Ramadan روزه (fasting)

Ramadan – fasting

I don’t know who reads no the blog most. Moslem, buddhist or Christian based people.

In Ramadan the fast is for 30 days. Normally it’s 29 days. A full moon circle. Because different Moslem groups counted it different, there was a gab between starting and ending it. One day. There was a negotiation between the different groups so there decided to start and end together. So it came, that the fast is 30 days long.

There is no eating and drinking, no sex and smoking until sunset. In the morning the fast starts earlier than sunrise. The last bit of drinking and eating should be before any dawn can be noticed. So that’s around 1h before sunrise. So people get up at around 2am in the morning to have a kind of breakfast. The first of the prayers is also before the dawn. After most people go again to sleep.

I was always curious about the Moslem fast. I love fasting and I did a lot before getting on the peace walk. When I was around 23/24 I did my first fast. The very first was just one week long. But no eating all week long. Day and night no eating only drinking water and tea, but as much as I wanted all day long. Also some honey. The first time was so hard, because the body is depoisoning hisself and I did not have found the best tea mixture for me by then. Later I extended the fast periods to 10 days, 2 weeks,  3 weeks and up to the longest was 10 weeks.

So when we walkers, we where 3 by then, arrived to Turkey, 2 of us, Magdalena and me were doing the Ramadan while walking in the heat.

It is beautiful when a whole country or religious group is doing a spiritual exercise together.

In Turkey it was so nice, that we did not have only free accomodation at night, but we were also sometimes invited for a nap at daytime. So beautiful.

Ramadan was created by Mohammad to understand poor people and hunger and thirst better, so you can develop compassion easier. Also people who have savings or gold are not only ask, but ruled to give a specific amount of yourself away to the poor. And it has to be done through Ramadan.

Ramadan is a holy month in Islam. On top of the 5 times prayer a day are some extra ceremonies mostly at night.

All the families enjoy Ramadan so much, because eating together in the evening for fast breaking, iftar, is just guaranteed.

Ramadan is sometime also a bit being a whole month in a jetlag. Lots of people don’t go to bed before the morning prayer. So the whole body rhythm is somewhere else.

The start of Ramadan is always moving in the calendar 10 days forward, earlier, because it starts 12 moon cycles after the last Ramadan ends. A year cycle has 12 moons and 10 days.

I can’t imagine to eat normal meals in the evening and night while walking through the heat at daytime. I guess my diguesting system can’t manage. So I decided to eat only fruits at night and drink water. That works pretty good.

This is my fifth time doing Ramadan. I have to say I don’t do all the prayers. I just do the prayer when I feel like it. Anyway. If I do a Moslem prayer, I do it much slower and always in silence.

So now we have four days left until the Ramadan ends. Then there is coming a 3 day celebration, in Turkey it was called Bayram, the sugar fest.