Hunger

There is something in Buddhism called the hungry ghosts. I remember hearing about them and it fascinated me. At the time, I was very able to name some select people who fit the description exactly. I am sure my naming of them was accompanied by requisite finger-wagging. You know that feeling you get--oh, you can admit it--no one is watching. It is that feeling of superiority that the bad trait does not belong to you, and even better--it belongs to someone else! This feels like the rite of Spring. To know that what is wrong in the world is not you, means you are OK. A decent person. Certainly better than that other person.

So tonight I began thinking about my hungry ghost inside me. This just goes to show how nice and firm our resolve is to believe all is right with us--that is has taken me this long to really make the connection. So with no more ado--about this ghost. In my interpretation, the ghosts have these little mouths and giant bellies. They are unquenchable, and the torment is that their little tiny mouths can only take in so much at once. The end result is that they are always hungry. All that space in the belly and so little opportunity to fill it.

And to be hungry, as I have seen, is to suffer. To be hungry for love, for accolades, for accomplishment, for silence to fill spaces you do not want to feel. All of this hunger leads to yearning, which leads to desire to fill the space. Fill it with blanks, with those flourescent hazard cones, or a tall building. Just fill it is what we crave. And when I stop filling my space, there is something that happens.

The vacancy initially makes me want to fill it more than ever. I am not talking about the times when I am occupied. When life is like cherry pie and I am deeply immersed, in joy, in busy-ness. The time I speak of, is when the silence washes over me, and I see truths and can do nothing to soften them. I cannot move them out of focus, and I feel the rumbling in my belly. I do not expect that my belly will one day cease rumbling, perhaps until I pass from this place.

But until then, part of the art of living, for me, is to play the dance with the hunger when it arises. I dance with putting it out of its misery and acommodating it with distractions and work and laughter. And then there is just sitting with it, ugly and unappealing and whining for "fill" as it is. It is unwanted, but I imagine that it is sitting right next to me, feeling the same fear and rejection that comes from me. It is of me. And then with this, I am okay with sitting. The grumbling in my belly quiets and for a time, my mouth closes. The baby bird has stopped begging for food. I can wait, I think.