I don't wish to give the impression that any of this is easy for me, that I somehow made a choice to live the way I am describing and--hey Presto!--I am transformed into the perfect Buddhist and a svelte model of mindful eating. What I have been writing about are things I believe with all my heart lead to liberation, but I know how off-putting it can be for someone to imply that they are living by these principles 24/7/365. I am not. For one thing, I still am eating compulsively from time to time. My weight has been ping-ponging up and down some. I find winter particularly difficult because my energy is so much lower and food seems like a good solution to that. I am also in a sort of low-level depression, not really sad or down so much as just plain blah, which I have no doubt is a form of seasonal affective disorder. It makes the whole thing difficult to deal with.
What I try to do is practice renunciation. I know that sounds like a major undertaking, as in, "the monk renounced all contact with the world" or something like that, but in the Buddhist sense it is nothing so drastic for us who are following the simple path. Renunciation in this context is simply the act of choosing to stop doing something compulsively and then seeing what arises.
Actually, it is worth pausing for a moment and reiterating that this path is all about "seeing what arises". It is sometimes difficult in the context of our culture to see any of these prescriptions as anything but judgments. We in the West (and especially in the United States, I think) tend to think in terms of "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt Not". No need for me to point out where that way of thinking came from! (Not that I think that's what Christ meant to convey, either, but that's a different topic). The path the Buddha set forth is above all a path of investigation. "Hey, let's try this and see what happens. Huh. Well, that was unpleasant. Do I want to do that again? I do? Do I expect a different result this time? Well, here goes. Oops! Same result!" and so on. Really, we need to be gentle with ourselves above all. To hold our figurative hands over the flame because we can't live up to every precept or concept the Buddha put forward is not only self-defeating, it is antithetical to the teachings themselves. The Buddha was very clear that there is no one more worthy of love than we are, so to be cruel, harsh, or judgmental of ourselves is, if anything, more in opposition to his teachings then acting in this way toward others. So when I write about principles and practices that are worth considering, I never mean to give the impression that anyone, least of all me, is living them perfectly. Do I think such perfection is possible? Well...yes, actually, I do. I think that's what the Buddha achieved and I think there are many others who have done so, as well. But setting that as a yardstick against which we measure ourselves and to pass judgment on ourselves when we fall short actually works against achieving that goal.
In any case, renunciation is one of these experiments in finding the source of suffering (remember, that's what this is all about, the end of suffering). An example: a few years ago I recognized that I was eating a bunch of ice cream. I would eat it nearly every night, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Now, obviously, there is nothing inherently wrong with ice cream; it is delightful and gives a great deal of pleasure. But like anything else, it can become just one more compulsion and all compulsions are a source of suffering. So, I determined that I would entirely give up ice cream for a year. Now, I admit that I could have said, "only on special occasions" or "no more than once a week or once a month" or something somewhat less drastic. But in the spirit of pure renunciation, I decided to go without for an entire year, just to see what happened.
Now, at first this was rather annoying. But the key here was to look at that annoyance and see what's beneath it. What I found was (of course) that I was using ice cream to push away feelings I didn't want to have, feelings of insecurity, frustration, unhappiness, anger and fear. The next step was to look at each of these feelings in turn and investigate what was beneath them. When I found some root causes, I was to look yet further beneath to find the sources of the root causes. And so on. What I always found is that in the investigation the emotion itself crumbled and passed away. When I got to the root causes they were almost always contained in an event or events so far in the past that I had nearly forgotten them, but the residual emotion continued to eat my lunch (or my ice cream, in this case).
The goal here, of course, was most assuredly not to give up ice cream or emotions or compulsive behavior. Nor was the goal to eliminate those root causes. All I was doing was investigating, poking around in the dark crevices that have scary ghosts in them that turn out, more often than not, to be wimpy poltergeists who want nothing more to be set free to go their own way. The investigation itself is a road to freedom.
