Food for the Mind

Close your eyes. Focus on your breath. Know the breath all the way in, all the way out. And then the next breath. And then the next. Notice where you feel it most clearly in the body. Focus your attention there. Then try to make the breath comfortable. You can ask if it’s too long or too short. Too heavy, too light. Too deep, too shallow. You can adjust things so they’re just right. It’s like fixing food. You don’t want it to be too salty, too sweet. You have an idea of what’s just right, and that can be nourishing for the body.

In the same way, as we meditate we’re fixing food for the mind. So you want to fix it just right. Because the food for the mind is what? The Buddha said it’s contact at the senses, our intentions, and then our consciousness.

The main food is going to be your intentions. You want to develop good intentions. This is why we practice generosity, why we practice virtue, and why we meditate. We’re practicing fixing good food for the mind, food that gives you a sense of conviction that your actions really do matter. And when you make good choices, it brings good results.

When you have that conviction, then other forms of strength develop as well. You stick with the practice. In sticking with it, you have to be mindful not to forget that you’re going to try to develop skillful qualities and abandon unskillful ones. When you do that, the mind settles down into concentration.

That’s the most nourishing part of the food regime the Buddha has for you. It gives you an immediate sense of well-being. Then based on that, even stronger food: discernment. When you see the ways in which you’re weighing yourself down unnecessarily with the stress and suffering, you learn how to stop. This is probably the best way to develop strength of all of them. Otherwise your mind goes down, way down, way down, way down. And no wonder you don’t have the energy to do good things you know should be done.

So lighten your load. Then you find that it’s a lot easier to do the good things you know are right.

So we nourish the body with good food outside. We nourish the mind with good food inside. As we do that, then the mind becomes strong. When the mind is strong, then the things it knows are right, it has the ability to do them. Things that it knows are wrong, it has the ability to let them go—because it’s well-fed inside.