The Day Shiva Went Hungry

Shiva said food doesn't matter. Annapurna disappeared. The whole world starved. He came to her with a begging bowl.

On a quiet evening on Mount Kailash, Shiva tries to teach Parvati a lesson. He says food is just an illusion, that hunger is not real, that nobody really needs to eat. To show him how wrong he is, Parvati disappears from the world. The whole earth begins to starve. Shiva, the greatest yogi of all, walks into the city of Kashi with a begging bowl in his hand. There at last he meets her again as Annapurna, the goddess of food, and bows before her.

A Quiet Argument on Mount Kailash

It was a soft evening on Mount Kailash. The sun was going down behind the snowy peaks. The pine trees swayed gently. Up in the clouds, Shiva sat in deep meditation as he often did, his eyes half closed, his long hair piled up like a mountain of its own.

His wife Parvati sat beside him, kindly stirring a pot of warm rice for their evening meal.

Shiva opened one eye and watched her cook. He smiled in a teasing way.

"Parvati," he said softly. "Why do you take so much trouble for this rice?"

Parvati looked up and laughed. "Because we are about to eat it, my Lord."

"Eat," said Shiva, and waved his hand like the word was a small fly. "Eating is just an illusion. The body is an illusion. Food is an illusion. Hunger is an illusion. The wise person knows that nothing of this matters. The whole world is maya, a dream."

Parvati stopped stirring.

She was a goddess. She was the daughter of the mountains. She was the mother of all things that grow. She knew that her husband was the greatest yogi in all the worlds, and that he was right about many things.

But he was wrong about this.

"My Lord," she said, very gently, "food is not just an illusion. The whole world is held together by it. The farmer wakes up before sunrise to plant rice because food is real. The mother rocks her hungry baby because hunger is real. The cow eats grass, the bee drinks nectar, the deer grazes the leaves. Without food, there is no body. Without a body, there is no chance to even know yourself. Food is not maya. Food is life."

Shiva chuckled. "My dear, you have been spending too much time with the cooking pots. Food is just food. Try going without it for one whole day, and you will see. The world goes on. The yogis go on. Nothing changes."