Stolen from Early Morning Buddhist Inspirations

[sabrinamari]

"You do know that if you're alcoholic, or have been alcoholic or are a recovering alcoholic, you do know that you have to stop drinking. In your case, one little sip doesn't quite do it in terms of ending the cycle. There are different degrees to how much you have to refrain. There has to be something, some pattern of habituation of strengthening the ignorance around shenpa and the ignorance that the chain reaction is even happening, the ignorance that you're even scratching, the ignorance that it's spreading all over your body, the ignorance that you're bleeding to death. You know when addiction gets really strong. My daughter-in-law... at the age of thirty-five, they gave her two months to live from alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver. She was here last night. She lived. She's sober. It's five years later. But, she had to really hit bottom. And, I'll tell you, she was blown up like a blimp. She was this horrible yellow-green color, and her eyes were bright orange, and she would not stop drinking. I would get her to the hospital and they would drain her fluid -bottles and bottles and bottles of fluid- and soon as they would allow her to go, she'd go home and drink again.

Sometimes people never pull out of it. Why do we do those things? We all do those things to that degree or lesser. Why? It's stupid. But the reason we do it is because we imbue that drink or that scratching in whatever form with comfort. In order to move away from the basic uneasiness, we find comfort in certain things, which in moderation could enhance our life, but they become imbued with addictive quality. Then what could have enhanced our life, or brought delight to our life -like a taste, or a smell, or an activity, or anything-begins to make our life into a nightmare. All we're getting is this short-term symptom relief. We are willing to sometimes die to keep getting short- term symptom relief. That's what it came down to [with my daughter-in-law], short-term symptom relief even when she took those sips, even though her life was more out of control every day and she was dying. But when she got paralyzed so she couldn't move and they took her child away, then she changed. And she had some friends who were there for her through the whole thing and that was helpful too. For her AA has been a savior. It doesn't work for everyone, but for her it's been a savior. That's the story of how you are so habituated and the habitual pattern of imbuing poison with comfort. This is the same thing. It doesn't have to be substance abuse. It can be saying mean things. Maybe you never say mean things, but you think them all the time.

Pema Chodron

What you think upon grows..."

Comments

[tigira.livejournal.com]

What you think upon grows...

This is something that I learned, or started learning, quite a long time ago. We change the way our world interacts with others with our words, but our thoughts are our words with ourselves.

Every word, inside or out, makes a change. So, is it a good change or a bad change? If you tell a child, "If you play in the creek, you're going to drown," that can have a distinct effect on reality as opposed to, "Please don't play in the creek, I'm concerned you might..." With the second, you are acknowledging your fear, but not telling the child that one definitely leads to the other.

I won't really get on my soapbox here, though. It's a subject I'm rather passionate about - being careful with our words.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I agree. Words have power, and thoughts are, indeed, "words with ourselves". It's sometimes a challenge to replace ugly self-talk with reasonable, caring, rational self-talk, but I always feel the effects right away when I do it.

How do you stop thinking mean things?

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

That is the part that I simply don't understand. The base of our brain is reptillian. It throws up all sorts of nasy, self-interested poison. I am often able to quiet it, but only after I recognize it.

How do you become the sort of person who never thinks ill of another being, who recognizes the humanity in others even if the other is behaving in an inhumane manner? I am able to recognize the wounded child in the other, but only after my inner voice says, "A&&hole" and my higher self says, "Acknowledge that "the inherent worth and dignity of every person" also applies to THIS person, regardless of his or her politics or behaviour." How do you go straight to the inherent worth and dignity and skip over the A&&hole? I have been struggling with this (with varying degrees of success or failure) since childhood.

Re: How do you stop thinking mean things?

[ingridsummers.livejournal.com]

You have to be a buddhavista, saint in the making (i.e. Mother Theresa) or some other semi-divine personage. I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the things that defines us as humans is the reptillian response and our ability to move beyond it consciously. (Note, I've never found conscious action to be particularly easy.)

Re: How do you stop thinking mean things?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Pema Chodron has thsi great concept: "the one-minute bodhisattava". She says that if you even manage to let go of a shenpa for *one minute* and respond the way a bodhisattva does, then you are, for all practical purposes, a bodhisattva for one minute. Then the goal is to stretch those periods into longer and longer periods.

