Episode 378
Food Worthy of Grace
In many traditions, there are rituals associated with food.
In the west, we might say grace before we eat, and in the east sometimes they say grace after they eat. In the Hare Krishna tradition, they only eat food they have prepared themselves, or when it is prepared by someone they know and trust – and it is always offered to Krishna before it is served.
In the Sikh tradition, they treat food as holy – perhaps even as the material manifestation of God. It sustains us, and therefore it must be sacred.
When we’re in the kitchen, we don’t have to rush through the cooking process. We can take our time, and even say thank you to the vegetables as we cut them and cook them. The extra care serves to make the food extra delicious, and truly worthy of saying grace.
Hosts & Guests
Kurt Robinson
Resources
Transcript
So many times when I am preparing food if I am cutting up vegetables or fruit or flesh, I cut slowly. I notice a lot of people try to be very efficient in the kitchen and you will see an experienced cutter and cooker.
With all their years of experience they can cut through a zucchini, even slices very quickly but in my kitchen I am not concerned with speed or efficiency, well not directly. What I am most concerned about is presence. As I slice every part of that zucchini I say thank you and I think every time I say thank you to that vegetable or that flesh or those animals that sacrificed to create my meal, the more delicious my meal becomes.
Food always becomes more delicious when I say grace. Maybe that’s simply psychological because I am saying these things and taking the time to be pleasant with my food. Maybe it is perhaps something otherworldly, something spiritual. The fact that I have said thank you for this meal means that it is blessed.
It doesn’t matter which of these explanations or if you take them both to be congruent, the point is it is absolutely true, food tastes better when you say grace.
Try it and you will find out for yourself. I take the time in the kitchen looking slowly because this food is worthy of respect, something that will sustain us.
I have mentioned before in the Sikh tradition they consider food not just holy they may even consider it god. As the sustainer, something physical tangible, we can feel, touch taste and smell it. WE know it is with us, clearly this is something holy, this is something worthy of our respect.
If its something to sustain our life. How wonderful and how unusual if you think about it that these things, these fruits and vegetables can maintain our force and our heart pumping and stomach turning and our blood flowing. Our words and our actions come in many ways from this food.
When we sit in a restaurant when we know they have taken the time to prepare the food precisely with care and with love well we can know in a restaurant, that’s why in certain traditions like Hare Krishna they will only eat food in their own kitchen or someone they know well and trust. That they know has prepared this food with meditation and with presence and who has offered to Krishna before eating.
If someone does prepare us a meal with the goodness of your heart or if we prepare it with ourselves and sit down and say those words “for the most graceful, for the most merciful”.
And then we begin to eat, then we know. We know this highest compliment to the chef that this food is worthy of grace.
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