On Thursday November 3, a talk on “Food and Buddhism” was held at Bra’s Arpino Multifunctional Center by Professor Massimo Raveri, who lectures on East Asian religions and philosophies at Venice’s Cà Foscari University.
The event brought to a close the cycle of four discussions on food and religions organized by the prior of the Bose monastic community, Enzo Bianchi, a recent recipient of an honorary degree from the University of Gastronomic Sciences.
“Why does the relationship between food and Buddhism concern us all deeply?” asked Professor Raveri at the start of his talk. First of all, he said, because the number of immigrants to Italy who follow this religion is growing constantly, with as many as 400,000 to 500,000 people registered with the Italian Buddhist Association.
Additionally, as everyone can see in their own neighborhood, the number of organizations, associations and other bodies organizing courses and training of Buddhist origin or inspiration is on the rise. Opportunities for practicing yoga, Asian arts and meditation are multiplying, infiltrating places that traditionally have nothing to do with the religion, like gyms.
If we then look at the exponential increase in the number of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in Italy’s urban centers, it becomes clear that dialog and encounters with Asia in general, and specifically with the Buddhist doctrine, is of ever greater interest to us.
Having caught the audience’s attention with this introduction, the professor then got to the heart of his subject with an important and highly resonant statement: “In the history of the Buddhist religion, food has always been a great problem, not moral, but existential.”
To explain all this, it is necessary to clarify two essential concepts of the Buddhist doctrine: samsara and nirvana.
Samsara refers to the cycle of rebirths in which all living beings are trapped. Far from seeing this series of reincarnations in a positive light, as we might imagine at first, Buddhists consider samsara a condemnation. Liberation from this infinite cycle of suffering can only be reached through nirvana, the salvation of definitive death. This is achieved at the moment in which one is liberated of all forms of desire that keep us anchored to the earthly life, thus recognizing the ultimate reality. Desire, which manifests itself through senses and feeling, is the source of all illusions, and the violence of the human mind arises out of desire.
This perspective, according to which the achievement of liberation takes place through the elimination of desire, leads to a problematic relationship with food. Food represents a desire that humans cannot renounce, and if they want to survive they cannot completely eliminate its fulfillment. One of the temptations that the demon Mara used to try to seduce the Buddha in his journey towards the path of enlightenment was in fact food.
So how should a Buddhist approach the matter of eating?
The doctrine’s solution to this dilemma is complex and multifaceted and has evolved over time, based on the different currents that have formed within the religion.
The traditional response has been the search for a middle way: The relationship with food should be managed and controlled. The fundamental principle is that of abstention, which is expressed first and foremost in the ban on killing other creatures in order to feed oneself. This is why Buddhists are essentially vegetarian.
They also abstain from the consumption of alcohol, which inflames passions and increases that desire from which they want to free themselves.
Food must be seen as a gift, as something that is received, not something which is appropriated and dominated.
The essential idea is to eat only what is necessary, eliminating the superfluous.
In this context, the practice of fasting takes on great relevance. Monks accept hunger and the renunciation of food for varying periods of time as an exercise in controlling their desire. This is done, however, in an altruistic spirit: When the Buddha was fasting, he would talk and make himself available to others.
In this, the monks contrast with the gaki, the malign spirits of the Buddhist religion, represented as hungry demons with huge bellies, who want to eat the world but who cannot satisfy their desire because their necks are too narrow for food to pass through. So they wander restlessly through the underworld, futilely attempting to placate their atavistic hunger.
Around the 7th century AD, a current of Buddhism developed, known as esoteric-tantric, which calls into question the religion’s traditional vision of a sense of wrong.
Senses and feelings are seen as something profound and insuppressible, and advocates accuse the previous tradition of pushing people into a repression of their soul. Only by passing through one’s own illusions can one reach liberation.
So followers are led by their teachers through a journey that includes forced transgressions, with the aim of exploring their own soul: They are encouraged to stuff themselves with foods considered toxic, like meat and spicy foods, to the point of nausea, or to drink alcoholic beverages until they pass out. The underlying idea is that only someone who knows their own darkest depths will have the strength to reach enlightenment once they have escaped them.
On this point, the difference that separates Buddhism from religions like Catholicism or Islam is clear: The Buddhist doctrine is not an ethical path towards salvation but a path of wisdom; only through knowledge of oneself can liberation be attained.
But it is within the Japanese current of the Zen school that the question of food is finally dealt with positively, and not seen only as a problem to be overcome.
In Zen, every daily action, if performed consciously, can be an opportunity for meditative practice. From this perspective, both cooking and eating are seen as great opportunities for conscious action.
Cooking, we transform food, but we are also transformed by it. Cooks dedicate themselves to others, abandoning the sometimes egoistic quest for one’s own salvation, and transforming humble ingredients (generally vegetables and grains) into delicious, healthy and easily digestible dishes, facilitating an optimal meditative practice for the rest of the community. This is why the role of the tenzo, responsible for preparing meals, has a profound relevance in the Zen monastery.
The 13th-century Japanese monk Dogen Zenji is highly emblematic in this sense. He worked for many years as the tenzo in his monastery and he wrote the book Instructions for the Zen Cook, often subtitled How to Obtain Enlightenment in the Kitchen, which highlights the idea of the art of cooking as a practice towards the absolute. Skillfully alternating the six tastes (sour, bitter, sweet, salty, mild and spicy), the person preparing food can express in their dishes the four essential qualities of the soul: cleanliness (which reveals a genuinity of heart), carefulness (which shows concentration in preparation), simplicity (which highlights the essential nature of the cook) and purity, in harmony with the laws of nature. In Dogen’s monastery, only the abbot ranked above the head cook.
With this poetic and romantic vision of cooking in the Zen doctrine, the professor wrapped up his overview of the relationship between food and Buddhism, one marked by controversy, multifaceted and in constant evolution.
There is no question that his talk was full of inspiration for further reflection and study, not only giving us an idea of food from a different point of view, but also encouraging us to problematize and reflect on the way in which we feed ourselves and our relationship with food.
