Emotional Feeding - Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Feeding the Mind

“This world is dry and hot and we are thirsty.”

“How you eat is how you define your self.”

Part of the divide between Theravada Buddhist attitudes, and later forms of Buddhism, is the insight of interrelatedness. To Thanissaro, interrelatedness, inter-being, or interdependence is not a happy realization, because of the mind’s need for emotional feeding. He says, “all living beings depend on food. Interrelated is the process of eating. We eat each other. Physical, emotional and mental food.” All human conflicts relate to feeding, especially on things that cannot be shared. There are good elements to interrelatedness as later traditions of Buddhism point out, but there is danger if the negative side is forgotten. He reminds us that even if we only feed on vegetables, there’s a lot of suffering required to farm, process and transport food for consumption. By being hungry we are interdependent to the environment, which has so much that is out of our power.

Skillful feeding

The Buddha’s answer to this type of feeding, is not to relinquish the need for food, but to learn to feed more skillfully, by feeding on the breath. By seeing how our emotions are connected with feeding, and how they can hurt others, it requires more ingenuity to feed better. It requires an understanding that we can feed our emotions with music, movies, gossip, social comparisons, and conflict. This includes religions, including Buddhist concepts and any feelings of superiority towards others.

Many teachers lament seeing Buddhist students arguing with each other over incorrect understandings, much like other supposed peaceful religions that have histories of violence. The feeding is in our self-measurements and conceptual labels. The fear of feeling inferior, being rejected, of threats to our survival, create defensive behaviours that co-opt peaceful intentions. In the case of philosophical debates: a need to win.

The Manipulative Ego

For new meditators, it can be daunting to see how little control there is and how the mind usurps the mantle of the “great meditator” concealing a prideful form of psychological feeding in the practice itself. By making mistakes and going back and forth between mistakes and genuine pleasure with the breath, the meditator can learn without having to be perfect. They can slowly over the years lean more towards the breath, to replace the pleasure of conceptual knowledge, which has that acquisitive pleasure we get with physical objects we like. Conceptual knowledge on its own can be a form of intellectual food.

Thanissaro instructs practitioners to “feed on the breath. Learn how to savour the breath.” Then quickly we see how incredibly skilled Thanissaro is at this practice when he says, “the breath is health food for the mind. The mind gets stronger and more self-reliant. Eventually you no longer need to feed. It’s gotten so skilled at feeding, it can get along without feeding at all.” In this case he means living without emotional feeding, not living without food, to avoid any confusion in the reader.

The Challenge

For a beginner, who regularly is thinking about exciting projects or what’s for lunch during their meditation, this seems way too hard. For most of us, meaning 99% of meditators, emotional feeding on the breath requires a lot of consistency of attention to see any reward. The goal is to allow the mind to think when it needs to think, and to go back to the breath when it doesn’t need to think. Subtle thoughts and suggestions are arising all the time, but many of them want to feed on unstable external sources.

To replace that conditioning, a practitioner can measure how good the breath is feeling now, and consistently adjust it to what feels comfortable. This is similar to having preferences in the outside world and satisfying those desires with external actions. The difference is that the breath doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s pleasure, and it is something that is more under your control than external circumstances usually are.

All you have to do is make an intention to do something external and then notice the negative feelings when there is an obstacle preventing the intention from receiving satisfaction. Being a practicing connoisseur of the breath is more under your control.

Even if people in your life mock your meditation practice, it’s ultimately hard for someone to police your breath, unless they are assaulting you, which in that case you can have them incarcerated.

There are no excuses to not throw in some nice breaths throughout the day. Even enjoying the breath when dealing with difficult people is possible, though that’s more of an advanced practice, and something you gradually get better at over the years. Like bodybuilding, meditators are strengthening the mind, and the results don’t happen overnight.

Internal and External rewards

Meeting your preferences for the breath is enjoyable, and is the Buddhist way to increase self-esteem. When the treasure in life is something you have more control over, the rewards of society become less appealing, precisely because of how unreliable they are. Taking care of your mind, and having goodwill for yourself is the basis for having goodwill for others. When you don’t like yourself, it’s very hard to like others. Having an independent form of happiness, keeps the mind away from being dysregulated, and the temptation to aggressively dominate others as a way to deal with it.

