“Suffering is universal,” the authors of this book point out. “It’s not a terrible mistake that we are suffering, nor a personal failure. Pain happens to us and it happens to everyone.”
The challenge for human beings is not how to avoid suffering, but how to face the pain that is inherent in our lives, and how not to create more suffering by our desperate attempt to avoid pain. Addiction is, perhaps, the most desperate measure we employ to escape suffering. It does not work, as so many of us have found. “Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain,” Eckhart Tolle has written.
My definition of addiction, close to that of the authors, is any behavior, substance-related or not, that brings temporary pleasure or relief, a behavior one craves but is unable to stop despite negative consequences. As the Buddha pointed out thousands of years ago, almost any human pleasure can become addictive:
Some ascetics and Brahmins ... remain addicted to attending such shows as dancing, singing, music, displays, recitations, hand-music, cymbals and drums, fairy shows; ... combats of elephants, buffaloes, bulls, rams; ... maneuvers, military parades; ... disputation and debate, rubbing the body with shampoos and cosmetics, bracelets, headbands, fancy sticks ... unedifying conversation about kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes ... heroes, speculation about land and sea, talk of being and non-being...1
The point is not that any of these behaviors are in themselves necessarily addictive, but that it is our relationship to them that defines the addiction. One could dance or sing, for example, as an act of creation and even divine worship – or, as one of the authors, Valerie, writes: “When something traumatic happened in my life I would go out dancing all night, even without intoxicants.” Addiction happens when an activity is used as a means to escape from the distress of experiencing oneself.
And why should people wish to flee from themselves? We do so when we have suffered as children, and when, being alone and in despair, we could not see how to be with our pain and how to learn from it. The healing of addiction is all about how to learn from pain. “Whatever you do, don’t shut off your pain,” Sogyal Rinpoche writes in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
However desperate you become, accept your pain as it is, because it is in fact trying to hand you a precious gift: the chance of discovering, through spiritual practice, what lies behind sorrow.2
What lies behind sorrow is liberation and joy. A powerful spiritual practice to get us there is the mindfulness taught by the Buddha and revitalized by many great teachers since. Mindfulness reveals that we are not our thoughts, not our bodies, not our emotions, that we can notice and compassionately observe our feelings, thoughts, and bodies without being controlled by them. The key is awareness, as taught in this book, based on Buddhist principles but not requiring any Buddhist affiliation or identification.
The eight steps taught here may also be seen as eight principles to live by. We begin by accepting that whatever we have suffered – and some do suffer more than others – our pain is not ours alone, not personal, but simply a way life may show up while we are in this world. The other steps lead us away from the path of creating more suffering for ourselves and, gradually, onto the path of compassion for others.
It takes practice. In this volume Vimalasara (Valerie) and Paramabandhu gently introduce us to the practice of breathing and self-awareness, beginning with small increments, until breathing and awareness become the anchors for us being grounded in all the eight steps.
There is no one fail-safe way out of addiction. Nothing works for everyone. Challenged by addiction to substances or to behaviors that generate more pain, we need to find the right path for ourselves. Twelve steps, five steps, no steps, eight steps: what is right is what works. The eight steps here recommended may be the primary path for many, but they can also be a powerful support to anyone, no matter what the addiction and no matter what path they are on.
Mindful awareness, conscious breathing, being present in our body, compassion for ourselves and toward others: addicted or not – and most of us are, in some way – these qualities and practices can serve us all.
May we all find peace.
Gabor Maté MD
Author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts:
Close Encounters with Addiction