With Buddha as my Chef, the Arising of Vedana

As far as I know, Lord Buddha was not a chef per se – in fact, he was a monk who accepted only the food offered to him. After his renunciation he lived on one simple vegetarian meal per day, served to him by Ananda, who looked after his needs along with Doctor Shivaga (or Jivaka) Komalaboat.

The “Father Doctor” or “Hermit Doctor” Jivaka, is believed to have been born in northern India where he learned traditional medicine and became adviser to Lord Buddha.

He moved to what is now Tibet and by 1000 c.e his teachings had spread throughout Thailand and Burma. Father Jivak is revered  as the “Thrice Crowned King of Tibetan Medicine” and his image is depicted in artwork adorning the hallways and shrines of hospitals, pharmacies, medical and massage schools throughout the “Golden Land”.

Ancient medicine maintains that the very foundation of lasting physical and mental health is good agni, or fire. This is the inspiration behind the name Kindle Cafe – our intention is to kindle your fire.

How Lord Buddha really felt about his one vegetarian meal per day is anyone’s guess. I imagine, like any good Yogi, his attitude was rather indifferent when it came to his desire to actually ingest food. That’s not to say he didn’t have plenty of advice about dietary conduct, he did, but more important to Lord Buddha was Vedana.

Vedana is a Pali word meaning “sensation” – not in the sense of “new, unusual and exciting”, but rather a more neutral term for anything that arises in the mind or body as a result of ingesting all our different “foods” that arrive through the six sense doors: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste and thought.

That’s right, our thoughts are as much a food as the pizza you may have had for lunch, one will be digested – one by the stomach and the other by the mind. The digestibility of each will depend on agni,  the fire element responsible for all transformation in the body and mind.

If agni is good, then what you have eaten, heard, smelled, touched, seen or thought will be digested and assimilated into body and into ahamkara, the “I” former, or that which constitutes your personality.

You are what you eat, or more accurately, you are what doesn’t come out. . . .