During my Kum Nye practice–I don’t want to call it my meditation, because that really isn’t what it is; it is in a category by itself as far as I am concerned–a few days ago it really hit me that the world is filled to the brim with addictions.
We speak of “bad” addictions, like alcoholism or heroin addiction, but what if the same relief that these things provide could be had with a little pill which was cheap, not physiologically addictive, and that you never missed work, or did anything unpredictable while under its influence. It caused you no physical ailments, and in fact was GOOD for you.
If you took it every day, would this not still be an addiction of sorts, merely a socially, legally, and physically benign one?
I looked up the root of addiction: 1595-1605; < Latin addictiōn- (stem of addictiō) a giving over, surrender.
A giving over or surrender. What are you giving over? Your self.
I don’t have time for a lengthy post tonight, but it hit me that the worship of God itself is an addiction. God does not come into this world directly. God is an emergent property of a system in motion whose full extent is FAR beyond our capacity for measurement or perception. Do miracles happen? I believe they do. Do they happen on command, for good people, because they are good? No, I don’t think they do.
Buddhism wisely destroys everything. They destroy matter. They destroy time. They destroy the self. The task is to blow everything up into small, small pieces, then let them rebuild and reconfigure in constantly evolving new and interesting and useful ways.
And it struck me too that people think of Buddhism as giving up. It is not that at all. It is TRADING. You trade one vision of reality for another, which in turn enables emotions and sensations that are better and higher than what you had. You are not renouncing a self, but moving towards a a better and more honest one.