Sugar

I have mentioned in this blog before the concept of renunciation, which is the Buddhist cosmology has a special meaning. Unlike the temporary giving up exemplified in Lent for certain Christians, renunciation in the Dharma is neither an abasement nor a sacrifice. Rather, it is a way of bringing to the forefront the ways in which we attempt to escape from the present moment into the trap of diversion. This form of renunciation can be permanent, such as my renunciation of meat and alcohol, or may be temporary, as a way of bringing these ways of thinking into sharper relief. A good example of this is a renunciation once taken on by the teacher Sylvia Boorstein in which she gave up purchasing fresh cut flowers for a full year. She truly loved buying these flowers, but had recognized the attachment she had to this practice and wished to come to a deeper understanding of this urge.

Over the years I have done some of what I call special renunciations, too. I once gave up ice cream for a year. Other of my renunciations have been more personal and private, but most have revolved around food. Recently I realized how much sugar has become a part of my life and have been contemplating a year-long renunciation of it.

First of all, it is important to realize that there are no rules to such a renunciation beyond those which are self-imposed. The Buddha did not say anything about the details of such a practice. For instance, though I say I intend to renounce sugar for a year, I understand that this can only be done within certain parameters, because naturally-occurring sugars exist in all fruits, vegetables, grains, and other food. It would be silly and possibly fatal to do away entirely with carbohydrates in my diet. What I use as my guide in such situations is a return to the reason for my renunciation. I must ask the question: to what, exactly, am I addicted?

Because addiction is what I'm really talking about here. This term can be overused, I know, but a definition of I like is this: an addiction is anything used as a way of avoiding the truth of one's existence. When thought of this way, one can see that such things as television, the internet, sex, shopping, focusing on the problems of others, exercise, gossip can all be addictive. I have certainly used sugar this way. This blog began as a quest for the meaning behind the reality of my inability to keep my weight within a range that is normal for a man of my age and size, and sugar has been a huge part of that struggle. One certain sign that this is an addiction for me is that the consumption of any processed sugar inevitably leads to a craving for more.

On April 13, 2011, Gary Taubes wrote a provocative article in the New York Times Magazine identifying sugar as a toxic substance. He paraphrased the pediatrician and specialist on pediatric hormone disorders Robert Lustig as saying that our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them." He refers to sugar as literally poisonous. Both Lustig and Taubes define "sugar" in this context as any source of sucrose (brown or white sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. They argue that the problem isn't merely that these substances are empty calories, but that the way our body processes them is entirely different from the way we process other sugars, and that the difference is inherently toxic.One of the ways in which this toxic reaction may happen is that the liver cannot easily process the fructose in these compounds at the rate at which they enter the blood stream. This inability in turn induces insulin resistance, which is a problem in both diabetes and obesity, both of which have seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades. Sugar may also be implicated in some cancers and heart disease. A pretty damning indictment.

My own addiction to sugar does not take the predictable form of sodas or pastries or such things. I am more likely to get my sugar fix from ice cream or candy, from cookies, candied ginger or cocoa, lattes and mochas. No better for me than those others, certainly, but a bit more subtle. Which is part of the problem.

Another issue is the degree of comfort I get from these foods. If I am suffering from insomnia, there is nothing that works better for me than to have a big cup of cocoa. Never mind that there is caffeine in chocolate and the sugar is more likely to rev me up than calm me. Mine is clearly a psychologic rather than a physiologic response. The same applies to ice cream. It is for me the ultimate comfort food, as can be deduced from the fact that I felt the need to do a year's renunciation of it.

When I first contemplated doing a year-long sugar renunciation I thought it would be fairly simple. Cut out the candy and the cookies entirely and voila! it's done. Not so fast, bucko. The more I looked, the more I realized how much added sugar there is in so much of what I enjoy. Which brings up another question: at what point is the risk of possible toxic effects worth the pleasure it gives me? Clearly, if one is consuming a six pack of soda a day, the risks are far too high. But a dish of ice cream once a week? What could be the harm there?

(Then I went to the doctor this week and had my blood drawn. Mostly things are fine, but my HDL cholesterol is low and the first thing I thought to myself was, "Do I have to be freaking perfect just to be healthy? *Sigh*)

The answer for me, and for many such contemplations when the Dharma is applied to them, is what I referred to earlier: to what spiritual use am I putting these foods? Am I trying to (ahem) sugar-coat my experiences as a way of not having to actually live them? For me, the answer is clearly, yes, quite often that is the case.

I'm afraid it will take me a while to figure out exactly how to proceed with this renunciation plan. I will share my process with you as I go. This won't be easy but, as has been observed by those wiser than I, very few things worth doing are.

Lost

Not sure where to begin. I feel so lost sometimes, as if the core if who I am gets called into question. I know I have written about this feeling a great deal lately. But this is, for me, the most profound of all experiences, this contrast between my reality as a being that does, after all, exist in some form (however ephemeral)  and the truth of the constantly dissolving, crumbling nature of that beingness.

