The Antidote to Mindless Eating with Br. Chan Pháp Lưu | Get Fit Sanely Listener Picks

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Antidote to Mindless Eating with Br. Chan Pháp Lưu | Get Fit Sanely Listener Picks"

Podcast Information:

• Title: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
• Host/Author: Dan Harris
• Description: Self-help for smart people. World-class insights and practices from experts in modern science and ancient wisdom. Hosted by veteran journalist and best-selling author, Dan Harris.
• Episode: The Antidote to Mindless Eating with Br. Chan Pháp Lưu | Get Fit Sanely Listener Picks
• Release Date: June 27, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of "10% Happier with Dan Harris," Dan delves into the concept of mindful eating, drawing inspiration from Buddhist monk Brother Chan Pháp Lưu. Framing the discussion within the "Get Fit Sanely" series, Dan emphasizes taking care of one's body without compromising mental well-being. The episode also features a heartfelt listener story from Shannon, highlighting practical applications of mindful eating.

Listener Insight: Shannon's Experience

Shannon, a listener from the suburbs of St. Louis, shares her transformative journey influenced by mindful eating practices discussed in previous episodes. She reflects:

"Listening to Dan's episode with Brother Phap Lu gave me pause to reconsider how I was eating." (05:53)

Shannon describes how she altered her lunch routine from solitary reading to actively enjoying her meals, savoring the food, observing nature, and cultivating gratitude. She appreciates the soothing combination of monastic voices and the calming energy they impart.

Expert Interview: Brother Chan Pháp Lưu on Mindful Eating

Brother Chan Pháp Lưu, an ordained monk in the Plum Village tradition founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, provides an in-depth exploration of mindful eating through the lens of Buddhist practice.

Five Contemplations Before Eating

1. Gratitude for Food (06:34) Brother Pháp Lưu emphasizes recognizing food as a gift from the universe, appreciating the earth, sky, and the collective effort involved in its production. This contemplation fosters a deep sense of gratitude and interconnectedness.

"Nothing is by itself alone. So the orange is there because of all of these conditions." (06:34)

2. Eating with Worthiness (07:30) Acknowledging one's worthiness to receive and consume food is crucial. This practice combats feelings of unworthiness that often lead to overeating as a means to fill an internal void.

"Knowing that with gratitude in our hearts, we are worthy to receive this food, it creates a sense of meaning in the act of eating." (09:00)

3. Recognizing and Transforming Emotions (09:15) Identifying emotions like greed and craving helps in moderating eating habits. Brother Pháp Lưu advocates for communal eating, which increases accountability and reduces automatic, mindless consumption.

"We tend to hide away by ourselves. We kind of get our food and then we sit in front of the TV." (10:45)

4. Environmental Awareness (16:41) Understanding the impact of one's dietary choices on the planet is vital. This contemplation encourages sustainable eating practices that minimize environmental harm and support biodiversity.

"Eating has a massive effect on the planet, not just through climate change, but also biodiversity." (16:41)

5. Nurturing Community and Relationships (17:15) Acceptance of food is tied to nurturing relationships and community building. Sharing meals fosters a sense of brotherhood and interconnectedness, aligning with the Buddhist path of understanding and love.

"By eating mindfully, we're actually in the process of building our relationship with each other." (17:30)

Practical Applications and Community Building

Brother Pháp Lưu discusses the challenges of practicing mindful eating in an individualistic culture. He offers creative solutions for those living alone, such as rotating meal preparations with friends or joining community gardens. These practices not only promote mindful eating but also help in building meaningful relationships.

"Finding creative ways to eat together is more fun than like counting calories or taking a quantitative approach to eating." (15:50)

Metaphors: Ghost Carrot and Hungry Ghosts

Using metaphors, Brother Pháp Lưu illustrates the pitfalls of mindless eating:

• Ghost Carrot: Represents the disconnect between the immediate sensory experience of eating and the mind's distractions.

  "It's like eating a ghost carrot... you have the carrot, you put the carrot in your mouth." (19:05)

• Hungry Ghosts: Symbolize insatiable desires and perpetual dissatisfaction, highlighting the importance of transforming internal cravings to achieve true contentment.

