Buddhism is in fact about addiction.
Undoing Addictive Patterns
Of the three root afflictions, one of them is ignorance, which is obvious.
One is anger, which is obvious.
The other one is usually translated as "attachment,"
but this attachment is not the same attachment as in Western psychology,
when we're talking about the world of John Bowlby.
But it is an addiction, grasping, needing, must have type of thing.
So I started teaching these courses balancing up my Western knowledge with my Buddhist knowledge.
Also with the idea that we need to have a graduated way,
a step-by-step way to find methods which will work.
So the very first thing you do is to learn to breathe.
You have to breathe, in any case!
Then, the next step is finding ways to actually stop yourself in the middle of a pattern.
That's not so easy.
You stop yourself, and you realize it, then you do the breathing.
After that, you say, "Alright, why have I got this pattern?"
Now this pattern is a habit.
What we're doing now is trying to undo a habit.
Good habits we don't worry about them,
bad habits are a bit of a nuisance,
and there are other neutral habits, like when you go from a manual car to an automatic car.
I drove a manual car for a long time and then I had to drive an automatic,
so the first thing that happened was my foot kept looking for the clutch,
which of course wasn't necessary.
And even now, 15 years later, sometimes my foot goes looking for the clutch because I'm not thinking.
Undoing that pattern is a matter of being reminded that we're falling into the pattern,
and we can be reminded about this at earlier and earlier stages of falling into the pattern.
Let's say you have an addiction to chocolate, right?
Lots of people have this one!
You know that this chocolate is stored up in the kitchen cupboard, and you keep a stash there,
so that it's there when you want it.
You've decided that you are going to give up chocolate.
But this particular day, the stash is up there, you've been busy working on something,
you're tired, you want something for a quick hit,
so you go into the kitchen, put your arm up to get the chocolate, and open the door with all the chocolates.
And you suddenly remember during the process of opening the door that you've said,
"No, I'm not going to do this."
So then we meditate on this moment of opening the door and what is happening there,
and going over and over this before opening the door, and reminding yourself that I'm not going to do it.
Open the door, reminding yourself over and over again.
Then, once you've established that pattern,
or undone that pattern, we undo the pattern of reaching up.
So as soon as you go to reach up, you do a similar meditation.
You go to reach up, you stop yourself before you get there, over and over again.
And then you might be able to go back to walking through the kitchen door,
and from there you might be able to go back to finishing the work, and realizing you're tired.
So you do these things at each stage, and that undoes the pattern which has been ingrained.
Once we've done that, we have to look at the emotions behind the pattern.
Very often we get angry with ourselves,
so that when we reach up to get the chocolate,
we become very angry,
"I'm stupid! Why did I do this? I didn't want to do this! I'm hopeless," and so on.
And you feel worse, which means you want the chocolate even more.
So in this particular meditation, instead of doing that,
when you're about to put your hand up to get it, somebody walks into the kitchen.
He's a very close and dear and kind friend.
If you don't have somebody like that, imagine the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama comes in and says, "Why are you doing that?"
And because he says it with such kindness, you start to put your hand down.
And because you know that at the very base of his heart is just your protection from your own mind,
you understand what it is that is happening.
So in our own mind, we have this very negative "I mustn't do this,"
but if instead we bring in the Dalai Lama as part of our mind as this great kindness,
it makes it a lot easier to undo that pattern.
So the ways of undoing patterns develop into using different parts of the mind, deeper parts of the mind.