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Web Exclusive
July 2, 2007
Tricycle Q & A: Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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4. justinhoneyford asks: how can buddhism help me quit marijuana for good, without craving. because honestly right now i would rather smoke than crave. since i have tried to be clean for about 3years now and weed is all i think about.
Try not to think of yourself as a victim of craving. Instead, try to look at what you’re doing to keep craving alive. Craving usually depends on a story line: “I have this particular set of uncomfortable physical or mental feelings, and the only way I can be rid of it is to smoke some good weed.” When you see this kind of thinking arise, try to provide an alternative story. To begin with, take the “set” of feelings apart. Do they have to come as a set, or are you simply habituated to glomming them together? Try dealing with each particular feeling on its own, and it’ll be less overwhelming. Good practice with breath meditation—particularly the style taught by Ajaan Lee, where you’re learning how to alter the energy flow in the body simply by the way you breathe—can give you a handle on a lot of uncomfortable physical and mental sensations. When you can master this, that helps to deconstruct the other part of the story line: that the only way you can get rid of the feelings is to get stoned. You’ve got proof that there are clean energy alternatives ☺ that have fewer drawbacks. You may find yourself slipping back into your old habit of fostering craving from time to time, especially when you’re not fully mindful or alert, but as soon as you catch yourself in action, you can keep deconstructing it in this way. That way it’ll be less compelling, and you won’t feel so overwhelmed.
5. TK321 asks: Greetings, all. What are some ways one can effectively generate patience in the everyday world?
First, make sure that you’re not burdening the present with the past and future. In other words, don’t focus on thoughts of how long the intolerable situation has lasted, or conjectures about how long it’s going to last. Otherwise, you weigh down the present moment so much that it’s going to snap. So just focus on what you’re facing right now. Can you bear with it for just now?
That leads to the second point. When you’re focused on the present, focus on what you can tolerate, rather than what you can’t. That way the aspects that are hard to bear won’t weigh so heavily on the mind. Focus on what you can do to alleviate the situation—even if it’s only something fairly minor—rather than obsessing about the roadblocks in your way. Try to develop confidence that the good you do, even if it may seem small, and even if it doesn’t show immediate results, will eventually blossom.
6. b215y asks: Why do we lie? Intentional lying, the fear of discovery and the continued need for deceit, the avoidance of the truth: why do we do this?
Because there are times when we gain short-term benefits from lying, and it’s a common tendency in the untrained mind to go for the quick fix, the short-term benefits whenever we spot them. As the Buddha said, wisdom is not just a matter of knowing that something gives good or bad results. It’s more strategic: your ability to talk yourself into doing what you know will give good results even if you don’t like doing it, and your ability to talk yourself out of doing something you know will give bad results even though you like doing it.
Whenever you want to wean yourself from an unskillful or unhealthy habit, you can’t just look at its drawbacks. You also have to look clearly to see what immediate gratification you get from it. If you can’t see the gratification, you won’t understand it. If you don’t understand it, you can’t get past it.
7. 3wishes asks: I've been told both that Buddhism has no gods and that Buddhism has always had gods. Many Westerners seem to be attracted to the no-gods thing, but is this a Western misconception?
Gods appear in the earliest texts, but not as objects of worship or as authorities to be obeyed. They’re basically irrelevant to the real issue in Buddhism, which is how to train your mind so that it no longer causes suffering.
Gods in the early texts range from tree spirits and celestial spirits (devas), somewhat like fairies and angels, all the way to brahmas, majestic gods who think that they created the universe. These gods are born into their positions because of their past merit, and they fall from those positions when their merit runs out. (You’ve probably been a god in the past, and now you’re back to being a human. Keeping that point in mind helps to keep you from being awed by gods.) Sometimes the gods are helpful; sometimes not; sometimes they’re portrayed as intelligent, sometimes as ignorant and hypocritical. (There’s one passage where a female tree deva, spotting a monk coming out of the river after taking a bath, comes out of the tree to proposition him. There’s another where a monk gains a vision of the great Brahma who claims to have created the universe. The monk asks him where the physical universe ends, and the Brahma keeps repeating, “I am Brahma, the Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Sovereign Lord, the Maker, Creator, Chief, Appointer and Ruler, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be.” The monk—unlike Job—responds, “That’s not what I asked.” Finally the Brahma takes the monk by the arm, pulls him off to one side, and admits that he doesn’t know the answer to the monk’s question, but he didn’t want to disappoint his adoring retinue by admitting his ignorance in their presence.
So the early texts portray the gods as subject to passion, aversion, and delusion, just like us. In this they’re far inferior to the Buddha and his arahant disciples. The early discourses recommend being polite to the gods and wishing them well, just as you would treat any other living being, but they don’t recommend obeying the gods or believing a teaching just because some spirit appears before you and advocates it. The teaching focuses instead on your capability to use your powers of reason, along with a reasonable faith in the power of your actions. The gods are part of the Buddhist landscape, but they aren’t necessarily guides to the path.
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