Where the body sets the limit

The teaching

As the Buddha's middle way, the desert elders and the Rule of St Benedict teaches it.

The middle way

The Buddha's first teaching begins with a warning about extremes. There are two, he told his first five companions, that one who has gone forth should not follow: devotion to the pleasures of the senses, which is low and unprofitable, and devotion to self-torment, which is painful, ignoble and unprofitable. Avoiding both, he had found the middle way, which leads to peace, to insight and to awakening. He had tried the second extreme himself, and named it a mistake.

Later he taught a monk named Sona, who had driven himself in practice until his feet bled, with the picture of a lute. Strings tuned too tight do not play, and strings too slack do not play either; only strings tuned to the middle make music. Effort, he said, is to be tuned the same way.

Discretion, the guard of every virtue

The desert monks fasted more than anyone, and they taught that fasting without discernment does harm. In Cassian's Conferences the elders gather to ask which virtue keeps a monk from falling; some name fasting, some vigils, some solitude, and Antony answers discretion, the gift of judging the measure, because it keeps a person from both extremes. Excess, the elders say, does as much damage as neglect.

Antony's own saying is short: some have worn out their bodies with asceticism, but because they had no discernment, they are far from God.

The daily measure

In place of long fasts followed by feasting, the elders counselled a small and steady measure. Cassian describes the rule of the Egyptian monks: eat every day, a little, and rise from the table still a little hungry, rather than going without for days and then eating too much. A moderate fast kept daily, he says, is better than a severe one kept now and then, because the body stays strong enough to pray and to work.

Benedict's measure

Benedict's Rule sets the measure for a whole community, and sets it with mercy. It allows two cooked dishes at the main meal, so that one who cannot eat the first may eat the second, with a pound of bread a day and more when the work is heavy; less for children; and for the sick, meat and whatever else they need. The abbot is to fit everything to the weak and to the season.

In Lent a monk may offer something more of his own will, a little less food, sleep or talk, but only with the abbot's blessing, because an offering made without it is reckoned presumption and vainglory.

Love before the fast

The elders also taught that love comes before the fast. Cassian tells of an old monk who broke his fast to eat with visiting brothers, and explained: fasting is always with me, but you I cannot keep with me always. The guest was received as Christ, and the fast waited.

And the fast is hidden. Jesus tells those who fast to wash their faces and look as on any other day, so that no one sees it but God. A fast kept to be admired, the elders say, feeds the very pride it was meant to starve, and it is better to eat humbly than to fast proudly.

The body's own signals

The old rules and the house's own lines come to the same thing: the body sets the limit, not the will. Water is never given up. A fast is not carried beyond a day without a doctor's word. It is kept on a day without heavy work or long driving, and it ends at once at faintness, dizziness, a pounding heart, shaking or confusion, with a drink and a small plain meal.

Hunger that is only appetite can be watched with interest; hunger that has become weakness is a warning, and is obeyed.

Those who keep no fast

For some people 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. The faiths agree in their own exemptions, and none of them asks a person to harm the body. For such a person the discipline is found elsewhere: in silence, in a kept promise, in a meal eaten slowly and with thanks.

The gentlest form

For a healthy adult the mildest form is enough: the ordinary gap overnight, kept with water, ending in an ordinary breakfast eaten slowly. Or a plain meal in place of a rich one, as the monks kept their table. The point is to notice appetite and habit, the hand that reaches for food when the body is not hungry, and to give thanks for what is there, never to prove how much hunger can be borne.

If food or the body has become a fear, the step to take is not a fast but a word with a doctor.