Buddhists in Recovery

[likeafish34]

I've been trying to follow a Buddhist path for the last couple of years. Although it's been a tough time, I'm sure that 'trying' to live an ethical life, meditating and listening to teachings has helped me survive.
With the help of TTF, my recovery is now going much better, but I thought that it would be good to talk to other Buddhists to learn about the ways that the teachings and Buddhist practice is helping you in your recovery process.

Of course I'm happy for anybody from any religion to comment.

Simon

[Charly22]

I am not a buddhist, but I find the religion very interesting and love learning about it. I have only learned a little bit about Buddah's life and happenings, but haven't really learned alot of the principles and teachings. What little I do know, I find the simple clear views to be very helpful and believe they most certainly do apply to all of us. I'd like to hear anything you can share with us about the teachings, and what you have found most helpful and interesting. Please do share with us.....

[likeafish34]

I'll start by saying that none of what I say is intended to criticise other religions. If for what ever reason, you see something that you find offensive, let me know, but rest assured that I mean no ill will.

Here goes.

The Dalai Lama says: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
In my view that is a very good start to understanding Buddhism.

There are many different Buddhist traditions and being a 2,500 year old religion, there are many different teachings. Probably the most fundamental teachings are the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. These remain pretty much the same in every tradition of Buddhism. These were taught by the Buddha (a real man, not a god) for about 40 years from his enlightenment to his death. They are:
There is suffering. Nobody gets exactly what they want out of life. We all suffer from stress, pain, anguish, affliction or unsatisfactoriness.
The cause of suffering is grasping or aversion. We spend our lives wanting stuff or running away from stuff.
There is a way to end suffering.
The way to end suffering is The Eightfold Path.
Right Understanding Learning the nature of reality and the truth about life.
Right Aspiration Making the commitment to living in such a way that our suffering can end.
Right Effort Just Do It. No Excuses.
Right Speech Speaking the truth in a helpful and compassionate way.
Right Conduct Living a life consistent with our values.
Right Livelihood Earning a living in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
Right Mindfulness Recognizing the value of the moment; living where we are.
Right Concentration Expanding our consciousness through meditation.

My explanation of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are probably a bit weak, but when I first heard them, things clicked into place and they felt true. I try to help myself by living by the Eightfold Path, but it is really challenging.

A really important part of Buddhist practice is to be mindful. This means living with your mind in the real world now, rather than dwelling on the past or fantasising or worrying about the future. I certainly know that as someone who suffers from generalised anxiety, trying to be mindful can really help (even if it is extremely hard to do).

Meditation is a really common practice in Buddhism, particularly in the West. Two of the most common forms of meditation are Mindfulness meditation (mainly consists of sitting quietly and focussing on your breath) and Metta Meditation (which involves meditating on being kind to other people and to yourself). I've really found MIndfulness meditation to be a great help in reducing my anxiety levels. I've tried Metta Meditation, but I've found it really hard to be kind to myself.

Two of the things that I really like about Buddhism are:
1. That Buddhists don't tend to push their religion. Generally they don't tell people that their religion is right and everyone else is wrong For example in a talk in Scotland, the Dalai Lama urged Christians not to convert to Buddhism. Instead, he urged them to embrace the teachings of compassion and peace that can be found in their own religious traditions. I like this because it I think that there are good people of every faith and we are all equally worthy spiritually.
2. The Buddha told us that we should not just blindly accept teachings, but use them to investigate and reflect upon the truth of them in our own experience, and whatever we find to be true, use them to shape our lives.

There is so much to Buddhism and I don't really feel very qualified to teach. There are lots of free teachings available on the web. Two of my favourite teachers are: Gil Fronsdal and Tara Brach. You'll find their teachings on Audio Dharma - Welcome to Audio Dharma and Tara Brach - Meditation, Audio Dharma, Podcasts.

I hope that this helps

Simon

[burnedout]

Thanks for starting this thread, Simon

I watched a documentary on Buddhism last night. A lot of it really appealed to me, but the one thing that stood out had to do with desire. Buddha said, if I recall correctly, that desire can't be extinguished, otherwise none of us would work to improve ourselves. Desire can be controlled and managed, however. The Dalai Lama put it pretty simply. Again, I'm quoting from not totally reliable memory, but I think he said you just have to ask yourself whether fulfilling your desire could lead to something bad happening, try not to pursue it.

I've been interested in Buddhism for a long time, but never delved to deeply into it for a variety of cultural and personal reasons. Now I think I see how it could really help me, so I appreciate your including the links above so I can learn more. I even slept better after I watched the program last night.

[likeafish34]

Here are a few more links to sites with guided meditations. They vary quite widely. In some there's loads of guidance and others a lot of silence. Try a few and see what works best. If anybody knows of other good sites, please post links.

