A Byrd's Eye View

How Eating Only One Meal A Day Is Not An Ascetic Practice

And no, that is not an April Fools' Joke....

Anyway, Noah the Canadian monk then launched into a rather long discourse on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhism. I found the talk interesting, but a dear friend characterized Noah as being "full of shit" - well, OK, different strokes for different folks, I guess.

One thing that was notable about this particular monk is something that I notice in speakers who are a part of Southeast Asian monastic orders. Thich Naht Hanh is another example of this, if you've ever heard him speak. That is, that they tend to speak very slowly, softly and deliberately. Every word is chosen, and every word counts. That's kind of refeshing to listen to. So many of us in the West are in a hurry with our speech, and we fill the spaces up with, like, the verbal equivalent of junk food, you know? I dunno, I mean, it's like sometimes you have to really try to pick, you know, the, I dunno, the content, you know, out of what people are saying. You know?

I enjoyed listening to some one who chose his words carefully, even if I didn't agree with everything he said. He didn't just "shoot from the hip". He wasn't out to impress me with his intellectual prowess, or his vocabulary, he was just choosing his words carefully and softly.

So carefully and softly, in fact, that two of our group fell asleep. One of them expressed some concern later that he had been snoring, but he had not (whew! What a relief!)

At any event, Noah discussed at some length the Buddha's "Middle Way" between indulgence and asceticism. This makes sense to me, but I thought that Noah's approach was a little bit odd. For example he considers things like stairmasters and treadmills to be forms of self-torture. But eating only one meal a day (which he does, and always before noon) is not self-torture at all. I didn't quite follow his reasoning, but it seemed to make sense to him. By the way, Noah is extremely thin, and not at all buff.

He also spoke at some length about our "addictions" to sensual pleasures, and to our emotional states. This was interesting for me, as I have long felt that some people get addicted to certain states of mind -- anger, for example. It seems like some people just go around looking for something to be angry about, so they can feed their angry head, the same way that alcoholics go around looking for a drink. Other people get addicted to television, or to whatever rush they get from chocolate cake or (in my case) spicy tuna sushi rolls. So, this part of the lecture made sense to me.

After the lecture was over, some of the group went into a Q&A session with Noah, while I went off to an appointment. If someone else has anything they can add about this field trip, feel free to pipe up.

Be moderate, be deliberate, be cool.

Byrd in LA

Posted by wahzoh at April 1, 2008 01:02 PM