Healthy Living: Eating Like A Monk

McCoy: “It might eventually cure the common cold, but lengthen lives? Poppycock. I can do more for you if you just eat right and exercise regularly”

Star Trek, “The Omega Glory” (s2ep23), Stardate unknown

Healthy eating is not difficult, at least in theory.

Of course if it were that easy, how come many of us are overweight? Myself included.

I talked about this recently, but I do not have very good self-control. I work a desk job, so I don’t move around much, and I snack a lot. I don’t eat particularly unhealthy: no alcohol, no soft drinks, etc., and I eat minimal red meat. But I tend to just eat too much junk food, or too many portions.

Recently, I dug out an old book of mine from many, many years ago,¹ titled What Is Zen? 禅ってなんだろう. It’s a bilingual book I bought in Japan that explores Rinzai Zen life as a monk, but also includes some general thoughts about the tradition for lay followers. My copy has been covered in stickers when my daughter was a little girl, so I kept it both for nostalgia, and because such down-to-earth books on Zen are hard to find in the West.

Anyhow, this book shows things like daily routines for monks, how they eat and so on. I wish I could repost the photographs because they’re really neat, but obviously that’s inappropriate. Instead, let me shiw you a different example:

This photo, shows a meal served at Tenryuji Temple, which I coincidentally visited last year. This kind of monastic food is called shōjin-ryōri (精進料理, “ascetic food”) in Japanese, but is a common part of Buddhist cuisine across East Asia. It’s not limited to monks and nuns only, devout lay followers can eat such a lifestyle if they wish. The photos from my book show that the monastic version of this meal is somewhat simpler in presentation (they are monks after all), but essentially the same.

Similarly, when we visited Ryoanji Temple (another Rinzai temple) waaay back in 2005, we enjoyed their version of tofu stew:

This kind of diet is similar to a vegan diet in that it contains no animal products, even the dashi broth is vegetarian. Certain flavors like curry and onions are not used either.

But as with any diet changes, this is not something that should be done hastily or without consulting a physician. The key I wanted to convey here is that (partly as a reminder to myself when I read this six months later….) is that a healthy diet consists of the following:

• More vegetables than protein
• Minimal processed starches
• Little or no animal protein
• Small portions per meal²
• Little or no snacking.

But I’ve been inspired by these examples of good Buddhist eating, and so I have been gradually trying to “eat like a monk” lately: smaller portions, avoiding or minimizing animal protein, limit starches, and eating more veggies.

Will it work for a Western desk-jockey like myself? We’ll see.

¹ I mentioned this book on my old blog, that’s how long I’ve owned it.

² My doctor had previous suggested intermittent fasting as a potential solution, or alternatively eating four small meals per day, instead of three big ones. Say, portions the size of two-three fists. The issue hasn’t been the diet, but my lack of diligence especially during the holidays. So, that may be the bigger issue.