What to give up for Lent?

Hindus then and now love their tilak or ash hashmark of ascetic pyre ashes.

Anyone can abstain for the better.

My friends are lucky. They get to be ascetics for the next 40 days (which in Ethiopia, the original "Israel," means 40 days of "fasting," which means abstaining from eating dead animals and feasting on vegetarian cuisine). Catholics and other traditionalists worldwide begin a Lenten period starting today, Ash Wednesday. It has been watered down to the max -- not eating meat on Fridays but getting a pass by considering fish an insensate vegetable, not giving up anything, doing nothing to better themselves for this great spiritual opportunity.

Catholicism borrowed the rosary (mala) used by Buddhists and Hindus

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Give up my nip? Are you crazy? I need it to live!

As Buddhists we do the "sabbath" (uposatha) as the lunar observance day, weekly on the four moon phases (keeping the Eight Precepts instead of the regular Five Precepts), but only monastics do "Lent" (Vas), the Rains Retreat. Of course, Buddhists have many spiritual growth opportunities at that time of year, too, by participating with nuns and monks, who pause their wanderings to remain at one monastery or nunnery (vihara) for three months to practice intensively: meditating, cultivating the Threefold Training (virtue, stillness, insight), listening to and teaching the Dharma, studying, reflecting, and contemplating.

Wait, Buddhists can do Christmas? Yes.

Like celebrating Xmas with Buddhist Lisa Simpson, doing Catholic Lent sounds fun and potentially very beneficial. If Catholics can give up a bad habit -- meat (devouring the corpses of animals murdered for the flesh trade), fried foods, porn, joeing, sugar, smoking, drugs, video games, social media, alcohol, cussing, getting angry, buying single use plastics... -- I want to, too! But what? What to give up when it's my choice to better myself and make life better for everyone around me? I think it's time I get environmentally conscious and go vegan or at least vegetarian. What would you give up if you had the power to?

Women in the Philippines line up for their tickets to heaven, ash marks of holiness.