Fasting and discipline

The teaching

As the ascetic tradition of the great faiths and the Stoics teaches it.

What the discipline is for

The first teaching of this art is about aim. In the first of John Cassian's Conferences, Abba Moses asks two young monks what their discipline is for, and answers with the farmer, who works his field through heat and frost for the sake of the harvest. Every art, he says, has an end and a nearer target. The monk's end is the kingdom of God, and his target, the thing he aims at day by day, is purity of heart.

Fasting, vigils, the reading of Scripture, solitude and going without are not that purity, Moses teaches, but its tools, as a craftsman's tools serve his craft. They are taken up for its sake, and kept at the cost of love they have lost their point. Every discipline on this page is measured the same way, by what it is for, and a fast that leaves a person proud, harsh or ill has missed its target however long it was kept.

The whole person fasts

In every faith the fast reaches past food. John Chrysostom told his people that the hands, the feet and the eyes must fast as well as the mouth: the hands from taking what is not theirs, the feet from running where they should not go, the eyes from looking where they should not look. A saying of the Prophet warns that God has no need of the hunger of one who keeps on lying, and Israel's prophet asks for a fast that loosens the bands of wickedness.

So the faiths give the fast two companions. What is not eaten is turned into prayer, and what it saves is given away: Jesus names almsgiving, prayer and fasting together, Islam closes Ramadan with an alms of food for the poor, and the rabbis say that the merit of a fast day lies in the charity given on it. Food is the first thing a fast sets down, and the easiest to see; its real work is on the self that always reaches for more. Each faith's own law is taught in Fasting in the religions.

Four disciplines and what each trains

Each of the four old disciplines kept here is a fast from one thing. Fasting sets food down for a time and shows the hand that reaches before the body is hungry. Silence sets speech down and lets what talk was covering be heard. The vigil keeps an hour awake in prayer or watching, outside the night's sleep, and trains wakefulness. The cold sets comfort down for a moment and teaches the body that its first protest need not rule.

Beneath all four lies the Stoic division on which the training of the will is built. Some things are in our power, our judgements, our choices and our actions, and some are not, and the will is trained on the first by small hardships freely chosen, as Training the will teaches.

Tapas, the inner heat

The Indian word for austerity is tapas, heat. The hymns of the Rig Veda give it a part in creation itself: the One, before anything was, came to be by the power of heat, and order and truth were born from kindled heat. So the yogi and the ascetic speak of restraint as a fire kindled within, which burns away what binds and steadies what remains, and Patanjali counts it among the observances, by which impurity dwindles.

Here the sources differ, and each is given its due. The Jains, who fast more than any other community, hold austerity to be a chief means of burning away the karma that binds the soul, yet only six of their twelve austerities are outward, from fasting to bearing hardship; the other six are inward: repentance, reverence, service, study, meditation and the letting go of the body. The Buddha, who had tried severe fasting himself, rejected self-torment and taught a middle way, and the Bhagavad Gita calls austerity that torments the body dark.

Measure, the bow and the lute

Every school that keeps these disciplines keeps a measure for them. A hunter once came upon Antony of the desert sharing an easy hour with the brothers, and was shocked. Antony told him to set an arrow to his bow and draw it, and again, and again, until the hunter said that if he drew it any further it would break. So it is with the work of God, Antony answered: stretched beyond measure, the brothers break, and at times they must be met where they are.

The Buddha taught the same with the strings of a lute, which play neither too tight nor too slack, and the desert elders named discretion, the gift of judging the measure, as the guard of every other virtue. Benedict's Rule fits the table to the weak and to the work, and lets a monk add a little in Lent only with his abbot's blessing. These measures are taught in Where the body sets the limit, the page to read before any fast.

Mercy in the law, and the body's signals

The faiths write their mercy into the law. Islam excuses the sick, travellers, the very old and women who are pregnant, nursing or bleeding. Jewish law sets the saving of life above every fast, Yom Kippur included. The Christian rules release the sick, the young and the old, and children are not bound until they come of age. None of them asks a person to harm the body to keep a fast.

The body gives its own signals, and they are obeyed. Water is never given up, and a fast is not carried beyond a day without a doctor's word. It ends at once at faintness, dizziness, a pounding heart, shaking or confusion, with a drink and a small plain meal. For some there is no fast at all: anyone pregnant or nursing, under eighteen, old and frail, unwell, diabetic, on medicine, underweight, or with a history of an eating disorder. Sleep is never given up for a practice, cold water is never entered alone, and no one stares at the sun. If food or the body has become a fear, the step to take is a word with a doctor, not a discipline.

Hidden, small and daily

Two counsels run through all the teachers. The first is to hide the discipline. Jesus tells those who fast to wash their faces so that no one sees it but God, and Epictetus tells his students that if they drink only water they need not say so at every chance. A hardship kept to be admired trains vanity, not the will.

The second is to keep it small and keep it daily. The desert monks preferred a small meal every day, leaving the table still a little hungry, to a long fast followed by a feast, and William James advised a little needless effort each day, so that the will is in training when the hour of need comes. A small promise kept for a week teaches more than a great one broken on the second day.

How a beginner starts

Begin with the discipline that asks least of the body. A morning of silence, told to the household beforehand, is the gentlest. Or choose one small promise for one week: no telephone before breakfast, ten minutes of quiet, a meal eaten slowly without a screen, a cool finish to a warm wash. Write it down, keep it in private, and make a mark each evening, kept or not kept, without comment.

At the week's end ask what got in the way and what the keeping was like, then renew the promise, change it or drop it, on purpose. One who belongs to a faith keeps its fasts by its own law and with its own exemptions. A healthy adult who simply wishes to know what a fast teaches keeps to its gentlest form, the ordinary gap overnight with water, ended by a plain breakfast eaten slowly and with thanks. One discipline at a time is enough.

The branches and how they stand

Fasting in the religions gives the law of each faith's fast, with its seasons and its exemptions. Where the body sets the limit gives the measure, from the middle way to the house's own lines, and names those who keep no fast at all. Silence is the oldest discipline and the gentlest, and the best place to begin.

Cold and the vigil gives the harder pair, the watch of the night and the cold water of the rites, and why both are kept small, never alone and never at the cost of sleep. Training the will gives the method beneath them all: the Stoic division, the Gita's three austerities and the small promise, kept and reviewed.