Suppose our car fuel indicator alerted us that our gas tank was becoming empty. We would naturally seek a gas station. But suppose we noticed that those fuel indications start coming too soon after we had refueled. We would enquire why those signals were coming, not just keep putting fuel in unquestioningly. 

Our body is like a car for us souls. To function, it needs food — a need that it conveys periodically through the sensation of hunger, which is like a car fuel indicator. Unfortunately, this food indicator can be taken over by the mind: that is, we may feel hungry not because our body needs food but because our mind craves it. And the mind’s greed for food may not just be in excess of the body’s need; it may even go against the body’s need. Our mind may crave for more food than our body can digest; it may even crave for food that makes the body work rather than work for the body. How? By prompting us to eat fatty food that doesn’t so much energize us as exhausts us first by overworking our digestive system and then by overburdening our body as extra weight that we need to lug around constantly. 

How can we differentiate between the body’s need and the mind’s greed? By first becoming regulated in our eating, as the Bhagavad-gita (06.17) recommends. This means we can strive to eat at fixed times daily and eat fixed quantities. Once we have in place a reasonable arrangement for addressing our body’s need, we can more easily detect false hunger alerts — whenever we feel any untimely or excessive food craving, we can promptly ask ourselves: might this be my mind’s greed pretending to be my body’s need? 

By such self-examination, we can train ourselves to eat for aiding our body’s functioning, not for abetting our mind’s fantasizing. 

One-sentence summary: 

The mind’s greed often goes against the body’s need – listen to the body’s need, not the mind’s greed.

Think it over:

  • How may our body’s food indicator mislead us?
  • What’s wrong with pandering to the mind’s greed for food?
  • How can we differentiate between our body’s need and our mind’s greed? 

***

06.17: He who is regulated in his habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practicing the yoga system.

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