Free will and addiction

(Source)

In the disease model of addiction, it is nice in that it counters some of the heaping moral blame. Blame the victim is fairly standard in the good old USA, another self defeating philosophy amongst many. You can find a few articles on line about the disease model of addiction and free will.

The good old USA, we have a kind of wacky political bifurcation, either you follow that party line or this party line, and neither the twain shall meet. Either you believe in personal responsibility and ignore other social factors, or you look at other social factors, and you don't harp on personal choice. I feel like you can do both, and we don't need to entrench into partisan sniping.

The physiological element to addiction makes it very rewarding, and to quit is hard, mere exertion of will doesn't really make it so.

In Buddhism, we work to transcend our conditioning and not be reactive, to be creative. There's probably a percentage of free will, creativity, and we're looking to increase the percentage.

There's a lot emphasis on improving condition, creating the conditions that will lead to enlightenment. Improving conditions is an important way of working towards moving toward enlightenment.

Once someone is addicted, and you have the cycle where more and more is required to get the high as you habituate to the drug. Moral judgements don't stop people from using, it contributes to feeling bad about yourself and that leads to more use. Recovery has to be a choice, moving out of attraction and not just avoidance.

There's also a generic element in our genome. Before for water treatment, putting wine into your water killed bacteria and having the gene helped you to survive.

Addiction is very complicated. Free will and blame are in an interesting dance with the issues of addiction.

My first philosophy class was about free will. The Christians who want it because they need it to solve the problem of evil were heavily invested in it. How can an all knowing and all powerful god make something bad happen. The answer is free will. But if you don't have that commitment, the need to have it is less. On the other side, the materialists, who think only the stuff of physics exists, they have a need to defer to physicist, which is a much more muddy picture at this point, but could be an anti-free will position, determinism.

I like the idea of free will, even if it's not true, at least psychologically. Focusing people on their choices can help one to actually reflect on them, and in error analysis. If determinism is true, then I can't help but like the idea of free will.

The magical thinking involved in substance abuse is amazing. Working with substance abuse is interesting in that often times mental health professionals want to ceed that territory to substance abuse counselors. There are some that cross over, and the MICA tradition addresses both issues.

BTW, my sons interrupted me a million times while I was writing this post, so I apologize for any incoherence. 

Hotai in a frump hat

McMahan on Suzuki

P. 133 of The Making of Buddhist Modernism:

"Suzuki's insistence that the enlightened person transcends social conventions and prescribed morality, realizing intuitive action as the vehicle of nature, reconfigures and radicalizes Rousseau's primitivism."

Once In A Lifetime

"Once In A Lifetime"

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful

wife

And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself

How do I work this?

And you may ask yourself

Where is that large automobile?

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful house!

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing

There is water at the bottom of the ocean

Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean

Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/in the silent water

Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself

What is that beautiful house?

And you may ask yourself

Where does that highway go?

And you may ask yourself

Am I right?...Am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself

MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/in the silent water

Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...



 

Sutta Nipata 4.15

Seeing people floundering
     like fish in small puddles,
     competing with one another — 
               as I saw this,
               fear came into me.
     The world was entirely
               without substance.
     All the directions
                                    were knocked out of line.
     Wanting a haven for myself,
     I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to.
     Seeing nothing in the end
     but competition,
     I felt discontent.
              —Sutta Nipata 4.15, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Meditating with a new cat

Anandi enjoys cats, and she waited an appropriate time after Oscar died, and then she decided she wanted rescue cats from the shelter. She adopted Ella and Lulu (originally Booboo and Cupcake). They were fixed free of charge, and their first vet visit is free if done within a certain time limit. We got the cats the next day, because they don't perform an operation on a cat that they will eventually put down. They used the phrase "no longer available" to describe one cat. There are no snuff shelters but the city one is not one of those. Here's the search site if you're looking for a cat in NYC. The place is pretty disturbing but it feels good to snatch a cat from the jaws of extinction. I wanted to adopt them all. Talking to one of the workers there, we asked her how she does it. She said she'd avoided it for quite a while, but finally she was able to accept the situation. You can volunteer there if you like animals. And I guess that's where you can go if you have to get rid of an animal and you can't find someone to take it. Luckily my aunt took my cats when I moved and couldn't take my cats. And she got someone to take the cats when she moved.

They are obviously traumatized from living in the shelter, and who knows what before that. I call them scairdy cats sometimes. Each day they relax their vigilance brought on by the traumas of their past.

We sat down to meditate for the first time since getting them today, and Ella was clawing at Anandi's foot.

Ella proceeded to snuggle in, head butt her. She brushed by me. We laughed. And that was all after chasing the bird off the air conditioner near our shrine.

As always, you focus on the breath. The cats will learn we don't pet them when we're meditating. But they did like it when we finished.

