May 2nd was Vesak, the "official" Buddha Day or whatever you'd like to call it. It was established by the World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1950 as Guatama's holiday, celebrating his birth, enlightenment, and death. It follows the astrological calander and supposedly corresponds to those three events in some way, but that, like everything else, is up for debate. Either way, I decided to celebrate it by fasting this week. To clarify, I haven't fasted much and in retrospect this was more serious than I anticipated (though nothing compared to gross Buddha fasting ). I decided that I wouldn't eat anything all week, but that I would drink normally as long as it wasn't a protein shake or smoothie or something. I really wanted to do this because I think it's easy for Buddhists (or anyone) to say that they're practicing the middle way without having experienced the extremes of what they're doing. That is to say, you don't have to get strung out on blow then go coldturkey to decide that maybe you should only have a beer or two every weekend. I just mean that it's very easy for us to say we will eat moderately when most of us only have experience with OVEReating instead of UNDEReating. Buddha, as the above hyperlinked image shows, was supposedly an ascetic for a period of several years and became positively skeletal before deciding that this probably wasn't conducive to, oh I dunno...living? So I just thought it would be an important experience for me to actually feel HUNGRY for once. Herman Hesse's Siddhartha is also one of my favorite books, and he talks a bit about fasting. So I gave it a shot!
I hadn't been that hungry over the weekend so I didn't end up eating a big meal Sunday night to tide me over for the first day. I got hungry and I found it tempting to want to snack a little. I drank plenty of water and, all in all, it wasn't that different from a normal day. I started drinking a Vitamin Water each morning and really, things didn't go that badly. I found that if I kneeled down and stood up I had pretty bad headrushes, almost to the point of not being able to see for a few seconds, and I was fatigued by the third day. I also discovered that I eat, atleast sometimes, out of boredom. I'm in pretty good shape, and at 5'6" and 120 lbs it's not like I have a lot of body fat to subsist off of, or that I'm a lazy bum . I would think, "I wanna eat some pizza and play video games" when pizza really didn't have anything to do with playing video games. I wanted to go some place to eat and hang out with friends or go on a date to lunch even though I wasn't that hungry. I wanted to eat out of habit, not necessity.
I think, especially nowadays, we tend to say/believe that we are hungrier than we actually are. It's three hours after breakfast and suddenly we're "starving". A friend of mine once said this while taking a group of Ethopians on Foreign Exchange for a tour around Burlington and they were really offended. Food is fuel, not necessarily an indulgence. While I enjoy the way a lot of foods taste, all too often we fall prey to the avarice of wanting that taste so much that we overeat, or eat when we don't need it. From now on I'm really going to try eating only as much as I need to stay comfortable and healthy. I don't mean I'm only going to eat Blandbrand Nutra Wheat Health Cereal and Powerbars, or tasteless gruel. I'm just going to stop reaching for food every time I can't think of something better to do.
**As a side note, after having a bagel and cream cheese to break the fast I ended up getting REALLY sick and booting. I'd advise anyone thinking of doing something similar to eat a little something each night, like maybe a small bowl of oatmeal or something. Otherwise you might get really sick like I did. Oh, and thanks to http://www.bustedtees.com/ for the above image. It's from one of their many hilarious t-shirts.**
