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The Spice of Life: On Food, Health, and Awareness

A satsang discourse on food quality, health, and spiritual awareness.

"You know, quality food is a little expensive. The choice is yours."

"Until today, we have lost the time. From your birth until today, just now, the time which has passed is past."

Swami Anand Arun discusses the importance of pure ingredients, using a story about acquiring authentic turmeric to illustrate the degradation of modern food. He links physical health to spiritual discipline, advocating for daily yoga practice and mindful living. The talk expands into a reflection on time, impermanence, and using the present moment for spiritual progress.

Filming location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Now, there is a different kind of food we call fast food. Fast food means you quickly swallow it. A white bread, made only of white flour, with many different things, and you put red and white on it and put it between meat. You can't chew it for two minutes because after half a minute you feel like vomiting. It has no taste. In a country like Slovenia, or this European part, there are a lot of herbs. In my food every day, I try to consume two to three teaspoons of haldi, what you call curcuma or turmeric. You should also consume every day at least three teaspoons of turmeric. One teaspoon? Three teaspoons. Three times eating, three times. Aha. Whenever people are cooking for me—Ganga is sitting, she cooks for me very nicely—but I am always not satisfied. I asked her, "Please, next time put more turmeric in the food, because turmeric has a beautiful yellow color." She said, "I put three spoons inside." I said, "Okay, you are right, I am wrong, but I see there is no turmeric. Are you sure that you put it inside?" When the cook is in love, then she puts the salt in, so you don't know where it's falling. So she brought me a glass of turmeric. I took one spoon and put it in the water. There was a lot of yellow earth and little haldi, and it was very old haldi. There was no smell of the haldi. I said to myself, "How would you like to eat? Decide yourself." So, all of you, it is by question, not by force. Decide if you want to eat quality food or not. And you know, quality food is a little expensive. The choice is yours. One of my bhaktas from Novi Sad—I don't know his Yugoslavian name, I call him Siddhārtha—he is in the import-export business with India, Nepal, and some other countries. He was in India, and I asked him if he could bring me one kilo of turmeric, but not powder, the whole root. It is like dry roots, like our thumb. "No problem, Swāmījī, I will do it." So he went to his client and asked, "My Swāmījī, my Gurujī, wishes for some turmeric." He said, "Okay, how much? One kilo." That Indian said, "No. For Swāmījī, take ten kilos." But should we grind it, make a powder? He said no, Swāmījī said no. Why? Don't speak to Swāmījī. I say that in many countries, we are experts at mixing artificial things inside. Some countries sell nice red paprika, but now they put a color inside. Money is God. So that businessman spoke to me. And I told him, I don't want the haldi ground with an iron plate. The mill should be with a stone slate or a stone plate, and with slow speed. He said, "It's done. I will do it in front of Siddhārtha." So Siddhārtha and his wife were sitting there and looking; they really put haldi, not anything else. So they said, "Five kilos powder and five kilos complete." He came to Europe and gave it to me. I brought it to my flat in Vienna. Now, I tell you, it is really true. Not only my flat, but the whole corridor was smelling nice from the haldi. Pleasant. So pleasant. Then an idea came to me. I went back to my life, you know, what you call going back to the past. I closed my eyes, imagined myself as a three-year-old boy, a four-year-old boy, five years, six years, till I came to Europe. And what was it? Every time, three times we had a meal, and three times mother or father or brother or sisters, we were grinding the spices on the stone: haldi, red or green chili, coriander, cumin. I am telling this today because there are many questions about health. And perfect health—few of us may have it here. So, this is a main subject. Of course, the first is yoga exercises. So let's begin today a new saṅkalpa, a new regulation: that every day I will go to sleep early, and in the morning I will practice my yoga sādhanā for two hours, two and a half hours. Then you will enjoy your eating, the drink—I mean juice, not alcohol. You will enjoy good health. This is the first thing. If you can't do or don't do, then you can't get that. If you want to enjoy your life, let's say it in this way, then do this. But if you think that you enjoy something in a different way, then I used to say: the joy which you want to enjoy has little joy compared to the sorrow of that enjoyment. So the joy of the joy is less joy than the sorrow of that joy, in a different way. The second thing is that, unfortunately, we are not fortunate enough to have cooked food from our mother. And that mother, which has knowledge of the grand, grand, grandmother's kitchen. Nowadays, father or mother, when we ask them to cook, many don't know. We buy ready-made, put it in the microwave or in the oven, take it out, put something on it—red paste, you know, ajvar—and eat. And who knows how to cook? But they lost the source from where they should get the healthy things. Why do I tell you this today? Because it happened with me. And the best thing is to tell what happened. And no one is guilty, no one is to be blamed. It was our ignorance. You know, this is a lavender. Don't let desires enter into your mind, your intellect, your body. Constantly observe your senses, and ask yourself, "Do you still need this? Have you not enough? Are you able to say no to yourself?" To say to others, "No," that's very easy. But to say no to our self is not easy. So, to reduce desires is called satsaṅg. Go to satsaṅg and constantly repeat the name of God. What is God? What is the beauty of God? Will I be one with God? Bhakti Yoga. Until today, we have lost the time. From your birth until today, just now, the time which has passed is past. That doesn't belong to you at all anymore. You can't go back, and what has been done is done, good or bad. But what remains? What about that time? We know we are not immortal, physically. It doesn't depend on age. How many of us are sitting here in this big hall, and nobody knows who is the first one. Don't think that the old one will go first. No, that is somewhere in the stars. We don't know. Thanks to God that we don't know. And as long as we don't know, we should live happily. And when we will know, then we will have time to say goodbye. Again, we will come to some different planet. Therefore, gone is gone. What remains is still not here. Be aware of the presence. And there we shall try to do something good. We have thousands of opportunities to come to liberation, and we have thousands of situations where we can come to liberation.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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