Perennialism

The Making of Buddhist Modernism is really eye opening in that it discusses how other ideas are used to articulate Buddhism in the modern world, as a reaction to imperialism, as the first wave of western converts articulate what they like about it. What does it mean when traditionalists can see meditating as presumptuous, and the plethora of printed English Buddhism that has created a kind of western bookish Buddhist? I'm going to riff, with my thoughts from reading the book, but in no way are my thoughts either a review of the book or some scholarly paper themselves. This is a personal blog post.

Perennialism is the idea that all religions participate in the ultimate truths. This contrasts with perhaps the Buddhist who feels that it's the Buddha's experience that matters, and that there isn't some universal kind of truth it participates in.

As I delve into the book, I'm don't think I want to be a traditionalist, and I think it's OK to blend modern ideas with Buddhism. I don't necessarily think science has the best truths, or that Buddhism is more scientific than other religions. But I do believe in pluralism and multiculturalism instead of separatism or the importance of erasing differences.

Perennialism really helps in the exclusive truth wars. I've written in the past about friends who think religion necessarily leads to people feeling closer to the truth and that leads people towards conflict. A modern mindset is inclined to think that truth is more of a function of a system, learning the lessons from Godel's Incompleteness theorem. That you can't prove the truth of a system without referring to the system, and that just makes it all a kind of game. There is no super system that explains it all. That points to a kind of pragmatism, just noticing what each system does, and resisting reduction or assimilation into other systems. Perennialism functions to promote harmony, and not discord, and whether it's true or not. Nobody needs to be colonized or converted, we're all on the same journey. The only danger could be to ignore differences and history.

The modern world has allowed for more open source Buddhism, that teachings are available. We don't need a system that concentrates the information into the powerful hands of a central authority. We don't need to have an allegiance to one kind of Buddhism, we can love the variety and appreciate the spirit of certain teachers, even if we don't believe in the system they created. We own our own spirituality and have the responsibility of finding out what works for us. Now you can lose some depth by not committing to one tradition and there will be people that will tell you you should only shop exclusively in their bookshop, but most people see through that. They see it as branding, a sales pitch.

The lack of a cohesive system and community can be an outgrowth of open source Buddhism. The real living traditions that actually exist are more traditional.

I like to be around other people of different traditions, and I get the feeling I sometimes get when I'm with sangha. Even outside of Buddhism.

So it think the trick is to have a community, with a tradition, but that also allows for independent thinking. And being aware what is Buddhism and what is not Buddhism. What does our modern culture add in to adapt Buddhism to our times, and what do we gain and lose by doing that? I don't like sectarianism, but loosey goosey doesn't always work either. Buddhism without beliefs is wonderful, but Stephen Batchelor has not founded a sangha. He visits other sanghas and organizations. People come to hear him teach, but he does not present a system for spiritual development.

I think perennialism, which would be hard to prove, does function in a harmonizing multicultural way.

what is a Buddhist?

McMahan talked about modern existence, and being disenchanted, and that we are looking for re-enchantment.

I'm not sure which I want. There were times in my life when I saw a rupa and had a visceral desire to prostrate myself to it, even though I was in a museum. I have done the prostration practice to the TBC refuge tree. On the other hand I would also like to just tolerate not knowing and not necessarily multiply entities beyond their necessity. I like the idea of Padmasambhava pinning down demons, but I also interpret that psychologically. I see great psychological benefit in thinking archetypically, but don't think there are unseen spirits beyond my mind.

I am deeply suspicious of "organized religion". I do feel the differences between myself and other Buddhists. One time a waitress had a Buddhist necklace on. I asked her if she was a Buddhist. She said yes. I asked her if she meditated, and she said no. I didn't even know at the time if she could have considered it presumptuous for me to meditate. I did not even know that.

I sat at a Wesak celebration onces, where Sri Lankan children played out various aspects of the Buddha's life in play. It felt weird to see that because the children were kind of being force, and the parents were so proud of their children for doing this thing they seemed to feel put upon. For me Buddhism is a choice that goes counter to the dominant culture I am surrounded by. To be sure in New York City, there is multiculturalism, but outside of NYC, there is a kind of Christian fog hanging over America.

At one point I was exploring various centers. I went to one where I was talking to a monk outside. I thought we were having an interesting conversation until he abruptly stopped the conversation to open the door for a Chinese woman to enter the temple. I got the message. This is for Chinese people. I have no problem with his commitment to cultural Buddhism. I even wish for an American Buddhism, though that's going to take hundreds and hundreds of years. I tried to read a memoir by a guy who grew up in a Zen family. I didn't really detect much that was Buddhist about it, it was more about how his journey was impacted by having Buddhist parents. He seemed to be into Buddhism, but it also seemed to be going with the flow, and not something he committed to. Perhaps he did later in the book, I honest could not finish the book, not much was happening and "hey look I grew up in a Zen family" wasn't enough for me.

