|Eat ,Pray, Love| Discussion Questions on Book 1 Italy

Eat, Pray, Love - Suggested Discussion Questions on "Book One Italy"

For those who are unable to complete the reading prior to our meeting, I provide a list of passages and questions from the reading so that you have something to reflect upon. These passages and questions are simply a guideline to jump start conversation. As always, my preference is that you spend the entire evening sharing your answer to the final question.

Pg 115-116 "I came to Italy pinched and thin. I did not know yet what I deserved. I still maybe don't fully know what I deserve. But I do know that I have collected myself of late - through the enjoyment of harmless pleasures - into somebody much more intact. The easiest, most fundamentally human way to say it is that I have put on weight. I exist more now that I did four months ago. I will leave Italy noticeably bigger than when I arrived here. And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person - the magnification of one life - is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody's but my own."

This passage encapsulates one big reason that I wanted to discuss this book. "Book 1 Italy" generates strong opinions from either end of the spectrum: readers either love it because they perceive Elizabeth Gilbert actions are self-nurturing or hate it because they perceive that Elizabeth Gilbert is extremely self-centered.

Where do you fall on the spectrum? Why?
In your opinion, what is the distinction between self-nurturance and self-centered? Is a commitment to self-nurturance necessarily self-centered?

Pg 29 "The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I'd said to the medicine man in Bali - I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence - the dual glories of human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety."

I am intrigued by the concept of striving for balanced life that includes appreciation and celebration of what is available to us, rather than deprivation to enhance single-minded focus. Do you feel that worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence are mutually exclusive?
Do you agree with the assertion that "both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish"? If you do, then how do you create that space in your own life to express and experience those elements?

Pg 61 "Il bel far niente means "the beauty of doing nothing". Now listen - Italians have traditionally always been hard workers, especially those long-suffering laborers known as braccianti (so called because they had nothing but the brute strength of their arms - braccie - to help them survive in this world). But even against that backdrop of hard work, il bel far niente has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either."

I recently realized that I have conditioned myself to believe that one accomplishment is simply the stepping stone to the next. As a result, I rarely experience satisfaction or appreciation when I successfully complete something or allow myself to simply relax - there is always more to be done. I am intrigued by the concept of il bel far niente - it seems to be a way to put my all into a given task, but to simply allow myself space to just be when the task is done. And yet, doing nothing doesn't sit well with me. What is your reaction?

Pg 75 "I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough - but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, once must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

There are two essential Buddhists concepts in this passage: 1) It is our reactions to circumstances that create chaos, not the circumstances themselves; and 2) Humans suffer because we become attached to things that, by their very nature, will change. Suffering is a mental condition caused by resisting the natural change.
I find that as I strive to adopt these perspectives that my outlook has become calmer. Do you have personal experience with this? Do you believe that adopting these perspectives could support you in your life?

Pg 114 "Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the sense stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors ... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business - not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into ... rhetoric and plot. ... What can you do in such an environment to hold a sense of your individual human dignity? Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing except, perhaps, to pride yourself on the fact that you always fillet your fish with perfection, or that you make the lightest ricotta in the whole town?"

The concept of trusting one's experience when events in the outer world seem contradictory or negative. Yoga therapy has taught me to trust my experience that when I take actions to nourish my senses (yoga, meditation, appreciating a sunset, making a meal with love, etc), the more I am able to respond to outside forces with equanimity. What has been your experience?
The concept of doing the best you can with what is within your control as a way to hold a sense of your individual human dignity. I teach a meditation that encourages people to choose "the best" – to make the most colorful meal; to be my calmest during a commute; to be the most focused during a conversation, etc. I find that this commitment to the task encourages me to be more mindful and satisfying results happen. What do you think of this concept?

Was there a particular passage that made you stop and either consider or appreciate?