Does this sound very foreign and strange? Contradictory and a little nuts? Yeah, it feels that way to me too, quite often. Yet it also feels more entirely truthful than the next largest truths there are. I want for things to be certain and comfortable, always. Yet because I desire the certainty, I cannot have the comfort; there's a Catch-22 for you! It's as if I had hitched my happiness to the sun always shining—at least once a day for half the day (or thereabouts) my hopes would be dashed.

My parents are old and becoming gradually less able to care for themselves. Contemplation of the inevitability of aging, decay, and death is one of the Buddha's primary instructions to us, an entry point to the holiest of understandings, that all things are of this nature, the nature to arise and pass away. We can understand this intellectually with great profundity, yet have no capacity to face the reality of it in the form of our own illness or injury, or the slow diminution that is the inexorable march toward the end of life as it is experienced by those we love. Because it is deeply uncomfortable, of course. Death is one thing, but gradual loss is quite another. Here's the Buddha's take on this, though: suffering is my resistance to the truth; the experience itself is entirely neutral.

Easy for him to say.

There is another factor in this situation with my parents: we cannot afford to provide them with everything that might make this journey as comfortable as it could be. This precipitates us into hard choices and difficult conversations no one wishes to contemplate.

So much comes down to humility, it seems to me. In the contemplation of the great mysteries, even in thinking of the smaller ones, the minor questions, an honest survey reveals how entirely helpless I am in the face of these forces. Not merely the forces of old age, disease and death, not just the forces of nature that destroy homes and lives, not only the forces of economies and injustice and misplaced societal priorities, no, even in the contemplation of the smallest realities of my existence I am almost entirely powerless to change things. I can choose which shirt I wear today and, perhaps (if I am willing to be uncomfortable) not to wear a shirt at all. But I can choose neither the nature of the body upon which I place the shirt nor the need it feels to be clothed. I cannot willy-nilly decide to disregard decades of conditioning and wear a dashiki instead, not with any level of comfort. I must humble myself to know that I am the sum total of the causes and conditions that brought me to this point. Far from being a free agent, I am at the mercy of that which led to this time in my existence. I must, in the words of the old phrase, "dance with him what brung me".

I am tired today, without any identifiable reason. I have goals and plans and schemes, but I am tired. I probably won't do most of what I had in mind. I must listen when my body tells me to halt. I need to make myself a steward of this body and this mind in order to move forward into a deeper understanding of what it means to have a body and a mind.

There is no easy solution to my parents' situation, of course. There are complexities piled on top of complications. Also to be considered is the fact that the grooves of the relationship between my parents were first laid down over 70 years ago when they first met and have been worn and deepened every day since. We may be as logical, sensible, rational, caring, loving, and reasonable as we wish, yet this will be no proof against these well-worn patterns of love between them. Because it is love, that's clear, even when (especially when?) they bicker or disagree or grow impatient.

I began this post by saying I was lost. And I am. But lostness is the truth of our lives. It is when we consider ourselves found that we are living most in delusion, if only because even if this feeling is true it cannot last. Where I have found myself will change, I will change, and once again I will be lost. We are all wanderers in this wilderness of being alive and human. It is not easy. But it sure beats the alternative. It is enough.

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, you are sharing in a certain measure of that cosmic pain, and are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.

  Pir Vilayat Khan

Guest House

This being human is a guest house...

I came into conflict with two people I love over the past week. It caused me a great deal of pain. I struggled mightily with so many different emotions and impulses that I felt half-crazed much of the time, as if all of who I was had been exploded, the foundations remaining but the House of Reid destroyed. I know this sounds like hyperbole but, then again, I am not telling you how it really was, merely how it felt. Whenever threatened, the ego makes the event into The Biggest Thing Ever. It is death. It is disaster.

It's not all that hard to fall into the trap and believe the stories the ego is putting out, either (we do it all the time). When in extremis, the ego is also quite skilled at assigning blame, feeling self-righteous and superior in its suffering (a particular specialty, I think), engaging in rationalization and justification. You will note that I do not use personal pronouns which speaking of the impulses of the ego. As one of my teachers says, what we are dealing with here is THE mind, not MY mind. If it were mine, for one thing, I would be much more in control of what it thinks, which I clearly am not. I speak to it quite often, telling it I am thoroughly done, thank you, with certain memories of shame or remorse, but it has...well...a mind of its own, so they keep arising anyway.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness....

When I give in to the impulse to think that such events are unmitigated disasters, I am forgetting the most basic truth of all: life is change. It is when I can see the leveling of my ego, my pride, my self-image as not only inevitable but a good thing, when I recognize that dissolution is going on all the time and that in times of crisis it just becomes more obvious than at other times, this is when I can choose: on the one hand, to grow into the new being I was headed toward in any case, or on the other to resist the transformation and suffer, inevitably causing those around me to suffer, as well. I could, in other words, use up huge amounts of energy bolstering the crumbling walls of my Self (which is the self of yesterday, of last week, of a former life) or I can choose to accept the dissolving of the barriers as the gift it is. It is truly a gift; this is something of which I must always be aware.

