hangry

In 2015 I spent a few months on a Permaculture farm in the North of Thailand, before heading to Thich Hat Hanh’s Thai Plum Village for the last ten days of my visa. This led to three months at a Zen Center in South India, which led to a series of ten-day retreats and the development of a meditation practice, which has had an immense impact on who I am.

I would hardly call myself an expert on Buddhism, but I am a big fan, especially when it comes to meditation as a tool for self-discovery and so much more. In Buddhism, we hear about desire, which leads to attachment, which leads to suffering. We can’t live without desire, because it motivates us to fulfill our basic needs. However, desire has the tendency to shapeshift into attachment and addiction. So it’s a bit tricky.

In Buddhism and other traditional religions of East Asia, you find the concept of the hungry ghost. A hungry ghost is basically a spirit that wanders around looking for stuff to consume, but never feeling satisfied. A hungry ghost is also an analogy we can use to think about our attachments and addictions, which are often less conspicuous than we might think.

So I was thinking about this concept and decided to illustrate it, with a twist of “hangry”. Who doesn’t get hangry from time to time? Are you “hangry” because you need food, or is there a deeper lying issue, some unaddressed hole in the lower tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy?

I am far from perfect, in fact I am amazed at the lengths attachment goes to lurk incognito in my consciousness. I am also far happier when I allow myself to recognize attachment as such. It’s a complicated topic, something I am learning more about all the time.

I hope you enjoy my illustration of the day!

For more on hungry ghosts in a modern context, Tara Brach has an excellent talk, and Dr. Gabor Mate has a book dedicated to the subject, which has been on my reading list for a while.

May all beings be free from suffering.