Today is 'samvatsari', one of the many pious days observed by Jains in India and across the world. Its supposed to be a day on which everyone requests forgiveness from each other for occassions in the year where they might have hurt the other person, either intentionally or by oversight.
Most jains also observe a fast on this day. A jain fast unlike many others isn't all fun and games. It rules out any meals through out the day ... not a single morsel of food. And after sunset, no water either. Beats me how they do it or why they do it!
Jains have religious reasons for fasting. To the best of my knowledge, God Mahavir, when he was meditating for several years in a forest, did not eat. The draw from that is "you don't eat and become a holy man overnight". Quite silly if you ask me!
But this is a problem that all ancient religions face. Over a long period of time there are misguided interpreters of religion who gain following. They end up establishing wierd customs and somehow make the religion illogical for people to follow. This happens to all religions and even cultures. Hindu religion and culture is full of examples of this happening. So is Islam and Christianity. Incidentally, the amount of such absurdity is quite linked to the age of a civilization and inversely linked to the extent of scientific education amongst the people. Maybe its just coincidence, but I think not. Christianity has a much lower % of such customs actively followed. Hinduisn has a higher % and Islam the highest %. By age Hinduism should have more such customs followed than Islam, but then the Hindu populace is on an average better educated than the Islamic population across the world. Individual pockets if observed however, will show a very different story.
Anyway, I decided today to try out one of these fasts. Not for any religious reasons, but just to see what its like and what a person goes thru.
I find it to be an absolutely amazing method to develop self control and will power. Throughout the day even without realising we bow down to a million desires. Conscious thought might actually convince us of not doing some of them, but we can't resist our impulsive urges. Through today, I've passed tea vendors, chat stalls, pav bhaji restaurants, places serving the tastiest pizza and other most delicious foods. I have obviously been starving. In fact in this state, even plain bread and sauce would look delicious! Even so, I had to walk away.
Its not all that bad. But yes, its an amazing exercise in discipline. People who are compulsive eaters and end up munching away on junk even without noticing it should definitely do it once in a while.
I think the discipline created through such fasts not only applies to our food habits, but the basic self control learnt would help us in other walks of life as well. Maybe it does make sense to build them into our lifestyle. Not from a religious standpoint at all, but from a lifestyle standpoint, where it would help us resist the urges that marketeers keep inventing to dupe us.
Apart from that, you really enjoy something only if you experience its absence. I know that I will enjoy what I eat tomorrow morning more than anything else I've ever had!
Cheerio!
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2 comments:
"God Mahavir"
From what I know and have read of his teachings, Mahavir was the greatest atheist philosopher. So please do not add "God" in front of his name. It is as bad as a Jain in the US donating money to build a "Hindu" Temple!
From my interaction with an anthropologist, it seems that the Dravidians were the first group to take to not eating meat in the Indian sub-continent. This is because meat is something that is costly to produce. It takes something like 12 acres to get as much food from a cow as it would from an acre of land. Since, the Indian continent has seen agriculture, and consequently, a rise in population since the time of the Indus Valley civilization, it is not surprising that there are vegetarians in India. To couch it in religious terms is nothing but to state the obvious ecological truth to ensure the survival of the group of humans.
And with agriculture you have a boom and bust cycle-ofcourse the bust can take a long time in coming. The Indus Valley Civilization collapsed because of their inability to provide food to the people due to the overexploitation of the soil resources.
And vegetarianism is not something confined to a "holy" land like India- it was present among the Aztecs in Mexico as well- because they had also exceeded the carrying capacity of their land and the lack of co-domesticated animals like the pig, the cow or the goat exacerbated
the situtation.
Simply agriculture implies that you have more people on a unit of land- and after a few generations you see scarcity- and then things like fasting get incorporated in your culture.
http://sanghsamachar.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/the-myth-of-the-holy-cow-part-1/
You also cannot have a tradition of fasting in a climate near the artics. People studying them have noted that they eat almost constantly.
Basically, what I am trying to say is that it is important to understand the historical origins of a tradition- and for that you have to go back to the discovery of agriculture.
I also wonder if one could afford to fast if say one were working in the sun all day- like an agricultural labourer would.
That being said, people have also observed among the gatherer-hunters of South Africa that humans chase an antelope wounded by an arrow for over 2 days and a distance of over 50 miles- without food and water.
So, the thermostat of the human genome can indeed range far and widely.
As Mary Catherine Bateson has said, it is best to analyse something from a perspective of atleast three different cultures rather than get a limited understanding due to tunnel vision.
And this is nothing but an attempt to talk like a earned professor. Just a random practice for an essay I will be writing in graduate school.
I have more reading to do before I can answer this question more definitively.
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