The Influence of Diet on Meditative Concentration

Diet is also an important factor affecting meditative concentration (samādhi). If the body takes in too many nutrients beyond what it needs, the body will react; this then affects the conscious mind, whose reactions become somewhat restless and agitated, the mind is not pure, emotions are not easily controlled, or require forced restraint. These nutrients include not only meat and fish, tobacco and alcohol, and pungent substances like scallions and garlic, but also vegetarian food. If vegetarian food is excessively nutritious, it can likewise cause excessive reactions in the body and emotions, increasing physical and mental burdens, making the mind difficult to purify, and thereby affecting meditative concentration.

So many people complain that meditative concentration is hard to cultivate; in that case, they should examine their own dietary structure to see whether their nutrition is excessive. Nowadays, because material life is rich and abundant, people crave the pleasures of the palate and nutrition, cherishing the physical body and delicious flavors too much, to the point that body and mind become impure, greed and anger are not easily subdued, afflictions are heavy, and of course meditative concentration cannot be accomplished, making the contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and personal realization of the Buddha's Dharma doubly difficult. Then, although a Buddhist student may be broadly learned, fluent in theory, and eloquent in speech, the inner realization is ultimately never accomplished, and one merely becomes a disciple who only understands intellectually or a jack-of-all-trades in theory.

In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the World-Honored One required his disciples to abstain from meat and pungent substances and to subdue the mind of desire and the mind of anger, so that their progress on the path could advance rapidly. But in modern society, material life is too abundant; even vegetarian food likewise affects the purity of body and mind, increasing the mind of desire and the mind of anger, and the path cannot advance rapidly. This should draw the attention of us, the vast numbers of Buddhist disciples, to adjust our own dietary structure so as to benefit our cultivation.