Donald Altman

West Linn, Oregon

Sometimes we can understand mindfulness by seeing what it is not because it’s kind of invisible. When I was 20 or 21 – I’d graduated college, but I wasn’t very happy. I had to move back home, I didn’t have a job, had no relationship of any kind. What I did have was one of the best restaurants in the city of Chicago that had rice pudding. I can remember that summer spending time in the morning going out with a kind of glee being excited about going to that restaurant, to their little deli section and getting a pint of rice pudding, bringing it back home just in time to watch the Dating Game. <Laughs> That kind of sustained me through a period of my summer when I wasn’t very happy. So you can look at that and say I was using food as a kind of medication to medicate my loneliness, my sadness at where I was at that time. It had no deeper meaning for me at that time. 

I can move forward almost 25 years after that when I entered the monastery. In the interceding time I had a tendency toward binging with food especially if it made me feel better emotionally.  So I went into the monastery not knowing if I could actually get through it because in the monastery in the Theravadan tradition of Buddhism, you only eat an early morning meal about 6:30 a.m. and then a meal at about 11:00 a.m. And really no food after noon except maybe for a juice or a tea in the evening if you feel you need that. So I didn’t know if I could get along not eating from 12:00 noon ‘til the next morning, especially with my strong emotional need to have food. And it was a real <pauses> serious issue for me at the time. 

So before I went in, I had a very healthy meal I have to say. <laughs heartily>  My last meal. 

And then I went in. It was a beautiful ceremony where the first thing they do is they cut off your hair and they hold it in front of you and they say, “This is not you.” First lesson about letting go ever so slowly.  I was going have to let go of some of my attachment to food. It was a beautiful ceremony out on this grassy field and the sun was finally setting at the time it was over. And it was very powerful for me. 

Then the ceremony is over and you’re walking out with this black alms bowl and people are putting in different things. I remember somebody putting in a little bottle of shampoo and I’m thinking, “What do I need that for?” <Laughs>  I wanted a chocolate bar. 

Three new monk initiates shared a little room with three futons.  I took one of the futons and I’m sitting there wondering, “What have I done?” I mean, I was drawn to Buddhism really because of the monks I had met and I wanted to know what they had learned to become the compassionate people they were. But here I am feeling very uncomfortable now. One of the monks is laid out on the bed kind of exhausted. Another one is sitting very intently just doing his rosary beads, chanting.

And – this was the amazing thing – something catches my attention. There was a bookshelf to my left and I look over and there maybe just a foot and half from the tip of my nose on the bookshelf is one of those giant Cadbury’s chocolate bars. <Laughs> I couldn’t believe it. I thought somebody had set me up. Of course, nobody knew about my struggles with chocolate. There was the one thing that probably could get the reaction from me. And it did at that moment which was, “I want this chocolate bar” because I was feeling some stress over this whole thing that I had done, wondering and questioning.  Nothing would have taken me away and medicated me better, in that moment or temporarily anyway, than a nice big chocolate bar. <Laughs> 

And then I thought, “Oh, wait, I just took this vow that says I can’t eat after 12:00 noon.” Of course, I didn’t have a watch on but I knew I couldn’t eat the chocolate bar. And yet, there was this emotionally hungry void. I mean, in pain, literally kind of screaming for this desire and craving something. I looked over at the other two monks and I thought, “Well, they probably wouldn’t know.” <Laughs> 

But I took the vow. And then all of a sudden – this was a real lesson in mindfulness – I was aware of that voice and that I was no longer identified with it anymore. It wasn’t me, but it was something I was watching almost from a distance. I heard it and I witnessed the pain that it felt and the emotional hunger that it was experiencing. And by letting go of that, my attachment to that even for a moment, I realized that I could get through this experience. I would not have to push that voice away, but just watch it and acknowledge it and hear it. Give it a voice, too. And I realized I could let that voice coexist. I could follow my vows and have both of these things be present at the same time. In that way I could just accept and be present with it. 

And so instead of pushing away unpleasant thoughts like I had 25 years earlier, I was able to stay with my feelings, my emotions, my thoughts. To watch them without blaming myself, “I am such a bad person. Here am I’m a monk and I want this chocolate bar. What kind of monk am I?” <Laughs> But watching with compassion, with greater awareness and feeling my emotions, watching my body and inhabiting the present moment. What I now like to say, “living in the ‘what-is’ as opposed to the ‘what-if.’” So to me, mindfulness is a lot about living in the what-is, not rejecting this moment, but accepting it. 

Mindfulness is about being aware so that you can be free. Free to make the choices that benefit you. Free to have the strength to say, “You know, I can have this chocolate bar or I cannot have this chocolate bar. But it’s my choice.” Or it’s even my choice if I feel like overeating a little more food today. That’s my choice, too. But then, it’s not a compulsion anymore and you’re aware of the consequences and you have the strength and the ability to make the decision on your own. And that’s probably the most powerful gift you can give yourself is the gift of awareness and the freedom to choose. 

I like to say that if you eat a grape in mindfulness, it no longer becomes a grape, but something much bigger, more sacred than that. If you eat a grape, you’re really tasting the sun, you’re tasting all the elements, the soil, the universe. If you can touch food in that way, you realize that it has a divine purpose. I feel that food is <Pauses> touching sacredness, tasting sacred, sharing stories with others, and experiencing a taste of the universe.

Donald Altman, MA, LPC, is a practicing psychotherapist and adjunct professor who continues to explore the power of mindfulness to help people improve their eating habits and find balance and joy in their lives. The peaceful yet passionate way in which he shared his thoughts about his relationship with food affirmed his commitment to being mindful. Learn about his books and resources at www.mindfulpractices.com.