A Reflection on Lent

by Namaste Staff Writer

This is a special reflection for Lent, based on the movie Chocolat.

The movie opens with the words of the village priest, "This is the season of Lent. It is a time of abstinence, a time of reflection, and hopefully a time of sincere penitence."

Lent––a time to restrict yourself. Don't give in to something you usually like. After the binging of Mardi Gras, in preparation for Easter, deny yourself. Rein in your desire.

The Count Delenoe sets the tone of the village. He is a strict observant of Lent. But he is faced with a crisis when the North wind blows in a female and her daughter, both in red capes––symbols of desire.

The count is denying himself even normal food, missing meals, eating the plainest of fare––and right before his eyes materializes a symbol of indulgence.

Vianne Rosher, unmarried, and her daughter Anouk, open a store that flies in the face of the very essence of Lent.

Espying the sinfully delicious array, the shocked Count enters the premises, introduces himself to Vianne, and invites her to church. When she announces that she doesn't practice, the Count crosses to the hairdresser where he declares to the prudish women of the village, "Have you seen the new shop?"

"The chocolaterie?" they ask.

"Shameless," he gasps. "Opening it just in time for Lent. Brazen. My heart goes out to the illegitimate child."

The Count is terrified of all that Vianne’s chocolate shop represents. It isn't just the chocolate, it's the desire to live life fully, enjoy oneself, symbolized by chocolate.

For the Count, to indulge his desire would be to admit his marriage is over, his wife long gone, and allow himself to develop a relationship with the church organist, who is in love with him, and with whom he is in love but cannot face the fact.

In the thinking of some, Christianity involves the suppression of desire, and such people see Lent as the epitome of this suppression. Not only do these Christians have a tough time with desire, but some Buddhists also propose that desire is undesirable and indeed the very cause of suffering. And there are those in Islam who also have little tolerance for desire, as reflected in the burqua shrouding the female form. For many religions, the path to nirvana, or heaven, is self-denial. They imagine that to eliminate desire is the path to peace of mind.

In direct conflict with this suppression of desire, Vianne serves hot chocolate with chili pepper––an elixir that sets all the senses aflame. The mother of the church organist is a rebel, unlike her repressed daughter, and comments, "It tastes like . . . I don't know. Are you sure you didn't put booze in there? Perhaps you should give it to my daughter who won't let me see my grandson. If only she would let him run, let him breathe, let him live."

For much of religion, desire is the original sin. Don't dare live! Eve, in the story of the garden of Eden, sees the fruit of the forbidden tree, desires it, and takes it. She wants to breathe a little, explore a fuller life. She shares the forbidden fruit with Adam, and the two of them suddenly have their eyes opened and become aware that they are naked. Now they are fully exposed to desire, and the automatic response is shame. They sew fig leaves to hide from their desire for each other.

Through their contact with the chocolaterie, some of the women of the village stop closing their eyes to their desire and come alive to their passion. In defiance of the imposed sanitizing of Easter, they plan a fertility celebration for Easter Sunday. Joyful celebration of the body, symbolized by chocolate, is restored to its rightful place as representative of the wonder and wholeness and magic of desire. With our desire resurrected, we are raised up into the fullness of life. A grand celebration with dancing and merriment follows.

Monsieur Le Compte, terrified of awakening to his desire and being liberated from all that Lent depicts, tells Vianne, "The first count expelled all the rebel Huguenots from this village." Huguenots were a group of protestants who became the center of political and religious quarrels in France during the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. "You and your truffles will be far less of a challenge. You will be out of business by Easter, I promise you that."

Suppress desire, drive it far from you, starve it out––this has always been the message of some, who have never really grasped what spirituality really is. The Count had "boycott immorality" posters emblazoned in all the shop windows throughout the village. Forbidden fruit––don't touch, lest you breathe a little and live!

The Count, deadened to his desire through repression, finds himself acting out the consequences of what he has repressed. As his desire is tantalized by the chocolaterie and the organist, he becomes so angry that his wife has gone, leaving him exposed to the full blast of his desire for the organist, that he finds himself in his wife’s closet with a pair of scissors cutting up all of her dresses and undergarments. It would be so much easier to continue burying his desire in convention would she only return!

