My very dear one,
I am very, very happy that you are doing the Basic Program; you are unbelievable, the most fortunate being in the world, so it is important to remember this.

Regarding not eating food, that is ridiculous. Everything that we do in life, we must follow what does not cause harm to ourselves and others, and we must avoid doing anything that causes harm to ourselves and others. We have to eat food so that we can continue this precious human rebirth and have a long life. If we become sick and so thin, then our life will not last very long or it will not be good quality.

You already have a precious human rebirth, where you can learn the Dharma, as you are, so you can practice the Dharma and achieve happiness in this life and future lives. You can be reborn in a pure land where you can become enlightened or you can take another precious human rebirth in the next life. You can take a perfect human rebirth having the eight qualities or seven qualities, or the four Mahayana Dharma thoughts, where you can achieve liberation from samsara and then achieve peerless happiness, enlightenment, the complete cessation of all the subtle and gross defilements and you can complete all the realizations.

Of course if you eat too much, what you don’t need, this can also cause a short life. You are harming yourself and you become unhealthy. However, not eating food or eating too little is also not good, so you shouldn’t be too extreme either way.

We eat food to have a long, healthy life in order to benefit the numberless sentient beings—the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless human beings, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings. There are numberless sentient beings in each realm, so we need to free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. We need to save them from the lower realms so they can have higher rebirth.

Can you imagine what benefit you can give to them, now that you have a precious human rebirth, so you must eat food for other sentient beings. Please do it for other sentient beings.

If the reason you are not eating food is to harm yourself, this is totally wrong and also it is creating negative karma. I know some people don’t eat because they think they are fat, but actually they are not, so that is also creating negative karma. Eating should be done with the motivation to have a long and healthy life, so eat for the benefit of sentient beings; so you can benefit them.

Thank you very much. Again, I want to say that in your life do what benefits sentient beings and avoid doing what harms them. This includes yourself. Do what is beneficial to others and do not do what harms others. This is the path of the Buddha; what to follow.

Please write to me again if you change your mind about eating food.

With much love and prayers...