So, what does all this meditation malarkey have to do with my relationship to food, you might ask? How can 15 or 30 or 45 or even 90 minutes a day of sitting and watching my breath do anything to overcome the compulsion to eat in response to emotion? The connection is far from clear, you say. I think it is necessary to dig a bit deeper into the derivation of these compulsions.
One little piece of housekeeping first: I have used the term "ego" up to this point because it was useful and a term most people understand easily. But the usual term for this constellation of thoughts, habits, instincts, and impulses is mind, at least in most discussions of the dharma. So, I intend to use the term "mind" in place of the word ego from now on (at least for the most part). I haven't used that term up to this point because most people think of their minds as being who they are, and it can be quite threatening to think there is something other than this identity. But I hope we are past that by now.
So, all of this talk of meditation and compulsion goes back to the idea that the mind is our protector, responding to every situation that is in the least uncomfortable with an action of some sort. This is all the mind knows to do. As I have said before, what mediation does is create a space in which the mind can operate in its habitual mode, but still allow us some choice in what we do, to decide whether following the dictates of the mind is useful or not. This space we create is usually called consciousness, and is the self that is aware of the workings of the mind without being a part of it. This is a tricky concept to grasp, but not really all that obscure.
Nirvana, a term which is thrown around a great deal, really just means having found the state of being in which consciousness is always present. The Buddha called Nirvana "the end of suffering". (Can you imagine the end of suffering?) The reason I bring up Nirvana is because we have all been there. Now, I don't mean we have all been there in previous lifetimes or some such thing. Rather, we have all experienced fleeting moments of Nirvana in our lifetimes. Any time you have been totally present in a moment, without any egoic interference or input, you have been totally in consciousness, and therefore in a fleeting slice of Nirvana.
Some of the more common moments of pure consciousness: gazing at a newborn, sitting by the ocean, at the top of a mountain, beside a stream, with a loved one, or listening to a great musical work. You can recognize this drop into pure consciousness by the utter calm enveloping you in that moment. Unfortunately, for those of us who have not yet reached a lasting state of Nirvana this state cannot be made to last. Our attempts to grasp it and get it to stay or to replicate it are doomed to failure, since the grasping itself is a form of the creation of suffering. Still, we have all felt it.
Meditation allows us to know that there is a space that is not dominated by mind. When we turn our awareness from the chattering mind to the breath, it is a movement away from this domination and into consciousness. And it is only in this consciousness that true and lasting peace can be found. When we look outside ourselves for peace, we will be constantly disappointed. Even if we achieve it for a moment, it will then inevitably change and move away from the perfection we thought we had achieved. If we then try to reproduce the conditions that seemed to create that perfection, we doom ourselves to further frustration and eventual despair. What else have we been doing with our addictions but this very thing? The problem with getting tastes of Nirvana is that the mind then tries to take control of the process and replicate that which it cannot even hope to understand, nonetheless build. But the more we use the tools of meditation and the teachings of the Buddha to expand consciousness, the more joy and openness we feel.
When we are uncomfortable in any situation, we are faced with a choice. We can take a habitual action, or we can take an action born out of conscious awareness (which is often no action at all). Our addictions are all habitual actions run by the mind on a more or less constant loop. To break that loop and come to a realization of the presence of a different way of responding, we must practice what is known in some circles as "the holy pause". We must see our compulsion for what it is, and realize we have a choice, rather than plunging headlong into it. Sometimes we will still choose that second slice of cheesecake. So be it. There is no right or wrong in this, merely awareness. And if the cheesecake causes us to suffer more than it causes us joy, with consciousness we can take this into our hearts as an experience from which we can learn. Guilt and shame really have no place here; these are efforts to control through violence, not accept and change through love, which is the only thing worth doing. The violence of shame is a function of the mind; the gentleness of acceptance and love is a function of the heart, where true peace and consciousness reside.
One little piece of housekeeping first: I have used the term "ego" up to this point because it was useful and a term most people understand easily. But the usual term for this constellation of thoughts, habits, instincts, and impulses is mind, at least in most discussions of the dharma. So, I intend to use the term "mind" in place of the word ego from now on (at least for the most part). I haven't used that term up to this point because most people think of their minds as being who they are, and it can be quite threatening to think there is something other than this identity. But I hope we are past that by now.
So, all of this talk of meditation and compulsion goes back to the idea that the mind is our protector, responding to every situation that is in the least uncomfortable with an action of some sort. This is all the mind knows to do. As I have said before, what mediation does is create a space in which the mind can operate in its habitual mode, but still allow us some choice in what we do, to decide whether following the dictates of the mind is useful or not. This space we create is usually called consciousness, and is the self that is aware of the workings of the mind without being a part of it. This is a tricky concept to grasp, but not really all that obscure.
Nirvana, a term which is thrown around a great deal, really just means having found the state of being in which consciousness is always present. The Buddha called Nirvana "the end of suffering". (Can you imagine the end of suffering?) The reason I bring up Nirvana is because we have all been there. Now, I don't mean we have all been there in previous lifetimes or some such thing. Rather, we have all experienced fleeting moments of Nirvana in our lifetimes. Any time you have been totally present in a moment, without any egoic interference or input, you have been totally in consciousness, and therefore in a fleeting slice of Nirvana.
Some of the more common moments of pure consciousness: gazing at a newborn, sitting by the ocean, at the top of a mountain, beside a stream, with a loved one, or listening to a great musical work. You can recognize this drop into pure consciousness by the utter calm enveloping you in that moment. Unfortunately, for those of us who have not yet reached a lasting state of Nirvana this state cannot be made to last. Our attempts to grasp it and get it to stay or to replicate it are doomed to failure, since the grasping itself is a form of the creation of suffering. Still, we have all felt it.
Meditation allows us to know that there is a space that is not dominated by mind. When we turn our awareness from the chattering mind to the breath, it is a movement away from this domination and into consciousness. And it is only in this consciousness that true and lasting peace can be found. When we look outside ourselves for peace, we will be constantly disappointed. Even if we achieve it for a moment, it will then inevitably change and move away from the perfection we thought we had achieved. If we then try to reproduce the conditions that seemed to create that perfection, we doom ourselves to further frustration and eventual despair. What else have we been doing with our addictions but this very thing? The problem with getting tastes of Nirvana is that the mind then tries to take control of the process and replicate that which it cannot even hope to understand, nonetheless build. But the more we use the tools of meditation and the teachings of the Buddha to expand consciousness, the more joy and openness we feel.
When we are uncomfortable in any situation, we are faced with a choice. We can take a habitual action, or we can take an action born out of conscious awareness (which is often no action at all). Our addictions are all habitual actions run by the mind on a more or less constant loop. To break that loop and come to a realization of the presence of a different way of responding, we must practice what is known in some circles as "the holy pause". We must see our compulsion for what it is, and realize we have a choice, rather than plunging headlong into it. Sometimes we will still choose that second slice of cheesecake. So be it. There is no right or wrong in this, merely awareness. And if the cheesecake causes us to suffer more than it causes us joy, with consciousness we can take this into our hearts as an experience from which we can learn. Guilt and shame really have no place here; these are efforts to control through violence, not accept and change through love, which is the only thing worth doing. The violence of shame is a function of the mind; the gentleness of acceptance and love is a function of the heart, where true peace and consciousness reside.
This is a great blog that I just stumbled on. keep it going.
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