You can do this anytime you eat a meal. Before taking the first bite, just pause and think of those men and women of wisdom and mentally offer them your food. In this way, you connect with the virtue of devotion.

Before taking the second bite, pause and offer your food to all those who’ve been kind to you. This nurtures the virtues of gratitude and appreciation.

The third bite is offered to those who are suffering: all the people and animals who are starving, or being tortured or neglected, without comfort or friends. Think, too, of all of us who suffer from aggression, craving, and indifference. This simple gesture awakens the virtue of compassion.

In this way—by relying on our teachers, our benefactors, and those in need—we gather the virtues of devotion, gratitude, and kindness.

Pema Chödron

from the book No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Pema Chödron.

Further quotes from the book No Time to Lose:

• Our true nature
• Heroic perseverance
• Our capacity for love and tenderness
• Three attitudes
• The cause of our enlightenment
• Connect with Groundlessness
• Benefits of pain
• Our pain is self-inflicted
• Any Encounter Offers Us a Choice
• Our Mistaken Feeling of Separateness