Toh 206 — Pure Sustenance of Food

F.94.a Homage to all buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was staying in the Bamboo Grove, accompanied by a great saṅgha of twelve hundred fifty monks, as well as other monks and nuns, laymen and laywomen, the eight classes of beings, and many bodhisattvas.

The great Maudgalyāyana rose from his seat, bowed to the Blessed One, and said, “Blessed One, once when I went to town for alms, I noticed tens of thousands of people on the way. Their heads were as big as mountains and their bellies the size of Mount Sumeru, yet their throats were as thin as needles. When they moved back and forth, they emitted a sound like the rumbling of five hundred chariots and spewed intolerable acrid smoke everywhere. Who are they and where do they come from? Please tell us, Blessed One.”

“Maudgalyāyana,” replied the Blessed One, “those are starving spirits. That is the ripening of past misdeeds such as ruining meals^[1] or the preparations for meals. It can also be the ripening of the misdeed of failing to eat only one meal per day because they consumed a meal offered to someone else.

“The leftovers from meals are not to be given to those who fail to eat only one meal per day. The polluted leftovers of a patron are to be used for the saṅgha; it is polluted food but is to be tolerated. Polluted food made by the saṅgha must be given; otherwise, the saṅgha will incur a downfall.”

“The Blessed One is correct,” Maudgalyāyana remarked.^[2]

The Blessed One continued, “Articles of offering collected in accordance with the Dharma, no matter who the patron may be, can serve as the sustenance for those who eat only a single meal.^[3]F.94.b Those who fail to eat only one meal will lack for food. Conversely, the ability to eat only one meal a day is the equivalent of sixty thousand days’ worth of merit, and it leads to an increase of foodstuffs. Those unable to eat only a single meal will become starving spirits for six hundred thousand days. How does that happen? It happens because the donations to them are weighty. It would be preferable to eat lumps of iron. The food from faithful patrons will not be easy to digest; they will experience suffering for an extremely long time and become the entity known as a starving spirit for a million lifetimes. Exercise extreme caution with all meritorious food offerings.

“If you stash leftovers in your breast pockets or in your sleeve, you will descend into the hells for five hundred lifetimes, and red-hot lumps of iron will tumble out of both your left and right armpits. Do not stash leftovers! Even if you stash as little as a single grain of millet, you will at least end up in the hell of iron wheels.

“Laypeople should also avoid polluting any of the meritorious food preparations by tasting them first. They should avoid polluting prepared food by tasting it. Doing so will render it impotent; it would have been better not to have made it at all. Why is that? It will displease all the gods and upset one’s companions.^[4] Anyone who tastes such food will become a starving spirit for fifty thousand lifetimes and experience various forms of unbearable suffering.

“Whoever seeks merit for the future should apportion the meritorious food offerings properly, hygienically, and respectfully. They should wash their hands thoroughly, cover all the warm dishes such as vegetables and the like, handle them carefully, and not taste them beforehand. Doing so will be meritorious and please all the gods and gain the favor of all one’s companions. This will bring about the protection and blessings of all the gods. This is a statement of fact. F.95.a

“The ripening of merit is like an echo or a reflection. It is in this way that starving spirits were initially humans. At an earlier time, they handled the saṅgha’s clean food with unclean hands, dug their unclean hands into the saṅgha’s clean food, or mixed unclean food into clean food and offered it to the saṅgha. Later, they fell to the state of a starving spirit for five hundred lifetimes, and they constantly consume filth and eat toilet waste. When they consume toilet waste, the toilet protectors run them off with iron clubs and disparage the starving spirits as receptacles of filth. They consume filth such as people’s pus, blood, mucus, snot, and dirty bathwater. They guard such filth and consume the unclean blood that drips from women after childbirth.

“After five hundred thousand years, they are reborn in the body of a dog, pig, insect, or something similar and continuously reek and consume feces and filth. They experience this sort of suffering for ten million eons, without any escape. To fully free themselves from this state is extremely difficult. Their utterly unbearable suffering is all but indescribable.

“If you touch your penis or vagina and then touch the clean food of the saṅgha with your unclean hands, introduce filth into the food for the saṅgha, or allow the saṅgha to partake of unclean food, this sort of misdeed will ripen as infectious eye diseases that afflict everyone, a misdeed no one will be aware of. Henceforth, handling the saṅgha’s food hygienically, using clean hands to carry the containers of the saṅgha’s food, washing millet with clean hands, and offering clean foods will lead to the attainment of inconceivable merit.

“Let this be well known and swiftly internalized.”