  "We are like hungry ghosts... we have a huge desire, but we're tortured because we can only eat a tiny bit at a time." (21:04)

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the essence of mindful eating rooted in gratitude, worthiness, emotional awareness, environmental consciousness, and community building. Dan Harris wraps up by directing listeners to the full interview with Brother Pháp Lưu and highlighting additional resources for those interested in deepening their mindful eating practices.

Notable Quotes:

• Dan Harris: "Mindfulness can be very helpful in [mindful eating]. Paying attention while you're eating can help you sense when you're hungry or full." (01:30)
• Shannon: "I slow down. I'm grateful for everything that went into that meal." (05:00)
• Brother Pháp Lưu: "We don't eat for beauty. We don't eat because we want to look a certain way." (11:35)
• Brother Pháp Lưu: "Eating mindfully is letting go of whatever our projects are, whatever ideas." (19:50)

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of mindful eating, blending ancient Buddhist wisdom with practical modern applications. Whether you're seeking to improve your eating habits, build stronger community ties, or cultivate a deeper sense of gratitude, the insights shared by Brother Chan Pháp Lưu provide valuable guidance.

Transcript

[Brother Phap Lu]

Foreign.

[Dan Harris]

This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey. Happy Friday, everybody. As you may know, I have in recent years become deeply suspicious of diets. To be clear, I'm talking about my own life here. I'm talking about what works for me. I'm quite wary of being overly prescriptive on this subject. I'm not picking sides in the diet wars here. I'm just talking about my own life. But anyway, back to my point, I'm not a fan of diets, at least not for me personally. I've been heavily influenced in this regard by Evelyn Tribble, who's one of the creators of Intuitive Eating. Evelyn argues that instead of eating according to somebody else's rules, you should make the radical move of listening to your own body. How do you do that? As you might imagine, mindfulness can be very helpful in this regard. Paying attention while you're eating can help you sense when you're hungry or full. It can also help you actually taste your food and enjoy the process. So today, in this brief bonus episode, we're going to drop a nugget of wisdom about mindful eating from a Buddhist monk. As you may know, we're dedicating the whole month of June to a series we call Get Fit Sanely. We've been doing this series occasionally for years now. Every month, Monday and Wednesday, we bring on an expert to talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. And on Fridays during the series, my team had the brilliant idea of reaching out to you, our listeners, and asking about the most memorable moments and insights from past iterations of our Get Fit Sanely series. And today we're going to hear from a listener who made a big change in her mealtime routine. So here's how this is going to work. We're going to share a comment from the listener whose name is Shannon. Shout out to Shannon right after this quick break. And then after Shannon's comment, we'll hear from our expert, Brother Fat Blue. So to recap, quick break, then we'll be right back with Shannon and then Brother FA Blue.

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[Shannon]

Hey, this is Shannon from the suburbs of St. Louis. I'm always intrigued when Dan interviews monastics because they offer glimpse into their daily routines and rituals with the science and dharma to support it. And so inevitably I find myself making small adjustments to my daily life to better align with the path. It's like when you come home from a silent retreat and you incorporate a few Details from retreat at home to keep a piece of that container. Listening to Dan's episode with Brother Phap Lu gave me pause to reconsider how I was eating. His detailing of Plum Village's eating rituals was fascinating. I usually spend my lunch in solitude, reading a book while eating, but now I put the book down and try to really enjoy the food, maybe watch the birds. I slow down. I'm grateful for everything that went into that meal. An added bonus to dance interviews with monastics. The combination of his voice with theirs is so incredibly soothing. It's lovely to just let that calm, wise energy wash over me.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you so much, Shannon. So now let's hear the part of the interview with Brother Phap Liu, who's an ordained monk in the Plum Village tradition founded by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Brother Phap Liu was on the show in January of this year in an episode we called Rewire youe Relationship to Food. If you want to hear the whole thing, we'll drop it in the show notes. But here's the relevant nugget.

