When most people think of feeding, they think of hunger and eating at specific times.
After we feel better we get on with our day. But to the Buddhist monk
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu we are hungry and feeding all the time.
Emotional feeding.
Part of the divide between Theravada Buddhist attitudes and later
forms of Buddhism, is the insight of interrelatedness. To Ṭhānissaro
interrelatedness, inter-being or interdependence, is not a happy
realization, because of the minds need for emotional feeding. He says:
All human conflicts relate to feeding,
especially on things that cannot be shared. There are good elements to
interrelatedness as later traditions of Buddhism point, out but there is a danger
if the negative side is forgotten. He reminds us that even if we only feed on
vegetables there's a lot of suffering required to farm process and transport
food for consumption. By being hungry we are interdependent to the environment,
which has so much that is out of our power.
The Buddha's answer to this type of feeding is not to relinquish the need
for food but to learn to feed more skillfully, by feeding on the breath.
By seeing how our emotions are connected with feeding and how they can hurt
others, it requires more ingenuity to feed better. It requires an understanding
that we can feed our emotions with music, movies, gossip, social comparisons, and
conflict. This includes religions, including Buddhist concepts, and any
feelings of superiority towards others. Many teachers lament seeing Buddhist
students arguing with each other over incorrect understandings, much like other
supposed peaceful religions that have histories of violence. The feeding is in
our self-measurements and conceptual labels. The fear of feeling inferior,
being rejected, of threats to our survival, create defensive behaviors
that co-opt peaceful intentions. In the case of philosophical debates:
The need to win. For new meditators it can be daunting to
see how little control there is, and how the mind or usurps the mantle of the
"great meditator," concealing a prideful form of psychological feeding in the
practice itself. By making mistakes and going back and forth between mistakes,
and genuine pleasure with the breath, the meditator can learn without having to be perfect.
They can slowly over the years, lean more
towards the breath, to replace the pleasure of conceptual knowledge, which
has that acquisitive pleasure we get with physical objects we like.
Conceptual knowledge on its own can be a form of intellectual food. Ṭhānissaro instructs
practitioners to "feed on the breath. Learn how to savor the breath."
Then quickly we see how incredibly skilled Ṭhānissaro is at this practice when he says:
In this case he means living without emotional feeding, not living without food, to avoid any confusion in the reader.
For a beginner who regularly is thinking about exciting projects or what's for lunch during their meditation,
this seems way too hard. For most of us, meaning 99% of meditators, emotional feeding on the breath requires
a lot of consistency of attention to see any reward. The goal is to allow the mind to
think when it needs to think and go back to the breath when it doesn't need to think.
Subtle thoughts and suggestions are arising all the time, but many of
them want to feed on unstable external sources. To replace that conditioning,
a practitioner can measure how good the breath is feeling now and consistently
adjust it to what feels comfortable. This is similar to having preferences in the
outside world and satisfying those desires with external action.
The difference is that the breath doesn't interfere with anyone else's
pleasure and it is something that is more under your control than external
circumstances usually are. All you have to do is make an intention to do
something external and then notice the negative feelings when there is an
obstacle preventing the intention from receiving satisfaction.
Being a practicing connoisseur of the breath is more under your control. Even if people
in your life mock your meditation practice, it's ultimately hard for
someone to police your breath unless they are assaulting you, which in that
case you can have them incarcerated. There are no excuses to not throw in
some nice breaths throughout the day. Even enjoying the breath when dealing
with difficult people is possible, though that's more of an advanced practice, and
something you'll gradually get better at over the years. Like bodybuilding
meditators are strengthening the mind and the results don't happen overnight.
Meeting your preferences for the breath is enjoyable, and is the Buddhist way to
increase self-esteem. When the treasure in life is something
you have more control over, the rewards of society become less appealing precisely because
of how unreliable they are. Taking care of your mind and having good will for
yourself is the basis of having good will for others. When you don't like
yourself it's very hard to like others. Having an independent form of happiness
keeps the mind away from being dysregulated and the temptation to
aggressively dominate others as a way to deal with it. A funny example Ṭhānissaro
gives is how people can get irritated by small things like being interrupted when
texting. This realization shows how we can be tethered to many things
unconsciously. He says:
A lot of people desire to make a big
difference in the world but they often burn out precisely because of this lack
of self-care. Handling small difficulties with contemplative practices eventually
leads to having enough skill to handle larger difficulties. So in a sense
there's really no advantage to letting your mind get dysregulated emotionally.
