A Monk's Guide to Happiness by Gelong Thubten

Author:Gelong Thubten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

DECODING OUR ADDICTIONS

As our meditation training progresses, we’ll be drilling down deeper in terms of mental transformation. One aspect of that is to understand and change our addictive habits.

An addiction is where we feed a habit, often without even wanting to, and it becomes detrimental to our happiness. The roots of this lie in our deepest addiction, which is to our thoughts and emotions—they arise, and we jump in and cling on to them, even when we don’t want to. Based on this internal addiction, we can become addicted to all kinds of outer things.

Addiction is rather like scratching an itch for relief, where the more we scratch, the worse the itch becomes. Instead, through being mindful we can discover some space between impulse and action. In that space we can begin to make choices—maybe not to scratch.

When we are addicted to something in the world around us, we are reaching for that thing to alleviate the discomfort of wanting: to “get rid” of the feeling. The activity to which we are addicted eventually no longer feels pleasant as much as just being a form of relief. This is symbolic of life as a whole: we spend our energy seeking relief, constantly trying to extinguish the flames of wanting, but the wanting never ends. A solution to this can be to “turn around” and look at the wanting mind itself, rather than focusing on the object of the wanting. When we stare wanting directly in the face, something interesting happens: it begins to dismantle, as if it is unable to withstand the glare of awareness. We can do this by using the craving feeling itself as the “object” of meditation, focusing on its sensation without judging it; this is like looking directly at the craving rather than following its dictates.

Addiction means we are feeling a kind of lack, or an emptiness, within ourselves, and we are trying to “fill that hole.” Addicts often speak of the “hole in the soul.” Of course, through chasing and getting an object of our desire, we are simply deepening that hole, as we perpetuate the feeling of needing something in order to feel fulfilled. Meditation can fill us up from within. It is called “mindfulness,” but one could easily use the term “mind-full-ness.” It is not about emptying the mind, but instead filling the mind with peace, joy, and fulfillment.

When we rest mindfully in the present moment, we can discover that everything we ever wanted is right here. That’s because whenever we want something, we are seeking a feeling of completion, a feeling of having what we want. It is not the thing itself that we want, what we are looking for is that feeling. When we are in a mindful state, we are resting in that completeness; we are relaxing into the moment without wanting it to be different.

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