Food and Dharma Practice

Food and Dharma Practice

Cooking as Dharma Practice
Date of Advice:
July 2016
Date Posted:
April 2018

Rinpoche sent this letter to the cook at a Dharma center.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Singapore, February 2016. Photo: Roger Kunsang.

My dear most precious, kind, wish-fulfilling one,
How are you? I heard that you have been cooking for twelve years or more than that.

What I heard is that you are not only cooking, but you are practicing Dharma at the same time. Your cooking is practicing Dharma. There are professional cooks who make delicious food, but their motivation is to make the real I happy, which is not there, and then on top of that, to cherish this real I most, which is not there. I am very happy to hear that you are living your life and working by understanding your mind.

The essence of the Mahayana teaching is to let go of the I and to cherish others who are numberless. Even by cherishing one [sentient being], that brings enlightenment to you. That means you are able to free all sentient beings from the oceans of suffering and bring them to the peerless happiness, buddhahood—the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations. That is why even if one insect falls in the water, to arise compassion and help that insect is so important. Or if an animal, such as an ant, is attacked by another animal, to help rescue it with compassion. Also to help even one person with problems, with suffering, for example, to help rescue someone or to help someone who is suicidal, to help them not to be suicidal.

It is said in the Chenrezig Sutra Well-Condensed Dharma, that you don’t need to follow many Dharmas, only one, which is compassion. If you have compassion then the whole Buddhadharma comes, which means in your heart, all the understanding of the words and all the realizations. The conclusion is that if there is compassion you can achieve enlightenment. Without compassion, no enlightenment.

Relating to cooking, it is very important. As you know, cooking gives so much happiness to sentient beings. What I have heard from Kopan is that the food is very good and even if people don’t like the meditation course, they stay. So that helps them and even if they do not understand the teachings or the meditations, they stay, and it leaves a positive imprint in their mind. Besides that, they achieve everlasting happiness, nirvana. This is one example related to the Kopan courses in Nepal or the Tushita courses in Dharamsala.

I like to make food for people because it pleases their mind very much. When you know how to make different food delicious, one of the greatest benefits is that you can invite your gurus and make food for them. They enjoy it and you collect the greatest merit and this becomes the greatest purification. That means especially by pleasing the guru it becomes a quick way to achieve enlightenment. So many negative karmas get purified on the way. By making delicious food, you make the guru happy.

Before you made the food offering you would be reborn in the hells but by offering food and pleasing the guru you will be reborn in the pure land, or at least have a perfect human body, meet Dharma and actualize the path, and then achieve enlightenment. This benefit is not only relating to food, it’s anything that pleases the guru. Previously you would have been reborn in the lower realms, but if you please the guru you will be reborn in the pure realm, or become a human, become a monk. It changes from second to second, your whole karma changes your rebirth.

This is something you must keep in your heart and not forget. This is the way to make your life most meaningful.

With much love and prayers ...

Benefits of Offering Food
Date of Advice:
September 2014
Date Posted:
November 2016

Rinpoche had sponsored lunch on the Buddha Day for people who had taken precepts at a Dharma center. Rinpoche wrote to thank the center director and students for their service.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling director and all the people there,
I am very happy everyone enjoyed the food offered on the Buddha Day, when any merit created on that day is multiplied 100 million times. I heard that the center has the best cook from all over the world, so I am very happy. I shall come to taste your food soon.

This is what I tell cooks: food is very important for the centers and courses. It makes the people so happy, even if the Dharma talk is not very inspiring. If the food is good, then the people stay and at the end they can see the great purpose of the teachings. At the end they can see. Also making good food, delicious food, makes believers and non-believers very happy—both are happy.

Generally we receive all the past, present and future happiness up to enlightenment from sentient beings. We receive all the happiness from each sentient being, so they are most kind to us. To repay their kindness and also to serve them best, this is the best Dharma, the best practice—to free them from samsara's sufferings and bring them not just ordinary happiness but ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara, from the oceans of suffering of pain and the oceans of suffering of change, which is all the samsaric pleasures, then from where those two sufferings arise—the pervasive compounding suffering. These aggregates are under the control of karma and delusion. That is why they are pervaded by suffering and that is why they are in the nature of suffering.

It is important to know how to make the food tasty. When I get a chance to make the food myself, especially when I invite one of my gurus, then I am able to serve good food which pleases their holy mind. That is very good. Pleasing the gurus is most powerful purification. All the negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths [is purified] and it is the way to collect extensive merits, which makes it quick to achieve all the realizations of the graduated path to omniscient mind—the cessation of all obscurations and completion of all the realizations. That makes it quicker to achieve enlightenment and that means it is quicker to free the numberless sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and quicker to bring them to full enlightenment.

Again from the bottom of my heart I thank you very much for your service and everybody’s service at the center. That is serving the teachings of the Buddha, serving sentient beings in order for them to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and to bring them to omniscient mind. For that they need Dharma.

