..续本文上一页Again, this is not to be believed because the Buddha said so. It is not to be believed because your teacher says so. It is not to be believed because your intellect says so. You have to experience it yourselves. People coming to these courses have found by their experience that there is a change for the better in their behaviour.
When we talk of addiction, it is not merely to alcohol or to drugs, but also to passion, to anger, to fear, to egotism: all these are addictions. All these are addictions to your impurities. And at the intellectual level you understand very well, "Anger is not good for me. It is dangerous. It is so harmful." Yet you are addicted to anger, you keep generating anger. And when the anger is over, you keep repeating, "Oh! I should not have generated anger. I should not have generated anger." Meaningless! The next time some stimulation comes, you again become angry. You are not coming out of it, because you have not been working at the depth of the behaviour pattern of your mind. The anger starts because of a particular chemical that has started flowing in your body, and with the interaction of mind and matter one influencing the other the anger continues to multiply.
By practising this technique, you start observing the sensation which has arisen because of the flow of a particular chemical. You do not react to it. That means you do not generate anger at that particular moment. This one moment turns into a few moments, which turn into a few seconds, which turn into a few minutes, and you find that you are not as easily influenced by this flow as you were in the past. You have slowly started coming out of your anger.
People who have come to these courses go back home and apply this technique in their daily life by their morning and evening meditation and by continuing to observe themselves throughout the day and night in different situations; how they react or how they remain equanimous to these situations. The first thing they will try to do is to observe the sensation. Because of the particular situation, maybe a part of the mind has started reacting, but by observing the sensation, their minds become equanimous. Then whatever action they take is an action: it is not a reaction. Action is always positive. It is only when they react that they generate negativity and become miserable. A few moments observing the sensation makes the mind equanimous and then it can act. Life then is full of action instead of reaction.
This practice morning and evening, and making use of this technique in the daily life, starts to change the behaviour pattern. Those who used to roll in anger for a long time find their anger becomes less. When anger comes it cannot last for a long period, because it is not intense. Similarly, those who are addicted to passion find the passion becomes weaker and weaker. Those who are addicted to fear find the fear becomes weaker and weaker. Different kinds of impurities take different amounts of time to come out of. Whether it takes a long time to come out of them, or a short time, the technique will work provided it is used properly.
Whether you are addicted to craving, or aversion, or hatred, or passion, or fear, the addiction is to a particular sensation that has arisen because of the bio-chemical flow. This type of matter results in reaction at the mental level, and the reaction at the mental level again turns into this bio-chemical reaction. When you say that you are addicted, you are actually addicted to the sensation. You are addicted to this flow, the bio-chemical flow.
The āsava of ignorance is the strongest āsava. Of course there is ignorance even when you are reacting with anger or passion or fear; but when you get intoxicated with alcohol or drugs this intoxication multiplies your …
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