I once overheard a saintly spiritual teacher say to a friend—after a particularly heavy duty lunch, “Hey, man, a lunch like that really makes you feel like going out and kicking some ass!”
I knew what he was talking about. I know how I feel after a pancake and scrambled curd breakfast; I feel like replacing a few acres worth of cow fences singlehandedly, or rearranging a houseful of heavy furniture.
We recently did a four day, Ayurvedic “fruit juice and whizzed greens soup” fast—a jolly recipe for health and happiness my wife found in her favorite Ayurveda paperback; good to do during the change of seasons.
I had never before voluntarily reduced my eating—except on big festival days, in heavy salivating expectation of a late-night mountain range of heavy, fried, sweet, rich delicacies—any health nut’s nightmare of a feast.
My only previous extended fasting had been Involuntarily—for 3 days, due to a lively variety of flu that specialized in causing delirious, feverish, sweating-and-heaving oblivion.
I had no clue what four or five days of eating nothing but rigidly rationed ounces of freshly squeezed juice and bowl after bowl of blended kale would do to me. The “fruit juice and whizzed greens diet” does not inspire thoughts of ass kicking, I found out.
Day by day, I began to feel more and more like a koala. All I wanted to do was hang out in a hammock. I began to understand why, no matter how damn many eucalyptus leaves they eat, koalas never seem to take interest in anything resembling warfare or Australian Rules Football. They’re too pooped all the time to even climb down a tree.
Imagine all the people, eating Fruit-Juice-And-Whizzed-Greens-Soup: a sure recipe for peace on earth. I lost nine pounds, and nobody got hurt.
Koalas do get fired up about some things. They make the most disgusting grunting noises, mostly at night when they are busy defending their turf from other koalas, especially the male of the species. Otherwise they are quite spaced out. I have been able to approach a lone koala walking down a side road and poke him in the ribs. They aren’t as fluffy as they look. He nonchalantly accepted my prod and continued on his way. That was an amazing lack of response from a completely undomesticated animal of the ‘not so’ wild.