NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the power of a good meal. A well-timed snack can even alter the course of human history.
Consider the meal offered to Siddhartha Gautama right before he attained perfect awakening. Siddhartha had just left his life of extreme asceticism in the forest and was at death’s door—gaunt with deprivation. A farmer named Sujata saw his emaciated yet radiant figure seated under an ancient pipal tree and believed she was seeing a tree-spirit who’d granted her prayers for a son. In thanksgiving, she offered him a nourishing bowl of payasam. This provided the malnourished Siddhartha with the energy he needed for his final breakthrough from confusion to clarity, from bondage to liberation!
“Payasam” means, simply, “milk-rice.” And in case
