Once upon a time, Buddha’s disciples asked Buddha, why do you always speak to take food with love.  And why is it said to take food in a balanced quantity only.  If we do not take food with love, then will there be no food, if we take food in excess, will it act as poison?  Buddha said that our thoughts become according to the kind of food we take.  And not just food, too much of anything is never good.  Buddha started telling the story to his disciple.

Once upon a time, a hermit used to live in a forest by building a hut.  If any person would have taken any problem in front of him, he would have solved it immediately.  While doing this, he became very famous and the people of nearby villages also started coming to him to solve their problems.  He had become very famous.  Hearing the discussions of the sage, one day the king of that city reached to the sage with his courtiers.  The king folded hands and said, Maharaj, I have heard that you solve everyone’s problems.  So why don’t you solve some problems of our state as well.  And you have to walk with us because there is no material means for you in this forest.  You are passing through great difficulties in this small cottage.  After listening to the king, the sage said, “No, sir, I am absolutely happy in my place.”  But the king did not mind, he forcefully took the monk with him.  The king gave all the comforts to the monk in his court.  Delicious dishes to eat, velvet bed to sleep.  After getting all these, the sadhu changed completely, there was a lot of change in his nature.  Even the sage could not understand why his nature changed like this after coming here.  Then one day, suddenly getting a chance, the monk runs away from the court.  And he takes a lot of valuable things with him.  When the king came to know, he put a soldier behind them.  The soldiers searched everywhere for the monk but could not find him.  On the other hand, the monk went towards the forest while running and sat down tired under a tree.  Sitting under the tree, he saw a fruit fell down from the tree.  The monk was very hungry that’s why he ate that fruit.  He had such a medicine in the fruit that upsets the stomach. Medicine is also something that cannot be eaten without illness.

After eating that fruit, the monk became so ill that he did not even know how to heal from his place. He didn’t like anything, he happily became a structure. One day he thought in his mind that why did I run away from Raj Mahal with his valuables. Maybe that’s why God put me in this condition. There is a lot of remorse in his mind and he starts thinking of giving back all the money to the king. Then gathering courage in his mind, he goes towards the Raj Mahal and starts giving back all the money to the king. So the king asked him why did you run away with my money. And now you have come to give back, when you had to give, then why steal.

Then the monk said to the king, Rajan, while I was at your place, I was taking food from your house, and my intelligence had also become like yours. That’s why I ran away with this money. Because this money is not your earned, you have also snatched it from someone. Don’t know how many poor and unhappy souls reside in this money. Ever since I ate that fruit, all the food I had eaten in your house went out of my stomach because of it. And as soon as your food came out, wisdom came back in my mind. That’s why I came to give it back.

Buddha says the same thing to his disciple that whatever we eat, we should first observe where that thing came from. Is that food of someone else’s right? Even when we cook food, the emotions of our mind get absorbed in the food. The condition from which we cook food enters our food. As we are preparing food with a very happy heart, the person who eats the food prepared by us also remains happy. If we cook with sadness, then the person who eats it will also be sad. If we cook food with anger, everyone will get angry because of the food we eat. So this is the thing that only one thing means how much importance Bhajan has in our life. If we prepare and speak food with a happy heart, then our mind also remains happy. And when the mind and heart are happy, then we can achieve immense success in our life.

Food prepared with a sad heart and the person who eats it becomes so sad that he does not see the highs and lows of life. And when the mind itself is not happy then what kind of success.