How to Eat

An invitation to a joyful and sustainable relationship with all aspects of eating, including gardening, food shopping, preparing, serving, and even cleaning up after a meal. 

The second book in the bestselling Mindfulness Essentials series, a back-to-basics collection from world-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh that introduces everyone to the essentials of mindfulness practice.

These short meditations cover everything from eating with others and enjoying our food to connecting with the Earth. How to Eat is a welcome reminder that the benefits of mindful eating are both personal and global. 

With sumi-ink drawings by Jason DeAntonis.

“Appeared on every Regional Trade Association bestseller list in 2015: GLIBA (Great Lakes) MIBA (Midwest) MPIBA (Mountains and Plains) NAIBA (New Atlantic) NCIBA (Northern California) NEIBA (New England) PNBA (Pacific Northwest) SCIBA (Southern California) SIBA (South)”

The Mindfulness Essentials have appeared on the NPR Bestseller list, the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller list, the Boston Globe Bestseller list, the LA Times Bestseller List and the extended New York Times Bestseller List. 

“The monk who taught the world mindfulness.”
—TIME
 
“Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.”
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam.

Eating is a chance to return to the present moment. How to Eat is the second in Parallax's series of how-to titles by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. These friendly, pocket-sized books contain several delightful illustrations by Jason DeAntonis, and are appropriate for those practicing in any spiritual tradition and all levels of familiarity with mindfulness practice. How to Eat clearly and succinctly explains how you can incorporate eating as a form of meditation. The book provides practical advice on how to become truly nourished through the mindful preparation, serving, eating, and cleaning up of food. Eating a meal in mindfulness reveals that you are nourished by the whole universe. This awareness helps develop compassion and understanding, reminding practitioners that there are things they can do to help nourish people who are hungry and lonely. How to Eat encourages moderation and taking time to truly savor what we eat. By doing so, you too can become healthier, more fully enjoy what you eat, and help reduce waste.

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