In whatever status whether lavishly or poorly you offer a meal, what both the recipient and the donor get are [merely] longevity, good appearance, comfort and strength that constantly become impermanent in terms of this life and the lives after.

To develop paññā, all of the above become supportive.

Therefore, rather than toiling over speculative views (diṭṭhi) whether it should be one meal a day or two meals, whether it should be vegetarian or non-veg food, or whether it should be fruits or rice and curry, it is to insightfully realize, in whatever form we take food, what it nourishes is nothing but a body that is subject to continually ageing, falling sick and dying that we must exert ourselves. The very food you eat will someday cause you to get sick, too, and kill you. A hundred percent of the cause of getting sick is too much or too little food.

Instead of seeing the rice, curries, fruits and sweets offered into your alms-bowl in their apparent form, if you can see what lies in the bowl as excrement, urine, phlegm, snot and sweat, …see the cup of king coconut or water you drink as a cup of urine, …see the garlic curry you eat as a gas that escapes the body, …see the curd you eat as a lump of phlegm ejected from the body, what you see thusly is not something different but the true nature, the real nature, of that food. The truth as it is. The true ‘review and reflection’, too, is this.[i] Instead, eating whatever you want to your heart’s content and afterwards reciting stanzas of ‘review and reflection’ at the evening chanting, is not.

You mustn’t be ones who dress such noble teachings as ‘review and reflection’ up in clown costumes. For it would be yourself that you’d be dressing up [as clowns]. In future rebirths in saŋsāra, you would get cast as characters that fit those costumes you stitch for yourself to simply suit your liking, measurements and complexion. That would be your own selection. There is nothing that can be gained by ‘reciting’ or ‘wishing’. Something can only be gained by ‘putting into action’ alone.

Resolve on the truest reflection thus: “I, who have tasted celestial ambrosia of the heavenly realms,[ii] royal banquets of the human realms, phlegm and snot of the peta-ghost realms, grass and poonac of the animal realms and molten rock of the niraya[iii] to the same extent of the earth’s soil, shall no longer succumb to the desire for taste, to the voracity of the tongue.”

Without doing so, if we use the innocent alms-meal of the unsuspecting benefactor towards feeding Māra, then we’ll be in debt to ourselves. How we can get out of that debt is not by chasing after taste or nutrition but by pursuing the [true] nature of both the food and the body nourished by that food.

Although there would be containers of malted milk, nutritious milk powder, international brands of coffee or drinks made out of vegetable yeast extract in the glass cabinet inside the storage kuṭī of sanctioned items, there comes a day we’d be unable to swallow even as much as a teaspoon of anything past the throat. If you fail to insightfully penetrate this reality today, when that day comes, you will end up having to pass away salivating over those containers, drooling over them. Why you’d salivate is due to tanhā.

If you manage to be skilful to behold as impermanent the mind of defilements that seeks taste, that asks for taste, then you won’t ever need to specifically perform review and reflection on food.

If you often have the urge to eat a certain food you love, see that food as a putrid heap of garbage, as excrement and urine. Reflect upon the immense suffering endured in the past in saŋsāra, as well as the heap of suffering currently experienced and will be experienced in the future as a result of trying to make a desire that doesn’t belong to you ‘yours’. Breaking free from the state of puthujjana that endures such a colossal amount of suffering caused by a mind that is foreign to you and doesn’t belong to you, make the most of the [precious] human life received on this occasion when a Buddha has emerged.

Reflect that the aroma of the food, the saliva gulped, the mind that arises, and the taste that is felt, are nothing but impermanent. Do not identify yourself with the quantity, lavishness or variety the revered-benefactors offer; don’t make such things ‘yours’. When consuming, always stay within your limit. Make the practice of ‘filling up half of the stomach with food, a part with water and leaving a part empty’ your limit. Strictly keep the Blessed One’s teachings as your guide in deciding your limit; don’t let the whims of the benefactors decide it. Firmly bear in mind that the aforementioned thoughts would be valid only for those righteous men who develop the path to be extinguished in this very life itself. Whoever [else] who feels like it, should eat as they please. The freedom to do so is available in the sāsana. Yet mindfully notice that emancipation from the round of rebirths could be a long way away.

[i] When eating food offered by benefactors (as with the other three requisites―robes, dwelling and medicine), a bhikkhu is supposed to wisely review and reflect upon the food that is being eaten―specifically, the purpose of consuming that food, its non-self (anatta) nature, and its loathsomeness. To denote such act of review and reflection, the translation uses the terms ‘eat reflectively’ or ‘review and reflection’ as applicable. To shed light on what is meant by this, stated below, in brief, is how one usually contemplates when performing such review and reflection on food:

“This food is eaten not for fun or enjoyment, nor to develop manly vigour, nor to fatten lean areas of the body, nor to make the body look attractive, but this food is taken in so as to sustain body and life, to avoid the pain of hunger, and to be able to pursue Dhamma by practising the path. … …”

“This food would replenish blood and flesh. Yet the food does not know of that. Nor does the body know that it is dependent on food. Thus the food and the body are two masses of elements that have no knowledge or expectation of each other. There’s no being or person in them. Thus, it is not correct to say ‘I eat’.”

“No sooner this food enters the body than it mixes with saliva and phlegm and turns into vomit and gorge. As it digests further, it becomes loathsome long before it reaches the stage of excrement.” 

[ii] Here ‘heavenly realms’ refer to the 6 heavenly worlds of the sensuous sphere. See deva.

[iii] ‘Niraya’, the nether or infernal world, usually translated as ‘hell’ is the lowest of the fourfold-hell. It is a sort of a place of punishment and torture where only unwholesome-karma ripens; where the gravest of the unwholesome-karma comes to fruition. It is a naturally risen place of ‘becoming’ due to causality, rather than a place created by someone. When one is born in niraya, that too is a dependently arisen rebirth that arises in dependence of ‘clinging’. A birth in niraya is not eternal. In other words, just as in heaven, a birth in niraya, too, is impermanent, which will come to an end once the relevant unwholesome-karma has finished giving effect, necessarily be followed again by a death and a new rebirth according to one’s remaining karma.