Isa

What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented

But that desire in itself is not enough to displace a lifetime of hunger-habits that have built up. Those have to be undone and replaced. And that is going to take practice—since that’s how I learned the original hungers as well.

If you actually listen to what your body (not your mind) wants, you’ll discover that it doesn’t want three weeks of hot fudge sundaes despite the panting and salivating that is evoked at their very mention. In addition to your body’s need for foods other than cream and fudge, there is also the fact that the moment you tell yourself you can have it,

Sometimes when you listen closely to your body, the message you hear is a call not for food, but for fasting. You may observe this in animals, which abstain from food when sick, and in young children, who sometimes go days eating hardly anything at all (much to the consternation of their parents!).

This is the ancient secret. This is the cycle of life. Fasting follows feasting. Feasting follows fasting. Diets must be intermittent, not steady. Food is a celebration of life.