A funny example Thanissaro gives is how people can get irritated by small things, like being interrupted when texting. This realization shows how we can be tethered to many things unconsciously. He says, “most people are cruel when they are suffering. Acts of compassion come from a feeling of well-being in the mind. That’s why it’s not a selfish desire [to meditate.]”

Emotional Dysregulation

A lot of people desire to make a big difference in the world, but they often burn out, precisely because of this lack of self-care. Handling small difficulties with contemplative practices eventually leads to having enough skill to handle larger difficulties. So in a sense, there’s really no advantage to letting your mind get dysregulated emotionally. Although we have to accept that some people will never meditate, and will let their emotional dysregulation lead to external forms of emotional regulation, like sadism, or addiction. For some people THAT IS their main coping mechanism. Added on to that, society can perversely reward these reactions and condition them to repeat.

This becomes a big divide between Buddhism and some points of view in psychology. Many psychologists believe that people should vent their frustrations on safe objects and environments to let the emotion out. This can be done skillfully, but when done unskillfully it can lead to an actual acting out of revenge leading to remorse. In extreme cases it can lead to serious injury or death.

Another danger is how psychologists view pleasure. They are right in saying that many pleasures are more intense than mental peace, and it’s true that many of these pleasures can be good, but these same pleasures, when denied can create intense pain.

The feeding eventually gets discouraged by the consequences of moving through people’s boundaries, and naturally looks for what supports a clear conscience. Thanissaro is not under the illusion that these practices are easy, he regularly points out that a lot of addictive voices in the mind say “it’s no big deal. It’s worth it.” The mind finds short-term excuses to gain relief from craving.

Over many pleasurable and unpleasurable experiences, the mind eventually prefers the breath because mental peace is more sustainable. He says, “straighten out your mind first. There is no hidden agenda because you don’t need to feed on the pride of being an important person. Compassion from total freedom is ultimately the only compassion you can really trust.”

The Mind has a Mind of its own

One of the ways Thanissaro gets us to see evidence of our duplicitous minds is to notice the feelings related to our thinking. Even thoughts that seem responsible can be coloured by feelings of the opposite nature. If the habit is stronger than the new intentions, we can be an alcoholic that is going to an AA meeting, and blank out, turn directions, and then end up in a bar. This blanking out can be seen in meditation. Your intention to stay concentrated with the breath can in a fraction of a second, move into thoughts of planning and anticipation of future pleasures. The ending bell of the meditation is where many of us are just starting the meditation.

It can be humbling to see how easy it is to get carried away and feed in the wrong places. For example, when I visited Japan, I remember trying to take pictures of koi fish in a pond, and a young girl pushed in front of me to get a picture first. Ironically, this is similar to how koi fish steamroll each other to get at the fish food tourists throw at them. Yet it was the food of superiority she was looking for instead of fish food.

Another example from my trip was when visiting Buddhist temples. One temple had a sign that tourists were not to take pictures of the golden bodhisattva statue, Guanyin. Of course many people did, with men at the ticket booth shaking their head in contempt at the pathetic tourists. I also took a picture. At the time I was feeling the same as the other tourists. “Damn it! I came all this way, I’m not leaving without a picture.” Of course this left me with guilt feelings, which tarnished the experience. Yet this feeding is so contagious and easy to fall into, like drivers passing the speed limit because everyone else is.

Looking back, even the men in the ticket booth, that were shaking their heads in contempt, were also feeding; except they were again feeding on superiority. It’s so hard to notice all the types of feeding in real time, because the automatic decision making is happening so fast. This is why intentions have to be renewed constantly. All of this means we have to watch ourselves more than others. We have enough work to do right here.

Focus on your own work

Instead of worrying about other people, Thanissaro wants the meditator to keep it simple, and focus on their own feeding. This freedom from feeding for Thanissaro means you aren’t completely restricted. By having a portable source of pleasure, you are not chained to your source of food. The measure of the practice is to be able to do the things you don’t want to do that are good for you, and let go the things that are bad for you, that you like. The great insight with this practice is to see that even if we mainly pursue our breath because we can control it, the meditator can use this insight and assert themselves externally, with an understanding of what can be controlled on the outside. Even if a person takes external risks, they have the breath they can return to, and there’s less feelings of shock when there’s an external disappointment.

A lot of the stress of disappointments is precisely because we are caught off guard. When our expectations are matched with what the external world is actually like, we will get fears and frights, but they won’t be as damaging as when we emotionally invest and daydream on only one particular outcome happening. Having backup plans, and prioritizing meditation practice as the main form of pleasure, gives the mind a source of relief while dealing with the world. There is something to not having all your eggs in one basket.