The root of all dysfunctionality is the deadening of our passion. When you deny your deepest self, your desire is going to turn rogue––you will find yourself cutting up dresses, so to speak. Denial of our desiring self is the root of all kinds of dysfunctionality in our world. This is a lesson the Buddha learned the hard way (see the earlier blog on this site).

It is not desire that is original sin. Our original sin is the denial of desire––the restriction of our fundamental yearning for the full expression of ourselves in every dimension of our lives. When we conduct our everyday lives as if it were Lent, we are the walking dead, in need of an Easter resurrection.

The denial of desire is the touchstone for alienation from ourselves, our fellow humans, and the very planet itself. Desire is basic to being. To be alive is to desire. If you didn't desire, you'd die. The life-force functions through desire.

In Chocolat, you see the Count sitting at his work desk, and his secretary has put some food there. Nothing too tempting, just basic sustenance. Finally, starving, he is forced to eat. Again and again, you see the tension between the count's religious belief that he should deny himself, and his longing for food, conviviality, the fullness of life.

Desire isn't craving that which you don't have. Desire is radically different from craving. Craving is neediness, born of the fact you don't feel complete in yourself. It’s this that both Jesus and the Buddha realized causes us grief.

A kid on the streets sees the latest pair of Nikes, pulls a gun, and seizes them. That's not desire, that's a sense of emptiness craving an identity.

Desire is you feeling fantastic about yourself and wanting to express how fantastic you feel. Desire isn't hankering after something you don't have, it's wanting to be who you are and to invest yourself in life.

The difference between need and desire is the fullness of being that makes possible the investment of yourself. If you don't feel wonderful, you use others to prop you up. When they fail to meet your need, you move on, from person to person, or place to place—like Vianne, and like the river rat who comes into her life but leaves again because he tells himself that to stay is too costly.

When the Count denies himself normal enjoyment, tells himself chocolate is forbidden fruit––and the organist he’s attracted to is forbidden fruit, even though his wife is truly long gone and he knows it––he sets himself up to crave these things. It's not the wanting that's the problem, it's the craving, which is a quite unnatural feeling. You're afraid to go for something, yet you can't stand the thought of being without it, and so you are caught up in what we know as lust.

Lust is not the same as desire. Desire wants the object of one's desire. Lust is what happens when we are in flight from our desires. We borrow the person, or take the new Nikes, to scratch an itch for a moment, but we don't invest ourselves.

There is a theme that runs through Chocolat. It is that awakening desire, symbolized by chocolate, is an aphrodisiac. Now I understand why my Sunday school teachers in my teens taught me to be afraid of desire. They were like Monsieur Le Compte. I needed to be strong, they admonished. This is what the Count stresses to his constituents. His definition of strength is the ability to put attraction to chocolate––or a pretty organist––out of one's mind. Strength, the Count and my Sunday School teachers emphasized, means not wanting.

And that's just the problem––we have so many couples who are together without truly wanting each other. Even when bodies entwine, there's often little real connection, little true looking into each other's souls, little real desiring of the person, little investment of yourself in the person. You want the sensation, but you don't want the person.

The problem in our sex-saturated society isn't too much desire but too little desire. There's a lack of desire in much sex. People don't really want each other. It's not desire that's the cause of our heartache, our anguish, our suffering, as so many think, it's neediness that borrows the other for an ego boost but doesn't want the other.

The river rat finds himself so deeply touched by Mademoiselle Vianne that his desiring center, until now denied as he flits from landing dock to landing dock, at the end of the movie brings him home to himself and a new life. He's dressed differently, looking like he's cleaned up his act, and he's ready to invest deeply. Lust has been transmuted into desire.

Desire is investing myself in that in which I am involved, instead of holding it at arms' length and craving something different.

If I am with someone with whom I cannot invest myself, or in a job in which I cannot invest myself, then I need to have the strength to follow my longing to become a fully invested person and change my situation to one in which I can invest myself.

