Every meal a sacrament: Eating and drinking mindfully
23 … The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Many Christian churches do this sacrament weekly, some only do it four times a year. I think that this is a serious misunderstanding. Every meal we eat, every drink we drink is the body and blood of Christ. In Buddhism, there is a similar story:
From mymindfulnessblog.wordpress.com
In the book The World We Have, Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of couple traveling with their small boy across a vast desert to seek asylum in another land. They ran out of food. “Realizing all three of them would them would die in the desert, the parents made a horrifying decision: they decided to kill and eat their child. Every day they ate a morsel of his flesh, just enough for the energy to walk a little further, all the while, crying ‘Where is our son?’
When we do not eat mindfully, we are like the parents in the story. We should remember with every morsel of food that we ingest that it has been provided to us by the universe. That God has given us this magnificent blessing of our daily bread, that we literally consume the flesh and blood of the universe and it sustains us. By eating and drinking mindfully with these stories in mind, you will taste eternal life or nirvana in the midst of this world of suffering. Every meal should be a ritual – the hard part is remembering to be mindful, because usually when we eat or drink we’re on autopilot.