McMahan has a term called Buddhist sympathizer, which he got from Thomas Tweed. I had a Buddhist t-shirt that said, "I am a Buddhist" and it was shouting it out loud. I remember once time in a cafe in Santa Fe someone laughed at the idea. I suppose they wondered why would someone have to shout that. I feel the need to distinguish myself from Christians, and to raise the profile of American Buddhists. Coming from NYC I feel as though what ever my religion is, that is fine, and that it won't hinder me to be Buddhist.

When I was a therapist I had a few patients that followed Soka Gakki. I didn't really feel like we had a common ground. My understanding is that they hoped, that by chanting a mantra about their devotion to the Lotus Sutra, to be reborn in a pure land where they could then become enlightened.  I was hoping to move towards enlightenment through my own personal efforts. I do think we need other power to help us, why not, but for me there's more of a personal responsibility.

In discussion with a friend on retreat, he thought it was pretty controversial to feel like you had to do it in one life time. Another friend says that it's hard to imagine the life force energy doesn't go somewhere after they die. Another friend suggested to me that the only important thing about reincarnation was that I kept an open mind to it, and I later read how Sangharakshita asserted that there was no Buddhist movement that didn't include reincarnation. There are various books about reincarnation in the movement that as far as I can tell, debunk the popular notion, and water down into something inoffensive. It's just conditionality. Who knows. I find the work of Stephen Batchelor refreshing.

There is a part of me that makes me think I can't just make it all up for myself. That there should be some bite to the spiritual life, the bending of my will.

On another hand I want to guard myself against the social control aspects of being manipulated by religion, for other people's goals. I'm individualistic in a way that will not jive with the more socially oriented versions of Buddhism.

I have been enchanted at times, loved puja, mantra, ritual, felt strong feelings towards the sangha. I wondered why someone wouldn't get a visualization practice at ordination, that was the final step in Sangharakshita's system of meditation. I like the idea of having a visualization practice about ideals, the embodiment of ideals. I like all that Jungian kind of thinking, but I do not so much think about these things literally, and put a modernist twist on what others take literally.

What Buddhism is, is a question for the scholars. What is my spiritual journey, is another question, and it's good to realize the modern/traditional split in Buddhism. I think of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. I'm ok with importing modern psychology and theoretical understandings into ancient Buddhism, making it my own. And that is a very modern idea, I have come to learn.

off to the opera

Reading the Visuddhimagga really gets you into the word tangle. Disentangling the entanglements is perhaps one of the missions of Buddhism. One of my teachers was reading that book when he used that word a lot. This is the kind of book where I'm probably going to read a page a day and finish in a few years.

I got The Making of Buddhist Modernism in the mail yesterday. It came out in 2008. It's one of those complex books that has a million references you want to read like The Saturated Self or Courtesans and Fishcakes. A tour de force. I read the introduction and the section on Sangharakshita's The Art of Religion. That's one I haven't read. Guess I need to read that one.

The book basically traces the various ideas and synthesis of modernity and Buddhism. I was writing about that in my review of Daughters of Dolma. It makes me wonder if there is anything wrong with adding in ideas and whatnot to the original tradition? Is there any virtue in not adding in modern ideas? McMahan asks a few times what is it about Buddhism that you can say you're "into Buddhism"? Do people say they are "into Protestantism"? I guess people don't brag about it anyway. Also there is a plethora of published books in English, which makes reading about Buddhism a new phenomenon. Forget about blogs.

Last night after I listened to a talk about the 5th precept, last night, I still hadn't fallen asleep, so I was listening to an audio version of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, and I heard the phrase "unbarrowed experience". I'm not sure if I could read that book, but I can certainly fall asleep to it. I got an audio version off one of those free read book websites. But I digress. Unbarrowed experience means something that not someone else's formulation, it's your own formulation. Can you actually do that?

I almost didn't break my position for the 40 minute sit this morning. I've decided to meditate every day again. I've taken some time off. I'm ready to get back. As I'm getting back into meditation I'm aware that I kind of control the breath when paying attention to it. The third stage I focus on my posture, and think about wanting to read Will Johnson's book about posture.

I'm hoping to meditate for 20 minutes every day and longer on work free days when I don't have my children.

Doing a retreat at home was interesting. I'd hoped to be more disciplined, but it's good that I pushed myself to do what I did. Doing a retreat with someone else, gets you more intimate with them. Anandi and I did a lot of talking.

And now it's off to the opera!

Here is a picture of the calzones Cori made last night--squash, onion and mushroom.