[Brother Phap Lu]

So let's talk about the how of it. Like any good Buddhist, you have some lists, and one one list is the five contemplations before eating. So there's stuff to do before you start filling your face hole. So can you walk me through the five contemplations before eating?

Sure, yeah. So this is rooted in the East Asian tradition, mainly in China in Zen temples. So there's these five reflections that we do before we even begin to eat the food, mainly to nourish our gratitude for the food that we have food to eat. So it's similar in many ways to Western prayers that might be done in Christian or other Jewish or Muslim meals. And it starts with recognizing that the food is a gift of the whole universe, of the earth, the sky, and much hard and loving work. So we visualize all those people who have contributed to this food, but not just the people, also the living beings. We eat mainly vegan in our community, so that's a decision we've made. We see that it has less impact on the planet and as well, less suffering. And so we're aware of the fruit trees that have been planted. We're aware of the ancestral trees which have been cultivated from wild ones over hundreds of years, sometimes thousands of years, just through the taste and the nutrition. One generation after another picks that particularly tasty apple or a citrus tree and then cultivates it and grows it so that it's a bit more sweet. Each generation we're aware of the sun and the rain, which have contributed to the food. So it's really developing a sense of what thay or teacher would call interbeing. Nothing is by itself alone. So the orange is there because of all of these conditions. But if we just see it as an orange, it just seems like something very normal or not particularly special. But when we look into it and we see the sun and the orange and the rain and the earth and all these other elements, we realize if we take any of those elements away, then the orange cannot be there. It requires everything. In fact, when you go farther out, you see that the entire universe is present in that orange. And so your heart becomes filled with gratitude that you have this wondrous object here, which is actually a profound combination of so many different elements. And here it is available for me to put in my body, to give me energy to continue. So that first contemplation is to nourish our gratitude and to help us to look deeply into all the conditions that have come together in order to have this orange or carrot or whatever it is. And the second contemplation is may we eat it with gratitude so as to be worthy to receive this food. We nourish the gratitude for all these conditions coming together. Sometimes actually we don't feel worthy to eat the food that we eat. That's why we treat our bodies so poorly. You know, when we're especially snacking on something, I notice in my own mental makeup that there's a kind of depreciation of ourselves, like we're somehow not worthy of this food. I mean, that's literally. And so then we, when we feel not worthy that we feel like there's something lacking in us, and then we eat more. And so we've tried to fill that void inside with more potato chips or whatever it is. And so it's very important to feel worthy to receive the food. And knowing that with gratitude in our hearts, we are worthy to receive this food, it creates a sense of meaning in the act of eating, that it's not just a transfer of energy, but rather it's a profound and wondrous process that's going on when we eat food. And that should be treated and in a sacred way, sacred meaning, we nourish our gratitude for it. And then we learn to recognize and transform. And the third contemplation, those emotions, what we call mental formations. I think people on your podcast would be familiar with that term. It's kind of these emotions like greed or craving. We recognize and transform those emotions so we can eat and practice the EID in moderation. And this is where I find eating as a community is very helpful because when you're eating with others, you're a bit more accountable. And so I think a lot of the difficulty people have around food is that we tend to hide away by ourselves. We kind of get our food and then we sit in front of the tv or we are by ourselves. And when we're eating together with others, especially we're eating in silence, then we are much more supported and not overeating, not just getting in this automatic mode of just motivated by our craving or greed for the food and just kind of stuffing our face and not being really aware of what we're doing while we're eating.

I trust you, so I know that you're not doing what some people listening might worry that you're doing. But there's a very important line to be walked or drawn. I suspect you would agree between being moderate in your food consumption and artificially reducing how much you eat because you think other people are judging you because you're overeating or because you want to look a certain way or whatever it is.

