Dear Reader, this right here is a biggie Buddhist moment –Don’t miss this and the next blog!!!

Around late 2013/ early 2014, I practiced with an acute fear that I would somehow fall off  the dharma path and end-up wandering in the weeds for countless more lifetimes; not exactly a comforting thought for a practitioner whose great aspiration is to reach enlightenment now, as quickly as possible, preferably in this life.

My greatest fear was that I would lose my teacher, Mae Yo, and without her I would be dharma screwed (gone, for a little while anyway, were the days of Screw This Dharma Thing). So I spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand the path as a roadmap, something that I could know myself and follow, even if, one day,  Mae Yo was not there to guide me.

As this is very long, I will divide the email into two blogs. This blog will contain the first two sections: The Path in General Terms and The Path From My Experience Quitting Smoking. The Next blog will take-up the last section: The Path in Slightly More ‘Official’ Buddhist Terms Using My Own Experiences with Hotels in Hawaii

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Part 1: Step by Step in General Terms (If I Had to Write a How-to-Guide):

I guess in a nutshell I see the path this way (I realize it is not exactly linear and that the parts keep intersecting over and over, but for the sake of simple roadmap, I will innumerate:

1) We look around at the world, nature, our lives, lives of others, etc. to gather the evidence we need to begin convincing ourselves that the nature of this world and everything in it is changeable, subject to decay, dependent on basic laws of cause and effect. Once we have begun to internalize this we can →

2) Find places in our life where we are sad, angry, emotionally uncomfortable in some way and begin to analyze why. With enough thought we can see that some idea we hold to be true are actually antithetical number 1 above, everything is impermanent. We want something to be permanent, or we act like it is permanent, or we try to exert control over something to make it more permanent than it is, with the belief we can affect the outcome we want absolutely (this one is a biggy for me). This is what is causing our dis-ease.

3) With practice we can see that many times the same wrong views keep coming-up in different ways. At this point, for me anyway, it is helpful to think about Sanna and Sanakara (3s and 4s in Alana verbage ;)). Using the aggregates I can see the pattern more clearly of how all those wrong views arise in the first place, and how we can interrupt them. This was also the source of my understanding #4 below.

4) By seeing the patterns of wrong views more clearly and overtime, we can figure out that we are the common denominator–we are the ones who are creating all the noise. It is also therefore us that can create its cessation. I guess this one is pretty critical because, for a while I felt like–what now, what do I do with all this. Sure, I have better seats at the movie now,  know some of the back plot but I still can’t do anything. Then I realized I was writing the script…

5) Seeing that suffering isn’t a “one-off” or a freak exception but rather a consistent pattern lets us start asking “is it worth it?” We can weigh the balance of our pleasure versus suffering, or rather, see the suffering even in our pleasure and begin to overcome our addiction to this world.

Part 2: My Personal Example…I’m Beginning to Think Quitting Life is Like Quitting Smoking...

Birth and Becoming as a Smoker:

Even though, on an abstract level, I knew smoking was bad for me I had reasons for wanting to start. I wanted the social element, I wanted to look cool, I wanted to impress a girl. Just like with other causes in life (like wanting to be better then my brother fueling decades of vegetarianism), over time the original reasons became buried, and I kept smoking out of habit. I became used to the ritual of smoking, the timing, and even though I really didn’t enjoy it that much, the idea of not having a cigarette after a meal, or at the end of a work day was inconceivable. Moreover, I set other particular conditions around smoking and used those to help define my identity as a smoker –I smoked only a particular brand, ‘packed ‘ my cigarettes a certain way, etc.

It was only after my dad died of cancer that I was able to kick the habit. Till then I did know intellectually that smoking was dangerous but I thought :

1) Things won’t change and I won’t die –I am immortal. This was particularly true back when I started smoking at 18 and it was so hard for me to see and identify my own decay.

2) As I got older I thought I’m still young –I can quit later and I’ll be ok.

3) Other folks get sick from smoking, but not everyone does. There is hope that I will be fine because I am somehow special.

4)That it wasn’t going to be this one cigarette that kills me…so I can just go ahead and smoke it.

Seeing the Wrong View:

When my dad died I really saw impermanence.

