Gita 17.08 Food in goodness provides profusely both nutrition and satisfaction

Transcript

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rasyas nirdhas tirarudhya aahara sattvika priyaha aahara sattvika priyaha in the previous verse Krishna stated that one can understand the faith of people by looking at their aahara and their yajna, dana, tapa so in the next three verses starting with this he is going to talk about the aahara so he describes the effects and then the characteristics so in scripture always there is a eternal essence and there is a circumstantial or contextual cover so food may not always have the same physical characteristics through the ages or the same kind of food may not have the same physical characteristics so rasyas nirdhas tirarudhya rasya is juicy nirdha is fatty so tirarudhya pleasing to the heart so now here the word fatty is not used in the sense of fattening it is used in the sense of pleasing so tirarudhya so we need nourishment of different kinds modern science talks about how we need various things like proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates like that so there are different frames of analysis by which we can understand what is needed for people to function effectively in terms of getting adequate nutrition from the food that they eat across the world we will see that people have widely different varieties of foods kind of food that they eat at the same time there are common purposes people want to enjoy what they eat and people want to be nourished by what they eat so nutrition and satisfaction pleasure and strength are the common purposes of eating now depending on the world that one is in one may find different kinds of foods satisfying the two purposes of satisfaction and nutrition may run cross to each other may go against each other in certain foods and those foods will naturally be considered in the lower modes Krishna has earlier talked in the 14th chapter how rajasastra phalam dukkham and ajnanam tamasah phalam the fruit of the mode of passion is distress the fruit of the mode of ignorance is just ignorance further ignorance deep aggravated ignorance so here when we eat in the mode of goodness there is a proper balance of nutrition and satisfaction this is pleasingly juicy pleasingly fatty enduring it gives good nourishment and most importantly the effects Krishna talks about is ayusatva bala rogya sukha priti vivardhana so sukha priti is satisfaction is happiness and pleasure one likes it, one feels happy on taking it so both at the level of pleasure and the level of happiness both comes here sukha priti if we take food that is natural properly cooked, lovingly served it tastes good and it doesn’t just taste good to the tongue it tastes good to the heart because it’s not just the body that is satisfied by the offering of food it is also the heart that is satisfied by the offering of the love that is expressed through the offering of the food so conviviality people eating food together is a time honored part of sociality and when people dine together that brings them together very much so in fact in the Upadesha Amrit also it is stated that accepting food and offering food this is a vital way in which people bond together in love when two people want to form a relationship one of the things that they do is they go out together and when they go out one of the things they do is eat together so good food that is there food in the mood of goodness it satisfies both the tongue and the heart so the nutrition aspect is the satisfaction aspect is abundantly taken care of and so is the nutrition aspect in fact nutrition is explained elaborately over here aayu sattva bala rogya aayu, if we eat good food it can even prolong one’s life so we want to eat in such a way that our body’s health is maintained and we move forward and live for an abundant amount of time even if we consider the body to be like a machine when a machine, like a car is given the right fuel it lasts longer if it is given fuel that is already contaminated then burning that fuel drains the engine or the carburetor or the ignition spark and overall the combustion becomes a messy process and the car runs down faster but if good fuel is put in the car then the car can last longer similarly even if we consider the body from the objective distance perspective of simply being a vehicle then the lifespan can be expanded by eating proper food so rather than looking for a specific list is this food in goodness is this food in goodness we can look instead for what are the foods that yield these results what are the foods that promote well-being they lead to longevity now for example it is generally understood that vegetarian food actually is much more healthy in a holistic way than non-vegetarian food sattva bala arogya sattva is overall existence it is not just the quantity of life that is increased in terms of aayu it is also the quality of life that is improved sattva can refer to goodness sattva can also refer to existence so in this context aahara saatrika priya so in sattva the food that is in sattva that increases the sattva so that might seem tautological or not very meaningful but it improves their existence so quality of life improves if we eat good food we feel uplifted, we feel strengthened and that part of being strengthened is talked about in the next two points sattva bala arogya health and strength are improved it is interesting some people may be healthy but they may not be very strong brahmanas are healthy but they are not physically strong like kshatriyas so health and strength also can refer to different things in different contexts whatever strength one needs for doing the work according to one’s nature if one has that strength then that is perfect if one has health that is also perfect sometimes some people just want to increase their muscles and get a lot of strength but then if they take something which doesn’t promote their health sometimes athletes weightlifters may take some performance enhancing steroids and that might increase their physical strength but if it hurts, harms or even breaks their health then that is counterproductive some people try to improve their body looks by doing lots of workouts workouts at one level are good they keep their health good but if workouts are done in an excessive or disproportionate way beyond the capacity of the body then the body may break down sometimes if we take just to do heavy workouts if the body doesn’t have the capacity to digest the food to convert into energy or to sustain the workout then one might get strength temporarily but in the long run one will end up with a ruined health so basically foods in the mode of goodness lead to holistic improvement all round improvement in terms of both satisfaction and nutrition based on one’s own culture one’s own national one’s own dietary preferences we may well have to find out which are the foods that work best for us which are the foods that enable us to get these results and those foods would be the appropriate foods in the mode of goodness for us