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

My existence is a delusion of the moment I am in. Of course I exist, I can prove this in any number of ways (Monet kicked a rock). But to think of myself as a solid, unchanging being is sheer delusion. This is no less true of my inner life than of my body. I have the choice to embrace this reality or reject it. The one is the road to joy, the other to suffering. Of course, even my resolve to accept myself as impermanent can be an expression of ego if I am not aware at all times of the impulse to make it so. If I feel that I am in any way superior to others because of this or if I think I have Gotten Somewhere as a result of my understanding, then I am placing myself at the same risk I was in before I ever had the realization. These concepts are by their very nature ego concepts. Put another way, if I truly inculcated this understanding into my being, the concept of achieving anything (being superior, right, accomplished, real, a Good Buddhist) would have no function, since there would be no ego to consider it important or even acknowledge its existence. This is, by definition, the end of suffering.

It is also true, though, and just as true, that criticism of myself is a manifestation of ego. This can be tricky. To justify any and all actions as being mere manifestations of ego and therefore excusable (because they were not done by Me) is also to live in delusion and has the potential to be extremely destructive. But to dwell upon my unskillful actions as the manifestation of who I truly am is just as egotistical as if I only praised myself. And in our culture it is far more common for us to obsess on what is wrong in us than on what is right.

The Guest House poem by Rumi is one of the guides to my life; I try my best to live by it. He goes on to say,

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

We don't know. Nothing is more universal than this not-knowing. Even those things of which we are most certain are subject to dissolution, decay, and death. The great Zen masters make it clear that while there is nothing more important than believing in Zen, it is also and equally true that there is nothing more dangerous than believing in Zen. I believe that what comforts me is essential to my well-being, but this recent conflict with my loved ones and the outcome of that conflict (the growing into a better, more loving human, I hope) makes clear that I am, quite simply and clearly and absolutely entirely, wrong. The end of suffering is renunciation, the renunciation of any concept of who I am or where I ought to be or what I should achieve. Even peace, enlightenment, kindness, openheartedness, love can be sources of suffering if I have some internalized measure of progress toward them or claim to have achieved them. It is part of the paradoxical nature of Buddhism that when we feel we are closest to having accomplished something with the practice, we are farthest from getting anything of true value from it.

Pema Chödrön speaks eloquently of this delusion when she writes that "when you start to want to live your life fully instead of opting for death, you discover that life itself is inconvenient....You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably...." But, she goes on to say, "sometimes when you just get flying and it all feels so good and you think, 'This is it, this is that path that has heart,' you suddenly fall flat on your face....You say to yourself, 'What happened to that path that had heart? This feels like the path full of mud in my face.'" This is how I felt this past week, as if I had found the path with mud on my face. The key is to know that this is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. It's a thing.

Sometimes I can overcomplicate events (well, OK, quite often, not just sometimes). I require reminders that this is all extremely simple if I let it be. I have the impulse to judgment, which is really just the belief that I know best and the world has nothing to teach me. Yet, as Rumi says further,

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whomever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

He is not speaking of the malice, meanness, or misbehavior of others; Rumi is referring to what comes into my own mind, into my own heart. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that does not have the capacity to open my heart if I let it. Those dark thoughts, that shame, the remorse, the meanness, the hurt, the anger, the vulnerability and the accompanying shame that I am so vulnerable—all of these are my teachers. Sometimes I am just a little slow on the uptake; this is not my teachers' fault. One of my favorite sayings (I call it Reid's Rule #1) is, "If you set your expectations low enough, you are bound to fulfill them." But yesterday, while speaking with friends, I realized that I should restate this (rather cynical) statement to read, "If you set your expectations low enough, miracles are much more likely." I can open my heart to all that is. This is simple. It is also a miracle.

On Friday I had occasion to call a tech support line. The person on the other end was not a native English-speaker. He was doing very well at explaining what I needed to know, but then departed from the script a bit. His grasp of what he was saying in the vernacular may have been a bit imperfect, but it ended up being a lesson I needed to hear and bear with me always. I said that this whole process was pretty complicated, to which he replied, without any sense that he was making a joke or (I don't think) any thought that it might be tactless, "Oh, no, it is very easy. You are just not getting it."

I am just not getting it. The Buddha had great patience, but one wonders if he wasn't sometimes a bit exasperated and wanted to say, "For heaven's sake, this is very easy. You are just not getting it. Stop with the judgment and the breast-beating and let it all go. The only reason you are making such a big deal of all this is because it makes your small mind feel important. Let it go. It is enough."