Although we have to accept that some people will never meditate and will let
their emotional dysregulation lead to external forms of emotional regulation
like sadism or addiction. For some people that is their main coping mechanism.
Added it on to that, society can perversely reward these reactions and condition
them to repeat. This becomes a big divide between Buddhism and some points of view
in psychology. Many psychologists believe that people should vent their
frustrations on safe objects and environments to let the emotion out.
This can be done skillfully, but when done done skillfully it can lead to an actual
acting out of revenge, leading to remorse. In extreme cases, it can lead to serious
injury or death. Another danger is how psychologists view pleasure. They are
right in saying that many pleasures are more intense than mental peace, and it's
true that many of these pleasures can be good, but these same pleasures when
denied can create intense pain. The feeding eventually gets discouraged by
the consequences of moving through people's boundaries, and naturally looks
for what supports a clear conscience. Ṭhānissaro is not under the illusion
that these practices are easy and he regularly points out that a lot of
addictive voices in the mind say "it's no big deal. It's worth it." The mind finds
short-term excuses to gain relief from craving. Over many pleasurable and
unpleasurable experiences, the mind eventually prefers the breath, because
mental peace is more sustainable. He says:
One of the ways Ṭhānissaro gets us to see evidence of
our duplicitous minds is to notice that feelings related to our thinking, even
thoughts that seem responsible, can be colored by feelings of the opposite
nature. If the habit is stronger than the new intentions, we can be, for example,
an alcoholic that's going to an A A meeting and blank out, turn directions, and then
end up in a bar. This blanking out can be seen in meditation. Your intention to
stay concentrated with the breath can in a fraction of a second move into
thoughts of planning and anticipation of future pleasures. The ending bell of the
meditation is where many of us are just starting the meditation.
It can be humbling to see how easy it is to get carried away in feed in the wrong places.
For example, when I visited Japan, I remember trying to take pictures of koi
fish in a pond, and a young girl pushed in front of me to get a picture first.
Ironically this is similar to how koi fish steamroll each other to get at the
fish food tourists throw at them, yet it was the food of superiority she was
looking for instead of fish food. Another example from my trip was when visiting
Buddhist temples. One temple had a sign that tourists were not to take pictures
of the golden Bodhisattva statue Guanyin. Of course many people did with men
at the ticket booth shaking their heads in contempt at the pathetic tourists.
I also took a picture. At the time I was feeling the same as the other tourists:
"Damn it! I came all this way. I'm not leaving without a picture." Of course this
left me with guilt feelings which tarnished the experience.
Yet this feeding is so contagious and easy to fall into, like drivers passing
the speed limit because everyone else is.
Looking back even the men in the ticket booth that were shaking their heads in
contempt, were also feeding, except they were again feeding on superiority.
It's so hard to notice all the types of feeding in real time because the
automatic decision-making is happening so fast. This is why intentions have to
be renewed constantly. All of this means we have to watch ourselves more than
others. We have enough work to do right here.
Instead of worrying about other people, Ṭhānissaro wants to meditator to keep
it simple and focus on their own feeding. This freedom from feeding for Ṭhānissaro
means you aren't completely restricted. By having a portable source
of pleasure, you are not chained to your source of food. The measure of the
practice is to be able to do the things you don't want to do that are good for
you and let go of the things that are bad for you that you like. A great
insight with this practice is to see that even if we mainly pursue our breath,
because we can control it, the meditator can use this insight and assert
themselves externally with an understanding of what can be controlled
on the outside. Even if a person takes external risks, they have the breath they
can return to, and there's less feelings of shock when there's an external
disappointment. A lot of the stress of disappointments is precisely because we
are caught off guard. When our expectations are matched with what the
external world is actually like, we will get fears and frights, but there won't be
as damaging as when we emotionally invest and daydream on only one
particular outcome happening. Having backup plans and prioritizing meditation
practice as the main form of pleasure gives the mind a source of relief, while
dealing with the world. There is something to not having all your eggs in
one basket.
