| Addiction by Bonni Ross Vancouver, March 1997 For more teachings by Bonni visit the Sunshine Coast Retreat House website What I want to talk about this evening is addiction. This is an important question, and I ask you to stop right now and ask yourself "what am I addicted to?" Just think about it for a moment. Everyone should be able to come up with quite a lengthy list. It can be helpful go to the dictionary to see what the definition of a word actually is, rather than what we've come to think it is through common usage. My Concise Oxford Dictionary was extremely interesting. The first definition refers to a formal judicial process which goes back to the time when young people were legally apprenticed to a master craftsman in order to learn a trade. Their formal sentencing by a court into that service was called addiction. Curious, isn't it? The dictionary says, "hence, dedication to a master, devotion," and this is a very new orientation. We have something similar in our culture in the mentoring process, where someone older and more experienced will guide the career or the life path of an individual. And in the spiritual traditions of the East, there is a strong emphasis on the necessity of this sort of teacher/student relationship, although only in a voluntary, not a legal sense. What are you dedicated to, devoted to? Your family? Your business? Your looks? Your ideas? The second definition was "the state of being self-addicted." Remember the story of Narcissus, the young man who loved his image so much that, while admiring his reflection in a pool, he fell in and drowned in his own self-regard? How dedicated or devoted are you to yourself? This definition includes being attached to one's own actions, one's own feelings and thoughts. The third definition is "the way in which one is addicted, bent, or inclined to." What distorts your life? What draws you in like a magnet? The fourth one is devotion or habitual application to a practice. Could it be that what we are advocating in these talks is addiction to meditation? What about people who get cranky if they miss their aerobics class? Is that withdrawal from an addiction? If we are going to examine addiction, we have to move beyond the obvious to subtle levels. I would hope that most of us are honest enough to confess the ice cream binges when weathering an emotional upset, the gambling, the cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. We've learned enough from the various Twelve Step programs to realize that admitting the truth is the absolutely essential first step to breaking free. So let me ask you: do you think you are addicted to your own body? How devoted are you to how you look, how you think you look or how you would like to look? How much of your identity as a separate, unique individual is dependent upon a certain way of appearing in the world? How much effort do you put into maintaining this image? We have a culture that encourages this addiction, and a lot of money changes hands because of it! So many people are unhappy with how they look! A lot of dieting and exercising and shopping and hair colouring goes on to satisfy the craving for a body image. This is suffering! In extreme it leads into behaviour that can be very destructive, even deadly. How addicted are you to particular foods? How addicted are you to sex? Or sleep? Where does life-preserving instinct leave off and addiction begin? We must examine these questions if we aspire to freedom from all patterning, because instincts are profound codings that bind us biologically. What about addiction to emotional states? Each emotion has its unique body chemistry, its hormonal wash. If you find yourself repeatedly angry, greedy, jealous, victimized, any of these repetitive dialogues, you have an addiction to the drugs produced by your own organism! In bipolar illness (formerly labelled manic-depression) the blocked energy state is so threatening to life that there is a bursting into wild activity in compensation. After a period the mania becomes as harmful as the depression, and the cycle reverses. Soon the neuro-chemistry is programmed. For many in the West the expression of anger feels good -- the organism doesn't feel dead or dull any more, it feel energized, it feels ALIVE!! Much popular psychology has capitalized on the rush people experience when some bottled up rage is "expressed." My father would argue passionately about anything, for the sheer pleasure of the juice of the process. We've been subjected all week to news reports on the latest buzz word -- Road Rage, a phenomenon with identified stages, from giving the finger to the guy who just cut you off, escalating to actually pulling someone from their car and pummeling them to death. I have worked in environments where people were addicted to their own adrenalin. You'd see a crisis being created so that everybody could feel that emergency sensation and then, ahhh! when the crisis was over, a deep breath and relax. Sounds similar to the build-up of sexual arousal, doesn't it? Now it's good to know that you can marshall your resources when there's a crisis. Our primate ancestors depended on this adrenalin response for the aggression to kill for food or protection and for flight when danger was to great to be faced, and it still has survival value today. But if it becomes the only way you can respond, and if the response is inappropriate to the context, then there's a problem. If a child experiences neglect or some kind of abusive activity, chances are that the adult will have become so habituated to the emotional state associated with the neglect or abuse that there is unconscious seeking to repeat this again and again in life. This can be tragic. When the emotional states are so confused that unwholesome (or