Question: I have an excessive passion for eating. I love the taste of food. How can I control this passion?

Sri Chinmoy: Everyone, every seeker, every aspirant, every disciple, eventually has to conquer all passion. Now, passion is a very complicated thing. It can be in the lower vital, it can be in the mind or it can be in the heart. This passion is persistent. But once you are purified in the physical, in the vital and in the mind, then the passion can easily be conquered.

Now you say that your problem is food. If your passion for eating takes you away from your spiritual life, from your inner discipline, then naturally you should try to cut down. Many people follow a spiritual path but are content to make very little progress. But if you want to make the best progress, the highest progress, then in your spiritual life you have to give up things that you eat only for the sake of taste.

I don’t know what food you actually prefer. Suppose you are eating too much meat. Naturally you will have to feel that this meat is disturbing your inner peace. Meat is not good for the spiritual life. You have to know what meat actually does, how it harms you. Meat comes from the animal world. We see animals quarrelling and fighting all the time. We don’t want to be animals any more. We have already evolved out of the animal kingdom. But the restless, agitated quality that you get from meat is bound to express itself through your outer actions. Now, if you have been eating meat all your life, then I will be the last person to tell you to give up eating meat all at once. But gradually, gradually you can cut down the amount. Then you will come to a point when you have to give up meat altogether if you want to make the fastest progress.

We have to take food in order to keep our body fit. We can drink milk, we can take vegetables, we can take eggs, we can take so many things besides meat. If we eat vegetables and other foods, they will not harm us in our spiritual life.

When you are asking about controlling passions, you are asking a very spiritual question. Spiritual people have to deal with food in a different way from a gluttonous, voracious eater, a greedy person who eats to please his tongue. A spiritual person, an aspirant, will eat primarily to keep his body fit. He knows that if he takes mild food, vegetables and so forth, this will help him to conquer his passions. At the same time he is offering to the body the food which the body legitimately demands. If the body becomes one with the divine Consciousness, then naturally it will try to fulfil God the way God wants to be fulfilled. God has given us a variety of foods and it is we who have to know what food we should take in order to expedite our spiritual progress. But again, how fast do you want to go? If you are content to go slowly, you can continue to take the food that you are taking now since you are fond of it. Try to diminish the quantity; in that way you can progress slowly. But the important thing is to start.

Whatever you feel is wrong in your life, whether it is passion or something else, try to minimise it and gradually it will be totally eliminated. You have to start from where you are standing and one day you will reach your goal. If you feel that it is too difficult, then it will always remain impossible. But if you feel that it is not only possible but practicable, then soon you will see that it is not only possible and practicable, but inevitable. You can do it, you are bound to do it and you will do it.