How Do the Inner and Outer Dusts of Food and Drink Arise, Cease, and Transform?

The dharma of eating is not necessarily an attachment of the manas. When the Buddha manifested in the human world, He had activities of eating and drinking, and the great bodhisattvas also eat; they have no craving for food and drink, and are not attached to it. For some sentient beings, eating is caused by the manas' attachment, and they crave form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas; other sentient beings are neither attached nor craving. The Buddha does not crave, and the bodhisattvas do not crave either—so what is eating for? It is to nourish the material body, so that the material body can have normal activity of the five aggregates to liberate sentient beings. For ordinary people, eating is on the one hand to maintain the material body, and on the other hand it carries a craving nature, manifesting their own greed, anger, and delusion. In the process of eating, Buddhas and bodhisattvas have no afflictions of greed, anger, and delusion—this is the difference between a Buddha and ordinary sentient beings.

Food and drink are composed of the four great seed elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. Even without being chewed into pieces, they arise and cease, changing moment by moment. The four great seeds arise, and in an instant they cease and return into the tathāgatagarbha; arising and returning, always thus arising and ceasing and changing. This food and drink must all be chewed into pieces; it is also composed of the four great seeds. The chewed food and drink becomes fine particles, and finally becomes the smallest of minute particles, yet it is forever a combination of the four great seeds, forever arising and ceasing and changing moment by moment.

The food and drink that sentient beings' tongue faculty, oral cavity, and teeth come into contact with is an outer sense-object; the food and drink that tongue consciousness and body consciousness feel is an inner sense-object. When the teeth bite the outer sense-object into pieces, the inner sense-object touched by body consciousness is also broken into pieces. Finally the outer sense-object becomes fragments and enters the stomach and intestines, and the inner sense-object touched by body consciousness and mind consciousness also enters the stomach and intestines. Finally, when the food and drink in the stomach and intestines is fully metabolized and gone, even excreted from the body, the inner sense-object touched by body consciousness and mind consciousness disappears. By the same principle, after the inner taste sense-object discerned by tongue consciousness and mind consciousness enters the esophagus from the oral cavity, the inner taste sense-object can no longer be tasted, but in the stomach and intestines there are still the altered outer taste sense-object and inner taste sense-object; it is only that tongue consciousness cannot taste them. After they are metabolized and excreted from the body, the outer taste sense-object and inner taste sense-object all disappear. What, then, is the relationship between these outer and inner sense-objects, and how do they all change?