FOOD PRAYER MANTRAS & Other Food Prayers

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Brahmaarpanam Brahma Havir

Brahmaagnau Brahmanaa Hutam

Brahmaiva Tena Gantavyam

Brahma Karma Samaadhinaha

 

[This is 24th verse from the 4th chapter of Bhagavad Geetha] The act of offering

is Brahman. The offering itself is Brahman. The offering is done by Brahman in

the sacred fire which is Brahman. He alone attains Brahman who, in all actions,

is fully absorbed in Brahman. (As we chant this prayer we are offering the

different types of food to Brahman).

 

Aham Vaishvaanaro Bhutva

Praaninaam Dehamaashritha

Praanaapaana Samaa Yuktaha

Pachaamyannam Chatur Vidam

 

[This is 14th verse from the 15th chapter of Bhagavad Geetha] This sloka is a

sort of acknowledgement and assurance to us from Brahman. " I am Vaishnavara,

existing as fire God in the bodies of living beings. Being associated with

ingoing (prana) and outgoing (apaana) life breaths, I will digest all the four

different types of food (that which we bite and chew; that which we masticate

with the tongue; those which we gulp; that which we swallow) and purify them. "

 

Harir Daatha Harir Bhoktha

Harir Annam Prajaapatih

Harir Vipra Shareerastu

Bhoonkte Bhojayathe Harih.

 

Oh Lord Hari, You are the food, You are the enjoyer of the food, You are the

giver of food. Therefore, I offer all that I consume at Thy Lotus Feet.

 

Explanation of this prayer

 

We should partake food with a Sathwic mind. Our ancestors recommended the

offering of food to God before partaking. Food so partaken becomes " Prasad "

(consecrated offering). Prayer cleanses the food of the thre impurities; caused

by the absence of cleanliness of the vessel, cleanliness of the food stuff, and

cleanliness in the process of cooking. It is necessary to get rid of these three

impurities to purify the food; for, pure food goes into the making of a pure

mind. It is not possible to ensure the purity of the cooking process, since we

do not know what thoughts rage in the mind of the man who prepares the food.

Similarly, we cannot ensure the cleanliness of the food ingredients as we do not

know whether it was acquired in a righteous way by the seller who has sold it to

us. Hence, it is essential on our part to offer food to God in the form of

prayer, so that these three impurities do not afflict our mind. The prayer:

 

Brahmaarpanam Brahma Havir

Brahmaagnau Brahmanaa Hutam

Brahmaiva Tena Gantavyam

Brahma Karma Samaadhinaha

Aham Vaishvaanaro Bhutva

Praaninaam Dehamaashritha

Praanaapaana Samaa Yuktaha

Pachaamyannam Chatur Vidam

Harir Daatha Harir Bhoktha

Harir Annam Prajaapatih

Harir Vipra Shareerastu

Bhoonkte Bhojayathe Harih.

 

" The food thus offered to God is digested by 'Vaishwanara " in the digestive

system. Since God exists in the form of fire as Vaishwanara, He digests the food

along with the impurities. So, man will not be affected even i the impurities

enter the food. "

 

Other Food Prayers

 

Just as we pray in the Lord's Prayer " Give us today our daily bread, " it is good

to give thanks to God for His provision to us. Whilst this may often happen at

family meals on more formal occasions, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving,

perhaps we need to remember to say grace, or mealtime prayers, on a daily basis.

This can be an easy way for the whole family to join in, and for those as young

as four or so to lead a very simple prayer. Below there are a number of simple

dinner prayers you might like to use. As far as we are aware, none of these

dinner prayers are copyright, but if we have inadvertently reproduced anything

without acknowledgement, please let us know

 

For food in a world where many walk in hunger

For friends in a world where many walk alone

For faith in a world where many walk in fear

We give you thanks, O Lord. Amen.

(Anglican Church of Canada,)

 

Thank you for the world so sweet,

Thank you for the food we eat,

Thank you for the birds that sing,

Thank you God for everything. Amen.

God our Father, God our Father,

Who gives all, who gives all,

Thank you for this dinner, Thank you for this dinner,

Amen. Amen.

(to the tune of Frere Jacques)

 

Dear Jesus

 

Thank you for this food.

Bless us all and keep us from harm.

Guide and direct us, through all our days.

Amen!

Loving Father, we thank you for this food,

And for all your blessings to us.

Lord Jesus, come and be our guest,

And take your place at this table.

Holy Spirit, as this food feeds our bodies,

So we pray you would nourish our souls. Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, As you blessed many with the five loaves and the two fishes,

may we too, know your blessing as we share this food, your peace in our hearts,

and your love in our lives.

