Just like in an ocean, the waves arise and cease, can we allow our emotions to arise and cease? Just as you get dark clouds and bright clouds which pass by, accept that there are dark thoughts and bright thoughts and will pass by. It’s a practice of really learning to be with all experience so at some point we don’t even label it as negative or positive or bad or good. However, what happens is when we resist it, we begin labeling it. So again, it’s coming home to the breath, coming home to the body.
Vimalasara talks about her book ‘8 Step Recovery: Using the Buddha’s Teaching to Overcome Addiction’
Please note that this episode includes mentions of sexual assault and suicidal ideation. There are many paths to recovery, and there is tremendous hope for changing the narrative, injecting more nuance into these discussions, and making flourishing in recovery possible for all. Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Eightfold Path: Staying on the Path to Recovery19:48
They will be discussing Valerie’s journey, their groundbreaking methodologies, and how these can help listeners on their own sobriety journeys. You’ve written extensively about how Buddhism can support a sustainable path to recovery. So how has Buddhism helped you in your path to recovery? I always say I got my recovery in the rooms of dharma halls. When I go back to the four noble truths, when I learned that our life is characterized by suffering, it was like, “Oh my God, I’m normal,” because I thought I was the only one who suffered. It was all about me, and I thought that there was something desperately wrong with me that I was experiencing this suffering.
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When the prince went into samadhi, he experienced every imaginable mental state arising in his mind, and he did nothing. He just allowed the thoughts and watched them arise and cease. There are people who have been sexually assaulted, and in that experience of sexual assault, they experience some kind of pleasure.
Eight Step Recovery
And what I have to tell people is that actually we have to remember that there are certain ways the body can be touched, and the body will naturally respond. I would say that it was meditation that brought me to Buddhism. When I began to experience meditation, I was like, “Wow, I can get high on this, and it doesn’t cost anything, and it isn’t illegal, and it doesn’t take up any space in my luggage! ” I think what’s more interesting is my journey to meditation.
- Other kinds of thoughts like negative thoughts can be like, “I’m a piece of crap,” “Nobody likes me,” “I knew I couldn’t do it,” those thoughts where you really beat yourself up and really put you in self-pity and self-blame.
- Addiction, compulsion, dependence, obsession, craving, infatuation—whatever you want to call it, you know it when you’re in it.
- We need to learn to sit with the pain calmly.
- Then, at the age of 15, I was incarcerated for shoplifting and being a runaway kid.
The second way is that the Buddha advises us to reflect on the results of our thoughts, the impact of our thoughts. To think of the impact of “I hate myself,” once upon a time, I could say “I hate myself,” and I would feel great. I love this because the Buddha uses the metaphor, the image of a rotting carcass. Just imagine this was a rotting carcass around your neck. So that’s where the stinking thinking comes from, just that rotting carcass around your neck. We know that many people who let go of alcohol have to then face the depression, which is often about being assailed by this toxic thinking, which is most probably why they went to the alcohol, to silence those thoughts.
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Every time we move away from pain, we multiply the suffering in our lives. We need to learn to sit with the pain calmly. We begin to do this by identifying the things that trigger us, and the high-risk situations that may bring about a relapse.
When I was 17, I was a street dancer in the nightclubs, and that was the place where I first experienced nonself, moments where I just lost the self and was really in the moment, totally here and now. That fourth one is restraining your thoughts, and some people might think, “Oh no, that is such a negative thing to happen,” but sometimes you need to tell the thoughts to shut up. The Buddha uses the whole thing of this huge man clenching his teeth and crushing the thought. For me, that has worked a couple of times when it’s just been “Just stop” and shattering the thought. And I think for me, my equivalent for that is just tell it to stop, and in that moment, in that stop, there has been a shattering, and the particular thought has never taken such a hold on me again.
Don’t let the Buddhist teachings get in the way of your recovery. The word Buddha means awake or awakened one. Therefore no matter what your religion or spiritual tradition is, this program can be integrated into your belief system and or life style. As a nonprofit, we depend on readers like you to keep Buddhist teachings and practices widely available.
In Step Four, we need to be willing to step onto the path of recovery and connect to a vision that is greater than our addiction or compulsive behaviors. We need to begin to buddhist teachings to overcome addiction with vimalasara identify things we want more than our addiction. We can begin to discover this new freedom by cultivating loving-kindness in our lives. Addiction, compulsion, dependence, obsession, craving, infatuation—whatever you want to call it, you know it when you’re in it.
- At some point, I think I really enjoyed it.
- The word Buddha means awake or awakened one.
- So I think definitely in my young years, I was in the direction of Buddhism and definitely meditation was the raft, and it still is my raft.
How do you define addiction from a Buddhist perspective? I think addiction can look different for each individual, but at the end of the day, we’re all addicted to self, aren’t we? If we strip away all the other addictions, we’re really addicted to the self and trying to protect this self.
Other kinds of thoughts like negative thoughts can be like, “I’m a piece of crap,” “Nobody likes me,” “I knew I couldn’t do it,” those thoughts where you really beat yourself up and really put you in self-pity and self-blame. It’s one of the places that we move away from experience. That self-blame and that self-pity can be manifested in this negative thinking of putting yourself down and bringing yourself down and everything’s bad and everything’s dark. The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
One thing that characterizes addictive behaviors is when we’ve lost the middle way, when we become polarized and we’ve gone to an extreme. I think what’s more interesting is my journey to meditation. In the nightclubs, I was a street dancer, when I was 17 or 18, a street dancer in the nightclubs, and that was the place where I first experienced non-self, having a non-self experience, where I could just do these things.
We acknowledge them and their impact on us and others. We make amends, and plan to do something different. We take our GIFTS to move forward in our recovery and commit to living our lives more in line with the five training principles. In Step Three, we embrace the fact that there is an end to suffering, that everything in our lives is impermanent, including our addictions, compulsive and obsessive behaviors. Taking this bold statement as a starting point, this wonderful book shows how we are all addicted to aspects of life and can all benefit from training our minds and hearts to be free of the tyranny of compulsion.
Thoughts can be addicting, just like eating, drinking, shopping, or gambling, a fact the Buddha understood well. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), people haven’t changed much in 2,000 years. The teachings of the eightfold path are still useful, dependable lessons, available to help the ordinary person step out of the cycle of samsara and addiction. In this month’s online retreat, join Vimalasara (Valerie Mason-John), chair of the Triratna Vancouver Buddhist Centre, as she shows how the Buddhist teachings can relieve you of your own addictions.
