..续本文上一页-self), nutriment is likewise a convincing teacher of the two other characteristics of life, Impermanence and Suffering.

　　Change, or Impermanence (anicca), is at the very root of the nutritive process which cries for constant replenishment of the food consumed. The bottomless gaping hole has to be filled again and again as long as the being lives. And it is no different with our mental hunger that craves for change and variety.

　　This repetitive monotony of the process of nutrition kept going by the urge to preserve life — this is enough to reveal the dukkha-nature of life, the tiresomeness of the tedious round of eating and being hungry again. Hence a medieval Jewish sage was moved to say, "I am fed up with being hungry again and again, and I hunger after final satiety."[4]

　　This is the suffering inherent in the very function of eating, though mostly hidden by the habituation to this most elementary feature of routine life. The concrete suffering and pain involved in the search for food and its acquisition, is obvious enough to all and this misery was, is and will be life”s constant companion. There is the mute suffering in the animal world where "devouring each other is the law" (and man joining in it by even rearing animals for food); we also know of primitive man”s fight for pasture land (basically the same as modern man”s wars for "world markets"); we also know of the pangs of hunger among the poor, and of starving children the world over. And though the resources for feeding humanity have grown considerably in our days, man still has not controlled famine, even where it would be in his power to do so; and all progress in the field of food-production threatens to be dwarfed by the rapid growth of world population. This problem looms large on the horizon of present-day humanity and may well become desperate if the disparity between available food and increasing population reaches a critical point. Should that critical point be reached, we do not know what dire consequences may follow from that situation, unless a united mankind can solve the problem by concerted action and peaceful means. Hence, also for mankind”s future, what the Dhamma teachers of old said remains true: that the search for food (aahaara-pariye.t.thi) is an ever-present source of suffering (vattamaana dukkha) and as such it can stir man”s sense of urgency (sa.mvega) when he considers, in the light of "nutriment," man”s own nature, his incessant needs and his situation in the world.

　　This contemplation of the dukkha-aspect of nutriment leads us to a formulation of the Four Noble Truths in terms of nutriment, as given in the last text (§ 7) of this anthology. The four nutriments of life stand for the first truth of Ill; the craving for the four nutriments is the origin of Ill, the second Truth; the stopping of that craving is the cessation of the continued process of grasping for material and mental food, which is the end of Ill, the third Truth; and the Noble Eightfold Path is the way to that cessation.

　　It is because the process of nutrition (material and mental) demonstrates the conditioned nature of all existence that we have found it to cover those salient features of the Dhamma — the three signata (impermanence, suffering and not-self) and the Four Truths.

　　We shall now consider each of the four kinds of nutriments singly.

　　1. Edible Food

　　Simile: A couple, foodless in the midst of a desert, eat their little child, to enable them to reach their destination.

　　Just like the husband and wife in the Buddha”s simile, mankind ever since it emerged on this planet, has traversed the desert of life where food is the most urgent concern. And again, as in that story, the stilling of man”s hunger has often been a heart-rending business — if not for the sometimes quite …

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