Zencast
A good site with a variety of mainly American teachers. The link is for their page on guided meditations. I quite like 'Being in the moment' by Bodhipaksa. He talks a lot (which generally I don't go for), but its a good short 10 minute meditation. I've done it in lunchtime when I've had a stressful morning in the office.
Zencast.org

Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre
A good Australian Buddhist site. I like Ajahn Vayama's guided meditations. She starts with a body scan, then gets you to focus on breath and then doesn't say much more.
Latest Downloads

Aruna Ratanagiri
An English Therevadan monastery. I've used Ajahn Munindo's guided meditations many times.
Aruno - Teachings from Aruna Ratanagiri - Guided Meditations

I hope that some of them help you in your recovery.

Simon

[Letting Go]

Metta Meditation (which involves meditating on being kind to other people and to yourself). I've really found MIndfulness meditation to be a great help in reducing my anxiety levels. I've tried Metta Meditation, but I've found it really hard to be kind to myself.

Simon,

I also find it really hard to be kind to myself, except in an unhealthy way. I would frequently do something pleasurable for myself because I had worked so hard that I felt that I “deserved” a break. This is how I justified P and MB. I “deserved” a break and did it for myself.

Needless to say this is an unhealthy way to be kind to oneself. Now I try to be mindful about being kind to myself, not because I “deserve” it, but because I want a good mental health break. I have also looked back and found that the times that I felt the best about myself were the times I was living a healthy life, with family and friends. Those are the most cherished moments. Taking the unhealthy pleasures don’t leave me with any happy memories, just sadness, frustration, and stress.

But you are right Simon, it is tough to be kind to yourself.


Letting Go

[Benedict]

In my tradition, Buddhist meditation and practice are very much aimed at letting go of habits and becoming fully present here-now. Very relevant to powerfully entrenched habits such as PA. I’ve been reading a book by Pema Chodron from another Buddhist tradition, which puts this in terms I have found very helpful in addressing PA.

Pema Chodron, in her book, Taking the Leap, talks about shenpa, a Tibetan word usually translated “attachment,” . She prefers an alternate translation “hooked”—what it feels like to get hooked—what it feels like to be stuck. Shenpa is the itch and it’s also the urge to scratch. The urge to smoke that cigarette, the urge to overeat, to have one more drink, to say something cruel or to tell a lie.

“Here’s how shenpa shows up in everyday experiences. Somebody says a harsh word and something in you tightens: instantly you’re hooked. That tightness quickly spirals into blaming the person or denigrating yourself. The chain reaction of speaking or acting or obsessing happens fast. Maybe, if you have strong addictions, you go right for your addiction to cover over the uncomfortable feelings. This is very personal. What was said gets to you—it triggers you. It might not bother someone else at all, but we’re talking about what touches your sore place—that sore place of shenpa.”

“Shenpa is not the thoughts or emotions per se. Shenpa is preverbal, but it breeds thoughts and emotions very quickly. If we’re attentive, we can feel it happening. If we catch it when it first arises, when it’s just a tightening, a slight pulling back, a feeling of beginning to get hot under the collar, it’s very workable. Then we have the possibility of becoming curious about this urge to do the habitual thing, this urge to strengthen a repetitive pattern. “

“Whenever there’s discomfort or restlessness or boredom—whenever there’s insecurity in any form—shenpa clicks in. This is true for us all. If we become familiar with it, we can fully experience that unease. We can fully experience the shenpa and learn over time that it’s in everyone’s best interest not to act it out. Not acting out, or refraining, is very interesting. It’s also called renunciation in the Buddhist teachings. The Tibetan word for renunciation is shenluk, and it means turning shenpa upside down, shaking it up completely. It means getting unhooked. Renunciation isn’t about renouncing food, or sex, or your lifestyle. We’re not referring to giving up the things themselves. We’re talking about loosening our attachment, the shenpa we have to these things. In general, Buddhism encourages us never to reject what is problematic but rather to become very familiar with it. And so it is here: we are urged to acknowledge our shenpa, see it clearly, experience it fully—without acting out or repressing.”

I will post a summary of the practice she recommends for addressing shenpa in my next post here. But if it interests you, I can recommend the book.

[Benedict]

“Instead of seeing shenpa as an obstacle to be overcome, it is more helpful to consider it an opportunity for transformation, an open doorway to awakening. When I realize I’m triggered, I think of it as a neutral moment, a moment in time, a moment of truth that can go either way. What I’m advocating is that in that precious moment we start to make choices that lead to happiness and freedom rather than choices that lead to unnecessary suffering and the obscuration of our intelligence, our warmth, our capacity to remain open and present with the natural movement of life."

