Good Intentions

3 Ramadhan

Something quite new today. In over ten years of fasting for Ramadhan I've never attempted any kind of physical exercise in the holy month. (In fact, for most of those years this was true of all the months of the year, due to a chronically bad back.) Today Noi and I went for a bit of a run after breaking the fast, thus missing most of the second half of the United vs Everton game - though it was easy to drag myself away from an incredibly dull game, which United were very lucky to win. The run worked; we both enjoyed ourselves. It took quite a bit of thinking through in terms of exactly how much to eat and drink when breaking the fast, but that's a feature of the month anyway - the need to figure out new routines each day to meet the obligations imposed on one, or rather the obligations one imposes on oneself.

One interesting feature of the month is how easy it is to cheat on the fasting, and, at the same time, how it's quite impossible to do so. The simplicity lies in the impossibility of monitoring someone throughout daylight hours to ensure they do not eat or drink. One trip to the lavatory is enough to give the privacy needed to consume whatever it is one wishes to. But, then, someone who cheats in this manner is not interested in fulfilling what is necessary to fulfil, so there's no point in the attempt. In contrast, if your intention is genuine then cheating is out of the question. You either succeed or, sadly, fail, and if you fail you try and make up for it at some future date and continue to try and succeed. This stress on intentionality is captured in the niat, the prayer expressing the intention to fast and the reasons for doing so. How vital this is is illustrated in the fact that a day of fasting which is not based on the niat to do so is invalid. This struck me years ago as a bit of unnecessarily fussy legalism, but now it seems to me to go to the heart of what the month is about in psychological terms. It's pertinent to observe that the importance of intentionality, of properly focused attention, is at the heart of several esoteric traditions.

I think it's also what art demands from us to be genuine: a proper focus of intention.