music: The Slip- 2/11/05, Matt Murphy’s Pub
I’ve had this past week off from work and it’s passed in a slightly dissociative haze. Sleep has been adequate, but not of good quality and I found myself waking up much, much earlier than I wanted to. I have been doing a lot with music as well: went to two concerts, played an acoustic open mic, had a second jam session with the guys from last week, and wrote a new song. All the playing and listening has been wonderful, but it’s put me into a dream-like state, floating easily in and out of my own thoughts and the more objective reality surrounding me. I’ve also decreased my food intake this past week, partially because I haven’t needed to expend as much energy, but also because I’ve been dealing with a pesky cold and have stuck mostly to juice, soup, and tea. The predominantly liquid diet caused me to be fairly hungry all week as foodstuff passed through me more quickly. I’ve thought a great deal about the nature of food this week as a result and decided that while I really like food, I don’t really like the idea of food, as food is quite possibly the most important limiting factor in a human’s life.
Psychologists call food “the universal motivator.” Almost every religion on the planet manipulate the intake of food in some way in order to achieve some spiritual ends. Daniel Quinn points to food as the source of a need for economic and political systems. Biologists, in a slightly more compelling argument, consider food to be absolutely necessary for life. It is clearly a thing of great importance to us, I think because it is the unsolvable problem. We need to eat whether we like to or not; we are ruled on a very basic level by the very thing a lot of us socially conscious types don’t want to hear: “Consume Or Die.” I’ve hit this conclusion before. I’m pulling the topic off the mental shelf again because of something Chelsea dropped on me during our weekly dinner (yes, dinner; the irony is not lost) last week: Breatharianism.
The science teacher in me laughs at it enough to dismiss the idea all but completely. The ever-so-slight sliver of interest left over comes from my hope that there is part of us that is not bound to the human condition. It seems that if one were to solve the problem of hunger, if one were able to survive without needing to eat anything, then there would be something about us that transcends our own humanity. We would also have the key to solving the larger problem of consumption. Breatharians offer exactly that. And from their own reports, such things seem almost possible. There is the case of the Indian mystic who stayed under complete supervision for 10 days without consuming anything, after all. There are claims of similar feats from various sources. It can’t be coincidence that restriction of food is an integral part of the holiest events of the big three western world religions (Lent, Ramadan, Yom Kippur), or that adherents to Eastern religions commonly practice a form of fasting or purposeful restriction of food intake. Buddhism teaches that the source of our suffering is craving, and it seems that the most basic and common form of craving is hunger. Solving the problem of hunger, then, is a step on the path to enlightenment.
At this point, though, I’ll take a good breakfast over enlightenment. The world I live in is more commonly about making it through the next 24 hours than worrying about transcending the human condition. Time and energy are more precious commodities now. Modern living has got me firmly by the neck and I’m running in my little urban hamster wheel enough to afford myself a fairly comfortable mortal existence. It probably doesn’t help the breatharian cause that the most popular Breatharian guru comes across as a quack and that one of her followers died following her teachings. It also doesn’t help that our (very human) common sense tells us that this is all a pile of crap.
Still, if I were given the choice between living as I am now and somehow surviving without eating or drinking anything I think I would choose the latter. Food is a utilitarian function these days-I’m eating purely to keep fuel in the tank. I know full well that we can’t run on nothing, that our energy can’t just be created, that it needs to come from somewhere, and that there is a finite amount of energy in the universe. But that there is even a whisper of an outside shot that the tank could be kept full by something as simple as the air we breathe and that the problems of consumption could be solved in one fell swoop has enough philosophical appeal to keep me, um, hungry to know more.
Posted by davidtaus at February 26, 2005 11:34 PMHi David,
Just curious about Breatharianism and happened across this entry. Thought I would offer you my opinion on the attitude of Buddhism to food, which you are free to take or leave. Buddhism says that the root of suffering is craving, and here you could substitute ‘attachment’. So, overcoming attachment to food would be a necessary step on the path to enlightenment. This is a different thing to overcoming the biological need to eat. Overcoming attachment to food means being without strong feelings of either aversion or craving and recognising food for exactly what it is. It doesn’t preclude enjoying eating, and in fact mindful eating, like mindful breathing, can be lots of fun.
The historical Buddha himself (pre-Enlightenment) practised extreme ascetic practices and almost starved to death before deciding that truth cannot be found in extremes. Thereafter he ate in moderation. Of course, in those days, they didn’t have to worry about pollution, pesticides, genetic engineering, or their carbon footprint :)
Regards and best wishes,
Paul
A lady in my office in California is doing her 2nd 21-day fast with only maple syrup and lemon juice with cayenne pepper. She says she has never felt better. We mess with her a lot saying she must be eating a bite of fruit once in a way during the fast, and she says no.
She says she feels lighter and detoxed. She doesn’t seem any crazier than normal. Her face, cheeks especially, have turned a rosy hue.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking for some months now that attachement to food keeps us from being free. Whether this attachment can be moderated by eating mindfully and not hedonistically, I have no idea. I’m a vegetarian/pescatarian and an avid cyclist. I do need - at least I think I do - to eat before my cycling which clocks 300 miles a week.
However, I do wish to transcend the need to eat. I’m going to try the fast in January 2006 and go from there.
Posted by: Anoop at December 7, 2005 01:54 PM