This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavour. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time, and engage yourself in zazen as though you are saving your head from fire.
Mary Pipher, aka Mary Elizabeth Pipher or Mary Bray Pipher
Girls developed eating disorders when our culture developed a standard of beauty that they couldn't obtain by being healthy. When unnatural thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural things to be thin.
Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.
Anger | Bitterness | Heart | Mind |
Rabbi Nahum Ward and Shelley Mann
We are concerned about the health of our bodies. We are responsible for taking good care of the bodies that God has given to us. Too much food can be destructive to our systems - especially if it is full of fat and sugar. Tobacco, alcohol, caffeine and other drugs can also be harmful. We eat mostly whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts. We try to pay attention to how our bodies feel about the food we are eating and to make our meals as nourishing and pleasing as possible.
Rabbi Nahum Ward and Shelley Mann
Our relationship with eating is one of our most intimate experiences of the earth. When we eat, we take another life into our own. We consume life in order to live. How do we do this with respect? How do we take life, and yet maintain our sensitivity to life? Kashrut - rooted in the Bible, and developed by the Rabbis - is the Jewish tradition's clearly delineated response to this challenge. Kashrut sets limits on what foods we can eat: for example, we can only eat certain (primarily domesticated) animals, and we must slaughter them in the least painful, most respectful way. The blood must be drained and buried, because the life is in the blood and must be returned to the earth. There are also prohibitions against eating shellfish, and the mixing of meat and milk products. We felt a need to expand this traditional understanding of Kashrut to include global environmental and social issues which the Rabbis of two thousand years ago did not face. In conversation with Jewish people in many communities, we have developed the following tentative guidelines for a Kashrut which speaks to our planetary concerns.
Conversation | Global | Life | Life | Need | Order | People | Relationship | Understanding | Following |
Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL
Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them.
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
Poetry | Quotations |
As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.
When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they were exercising their freedom of choice....Before eating the fruit, they did not know the difference between good and evil; thus they did not possess the knowledge which enables human beings to exercise freedom of choice. By eating the fruit, they acquired this knowledge; and from that moment onwards they were free. Thus the story of their banishment from Eden is in truth the story of how the human race gained its freedom...Adam and Eve became mature human beings, responsible to God for their actions....by defying God, Adam and Eve grew to maturity in his image.
Freedom | God | Good | Human race | Knowledge | Race | Story | Truth | God |
As a matter of strict logic, perhaps, there is no contradiction in taking an interest in animals on both compassionate and gastronomic grounds. If a person is opposed to the infliction of suffering on animals, but not to the painless killing of animals, he could consistently eat animals that had lived free of all suffering and been instantly, painlessly slaughtered. Yet practically and psychologically it is impossible to be consistent in one's concern for nonhuman animals while continuing to dine on them. If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end. In time we will come to regard pigs, cattle, and chickens as things for us to use, no matter how strong our compassion may be; and when we find that to continue to obtain supplies of the bodies of these animals at a price we are able to pay it is necessary to change their living conditions a little, we will be unlikely to regard these changes too critically. The factory farm is nothing more than the application of technology to the idea that animals are means to our ends. Our eating habits are dear to us and not easily altered. We have a strong interest in convincing ourselves that our concern for other animals does not require us to stop eating them. No one in the habit of eating an animal can be completely without bias in judging whether the conditions in which that animal is reared caused suffering.
Change | Compassion | Contradiction | Habit | Life | Life | Means | Nothing | Order | Price | Regard | Suffering | Taste | Technology | Time | Will |
Whatever the child's initial reaction, though, the point to notice is that we eat animal flesh long before we are capable of understanding that what we are eating is the dead body of an animal. Thus we never make a conscious, informed decision, free from the bias that accompanies any long-established habit, reinforced by all the pressures of social conformity to eat animal flesh. At the same time, children have a natural love of animals, and our society encourages them to be affectionate toward animals such as dogs and cats and toward cuddly, stuffed animals. These facts help to explain that most distinctive characteristic of the attitudes of children in our society to animals - namely, that rather than having one unified attitude to animals, the child has two conflicting attitudes that coexists, carefully segregated so that the inherent contradiction between them rarely causes trouble.
Body | Children | Conformity | Contradiction | Love | Society | Understanding | Society | Child |
To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.
Do we learn with one part of us, feel angry with another, and desire the pleasures of eating and sex with another? Or do we employ our mind as a whole when our energies are employed in any of these ways?
Powhatan, proper name was Wahunsenacawh, also spelled Wahunsonacock NULL
Do you believe me such a fool as not to prefer eating good meat, sleeping quietly with my wives and children, laughing and making merry with you, having copper and hatchets and anything else—as your friend—to flying from you as your enemy, lying cold in the woods, eating acorns and roots, and being so hunted by you meanwhile, that if but a twig break, my men will cry out, "here comes Captain Smith!" Le us be friend, then. Do not invade us thus with such an armed force. Lay aside these arms.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them.
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.