Expert: Joe McSorley - 11/18/2008

Question
QUESTION: I am a twice divorced, 38 yr. old male who was raised as a Southern Baptist. I have made some bad choices in my life inculding doing almost every drug I ever came upon, losing great jobs and hurting those who love me the most. I've recently lost the best job I ever had and then was arrested for growing marijuna. I've hit rock bottom. The positive side of my life is that I have the best girlfriend any man could want but I cant find the love in my heart to even hold her hand. I started reading Lama Sura Das' book "Awaking the budda within" when I was last divorced and it made me not want to turn to drugs, loose women and violence like I had before after my 1st divorce. Buddhism just seems to make so much more sense to me than what man has turned Christianity into. Unfortunatily for me there aren't any Buddhists around my part of north Fl. to help me learn more than what can be taught in just reading a book, no one to ask questions of, no one to help me figure out what it is I'm feeling when I am so depressed and tempted to return to a life I know will not satisfy me but only bring more pain to me and those around me. I really just need someone to turn to when things seem to mount up too large for me to handle sometimes. What do you suggest? Are there people online that can help teach as well as answer my questions? I know I need change but the thought of having to go to a "regular" church just doesnt do it for me. Thank you for any help you may be able to give me on this matter.

ANSWER: Dear Jeff,
   I am sorry for the pain and distress you are undergoing.  One of the most important lines in your letter is that you said “ ….return to a life I know will not satisfy me”, this is the crux of getting anywhere in Zen.  I don’t know how deeply you realize this but it is central to moving on in your quest for self-awakening.  Although this appears as an AA thing, reaching a rock bottom, it is what we come to realize when we really look at who we are.  If you really reach a point where you know these things not only can’t satisfy you but definitely impede you, you will no longer seek them out if you truly want a solution.  As you already know, they are quick fixes, though they are not really fixes but distractions from the pain.  You don’t need a Buddhist teacher to help you through this part of the struggle.  I would suggest you join AA and get a sponsor whom you can rely on 24/7.  There are many people in AA who have tread the same path you have and have a deep and existential understanding of what you are going through.  I wouldn’t be the least surprised if there were Buddhists in the group there. The more you get that part of your life under control the more you can devote time to studying Buddhism without the distraction of your addictions.  A friend of mine has had a life very similar to yours and he told me something his sponsor once said to him.  He was being tempted to do things that, if discovered, could hurt his career and marriage.  He thought he could get away with it but presented it to his sponsor.  His sponsor replied “what good can come of this”?   It forced him to face the reality of his choice in a profound way; what good could come of this?  The answer was ‘none’.  It struck a chord so deeply in him that he did not fall.  I don’t know the sponsor’s background but it is something I could see a Zen teacher saying.
  There isn’t one type of Buddhism but many schools of it so the approaches you encounter may be very different.  Surya Das is a Tibetan Buddhist and views Buddhism through that prism.  Zen deals with Buddhist teachings in a different way.   Many modern schools of Buddhism and many modern books on Buddhism deal with developing a Buddha like mind and in shaping the psychology of personal thought.  Zen tries to slice through directly to the core without those teachings.  All are valid, you must figure out what you want to do and what might help you the most.
  As far as asking questions online, you’ve already done that right?  So you can continue to write to me or you can write to others and get their take on things.  I think it’s important for you to have a physical body, like a sponsor, when dealing with the addiction issues.  There’s nothing as effective as face-to-face interaction when dealing with these issues.  People with addiction issues is nothing new in Buddhism, we are all looking for answers.
  Since you’ve made it clear that financial success, good jobs and relationships don’t fulfill you enough to not screw up what do you think will fulfill you enough? You have the best girlfriend any man could want but what do you want?  What can make you happy?   Till you know who you are you won’t be able to answer this question.
   Take care and good luck,
         Joe


