Friday, February 15, 2008
In her book, Getting our bodies back, Christine Caldwell says "Our bodies will not mobilize to take care of us. We can actually become addicted to not self-regulating, to not knowing what is good for us. To do this, we must turn off the internal body information that is basic to our sense of survival and happiness." This reminds me that perhaps eating meat, onion/garlic and taking medicine constantly may be addictions. Eating meat, onion, or garlic (what Hindus and Buddhists refer to as 葷腥 fetid vegetables and rancid corpses) seems to be unharmful, on the surface, but in fact it is destructive to our bodies and minds, and to the environment at large; so is wanting to take medicine all the time.
Our bodies take in whatever we feed them. Our bodies send signals when something is wrong, such as high heart rates, irritated mood, or unsettled mind. We just simply choose to ignore them. Innumerable times, people try to persuade me that we need certain nutrition from meat, and the majority of meal cannot be delicious without adding onion and garlic. Honestly, I was a meat-eater and I liked onion and garlic before, but I never really felt that they were "good" in me. Since I stopped having these kinds of food, I have felt that my mind and body become much cleaner. They disrupt the body's natural harmony.
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Caldwell stresses that "Addiction is the process of shrinking from our awareness and interpreting, judging, and attempting to control our experience." And I believe it. If addicted people are those who have much 我執/who clutch their ego (a Buddhist term meaning clinging to the self, clinging to the ego), we could say that he can hardly be aware of his inner self and his own behavior as well as other people's. Mental, physical, and spiritual obstacles get in the way of his interpretation, judgment, and attempt to control his own experiences. This is scary to me.
One of the stories Caldwell tells in her book I like is:
On a darkened street, a man was on his hands and knees, searching for something in the light of the street lamp. Another man came along and asked him what he was doing. "Why, I'm searching for my car keys." he replied.
"Where did you lose them?" the other man asked.
The first man pointed across the street, "Over there."
"Well, why don't you look over there?" the inquiring man asked.
"Because this is where the light is!" he answered.
We are familiar with the feeling of losing something important to us. But we usually tend to seek it somewhere outside without knowing that the keys are actually in our selves, our bodies and minds. If I'm allowed, I will say that craving for meat and onion/garlic is an addictive habit. As impeditive as other kinds of addictions (alcohol, tobacco, substances, medicine), it blocks our inner eye. It guides us to an illusion that the keys we need are under the street light.
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Caldwell, C., (1996). Getting our bodies back: Recovery, healing and transformation through body-centered psychotherapy. Boston: Shambhala.
# posted by Chao=Sabiy : 11:15 PM
