Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
—Carl Jung
The newer people, of this modern age, are more eager to amass than to realize.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Our unconscious habits develop from our inability to experience and accept things for what they truly are. We might, for instance, make ourselves coffee when we wake up each morning, but if this activity is merely a habit, we are unplugged from the miracle of the whole experience. Do we notice the weather outside in the morning? How about what it feels like inside our home? Are we aware of the sounds at play around us? The sound of the coffee dripping into the pot? The songs of the birds outside our window? Are we aware of the silence between the sounds? Can we truly notice the smell of what we’re pouring into our cup? Can we openly consider how the whole experience came to us in this moment? Do we feel gratitude for those who picked the beans? Gratitude for the sun and the rain that allowed them to grow? Can we taste all of this as we sip our hot morning drink? Are we truly thankful for this brand new day, guaranteed to be filled with mystery and possibility? Maybe we are. Then again, maybe we aren’t. Maybe we’d rather slog down the coffee in order to stave off the deep urge to get back into bed.
Regardless, if we plug into the mystery and powerful nature of this inherently chaotic Universe, the ego’s sense of control gets overwhelmed. This is because the Universe’s activity is impossible for the ego to manage, just like it’s impossible for a child to get the world to obey its commands. Of course, just like the child, the ego can pretend all it wants, but when we climb the Mountain of Spirit, something in us starts to see the folly of ego. Once this happens, the ego’s managerial position is radically diminished.
In order to prevent its loss of stature, the ego creates systems and structures of habit and repetition that it believes will prevent it from being overwhelmed. As we discussed in the last chapter, one of the ego’s perpetual charges is to fill our lives with pleasure and keep out all of the pain, even though the ego’s attachment to this task is exactly what generates pain in the first place. This inadvertent fueling of suffering happens because whenever we experience pleasure, at some point we sense that it will be a temporary event. From here, the ego immediately begins grasping at whatever it thinks will ensure that the pleasure continues. The problem is that pleasure can’t perpetually continue, no matter how much any ego might want this to be true. All things change over time, and suffering will always eventually arise out of any opposition to this natural aspect of life.
Take, for example, our experiences with good food and drink. No matter how we try to keep the pleasure of good food and drink going, it eventually ends. We get too full, or too drunk, or both. If we deny the physical limits of our bodies in order to keep the pleasure going, and we keep eating and drinking, nature has a way of violently reversing our indulgence. On the other hand, if we recognize the temporary nature of our meal, if we fully realize that we ultimately have to let it go, we have a chance to get beyond our craving and rest in a spaciousness that is always and forever fulfilled. Becoming intimate with our dining experience allows each bite of our food and each sip of our wine to be enlivened with an open sense of wonder and awe. Some restaurants help this realization along by serving us slowly and in stages, allowing us to take in the experience of our food and drink with our whole being. Some families approach meals in the same way at home: with care, and a mindful intention that allows the meal to support not only our physical body’s needs, but also our spiritual connection to the miracle of food and the blessing bestowed upon all of us when we share it with others.
The same kind of non-grasping that we can apply to our eating can just as easily be applied to our meditation practice. It’s always nice, for example to have one of those meditation sessions that really puts us at peace. But do we attempt to hang onto the feeling? For that matter, do we try to avoid the more difficult periods of stillness where we can’t seem to escape, say, a bad memory, or pain in the body? Whether we are having an experience of all-encompassing bliss, or we are mired in negative feelings while we sit, the ego will crave for less of the negativity and for more of the bliss. This is natural enough, but in the craving of the bliss the seeds of suffering are sown, since the bliss can’t be maintained perpetually. Bliss, like all other feelings, is temporary.
“Moving toward what you like,” another one of my teachers used to tell me, “or moving away from what you dislike are the same move.” This particular priest had a way about her that put everyone at ease. I loved her for this. In the face of so much seriousness around the Zen community, she offered smiles that could light up the night.
“Comfort and discomfort are temporary states,” she would always say. “They, like everything else, will fade away. So get right in there with all of it, as best you can, again and again, with total relaxation. Do this continually and know that in that still space that notices your state, the potential for deep realization will offer itself to each of us.”
While I liked the sound of her words, I always felt like telling her that sometimes things hurt and you want to avoid them. But I kept quiet and followed her advice to see if just sucking it up would lead to what I hoped would be an actual experience of what she described. In time I saw that she, and all those before her who had said the same thing, were right. Honestly recognizing that both bliss and discomfort are temporary states frees us from fearing the loss of anything.
“Get over it,” she’d say with a laugh. “Whatever it might be. Get over it, and get real. Don’t deny it, just let it go, again and again. You can’t keep anything anyway. Again, whatever it is will eventually be gone. So take responsibility for the way you relate to this fact, process it, deal with it, and then when you’re ready, let the whole thing go. Nothing lasts! This is one of the great Laws of the Universe; one of the great Truths of Buddha’s teaching. In trying to find a creative way to break this Law, we realize that the Universe always wins. Always. Fighting this law is the reason why we suffer.”
As harsh as her words sounded, it was an incredible offering. After more and more hours on the meditation cushion, it also seemed that pleasure and pain were tied together. Whatever pleasure I felt, I wanted to keep, and yet I knew that I had to “get over” the fact that the Universe was going to take it from me. This recognition brought disappointment and pain. It was as though right underneath the pleasure, pain was lurking. But then when I looked at the pain with all of the awareness I could muster, I kept seeing that the Universe was going to take all of my discomfort away, too. There came a time when I decided to ask the teacher about this one directly.
