Varanasi, India. On the cement floor of a crumbling apartment, I sit before an ancient gas burner, wondering if I should add more turmeric. I decide I should, and pour in a little too much. As I stir it in, I listen to the voices of my companions, sitting in a circle around me.

No normal person would choose to stay in this building. There are so many dogs. The water doesn’t always work, and the walls seem eager to buckle. We all have our different reasons for being here—little money, adventurous spirit, appreciation for the odd and beautiful—but we have in common a feeling of trust and courage. Without it, we wouldn’t have managed to stay here.

Peter makes a joke, and his grown daughter laughs and cringes. The room falls silent as Kate tells of the difficulties she endured, which have made her stronger and wiser. And I taste the dal to see if it needs a little salt. It does.

The food is ready. Steam billows from the rice-pot as I remove the lid and my nostrils are ignited by the smell of cumin. I heave the pot of dal (and potatoes and carrots and turmeric) onto the floor, and Kate offers a clay pot of fresh curd to the center of the circle. We are ready.

Except,

No plates.

“There’s a giant bowl, though. The kind they use for kneading chapatti,” someone says. In this, we serve the food.

So we gather around this vessel, seven of us, and say a prayer. Silently, together.

As is the Indian custom, we eat with our fingers. Anyway, there are only three spoons. The first few bites are taken hesitantly (is it okay to stick your hands into everyone else’s food?), but our hesitancy is contrived. In this place, together, it feels irrelevant.

We eat slowly, respecting the heat that jets through our bodies when our fingertips dive in. Candle light flickers over our faces. I mix a little curd with each bite to cool it off. Noises of affirmation say the food is good, and we make gentle conversation between bites.

The food cools and our appetites deepen. Words and laughter flow like a creek between bites. Our bellies warm. The food dwindles. We sit against the walls and lie across each other.

Then the stories begin.

There is a great silliness in Western culture: we don’t eat together. That simple fact is the root of much suffering. When we eat alone, our lives become sparse and mechanistic. We no longer taste the full medicine of flavor, and we settle for satisfying our cravings rather than nourishing ourselves.

Even when we are together at the dinner table, we are not really together. The stress of our busy lives is so weighty it crushes our experience of the present moment. Our thoughts wander elsewhere. We have no time to just be together, to nourish together. How can we thrive?

Eating together may not fix all our problems. However, it is a pathway from which a much greater effect will spread. Being mindful in what we put into our meals, and present with those who are with us as we eat them creates a spider web of connections to the other areas of our lives. A deep connection to our food nourishes our whole self for the entire day. Authentic connection with others brings joy and reminds us what really matters.

“When I was in Malidoma’s Village [in Burkina Faso], every night at dusk the commons would swell with people, and they would laugh and share stories and millet beer and food, and the kids would play and then lie down on the ground and fall asleep, and the young children who were nursing could go to any mother for milk. Here we have ‘happy house,’ where we can go to the bar and have half-priced drinks; there they have an actual happy hour.”

–Francis Weller

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By Nicholas Tippins