"This transmutation practice is specifically one of remaining open and receptive to your own energy when you are triggered. It has three steps. Step One. Acknowledge that you’re hooked. Step Two. Pause, take three conscious breaths, and lean in. Lean in to the energy. Abide with it. Experience it fully. Taste it. Touch it. Smell it. Get curious about it. How does it feel in your body? What thoughts does it give birth to? Become very intimate with the itch and urge of shenpa and keep breathing. Part of this step is learning not to be seduced by the momentum of shenpa. Like Ulysses, we can find our way to hear the call of the sirens without being seduced. It’s a process of staying awake and compassionate, interrupting the momentum, and refraining from causing harm. Just do not speak, do not act, and feel the energy. This leaning in is very open, very curious and intelligent. Step Three. Then relax and move on. Just go on with your life so that the practice doesn’t become a big deal, an endurance test, a contest that you win or lose. The biggest challenge in doing this practice is to embrace the restless energy, to stay awake to it rather than automatically exiting. “

“Then the next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves.“

“It doesn’t help at all to feel guilty about where we find ourselves. When we can shed the light of compassionate attention on our actions, an interesting shift can happen—this regret of ours becomes a seed of compassion for all the other people just like us who are caught in fixed mind, closed mind, hard heart. We let this recognition connect us with others. We let it be the seed of empathy, and we go forward, not wallowing in guilt and shame about what we did.”

“How can we start exactly where we are, with all our entanglements, and still develop unconditional acceptance of ourselves instead of guilt and depression? The practice of compassionate abiding is a direct method for embracing our experience rather than rejecting it. So the next time you realize that you’re hooked, you could experiment with this approach. Contacting the experience of being hooked, you breathe in, allowing the feeling completely and opening to it. The in-breath can be deep and relaxed—anything that helps you to let the feeling be there, anything that helps you not push it away. Then, still abiding with the urge and edginess of feelings such as craving or aggression, as you breathe out you relax and give the feeling space. The out-breath is not a way of sending the discomfort away but of ventilating it, of loosening the tension around it, of becoming aware of the space in which the discomfort is occurring. This practice helps us to touch feelings that we think we shouldn’t be having—feelings of failure, of shame, of murderous rage; all those politically incorrect feelings like racial prejudice, disdain for people we consider ugly or inferior, sexual addiction, and phobias. We contact whatever we’re experiencing and go beyond liking or disliking by breathing in and opening. Then we breathe out and relax. We continue that for a few moments or for as long as we wish, synchronizing it with the breath. This process has a leaning-in quality. Breathing in and leaning in are very much the same. We touch the experience, feeling it in the body if that helps, and we breathe it in.”

[2frustrated]

What do Buddhists do about guilt?

[Benedict]

I am no expert on Buddhism, but here is my understanding of the Buddhist approach to guilt for what its worth. To Buddhists, guilt is a negative, paralyzing emotion, essentially a form of self-hatred and contributes to lack of self-confidence (along with inwards-directed anger, depression etc). Instead of recognising that ones actions are or were incorrect and can be corrected in similar situations, you feel unworthy, as if "I" is intrinsically bad. Buddhism sees this as a type of delusion, a complicated form of self-centredness and egotism, and non-acceptance of things-as-they-are.

Although guilt is seen as a negative, destructive emotion, repentence is very important in improving our ways of thinking and behaving. We admit our mistakes, ponder over them and motivate ourselves to not repeat negative actions - repentence. But we do not blame ourselves, beat our selves up over past mistakes - that's guilt.

In the Zen tradition, guilt is just another unnecessary emotion that we create in our minds out of mere thoughts for the sole purpose of stressing ourselves out. If here-now we regret a past action (which would have occurred because we were hooked by something - see previous post on shenpa), then there is absolutely no point stressing about the past and beating yourself up over it. If you can learn from it, to change behaviour in similar circumstances when they arise again, or even just to be mindful and note when the behaviour occurs, or if you can do something now to address any harm caused in the past, then that’s what you need to focus on here-now, not beat up the (non-existent) self about the past (which only exists as memories here-now).

I also came across the following helpful comments on guilt from a Tibetan teacher:

"This sense of “bad me” comes from not understanding the view of selflessness that is so central to the Buddhist path. From this perspective, since there is no solid, singular, permanent self, there’s not going to be a “bad” self to feel guilty about. Guilt has no benefit of any sort and only increases our neurotic attachment to the self. But, more importantly, we can see that guilt is actually the way we try to escape responsibility for our actions and circumstances. We feel guilty when we don’t fully accept our circumstances. Instead, we continually try to protect and cherish this imaginary self. When we feel guilty, we are actually substantiating this “self” even further, rather than honestly looking at the situation in front of us.

"Regret on the other hand is a function of mind’s intelligence. We can see what we’ve done to cause suffering to ourselves and others. We acknowledge what we’ve done and also resolve not to do it again. This is very helpful. …..Regret is the opposite of guilt. We acknowledge it, we expose to ourselves that we have done something harmful and how it came about from our ignorance, but we don’t get caught in emotions and story lines. The sense of remorse is not anywhere near as heavy as the “bad me” that guilt produces.

"When one realizes guiltlessness within oneself, one feels freer and lighter. The attachment to the self, which we all have, lifts. We also start to work with our minds better. …. With the view of guiltlessness we can work with wrong or right, did or didn’t. It doesn’t matter. We can feel free to work with that situation without struggle. The mind is more agile because there is more space—space to look without feeling threatened. If we bring the view of egolessness to our guilt, it will pop the deep part of our emotional attachment to this intrinsic “bad me.”