Anything less than to desire with all my being is a lack of integrity. Salvation, which is a word simply meaning health or wholeness, is the ability to bring my whole self to whatever I am doing. I am fully present in the now, instead of my thoughts and eyes roaming everywhere but where I am, craving something different.

When the church organist emerges from the Chocolaterie with a smile on her face and an arm lovingly resting on her son's shoulder, accepting at last the boy's desire to breathe and to run, which she has been controlling, the Count sighs, "All of my efforts have been for nothing." He goes to the church, kneels before the crucifix, and picks up a silver dagger. In righteous rage, he breaks into the chocolaterie and, seeing a chocolate statue of a naked woman, slashes it to pieces. But when chocolate accidentally touches his lips, he is done for. He eats the chocolate woman, gorges himself on nipples of Venus, and satiates his soul with every variety of chocolate.

That's what lust is. It's desire denied, then gone wild. When you can't yield to the normal flow of desire and invest yourself, you create a monster within yourself. You set yourself up for an orgy. Suppression of desire turns rogue, causing your desire to be experienced not as a free-flowing enjoyment of your goodness and worthiness, but as a driving compulsion.

So where does our denial come from? Why do we suppress desire? Why can't we simply accept the fact that we love life, and embrace our desire to enjoy to the fullest? Why can't we celebrate the rapture that desire embraced makes possible?

You watch people coming into the chocolaterie fearful just to buy a chocolate. What they are really experiencing is embarrassment. They are ashamed to admit they love to give themselves up to pleasure. I mean, you're supposed to hold back, not surrender to feeling wonderful––which is why we actually use the term "sinfully delicious" for things like chocolate!

It's like, if you really love something, totally indulge your senses, then you have to feel guilty. You search for fig leaves because you're ashamed of wanting something that's so good.

Religion is too often in the fig leaf business. It has a knack for identifying the things we can't hardly stand wanting, then branding them forbidden fruit to let us off the hook so we don't really have to come to terms with our desire. This kind of religion is the opposite of an authentic spirituality.

Underlying this guilt is the sense that you don't have a right to enjoy yourself this much. This is the essence of original sin. Isn't this what the garden of Eden story is about?

The way many people read the foundational story of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that they use it to confirm their inner sense that they don't have a “right” to enjoy themselves. It's a story used to let you off the hook, so you feel justified in repressing your desire and holding back from investing yourself fully.

This interpretation plays to people's self-deprecation, which is the bait for all systems of control. Says the story, read as most read it, the things you want most of all are forbidden to you––and if you dare go for them, you're going to get it in the neck. Besides which, you're going to feel terrible shame. You low life, you! Suppress your desire. You're not worthy of this much enjoyment.

In Chocolat, Vianne has been in flight from the full expression of her desire. Every time she runs into society's disapproval, she moves on, dragging her daughter with her. Her daughter's imaginary kangaroo, Pantouf, is an image of how she hops from one place to another, never settling and facing her fears. As the story unfolds, and she yields to her desire, she draws around her a network of meaningful relationships in which people can connect deeply. They are invested in each other, and in their venture together. Love flourishes.

The movie illustrates how, far from being a sign of weakness, it takes strength to embrace your desire, instead of running from it. It takes courage to really want. The fearful person is trapped in a cycle of guilt over their most basic desires, compounded with a craving for all that they reject, which tortures them in a living hell.

It is the priest who, on Easter morning, discovers the count sleeping off his chocolate orgy in the window of the chocolaterie, covered in chocolate. In his sermon that morning, the priest talks about "not measuring our goodness by the things we don't do, the things we resist, the things we deny ourselves, the people we exclude. We need to measure our goodness by what we embrace, by what we create, and who we include." These are hallmarks of a genuine spirituality.

A spiritual master was asked by a disappointed visitor, "Why has my stay here yielded no fruit?"

The master responded, "Could it be because you lacked the courage to shake the tree?"

Vianne had the courage to shake the tree. In your work, your play, your romantic life, do you have the courage, the strength, to truly shake the tree? Are you ready to awaken to desire, to go for what you want? Or do you prefer to stay locked in a half-life in which guilt and fear keep you from ever tasting the wonder of what society likes to label "forbidden fruit?"