Yeah. So which would cause an eating disorder, of course. So we don't eat for beauty. We don't eat because we want to look a certain way, or eat because people will judge us. Right. Or eat less because we feel otherwise. We feel judged. When I've gone to, for example, to Vietnam, and I participate in a more traditional food offering at a temple or somewhere else, because I quite often go. I mean, our teacher is Vietnamese, and so we'll quite often go to Vietnam. And they often arrange dishes on a table, many small dishes with different items. So sometimes there's boiled okra, maybe there's a bowl of white rice, there's some spring rolls, all kinds of delicacies. And we'll sit around the table, maybe four, five, six of us, sometimes circular tables. The food culture is such that you try to look to see, can everybody reach all of the dishes that are in the center of the food? Is there anybody who's on some part of the table who can't reach this particular dish? Can I put a little bit of that food on another dish? So they can. They don't have to reach across the table to do it. So it's like a kind of cultural training, not in judging each other, but seeing how to offer to each other. So it's a positive. And the other aspect of it is just kind of fun. Is that because as An American. When I first went to Vietnam, actually, with our teacher in 2005, I would usually put, like, all the food I wanted to eat into my little bowl, and then I would just eat. And then when I was. When I felt full, I would stop eating. But actually, in Vietnamese culture, if you're sitting there with your empty bowl, then people will say, oh, don't you want more food? And then they even put food into your bowl. And I say, no, no, no, I had enough. And so I learned I had to slow down, otherwise people were going to put more food in my bowl than I wanted. And that's part of a kind of communal act of eating right. That helps us to actually eat in moderation. So I feel, without triggering some of those disorders that you mentioned, there's a sense of feeling, like, shame around the food, but it's more kind of sharing and knowing that everyone have enough. You're sharing an experience of eating. And that is the. Yeah, the sense of the word companion. Right. Of these are the people I eat with. So I want to do it together. And when you do it with mindfulness, it's even more powerful, I feel. So actually, the essence of mindful eating, according to Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, our teacher, the things he emphasized was really just two things. The inter being nature that I mentioned and the community that eats together with us. And actually everything is encompassed in those two elements. So I found that it's a little bit difficult now. I mean, having lived in the monastery for more than 20 years, to go eat by myself. It feels a bit weird. But I think it's become the norm for most people. And so I think part of mindful eating is actually recreating what is inherent actually in the root of our culture, which is sharing spaces of eating together with our families, with our friends, with our colleagues.

Given that so many of us live alone or are actively lonely or isolated in our individualistic culture, I can imagine some people listening to this, thinking, well, I can't do what this mug is suggesting because I just. I have people to eat with.

Yeah. And I think it's a seed that you start to observe when there are opportunities, whether it's just a dinner with friends that you start to. Maybe in the past you think, no, I just want to be by myself. But it's actually a decision we make every moment, when we become more aware of it, that I want to look for spaces in which I can eat together with others, then actually those opportunities start to appear. So it's not that they're not there. But sometimes we've just constructed our life in a way that it seems like they're not there anymore. I know I have a good friend in Holland and he actually has a. There they have a rotation. He lives by himself and so he often will end up eating by himself. So they decide every. I don't know, every week or every. So often they rotate around each other's apartments and each one of them will make a meal and they'll just come together. They don't have any other relationship, professional or even necessarily. I mean, they become friends over time. But it was mainly because there's people who live alone who want to just eat together. It's a way of building relationships and building community by rotating and going from one apartment to the other and each person will cook on a particular week. And so there are creative ways, I think, if we're motivated. I personally find, like finding creative ways to eat together is more fun than like counting calories or taking a work quantitative approach to eating, but rather just depend on how to find ways through food to build community.

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Brother Phap Lu]

Plus one to that. Okay, so I think we've worked through the first three of the five contemplations before eating, but maybe tell us numbers four and five before we dive into the practice itself.

