Meditating on Famine
By: Dr. Teodros Kiros
My sisters and brothers in Ethiopia are dying as I write, and I cannot help but think about their condition. What must they be feeling when I am busily shopping away, even when I do not want to; how might they be comforting the hungry babies, the starved children, as their own scrawny bodies and hungry stomachs screech for food, yearning to leak a drop of water and die in dignity. I am sure all Ethiopians are immersed in these questions. Some spill the pain on ink; others are drenched in their own tears. Many suffer quietly. A few “cannot cry anymore.”
Sitting in my comfortable office after I had overfed myself, and had coffee, tea, wine, soft-drinks, and much else, I began wondering what it is going to take to answer the perennial question: why famine before, why now, and how many times more?
That is when I was struck by the memory of Zara Yacob, the Abyssinian sage, and his profound understanding of the nature of thinking. I imagined him sitting inside a cave engaged in exilic meditation; I imagined him agonizing over those millions of locusts which used to come and eat away what took farmers years to grow; I imagined him shedding tears of despair, over the plight of famished Ethiopians in the seventeenth century; I imagined him looking down towards his heart and expecting God to reveal himself in the form of an answer to the philosopher’s question:
“ Why are your people dying, God? Please speak to me, God. Why should your children die this way?”
The philosopher is searching for God. He is engaged in Hasasa, in searching, looking for God as the answer, who hides himself from the philosopher’s view. God reveals himself for a fleeting instance, and then disappears from the philosopher’s gaze. So desperate was Zara Yacob to think for his countrywomen and men that he got up from his stool to grasp the all-knowing and merciful Being of beings.
The Being disappears and the sorrowful face of the philosopher engages in Hatata (inquiry) about the nature of the Being who revealed himself and then vanished in hiding. The philosopher learns from this fleeting encounter of the Being who appeared and disappeared that man alone cannot emerge with the ultimate answer to the mystery of suffering at the hands of nature.
The tools of scientific rationality can surely explain famine, but only partially. A monumental phenomenon such as famine is going to challenge us all to enter into the labyrinth of the human heart and engage in Hasasa and Hatata. Hasasa and Hatata are forms of meditation anchored by humility and honesty.
If and when that Conference for which I yearn takes place, the gifts of Zara Yacob, that meditative spiritual father of Ethiopia, might be the medicine that we will all require. Scientific solutions will help us in the beginning; in the end, however, nothing short of the appearance of the transcendent, the lawgiver, the rational/moral force is going to save our people.
For now, on these holidays, we Ethiopians have an obligation, like Zara Yacob to look for and meditate about this God, who is only temporarily absent.
Hasasa and Hatata will show us the way -- and along the way, we might encounter the solutions we are looking for.
Our self-imposed duty, then, is to swim against the laxness of comfort and luxury in the holiday seasons, which are so human to do, by meditating about the condition of those hungry eyes, the weakened bodies, the disappearing bones, and refuse to buy what we do not need.
Our homes, wherever they may be, should be the dwelling places of meditation and moral commitment to help our people by any means necessary. Thinking about them through the merciful guidance of our creator must be our singular motto, until our counter is freed from the menace of famine now and AIDS later.
[Opinions in this article are solely that of the writer.]