1)I saw that everyone, even someone that seemed larger than life to me, someone I loved so much , died. If my dad, who was like a hero to me, could die, so could I.

2) My dad was a youngish man when he died, 65. He was so full of life, he traveled and exercised and then bam, out of nowhere a cancer diagnosis. Dead 3 months later. How can I assume I will have more time to quit or change when my dad sure didn’t.

3) This idea that I am somehow special –in better control, really started to erode when my dad died. I loved my dad so much, but I couldn’t make him live through either will or through my own good fortunes.  I saw that even if some folks can have a beloved parent live long into their adulthood, I wasn’t one of them. There was no guarantee I’d be a “lucky smoker” either.

4) So this one is a bit more complicated, I see it though as the issue of when does the pile become a heap. When my dad was dying I often thought about when he actually got sick. He was clearly sick before he was diagnosed, he had been having pain and weight loss for a while, but no one called it cancer. Even before he felt effects, he was technically not called sick at all, but the cancer was probably growing. All of us actually have cancer cells in our bodies, most of us however dispose of them and they never become a critical issue. The wrong view is subtle and I still have some trouble articulating, however I think its about the control we exert and the identity we build through naming, classify and grouping. By isolating a single cigarette I could say this one is not dangerous, its the pile that dangerous–it misses the fact that its a self imposed distinction.

Seeing the Suffering:

Starting to see suffering in general, and around smoking in particular, was much easier after watching my dad die. For one thing, my dad was in so much pain when he was dying–I don’t want to suffer in that way. My brother, stepmom and I went through so much pain as well, not just with his loss, but through the stress of caring for him in his final days –I did not want to cause that kind of suffering to Eric if I can avoid it.

I understand (on some level) that whether I smoke or not, I will die;  it may be from cancer it may be from something else, it may be slow, painful, quick, easy, no way to know. But why stack the cards against myself? Why plant the seeds for suffering and pain if I don’t need to?  Its suffering for free.  So I quit. And I quit for real. I have been out with friends and had a few cigarettes since I quit and I thought, “this is just disgusting.” These days I don’t even have urges anymore, I see other folks smoke and I don’t want to join them, I don’t want to smoke too. I’m just done.

The Sum-up on Why I’m Starting to Suspect Quitting Life is Like Quitting Smoking:

Much of this actually came-to me when I woke from a dream while we were in India, so I don’t have the clearest line of thought as a lead-up. But with some backwards engineering..

I see that my starting to smoke was consistent with my understanding of arising through the 5 aggregates. A bunch of 3s, memories, (that the cool kids smoked, that beautiful women in ads smoked, that smokers all seemed to be collect, that this chick I liked spent a lot of time smoking and only hung out with other smokers) got my creative 4 juices flowing, imagination, (I thought I could be cool, and would be better accepted if I started smoking).

I also see that there are even more basic and older conditions that I set out as true, ruled by older 4s that became 3s sometime in the past. For example I had “learned” if I did things to fit in, I would be accepted. Even further back I must have learned that if I was accepted I would be safe, I would benefit in some way. 

Over time I lost sight of the original reasons for smoking and habitual patterns took over. It became wrapped-up in my life, in my identity and it became harder to let go of over time. I set so many conditions around pleasure and satisfaction and smoking. What interrupted the smoking cycle was an experience that actually helped me internalize my own impermanence and to consider the real risks and suffering of the actions.  After that I just realized it wasn’t worth it at all. I was done.

Moreover, when I look back at it I realize no one made me start smoking and it was me who was able to quit.

I have also been thinking a little since all this dawned on me about the original conditions that got me to start smoking. Over time they changed — it was no longer cool to smoke, in fact these days its pretty unpopular. I have been wondering a bit about whether I would have been able to quit if the original conditions hadn’t changed…I’m still not sure how to answer this one.

Later Day Note: Mae Yo actually did answer this finally question for me, “Mae Yo says that even if society continued to see smoking as cool, your seeing the truth of it (your dad) effectively made it uncool. So she thinks that yes, you would’ve been able to quit, regardless.”

Tune in next week for  Part Three: The Path in Slightly More ‘Official’ Buddhist Terms Using My Own Experiences with Hotels in Hawaii