Attachments to Food Are Obstacles in Cultivation

(Minghui.org) What a person likes to eat and does not like to eat is rooted in sentimentality and desire. Our ancestors had a saying: Food cravings and sex are desires. Back then, many understood that the enjoyment of food is an attachment. This is in sharp contrast to modern society, where much time and energy is devoted to the pleasure and sensations derived from eating.

Previously, I managed a restaurant, and I was very particular about the nutritional content, color, smell, taste, and presentation of food. After cultivating for a while, I stopped eating meat, but I was still very fond of vegetable dumplings. I left my position at the restaurant, and I have been living at a materials production site. To save money and time, I usually just eat plain noodles with hot sauce and preserved salted vegetables. Instant noodles or fried rice with egg are now the best dishes I make for myself. However, I still often think about visiting my mother and asking her to make vegetable dumplings.

However, I realized that these thoughts are caused by an attachment. One day when thoughts of dumplings arose, mental images of the dumplings and the other foods I was attached to suddenly transformed into piles of excrement. I enlightened that as a future god, how could I be interested in ordinary foods? Making matters worse, many things that people eat are deviated and polluted.

I understand that I have been wrong. I have been cultivating for some time, but I am still attached to eating. This is sentimentality and a desire. Going forward, I will eat just enough to keep physically strong.

If any of my fellow practitioners reading this still have the same attachments noted above, please let them go as soon as possible. Chinese New Year is fast approaching, and we usually prepare delicious foods at home, so I kindly remind my fellow practitioners: do not be attached to eating!

One of the primary characters in the ancient Chinese epic Journey to the West is Pigsy, who had many bad habits, such as gluttony, lust, laziness, and trickery. Journey to the West is one of China's four great classics about cultivation, and Pigsy's character serves as a compilation of human habits to avoid, and his gluttony was very prominent. It seems that the attachment to eating is not just a small issue; it has been a known obstacle in cultivation for thousands of years.

Let us work diligently to reach the standard of consummation until the final stage that Master mentioned: “…you have abandoned all of your attachments and none of them remain” (“Cultivation Practice is Not Political”). Let us cultivate diligently together.

Thank you Master for your compassionate enlightening and strengthening, and for saving us!