Middle Way vrs The 1 Grain of Rice a Day Diet

The month August is a crazy busy month on San Juan Island, so much so that Miss S. and I have suspended our walking schedule for the duration. For those of us in the habit of quelling stress with food it’s a minefield. Nonetheless, we did have a small New Moon Mindfulness Eating Fruit Potluck and Whale-Watching meeting at the beach on the last day of July.  I shared the story of the Buddha and the Middle Way because I think it offers a fairly sane perspective for chronic dieters/overeaters. 

 Mural of Fasting Buddha with Girl Giving him Bowl with Milk Rice. 

Tibetan Monastery in Nyingmapa tradition, Bodhgaya, Bihar, India

Before he became the Buddha, the pampered Prince Siddhartha left the protection of his father’s Palace to seek enlightenment. To this end he tried living an ascetic life among forest monks who sought enlightenment through deprivation of worldly goods, including food, and self-mortification. As the story goes they ate 1 grain of rice per day. Talk about portion control! In the end he nearly starved to death before a girl from a near-by village brought him a bowl of milk and rice. Siddhartha reconsidered his path and took the “Middle Way”.

To be free of suffering he advised avoiding the extremes of both addictive sense-pleasures and self-mortification. The Middle Way, a life lived between the extremes of self-denial and self-indulgence, neither hedonist nor ascetic. The Middle Way, it's the Buddha's first teaching and he came up with it after a healthy hit of carbs and animal fat!