Thank you very much. The ultimate is benefiting sentient beings who are numberless. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers...

Benefits of Knowing How to Cook
Date of Advice:
November 2014
Date Posted:
November 2014

Rinpoche gave the following advice about cooking for the guru and for others.

At the beginning, when the Sangha were flourishing, Lama Yeshe got all the monks and nuns to take turns cooking for the other Sangha. One nun didn’t know how to cook, so when it was her turn, she put some vegetables in oil then served them raw.

If you know how to make food, it is very beneficial. The highest benefit, bringing great purification of negative karma and delusions and collecting merit, is to offer delicious food to the guru. You can also make so many people happy by making delicious food for them.

So, bodhisattvas, they learn anything to benefit for sentient beings. 

 

Blessing Food in a Factory
Date of Advice:
October 2013
Date Posted:
June 2014

A student who was helping with the relic tour wrote to ask Rinpoche for advice about blessing bulk food produced in a factory owned by her family.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling Marie,
Thank you for your kind email and your kind service. Thank you so much supporting the relics. This becomes great purification, and a way to collect extensive merits for sentient beings. It plants the seed of the path to enlightenment, and makes it more possible to achieve enlightenment and to free all the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment.

Regarding your question about blessing the food, you can recite OM AH HUM and visualize all the buddhas and bodhisattvas blessing the food with the qualities of the holy body, speech and mind. These absorb into the food, where the food is; these qualities are all absorbed into the food. So, recite OM AH HUM.

Visualize every grain or every part of the food as HUM. Visualize a blue HUM and numberless buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ holy body, speech and mind all absorb into that. Then do quite a number of malas of the mantra OM AH HUM. The more you do, the better. Then the HUMs become the grains or food particles.

Then make a prayer to the merit field, to Medicine Buddha, Tara and Chenrezig, but particularly to Medicine Buddha. Pray that all the buddhas and bodhisattvas bless the food and that there will never be any side effects, so it immediately purifies. The minute the food goes inside someone’s mouth, it immediately purifies all the negative karmas collected from beginningless rebirths. Not only are all the diseases and spirit harms purified, all realizations from guru devotion up to enlightenment are also actualized. All the realizations are generated, especially bodhicitta, and this brings perfect peace and happiness to all sentient beings in this world. All the wishes for happiness and all the successes, according to holy Dharma, are immediately received. All the wishes up to enlightenment are actualized.

That is what you should pray. You and your father (if he wants to) and everyone else can do this meditation. You can do the meditation and practice in the factory, and you can also do it at home, as long as all the food is piled up in one place and you know exactly where it is.

Please continue to make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta night and day and in every action that you do.

With much love and prayers...

 

Eating Meaningfully
Date Posted:
July 2011

At the Council for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (CPMT) in 2009, a student mentioned that eating certain types of food is cruel to other beings. Here is Rinpoche’s solution.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, 2005.

In reality, we cannot survive and live our life without harming others. There’s no way to live life without others receiving harm, without their being killed, without others suffering. There’s no way we can survive even one day without others being harmed. This is how life is in samsara. That’s why we need to be liberated. The ultimate answer is to be liberated and get out of samsara.

As I normally say, whenever work is done in a field to grow one grain of rice, so many beings are killed and receive harm. Somebody creates negative karma through harming them. This one grain of rice came from another grain of rice. So many sentient beings suffered for that—they died, were killed. It goes on and on like that, back to the very beginning of the continuum of rice, to when it first appeared in this world.

There’s no way to eat rice without some serious, careful, meaningful thinking, or at least without something benefiting the numberless sentient beings who died for each of these grains of rice. The hardest, most difficult, most painful thing is to eat this only thinking about our own happiness, and completely ignoring all those numberless sentient beings who died, suffered and were killed, creating the negative karma for all this rice.

We can see now that it is an emergency to practice Dharma, and that Dharma becomes the most important thing in life, more than anything else. The answer is to achieve liberation from samsara for our sake and for the sake of sentient beings, for them to not suffer or be killed. The greatest purpose and benefit is to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. In everyday life, this is the most important thing to achieve: enlightenment in order to liberate numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment—wow!

We have met all these teachings this time. That shows how we are the most fortunate beings in the world. But this incredible opportunity, this wish-fulfilling, perfect human rebirth, where we have met all this Dharma, sutra and tantra, can stop any time. Therefore, really to learn, practice, and actualize the path is more important than anything else in life; it is the most important thing.

 

Potato Pancakes
Date Posted:
April 2010

Rinpoche left the following note at midnight, for a student, on a pile of potato pancakes, during a retreat Rinpoche was doing. A monk from Kopan Monastery had made potato pancakes for dinner for everyone.

Of course, you heat it up, make it hot, then put a big piece of butter on it, slide it around, let it melt, and keep the rest in the center. Then, also you put sour cream on, the mixed one. Please enjoy, go into the clear light. Ha Ha Ha.

 

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