Karmic Seeds, Karmic Conditions, and the Digestion and Absorption of Food

Question: If everyone eats the same food, does the tathāgatagarbha selectively absorb it according to each person's different karmic causes?

Answer: Each person's physical condition is related to the karmic seeds from past lives. The body is the direct retribution, while the living environment of the material world is the circumstantial retribution. Whether a person is healthy or not, tall or short, fat or thin, is all determined by the karma of past lives. For example, if a person's retribution is to be fat, even if he eats very little food, he will still be fat; a thin person, even if he takes in a lot of nutrition, will still be thin. When food enters the stomach, the tathāgatagarbha will selectively digest and absorb it according to sentient beings' karmic seeds and karmic conditions; the functions of the stomach and intestines are also manifested by the tathāgatagarbha according to sentient beings' karmic seeds.

When different people eat the same food, their karmic conditions differ, so what is digested and absorbed differs, and their physical conditions differ. Those whose cultivation lacks strength will be influenced and limited by these karmic conditions, while those whose cultivation has strength can change the structural composition of matter and remain unaffected, or less affected, by material things. For example, one who is quite good at sitting in meditation and cultivating meditative concentration can replenish the nutritional elements in the body, allowing the body to gain energy—even more abundant and nourishing than the energy from food—so the body will be very healthy, and thus one can reduce the intake of food.

Another example is Patriarch Bodhidharma, whose meditative concentration was excellent. Others repeatedly poisoned his food, yet he remained unaffected and unharmed by the poison. His tathāgatagarbha was able to refrain from absorbing the poison in the food, or, having absorbed it, could change the four great elements of the poison so that the food had no toxic effect. Patriarch Bodhidharma's cultivation was powerful, so his tathāgatagarbha could change the four-element structure of the poison; the poison was not absorbed by the body, and the body remained unharmed by it. The power of merit of each person's tathāgatagarbha is the same, but each person's karmic conditions differ. With the same poison, the four-element components absorbed by each person's tathāgatagarbha differ, and the material body manifested will differ accordingly.