“I can think, I can wait and I can fast. ”
Siddhartha is a well known novel by Herman Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self discovery by a man named Siddhartha during the time of Gautama Buddha in ancient India. Siddhartha decides to leave behind his home in the hope of gaining spiritual illumination by becoming an ascetic, a wandering beggar of the Śamaṇa which means to seek. Joined by his best friend, Govinda, Siddhartha fasts, becomes homeless, renounces all personal possessions, and intensely meditates, eventually seeking and personally speaking with Gautama, the famous Buddha, or Enlightened One. His journey takes him to a city where he is interviewed by a wealthy merchant who asks him what he can do. Siddhartha’s response is; “I can think, I can wait and I can fast”, and it is this response and these abilities that bring great material wealth and success to him.
I can think
One of the greatest gifts that we can give ourselves during these strange times that undoubtedly none of us, except perhaps the true sages, saw coming, is to truly learn how to think.
To be able to think for ourselves, create our lives and not merely follow the crowd, one must certainly posses an awareness of consciousness. True thinking requires focussed attention on the goal, problem or desire. Simply put, true thinking is a way of training the mind. Some of the most effective tools for training the mind are meditation and contemplation.
By making you, in a very real sense, more conscious of the world around you, meditation does a great deal for our thinking capacity. It heightens our awareness, deepens thought levels, boosts sensory perception and helps us to process stimuli more easily among countless other emotional, psychological, and physical benefits.
The mind is constantly churning and being impulsed to chatter through the stimuli entering our 5 senses. The mind never seems to be abated as it wants more and more and unconscious thinking is the result. It is always looking to grasp something that is out there, constantly looking for information, proof, something. Something to support what it has been told through our experiences and conditioning. Most of us live our lives with an outward focus, yet we neglect the rich world that exists within us. By constantly identifying with the mind’s chatter, restlessness, grasping and boredom are the results. The solution is to become fully conscious of your mind in meditation and as your ability to meditate increases, your ability to think clearly or contemplate is the result.
By teaching you to live in the present, meditation can bring about a deeper awareness of consciousness as you begin to recognise that neither the past nor the future hold any sway over what is happening right now. The Buddha said; “If you want to know your past, look at your present, if you want to know your future, look at your present. By truly being present in this moment, we can not only understand our past, but we can literally see into the future. By this I mean that when we become mindful of our thoughts, when we see the trajectory of thoughts that our mind is on, we can clearly see the path that leads us into the future. Our thoughts literally create our reality and therefore the only way forward is to know what we are thinking. In this way, we can essentially change our future to a favourable one.
It is not to say that we now all of a sudden have control of what is happening to all 7.8 billion people on the planet, no. There is free choice and each individual must make their choice as mindfully as they can. It is to say that our experience can differ vastly between an unconscious mind and a conscious one. Harnessing and focusing the mind changes everything. It brings self mastery over your emotions and your feelings and allows you to step into your own true authority over your thoughts and impluses. We become aware that we are not our mind, nor are we our thoughts. They are merely tools for us to use.
I can wait
Waiting itself is nothing special if we don’t bring mindfulness into it and craft the virtue of patience. Patience is not simply the ability to wait, because we wait everyday. For the bus, for the kettle to boil, for our lockdown to finally be over so that our lives can return to normal. Patience is how we wait. How we feel while we are waiting. How we think, what we are thinking about, what we are doing. Patience is meditation. Not just sitting still doing nothing, then we may as well be a stone. Meditation is not doing nothing, it is bringing our inner being into presence. Patience is putting in the effort today in order to receive the benefits later. It is the very act of working on oneself and developing consciousness awareness. When we harness our thoughts in order to know and understand ourselves and our situations and use those thoughts to steer our choices and decisions, we are on the path of developing the Art of Waiting.
I call it “The Art of Waiting” because it is a practice. We don’t have to be in a holding pattern, we have every opportunity now to cultivate what it is that we want from this life for ourselves. And since we cannot control the external environment, we can practice mastering the internal environment and ultimately the outcome at a deeper level than the surface experience. There is every possibility of transformation in this ‘eternal now’ moment as we learn acceptance of what is and use it to our greater benefit. No moment has to be wasted as we release the endless cycle of productivity and allow our inner being to emerge from its chrysalis as we simply wait.
I can fast
“The best of all medicine is resting and fasting.”
Of Siddhartha’s answer, “I can think, I can wait and I can fast.”, the merchant enquires: “And what is the use of that? For example, the fasting: what is it good for?” Siddhartha responds by saying; “It is very good, sir. When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he can do. When for example, Siddhartha hadn’t learned to fast, he would have had to accept any kind of service before this day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. But like this, Siddharta can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. This sir, is what fasting is good for.”
Sometimes we have to remove ourselves from the world in order to repair and heal. As we wait, we can fast. At the purely physical level, the benefits of fasting are numerous, including to give your digestive system a rest as your body cleanses and detoxifies every cell, to reduce inflammation of every organ, to improve the lustre and elasticity of your skin, to lose weight, to boost your immune system and give you energy. Fasting also heals ailments and helps the body clean up after sickness. It rejuvenates and revitalises. It brings mental clarity, physical health and spiritual wellbeing.
Fasting trains us to be able withstand difficulties and to be resilient with a high emotional pain threshold. It increases our capacity to sustain ourselves, our tolerance and our will power. Gaining in will power is not only about bearing physical hunger but also about bearing emotional and mental hungers and the suffering of life. Fasting increases our spiritual strength and this is the real meaning behind the ritual of fasting. If we can survive through tough times without succumbing, we can fast. The fact that we are all going though these tough times together whatever our circumstances indicate in this sense that we are practicing fasting. There simply are no short cuts to learning to fast, these deeper capabilities come only though practice and determination.
You can read more about Juice Fasting to Develop Consciousness and 5 Benefits of Juice Fasting on our blog for more information about fasting.