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ,

Friend of sinners, we thank you for friendship,

Prince of peace, we ask you that we may be peacemakers.

Lord of all, we thank you for this food.

Bless it to our bodies, we pray. Amen.

Bless, O Lord, this food for thy use, and make us ever mindful of the wants and

needs of others. Amen

Lord, Bless this bunch, while we munch our lunch. Amen.

Top

 

 

Bless

 

Food Prayers prominence in different religions

The sacred texts of the world, such as the Bible, the Koran, the Lotus Sutra,

the Hindu Vedic corpus, have a common profound quality. What marks them as

sacred is that they are treated as holy documents possessing supreme authority

and power, by virtue of their divine origin.

 

Sacred texts are created directly by God or revealed to humankind or recorded by

holy prophets. Through the centuries, rebbes, monks and saints have orally

passed down such sacred texts as the Pali canon, the sacred Scripture of

Theravada Buddhism, and the Torah, which originally was forbidden to be written

and was memorized by tannas, who were flawless ``repeaters'' of the text. Sacred

texts are immutable and are considered ``closed'' texts, which cannot be altered

or revised.

 

A distinguishing feature of a sacred text is its beneficence to humanity. While

not all food prayers are sacred (including those in this anthology), they all

possess some kind of beneficial power for humankind.

 

 

For those whose intellectual interest is in what Paul Verlaine called ``mere

literature,'' the compelling beauty of these thanksgiving food prayers reveals

the noble spirituality of humanity. Prayer is how human beings relate to God,

nature, and their place in the divine order of things. Prayer is the principal

channel we use in our search for ultimate meaning. Thanksgiving food prayers

embody religious and social contexts, encompassing myth, sacred doctrine,

rituals, and social and cultural practices.

 

 

Sharing food is the most universal cultural experience. Expressing thanks for

food was humankind's first act of worship, for food is the gift of life from

above. In every culture there are sacred beliefs or divine commandments that

require honoring the giver of life--God or the divine principle--through

acknowledging the sacred gift of food. By admitting us to his table, God became

bound to us in a unique relationship. By admitting God to our table, we

experience the love and beauty of that relationship.

 

 

The gods command prayers of thanks for food. The Bible has several citations:

``And thou shall eat and be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God'' (Deut.

8:10). The divine origin of the words of the Koran are better appreciated if you

understand that the Koran is to Muslims what Jesus--not the Bible--is to

Christianity.

 

A verse from the Koran, the words of Allah, the God of Islam, as recorded under

divine guidance by the Prophet Muhammad instructs Muslims on the sacred origins

of food and the requirement for food prayers: ``Eat of your Lord's provision,

and give thanks to Him'' (34:15).

While some people may believe that ``grace'' is a Christian or Western notion,

the etymology of the word shows otherwise. The theological notion of grace

infuses the entire meaning of thankfulness.

 

Grace is the unmerited love of God and the presence of God in us. This presence

of divine love is gratuitous. Gratuitous (given freely) comes from the Latin

gratuitus (grateful) and derives from the Latin word for thanks (gratia), found

in many languages; Old French, gratus (thankful); Sanskrit, grnati (sing

praise). Grace in Greek is charis (charisma). Charismata is the power of the

Holy Spirit. A grace is the thanks-to-God utterance before or after a meal.

 

Food has always been recognized as the unmerited gift from God. Grace is the

divine reality underlying all religion and faith--that is, God's loving

generosity. In the Hebrew Scriptures it is hesed (loving kindness). In the Tao

it is found in the love of the Hindu triad Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. In Christian

theology, grace is the human transcendent activity of God in every creature.

 

 

Whether that expression of thanks (gratia) for the gift of spiritual and

physical food is voiced in a tribal ritualized saying or uttered silently or

sung eloquently, a person's intrinsic spiritual nature imposes a recognition

that the very food before him or her is sacred and mysterious and comes to him

or her from the beyond.

 

 

Consider: The first interhuman act of the newborn child is to experience

satisfaction through food. In the first hour of life our senses may transmit

ephemeral sight, sound, or touch quanta, but it is the initial ingestion of milk

from the mother that constitutes the first interhuman act: nourishment.

 

The immediate response to this nourishment is a systemic and psychic

satisfaction, and the hunger-gratification cycle begins at that instant and

continues throughout life. The just-born infant's first human experience is a

``gift'' of milk in response to its sucking instinct and food need, a gratifying

experience that has an impact on the infant's psyche on its deepest level. This

gratis experience is irrevocably imprinted on the newborn's uninscribed mind and

is the primordial unconscious analogue to voiced prayer.

