So what does all of this talk about noble paths and truths and such have to do with losing weight, I suspect you would like to know. The fact is that those of us who eat to excess have little idea why. Pema Chodron talks about "a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it." This misunderstanding is the idea that we are not safe and that we must do something, anything, to make ourselves safe. This idea of safety becomes the drive to assure permanence, the idea that those things that make us feel safe will never leave us, and those that make us unsafe will never find us. Sure, we can acknowledge that these are unrealistic goals, but we still constantly strive to accomplish them. Because if we allow the unsafe to take hold, we and all those we love will die.
In ancient times, to eat when food was available made good sense because it might not always be available. It was also an adaptive mechanism to hoard food for you and your tribe; it was a brutal fact that not everyone survived hard winters in prehistoric days and to share and share alike would be suicide for all. None of this makes any sense at all, though, in our Western world. Yet most of us still believe myths we have been taught and some that are hardwired into us about food, such as: we must eat everything we cook or order in a restaurant, as a country we must hoard food so we don't go without, and, most pernicious of all for those of us who overdo it, that food itself will make us safe, at least for the moment.
What the Buddha taught was a radical reversal of this misunderstanding. He may have been the first prince of a major Indian tribe ever to turn his back on the wars, raids, land grabs, and infighting of his country and say that none of this mattered. None of it mattered because it's all a passing show and believing that the show is a permanent reality only reinforces these ideas that keep us locked into patterns of seeking and rejecting. We still believe that there is something or someone or some Being or some action that can make us safe; if not forever, then in this moment. But the fact is that we are already safe. We are already home. When we live as if the next moment will be the right one, the one in which we will have it all together and the wolves will no longer be at the door, is to entirely miss the fact that this moment is the only moment we have. Similarly, our habit of living in the past derives, as I said in an earlier post, from the strategy of recalling past failures in order to avoid them in the future. This can be useful, but only if the lesson is learned and the experiences are then tossed away. Instead, we obsess on these supposed failures and entirely miss the present moment.
The Zen master Suzuki Roshi once said, "You are all perfect just the way you are...and you could all use a little work." This is funny because it sounds contradictory, but in fact it is not. In this moment, you are the only person you can be; if you could have been someone else in this moment, you would have been. But all of the generations and millennia of influences, the causes and conditions of our human existence have come to bear in this one moment to create the person you are now. And this person is ephemeral. In the time it took you to read that last, short sentence, you have changed into another being. Granted, the being before the sentence and the one after are very, very similar, but they are not the same. And both are perfect. And both could use a little work.
The work is the work of liberation. If we were to come to a full realization of the fact of impermanence (another core Buddhist concept), the basic truth that absolutely nothing remains unchanged in our world, we would be a long way toward freedom. If when we have the urge to eat in order to feel OK, we took a moment (the holy pause) to recognize that we are already OK and that the food can do nothing to enhance that okayness, we could become free of the compulsion to overeat. I believe this with all my heart.
Make no mistake, though; the mistaken idea of the existence of a permanent safe place is so deeply etched in our consciousness that one cannot merely make a decision to have it be gone and it will be gone. Fortunately, we have tools that can help us. Meditation is foremost among them because, among other benefits, through meditation we have the opportunity to see a most important truth about our minds: thoughts are simply ephemeral, passing shows that have no substance. They arise and pass away. We have identified with our thoughts as our true selves for so long that it comes as a rude but welcome awakening to realize that they have no solidity. In fact we have very little control over them whatsoever.
Let's apply a little logic to this. If thoughts arise and pass away without any input from us, and if we have little control over them, and if we quite often don't even agree with them, how can they be who we are? If they are who we are, then who is the "I" that is recognizing that they are not "I"? Because they are not our core identity, we don't necessarily need to believe what they say, so when they say that eating that piece of cake will make me feel safe and protected, I can simply recognize that this statement has no more validity then a claim that the sun is purple with yellow polka dots. Both of those thoughts can be allowed to arise and pass away without my having to do anything about them. I need not eat the cake. I need not look at the sun.
Pema Chodron has also said, "As a species, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort." When we feel any discomfort, we become afraid. When we are afraid, we kick into the fight or flight mode and feel we must do something or die. That something can be violence, running away, eating, drinking, gambling, shopping, sex, reading, television, drugs, movies, meditation (yes, even that), fast cars, gardening, writing, taking a bath, anything to avoid feeling that feeling or make it go away. Of course, most of these are not negative actions in and of themselves. But we need always ask ourselves what our motives are when we move away from discomfort and toward something else. Can we pause and just feel the feeling of unsafeness for a moment, rather than trying to make it go away? This may not seem like much, but this is the very nature of the beginning of liberation.
