But when we begin to slow down and step onto the path of recovery, we can actually see more clearly what we are doing and realize that we do have that choice. Quote of the Month While on retreat this past weekend, I heard the expression, ‘Mindfulness from breathing’. Buddhist teacher Amitaratna says we’ve been misled, it’s not mindfulness of breathing we need to be practicing.
Good Tricycle review for Eight Step Recovery
Ten hours a day of focussing on the bodily sensations and 10 days of noble silence, transformed a whole prison culture. The course was such a success that the people who taught it couldn’t wait to go back to prison and teach it again. What I’m Thinking Thinking can get us into trouble. Thoughts without a sTinker is the way of the liberated. When the thought arises, I want a drink, or a line of coke, a cream cake, some porn, another video game, we don’t have to identify with it, we let it arise without a sTinker. When there is nobody to identify with the thought, there is no thinker, no acting out of the thought.
” The summit also explored the intersection of Buddhist recovery and the 12 step recovery model. The summit focused on ways to offer Buddhist recovery in all of its forms to people suffering from addiction regardless of their religion or spiritual traditions. Something I’m doing I will be in Mexico this month, exploring Compassionate Inquiry, Mindfulness Approaches to addiction and reflecting on the Buddha’s Parinavana.
New Book out on Amazon.co.uk
What I’m Watching Seeing The Disgust in Food A short documentary by Bhikkhu Samahita. He reminds us that over 3 million people die of obesity every year, and obesity causes death from heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. He points out that while food may look attractive to the eye and nose and taste senses. As soon as we place the food in our mouth, and chew it, the food becomes something disgusting to look at, and if we regurgitated it, we would most probably recoil with disgust. 32 minutes of food enlightenment, and we will realize how much we are a slave to food. What I’m watching Socio Cultural Trauma by Dr Kenneth Hardy.
‘A Doorway Out of My Hell Realm’
Of course, some of us, who realize our difficult human predicament, reach a crisis and turn to a spiritual path, faith or religion to deal with the shock. Others turn to an addiction to find meaning in life. Fortunately, addiction itself and the suffering it causes can lead people through the doors of a Buddhist temple, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, and many other places that offer some type of solace.
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. At that time, I thought the only way buddhist teachings to overcome addiction with vimalasara out was to take my life. It was a doorway to something different—it was a doorway out of my hell realm.
Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John
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. Meditation is such a powerful tool that in the long term it can completely transform people’s lives.
- Explores black as an umbrella term for several communities including African.
- He just allowed the thoughts and watched them arise and cease.
- So he tried to find contentment by going to the other extreme and becoming an ascetic, using self-mortification practices and eating just one grain of rice each day.
- However, we know that sometimes that just isn’t going to work.
In this video, Vimalasara explains why ‘Eight Step Recovery’ is a ground-breaking and life-changing book. This new, expanded edition includes a Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a guide to running an Eight Step Recovery meeting, and how to teach a Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery (MBAR) programme, including teacher’s notes and handouts. Originating in North America, Buddhist Recovery programmes have spread like wildfire over the past ten years. Noah Levine has created Refuge Recovery, Kevin Griffin has connected 12 Steps to the Dharma, and there are many other Buddhist Recovery variations out there. In Triratna we now have Eight Step Recovery (ESR) – Using The Buddha’s Teaching to Overcome Addiction, an initiative spearheaded by two Triratna Order Members, Dr. Paramabandhu Groves and Vimalasara (featured in this video). Can you help us find a logo for our book, Eight Step Recovery?
- It’s a reminder to me that if I want recovery If I want abstinence and sobriety of mind, I have to work a program.
- The body’s suffering, and we’re training ourselves in training to breathe through that experience of the body.
- ’ I don’t actually recognize that person who I was, and that is fantastic.
- It was a subtle reminder that the power tools was not the issue, it was the agitated mind.
- 10 sessions exploring our triggers, body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions, thinking, actions, gains and cost of our addictions.
And again, just in terms of recovery, in my first book that I wrote with Dr. Paramabandhu Groves, we say that the Buddha was in recovery. I think now if I wrote it, I would say the prince was in recovery, and when the prince became a Buddha, he went beyond recovery, very clearly so. So again, for people who really separate, “Oh my God, addiction’s over here, and this isn’t me,” we’re all in recovery as soon as we’re born.
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: The Best of Buddhism & Psychotherapy – Sponsored by Tibet House US
First, it was Shoe Conditioner, then it was Evo Stick Glue, then Slimming Pills, heroin, methadone and the list continues into today. What is clear that while North America may be dealing with a Fentanyl crisis, other parts of the world may be dealing with Benzos or Ketamine. Particular addiction crises are culturally specific, in terms of class, wealth, race, gender, and sexuality. Addiction is part of life, the Buddha taught us that in his first discourse. The Buddha warned that there was an addiction to Hedonism which was lowly, coarse and unprofitable, and addiction to self-mortification which was lowly, coarse and unprofitable. Sometimes, though, our suffering can seem too overwhelming, or the possibility of freedom from it can be so painfully close that we refuse to see it.
I mean, what just came to mind is the Internal Family Systems method of asking the thoughts to step aside, asking them to relax, and sometimes it just doesn’t. 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.
I Am Still Your Negro is truth that needs to be told, re-told, and remembered. You can now explore all of Loch Kelly’s practices and teachings on the new Mindful Glimpses app. This innovative meditation and wellness app offers daily micro-meditations, step by step programs, and simple-yet-advanced tools for awakening. There are people who have been sexually assaulted, and in that experience of sexual assault, they experience some kind of pleasure. 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. Dharma teacher Vimalasara shares how Buddhist teachings have supported their path to recovery.
The latest issue of the Triratna Highlights newsletter, taking us into the new year, is fresh off the digital presses! If you’re signed up to receive it via email, it should be in your inbox now. If you’re not signed up, you can find the web version here, or go to ‘my profile’ (top right of any page when you are logged in), choose ‘edit’ and check the ‘Newsletter sign up’ box. Aryadhrishti is Canadian and runs the Triratna centre in Portland, USA. She writes about Karma as a spiritual practice of evolution and escape. All of these coping mechanism just fuels more agitation and discontent in our heart/minds.