Fasting and meditation are both religious and spiritual practices, but apart from that, it might seem they don’t have much in common. After all, fasting is a physical practice, while meditation is mental: On the surface, they seem to address different aspects of the human person. But in their essence, they have the same spiritual meaning. Understanding the true purpose of fasting illuminates the deepest significance of meditation, and meditation illuminates the true nature of fasting. Both are only fully understood as well as realized in light of each other. It is in this sense that it has been said, “Fasting is the meditation of the body, and meditation is a fasting of the mind.”
To see how this is so, let us begin by understanding meditation. What is its purpose? What does it do for you? We’ve all heard that meditation can be helpful as a stress management exercise. But why does it really help us destress? One way to meditate is to begin by examining your perceptions. For example, you may focus on your breath, on your bodily sensations, on a sound, or on your perception of the space around you. In all these variations, your practice is to focus on perceiving what arises in your field of consciousness. Or you may observe your thoughts, emotions, and memories as they arise and pass. The purpose is the same: to inquire into this experience of perception in order to discover that since all these perceptions appear to you, you are something else. Your reality goes beyond physical objects, beyond sensory perceptions, and even beyond subtler objects like thoughts and feelings. At the heart of all this, your reality is essentially unperturbed, undisturbed by all these perceptions or experiences. When we inquire enough into the meditation process, this is what we discover.
Through meditation, you learn to separate yourself from objects of experience and place your identity instead in conscious, aware presence. This is a perfect way to prepare yourself for any form of prayer so that you experience being more present for prayer or any other life activity. In fact, a meditation practice known as body-sensing is in a certain way already activated during ritual ablution (wuḍū’) as you prepare for ritual prayer (ṣalāt). When the coolness of water touches the limbs of your body and you purposefully move from one limb to another, you are naturally body-sensing while participating with faith in a religious rite. The ritual ablution is not only a physical preparation but also a psychological and spiritual preparation for ritual prayer. In this regard, it functions like a meditation practice prior to ritual prayer, as a kind of washing away of excessive thinking, and helps us be more relaxed in our body and gathered in attention for prayer. This is especially so if we remain consciously silent during the ablution, as is the recommended sunnah practice.
In any case, meditation helps you separate yourself from overwhelming emotions during the actual meditation and helps you relate to these same emotions as you go through your day. This is because meditation acquaints you with that place inside you that is the witness of your experiences. With consistent meditation practice, you can find this place of the inner witness again and use it to your benefit or learn to inquire into its actual nature. When you return to it and begin to rest in it enough during meditation practice, it is the hope of every meditator that you eventually learn to relate to everyday experiences from the living presence of your inner witness and to live in harmony from this place that is discovered to be your truest nature (fiṭrah).
Now let’s turn to the fast. What is the fast itself, at its essence? In its Islamic sense, it is simply refraining—from food, drink, and the fulfillment of sexual desires for God’s sake during a prescribed period of time. Fasting can be a struggle as you resist the urge to eat and drink and as you deal with the physical effects of hunger and thirst. But the actual fast is not an action at all. By its very definition, it is a refraining from acting in a certain way, which is a non-act, because it consists of simply not doing something. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the classical authorities on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh) maintain that the act of refraining from disobedience is highly rewardable due to the struggle one may have in doing so. Nonetheless, refraining is still a non-act, and it is rewarded by God.
In many ways, meditation is also a non-act. Sitting still is not really doing anything. Being open to our present-moment experience is not a doing at all. It is more of a shift in consciousness than an action. So why is this not-doing such an important spiritual practice in every religion and spiritual tradition? Why does God want you to “do nothing” for His sake—whether it be meditation or fasting—and why does He reward it? An answer with great wisdom is found in the Biblical passage in Psalm 46:101: “Be still and know that I am God.” When we are still enough in our prayer, meditation, or contemplation, we may become aware of ourselves on a deeper level. Through that grounded awareness, we may become aware of God’s underlying and transcendent Presence with us as well. Hence: “Be still and know that I am God.” This shift in self-knowing is the very sacred purpose of the non-act of meditative stillness.
It is through contemplative stillness (meditation) and spiritual emptiness (fasting) that we learn to awaken to a more centered sense of being and a deeper sense of knowing. In this way, fasting is like a walking or living meditation, and meditation is like a sitting or stilling fast. The purpose of both practices is to stop you, detach yourself from your impulses and inclinations to any given object, and awaken an insight into the nature of your inner being that connects you to God’s Presence.
