1 Timothy 4:3 · World English Bible
forbidding marriage and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
Whatever is forbidden becomes the center of attention. A man who renounces food thinks about food all day, and a man who renounces woman meets her in every corner of his mind, so the act of denial fastens him to exactly what he fled.
From the Indian Guru reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
AWARENESS
Whatever is forbidden becomes the center of attention. A man who renounces food thinks about food all day, and a man who renounces woman meets her in every corner of his mind, so the act of denial fastens him to exactly what he fled. Repression is not transcendence; it is the same obsession wearing robes.
Thanksgiving is the whole instruction: taking what is given, food, love, the body, with gratitude rather than suspicion. Life met that way loosens its own grip, while life fought grows tighter around the fighter. Those who actually know have no quarrel with existence, because the quarrel was always the ego's way of feeling holy.
Indian Guru lens
What are you fighting in yourself that might quiet down if you stopped calling it an enemy?
When hungry, eat; when tired, sleep. The ordinary thing, met simply and with gratitude, is the practice, and nothing is gained by making war on the body.
The Buddha tried starving himself and found it only sharpened his hunger and his pride. He ate, and the clarity he had been fighting for arrived.
Forcing and straining against the current of things breaks what it touches. Let life be received as it is given and it carries you instead of fighting you.
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Indian Guru