One day a man was watching his wife preparing an eggplant for their dinner. (When I heard this story, the wife was preparing a pot roast but this is a vegetarian blog after all.) Watching her cut off and then throw away the end of the eggplant, he asked his wife why she had done that. She replied that this was the way her mother had always fixed eggplant.
His curiosity growing, he suggested they call the mother to find out the reason. When they called the mother, she replied that this was the way her mother had always fixed eggplant.
Growing increasingly agitated, the husband suggested they call the grandmother in an attempt to figure out the reason for this apparent family tradition. When they asked the grandmother, she replied that the reason was very simple—she didn’t have a large pan so she cut off the end of the eggplant to make it fit the pan she had.
If we want to truly benefit from our practice, we need to understand the principles and reasons behind what we do. Otherwise, we will just go through the motions.