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2004-07-28 01:52
fasting
I am not a believer in fasting, I believe in feasting. My whole approach is that of celebration. I am not against pleasures -- they are not all, one should go beyond them, but in themselves they are beautiful. A man should not deny anything, because the denied part will take revenge. The moment you start denying you go against Tao. Tao is to be natural: a feast and not a fast. A fast can be used only when it comes naturally.
Sometimes animals fast. Sometimes you may have observed your dog fasting: you put the food down and he will not eat. But he is not a Jain, he is not a believer in fasting; he does not feel like eating. It is not a question of principle, it is not a philosophy -- he is ill, his whole being is against eating -- rather than eat, he would like to vomit. He will go and eat grass and vomit. He would like to relieve himself, his stomach is not in a condition to digest any more. But he is not a faster. It is natural.
So, if sometimes you feel that the fast comes naturally -- not as a law, not as a principle, not as a philosophy to be followed, as a discipline to be imposed, but out of your natural feel for it -- good. Then, too, remember always that your fast is in the service of feasting, so that you can eat well again. The purpose of fasting is as a means, never as an end; and that will happen rarely, once in a while. And if you are perfectly aware while you are eating, and enjoying it, you will never eat too much.
My insistence is not on dieting but on awareness. Eat well, enjoy it tremendously. Remember, the rule is: if you don't enjoy your food you will have to eat more to compensate. If you enjoy your food you will eat less, there will be no need to compensate. If you eat slowly, tasting every bit of it, chewing well, you are completely absorbed into it. Eating should be a meditation.
I am not against taste because I am not against the senses. To be sensitive is to be intelligent, to be sensitive is to be alive. Your so-called 'religions' have tried to de-sensitize you, to make you dull. They are against taste, they would like you to make your tongue absolutely dull so you don't taste anything. But that is not a state of health; the tongue becomes dull only in illness. When you have a fever. the tongue becomes dull. When you are healthy the tongue is sensitive; alive, throbbing, pulsates with energy. I am not against taste, I am for taste. Eat well, taste well; the taste is divine.
And so, exactly like taste, you have to look at beauty and enjoy; you have to listen to music and enjoy; you have to touch the rocks and leaves and human beings -- the warmth, the texture -- and enjoy. Use all your senses, use them at their optimum, then you will really live and your life will be aflame; it will not be dull, it will be aflame with energy and vitality. I am not for those people who have been teaching you to kill your senses; they are against the body.
And remember, the body is your temple, the body is a divine gift. It is so delicate and it is so beautiful and it is so wonderful -- to kill it is to be ungrateful to Tao. Tao has given you taste; you have not created it, it is not anything to do with you. Tao has given you eyes and Tao has made this psychedelic world so colourful, and it has given you eyes. Let there be a great communion between the eye and the colour of the world. And it has made everything and there is a tremendous harmony. Don't break this harmony.
These so-called MAHATMAS are just on ego-trips, and the best way to feel that you are great is to be against the body. Children do it. The child feels that the motion is coming; he holds it, he feels powerful because he feels his will: he will not yield to the body. His bladder is full and he holds it. He wants to show the body'I'm not your servant, I'm your master.' But these are destructive habits.
Listen to the body. The body is not your enemy, and when the body is saying something, do accordingly, because the body has a wisdom of its own. Don't disturb it, don't go on a mind-trip.
Eat with full awareness, eat meditatively, and then you will never eat more and you will never eat less. More is as bad as less. Too much eating is bad. just like too much fasting; these are extremes. Nature wants you to be balanced, to be in a sort of equilibrium, to be in the middle, neither less nor more. Don't go to the extreme.
To go to the extreme is to be neurotic. So there are two types of neurotics about food: those who go on eating, not listening to the body -- the body goes on crying and screaming'Stop!' and they go on. These are neurotic people. And then there is the other variety: the body goes on screaming'I am hungry!' and they are on a fast. Neither is religious, both are neurotic, both are pathological -- they need treatment, they need to be hospitalised. Because a religious person is one who is balanced: in whatsoever he is doing, he is always in the middle. He never goes to the extreme because all extremes will create tensions, anxieties. When you eat too much there is anxiety because the body is burdened. When you don't eat enough then there is anxiety because the body is hungry. A religious person is one who knows where to stop; and that should come out of your awareness, not out of a certain teaching.
