Less Is More

Last time we saw that craving and its close twin of aversion are the main actors on the stage of suffering called life. These are the automatic reaction patterns that we have to pleasant and unpleasant feelings caused by coming into contact with objects in the world. We also saw how craving is a root cause of so much of the suffering which we have. Today I want to discuss more strategies that we can use to cope with OCD by tackling the problem of craving.

Sometimes, when we are immersed in something for long enough, we do not realise what we are in. For example, we could walk into a musty smelling room and it hits us straight away. If we spend a few hours in the room, we gradually notice the smell less and less. After a few days, we are totally accustomed to it and we do not notice it at all. It is the same with us craving and desiring things, we do it so often that we do not even notice that we are doing it. From the moment we wake up, we think how we are going to satisfy our craving for food, warmth, love, respect and so on.

Craving is what the Buddha called a mental defilement. I would say that OCD is another type of mental defilement. The Buddhist view of the mind is that it is inherently pure but for defilements or taints like these. The goal of the Buddhist path is the removal of these taints so that we are left with the mind in its pure state, filled with peace and compassion. These defilements live below the surface of the conscious mind and have to be rooted out. They normally lie dormant until an opportunity arises for them to come out of hiding. The Buddha noticed, as can anybody who practices meditation, that the more active our minds and bodies are, the more chances these defilements have to express themselves.

A few analogies will make this clear. Imagine that your mind is a glass of water. The water is clean and pure, like your true mind. Next imagine dropping a small pellet of dye into the glass. If we keep the water as still as possible, that pellet will drop to the bottom and will remain undisturbed. However if we start to vigorously stir the water, before long, that pellet will have completely discoloured the water. That pellet is like a defilement in our minds such as craving or OCD. If we keep our minds as still as possible, then those defilements do not have the chance to develop and pollute our thoughts.

Or let's imagine that we are in a quicksand. Thrashing about will only make our predicament worse. In order to get out of this, we have to keep as still as possible so that we stop sinking. Only then will we be ready to look for ways to pull ourselves out. The best way to keep our minds still is to practice the various forms of meditation such as mindfulness of breathing. However, the novice would not be spending much of his or her time in meditative states during the day. What can we do to maintain the spirit of stillness even when off the cushion?

One answer is to live as simply as possible. Over the last few years there has been a "voluntary simplicity" movement. This is a choice of lifestyle that we can make. It encourages us to make do with fewer wants in our lives. It doesn't mean that we give away all our material possessions and go live on a mountain or anything like that. What it does do is to make us question whether the latest car model or the newest HDTV screen will really brings us lasting happiness. Or whether once we acquire these things, our craving moves onto other objects of desire and we are back on square one. Our craving is an unquenchable force that seeks ever receding horizons if we let it.

I think that if we simple our lives up a little, we give less material for our OCD to sink its hooks into. The height of simplicity is where everything in the world including our own possessions are "ownerless" to us. In Buddhism, this is called anatta, which is one of the three characteristics. Let's say that we have an OCD event such as we see some dirt on our carpet. Before we start obsessing about it, anatta tells us that we don't really own that carpet anyway, so who cares? Or we have an OCD thought that we didn't close our front door properly when we left our home this morning. Anatta tells us that our house and its contents don't really belong to us anyway, so who cares? Sorry, OCD, you're out of luck this time!

Let us finish with an extract out of one of the books of the AA organisation which states the same message. In order for us to work more effectively on our mental defects and unwanted behaviour patterns, which in our case includes OCD, we have to work at reducing the mental and physical clutter caused by our craving. Thus by choosing calm and contentment over our base cravings and desires, we create for ourselves a positive feedback loop which will spiral us onwards and upwards towards the peace of mind that we all seek.

"The chief activator of our defects has been a self-centered fear-primarily that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustrations. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands."

From page 76 of the 12 & 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous

Metta,
John

The message of Buddhism is that our happiness lies not in seeking to satisfy our many cravings, but that happiness lies in cultivating contentment which brings real peace to our lives.