As suggested, the contemplative beingness in the commandant to “be still” acquired through the practice of meditation or fasting can facilitate sensitivity to God’s ever-present and watchful Presence. This sense of the sacred connects us to what the Islamic tradition calls taqwá, or reverent awareness of God. To have taqwá is to be mindful of God and cultivate a presence of heart with our actions in full awareness that God is already present and watches over us. In this latter sense, the reverent mindfulness of taqwá is at the heart of the meditative practice. In quoting this wisdom tradition, we follow the Prophetic (s) acknowledgement and advice that “Wisdom is the lost treasure of the believer; the believer has a right to it wherever they find it.” Murāqabah, which is both a religious orientation and a contemplative exercise of being vigilantly aware of God’s Awareness of us. Such vigilance with our awareness helps us refrain from disobedience as well as facilitating obedience to God. In fact, this mindful mode of God-consciousness that is taqwá is directly linked to the universal purpose of the fast in Islamic sources. God states in Qur’ān 2:183, “Fasting is prescribed unto you (Muslims) just as it was prescribed unto those (religious communities) who came before you in order that you may cultivate taqwá.” If cultivating taqwá is the very purpose of fasting, and taqwá is a reverent awareness that can be procured through meditative mindfulness, then fasting and meditation are clearly interrelated.
The awakened sense of pure or empty being as well as inner clarity cultivated during a fast is very similar to the witnessing position2 awakened in meditation. In this regard, both meditation and fasting can help create an internal distance between ourselves and the negative effects of our impulses or other attachments and ground us in an awareness of God. This awareness of God’s already-present Presence can be called the discovery of your presence with God and God’s Presence with you. This presence is like consciously returning to an existential nothingness before God’s Presence. This is what many Muslim mystics (as well as certain Christian mystics) have called poverty (faqr) of the soul before the Richness of God’s Being. God Himself states in the Qur’ān 47:38, “God is the Rich, and you are the poor.” The fast and meditation (especially in the form of invocation, or dhikr) help us rediscover by direct experience our existential poverty as a gateway to an awareness of God’s richness of Being. This direct experience is what the Sufis call dhawq, or existential tasting.
Fasting and meditation bring you out of mere impulsive doing and place you into pure and conscious being—even amidst the doing. In both, you are getting yourself out of the way—removing the veil between you and God. Just as fasting is a non-doing, meditation means simply being present. Both a sustained sense of conscious non-doing and abiding in being consciously present bring the one fasting or meditating to a sense of contemplative beingness. Both fasting and meditation involve a process of emptying ourselves of the effects of our doership so that only a sense of being remains. In both fasting and meditation, the act is not yours. The deepest thing about you—your presence, your being—isn’t yours. Awareness isn’t even yours. In the deepest sense, they can be said to be only God’s. Perhaps this is why the Prophet Muḥammad (s) says that God states, “All acts [of worship] are done for the sake and benefit of the children of Adam, except the fast. Fasting is Mine, and I shall reward it—I shall be its reward.”3 Fasting and meditation acknowledge in their own ways the experience of our existential nothingness that is filled with the grace of God’s presence. It is in this conscious sense of emptiness and humility that meditation and fasting meet as the prayer of our heart.
A sustained practice of routine fasting and meditation detaches you from compulsive habits, toxic thoughts, and emotions that adversely affect your soul and body and lets you stand in conscious, open, aware presence with God. You empty your heart of everything other than God, including even your own identification as the doer of your actions. When you begin to do nothing for God’s sake, and simply return to your inward sense of being with God—as the fast and through meditation—you awaken to God’s presence of nearness with you. In this pure state of beingness, actions naturally flow from the spiritual heart (qalb), not from the impulsive lower self (nafs). This is how fasting is a meditation of the body and meditation is a fasting of the mind. Both serve to awaken the life of the Spirit (al-Rūḥ) in our heart.
Hasan Awan,
Al-Qadiri-Shadhili
Hudur Institute
Footnotes:
- In quoting this wisdom tradition, we follow the Prophetic (s) acknowledgement and advice that “Wisdom is the lost treasure of the believer; the believer has a right to it wherever they find it.” ↩︎
- When we say the ‘witnessing position’, we intend by this term the cultivation of the inner witness in meditation. The inner witness is the conscious recognition during meditation that your awareness is what witnesses all perceptions. The inner witness is the inner self or spiritual heart (and intellect) awakened through moments of prayer, meditation, or contemplation . It is the recognition that this awareness is what you really are, as it remains always present, beyond the coming and going of thoughts emotions and perceptions. ↩︎
- As found in Bukhārī, ḥadīth no. 5927. We have rendered the Arabic of Wa-anā ajzī bi as both “And I shall reward it” and “And I shall be its reward,” as both are possible translations of the Arabic. The former meaning is the more widely known one in our tradition, whereas the latter meaning is more subtle and spiritually profound. ↩︎