sufi · Day 142 · Week 21
Eknath's Plate
The body inside you is learning hunger and fullness, give and receive — and tonight a saint's plate teaches that the two are the same thing.
He had waited a whole day for this food. He gave it away in the time it takes to breathe.
In the town of Paithan, on the banks of the Godavari, there lived a saint named Eknath. He was a householder. He had a wife and children and neighbours and a small garden where tulsi grew. He was also a man of long fasts, the kind that turn the body quiet and the mind clear.
One Ekadashi he had eaten nothing from sunrise to sunset. His lips were dry. His knees felt like they belonged to someone older. His wife had prepared the breaking of the fast — warm rice, a little dal, a few slices of mango from the season's last fruit. She set the plate before him and stepped back, the way one steps back from something sacred.