The Travails Of Trying To Eat Like Korean Buddhist Monks

What is the most challenging part of trying to eat like a Buddhist monk?

a. Do nothing but eat
b. Eat in silence
c. Eat V- - E - - R - -Y ......................S- L – O – W – L - Y
d. Eat everything in your bowl
e. Drink the water used to clean the bowls
f. All of the above.

Personally I’d have serious problems with the first one. I’ve to break a lifetime habit of multitasking at mealtimes – I’d be catching up on news and rushing through breakfast simultaneously, gulping down lunch while Googling on the office desktop and socializing time, either with family, friends or the idiot box, takes place over dinner. I honestly can’t remember the last time, if ever, when I simply sat down and ate without the company of a book, magazine, radio, TV, mobile phone or human being. The notion of simply eating without talking, reading, listening to music or surfing seems like some alien norm from a galaxy far, far away.

So why on earth would I want to eat like a Korean Buddhist monk?

First of all, it’s green – with the emphasis on organic ingredients and no wasting of food to the extent that you’re expected to take only what you can consume and you’re even supposed to drink the water used to clean the bowl and slurp down each tiny morsel remaining in the bowl.

Next, it’s healthy –temple meals are wholesome, high in protein and low in calories. There’s no meat and no alcohol. Instead of using highly processed ingredients such as white rice and chemical additives like MSG, vegetarian dishes are prepared with natural condiments such as shitake powder and kelp powder. Fermented ingredients which can lower cholesterol and inhibit cancer are widely used in temple recipes. Modest portions are also encouraged instead of super-sized meals.

Third, I can feel virtuous meditating while chewing my cud. A typical pre-meal chant goes like this:

“Where has this food come from? My virtues are so little that I am hardly worthy to receive it. I will take it as medicine to get rid of greed in my mind and to maintain my physical being in order to achieve enlightenment.”

The dining experience is to the sunims, a sacred ritual and an opportunity to appreciate and reflect on the interconnectedness of life. While I won’t go so far as to meditate on the virtues of the farmers and the middlemen who played their part in bringing the tchigae to the table, it’s better than mindlessly stuffing my mouth while being distracted by various things that have nothing to do with the meal. I don’t expect every mealtime to be the “very moving experience” described by environmentalist and chimp expert Jane Goodall who took part in the food ceremony during her visit to Korea in 2006 but hopefully like her, I’ll be able to appreciate the value of the food while “chewing the food slowly and thinking about where it had come from”.

But honestly, the main appeal is that I can bid annyeong to the kilos more effectively if I were to adopt the slow-eating habits of the sunims. Slow food, Korean-Buddhist style is not simply the slow-food as envisioned by Carlo Petrini, the founder of the original “slow food movement” in the mid-80s as a reaction against the MacDonald-isation of global food. Instead, it means adjusting one’s pace of eating to the others around you –not too fast and not too slow - all in the name of moderation and harmony.

Am clueless as to how long the usual balwoogongyang temple meal is but I’d like to imagine that mealtime is an unhurried affair without being languid. And that’s what I think will be the most difficult aspect to emulate though clearly there are good reasons for not rushing through meals. One scientific study suggests that if you take a longer time, like half an hour, to chew on your food ( or chew each small bite “15 to 20 times”) and take many pauses between bites to complete a meal, you’re more likely to feel fuller and actually consume fewer calories.

But in a 24/7 world with pressing deadlines, where restaurants and cafes try to outdo each other by the number of TV screens lit up in their dining areas and by their wi-fi accessibility, how does one stop multi-tasking and just literally watch what one eats?


sources:
http://issuu.com/hikekorea/docs/kfs_booklet_final_standard_size
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=7,3489,0,0,1,0
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/02/08/dining/20120208-MINDFUL.html?ref=buddhism
http://koreantemplecuisine.net/blog/?paged=2
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=7,1469,0,0,1,0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_temple_cuisine
http://eng.templestay.com/board/board.asp?bt=9&idx=129&cid=21
http://jentrinque.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/
http://mingkok.buddhistdoor.com/resources/get/c8128cf9ec4137dba476c10334da59541d365c65/241/0