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Maitri Upanisad
Chapter Six
9. So the one who knows this has both as self. He meditates on the self, sacrifices to the self. This is meditation, mind resting in the practice, purified mind, as praised by the wise. One should purify the mind by chanting Touched by Leftovers. One chants the mantra: Whether it be left over or touched by leftovers, or given by an evil man, or impure from a stillbirth, may the purifier of Vasu, may Agni and the rays of Savitr purify my food, and anything else that is ill-done.
First one surrounds it with water. One makes offering with the five: To the breath, SVAHA! To the diffused breath, SVAHA! To the central breath, SVAHA! To the up-breath, SVAHA!
One eats the rest with speech restrained. Afterwards one surrounds it again with water. Having sipped, while sacrificing to the self, one meditates on the self with two verses, As breath, as fire and You are all:
As breath, as fire, the supreme self
Is sought for refuge, the one with five airs:
Being pleased, may he please all,
The enjoyer of all!.
You are all, you are in all men:
All, being born, is upheld by you.
May all offerings enter you,
And creatures, too, go where you are, the all-immortal.
So by this method the eater does not become food again.
10. 10. "Something else should be known: there is a further development of the sacrifice of the self-food and the eater of food. To explain further: the person is the watcher who rests inside matter. He is the enjoyer: he enjoys the food of nature. The elemental self is its food: matter is its agent. So with its three strands it is the object of enjoyment.
The person rests inside. What is seen is the proof here. Since all animals are produced from seed, the seed is the object of enjoyment. By this is explained the fact that matter is the object of enjoyment. So the enjoyer is the person, nature is the object of enjoyment, and resting in it he enjoys it. The food of nature, through the development of the distinction of the three strands, is the subtle body, which begins with the great and end with the particularities. In this way the fourteenfold path is explained: This world, known as joy, sorrow and delusion, has become food.
"For as long as there is no bringing fourth, there is no grasping of sweetness. It, too, turns into food, in three states. They are childhood, youth and old age- because of development, it becomes food. When matter has reached manifestation in this way, it can be got hold of. Then it has the sweetnesses, intelligence, etc.: they are called intelligence, resolution and conceit. Now the five sweetnesses are the sense objects, likewise all the activities of the senses and the activities of the breath. So there is manifest food and unmanifest food. The enjoyer of it is free of the strands. Because he is the enjoyer, he clearly possesses consciousness. Just as, among the gods, Agni is the eater of food and Soma is food, the one who knows this enjoys food with Agni. Because of the saying, the elemental self is called Soma and the one who has the unmanifest as his mouth is Agni, the person enjoys the three-stranded matter with the unmanifest as his mouth.
"The one who knows this is a renouncer, a yogin and a sacrificer to the self. Just as no one touches amourous women if they have entered an empty house, the one who does not touch sense-objects is a renouncer, a yogin and a sacrificer to the self.
11. Food is the highest form of the self, for breath is made of food. If one not eat, one becomes unable to think, unable to hear, unable to touch, unable to see speak, unable to smell, unable to taste, and one gives up one’s breaths.
Someone has said: if one eats one becomes filled with breath and becomes
able to think, able to hear, able to touch, able to speak, able to taste, able to smell, able to see.
Someone has said:
Whatever creatures depend on earth
Are born from food.
By food they live,
And into it go in the end.
12. Elsewhere it has been said: All beings fly out day by day desiring to get food. The sun takes up food with its rays, and so gives heat. When sprinkled with food, the breaths digest. By food, fire burns.
Through the desire for food, all this was shaped by Brahman. So one should worship food as the self. Someone has said:
Beings are born from food:
Born, they grow by food.
It is eaten and it eats beings,
Hence it is called food.
13. Elsewhere it has been said: Food is the form of the blessed Visnu that is called the All-breaking. Breath is the essence of food; mind of breath; knowledge of mind; joy of knowledge.
The one who knows this becomes endowed with food, endowed with breath, endowed with mind, endowed with breath, endowed with mind, endowed with knowledge, endowed with joy. The one who knows this, resting within them, eats food in whatever beings there are that eat food.
Food keeps away old age;
Food, it is said, makes folk well disposed;
Food is the breath of animals;
Food is the eldest; food, it is said, medicine.
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