LETTERS FROM HOME: THE ZEN PRIEST DIET: GRATITUDE & 1,200 CALORIES

March 7, 1996

Dear Leslie,

"What matters more than the quality of the food or its nutritional balance is a feeling of gratitude. If you think, when eating, of each life that is given up so that you may live, then you'll naturally stop at a point of moderation."

Now there's a diet philosophy that didn't come from Weight Watchers.

They are the words of the priest who prepared the meals at a Zen Buddhist training temple in Japan. The trainees eat rice porridge, beans or vegetables, pickled plums and vegetables and roasted sesame seed with salt for breakfast. Lunch is more rice, some miso soup and pickled and cooked vegetables. For dinner it's more rice porridge, usually made from the day's leftover rice and vegetables, and more pickled vegetables.

No wonder the priesthood is shrinking.

The daily caloric intake is 1,200, which is 800 calories fewer than the adult recommendation.

The trainees look drawn in the first two months of this regimen and often lose 8 to 13 pounds. But in the third month their weight stabilizes and they glow with health.

Doctors who have studied how the priests could stay healthy eating porridge and pickled vegetables speculated that mental or spiritual states could weaken or strengthen the body's ability to absorb nutrients. These priests were able to live on less because they could assimilate more, the doctors said.

Nah, the priests' cook said. An appreciation for the food's sacrifice simply made the priests desire less of it.

You just don't see much of that kind of gratitude in the drive-thru lines at the Burger-Rama. You see impatience. You see gotta do this before I can do that. It's the same at home. Food is an afterthought, eating a way of filling some emptiness.

Years ago at a Zen retreat a priest talked to us about meditation. He practiced the kind where you kneel uncomfortably and stare straight ahead. It felt like torture. "If you're expecting more from meditation, there isn't anything more," he cautioned us.

Then he asked each of us to find some small task to do toward cleaning up the retreat center before lunch. And he instructed us to perform that task "mindfully."

I ended up with the bathroom. It wasn't so bad, thinking about cleaning the bathroom while cleaning it rather than cleaning the bathroom while thinking about all the other things I'd rather be doing.

Then we sat in a circle and each of us silently and mindfully ate the light lunch we'd brought. It was odd to eat my cheddar cheese sandwich and think only about the pungency and how my teeth felt slicing through the firm cheese and soft bread, and noticing how much I chewed before beginning to swallow.

The retreat was no big spiritual revelation. In fact, it gave me a headache. Thankfully, I discovered more fulfilling methods of contemplation. But my eyes were opened to how unconsciously hundreds of daily acts are performed. And to a simple fact: The more attention you pay, the more alive you feel.

DC and I have resolved to begin a spring diet. We're substituting cabbage for porridge. Cabbage sliced and boiled with gratitude, and maybe we'll begin to glow.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.