Feed the Hungry Mind

If you’ve ever read any Western philosophy and then some ancient Indian philosophy, you notice that they’re operating on very different models. Western philosophy is mainly concerned with how the world looks to your sense of sight. Input comes in through the eyes, and then you have to do some building and some constructing to make sense out of it. But the initial impulse is passive. You’re on the receiving end. Whereas in Indian philosophy, they’re more concerned about eating. You start out active. You’re looking for food. You’re hungry. They talk about different food sources and how to maintain a safe food source in this life and the next.

The Buddha follows that second pattern, but with a big difference. He talks about not only feeding, but also what you do to have to find your food and to fix it. And he basically says that the whole process is the essence of suffering. But he’s not going to tell you to stop feeding, because you’d starve. Instead, he teaches you to feed in a new way. Instead of clinging to the aggregates just for their own sake, for the sensuality you can get out of them or the states of becoming you can create, you turn them into a path. You feed on them as you turn them into a path. But then the path takes you to a place where you’re no longer hungry. You no longer need to feed.

You’re going to be fixing your food with knowledge as opposed to ignorance, because ignorance is the big problem: We fix our food in ignorance, which is why we suffer. But with knowledge, we can fix our food in a way that leads to the end of suffering. Of course, we don’t really know in the beginning stages. We have to listen to what the Buddha has to say, and we learn right view from following his instructions. It’s as if he’s teaching us how to cook in a new way, what kind of ingredients to look for, how to fix them the proper way. If we do it mindfully and with alertness, we become more conscious of what we’re doing, seeing it in terms of right view. As we watch ourselves in these terms, the right views we learn from the Buddha are replaced with right knowledge.

There are a lot of “shoulds” in his teachings, because our present-moment experience is very much constructed, and we need instruction in how best to construct it or fix it as our food. The raw material comes from our past karma. These are the ingredients we work with. He’s teaching us that there are right ways and wrong ways to cook.

It’s ironic that so many people think that the Buddha didn’t teach any “shoulds.”

I sat in on a class one time when a teacher was explaining the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. The first word, karaṇīya, means this “should be done” by someone who is skilled in aims. In other words, you know what you’re going for.

Someone raised his hand: “I thought Buddhism had no ‘shoulds.’” It took the poor teacher a whole morning to explain how there could be “shoulds” in Buddhism. But it’s full of “shoulds.” Kicca, “duty”—that’s what the Buddha talked about with his four noble truths. The big teaching has duties. Karaṇīya, “what should be done.” There’s a verb form that ends in -attabbo, -attabbaṃ: katabbo, this “should be done.” Dātabbo, this “should be given.” Sikkhitabbaṃ, this “should be trained in.” Should, should should. The Buddha treats us as active beings. He’s simply teaching us how to act in new ways, so that eventually we get to a place where we don’t have to act anymore. We’re learning the karma that puts an end to karma. But be very clear on the fact that the Buddha is telling us how to do things properly. He’s not simply saying, “Well, this is the nature of reality, and do with it as you like.”

Of course, he’s not forcing anybody to do things the way he recommends. Some people misread that to mean that he maybe wasn’t really all that confident that what he knew was right. But no, the reason is very different. He knew he had found the right way, so there’s no need to force anybody. The only force, of course, is the fact that you’re suffering. He’s simply pointing out that you don’t need to. You’re free to keep on looking for food, fixing your food, as long as you want. You can do this on and on and on. You’ve been doing it for who knows how long. Keep on doing it if you want. But when there’s an opportunity by which you don’t need to do that, it makes sense to give it a try. Otherwise, you just keep on suffering.

Like a hummingbird I saw in the North Rim one time: It was flying from flower to flower to flower, little tiny, tiny flowers, with a tiny bit of nectar in each flower. You wondered if the amount of energy expended in flying was actually compensated by the nectar. But as long as we’re hungry, we keep on looking for food in these ways. This is our problem. Our hunger distorts our vision. We see the world through the eyes of hunger. Things that are not really edible suddenly look like you could eat them, because you need something to eat.

The Buddha is trying to take us out of that desperate situation. He’s like someone who’s teaching us how to cook. There are many, many ways that you could cook a particular piece of food, but some ways are better than others. And there are some that you want to avoid entirely, like the dangers of overcooking, the dangers of undercooking. That’s our life. We keep falling into those dangers.

He’s trying to point out that there’s a way out. You reach something that’s not influenced by the eyes of hunger. It’s not seen through the eyes of hunger. The knowledge that comes with awakening has nothing to do with feeding at all. You’ve arrived at a spot where there’s no more hunger. And it doesn’t need to be fixed. It doesn’t need to be kept. You don’t have to worry about how much longer that state of non-hunger is going to last. That’s what he offers.

So think about the Buddha’s “shoulds.” Realize that he’s offering us some really good advice on how to do a better job of what we’ve been doing all along, which is assembling our experience in the present moment, each present moment, as it comes. There’s a way to put that food together that leads to the total end of hunger. There are skills in eating that are all laid out in the noble path.

So take his advice. He’s offering it freely. See if what he said is true. He’s not trying to simply describe things to us as a philosopher might. He’s trying to tell us how we construct the world, and how we could do a better job of it. He’s showing us a way to end our hunger, to end this constant drive to keep on feeding, finding food, fixing food, worrying about where the next meal is going to come from. He pointed out that this drive to feed, which was recognized and extolled in ancient Indian philosophy, is actually suffering. They thought that this was how you found happiness: by finding food. He saw that, no, it’s making you suffer. And there’s a way you can fix your food and eat your food, so that you can come to the end of food, because you don’t need it anymore.