“So pleasure and pain are connected, aren’t they?” I asked
“Pleasure and pain are born together out of the same Infinity,” she beamed. “They coexist and are co-connected, like everything else. They’re like conjoined twins of experience.”
It was a disturbing image but it made sense. I then asked, “Okay, then once I see this truth, what’s next?”
“You mean what’s the next thing to grasp?” she asked with a devilish grin.
She had caught me. I didn’t even see it coming. I could actually feel a craving within me. I felt as if I was on to something, and I desperately wanted to know more. Then again, I was conditioned to crave. I’d been doing it since I was a little kid. Craving helped get me my first real date in high school, just like it got me through college. Does it ever stop? I wondered to myself. Do I even want it to stop?
“Just practice noticing your grasp,” she said with tenderness. “This is what will allow you to open to what is beyond suffering. Knowing that which is beyond suffering supports steadiness and peace in your life.”
“So what about craving Enlightenment?” I asked. “Isn’t that why all of us are here at the Zen Center?”
“Maybe,” she nodded. “But know that the craving itself isn’t bad or good. Nor is craving something you are trying to get rid of.” She paused and smiled again—she could tell I was frustrated. “We should simply be aware of our craving in whatever form it takes, be it mild or intense. That’s what we practice. And this practice is exactly what loosens the ties that bind us.”
“Fine. Then what about someone addicted to something?” I asked, recognizing that a fire had been lit inside of me. “Are you suggesting that they not try to quit their habit?”
I had only experienced addiction on the level of a six-month long smoking habit several years earlier, but quitting was a miserable exercise in self-control. I didn’t know much about the Dharma that this priest was offering me, but I knew enough about my experience to be convinced that just watching my misery wouldn’t have made the misery of kicking the habit any more bearable.
“When our craving becomes unbalanced to the point where it cannot be observed in our experience, it becomes pathological,” she said. “This is what we refer to as addiction.”
She then took a deep breath and closed her eyes, as if she had decided to meditate in the middle of our discussion. After a few seconds, her eyes opened.
“Whenever we refuse to face our circumstances,” she continued, “we begin to rely on our cravings and addictions to insulate us from feeling what’s really going on. We may cling to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, codependent behaviors, eating, mastering a particular topic, music, spiritual practices, or any other behavior or conviction that we habitually turn to in order to keep us from the uncertainty that the Universe is actually giving us at each moment. In this space of perpetual grasping, we live lives that revolve around addiction. If we look carefully enough, we can see that each addiction begins and then ends in a place of pain. Every single time.”
“Yeah, but just watching your pain doesn’t stop it. I can’t imagine telling someone deeply addicted to something to get near the pain, watch it, and you’ll be fine.”
“You’re right,” she laughed. “And if you told me that when I was trying to quit smoking all those years ago I might have gotten off of my Harley and punched you.”
The thought of her on a motorcycle distracted me for a moment.
“No doubt,” she continued, “some addictions deserve extra attention and should get extra care. But after dealing with the most obvious levels of addiction, our meditation practice can help us uncover our avoidances at the subtle levels. Watching our pain won’t keep it from us, but it will change the way we meet it. Watching our pain changes our relationship to it by keeping us from getting caught by it.”
“Okay,” I said, still trying to shake the image of this lady as a biker, “but I’ve seen it happen that well meaning people around this temple seem to become addicted to, or caught by, their practice of Buddhism.”
I knew I was beginning to stand on shaky ground here since she was one of the senior priests, but rather than glaring at me as if I’d cast an insult, her smile broadened and her head nodded slowly.
“People often grasp the forms, scriptures, and rituals,” she said, “in my view becoming one-sided in their approach to the Buddha’s teaching.”
This seemed interesting. Rather than defend what I saw as her life’s work, she openly questioned it with me.
“And in the process of their grasping, practitioners will lose two things,” she said.
I just stared back at her, listening intently.
“Practitioners of any faith,” she continued, “who are addicted to their tradition first lose their balance along the Path and then fall. Things get ugly for them, and they feel even more lost than when they started with their practice. It can be a real mess. Second, people who are addicted to their tradition lose the opportunity for Enlightenment. They become religious; closed down by the mind’s interpretation of texts; addicted to ritual, instead of letting forms and ceremonies show us how the mundane is also sacred. They get caught in a cycle of becoming good Buddhists instead of becoming actual Buddhas; or becoming good Christians, instead of becoming Christs.”
Her words seemed to put everything into an elegant context: the barbs of our craving can’t snag us as long as we’re fully aware them. Still, I knew I shouldn’t cling to any of what she said. We chatted a bit more. We even talked about the San Francisco Giants’ post-season chances that fall. Bowing to her as I left, I felt so fortunate. Just to be able to have this kind of conversation was nice enough, but as I walked back to the meditation hall, the temple grounds seemed to speak the colorful language of autumn. Everything about this moment seemed over-the-top gorgeous. Of course, I did my best to watch how much I craved for more days like this in the future. I entered the zendo and got back on my cushion with tremendous hope. Be fearless in the non-grasping, I thought. The priest hadn’t been afraid of my questions, and I could tell that she recognized some of the hypocrisy that I’d noticed. It didn’t scare her—it seemed like nothing did. She didn’t grasp at anything. Maybe that was her greatest gift—to be so devoid of grasping, so totally fearless, so totally comfortable with the way things are.
