Shinzen Young: How to overcome compulsive/addictive behaviour

[@ByJonathanLeung]

These are my personal notes on this talk on points that I find interesting (so not all the most important parts of the talk) and thought I'd leave my timestamps here in in case it's useful for anyone else. Note that there are some fundamental aspects of this talk that are not noted below because I am already familiar with those points and so it was not "noteworthy" to me. Also note that the stage numbers may be out of order because he went out of order in his talk, (kinda). Also note that things that look like they are direct quotes from the talk may not actually be accurate. 4:48: The meditative approach requires an enormous commitment and consistency in order for it to work. You have to really want it. 5:32: The meditative approach roots out the cause of compulsiveness so that the abstinence of the addiction can be maintained without effort or struggle 13:23 - 16:30: Nature is forcing that person with a severe compulsive issue in their life should not think they are more compulsive per say than other people, that is not necessarily true at all, it is only true that the general pool of compulsiveness has been concentrated around a specific kind of experience whereas in other people it may be distributed among many things. You might say from a certain point of view, a person with a severe compulsive issue is fortunate in two ways: (1) in order to even have their life together they are forced to deal with their issue of compulsiveness whereas people with their compulsiveness distributed can sortov eek by because it doesn't really wreck their lives, but they are every bit as compulsive as the compulsive overeater or drug user, it's just that their compulsions are all distributed and evened out so that you are not aware of how compulsive they are (2) the issue has been so to speak brought to a head where it is very very clear and constantly in front of them so that all you have to do to become an enlightened person is to deal with that one very very highlighted and clear issue but to deal with it in a meditative way. If you merely suspend the behavior without reaching down with extraordinarily concentration into the source of the behavior, you will not have a spiritual transformation, you will experience abstinence with effort for the whole life. But if you apply great states of concentration penetrating down into the source of the compulsiveness then you have the entire block to work spiritual experience been concentrated and highlighted and brought to total clarity in front of you and it is in front of you every day and maybe every minute and all you have to do is work in that one little spot ok, and that will be the spot that you can poke through and transcend awareness 16:38 - 21:34: About Koans 21:35 - 23:08: How a compulsion / phobia is a ready made Koan. 23:08: 1 possible set of meditative tools to solve the Koan 23:52: Stage 1: Person is completely at the mercy of the compulsion. "I have a problem with an external X". 24:59: Stage 2 : Person is able to some degree associate feelings with the problem situation. - 30:57: You will start second stage you start to get a sense of qualities and location of the actual sensation associated with that with that urge. Following through with whatever addiction is to relieve that particular pain. - 32:16: Craving version: faint pleasure, contact of the pleasant experience. If you cannot experience it with full conciousness, some part of the deep mind says "I have to have more of that" - 33:02: So we are driven by pleasure and pain more precisely we are driven by pleasures that are not experienced fully and pains that are experienced with resistance. When you don't experience a pleasure fully it's not satisfying. [Then in the final stage]: Theoretically when you first think wouldn't it be great tooto, and you think about your compulsion, at that moment enough pleasure fills your body that you could be just as satisfied as if you had engaged in the compulsion okay but you have to be really aware of it and get complete fulfillment in that moment and then there'll be no drivenness to go on to actually engage in the behavior or on the other hand you will feel the pain of the deprivation.If you. can have a complete experience of that pain without resisting it it will sort of bubble into energy and will lose its driving power 34:20: Stage 2 reviewed and continued: Vague feeling sense. This vague feeling is the tip of an immense iceberg of feeling. The best way to bring these feelings forward is abstinence with awareness and courage to feel (abstinence for the sake of bringing up the feeling sense to the surface) 35:29: Stage 3: Consistent clear contact with the sensations associated with the drivenness, all the time. The sensation will fill your entire body and be with you the entire time. You are willing that this happen. You will feel the icky tension in every part of the body, and willing to be there with it, so that I get the consistent and clear contact with those sensations. 36:23: Stage 4: Flow. You have stayed with the sensation long enough and have observed it carefully enough that you have begun to see that it has a quality of movement and change to it #impermanence. It may seem very solid in 3, but if you look patiently enough, you will notice that there is flow there. And this helps you open up to it. And the more you open up, the more circulatory it becomes. Eventually it no longer experienced as something that can drive you, it is just experienced as a very peaceful, almost massaging, peaceful and yet dynamic energy that is floating through your body, and it has lost your driving power. If it's a pleasant sensation the fact that it has become complete, there is no unfulfillment. If it 's an unpleasant sensation, the fact that it is moving, it never turns into a goad or barrier. It can also be both. 38:34: Stage 5: Karma is undigested experience, which causes the solidification of the self. The movement of the aforementioned sensation which were once the driving force of compulsion. Once they are experienced as energy that moves through the body, as soon as it moves, it will hit a hard spot, you will feel it grind down and break down a hard spot. Some rocky place in my personality has just been smoothed out, ironed out. => Effortlessness 42:20: Review of all stages - 43:00: Flow is the focusing on the changingness, and focusing away on the pleasantness and unpleasantness. Riding on "pure feeling" the d/t . You have escaped *into* the feeling. Whoah... 45:03: A severe compulsion just means the feelings are always there to work on, you don't have to gon on retreats, you don't have to see teachers, its all there, right there. You have an already made Koan, the barrier to enlightenment has been presented to you clearly and is every day presented to you and therefore you can bore in bore in drill in drill in to the feelings associated with that, and eventually poke through. 45:48: Practical remark about the bad news: increased fulfillment in what is pleasurable in what is pleasant, and decreased suffering in what is unpleasant. This is 180 degrees away from the standard coping mechanism. The feelings are going to be big. You will need an external support network to be not overwhelmed by the sensation (which could leave you worse than if just divered awareness from the sensation). This will allow the pain to percolate up. The behavior may get worse before it gets better. 49:55: How to implement what was described? You need to get meditation instruction. 52:31: Q&A 1:01:18: The root cause of suffering is not feelings, but one's habits around feeling, the feeling of compressing feeling, pushing or pulling feeling, diverting from feeling. Learning to experience feeling without pushing or pulling, or diverting ourselves from it. Cultivating new habits. No driveness in feeling, only around one's driveness around one's reaction to feeling.

[@GokuTheSuperSaiyan1]

Woah, nice work!

[@AlbertKingboss]

This is beautiful. Thank you so much!

[@rahulkulkarni536]

Brilliant

[@davidmitnick868]

You're a hero for summarizing this

[@ansari1375]

Thank you very much for uploading this. You saved my life.

[@dropthekorpi]

Great talk, glad I found this!

[@philgardner9497]

Thanks so much for posting this; really liked the talk and the subject.

[@JhonnyD88]

It seems I'm the luckiest person in the world then 🤔😂😂😂

[@MistrThomas]

Just the talk I needed. Thank you so much 🙏🏻

[@limeng7999]

great video, explains what happened to me after my first retreat. Please put up more content if possible🥰🥰🥰

[@AlbertKingboss]

This is gold! I'm in.

[@broquestwarsneeder7617]

thanks, rare shinzen is cool

[@ByJonathanLeung]

Whoah, this is super helpful. I've been following a lot of Shinzen stuff but have not come across thsi talk. Thanks so much for posting this! From where is this from?

[@dianneszymanski260]

Very powerful! When was this talk given by Shinzen?

[@GokuTheSuperSaiyan1]

I don't know

[@ebruistan4210]

🙏💕