Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Understanding and Addressing Desire, Hunger and Food

Transcript

Understanding and Addressing Desire, Hunger and Food · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:00
  Sri Aurobindo translates Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, Chapter 1,
• 0:05
  Section 2, verse one quote. Formerly there was nothing here.
• 0:11
  This was concealed by death, by hunger, for it is hunger that is
• 0:17
  death that created mind. And he said, Let me have
• 0:22
  substance. He moved about working, and as
• 0:25
  he worked the waters were born. And he said Felicity was born to
• 0:30
  me as I worked. This, verily, is the activity in
• 0:34
  action. Therefore Felicity cometh to him
• 0:38
  who thus knoweth this soul of activity in action.
• 0:42
  End Quote. Hunger is death.
• 0:47
  In this case, the Upanishad is not referring directly to the
• 0:51
  physical hunger for food, but to the much deeper and broader
• 0:55
  issue of desire, and how the individual fulfilling the desire
• 1:00
  in his attempt to consume the object of its desires is
• 1:05
  eventually itself consumed. A wise man, anecdotally
• 1:11
  considered to be the Buddha, once indicated that a bird,
• 1:15
  while it is alive and satisfying its hunger, may eat ants.
• 1:21
  When it dies, however, ants eat the bird.
• 1:26
  Everything that eats, everything that consumes, is part of the
• 1:32
  cycle of eating. Concisely stated, the eater
• 1:37
  eating is eaten. The Titiriopunishad states quote
• 1:44
  I am food. I am the eater of food.
• 1:49
  He who giveth me, verily he preserveth me, for I being food
• 1:54
  eat him that eateth. End Quote.
• 1:59
  Titiri Upanishad Brugu Valley Chapter 10 translated by Sri
• 2:03
  Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo clarifies this in
• 2:07
  his discussion of the Upanishads quote.
• 2:11
  If God is everywhere, he must be in the food we eat.
• 2:16
  Not only is God the Eaton, but he is the eater.
• 2:20
  And eventually, says the Vedanta, when you'd come to the
• 2:23
  bottom fact of existence, there is neither eaten or eater, but
• 2:29
  all is God. End Quote.
• 2:34
  It is one thing to address these issues on a philosophical level,
• 2:38
  but when the seeker is called upon to address the force of
• 2:42
  desire which he experiences in his life, he comes up against
• 2:46
  the reality that desire is embedded deeply in the mind,
• 2:50
  life body complex and he experiences desire, cravings,
• 2:57
  unsatisfied yearnings, and hungers of various sorts.
• 3:01
  The desire for food is illustrative but not exclusive.
• 3:06
  Triorrobindo advises that the seeker should shift his
• 3:09
  standpoint to one of the witness and experience hunger or craving
• 3:15
  for a specific food as something external to his true being.
• 3:21
  It may be helpful to reflect that the human being is not a
• 3:25
  unified whole, but an amalgamation of parts, and not
• 3:30
  all of these parts are actually the human being himself.
• 3:34
  For example, our digestive system is populated by a
• 3:39
  symbiotic colony of bacteria, without which we would have a
• 3:43
  hard time digesting anything. The question arises, whose
• 3:49
  hunger is it when we experience the sensation or the impulse to
• 3:53
  hunger or a craving for a particular food?
• 3:58
  Is it our own habit of response to the force of desire, or is it
• 4:04
  indeed the prompting of the bacterial colony seeking to
• 4:08
  satisfy its hunger? Either way, this is part of the
• 4:14
  process of understanding, addressing and transcending
• 4:18
  desire as the motive force of life and action, Sri Aurobindo
• 4:24
  notes quote. It is certainly not very yogic
• 4:29
  to be so harassed by the importunity of the palate.
• 4:33
  In this as in many other matters.
• 4:37
  If you want to do yoga, you must take more and more in all
• 4:41
  matters small or great. The yogic attitude in our path.
• 4:46
  That attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of
• 4:50
  detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire.
• 4:56
  Forceful suppression, fasting comes under the head.
• 5:00
  It is of no use for this purpose.
• 5:03
  Abandoned. That idea altogether stands on
• 5:07
  the same level as free indulgence.
• 5:10
  In both cases the desire remains.
• 5:14
  In the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies
• 5:19
  latent and exasperated by suppression.
• 5:22
  It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower
• 5:27
  vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamors as one's
• 5:31
  own, and cultivate an entire equality and equanimity in the
• 5:36
  consciousness with respect to them, that the lower vital
• 5:40
  itself becomes gradually purified in itself also calm and
• 5:45
  equal. Each wave of desire as it comes
• 5:49
  must be observed as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment
• 5:55
  as you would observe something going on outside you, and
• 5:59
  allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness and the true
• 6:04
  movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.
• 6:09
  End Quote Reference Sri Oro Bindu and the Mother Looking
• 6:14
  from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pages 165
• 6:20
  to 166.