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.
I have attachment to chocolate!
The taste, the texture, the sugar rush, the EVERYTHING. And the thought of giving it up fills me with bad feelings. So, definitely an attachment, and therefore to be given up. But how? I've tried 'just giving it up' in the past and that usually ends in craving, bingeing and self-loathing.
0
Comments
First of all I don't think you see clearly. You say: attachment? I am a bad buddhist shame shame. I'm just saying, but thats not really clarity, that sounds like more neurosis. Judging yourself. Neurosis. In buddhism we stop trying to become the person we think we should be. And start being more fully who we are.
So the first practice is to not be divided. If you eat chocolate then eat it. If you don't then don't. But don't be divided. Gently welcome any discursive thinking into your awareness and sit with it. Like waves in the ocean all of these thoughts will come, abide, and go.
Be compassionate to steady yourself. You needn't be harsh on yourself for eating chocolate. Or not eating. Whatever happens maintain a cheerful mind and be friendly with both yourself and the situation you are in.
And then if you trust yourself even if you go through 1000 cycles of binge/purge if you are compassionate and mindful eventually the true clarity will come. The true clarity is what is liberating and it comes from compassion and peace and not from judgement.
When you have this clarity your actions naturally follow from it.
Oh, and "never" is a *really* long time
I think most Buddhists misunderstand the concept of renunciation. It's not about suppressing actual desires; it's about analyzing the nature of those desires, and achieving a level of disgust with how Samsara forces us to live this way. If the disgust is great enough then a corresponding desire to abandon the pursuit of Samsaric pleasure will arise, and, simultaneously, one's attachments to things like chocolate will abate naturally.
So, just think back to when you were a kid and you loved playing with soldiers (or dolls, or whatever). There was a time when this is what really mattered; this is all you wanted to do in your leisure hours. As you matured you discovered other types of activities, such as reading children's books, perhaps...Harry Potter, etc., which suddenly made playing with toy soldiers seem unimportant. I used to cry when I heard the song "Puff the magic dragon"; but, when you think about it, this is probably the very best song which describes the actual process of renunciation. It's not reluctantly giving something up----it's moving on---spiritually growing up.
And, the best part---you don't even have to give up your chocolate; you can still eat it and enjoy it even more, perhaps, once you're free of any attachment to it. Great practitioners still enjoy a beautiful sunset, the reflection of moon on water, and, I am certain---chocolate, when someone offers it to them. Not craving something makes it very special, actually.
One thing you might try. Set one day of the week aside as a chocolate-free day. See if you can get through that. Even if you only eat chocolate 2x/wk you'll feel a sense of satisfaction at getting through this one dedicated day. And rejoice when you do it. Then, expand it to whatever you're comfortable with. I did this with regard to meat/fish and found that it worked perfectly. I was able to go from one meatless day to (generally) 5 days per week without any craving. When my practice improves (or whenever I do retreats) I will reduce my meat intake further, but I try to never beat myself up about this and to rejoice each day I succeed in not eating meat.
Thank you all.
Very nice.
I think the chocolate thing is to do with my own personal history in a way. I started dieting at 16 and ended up with an eating disorder as a result. Amazingly I managed to get over it under my own steam, but there are certain foods that were 'forbidden' back then that I still have issues around now, of which chocolate is one.
I ate some really good quality organic milk chocolate yesterday, and made myself really experience the sensations in the moment. Usually it's 'scoff, scoff, hate self', but this time I paid close attention to the taste, mouth feel, etc. I shared with my husband and kids and it was a nice experience. And then I got on with the rest of my day.
Weird...but good. I don't feel the urge today. But next time I do, I am going to allow myself to answer it in the same way. Perhaps my problem has been HOW I eat chocolate rather than the fact of the eating. You can do anything either lovingly or lovelessly, after all.