'body scan meditation' by vidyamala

free buddhist audio : : 'body scan meditation' by vidyamala

Retreat update: We did a body scan, which is wonderful. Vidyamala really does an excellent one and it takes 40 minutes. There are some phrases I like, like "back breathing" and "soft hands". She really zooms in on some interesting places. We had a lot of thoughts and feelings about our bodies and shared them in our check in.

Before that we read another intense section of The Essential Sangharakshita. That guy gets me every time.

We slept late. I think there are a few things about having a retreat in the home with two people. One is that it's harder to push yourself to conform to a schedule. We created an intense schedule and we've done about half of it. And I've broken all the rules. But I'm proud I meditated twice for 40 minutes yesterday and read a lot of Dharma, and cooked.

We just made a smoothie, that I'm going to write about on my other blog.

metta bhavana - full lead-through' by kamalashila

free buddhist audio : : 'metta bhavana - full lead-through' by kamalashila

Forgive me if I'm a little precious about my experience, that happens at the beginning of a retreat, as I tune in.

Anandi wanted to do a lead meditation (link above) because it's been a while, so we played the full lead through by Kamalashila. Unfortunately the computer went to sleep and we probably did more than we were supposed to in the final stage, but that's not bad.

I started to get that head feeling that is hard to describe, when you're meditating a bit for the first time in a while. Someone once called it the feeling of coming out of warp speed, a reference perhaps to Star Trek. I also go hot, which sometimes happens when I meditate. I feel like I'm burning off the impurities.

I used to think about myself sledding as a child to evoke metta, and I recently went sledding and had a weirdly full feeling of metta while doing it, the sledding was infused with metta because I connect that as a time when I was happy as a child, simple happiness. Passing that on to my sons, there was a kind of fatherly love involved. There was sympathetic joy in others joy. There was compassion when people got into problems. And all the while I was not overwhelmed, just right.

We went grocery shopping. We got some flowers for the shrine.

You can see my main rupa, with Kwan Yin on the left and Manjushri on the right, and some butterflies for color and beauty. The Buddha wears the awesome mala Anandi bought me, that I wear sometimes.

We made pizza dough for our pizza tonight.

It looks a little crumbly, but we put more water in it, and she didn't think we should put any more in. My first pizza dough.

I cut up some onions and got a good cathartic onion cry. I was glad to spend time in the kitchen with Anandi, she really is fun to be with in the kitchen.

She made a ginger drink with orange juice, lime juice and lemon juice. She's so creative!

Food

Anandi reports another vegan blog just stopped being vegan. She thought the comments were very harsh, the vegan community is often very hard on people who leave it. Is that one of the traits of being a cult? When people are punished for leaving? Perhaps people were just expressing their own feelings about another's actions. Such a strong reaction means there's a lot of meaning in there. I'm all for exploring what is important to people.

I asked he why the person stopped being vegan. It was health reasons, but supposedly they are never specific. Which makes me think they stopped feeling good, and listened to their body. They never get specific. Was it cheese? Was it meat?

Reading section 5.2.4 of The Essential Sangharakshita, he talks about moving away from harm to others. Whether that's not eating veal, to veganism, the point is to exert effort to reduce the harm done to others by providing ourselves nourishment. What I admire about Anandi is that she's not an angry vegan, she is OK with others not being vegan. She works very hard to make yummy vegan food. My mouth waters when I read her blog, because I remember those lovely meals. I'm a semi-vegetarian with aspirations. I feel lucky to live with such a good cook.

Anandi should really write this blog because she's the food expert. Yesterday we made curried chick pea salad, that was awesome. For dinner we had the tofu, broccoli and peanut sauce with rice. We haven't really had that here at home, that's more of an Aryaloka meal. I was so honored that she included that meal in our retreat eating.

(photo by Anandi)

Update on retreat: We moved the beginning time from 6 to 7 and only I got up. Anandi stayed up till midnight last night, and decided she doesn't like doing new year's alone. I slept. Instead of getting to meditation after 30 minutes, I took 75 minutes to read and write, and then sat down to do a mindfulness of breathing. Anandi woke up and ground some coffee. I heard her padding around and making noise. I did not resent it, but I was thinking about how we were not in harmony. I felt guilty that I didn't stay up with her. I've always been in relationships with people who wanted to celebrate New Year's Eve, and I don't particularly like staying up that late, it throws everything out of whack.

So we through out our rigid schedule of meditation and just wrote a list of essentials we'd like to do today. So that's how the retreat is going to go today. No Netflix or video games for me. I think that's something I'd like to do in my regular life. No non-Dharma books. We are talking about our life visions and the blocks towards achieving those goals and ideas. And cleaning becomes important. I'm not very good about cleaning, and I'm hoping the retreat helps me to clean and organize the house. It already has.

I'd say the challenge of an in-home retreat is that it's harder to step out of your usual patterns in your own home, going off to a retreat center makes it easier. And yet it's in the home where it really counts, so maybe it's good to fight that fight.