Practice - craving and letting go

Good evening. To introduce myself this evening— outrageous— Caspar is organizing a retreat Downstairs might be later. Yeah, so I'm half expecting the doorbell to ring. It might not. Expecting Oscar to come slightly late. So this week I I did a fast, a 24-hour fast, and I have done a kind of missing out breakfast fast before, and I think I possibly did a dinner to dinner fast, which would've been 24 hours, but this was a breakfast to breakfast fast. And I was doing it in solidarity with my friend Emma, who's in prison and is on fifth day 15 of her hunger strike today and is doing well. She's getting looked after and she's in good spirits. So lots of people, more than 60 people, did a 24-hour fast in solidarity with her, which has made her very happy. So apart from thinking about her all day and another friend Ben, who's also on hunger strike, and the other climate activists that are in prison at the moment, I thought about food a lot. And the thing that really struck me was how, how my, my brain was much more difficult to handle than my body. The physical hunger that I had, or, um, you know, what was going on physically was nothing compared to the, uh, the psychological, uh, withdrawal, I guess. And it did feel like withdrawal. It felt like, it felt like it was, uh, something that I needed to do all the time and I just wasn't allowed to do it at all. Even though rationally I knew that I only eat 3 times a day, or, you know, maybe a couple of snacks. And there was something about the stretch of day ahead of me with no food in it, which was really daunting. And I guess that fasting is a spiritual practice. Lots of traditions, lots of spiritual traditions have fasting as one of their kind of ways of practicing. And it does, it does show us, well, shows me certainly very quickly how attached I was, not necessarily to eating, but to the idea of eating, to the thought that I would be able to eat something nice at a point in the future, which was not tomorrow, and not being in control of that. And it was quite nice that I was on a chat with lots of other people, most of whom are doing this for the first time as well. One guy said that he went out to fill up the bird feeder with bird peanuts, and he was really tempted to just kind of sneak a couple when no one was looking. And I had the thought— I've said this on Facebook— I had the thought, I was downstairs on my own, a customer seeing a client, I thought I could eat a cracker, nobody's gonna know, just, just one little cracker. And then the brain was really powerfully trying to find a way around that, that kind of boundary that I'd set to not eat for a little while. And I know that it's particularly difficult for me because food is one of the things I lean on. I don't have other substances. I've got workaholism a little bit and, and yeah, pretty much workaholism and food. So food takes quite a lot of the weight. Of my, the parts of me that, that need to use things for comfort or for, um, for distraction, for distancing, or for rewarding myself. So all of those parts were suddenly kind of freaking out. And it was a helpful thing to do because I, because I was doing it for Emma and she was on day 14. I, um, I didn't I didn't have a choice. I did have a choice, but I didn't give myself a choice to cheat. So that boundary stayed in place. And what I discovered was the, the thoughts and the cravings I had, 5 minutes later I'd forgotten them and I was carrying on with what I was doing. That they passed, those cravings and those thoughts passed. And by the time I woke up this morning, I thought I was gonna be desperate for breakfast and really excited about eating. I woke up this morning and I kind of felt like, oh, okay, I, I could probably do another day actually. Um, because psychologically somehow it had been possible to do one evening, one lunch and one evening. So. It felt like I could do it again. And so I guess that one of the things that we can do as Buddhist practitioners is to play around with these things that we're attached to, all the different things that we're attached to. We're all dependent on or aversive to many, many things in our life. And just kind of gently experiment with how it is to not have that thing. And for me, if I tip over into a kind of a forcing or a punishing or a kind of a dragging parts of me kicking and screaming, that that's really not helpful. That's kind of counterproductive. That there's a, there's a, a window of, um, kind of possibility that we can play with. So it's outside our comfort zone but not too far outside our comfort zone, or it's a little bit edgy but it's not too edgy. It was edgy in one area but not in another area. And my experience certainly through doing my little fast is that it feels like not only that I feel more confident in being able to fast, but I feel more confident in being able to experience craving and allow it to fade away again. It reminded me a bit of my vigil when it was really, really cold and I was kind of starting to panic that I was gonna start shivering early in the hour and then I wouldn't be able to stay. And then I just had to remind myself, it's okay, just allow the cold to be there. And then a few minutes later, my body had done something and adjusted, and, and I was still cold, but I wasn't kind of tipping over into too cold. Yeah. And, and, and just another Another reminder to you, to myself, that, that we should always be really gentle when we, when we do these things, because life's usually already pretty challenging. Most of us, I think, are already near-ish our edges. So that it has to be done really respectfully, this kind of stepping into something that's challenging, and kindly. And if there are any parts of us that don't feel okay about it, then, then don't do it. Yeah, and I, um, I think that I will do it again because I learned so much about myself and also because it felt good to just give my body a break. And also to just connect in with, with that gratitude for how privileged I am to have as much food as I want every day. And that's certainly not true for everybody. So move into silence now. In the silence, you might want to just hold an embutsu in mind, and you can use a tune in your mind, the tune we use for prostrations, or another mantra, or just the words Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and just allow those words to be there. Sometimes I imagine the words following my breath, kind of Namo Ahh as I breathe in, and Amida Butsu as I breathe out, and just kind of follow the breath rather than changing the breath. Allow the Nembutsu to be there as a way of connecting you to the Buddha, and then we'll chant out loud for a little while before some more silence.

Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida But. Namoh Amida But. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida But. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amitabha. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amritabhoo. Namoh Amritabhoo. Namoh Amritabhoo.

For refuge I go to the Buddha. For refuge I go to the Buddha. Namo Buddhaya. Namo Buddhaya. For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to the Dharma. Namo Dharmaya. Namo Dharmaya. For refuge I go to the Sangha. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sanghaya. Namo Sanghaya. With faith in the Three Jewels— with faith in the Three Jewels— I pray that I may not take life. I praise— I may not take life. With faith in the Three Jewels— With faith of three jewels—I pray that I may not steal. I pray that I may not steal. With faith in the Three Jewels—with faith in the Two Gems—I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct. I praise my beloved Buddha's actions on earth. With faith in the Three Jewels—with faith in two shores—I pray that I may avoid wrong speech. I pray that I may avoid lustage. With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid intoxication. I pray that I may avoid intoxication. No blame, no blame. Be kind, be kind. Love everything, love everything. Innumerable are sentient beings.

We vow to save them all.

Inexhaustible are the rooted passions.

We vow to transform them all.

Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings.

We vow to master them all. Infinito is the Buddha's way, we vow to fulfill it completely. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namo Amida Butsu! Namo Amida Butsu! Namu Ami Ja Bu— namo ami ja bu... namo amijabuu? Namo Amida— Namo Amitabha! Namu Amidhavhu! Namohamidahu! Namohami Dhabhu! Namo Aminadu! Namoha- Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu. Namaste.

Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things. Amer me to boo? Paul's here too, I forgot to say. I forgot to say Paul's here. I didn't introduce you. Have you met Paul? You're usually Saturday, aren't you, Paul? Yeah, yeah. Let me— wait a minute, let me turn— let me stop the recording.