 

Our first common human emotional experience is the gratia response for food.

The ritualized saying of food prayers in thanks for God's bounty is an

acculturated experience derived through social and religious practices.

 

This ``imposition'' of formal prayer saying is a confirmation of our first

primal food experience. It gives form to expressing thankfulness that reaches

immediately back to our first minutes of life and is something inherently

cognate within us.

 

The gratia experience we encounter as infants is transformed and

intellectualized over time into an appreciation of food as both spiritual and

physical nourishment that is acknowledged in the gratis prayer.

 

 

There are four principal types of thanksgiving grace: the silent grace, the

spoken grace, the sung grace, the signed grace. I thought it would be nice to

include an adult and child's signed grace (prayers 133 and 134). They have a

beauty all their own. See for yourself.

While this book is a collection of blessings that civilization has preserved,

there are other momentous prayers of thanks that are documented but whose actual

words are not known. An intriguing example is two prayers of thanks that,

according to the Bible, Jesus offered at the Last Supper. We don't know if the

prayers were voiced or silent.

 

Jesus' exact words (if they were spoken) were not recorded by the authors of the

New Testament. In the course of the Last Supper, the Bible tells us, ``Jesus

gave thanks'' to God in heaven. The first grace was intoned before Jesus drank

the wine, and the second divine gratia before he ate the bread. These two

thanksgiving prayers of Jesus are sacred mysteries.

 

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls document another fascinating prayer of thanks that was a

sacred rite of the Essenes, the authors of the scrolls. (Essene means ``pious

one.'') This ancient esoteric Jewish sect existed from the second century

basmalah formula bismi-Llahi-r Rahmani-r-Rahim, ``In the name of God, the

Merciful, the Compassionate.''

 

Basmalah is never omitted before a Muslim meal; it is the equivalent of saying

grace. The meal is never ended without uttering the hamdalah, the ``praise

God.'' The hamdalah (colloq. hamdullah) is the required ending response to the

basmalah. The Prophet is clear on the motivation for saying grace: ``If you are

thankful, surely I will increase you'' (Koran 14:7).

 

 

In the Hindu belief, food cannot be eaten unless it is first offered to God. It

then becomes prasad (sanctified or observed as holy), something to be eaten that

was blessed by God. Hinduism puts great emphasis on the loving reliance upon

God. An example of this is seen in prayer 5 from the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the

Lord), the most sacred religious text of Hinduism. The Gita is found in the

Mahabharata, an extraordinary Sanskrit epic that dates from the second century.

 

Eucharist is derived from the Greek eucharistia (thanksgiving). In the

celebration of Holy Communion, the consecrated bread and wine are transformed

into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. ``He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh

my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him'' (John 6:56).

 

 

Food and associated prayers play a central role in religions of the Far East.

Confucianism, founded by Confucius in the sixth century Tao meaning ``the

Way''). Taoism is based on the annual rotation of the seasons and the harmony

and balance of nature. In the Tasze, the great sacrifice in the huge Altar Park

(the largest altar in the world), offerings of food, rice spirits, and other

gifts are placed on the altar and the spirit of heaven is invited by means of a

sacred hymn to descend to the altar.

 

Sie-Tsih, the gods of millet and corn, are worshiped in a spring and autumn

sacrifice. The modern Chinese expedient gratia before the banquet meal, Duo xie,

duo xie (a thousand thanks, a thousand thanks), is merely the cultural evolution

of worship chanted to the many food gods of Chinese antiquity: Chi Ming, Ching

Ling Tzu, or Chung Tso. A witty and sophisticated saying in cultural circles

that has the elegance of quoting poetry is (Ren Yi Shi Wei Tian), ``People

perceive food to be almost like God.''

 

 

Shinto is the old native religion of Japan that reveres ancestors and nature

spirits. Derived from the Chinese Shen-Tao (way of the gods), Shinto's central

belief is kami, God, the sacred power that infuses animate and inanimate things.

Amaterasu is the most eminent of the Shinto deities. She is the beneficent sun

goddess who taught mankind the cultivation of food. Inari is the grain god.

Norito prayers petition the gods for good harvests.

 

The Setsubun ceremony celebrates the start of a new season of seeds and

planting. Its rites involve Neolithic rituals that survive today in

technofuturist Japan. A cornucopia of rice, cakes, fish, and vegetables are

sacred treasures placed on the altar expressing thanks for the bounty of the

earth.

