► A Talk by the Venerable Master Hua's

Nobody talks during mealtime at Gold Buddha Monastery. Why? Because we want to focus on eating without false-thinking. Everyone needs to know that we could get sick if we don't know how to take a meal; knowing how to take a meal could eradicate calamities and lengthen lives and further increase blessings and wisdom.

Many people in the world have a certain strange disease, why? Because they don't know how to take a meal. Isn't that serious? They false-think a lot when they eat. You might think "thinking" is no big deal, but in fact false thoughts and meal, when combined, will result in certain kind of reaction just like that in a chemical factory-you may not feel anything when you have good false thoughts; but certain type of poison will come out if you have evil false thoughts.

For example, you false-think when you eat, "I don't have money but I can make a lot of money by selling opium, marijuana, or anything like that." A certain type of poison gas arises in the empty space with a flash of lightening, fast and invisible with naked eyes as soon as you have this false thought. This poison gas comes right in and accumulates day by day and month by month which leads to strange diseases such as cancer or various ailments and the underlying cause is not knowing how to take a meal.

Some people have false thoughts about taking a meal while eating. What's that, then? They give rise to a discriminative mind: "This food is nutritious so I would eat more; that food is not nutritious so I would not eat it at all; this food is tasty, although not nutritious, I would eat a little bit; that food doesn't taste good, although nutritious, I would eat less." This is attaching importance to flavors, not nutrition. Think about it, are you this way also?

Don't use a discriminative mind while eating-eat regardless of the flavors and nutrition of the food. If we look at the food with our eyes and discriminate the nutrition and flavors and our minds will get the messages. Now, we should turn things around and stop using our eyes to discriminate the nutrition and flavors of the food so that we can really enjoy the nutrition and flavors without being taken over by our eyes.

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