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank so very much for the response so quickly Joe. I listened to what you had to say and I may have not been clear on my lifestyle. I am only addicted to smoking cigarettes and most the time in the summer I even stop smoking those. I tend to turn to drugs when I get bored or lonely only because of the fake friends that seem to always accompany them. I will have to go to 2 AA meetings as part of my probation for growing pot and I will see if that helps me but I've been clean for over 6 mths. now and have no urge to go back to that life style EXCEPT when I sit alone to much and have time to start thinking. You are right in the fact I need that person in my life to turn to when things get hard to deal with.
I guess what I'm looking for is a reason to keep waking up in the morning. It seems as though I wait for the bad things to happen as if I just dont want to be happy. I asked myself after I read your reply, "What would make me happy" and I honestly couldnt think of an answer.
I know who I am, I am a only child who's parents divorced when I was young and both chose their new spouses over me and I seek, crave need the feeling of being good enough from others. Sad but true. I dont have it in me to love my girlfriend for I dont even like the person I am much less love myself. I have read that if you cant love yourself you cant love others.
I dont mean to drag this out. Thank you very much for your help and I wish you the best. I will try to find someone in the AA class I have to attend to listen to me. Thank you again, Jeffey

Answer
Hi Jeffey,
  When you talk about perhaps not wanting to be happy it makes me think of a few things.  The first is that happiness, even in the relative state, is not something you are used to.  You don’t know what it is and more importantly you don’t know who you are when in that state.  You know yourself by your past experiences, you define yourself by what you’ve been through.  From the Zen standpoint that is the psychological manifestations of self, not the true self.  Those are the things we carry as self and unless we hold them they have no power.   You don’t know who you are but rather you know what has happened in your experience to something you call ‘you’ or ‘I’.  This I or self is what you think yourself to be but is not the root of your being.   This sense of self carries your experiences of not being wanted or loved but these and this is how you view yourself, the prism of your existence, it is something that distorts and selects what is real but is not the reality itself.
   Who we think we are is not who we really are.  This self is an illusion or construct of our mind but it is the only way we know ourselves to be.  In the Western traditions we try to change this self and add to it, fill it and fulfill it but in the East this very idea of self is the problem.  It means that the self that you perceive as you is not in fact you, but an image you have of yourself.  We know that we are, that we exist, but we don’t know whom it is that exists.  Think of it this way, you see your shadow and that’s all you know who you are, the shadow, but you want to know who casts the shadow.  If you move forward, it moves forward and back, it moves back. This is called the ever-regressing self in Buddhism; you can’t approach it without it moving away.  The shadow is a self we perceive.  Now to perceive something means that you are not that which you perceive.  You have to separate from something to know it, to objectify it, but this separating to know causes a schism so that you can’t actually know it.  Think about it, if it is an object of your perception then it must be outside of you.  This is the problem of the human consciousness according to Buddhism.  We are split from ourselves and don’t know who we are.  This is called dualistic consciousness or ego-consciousness.  The ego is the split between what we perceive and who it is that perceives.  Since we don’t know who we are we confuse our thoughts for who we are.  In other words we know who we are by what we like and dislike, our history, culture, race and a million other things.   We also know who we are by knowing who or what we are not.  We are not that other group, race, religion, object, etc.  so we only can define ourselves by what we are not.  If you were to be in total darkness with no way to perceive anything else with your mind in the moment with no thought of past, future, like or dislikes aren’t you still completely you?  By the same token, if you wake up in a hospital bed and are only conscious, that is, you can’t see yourself, aren’t you fully you?  You might have had most of your body amputated but since you don’t perceive it you don’t have a changed idea of who you are.  Once you perceive it you then make all the judgments about your state of being and happiness.  So there is a self that separates itself from the world to know that it is.  This is dualistic consciousness; to only know in dichotomy or by splitting.  This is what the ego is, the act of splitting away from the world to know that you are.  This splitting creates a sense of self as separate.  We don’t have an ego, we are the ego, we are the act of splitting.
  The main question is who is splitting from what? What creates this split?  This is what meditation, mindfulness and koan practice all address; to stop the mental process of the split, to be fully in the moment without the conscious separation of self from other.  We attempt this in order to set up the conditions that this dynamic will eventually collapse and be obliterated and self and other will appear simultaneously as one yet not one.
  I know this I mind numbing stuff but if you really try to understand it, it might take root in your consciousness.  You won’t be chasing shadows or trying to fulfill a self you don’t know, you will be liberated from the confines of self.
    Good luck,
         Joe