 

 

Buddhism's history is rich with reverence for food and thankfulness for its

nourishment. The great prince Gautama Sakyamuni experienced full enlightenment

while sipping a cup of milk-rice as he meditated the doctrine of nirvana under

the Tree of Enlightenment, the Bodhi Tree.

 

Buddhists have used prayers of blessing and offering in everything from the

cultivation of crops to the dedication of each plate of food to the betterment

of humanity. As exemplified by the Buddhist prayers in this book, food can be

truly blessed only when the one giving thanks has lived a life of service to

both the universe that has given the food and those who suffer and are without

food (prayer 97).

 

Buddhism commands thankfulness for food by its ``vow to live a life which is

worthy to receive it'' (prayer 98).

 

 

Native American Indian tribes share a common reverence for the earth and all

that is given from its bounty. Animals, harvests and water must be accepted with

thankfulness in rituals and prayers. Respect for the food gift is often

expressed by asking a plant or animal that must be used for food for its

forgiveness in taking its life and explaining why its death was necessary

(prayer 89). In Native American thought, human beings are dependent upon the

earth, not master over it.

 

 

Civilization is synonymous in every sense with the growth of agriculture.

Cultivating crops predated the invention of the wheel and writing. The existence

in the belief of the power of the first fruits or grains has provided the world

with many rituals, beliefs and festivals. The festival calendars of antiquity

are based on agriculture. Our modern calendar descends from ancient agricultural

calendars.

 

 

The cultivation of plants for food, as opposed to the use of plants as they grow

naturally in the environment, marked the evolution of humanity from a user of

food to a producer of food.

 

 

The three main Israelite feasts recorded in the Bible are in part, harvest

festivals, in which multitudes of Jews brought fruits and vegetables to the

Temple in Jerusalem: Pesach, a feast at the beginning of the barley harvest;

Shavuot, a summer feast of the end of the wheat harvest; Sukkot, the autumn

ingathering of grapes and cultivated fruits. Of the six major sections of the

Mishnah, the first collection of Jewish law (elul, ``to reap, harvest'') is the

twelfth month in the Jewish year.

 

 

In the Old Testament the breaking of bread symbolized the immutable bond in

relationships among all people. The Covenant was reaffirmed through deeply

profound meals and feasts. The Hebrew word for covenant (b'rith) has

etymological origins in the Hebrew notion ``to eat.'' The ancient Jewish prayer

(6) has been intoned in Jewish homes over the centuries. It is a grace before

the meal and is recited before eating the first morsel of bread.

 

 

The Jewish liturgy is full of the idea of divine grace interceding to aid

humanity. Grace is Ahabah Rabbah and thanksgiving Shemoneh Esreh. The liturgy

requires separate blessings (b'rachot) for various categories of food. The

blessing over bread (the hamotzi) differs from that of cakes and cooked grains;

fruits and vegetables have their own blessings, as does wine and fragrances.

 

Inviting poor people to have food with you makes your table an altar and the

meal an atonement. Martin Buber helps us realize that our very table is sacred:

``One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar.''

 

 

There are many ways to analyze and classify food prayers: by country, by

culture, by language, by religion, by God, by food, by sacred imagery--to name a

few. A definitive analysis of food prayers is beyond the scope of this book.

 

I have divided the prayers here into two broad classifications: food prayers

honoring God or gods and food prayers extolling the bounty on earth. All

civilizations and all religions through all ages associate food with God or

gods; all primitives nonbelievers associate food with a supernatural power or

spirits. All recognize the earth's bounty (crops and food) as a reflection of

divine goodness.

 

 

Food prayers to the gods are created for many reasons: making one's wishes

known, honoring the dead in order to show reverence for life, reconciling God(s)

with humanity in order to bring good fortune on earth or to assure a place in

the afterlife. The recognition of the earth as sacred manifests itself in the

ritual and religious life of communities as petitional prayers by the laborers,

chants for seed planting and crop proliferation, ceremonials for laying out

plots, transmittal of family tradition, and reflection on the concept of home

and hearth.

 

Central to all cultures and religions, food is a sacred gift that is the supreme

and universal bond of all friendship.

 

 

The world's quest for happiness operates within a context of reverence for God

through an inimitable link to food. In this uncertain age when ethnic

differences divide people, we should strive to embrace our common humanity that

is expressed so succinctly in food prayers. These prayers talk to us with the

wisdom of the ages and teach us that we are all one family, all one mystical

soul. Food prayers throughout history may be seen as evidence of our profound

sense of awe in the face of the infinite.

I have chosen to include in this book texts that are not prayers per se, which

nevertheless have great spiritual quality, literary merit and an eloquence in

expressing mankind's profound debt to God.