Blissfull eating

Zen, Vipassana Buddhism, silent and talking meditation, Jewish Renewal, Reform Jewish, Yoga, Hindu, generic New Age, and more... When it comes to spiritual retreat centers, I've been to them all.

And after several hours deep in the transcendent realms, it's amazing how much you start to focus on the one sensual pleasure that's offered up: Food. Here we are withdrawn from the temporal world contemplating the eternal verities, and we're all (at least I'm) going: mantra, mantra, pranayama,downward dog, inner bliss, I wonder what's for lunch?

Most retreat centers are austere places, often financially precarious. Your bed may be a thin mattress on a wooden slab, the plumbing uncertain. But while I'm ready to accommodate physical simplicity, or even outright difficulty, I need that one link to the life of the body and physical satisfaction to stay sane.

I was just a very basic Zen center in New Mexico. On the walls were the rules of retreat: hours for prayer and work, a rule of total silence. Rule # 11: Don't complain about the food to the Roshi. Like they completely know it gets to be an obsession on retreat. And I want to tell you, that center had fantastic food: amazing enchiladas, pasta with homemade pesto, elegant baked eggs and mushroom for breakfast, chocolate chip cookies for dinner. What's to complain about?

But last December I was on silent retreat between Christmas and New Year's at a place where the normal kitchen staff was on vacation. It was steamed greens and brown rice, breakfast, lunch and dinner, with some miso soup thrown in. I'm not kidding. Forget meditation, I was ready to throttle the cooks. We stopped at a convenience store to buy potato chips and sandwiches on the way to the airport. So you never know what you will encounter…although vegetarian is a given.

Here's my advice: bring several chocolate bars so you can be assured your taste buds will get a daily thrill, some salty snack (food is often undersalted tho soy sauce is usually available), and something substantial like a couple of dense power bars to give a sated feeling if the dreaded greens come around again. And if the going get rough, know that you can invariably count on terrific bread no matter what .

This is a guest blog by MHF! Thanks!