Daily-Bhagavatam 72 – 11.07.62 – See food as the grace of God
Shrimad Bhagavatam 11.7.62 So here the avadhut brahmana is continuing the narration of the past time of the story of the kapota couple of the pigeon couple and now the pigeons have begotten children and they are very affectionate to the children they like it as the children are growing and as the children are growing their appetite is also growing their parents are in anxiety to provide for their children so ekata jagmatustasam at one time they went jagmatustasam of the children annartham annartham forgetting them kutumbinao the heads of the family kutumbinao parithaha they went round and round kaana ne in the forest tasmin that forest they were searching where will we get food enough food arthinao they were anxiously searching for that food sheeratusheeram they wandered and they went far away while searching for food actually the anxiety for food is one of the fundamental characteristics of material existence eating, sleeping, mating, defending are bodily needs and they are needed for the survival of the body and arranging for them is often a great source of anxiety some of us may be living in relative financial comfort and so we may not have too much worry about food but there is a large portion of humanity which wakes up every morning with the anxiety of how we can get food today will we get food today or not for that matter and what to speak of the human species the non-human species often has to worry much more about food a lion may be a king of the jungle but still that does not mean that a deer is going to come into its mouth and offer itself to the lion saying that oh you are the king and you shouldn't have to work you can just reward me nahi sukhasya sammasya pravishanti mukhe mrudaha that the lion cannot lie down and expect that the deer will come into its mouth the lion also has to work so if the king of the animals has to work mruganam mugendroham krishna says actually he says that the lion the vibhuti of kingship that the lion manifests represents krishna's greatness represents krishna its opulence of krishna and yet such a powerful living being such a powerful animal in the jungle the lion has to also worry about food and like that all living beings have to worry about food and now in human culture food is made to not just an item of necessity but also an item of affection and exchange and that's why when there is affection between two people they invite each other for lunch at their homes or they invite them to lunch at some other place and while eating they relax and talk with each other and their bond grows thicker so what happens with friends also happens with family members the father or whoever the bread earner in the family is the bread earner that person actually shows the love for the family members by providing for that food now when one arranges for the food through that food one expresses one's affection and inability to provide the food can be a cause of great anxiety the Bhagavad Gita helps us to get a sacred vision of food and it helps us understand that food doesn't come just by our own efforts food comes by God's arrangement at dinner yes we have to work and we say if I don't do a job I won't get food on my table dining table that is true but then even after we work hard we may not get food on our dining table if God does not provide food through nature it is God who arranges for food who by miraculous arrangement turns mud into mangoes even now scientists are barely understanding the extremely complex process of photosynthesis by which all food all edible food in this planet is produced at its root everything comes from that natural food generation unit that is there in nature even in those who eat flesh animals the animals also develop their flesh by eating something which is produced by the plants down and down the line we go that's how it is so we are ultimately dependent on God and animals are also dependent on God every morning when the birds get up they start searching around for grains or whatever be the food item that they eat and they have to labour and labour exhaustively to get those food items but still they are not the producers of those food items they are only the searchers and they search for the food that has been already pre-provided by God if the pre-provision had not been made then their searching would have been would never be fruitful so even simple simple act of eating we can recognize the role of God that is by God's grace that we are able to eat and many in the world there is some tradition of thanking God for food that many traditional cultures conduct religious festivals on the occasion of harvest so for example Thanksgiving festival is actually a harvest festival where God is thankful for the provision of food and even the Govardhan festival is a harvest festival which was celebrating good harvest by having a festival which they would offer much of the harvest to the higher powers of course Krishna directed them to offer to the highest power not to an intermediate power instead of Indra but the point is that there is this principle of offering to God and through that offering enabling our connection with God to develop our devotion to God to develop so when we search for food for ourselves or our family members we certainly need to make our effort but along with making our effort we can also meditate on how is Krishna who is the ultimate provider provider of food and in fact the provider of life itself so when we connect with him through a grateful consciousness through a conscious awareness of his benedictory role and the process of searching for food the process of getting food the process of eating food can all become permeated with the divine consciousness and when we express our gratitude to Krishna by offering food to him then and then taking the remnants as prasad then actually we don't just our connection with him doesn't remain only to the level of being grateful to him our connection deepens to wherein the very process of eating becomes spiritualized not that we thank Krishna before eating for having provided us food but we recognize that prasad at one level is non-different from Krishna so we recognize that it is Krishna who has manifested himself as prasad to connect us with him and if we see the Vaishnava prayers Mahaprasade Govinda these prayers are thanking God for food but they are not thanking God for food by which one can maintain oneself they are thanking God for food because this food will purify the heart this food will enable us to become more and more absorbed in Krishna so purity of the food permeates into our consciousness and makes it pure makes it eat pure now the bird the Kaputa Kaputa of course are far away from this kind of consciousness and their frantic search for food which has taken them far away from their offsprings is going to arise to a higher level of frenzy and anxiety when they see the disaster that awaits them when they return home and what we learn is that we do need to take the anxiety about providing for what necessities but often the more anxiety we take the more obsessed we become on the other hand if we remember there are small things that the ups and downs of life are ultimately inevitably small things and we don't have to get too worked up by success and failures and through success and through failure through starvation and through satisfaction of our hunger urge we keep moving towards Krishna thanking him for whatever situation we find ourselves in and that way no matter what our externals may be we can stay on words fixed in our service to Krishna and we'll find that whatever we are provided with we will be able to find satisfaction in that and keep moving on words towards Krishna.