A while back, my rheumatologist recommended I go on fasting cycles to help regulate my immune system; every 4 to 6 weeks I have been doing 5 day modified fasts. On the final day of my most recent fast, I started contemplating on my hunger, my joy at getting to eat the next day, and how to consider all of this in terms of the topic that ‘everything is suffering.’

As I fantasized about my break-fast meal, I felt a surge of joy, excitement and anticipation. And that’s when I realized my joy at getting to eat again arises because it will bring me relief of deprivation. This is already evidence that what Mae Neecha said is true – happiness is just less, i.e. a relief from, suffering.

Years ago I had gone to the famous Thomas Keller restaurant, Ad Hoc, in Napa. Above the door read a sign “ For the temporary relief of hunger”. The sign had really struck me. When I consider my joy at breaking fast, I realize it too is just a temporary relief of my deprivation: All I have to do is wait another 4-6 weeks and, with my next fast, the deprivation will return.

But the truth is, if I were to wait even a few hours, hunger would already set-in. It’s just that, when I’m not fasting, I simply go to the fridge and pull out something to eat – the relief comes so quickly that I barely notice either the suffering or the soothing. But fullness is always a temporary state, what exists before –what will exist again just a little bit later – is hunger.

Hunger is the native state, the baseline, that is what I am continually striving, eating, to fix. Striving for food, eating to temporarily relieve hunger, this is how I (and all embodied beings) adapt to this world. Adapting, ‘fixing’ — the fact that I need to do this at all —  proves what is there to start with: A problem, dukkha.

Hunger is just a type of dukkha. Hunger is the baseline state. Therefore dukkha is the baseline state. Fullness is temporary, it is just a temporary relief of hunger.