|
Main Index
|
| |
| |
|
| |
an accident; it happens to you.
Become alert, then you will not be identified with it. If you feel hunger, become alert that hunger is there. Look at it, encounter it, face it. What will happen? The more you become alert, the farther away will the hunger be felt; the less alert, the nearer. If you are not alert, exactly at the center you will feel, "I am hunger." If you become alert, hunger is thrown away. Hunger is there, you are here. Hunger is an object, you are a witness.
Fasting has been used only because of this, for this technique. Fasting in itself is of no use. If you are not doing this technique with the hunger, fasting is foolish -- just foolish, of no use. Mahavira used fasting with this technique, and Jainas have been simply using fasting without this technique. Then it is foolish. You are just destructive, and it cannot be of any help. You can be hungry for months and identified with hunger, feeling that "I am hungry." It is useless, harmful. There is no need to go on a fast. Every day you can feel it, but there are problems. That is why fasting may be helpful.
Ordinarily, we stuff ourselves with food before we feel hunger. In the modern world there is no need to feel hunger. You have a time fixed for your meals, and you take them. You never ask whether the body is feeling hungry or not; at a fixed hour you take your meals. Hunger is not felt. You may say, "No, when it is one o'clock I feel hungry." That may be a false hunger; you feel it because it is one o'clock, your time. Someday you can play a trick. Tell your wife or your husband to change the clock. It is twelve, and the clock will show that it is one. You will feel hunger. Or it is already one hour fast: it is two exactly, and the clock shows one; then you will feel hunger. You look at the clock, and you feel hunger. This is artificial, false, it is not real.
So fasting may be helpful. If you fast, then for two or three days you will feel a false hunger. Only after the third or fourth day will real hunger be felt; your body will demand, not the mind. When mind demands, it is false. When the body demands, it is real. And when it is real and you become alert, you become
|
|
|
|
| |