CHAPTER 17, TEXT 10: Food prepared more than three hours before being eaten, food that is tasteless, decomposed and putrid, and food consisting of remnants and untouchable things is dear to those in the mode of darkness.
Okay, hold up.
Waaaaait a second.
So here we have a 5,000 year old scripture, an epic conversation between God and His warrior friend Arjuna and they're standing between armies of oceanic proportions. Krishna has described the nature of the soul, death, and has even revealed his terrifying universal form of creation and all-devouring time. Yes, yes, this all seems fitting to be featured in an ancient religious scripture.
And now Krishna is talking about... old food?
Yes.
"Food that is prepared more than three hours before being eaten" is in the mode of darkness and should not be eaten - this information is so crucial that Krishna is sharing this knowledge with Arjuna on that battlefield, the poised armies facing each other like scorpions, the fate of the world at stake.
The Bhagavad-Gita translates as "The Song of God" - this means that the verses that describe Krishna's universal form and verses that talk about old food are just as crucial for God realization as any other verse in this epic. So what is going on here?
The Gita is a manual for living a fulfilled, purposeful life of fearlessness, joy, and love. Krishna is not suggesting that Arjuna just be a nice, pious person who goes to church on Sunday, or to ruminate about lofty theological ideas in university classrooms. Krishna declares to his friend that he should, "in all circumstances, be a yogī" (6.46). Being a yogi is about living and breathing self-realization.
A yogi is a spiritual athlete.
Professional athletes have a coach, a diet, a regimen, a lifestyle, a way of thinking about goals. Tom Brady, a professional football player widely considered to be the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT), trains hard and is careful about what he eats even when it's not football season. And even though he's the GOAT, he still has a coach, he still takes directions, he still practices and practices.
This is the Gita - an invigorating training regimen to bring us in alignment with our soul and love of God.
Who's our coach? Krishna - God Himself. And when God says, hey, old food is in the mode of darkness and should not be eaten, well, maybe we should listen. And follow.
But here's the deal - this advice is tough. After all, what about frozen food and frozen meals? Or leftovers from Thanksgiving? Or just leftovers from lunch? What about all those dishes they have at restaurants and fast food chains that have obviously been prepared days, maybe even weeks beforehand?
This is where the Gita shows up in our lives, where we make a choice. Do we take the advice of the coach? Do we follow, and do we trust the process?
This particular verse, Text 10, is surrounded by other verses that talk about lifestyle choices in the various modes of material nature. So Krishna does describe food that one should eat, food in the mode of goodness that elevates our consciousness. Prabhupad elaborates, "The purpose of food is to increase the duration of life, purify the mind and aid bodily strength. This is its only purpose." These words seem very much to come from a coach who is identifying the benefits of a particular training regimen - longer life, purified mind, bodily strength. Those goals are there to assist in self-realization. And to achieve those goals, one must eat food in the mode of goodness, not mode of darkness (ignorance).
Prabhupad emphasizes here "This is [food's] only purpose" which I find a bit hard to swallow, pardon the pun. After all, food can be delicious! Sometimes I feel the only purpose of food to taste and experience textures, flavors, and temperatures in my mouth. I'm certainly not thinking about a longer life or purified mind. Food's purpose in those moments seem to be about enjoying.
There is a crucial distinction here, though. Enjoying food is not the purpose of food - it's a side effect. One can enjoy food no matter what mode of nature - in fact, Krishna even says in this verse that old, putrid, and untouchable food (or meat) is "dear" to those in the mode of darkness. Just because it's dear to them does not make it right or recommended.
So Krishna - our coach - gives us the information and lets us choose.
These simple - but hard - choices determines the course of our entire spiritual life.
That's why Krishna is talking about old food on the midst of a battlefield, poised between armies. Becoming the GOAT is about the big things - understanding the soul and death and time - and it's also about little things - so you gonna eat Thanksgiving leftovers or what?
Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/17/10/
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