Does God want us to torture ourselves by fasting on holy days?
So if people say that why do you fast when God is up here God is and there's some holy days are there you know God God only want us to celebrate not not torture ourselves by fasting yeah so God certainly doesn't want us to torture ourselves the point of fasting is not just is not taking food the point of fasting is taking in Krishna more and more absorbing ourselves in Krishna so the four great devotees you know they are so absorbed in Krishna because of their devotion for Krishna that they feel food is a distraction on this day such a special day Krishna is appearing sometimes we meet a friend after a long time maybe five years ten years and we are very close friends I mean we just want to celebrate but how we celebrate just talking with each other so I'll keep talking keep talking keep talking like that for a devotee the day when Krishna appears at that time you know if two friends are talking with each other and they say come on let's have some food later just want to talk right now so the devotees want to absorb themselves in Krishna on this day the point is not to torture oneself the point is to remove all distractions from absorption in Krishna and food is like a distraction so we try to remove that that's point from the point of view of love for Krishna another perspective is that if we look even from social perspective that if say on every Ekadashi once a fortnight if people just avoided grains at that time there would be so much surplus of grains that will result and that can substantially help in encountering the food shortage that is there so the social perspective it's just it's not that and it's not that everybody has to fast and they cannot take any food but just avoid the normal food and take something else on that and most people they need the normal food and grains are short and often so it will create a tremendous amount of surplus which can be constructively used so that's from the social perspective from the individual perspective nowadays more and more people are turning towards fasting because they feel fasting is good for health then there is a whole genre of treatment and there's a whole specialized setup that is created called fasting retreats the people go on retreats and they fast some people who fast for 10 days 12 days and then many of the maladies it's not just fasting some procedures of massage and some therapy also but many of the problems which are not curable by a conventional medicine they feel that just by fasting what happens is that the body has its own healing mechanism but when continuously food is being taken in the body and the body has to continuously deal with digesting that food processing that food and it doesn't have any time and energy left to focus on rebuilding or healing itself but at the body there is nothing to do in terms of no food is coming in no food is going out it doesn't have to process that food constantly it's then the body starts using its reserve energy for for doing those basic bodily functions that way whatever fat is stored in the body that also gets broken down so obesity is also counter but more importantly because the body's energy is available so it heals itself so even from the from the spirit devotional perspective it is not that we are torturing ourselves but we want to just be absorbed in Krishna that's why we fast from the social perspective it can it can create a stock of grains which can be used to counter brain shortage from a physical perspective it can be seen as a means to promote health so this way we can explain the rationale for fasting to people.
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