Zengriff-v2 - Zengriff

"Because Zen seekers are searching too eagerly, they think there must be a special principle, so they try to describe it to themselves mentally, in a subjective way. Thus they are swept by the machinations of emotive and intellectual conciousness into something that is created and will perish." - Yingan Tanhua (1103-1163)

- mindfulness in plain english by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana

Recently I've really had strong urges to drink and smoke. By telling you I guess I'm hoping you have a little advice or something insightful to say, and hopefully it will help anyone else who might have similar urges. Btw I don't have any addictions to either one, just new and strange urges to indulge.

“Where attention goes, energy flows.”

I’m not sure who said that, but it’s a poeticparaphrasing of what many sages have been saying for years; and it can help toexplain how any thought or urge, indeed any movement of the mind, gets itspower. At the point a thought or urge arises it’s powerless and, bereft ofattention, it will quickly dissipate;however, when given attention, energy pours into it and then it’s going to be hard to get rid of.

What usually happens is this: an urge arises for analcoholic drink and we react to it, and think, ‘that would be nice, it’s a warmday and a cold beer would be good, I’ve not had one for a while, and on andon…’ or, we might think, ‘where’s this coming from, I don’t want alcohol, it’snot good for me, where is this urge coming from..?’ Either way, we’ve engagedwith it, we’ve given it attention and our energy is pouring into it, as eachthought gives rise to another, and then to another, and so on…

Instead, what we can do is acknowledge the urge as it arises,without engaging with it: an analogy we can use for this, is to imagine theurge comes in the form of a text message to your phone; so, a notification popsup, which allows you to see a part of the message, and you can see it says,‘lets have a drink’ but you can’t see all the whys-or-why-nots. Now, the moment you open that message you are engaging with it, the sendercan see you opened it and so a response is needed; however, if you don’t openit, you’re not engaging with it and so no response is needed and it can beignored and eventually be forgotten about. And if the urge to open it comes in,we again just see the notification, but don’t open the message…

If we engage with the urge, it will quickly bring thoughtafter thought, which are the whys-and-why-nots, which are mostly unconscious thought;by not engaging with it, we take away it’s power and create a space in which wecan consciously think about whether we really do want to drink and smoke. Andin that space, we’re less likely to be influenced by outside factors, such aspeer-pressure, and so make a conscious decision.

I hope that helps. Namaste, Dave

Joan Didion, from Blue Nights

Funda-in ‘芬陀院’ Kyoto, Japan.

"The fruit of meditation is not the absence of thoughts, but the fact that thoughts cease to harm us.

Once enemies, they become friends."

- Bokar Rinpoche