life-threatening) behaviour and feelings are mistaken for wholesome (or life-enhancing) ones, simple awareness is not sufficient for liberation. If you believe you may be addicted to being a victim, or caught in some level of sado-masochistic response to the world, to other people, it is advisable to seek psychological help, in addition to keeping your meditation practice current. This combination of approaches leads to speedy healing. We also have habitual mental states. Now, to talk about mental states is to go a degree even more subtle than to talk about feeling states, because here we are talking about the quality or texture of the mind itself, not the content. Sometimes the mind feels very dull and heavy and sometimes very light; sometimes very fluid and flowing and sometimes very stuck, regardless of what thoughts or feelings may be present. In the Buddhist teaching there is a complex study of mental states, a much more precise analysis than anything that exists in Western psychology so far. So it's possible to train and deepen our awareness to include all of these patternings of consciousness as well, and to begin to notice which of them predominate. And that's one reason why we persevere with meditation, because as consciousness quietens down a little bit, after some work, we are able to see the complexity of what's going on. And the training, the precision that we come to through the discipline of our formal practice, ideally spills over into the life. So we pay more attention to what's going on in our being from moment to moment throughout the day. On a very practical level, you catch the tension before it builds up in the habitual posture that you have at your computer, the habitual way you hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder while you're doing three other things! And you start noticing that those addictive behaviour patterns have an effect. And if you notice what the effect is, and you don't like it, then you can change the behaviour. But if you're not noticing, if you're not clued in on that level, then you are absolutely powerless to make change and you come home at the end of the day wondering why your body feels like its been in a torture chamber. In the classical teaching of Buddhadharma, the root of all suffering is clinging or craving -- the word in the ancient language is tanha and literally translated it means thirst. We crave sense-objects: visible objects, sound, odours, tastes, bodily impressions, and mental impressions. We cling to our existence, and our thoughts and opinions. You've all been thirsty at some point, right? If you've had that experience, you recognize the raw power of that drive. In the teaching of liberation, it says that noticing the sensations that produce this craving is the primary place where we have to stop, freeze the program because it's here that we can break into the patterning and change it. If we're not asking questions about those patterns and observing our habits and our opinions we will not be able to change. We cling to our views so much, we get such pleasure from them, pet them, share them with others (whether they're interested in them or not). This work requires honesty and a little humility. You're not going to change the patterns of a lifetime in a moment, but you can have a bit of humour about it and at least recognize that your views are an addiction, your idea of reality is an addiction, your sense of what's appropriate is an addiction and that you may actually be part of a vast conspiracy of consensus -- everyone may agree with you, but that doesn't make it free, doesn't make it a liberated state if you have to think that way, if you have to feel that way. All of your education, from your parents, your school, from religious insitutions, has been about the inculcation of habits. Do you suppose there are "national" habits? Are Canadians addicted to being nice, bland, non-aggressive and stubborn? The difference between addictive habits and and those of wholesome purpose is whether or not you are free to behave some other way. But if you find yourself in the same kind of repetitive dialogue, relationship after relationship, if you find yourself in the same kind of frustration, job after job, then you're moving in the direction of being able to identify patterning that is unwholesome, that is not supportive of freedom. In this Teaching it's also important to see what your positive habit patterns are, because they too must be transcended. At first we present the idea of exchanging bad habits for more wholesome patterning, but freedom means not being bound by habitual patterns at all, choosing whatever behaviour is appropriate in a situation. Evaluative work is needed to comprehend what is wholesome and what is unwholesome; it would be good to strike the words good and bad out of the vocabulary in this context. To be in a wholesome state is to feel well and whole and happy, not split off into all sorts of bits and pieces and pulled in many different directions by conflicting emotions, ideas, demands from other people, but to have a sense of all-roundedness and wellness that carries on through in life no matter what the external circumstances are. Have you noticed that circumstances are always changing? No matter how hard you try to make the good things remain the same, they change! When the situation changes and you are stuck with outdated habits that are inappropriate, your suffering increases. So here's some homework! See for yourselves what habits have you in their grip. Just go see . . . Click here for the printfriendly version of this page About Us / Program / Teachers / Treasury / Buddings / Images / Links / Books / Stay / Contact Us / Members
Sarva Mangalam - All is Blessing
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