What makes emotional food junk food for a Ṭhānissaro is if it comes from
unstable sources. Sometimes there's a feast, and sometimes a famine. This can
cause a lot of anger. Ṭhānissaro challenges the meditator he says:
In short wanting people to behave in particular ways can be a form of feeding
that causes stress, like a sense of superiority or preference. It can make
the meditator forget their own unskillfulness when they focus on the
on the skillfulness of others. This doesn't mean that people can't be assertive in
their behavior to make people accountable, but ultimately the
passive-aggressive attitude of wanting people to change by doing nothing about it,
except stewing in negative emotions, betrays a desire to feed on the
entitlement that the world should be fair. The world isn't fair. We can vote
for who we want to, and take actions within our rights, but the world will
always be a mix of good and bad. The practitioner can't wait for the world to
be fair to practice meditation. Ṭhānissaro says:
Even if this may look boring to many people, he doesn't restrict the breath to
boredom. He says to:
which is the main part of the practice. Athough it's not just aboutpreventing boredom he says:
Ṭhānissaro's website, Dhammatalks, is an endless list of practice instructions and insights to
help the practitioner. The practice can be kept simple in its broad strokes,
but eventually becomes complex as the mind ets clearer. The mental movements of the
mind are fast, and more clarity means more detail on how the mind emotionally
feeds. It's easy to fall into one of the feeding intentions and get carried away.
Ṭhānissaro says:
As you watch
movements of the mind latch onto things outside, you can also see that it can
feed on the body, but it's not the habit yet. The practitioner still has to
replace external things with the breath before going further. Ṭhānissaro says"
"savor the breath as if it is good food or music. Be a connoisseur of the breath.
Think of it as food." The danger of not feeding the mind is that it can rebel
and this will happen a lot as people are learning how to entertain the mind with
the breath.He says, "if you don't feed it well, it looks for scraps in the garbage
can...It becomes a homeless mind. Feed on rapture or refreshment. Allow the breath
to be refreshment. Each breath should be given space. Ask what would feel really
good and refreshing?" Moving to the body one can ask what kind of breathing would
be good for this section or that section of the body. We can notice parts of the
body that have tension and relax them. There are no particular rules at how to
play with the breath, just starting points. You can be creative with your
imagery as well. Below is my video review, which includes some of the creative ways
advanced practitioners use to deal with physical pain.
One of the insights that can be found early on, is how our breath is natural
when we don't pay attention to it, but when our attention goes to the breath,
the willpower starts manipulating and tightening it. By going towards
preference, like we do in the external world, we can experiment with the breath.
If you want a short or long breath we do that, and keep changing according to how
our body prefers it. As we satisfy our preferences,
we get some of that pleasure that we receive when satisfying preferences in the
external world. This way we are attuned to the present moment because it's
interesting. We're still thinking but thinking about our breath preferences
instead. This is the type of thinking that leads naturally to less
complication. "We don't anticipate the next breath," Ṭhānissaro says,
With others there are so many ways we can feed including feeding on the
intellect, feeding on anticipation, and we can wallow on unpleasantness if we feel
someone will rescue us. This actually matches a lot of what psychologists say,
that anticipation and plans for enjoyment are often the main part of the
enjoyment. For Ṭhānissaro, memory is used to watch
the cause and effect of your practice, "to remember what you did, and the results
you're getting." Showing that he's not afraid to point out practices he thinks
won't work, Ṭhānissaro says:
He challenges again and asks:
He wants the practitioner to look for happiness that doesn't require you to hurt others then there's,
As you continue practicing you will be...
Because we recognize experience with labels, they'll have a little bit of
clinging stress, a feeding based on what is recognized as being a better or worse
label or recognition. He wants us to...
Similar to Carl Jung's Archetypes and Freud's Ambivalence,
Ṭhānissaro looks at our desires as a committee that weighs desires.
Certain voices based on our habits are louder than others. He guides us to...
Of course we don't have to think about doing this, but just begin breathing
nicely, and feed the right voices before we get carried away.
Seeing ever more subtle forms of mental pain helps tilt the ambivalence towards
less pain. He says...
This inclines the mind towards Nirvana which is often called "the deathless" or
"the unconditioned," which is different from a concentration mental state, and
promises the deepest rest of all contemplative practices. Actual food for
someone who has weaned themselves into nirvana many times, is transformed into
something to keep the body strong to maintain practice.
So why all this fuss over these practices and even making a life out of it?
Ṭhānissaro asks...
The pain we are slowly unraveling with meditation, if we don't
practice, is going to be there when we age and experience
illness and death. To have to go through a quick weaning process of our addictive
attachments when we are closer to our actual death, will be more emotionally
painful than dealing with it earlier on. It also relieves a lot of unnecessary
stress when one is alive and well. A person's body can be in better shape
than someone who is older but their mind may not be as. Ṭhānissaro reminds the
listener that death can come at any moment and does not ask permission. He asks us...
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