Some Thoughts about Eating

Currently, there are more than 100 Falun Dafa practitioners imprisoned at the local forced labour camp. At the labour camp, practitioners are not permitted to have any meals with meat. The practitioners are constantly hungry, and still they are forced to do hard labour for more than ten hours each day. Many practitioners say that they are "feeling hungry to the bone," "feeling terrible," and so on.

This year, we had another practitioner who was imprisoned at the same place. She told the practitioners who visited her, "I will not give up my practice, but I have no food restrictions." This was confirmed by the guards.

This particular practitioner has no attachment to the type of food she eats, and she eats whatever food is available to her. She does not mind even if there is no food to eat. When other practitioners had access to some good food, she said to them, "I don't like that, I'd rather let others have it". But when some food was about to spoil, she quickly ate it in order to avoid it being wasted. She has always treasured the food that we got, even if it was a bit of leftover vegetable soup. She would add some water and drink it all.

Why did the labour camp guards not restrict her food? On the surface, they said that it was because of her advanced age, but that is not the reason. Other older practitioners had the same restrictions. I realized that because she had no attachments in this regard, the old forces had no excuse to impose this type of persecution upon her. (Certainly, we must completely negate the old forces and not even acknowledge their tribulations.) But it seems that some practitioners can't get rid of this attachment, always wanting to eat something good, showing preferences for certain types food and sometimes even wasting food. In reality, all practitioners need to cultivate and get rid of their attachments to being picky about food. When we don't, we are leaving loopholes for the old forces to exploit.

Teacher said in Zhuan Falun:
"So when it comes to eating, it's not right to be attached to any kind of food, not just meat. Some people say, "I just like to eat this." Well, that's another desire. A cultivator doesn't have that kind of attachment when he gets to a certain point". (Zhuan Falun)

Some practitioners say that they like eating spicy food, will only drink boiling hot water, or don't like eating certain types of food. These are all attachments. Although these are small attachments, the old forces like to seize every opportunity to persecute practitioners. As practitioners, we must try hard and get rid of all human attachments, even the small ones that we often neglect.

The above are just some of my understandings. Please point out anything that is incorrect.