Sangha Recipes

Sangharakshita, the founder of The Triratna Buddhist Community, has spoken and written extensively on food, particularly in relation to its ethical and spiritual implications within a Buddhist context.

Food occupies a very important place in our lives, and occupies many hours of our lifetime. An activity to which we devote so much time, energy, and money, and for which we require special provision in our houses in the form of kitchens, dining rooms and utensils, very definitely needs to be brought within the influence of our Buddhist principles.

– Edited from The Essential Sangharakshita: Windhorse Publications

Vegetarian Diet

The most important Buddhist principle is non-violence, reverence for life. This means, among many other things, vegetarianism.

Sometimes circumstances at home may be difficult – it may be impossible to be strictly vegetarian – but at least one can move towards it, perhaps by giving up
meat and fish on certain days of the week, or on certain occasions.

It should be said that the Buddha himself did not insist on vegetarianism. He considered it more important for people to practise not picking and choosing what they ate, but accepting what they were given.

– Edited from The Essential Sangharakshita: Windhorse Publications

Mindful Eating

Eating should be quiet, peaceful, even meditative.

As well as being vegetarian, one should practise loving-kindness towards oneself by eating pure and wholesome food. At the same time, one should eat only as much as is necessary for maintaining good health. Sometimes we forget that the purpose of eating is just to keep the body going.

Also, one shouldn’t eat neurotically; one shouldn’t use food in an attempt to satisfy some other need.

– Edited from The Essential Sangharakshita: Windhorse Publications

Opportunity for Reflection

It is useful to reflect on where your food comes from and all the circumstances that had to come into place to enable you to eat.

Eating is also an opportunity for gratitude, not only towards those who prepared the meal but also to the endless stream of people who worked to provide the
ingredients, the farmers, the market workers, the transporters, the factory workers, the bakers and supermarket workers, and on and on.

Metaphorical Significance

The Buddha used many metaphors in his teaching including the metaphor of food.

One of the most famous is:

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this Teaching has one taste, the taste of freedom.

– Edited from Uposatha Sutta, Udāna 5.5.

The Freedom of which the Buddha speaks is freedom from our self-imposed slavery to our habitual psychological and behaviourial patterns through which we turn pain into suffering.

One of the ways we can practice the Path to Freedom in our everyday lives is by being mindful of our relationship to food and eating. Observing the rising and passing away of patterns and emotions in relation to food.