The trick is realising when the body really needs something and when we are craving for craving’s sake.

Buddhism seems to indicate denial of the body, of physical existence, when it denies the existence of an ego. ‘I’ (heh) don’t believe this is the case. Our presence within this world is inseparable from the physical body; indeed, one question aspirants have asked for thousands of years is ‘where do I abode?’

The Buddha neither seems to affirm or deny the physical body, though he discusses the eye as if it were an existing thing (at least as long as form and emptiness are the same).

If this is true, then existing during this lifetime must happen as expressed through the physical body. There is no other way. We must understand the physiological demands of our body and attend to them properly until death frees us. This, I think, is the valuable lesson of yoga that practitioners of mind training sometimes miss. The body is our presence in this world, not some ethereal mind.

The trick is realising when the body really needs something and when we are craving for craving’s sake. The real trick is understanding that most of us are not at a point where we can decide for ourselves – and that is when tradition guides us.