When doing food renunciation, what I find is that when I have eaten sufficiently and find myself hungry, it is not food for which I am hungry. It requires a degree of fierceness to look this fact in the face and realize that I am taking a step away from freedom when I indulge in these behaviors instead of working toward a realization of why I do so, of what it is that I am in fact hungry for. Because what I will discover is that my hunger is for this freedom, for the deep realization of true awakeness, for buddhahood.
What I try to do is practice renunciation. I know that sounds like a major undertaking, as in, "the monk renounced all contact with the world" or something like that, but in the Buddhist sense it is nothing so drastic for us who are following the simple path. Renunciation in this context is simply the act of choosing to stop doing something compulsively and then seeing what arises.
Actually, it is worth pausing for a moment and reiterating that this path is all about "seeing what arises". It is sometimes difficult in the context of our culture to see any of these prescriptions as anything but judgments. We in the West (and especially in the United States, I think) tend to think in terms of "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt Not". No need for me to point out where that way of thinking came from! (Not that I think that's what Christ meant to convey, either, but that's a different topic). The path the Buddha set forth is above all a path of investigation. "Hey, let's try this and see what happens. Huh. Well, that was unpleasant. Do I want to do that again? I do? Do I expect a different result this time? Well, here goes. Oops! Same result!" and so on. Really, we need to be gentle with ourselves above all. To hold our figurative hands over the flame because we can't live up to every precept or concept the Buddha put forward is not only self-defeating, it is antithetical to the teachings themselves. The Buddha was very clear that there is no one more worthy of love than we are, so to be cruel, harsh, or judgmental of ourselves is, if anything, more in opposition to his teachings then acting in this way toward others. So when I write about principles and practices that are worth considering, I never mean to give the impression that anyone, least of all me, is living them perfectly. Do I think such perfection is possible? Well...yes, actually, I do. I think that's what the Buddha achieved and I think there are many others who have done so, as well. But setting that as a yardstick against which we measure ourselves and to pass judgment on ourselves when we fall short actually works against achieving that goal.
In any case, renunciation is one of these experiments in finding the source of suffering (remember, that's what this is all about, the end of suffering). An example: a few years ago I recognized that I was eating a bunch of ice cream. I would eat it nearly every night, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Now, obviously, there is nothing inherently wrong with ice cream; it is delightful and gives a great deal of pleasure. But like anything else, it can become just one more compulsion and all compulsions are a source of suffering. So, I determined that I would entirely give up ice cream for a year. Now, I admit that I could have said, "only on special occasions" or "no more than once a week or once a month" or something somewhat less drastic. But in the spirit of pure renunciation, I decided to go without for an entire year, just to see what happened.
Now, at first this was rather annoying. But the key here was to look at that annoyance and see what's beneath it. What I found was (of course) that I was using ice cream to push away feelings I didn't want to have, feelings of insecurity, frustration, unhappiness, anger and fear. The next step was to look at each of these feelings in turn and investigate what was beneath them. When I found some root causes, I was to look yet further beneath to find the sources of the root causes. And so on. What I always found is that in the investigation the emotion itself crumbled and passed away. When I got to the root causes they were almost always contained in an event or events so far in the past that I had nearly forgotten them, but the residual emotion continued to eat my lunch (or my ice cream, in this case).
The goal here, of course, was most assuredly not to give up ice cream or emotions or compulsive behavior. Nor was the goal to eliminate those root causes. All I was doing was investigating, poking around in the dark crevices that have scary ghosts in them that turn out, more often than not, to be wimpy poltergeists who want nothing more to be set free to go their own way. The investigation itself is a road to freedom.
When doing food renunciation, what I find is that when I have eaten sufficiently and find myself hungry, it is not food for which I am hungry. It requires a degree of fierceness to look this fact in the face and realize that I am taking a step away from freedom when I indulge in these behaviors instead of working toward a realization of why I do so, of what it is that I am in fact hungry for. Because what I will discover is that my hunger is for this freedom, for the deep realization of true awakeness, for buddhahood.
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