Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.
-Bhagavad Gita
Easwaran tells this story: Once, when the Buddha was told that one of his disciples was having trouble, he went to the young man's room to see what the problem was. This young man had been born in a rich family, and he had been trained in music, so he still kept his vina - an instrument something like a guitar - in the corner of his room. When the Buddha entered, he saw the vina and said, "Let me see if I can play your vina." The disciple reluctantly brought it forward. He didn't know that the Buddha had been an expert musician. The Buddha tightened the strings of the vina until they were about to break. The disciple protested, "You are not supposed to tighten the strings like that, Blessed One; they will break!"
So the Buddha, with tender cunning said, "Oh, yes! Then should I make them loose?" And he loosened all the strings until they couldn't be played at all. "Here, let me do it for you, Blessed One," said the disciple, and he adjusted them. "They are now just right, neither too tight nor too loose."
The Buddha smiled, "Yes, you see, that is what my path is: just right, neither too tight nor too loose. Moderation in everything. Temperance in everything."
This is a principle that is true in all traditions. The desert fathers, beginning in the third century with Evagrius Ponticus, stressed that disciples who would grow in virtue and spiritual formation would seek temperance in relation to all the seven deadly sins. The primary sin that poses a great challenge to me is the sin of gluttony, or intemperance. I learned this two years in a study of Evagrius' work: " Praktikos". Evagrius is known for his seminal work in identifications of the negative emotions that lead to sin. His most prominent research was a system of categorizing various forms of temptation. He identified eight evil thoughts from which all sinful behavior springs.The eight patterns of evil thought are gluttony, fornication, avarice, sorrow, discouragement, anger, vainglory/pride. While he did not create the list from scratch, he certainly refined it. This list was intended to serve a diagnostic purpose: to help readers identify the process of temptation, their own strengths and weaknesses, and the remedies available for overcoming temptation.
I find this particularly challenging in regard to eating. I am a snacker and am not in control of my diet. Therefore, I am now convicted, again, of the need to seek to grow in grace, and draw nearer to the will of God for my bodily life in order to gather the reigns of my senses. I sense the need in prayer to obtain new grace to adequately deal with this challenge, knowing that I will not be able to move forward in meditation until I do. My prayer then is:
Lord grant me the grace to obtain a governing will through Your Spirit so that I may obtain a temperate lifestyle in relation to all the temptations, but especially over the one that torments me the most--my own gluttony. By your Spirit, I know that this is the key to further progress in the life journey of spiritual growth for my own Work of Transformation. My this become my Aim this day.
Amen.
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