Have you ever felt hunger? You're so hungry that you've become "hangry" – angry because you're hungry. I have been unkind when I was hungry. I have yelled at people because of my "hanger". Not proud of it, but just keeping it real. Can we all agree then that satiating hunger is a very basic need? There is not much debate here, is there?
Now, here is the difficult question, and you know what it's like, in Jivamukti we ask a lot of difficult and sometimes unpopular questions. Why is it that even as we understand satiating hunger is a basic need, we (as a society) still continue to live in a way that perpetuates hunger? Some facts: 925 million people go hungry every single day. Every 12 seconds, a child dies from a hunger-related disease. And yet, the world produces enough food. It's just that we are not using the calories and nutrients efficiently. A third of the world's crops goes to feed the 60 to 70 billion land animals used and killed for their meat, dairy, and eggs. 70% of grain production is fed to those animals instead of directly to humans. That means, on a scale we can more easily understand, that the feed cost of an 8-ounce steak will fill up to 45-50 bowls of cooked cereal grains. There is enough food, it's just the food doesn't go to the people who need them because the commercial demand is in meat, dairy, and eggs. Of course, there are other problems with food distribution and food politics, but we cannot deny that the very basic choice of what we eat affects the basic need of others. The focus of the month in Jivamukti is called "Back to Basics", and we can use it as a reflection point to look at the world's most complicated problems and come up with the most basic solutions, solutions that we can all participate in, without waiting for a government or politician or world order to change, solutions so basic that each and every person can implement them now. How about that? Offer your intention to someone who is hungry right now. If you have an image in your mind, a person you once encountered, a person whose picture you once saw, think of this person and offer your intention to him or her. Then take it beyond intention and into action. Pledge a vegan meal or two or three, and take it from there. Challenge yourself to go as far as you can to alleviate the hunger of this person and others like him or her. Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.
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