Nutriments for the maintenance of beings and for those seeking a new existence ...

Figure 1

Figure 2

"There are these four nutriments for the maintenance of beings who have come into being or for the support of those in search of a place to be born. Which four? Physical food, gross or refined; contact as the second, intellectual intention the third, and consciousness the fourth. These are the four nutriments for the maintenance of beings who have come into being or for the support of those in search of a place to be born."

Puttamansa Sutta: A Son's Flesh

In many suttas Buddha talks about these four kinds of nutriment (food) for the maintenance of beings that already have come to be and for the support of those seeking a new existence (Figure 1).

The Four Nutriments:

1. Physical nutriment : gross or subtle (kabali'nkaaro)
2. Contact nutriment (phassa)
3. Mental volition (formations) nutriment (mano-sancetanaa)
4. Consciousness nutriment (viññaa"na)

Nayna ponika Thera says:

"All beings subsist on nutriment" — this, according to the Buddha, is the one single fact about life that, above all, deserves to be remembered, contemplated and understood. If understood widely and deeply enough, this saying of the Buddha reveals indeed a truth that leads to the root of all existence and also to its uprooting....

....the laws of nutriment govern both biological and mental life, and this fact was expressed by the Buddha when speaking of four kinds of nutriments

.... It is hunger that stands behind the entire process of nutrition, wielding its whip relentlessly. The body, from birth to death, craves ceaselessly for material food; and mind hungers as eagerly for its own kind of nourishment, for ever new sense-impressions and for an ever expanding universe of ideas.

.....Craving (ta.nhaa) is the principal condition of any "in-take" or "up-take" (upaadaana), that is, of nutriment in its widest sense. This is the first factor common to all types of nutriment, be they physical or mental.

The Four Nutriments of Life-An Anthology of Buddhist Texts

translated from the Pali, with an Introductory Essay by Nyanaponika Thera

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html

So Buddha says "With the arising of craving there is the arising of nutriment. With the cessation of craving there is the cessation of nutriment."

Now let us examine how it will work in the "mind works" model (Figure 2). The physical nutriment essential to sustain the 5 sense bases, eye, ear, nose, tongue and body. The three types of mental nutriment sustains the mind. The Contact food (shown in green), Mental volition /formations (shown in orange) and the 6 different Consciousness nutriments (are shown in purple). The dotted green boxes and arrows highlights or points to these foods. From the model it is clear that entire existence of a person is a self-sustained environment provided that food is supplied from outside (physical) and within (mental).