Listen to your body: you have a different body. And then there are different types of energies, different types of involvement. Somebody is a professor in a university; he does not exert much energy as far as his body is concerned. He will not need much food, and he will need a different kind of food. Somebody is a labourer; he will need much food, and a different kind of food. Now a rigid principle is going to be dangerous. No rule can be given as a universal rule.
George Bernard Shaw has said that there is only one golden rule, that there are no golden rules. Remember it, there is no golden rule -- there cannot be, because each individual is so unique that nobody can prescribe. My approach is of awareness, because today you may need more food and tomorrow you may not need that much food. It is not only a question of you being different from others -- every day of your life is different from every other day. The whole day you have rested, you may not need much food. The whole day you have been in the garden digging the hole, you may need much food. One should be just alert and one should be capable of listening to what the body is saying. Go according to the body.
Neither is the body the master, nor is the body the slave; the body is your friend -- befriend your body. The one who goes on eating too much and the one who goes on dieting are both in the same trap. They are both deaf; they don't listen to what the body is saying.
Just be respectful. Eat with feeling, eat with gratitude. The food gives you life, it is going to vitalise you, it will become your blood, your bones. Feel grateful -- without it you will not be alive, feel thankful. And if you are eating silently, meditatively and your mind is not rushing here and there, you are totally there, your attention is perfect, this is offering. You have offered the food to God because you are nothing but God's hand, his instrument. Where are you going to offer the food? God himself is eating through you, so don't overfeed God otherwise he feels a belly ache, don't starve God otherwise he feels hungry.
And these things are nonsense, that it'is a sin to eat for the tongue'. Then for what will you eat? Then it is a sin to see for the eye, for what will you see? Then it is a sin to hear for the ear, then for what will you hear? Then there is nothing left for you -- commit suicide, because the whole of life is of the senses. Whatsoever you do, the senses come in. It is through the senses that you flow and relate with life. When you eat with taste, God inside is fulfilled, satisfied; and when you eat with taste, the God within food is respected.
But your MAHATMAS, your so-called'religious gurus', they have been teaching you self-torture. In the name of religion they have been simply teaching you nothing but masochism:'Torture yourself. The more you torture, the more valuable you become in the eyes of God. The more unhappy you are, the more virtue you have. If you are happy, you commit sin. Happiness is sin; to be unhappy is to be virtuous.' This is their logic. I cannot see the point, it is so absurd, so illogical, so patently foolish. God is happy, so if you want to be in tune with God be happy. This is my teaching: God is happy, so if you want to be in tune with God be happy, because whenever you are happy, you fall in step with Tao; whenever you are unhappy, you are out of step. A miserable man cannot be a religious man.
So if you ask me what is sin -- there is only one sin: to be miserable is to be a sinner. To be happy, tremendously happy, is to be a saint. Let your religion teach you how to sing and how to dance and how to delight in life. Let your religion be an affirmative religion, a yea-saying religion, a religion of happiness, joy, bliss. Throw all the nonsense that you have been carrying for centuries -- that has crippled the whole of humanity. It has made people so ugly and so unhappy and so miserable. And it appeals only to the pathological -- those who want to torture themselves; it gives them an excuse.
To torture oneself or to torture others, both are diseases -- the very idea to torture. Somebody is an Adolf Hitler, he tortures others; somebody is a Mahatma Gandhi, he tortures himself. Both are in the same boat -- maybe standing back to back, but standing in the same boat. Adolf Hitler's joy is in torturing others, Mahatma Gandhi's joy is in torturing himself, but both are violent. The logic is the same -- their joy depends on torture. Their direction is different, but the direction is not the question, their mind has the same attitude: torture. You respect a person who tortures himself because you don't understand the logic of it. Adolf Hitler is condemned all over the world and Gandhi is worshipped all over the world, and I am simply puzzled. How is it possible? -- because the logic is the same. Gandhi says'Don't eat anything for taste. Taste should not be allowed. Eat as a duty, not as a joy. Eat because one has to live, that's all.' He reduces the joy of eating to the ordinary world of work:'Don't eat as play.' Remember, animals eat that way. They eat just to eat, just to exist, to survive. Have you seen animals enjoying food? Not at all. They don't have feasts and parties, and they don't sing and dance. Only man has made eating a great feast.

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2004-07-28 01:52