The great teachers of the past shared so much wisdom with us.
The Buddha figured out the mind and laid out practical steps for us to follow,
To come out of dissatisfaction.
And it's more than a little impressive that these instructions still work as well as they ever did.
There is one thing though that none of these wisdom teachers could have spoken about,
To which we must apply their teachings for ourselves.
I'm talking about the modern danger of hyperstimuli and their relation to what's sometimes called dopamine addiction.
The truth is that if there is such a thing as dopamine addiction,
Then we all need to check into rehab immediately.
We are all addicted to dopamine in a sense,
And we have been since before we crawled out of the ocean.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for making us seek pleasure.
When we lived in the jungle,
Dopamine motivated us to get out of bed,
Grab a spear,
Hunt for hours,
Maybe kill something,
Haul it back to camp and prepare it for eating.
It also motivated us to form social bonds and to breed.
In that environment,
Many of our daily activities required a lot of effort for what by today's standards was very little reward.
How would you fancy spending six hours tracking an animal,
Then killing it with your bare hands,
All for the privilege of a meal which would probably make most of us vomit?
In today's environment,
The daily routine that dopamine would have us act out goes something like this.
Wake up.
Grab phone.
Watch cat videos for an hour.
Pancakes for breakfast.
Calling sick to work.
TV and potato chips.
A few levels of Candy Crush.
Ice cream for lunch.
YouTube rabbit hole.
Piece of delivery.
Bottle of wine.
Make love if you have a partner.
Explore the grown-ups-only internet if you don't.
Oreos.
Scroll newsfeed until sleep takes over.
And add into the mix a near constant pinging of notifications from various social media and messaging platforms begging your attention all throughout the day.
If any of you who have an existing mindfulness practice have spent a day like this,
You may have noticed that it's a false economy.
You're likely to have woken up the next day feeling awful,
Not least of all because you'll be craving more of these same cheap thrills that you had yesterday.
This is a downward spiral and one into which we are hard-wired.
First came survival,
Then came capitalism.
The issue is compounded.
So,
What do we do about it?
Well,
Most folks,
Both now and in the past,
Recommend some form or another of discipline.
This can be useful,
But it's not nearly as useful as seeing directly the dissatisfaction that's inherent in surrendering to hyperstimuli.
Before we observe,
Acknowledge,
And accept the dissatisfaction inherent in this kind of behaviour,
We'll keep tumbling down the rabbit hole,
Taking cheap hits of dopamine wherever we can get them,
And making little or no connection between the behaviours,
Which our dopamine reward circuitry tells us are good,
And the inevitable consequences.
That cheap hit of dopamine and the itch for another cannot be separated.
When you enjoy a glass of wine one evening,
You'll likely want one the following evening too.
When you finish that long,
Dramatic Netflix series,
You'll likely feel that something is missing in your life until you find another.
When you're used to the taste of ice cream,
You're unlikely to enjoy the humble banana.
There's nothing inherently wrong with ice cream.
Ice cream is not a villain.
And we don't have to say never.
What we will all do well to realise though,
Is that wanting doesn't feel good.
That dopamine is the wanting chemical,
And the more we surrender to it,
The more that wanting divides us.
It divides us between the desire for things that taste good,
And our natural craving for nutrients.
It divides us between the desire to flop down on the couch,
And the motivation to condition ourselves to be fit and strong.
It divides us between the desire to spend our mental energies in virtual worlds,
And the compassion of applying our intelligence in ways that help ourselves and others.
It divides us between the desire to consume,
And the intuition to create.
When these divisions occur in the mind,
We are in conflict with ourselves.
And,
As probably all of us know,
This is exhausting.
The only way to end this conflict is to develop the skills of watching closely,
And of being happy,
Regardless of circumstances.
To do this,
Enjoy the pleasant sensations of the breath.
When you catch the mind wandering,
Celebrate.
This is successful mindfulness practice.
Rinse and repeat.
May we all remember to be present.
May we all see clearly.
And may we all come out of dissatisfaction.
