Nutriments for Our Health

According to Buddhist principles, there are four kinds of nutriments that lead to either happiness or suffering. These nutriments are edible food, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. You see examples of all of these nutriments in your everyday life. It is what you choose to do with each of them and how you choose to water them that will determine how much you suffer or how happy you will become.

The first nutriment is edible food. We need to pay attention to what we eat ingest so we can preserve a healthy life style and well-being for ourselves and for our family. “Much of our suffering comes from not eating mindfully. We have to learn ways to eat that preserve health and well-being of our body and our spirit.” (page 32) We need to think about how much suffering went into getting our food and try to minimize that for our own well-being. We feel better about what we eat when less pain went into making that meal. Also what we put into our bodies should never be any type of toxin. When we smoke and drink alcohol, we are putting toxins into our body. These toxins eat away at ourselves and our family. When children see us putting these toxins into our body, they think it is ok to do so too, and it ends up hurting them. We need to be mindful of everything we put in our body not only for our own well-being, but the well-being of those around us too. If you want to enhance eating well, you need to be mindful of everything you eat. Don’t ingest toxins, but ingest things that help your body and will have a positive impact on you. Doing this could easily increase your happiness in the long run. I have seen a lot of how food can affect you in either good or bad ways too. When I eat desserts too much, I can see myself being temporarily happy, but on the long run it does not help. It causes way more suffering compared to the happiness you get. Instead, when I eat healthy options I feel so much better, especially the next day when I go for a run. I am able to run longer and harder and I feel so much better at the end of the run. A lifestyle with mindful eating is a much happier one.

The nutriment of sense impressions is another one that is very important to be mindful of. When we look around, hear things, smell them, and sense them, our body’s sense impressions are being used. Being mindful of how we sense things and what we allow to stay in our mind determines how much pain we will feel or how happy we can become. “Advertisements that stimulate our craving for possessions, sex, and food can be toxic.” (page 33) If we allow these ideas to take over our senses, we feed our negative feelings such as fear, anger, and violence. These feelings cause us pain and suffering every day, but if you are able to be mindful so that you allow yourself to sense only the good senses and ignore the bad ones, you can protect yourself from feeling suffering and make yourself much happier. Too live a happy life; make sure you and your family do not ingest too many toxic sense impressions. Keep yourself mindful of what you are sensing and judge whether or not it will help you be happier. Let the good sense impressions into your life and keep the toxic ones out of your life. Sense impressions occur all the time every 

single day to us. I have been subjected to so many as a child, where I would watch television for hours on end. This was a very unhealthy lifestyle because I let everything in. Only now do I realize how much those shows and advertisements caused nothing but pain and suffering because I let it all in. Now I practice mindfulness of what I watch to keep out as much suffering as possible and to create as much happiness as I can.

“The third nutriment is volition…- the desire in us to obtain whatever it is we want.” (page 34) This desire we all have causes us pain. We do everything in our power to fulfill our volitions, and they end up hurting us more than helping. Because they are our volitions, we believe they will make us happy. This is not always true because getting to that point is often difficult and filled with a lot of pain and suffering. We always want more and more and can never be satisfied, but we need to realize that this is just a vicious cycle that causes more and more pain to be thrust upon us. If you want to free yourself from these pains, you need to wish to be free of your volitions and enjoy the wondrous life you have and your surroundings. People always strive for more and more and never look back at what they have accomplished thus far. If you see what a wonderful job you have done, 

Desire

your pain can be eased. Just enjoy every moment of life to its fullest because if you go chasing your desires, you will put so much suffering upon yourself.  Letting go of your desires is definitely one of the most difficult things you can do. I always try to let go of my volitions and to see what I have in my life, but sometimes your desires can overcome all your thoughts. Sometimes all I ever want is to be with someone who is very special to me, but I know I can’t see them. They are too far away for me to be able to see them. I have been trying to practice mindfulness of what I have to realize that I am happy where I am and that my desires do not all need to be fulfilled. Doing this, I have eased my suffering due to all of my volition, but this is definitely the hardest of the four nutriments to completely follow the Buddhist way for.

The fourth and last of the nutriments is consciousness. “Our consciousness is comprised of all the seeds sown by our past actions and the past actions of our family and society. Every day our thoughts, words, and actions flow into the sea of our consciousness and create our body, mind, and world.” (page 36) When we fill our 

Consciousness

consciousness with greed, pride, envy, and many other toxins, we cause ourselves to suffer. Our consciousness is being fed all the time. We need to stay mindful of what we ingest so that we don’t cause too much suffering. There are so many toxic things that enter our consciousness. We cannot let them dwell, otherwise we will start to suffer from them. In my experience, I find meditation is the best way to work with your consciousness. I like to look at everything that has entered my consciousness throughout the day. I think about it and see what has caused pain and what has caused happiness, but not just that. I think about why I felt the pain and the happiness. You need to look deeper than just the feelings to truly understand why they affect you and not just how they affect you. The only way to help your consciousness become a happier place and to have it cause less suffering, is to understand your surroundings and make sure you keep yourself in a good one. If your consciousness is causing pain, eliminate that source of pain in any way possible. If it is as easy as just walking away from it, then you will realize how much happier you are once you get rid of those conscious thoughts and actions that cause your suffering.