In ancient times, to eat when food was available made good sense because it might not always be available. It was also an adaptive mechanism to hoard food for you and your tribe; it was a brutal fact that not everyone survived hard winters in prehistoric days and to share and share alike would be suicide for all. None of this makes any sense at all, though, in our Western world. Yet most of us still believe myths we have been taught and some that are hardwired into us about food, such as: we must eat everything we cook or order in a restaurant, as a country we must hoard food so we don't go without, and, most pernicious of all for those of us who overdo it, that food itself will make us safe, at least for the moment.
What the Buddha taught was a radical reversal of this misunderstanding. He may have been the first prince of a major Indian tribe ever to turn his back on the wars, raids, land grabs, and infighting of his country and say that none of this mattered. None of it mattered because it's all a passing show and believing that the show is a permanent reality only reinforces these ideas that keep us locked into patterns of seeking and rejecting. We still believe that there is something or someone or some Being or some action that can make us safe; if not forever, then in this moment. But the fact is that we are already safe. We are already home. When we live as if the next moment will be the right one, the one in which we will have it all together and the wolves will no longer be at the door, is to entirely miss the fact that this moment is the only moment we have. Similarly, our habit of living in the past derives, as I said in an earlier post, from the strategy of recalling past failures in order to avoid them in the future. This can be useful, but only if the lesson is learned and the experiences are then tossed away. Instead, we obsess on these supposed failures and entirely miss the present moment.
The Zen master Suzuki Roshi once said, "You are all perfect just the way you are...and you could all use a little work." This is funny because it sounds contradictory, but in fact it is not. In this moment, you are the only person you can be; if you could have been someone else in this moment, you would have been. But all of the generations and millennia of influences, the causes and conditions of our human existence have come to bear in this one moment to create the person you are now. And this person is ephemeral. In the time it took you to read that last, short sentence, you have changed into another being. Granted, the being before the sentence and the one after are very, very similar, but they are not the same. And both are perfect. And both could use a little work.
The work is the work of liberation. If we were to come to a full realization of the fact of impermanence (another core Buddhist concept), the basic truth that absolutely nothing remains unchanged in our world, we would be a long way toward freedom. If when we have the urge to eat in order to feel OK, we took a moment (the holy pause) to recognize that we are already OK and that the food can do nothing to enhance that okayness, we could become free of the compulsion to overeat. I believe this with all my heart.
Make no mistake, though; the mistaken idea of the existence of a permanent safe place is so deeply etched in our consciousness that one cannot merely make a decision to have it be gone and it will be gone. Fortunately, we have tools that can help us. Meditation is foremost among them because, among other benefits, through meditation we have the opportunity to see a most important truth about our minds: thoughts are simply ephemeral, passing shows that have no substance. They arise and pass away. We have identified with our thoughts as our true selves for so long that it comes as a rude but welcome awakening to realize that they have no solidity. In fact we have very little control over them whatsoever.
Let's apply a little logic to this. If thoughts arise and pass away without any input from us, and if we have little control over them, and if we quite often don't even agree with them, how can they be who we are? If they are who we are, then who is the "I" that is recognizing that they are not "I"? Because they are not our core identity, we don't necessarily need to believe what they say, so when they say that eating that piece of cake will make me feel safe and protected, I can simply recognize that this statement has no more validity then a claim that the sun is purple with yellow polka dots. Both of those thoughts can be allowed to arise and pass away without my having to do anything about them. I need not eat the cake. I need not look at the sun.
Pema Chodron has also said, "As a species, we should never underestimate our low tolerance for discomfort." When we feel any discomfort, we become afraid. When we are afraid, we kick into the fight or flight mode and feel we must do something or die. That something can be violence, running away, eating, drinking, gambling, shopping, sex, reading, television, drugs, movies, meditation (yes, even that), fast cars, gardening, writing, taking a bath, anything to avoid feeling that feeling or make it go away. Of course, most of these are not negative actions in and of themselves. But we need always ask ourselves what our motives are when we move away from discomfort and toward something else. Can we pause and just feel the feeling of unsafeness for a moment, rather than trying to make it go away? This may not seem like much, but this is the very nature of the beginning of liberation.
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