Empty Bowl Meditation

I apologize if this sounds New-Agey, but it is plain old gratitude. I am pretty sure it didn’t happen before but these days, every time I sit down at the table before a meal I feel that I should be expressing gratitude.

This might be because when I was working I felt that I had somehow ‘earned’ my daily food. These days, in stark contrast, after having been very self-indulgent – reading & browsing -- I still get my food. Meanwhile, there are a billion people who are toiling hard and still going hungry.

Perhaps that’s why when I came across this simple ‘mealtime meditation’ practice by Thich Nhat Hanh, it resonated. (I found this when I was browsing the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Spirituality & Health magazine at my local library.)

My bowl, empty now, will soon be filled with precious food. Beings all over the Earth are struggling to live. How fortunate I am to have enough to eat.

Aside: In the same magazine, I found the following quote by Mandela.
“It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

The Sharper your knife, the less you cry

Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

This book can be looked at as being about cooking, but to me it is about the courage to follow dreams.

I finished reading this a couple of days ago. The author, Kathleen Flinn takes advantage of the fact that she is laid off work to go to Paris and study cooking at Le Cordon Blue, something she’s always dreamed of doing.

Personally, this book was inspiring because I now have the time to pursue things I’ve always thought of, and here’s someone who’s done it and written about it.

But I am recommending the book because it is very entertaining (reading about school and classroom always is) and because Kathleen writes with a sincerity and vulnerability that makes the storytelling very compelling.