Understanding and Addressing Desire, Hunger and Food

Sri Aurobindo translates Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter One, Section Two, Verse 1: “Formerly there was nothing here; this was concealed by Death — by Hunger, for it is Hunger that is Death. That created mind, and he said, ‘Let me have substance.’ He moved about working and as he worked the waters were born and he said, ‘Felicity was born to me as I worked.’ This verily is the activity in action. Therefore felicity cometh to him who thus knoweth this soul of activity in action.”

“Hunger is Death.” In this case, the Upanishad is not referring directly to the physical hunger for food, but to the much deeper and broader issue of desire and how the individual fulfilling the desire, in his attempt to consume the object of its desires, is itself eventually consumed. A wise man [anecdotally considered to be the Buddha] once indicated that a bird, while it is alive and satisfying its hunger, may eat ants. When it dies, however, ants eat the bird. Everything that eats, everything that consumes, is part of the cycle of eating. Concisely stated: “The Eater, eating, is eaten.”

The Taittiriya Upanishad states: “I am food! I am the eater of food! … He who giveth me, verily he preserveth me; for I being food, eat him that eateth.” [Taittiriya Upanishad, Bhriguvalli, chapter 10, translated by Sri Aurobindo]

Sri Aurobindo clarifies this in his discussion of the Upanishads: “If God is everywhere, He must be in the food we eat. Not only is God the eaten, but He is the eater and eventually, says the Vedanta, when you come to the bottom fact of existence there is neither eaten or eater, but all is God.”

It is one thing to address these issues on a philosophical level, but when the seeker is called upon to address the force of desire which he experiences in his life, he comes up against the reality that desire is embedded deeply in the mind-life-body complex and he experiences desire, cravings, unsatisfied yearnings and hungers, of various sorts. The desire for food is illustrative but not exclusive.

Sri Aurobindo advises that the seeker should shift his standpoint to one of the witness and experrience hunger, or craving for a specific food, as something exte
al to his true being. It may be helpful to reflect that the human being is not a unified whole, but an amalgamation of parts, and not all these parts are actually the human being himself. For example, our digestive system is populated by a symbiotic colony of bacteria, without which we would have a hard time digesting anything. The question arises, ‘whose hunger is it’ when we experience the sensation or the impulse to hunger, or a craving for a particular food? Is it our own habit of response to the force of desire, or is it indeed the prompting of the bacterial colony seeking to satisfy ITS hunger? Either way, this is part of the process of understanding, addressing and transcending desire as the motive force of life and action.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “It is certainly not very yogic to be so harassed by the importunity of the palate…. In this as in many other matters…, if you want to do yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression [Fasting comes under the head; it is of no use for this purpose. Abandon that idea altogether.] stands on the same level as free indulgence; in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one’s own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 165-166