Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
living a drug-free life
sova
delocalized fractyllic harmonizing Veteran
Having a clear head is an invaluable asset.
Addiction, I spit on you! Like how the Buddha spits on sickness, aging, and death.
When I was a youngster my forevermantra was "mind over matter". (it still is, in many ways and days) I once declared that later in life (when "older") I would use the most addictive substance for a while and then drop it like a heap of heavy burning coals just to prove it could be done.
Alas, it is different when certain chemicals actually affect your body chemistry in ways that wire you to effectively become a slave to the substance. Cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, none of these have any feelings of their own, yet they steer many many people down paths of pain and sorrow. Life is already not easy, why carry a bucket of lava on your head or from your scrotum in addition to all the basic foot steps that must be tread? It is purely nonsensical, and yet, find yourself under the spell of an intoxicant, be it anger, jealousy, greed, or a physical detriment like weed, and much of your sane time and clear mind will find itself simply searching for that buzz, that ever-brief justification for your endless pursuits. Pure nonsense.
Should you feel bad if you go to the pub on occasion, or enjoy a smoke? No, why? don't brew stress where there isn't any. But if the benefit of restraint is still unclear, take some time to reflect on the fact that living sheerly in the pursuit of the pleasures for this life will never lead to ultimate liberation. Renunciation and worldly pleasure are polar opposites, like how kindness and loathing cannot co-exist in the same mind simultaneously.
This life is very brief, and when you die nothing can be taken with. Only your karma and your merit will follow you into the next realm, and that is not something you can physically pick up anyway.
If you drop a rock off a building, it will plummet. Fill a balloon with helium and it will rise and rise and rise once you let go of the string. To expect the rock to float would be absurd. Causality is not a theory. It is how existence operates. The Blessed Buddha in all his kindness explains in loving words that there is indeed a connection with the resultant states of our life and our intentions in the past. Even if most of the houses have already burned down, don't sit there and cry about it, you need to go get a bucket or a hose and spray the ones that are still burning to put them out. Yes, tears are water too, and if your tears come from a deep place, a genuine place, it is true that they can put out any fire*, but if they come solely from despair, they will be small and ineffectual.
For whom are you living? For yourself? For others? For all beings? Or for the putrid addictions to whom many are tethered like the donkey is tethered to the plow, or the circus lion to the whip?
We can break free. Reflect, go into your day, your yesterday, your past, your life and early life. Was it the worldly dharmas whom you were serving? Fire is hot, life is suffering. Be a slave no more to Mara.
*see the four noble truths
Addiction, I spit on you! Like how the Buddha spits on sickness, aging, and death.
When I was a youngster my forevermantra was "mind over matter". (it still is, in many ways and days) I once declared that later in life (when "older") I would use the most addictive substance for a while and then drop it like a heap of heavy burning coals just to prove it could be done.
Alas, it is different when certain chemicals actually affect your body chemistry in ways that wire you to effectively become a slave to the substance. Cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, none of these have any feelings of their own, yet they steer many many people down paths of pain and sorrow. Life is already not easy, why carry a bucket of lava on your head or from your scrotum in addition to all the basic foot steps that must be tread? It is purely nonsensical, and yet, find yourself under the spell of an intoxicant, be it anger, jealousy, greed, or a physical detriment like weed, and much of your sane time and clear mind will find itself simply searching for that buzz, that ever-brief justification for your endless pursuits. Pure nonsense.
Should you feel bad if you go to the pub on occasion, or enjoy a smoke? No, why? don't brew stress where there isn't any. But if the benefit of restraint is still unclear, take some time to reflect on the fact that living sheerly in the pursuit of the pleasures for this life will never lead to ultimate liberation. Renunciation and worldly pleasure are polar opposites, like how kindness and loathing cannot co-exist in the same mind simultaneously.
This life is very brief, and when you die nothing can be taken with. Only your karma and your merit will follow you into the next realm, and that is not something you can physically pick up anyway.
If you drop a rock off a building, it will plummet. Fill a balloon with helium and it will rise and rise and rise once you let go of the string. To expect the rock to float would be absurd. Causality is not a theory. It is how existence operates. The Blessed Buddha in all his kindness explains in loving words that there is indeed a connection with the resultant states of our life and our intentions in the past. Even if most of the houses have already burned down, don't sit there and cry about it, you need to go get a bucket or a hose and spray the ones that are still burning to put them out. Yes, tears are water too, and if your tears come from a deep place, a genuine place, it is true that they can put out any fire*, but if they come solely from despair, they will be small and ineffectual.
For whom are you living? For yourself? For others? For all beings? Or for the putrid addictions to whom many are tethered like the donkey is tethered to the plow, or the circus lion to the whip?
We can break free. Reflect, go into your day, your yesterday, your past, your life and early life. Was it the worldly dharmas whom you were serving? Fire is hot, life is suffering. Be a slave no more to Mara.
*see the four noble truths
4
Comments
And after all, isn't this just all your perception? Why so much fire?
Maybe.
Obsessive, addictive, non plastic modalities are not enhanced by replacement with . . . obsessive, addictive, non fluid dharma . . .
Nothing is weaker than water,
But when it attacks something hard
Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,
And nothing will alter its way.
Tao Te Ching
Be cautious with your body and mind. They work best when they are in cahoots. What that means for each person can vary, though I doubt many people would agree that a true addition would be good for anyone, Buddhist or not.
That said, addiction to things that appear less harmful can be just as insidious, such as addiction to video games or internet.