This morning I was reading a book called Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters, a deceptively wise book about life, business and food by Bernard Glassman, founder of the Greyston Bakery and Zen monastery in Riverdale, NY. On p. 16 he writes:

We should eat in a way that expresses our appreciation of our food and all the effort that went into making it. We should savor the tastes and the texture of our food. In order to do this, it’s good to eat slowly—or at least slower than we usually do. And we need to pay attention to what we are eating, as well as to the people sharing our meal.…

When we eat with this kind of awareness, we will find ourselves eating just the right amount, whatever that is for us. …Undereating is related to a lack of appreciation for the ingredients, the cook, and the server—for our whole lives, in fact. Overeating is related to not wanting the meal to end, or to hanging on to the enjoyable sensation of eating. But too much of anything, even a good thing, soon becomes painful. It’s like wanting to hold on to wealth and profits in business. When that happens, the flow stops and the result is constipation, which rots you from within.

I had made myself some lunch—pieces of tempeh, sprouted beans and miso dressing. I was reading as I ate and I was hungry and I scooped spoonful after spoonful into my mouth. Quickly.
When there were about five or six pieces left I stopped. I noticed that it had probably taken me four minutes to eat my bowlful of lunch. My startled stomach was giving me the signal that it was full.

But I looked at the few bitefulls left in my bowl and knew that I would finish them. I reasoned: it’s bad to let food go to waste, it’s too small an amount to be worth putting back in the fridge, it’s tasty! I knew that I had enjoyed eating it and I could probably find room in my belly even if I did feel a bit full.

And I finished the bowl – but even in doing so, I had to be really kind to myself to keep from going crazy. How can I have just read something full of so much wisdom, and continue to do the opposite?! This is a process, I said. I’m learning. I understand that the way I eat may not bring the most deep fulfillment, but I’m not there yet. I’m not yet at the place where I am going to change. Not yet.

Different from “we shall do and we shall hear,” so much of the process of learning how to eat, and consume more generally, is for me fraught with this horrible irony. I hear it, and I believe it, but I don’t do it. Habit, circumstance, convenience, conditioning all contrive against me, and it makes me squirm.

But perhaps this is the way that it works. In Masechet Brachot, we learn the following:

Our Rabbis have taught: It is forbidden to a man to enjoy anything of this world without a benediction, and if anyone enjoys anything of this world without a benediction, he commits sacrilege. What is his remedy? He should consult a wise man. What will the wise man do for him? He has already committed the offence! — Said Raba: What it means is that he should consult a wise man beforehand, so that he should teach him blessings and he should not commit sacrilege. (Mas. Brachot, 35b)

Learning, then, is tied up with doing. How would you know to go consult a wise man when you forgot to say a bracha? Because you learned it, already, in the first place. That is, there is constant iteration between learning and doing, and we will continue to learn until we get it right.

Rabbi Akiva backs me up:

“Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were once reclining in the upper story of Nithza’s house, in Lod, when this question was posed to them: Which is greater, study or action? Rabbi Tarfon answered, saying: Action is greater. Rabbi Akiva answered, saying: Study is greater. All the rest agreed with Akiva that study is greater than action because it leads to action.” (Kedoshin 40b)

So I grudgingly concede that it’s a process. But being kind enough to myself to allow for the lag time between learning and doing—even to celebrate that it is only in the interplay between the two that real change will come—is a major challenge.