Pur-raise da' Lawd Almidey! Fine-ally its be a' eatin' timeWhile in Shenzen, China, I stayed with a group of guys from Bangladesh, who where, with the rest of the muslim world, deep in the middle of Ramadan. During the ninth month of the muslim calender, falling between mid September to mid October, Ramadan is a time where Muslim followers around the world abstain from all food and drink (including water) each day while the sun is up, for the entirety of the month. According to some prominent members of the BSC (Bangladeshi Shenzen Crew), Ramadan is about focusing less on the daily rigors of everyday life, and more on what matters the most: God. It is about the realization that we are all on this planet together, some more fortunate than others in the lives that we were borne into; the aim of Ramadan is to feel what it is like to suffer, like so many people in this world have no choice but to live through, and to understand that we are no better than anyone else, all of us the same in God’s eyes.

with some of the BSC--Bangladesh Shenzen CrewI fasted with the BSC for one full day during my stay with them, but the notion of fasting stuck with me as something that I definitely wanted to do in the future, when the time was right. Well, if my reader remembers from my last entry “Hungry in Hanoi”, being stuck in the middle of a foreign country with just a few dollars to ones name can’t possibly be more of a ‘right time’ to initiate a fast. The fasting guidelines where basic: for one full week, I would not consume any means of nourishment, with the exclusion of water, until after sunset, at which time I would have a moderate dinner.

The motivation behind my decision to fast is quite different from that of Ramadan, however–not a bit religious, maybe spiritual, but principally of a practical, hell, even selfish nature, in which the purpose lies in self-development and obtaining a greater appreciation for life, and all that comes with it. To understand this link between fasting, or more generally any form of self-deprivation, with a heightened sense of satisfaction and appreciation of life, I first must give the reader a little background.

Pretend for a moment that you were the ‘average’ Westerner, and I showed you a photograph of yourself when you were five years old. I then ask you who the person is in the photo, and you respond “Oh, that’s me”. But, how could that small child be the same person as the adult that I am showing the picture to. And surely you behave and think differently from that child as well, no? You respond, “Yea, but that was me”.

Most of us have this idea that we are separate and distinct beings independent from our surroundings. Even the word ‘Self’ literally means other. We think in terms of ‘I’s and ‘You’s and ‘We’s like we are static creatures in an ever moving and changing world, like our ’self’ as we call it is a cork floating down a river. Our surroundings might be continually changing, but there exists something distinct and unwaivering about who we are that does not change with time.

This view that most of us hold, that of a static ’self’, is inherently deeply flawed. Think about it for a moment. From a purely physical standpoint, we are changing every nanosecond, with old cells dying and new ones being reborn; our physical composition, much like our surroundings, is in a continual state of flux. But in addition to our dynamic chemical and physical make-up, our beliefs about the world, our thoughts and perceptions, are also always changing. Surely you don’t have the exact same mentality and views as you had when you where a child, but you also don’t have the exact same mentality and views as you had last year, or even a few moments ago before reading this entry for that matter.

As opposed to the flawed view of the ’self’ as static beings, I prefer to think of people, or try to at least, as dynamic ones, in a constant state of flux. A person at any point in time is the product of a complex function of different variables interacting, some of which are constantly changing, thereby creating a new ‘you’ every moment. The function is essentially just the interplay between our genetic code, which is fixed, and our experiences, which is changing by the moment. Since one of the variables making up our ’self’ is in a constant state of change, our ’self’ must also be constantly changing. As such, whenever I refer to ‘myself’ or someone ‘else’, I mentally put quotations around the ‘I’ or ‘you’ or ‘we’, because through defining ourselves through language, we get a distorted view of reality due to its inherently static nature.

In addition to our dynamic nature, we can also see that we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are separate and independent entities from the rest of the world. Since who we are at any point in time is largely predicated by our experiences and surroundings, we only exist in relation to all the other constantly changing things in the world. Going back to our cork in the river analogy, we can see how this is flawed because we are also constantly changing and interconnected with the river. Rather, we are the river.

This view of the world I find to be extremely intellectually satisfying as well as very powerful. Since we are constantly changing, there is no need to have regrets–only learn from them. Since people are at any given time the product of their past experiences which they have been exposed to, as well as other factors out of their control, it teaches us compassion upon our fellow humans. Since every moment that passes us is an experience, and every experience is an opportunity towards self-development and improvement, what’s the point of doing anything that isn’t advantageous to our environment and ourselves (i.e. watching mindless television, unnecessary complaining, creating negative energy etc.), and thereby towards our future ‘me’? Since we have control of our future experiences, but not of our past ones, what’s the point of not focusing on this very moment? This perspective on life teaches us that we are the masters of our destiny. When we think of ourselves as ’static beings’ we are in bondage, slaves to our pasts; but as ‘dynamic beings’ we know that we create the future, and our potential effect on this at first seemingly jumbled-mess-of-a-world is in fact infinite. Thinking of ourselves as the cork, we are prisoners, but as the river we are free–free to go anywhich way we please, free to Be.

And, importantly, since we understand that we are just part of this whole constantly changing flux, we can realize that nothing is permanent. Holding on to anything, any form of attachment, is the source of much of our angst. We conceptualize things as being static instead of what they are, transitory, and thereby we are pained when we inevitably loose what we like, what we love, and run away from those things which we don’t like or fear. But if we accept that all of Life is evanescent, then we can truly appreciate when those emotions that we like come around, and at the same time understand that when we encounter those emotions we don’t care for, it is only temporary, so we deal with them.

Tying all this in with the idea that self-deprivation can be beneficial to one’s being, we can see how the suffering we endure is transitory and an opportunity for potential growth. By reveling in the emotion, saturating our inner-most being with that emotion instead of running away from it, we will appreciate the other side of the same coin of that emotion that much more. Since everything in this world exists in relative terms, by experiencing a full spectrum of emotions we understand each one of those emotions that much better. When we feel hunger, which seems that so many of us rarely do, we also really feel the satisfaction on the other end of the spectrum, when we finally do get that nourishment.

During each meal during my fasting time, all of my senses where heightened. The slow savoring of every delectable bight of even the most basic dishes, the aroma from the dish taking over me extends throughout my body, the breeze from the fan above me, the dancing bright bright red rose at my table, the splitter spat sound from the fountain behind me and the chattering of the Vietnamese couple at the table at the other end of the otherwise deserted restaurant. Fasting brought me complete and unadulterated Nirvana over the course of the meal, an inability to think of anything else but all that was around me at that very moment–reveling in the moment.

I know this isn’t the most ‘light’ reading around, and congratulations to those that have made it this far down. But I truly do believe that the idea of temporary self-inflicted-deprivation of some kind is the panacea that many people stuck in our society of eternal wants really need. Many of us Westerners live a life in which everything is handed to them in a silver spoon, an existence void of struggle. We often are pleasure seekers quickly trying to run away from the first hint of discomfort and that which we fear. But by doing so, by not experience all these emotions which we think of as suffering, we numb are senses and take much of the great material life we have right in front of us for granted. By not experiencing the other side of the coin, the emotion that we are running from, we have an inability to truly appreciate its inverse, thereby making the emotions that we love so much duller and faded.

When really hungry, just about everything looks tasty. Can you sense my new friends' fear in their eyes?