I love this idea. I can be a one-minute bodhisattva. Hell, by the end of my life, I may be able to be 12-minute bodhisattva. and as a Pagan, I believe in reincarnation. I also need goals to work towards and meaningful work to live by, so why not make a multi-life plan? I mean, I'm going to be needing to do *something* worth all that time----all those lives. Why not work towards becoming a bodhisattva?

Fitness teaches me that anything can be accomplished in small increments over time, so it fits well into my worldview to create a long-term plan of this nature. And really, if I can do a dissertation, even if it takes me 16 years, why can't I become a bodhisattva if I have an unlimited number of lifetimes?

So that's one of my goals.

Re: How do you stop thinking mean things?

[dawningday.livejournal.com]

Practice.

I never would have imagined the degree to which I've been able to change my thought patterns, and the way those small changes have rippled. It required completely rethinking the way that I appraoch my life, but I find the I Ching to be an unerring guide in its pursuit.

Particularly this admonition from Hexagram 63: "[I]f a thought or action even borders on incorrectness, discard it and return to the path of the Sage immediately. One minute we dip our toe in incorrectness, the next minute we are swimming in it, and the next we drown. Therefore it is wiser to simply keep our toes dry in the first place." Another large aspect is learning not to feed the mind on desire, which is really tough, but possible. The I Ching (at least my translation) also talks about putting our inferiors under the direction of our superiors - with attention and effort, we can make that reptile voice subservient to the "higher self."

Re: How do you stop thinking mean things?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

"...with attention and effort, we can make that reptile voice subservient to the "higher self"

I think this is what mindfulness meditation teaches one to do in a very pragmatic, practiced sort of way. I really think it helps to work with a trained meditation teacher once or twice, at least, to get the technique down. And any Shambhala group will be both able and willing to provide that teaching for free. Most urban areas have at least one, and they are often on the web.

Re: How do you stop thinking mean things?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

THIS is a question I can answer! OK, I just learned this over the last 7-8 months. It's a real revelation. Buddhism is not strictly a religion, as Westeners think of "religion". In its original form, I am told it did not necessarily drawr on the concept of "gods" as external, literal beings at all. Instead, it is a pragmatic system for mastering one's mind---that unruly horse that goes wherever it damn well pleases and drags everything else along with it. Buddhism, at least in several of its forms, is a longterm system for training the mind so that one can slowly but relentlessly gain control over the reptilian brain stem.

It is based on a psychological technology: mindfulness meditation. You can call meditation, in its Buddhist form, a spiritual practice, but really, it's more of a technology with side effects that leak over into what we call spirituality---treating one's self better, treating those around one better and acting with compassion and reason rather than from "shenpa", or what cutting edge marriage and sex therapist David Schnarch calls "regression"---getting stuck in obssessive thought cycles originating in the reptilian brain.

Meditation is actually the practice of getting used to touching emotionally charged thoughts lightly and then letting them go, so that you don't get "hooked" by them and get sucked in shenpa/regressive states. when you are regressed, you cannot think with your whole brain and you cannot make decoisions based on reason and compassion. So usually, you end up doing things like screaming, "You are a compulsive ____" across a parking lot instead of just touching the angry thought, letting go as you practiced in meditation, and moving on to make a behavioral choice that can actually do you some good.

Mindfulness meditation is learned and incorporated into one's life the way you incorporate physical exercise: little by little, working one's way up from the 3 lb. dumbbell to the 30 lb. dumbbell. Eventually, you become able to 'touch and release' thoughts that used to make your mind crazy. You get used to gently guiding your mind back to a calmer, more centered place---directing your mind to 'pee only on the newspaper' for those who were at my workshop on meditation last weekend.

david Schnarch, whose work reeks suspiciously of unacknowledged Buddhist roots, teaches his patients to 'self-sooth' when they start to regress. By this he means that they should learn to deploy a series of self-calming practices---whatever they choose---to calm the regressed mind and then return to conflict resolution when both parties have ceased to be regressed. Buddhists just teach people to meditate.