Day 17 - Feeding the Seeds

Living Christ Sangha - Advent Ango Practice Period

Sign from the (now defunct) Rubin Museum of Art.

Readings

(click the header to view the readings)
Isaiah 9:1-7
2 Peter 1:12-21
Luke 22:54-69

Reflection

In yesterday’s reflection I introduced Buddhist psychology, which provides a four-layered view of the mind. It explains that various mental formations arise when unconscious seeds in our store consciousness are watered by a stimulus from our sense consciousness or mind consciousness. Today, I want to look more deeply into the types of stimuli involved in this watering.

In these teachings, the stimulus that leads to the arising of a mental state is called a nutriment. Nutriments are things that we ingest physically or mentally that either nourish us or cause us difficulty. We all know that when we ingest unhealthy food or toxins, our physical health suffers. When our physical health suffers, our mental health is also challenged. What most of us don’t realize is that this also works the other way. There are mental nutriments that have a profound effect on our mental well-being, which can in turn affect our physical health.

Buddhism describes four types of nutriments (Figure 1):¹

• physical nutriments - the matter we ingest physically (food, drink, other substances)

• sensory nutriments - the images, ideas, and information we consume via sight or sound

• volition - a nutriment that arises from within, based on our aspirations

• consciousness - another nutriment that arises from within, based on our mental activity

Figure 1. The Four Types of Nutriments

Let’s look at some examples.

External Nutriments

Physical and sensory nutriments are the two types of external nutriments. We have substantial (but not total) influence over both of these types of nutriments.

Suppose an individual lives in an area near a factory that release some level of toxins. The person may not be able to avoid those harmful physical nutriments, but they may be able to make choices regarding the other nutriments they ingest. For example, they can choose to eat in a healthier way or to avoid using addictive drugs. We all have some degree of freedom regarding what we ingest physically, and when we make sound choices for our physical health, our mental health benefits too.

Sensory nutriments are very important to our discussion, as we live in a world with a huge number of information sources that have all been designed to capture and keep our attention. We are bombarded by nutriments from these sources.

• Advertisers seek to create desire within us for the product they promote.

• Our social media applications seek to discover what engages us so as to dangle more of that in front of us, interspersed with the ads that the social media platforms use to make money.

• News providers across different media formats align their coverage with our preferences and opinions to lure us to stay tuned in.

• We also serve as nutriment sources, “transmitting” information we’ve found on other sources to our family, friends, and connections by liking, sharing, or discussing what we see, read, and hear.

I’ll discuss the topic of sensory nutriments in more depth tomorrow when I explore the idea of “selective watering,” which can help us abide in positive mental states. For now I’ll leave it to my readers to ponder how the information and conversations you take in are affecting your states of mind.

Internal Nutriments

There are two nutriment sources that are internal to our minds: volition and consciousness.

Volition concerns our aspirations and deepest desires for meaning. The question behind volition is often, “What do I want to do with my life?” This deep intention generates nutriments that may cause different seeds to be watered. For example, if my deepest desire is to be the wealthiest person on earth, an intention tied to craving and greed, the nutriments created by this intention may water many unwholesome seeds. If my deepest desire is to be of service to children in need, the nutriments created by this loving intention may water many wholesome seeds. Our intentions concerning our lives and their purpose are powerful sources of nutriments.

Our consciousness is an internal source of nutriments because our streams of thoughts, fantasies, and other mental activity can water different seeds, leading to different mental formations arising. At this point, we can begin to see just how rich and complex the model might be, where one stream of thought waters a particular set of seeds, giving rise to new mental formations, which then water other seeds, and so on. A web of complex mental activity is the result, all driven by the flow between mind consciousness and store consciousness. Our minds are complex, wonderful systems!

Tomorrow, we will take the next step in understanding the cultivation of joy by exploring “selective watering,” which combines and refines what we’ve learned about the workings of our minds and the nutriments that affect them.

Prayer

Source of all that nourishes us, give us the insight to truly understand that the nutriments we ingest profoundly affect the state of our minds, and that the state of our minds determines the state of our world. Amen.

1. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Chapter 7: Touching our Suffering.