The North Wind, a clever wind, figures prominently in the movie. It is a metaphor for the way the deep Presence that draws us toward salvation––which is the full enjoyment of every aspect of ourselves––is at work in our lives, inviting us to celebrate who we are.

Always when the North Wind blows, it makes trouble for us. It wreaks havoc with our usual, normal, mediocre ways of doing things. It breaks open the doors of our lives, bringing an icy blast that gets our attention, stops us in our tracks. It shows us that our present deal with life isn't working.

What is truth? This is an age-old question, and it is the question Chocolat addresses. It asks us to allow the North Wind to blow away the fake ways we live, the facades, the pretense. Only then do we find what truth is––and it is to be true to our deepest selves.

The Count is anything but true to himself. He has bought into an idea of tranquility that isn't peaceful at all. The little town has an air of peace, but it is the result of suppression. Yet the very thing that the Count, through his moralizing, suppresses, becomes his liberation. His desire is at last unleashed, and by the end of the movie he's even thinking of dating the organist!

When it has blown the false out of our lives, the North Wind is needed no more. A statue of the Count's ancestor in the village square, at first frozen and dour, begins to thaw. By the end, it is smiling. A south wind now blows, bringing connection rooted in desire that is invested in relationships.

And it all began with one woman. The entire system, built on the Count's repression and maintained by suppression, crumbles because one person refuses to play the games, refuses to be phony, and finally stands tall, true to herself. As Michael Brown likes to say in his book The Presence Process, Vianne finally begins to “show up” in her life.

Vianne doesn't get there in one step, though. And neither do the others who enter into the new consciousness.

After all she does to help others discover themselves, Vianne suddenly finds herself wanting to run. In the wake of a fire on the river rat's boat, she is ready to call it quits. She packs her bags to leave, with the urn of her mother's ashes, continuing the patterns of behavior she learned from her family of origin.

There is a neat interplay between the conscious characters, revealing how none of us is a world unto ourselves, and how we move into being true to ourselves with the help of each other––and yet it is a reality that must dawn in each of us individually.

Vianne brings Josephine, a truly suppressed woman in the town, into a knowledge of her true self. At first it is a borrowed sense of self. Josephine can only make the stand for herself that she makes because of Vianne. But when Vianne wants to run, Josephine questions whether there was any substance to what Vianne taught her.

This is the moment when Josephine comes into her own. She “shows up.” She realizes that Vianne may want to run, telling herself nothing has been changed by all her efforts, and she may be totally on her own in her newfound consciousness, but there is no denying she has been changed forever.

Josephine's ability to stand tall now impacts Vianne, who at last sheds her self-doubt completely and realizes that her running days are over. As the women own their new identity, the entire village system crumbles and even the Count begins to find his true self.

With many of us, it's only when it seems impossible to go on that we at last realize there is no going back. Only now, through crisis, do we fully embrace our new identity. This is the case for Vianne, Josephine, and the Count. It is sheer desperation that drives them to finally stand up and be counted for who they truly are––to finally “show up” in their lives. When they are at last no longer anxious about themselves, the whole system undergoes a shift. Everyone is transformed as the phony tranquility of the village comes to an end.

The tranquil, orderly, everything-in-its-place village of the Count Delanoe yields to a delight with life that births a new kind of tranquility in the village. It is a tranquility of the heart reconciled to its yearnings and longings, instead of the facade of tranquility achieved by suppression.

Remember the words at the beginning of the movie? Lent is a time of abstinence, a time of reflection, and hopefully a time of sincere penitence. This Lent, may we learn to abstain from all repressions and suppression of our divine desires. Using Michael Brown’s The Presence Process, let us reflect on all the ways we have failed to show up in our lives. Then, let us enter into sincere penitence, renouncing all self-suppression, all compromising of ourselves, all that is less than a life that is truly divine.

Let The Presence Process, both the books and CDs, become our Lenten fast—and through it, may we enter the joyous celebration of Easter.