Thought, Diet And Desire
Devotees occasionally ask, “When you experience a thought you don’t like, should you go around the thought, or go to the center of the thought and find out why you don’t like it?” Look at thoughts as people. I see thoughts when I’m in the world of thought like a school of fish. I’m there in the ocean, sitting and looking, and a school of fish goes by, right in front of me. Well, look at thoughts as people. You are aware of other people, but you are not other people. You are just aware of other people. So, when you see someone you do not like, you don’t have to do anything about it. Let him be. It’s the same with thoughts. When a thought comes passing by that you don’t like, let it go. You don’t have to glue yourself onto it and psychoanalyze it; it doesn’t do the thought any good to be psychoanalyzed by you!
A vegetarian diet is a big help on the spiritual path. Of course, it’s only one of the helpers on the path. I’ve worked out a very simple look at food. I look at food in four ways. You have four types of food: fresh food, dead food, clean food and dirty food. Not necessarily all fresh food is clean food. Much fresh food that we get nowadays is dirty food, because food is like a sponge. It will sponge up into itself chemicals, smog and inorganic substances. These are harmful to the physical body, because the physical body is organic. So, the object of nutrition for meditation is to eat clean, fresh, organically grown food and to avoid eating dead, chemically grown, dirty food. Every time you have a delicious dinner in front of you, ask yourself the question, “Is this clean fresh food or dead dirty food? Or, is this clean dead food or is it fresh dirty food?” After that, have a wonderful dinner, if you can! Basically, we eat one-third fruits, nuts and seeds and two-thirds fresh vegetables, salads, grains and dairy products. Such a diet keeps the physical and emotional forces subtle and refined, which therefore makes meditation subtle and refined, too. The within is very refined. We always try to the best of our ability, and we’re not finicky at all about watching the combination of foods.
We have talked before about desire and transmutation. The idea of transmuting one’s desires really means becoming aware of something inside that you want even more than the external desires. Ultimately, man’s greatest desire and urgency is for the realization of the Self in this life—the core of his Being. Realize that and live with it and enjoy it while on this planet. Once we intensify that desire, other desires become less intense, only because we are less aware of them. They are still intense for the people who are aware of them, because they still exist, right in the mind substance.
Here’s a wonderful meditation that I think you will enjoy. It shows you how simple the mind can be. How many hairs are there on your head? Thousands, but there’s only one hair in the total mind structure. People have thousands, and animals even have more, but basically there is only one hair. Think about that. There is only one eye. People have two, and so do animals. But study one eye and you know them all. There’s only one tooth. People have a lot of them, and so do animals, but there is basically only one in the universe of the mind. Meditate on that and bring everything to the one. Then, when you get it all worked out—that there’s only one hair, there’s only one eye, there’s only one tooth, there’s only one fingernail, and there’s only one of everything—start throwing those few things away. Throw away the tooth and make it disappear. Throw away the hair and make it disappear. This will take you right to the essence, the total essence of your being. Of course, probably your awareness will wander in the meantime, and you won’t get through this meditation. But keep working at it and working at it and really make everything extremely simple. We look at the world with our two physical eyes and we see such a complexity that it’s almost mind-boggling to encompass the entirety of it all. It’s much simpler than that on the inside.