Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

The Five Contemplations
Before each meal at the monastery, we recite the Five Contemplations either silently to ourselves with our palms together in what looks like prayer, or as a community with one person reciting out loud. They are intended to nourish awareness, gratitude, and appreciation for the food that we have to eat, and the community we have with whom to eat the food. We also eat in silence to be fully aware of our meal without being distracted by conversation, and to contemplate where this food came from and the possible suffering people endured to bring us this food, including the acts of corporations in polluting the environment and exploiting workers all in the name of profit. It’s not as big of a downer as it is when I write about it. I’m talented that way :p

The Five Contemplations are written out and are on the dining hall tables for guests who haven’t memorized them. After people memorize them, they tend to put in their own permutations so that they resonate for them personally, and when they are asked to recite them out loud for the community, they keep in their permutations. Sometimes a permutation resonates with someone else, and that person adopts the permutation. That happened to me once in a feel-good moment. One contemplation mentions the food brought to us by “hard work”, and I put in “hard, loving work”, and not long after that, a brother used that permutation. No one has taken my permutation of “We vow to eat in mindfulness…” into “We vow to eat in mindfulness and with good posture…”. No one even laughed, which leads me to believe that no one was even listening. Or they take them too seriously :p

When reciting them silently to ourselves, a lot of guests spend a lot of time with their palms joined and eyes closed, reciting through each contemplation. They don’t realize there’s a short version where you join your palms, close your eyes and silently recite, “Thhheeeee Fiiiiiiiive Contemplaaaaatiiiiooooons”. Bow, and eat.

I did get validation on the eating with good posture when I was visiting a monastery in Taiwan, and the monk instructing us on eating mindfully mentioned the importance of being aware of keeping good posture. I’m not totally random, you know.