Yeah. So the fourth one is aware of the effect that eating has on the planet, especially with regard to climate change. So this is where the traditional one has been updated for our present moment. We try to eat in such a way that we can reduce the suffering in the world. So we're aware that eating has a massive effect on the planet, not just through climate change, but also biodiversity, through land that is used for growing grains, to feed livestock or whatever it might be. Right. These have real effects on the world and they're observable. There's no debate about that. We remember that we are taking something. Yeah, Everything is a give and take. Right. And I think food is a more obvious example of that. And the more that we are taking from the universe or from others, I experience, the more I suffer. But where I learn to give and take, there's a flow. And I learned, for example, to not only just eat food, but maybe get involved with the local organic community garden and help to plant food that others can enjoy. Not only myself or support a local community supported agricultural farm. These kind of things where we create a visible and also experiential relationship between the land and our food and the people who are taking care of it. Then that suffering, I feel goes down most Times because we have more awareness of the kind of chain of where is this food coming from? And then the fifth one is that we accept this food in order to nurture our community and realize the path of understanding and love. So it means we want to help all beings to suffer less. So by eating mindfully, we're actually in the process of building our relationship with each other. And so it comes back to my original point about the word companion, which I just love that. This sense that we build our brotherhood, our sisterhood, our siblinghood, whatever word you put on it, our affective relationship with each other by eating together and sharing the food together. And that's a conscious thing that we do. We contemplate on that because we don't just think it's just an energy interchange, but it's actually building relationships with each other as we eat together.

And do you actually run through all five of these in your head before you sit down and eat?

Yeah, so we do it silently most of the time. But usually at our lunch meal, we'll. We'll come in, we'll serve our food. We usually, in our monastery, we have it buffet style. And then we'll sit down. Then there's a brother who or sister will be at the bell, and they'll invite a sound of the bell. And then we'll listen to these five contemplations being read. And then we'll begin eating in silence for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. So we can really allow the contemplation to go in and really be present for our food, not get lost in our thinking or our project, which is really important part of both mindful breathing and mindful eating, because that's a big tendency is to get lost in your thinking while you're eating. You have an initial sensation. We say it's like eating a ghost carrot. You have the carrot, you put the carrot in your mouth. But actually there's an initial moment where you get this burst of flavor. And then you're just thinking about your projects or what you want to do in the future, or some regrets about the past. And the experience of eating the carrot is completely lost because you're lost in your thinking. And it's like you're eating the carrot. Once you know the carrot, it tastes okay. It's not rotten. That's enough information. And then you, you. You're off in your thinking. And that's the way most of us eat. And so mindful eating is letting go of whatever our projects are, whatever ideas. Like, I notice I get really great ideas When I'm eating delicious food, but it's like the wires are crossed in my brain. It's because of the delicious sensation of eating the food. And the idea seems so good. So actually we're like crossing wires in our brains so that we don't actually understand where the pleasure that comes is when we have that idea is actually coming from, which is from the food. So I notice that happens a lot if I don't bring my attention back to the lived, visceral experience of chewing the carrot while it's in my mouth. And so creating anew not eating a phantom carrot or ghost carrot, but actually eating the carrot that's in my mouth right now. Not my past experience of eating carrots.

I mean, you can think of it as a ghost carrot or you can think of it as a ghost eating a real carrot.

Yeah. Also which is like the hungry ghost metaphor. Right. In Buddhist texts of these beings that have a very narrow neck and so even they are very in a big stomach. This is in Buddhist mythology. Right. But it's a teaching that's just there to help us to see that sometimes we are like hungry ghosts. We have a huge desire, but actually we're tortured because we have this narrow neck and we can only eat a tiny bit at a time. So we always feel hungry no matter how much we eat. And that's the way many of us live our lives. Like these hungry ghosts, whether it's with food or with our projects, our career, our goals in life, we feel like no matter when we get there, it's still not enough. We need something more. And so we can't be truly happy. And so transforming that ghost inside of us is a key part of mindful eating.

[Dan Harris]

Thank you, Brother Phatblue, and thanks again to Shannon. We'll put a link to the full episode with brother Fat Blue in the show notes. I do want to say this is the concluding episode of this year's Get Fit Sanely Programming. And this time for jfs, we did something we've never done before. We included bespoke or custom meditations to go with every full length episode. Every Monday, Wednesday episode. And those meditations were led by friend of the show and friend of mine, Cara Lai. They're available only to paid subscribers over on danharris.com so get on over there and sign up if you haven't already done that before I let you go. I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and Engineering is handled by the great people over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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