Third Hunger

The Hunger to Avoid Being, and the Fear of Being Seen (pp.45-48)

The hunger for what the Buddha called nonbeing is the urge to escape....It is a fundamental recoiling from the hurt of life...

And just as the interpersonal hunger for being is the urge to be seen, the interpersonal hunger for non-being is the urge not to be seen, to be invisible, to escape, to shrink from interpersonal contact and its possible hurt.

The hunger for escape also takes the form of fear of losing current safety.

Gregory Kramer, p.45

Second Hunger (cont'd)

To properly understand the power of the hunger to be seen, and its accompanying fear of invisibility, it is essential to understand its relationship with our elemental fear of death and of existential emptiness... If we understand this...we may soften our judgments of social longings--our own and others'--that we might judge as trivial.

Gregory Kramer, p.41