Sustenance Which Kills

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh.

[Four kinds of nutriments can lead to our happiness or suffering: edible food, sense impressions, intention, and consciousness. Regarding edible food, Buddha offered this example.]

"A young couple and their two-year-old child were trying to cross the desert, and they ran out of food. After deep reflection, the parents realized that in order to survive they had to kill their son and eat this flesh. They calculated that if they ate such and such a proportion of their baby's flesh each day and carried the rest on their shoulders to dry, it would last the rest of the journey.
But with every morsel of their baby's flesh they ate, the young couple cried and cried.

After he told this story, the Buddha asked, 'Dear friends, do you think the young man and woman enjoyed eating their son's flesh?' 'No, Lord, it would not be possible for them to enjoy eating their son's flesh.' The Buddha said, Yet many people eat the flesh of their parents, their children, and their grandchildren and do not know it.'"

R.