Unstable sources of food

What makes emotional food junk food for Thanissaro, is if it comes from “unstable sources.” Sometimes there’s a feast, and sometimes a famine. This can cause a lot of anger. Thanissaro challenges the meditator. He says, “be mindful of the object of the anger. The object, the anger, and the mind that’s watching. What sets you off about the object? Something somebody did. It’s your assumption that sets you off more than what they did. Once that assumption got planted in your mind, it starting eating away at you. Look at what you are doing…If you’ve let something into your system, you have to get it out…When you take these things in you find they give you no real nourishment. Make the mind so strong that it doesn’t need to feed…The breath can be so satisfying, the other things can’t get in.”

In short, wanting people to behave in particular ways can be a form of feeding that causes stress, like a sense of superiority, or preference. It can make the meditator forget their own unskillfulness when they focus on the unskillfulness of others. This doesn’t mean that people can’t be assertive in their behaviour to make people accountable, but ultimately the passive aggressive attitude of wanting people to change, but doing nothing about it except stewing in negative emotions, betrays a desire to feed on the entitlement that the world should be fair. The world isn’t fair. We can vote for who we want to and take actions within our rights, but the world will always be mixed with good and bad. The practitioner can’t wait for the world to be fair to practice meditation. They’ll wait forever.

Thanissaro says, “when you are not weighing the mind on these things there’s more lightness of being.” Even if this may look boring to many people, he doesn’t restrict the breath to boredom. He says to “make it interesting food”, which is the main part of the practice. Though it’s not just about preventing boredom. He says, “feed the mind well so you can live in a world with aging, illness and death.”

How to practice

Thanissaro’s website Dhammatalks is an endless list of practice instructions and insights to help the practitioner. The practice can be kept simple in its broad strokes, but it eventually becomes complex as the mind gets clearer. The mental movements of the mind are fast, and more clarity means more detail on how the mind emotionally feeds. It’s easy to fall into one of the feeding intentions and get carried away.

Thanissaro says, “the trick of course is to keep your mind with the breath. Be as sensitive as possible and change [the breath] if it feels uncomfortable. You don’t get discouraged when you lose the breath. Just go back to it…Keep things in mind and keep watching it and being sensitive. Don’t get too complicated…Focus your intention on the breath. See how long the intention lasts. If it’s strong you can maintain it. You can setup new intentions when it fails. Ask what is too much and what is not enough with the breath? Add a little bit until it’s just right. Just small adjustments.”

Savouring

As you watch subtle movements of the mind latch onto things outside, you can also see that it can feed on the body, but it’s not the habit yet. The practitioner still has to replace external things with the breath before going further. Thanissaro says, “savour the breath as if [it is] good food or music. Be a connoisseur of the breath. Think of it as food.”

The danger of not feeding the mind is that it can rebel, and this will happen a lot as people are learning how to entertain the mind with the breath. He says, “if you don’t feed it well, it looks for scraps in the garbage can. It becomes a homeless mind…Feed on rapture or refreshment. Allow the breath to be refreshment. Each breath should be given space. Ask, what would feel really good and refreshing?” Moving to the body one can ask, “what kind of breathing would be good for this section or that section of the body?” We can notice parts of the body that have tension and relax them. There are no particular rules on how to play with the breath. Just starting points. You can be creative with your imagery as well. Below is my video review which includes some of the creative ways advanced practitioners use to deal with physical pain.

Skillful Thinking

One of the insights that can be found early on is how our breath is natural when we don’t pay attention to it, but when our attention goes to the breath, the willpower starts manipulating, and tightening it. By going towards preference, like we do in the external world, we can experiment with the breath. If we want a short or long breath we do that and keep changing according to how our body prefers it. As we satisfy our preferences we get some of that pleasure that we receive when satisfying preferences in the external world. This way we are attuned to the present moment, because it’s interesting. We are still thinking, but thinking about our breath preferences instead. This is the type of thinking that leads naturally to less complication.

Appreciate where you are

“We don’t anticipate the next breath,” Thanissaro says, “appreciate where you are and make the most of where you are. That way you don’t think you are going somewhere. This way you are well fed all along the path. The sense of you [then] goes into the background. The skillful identity is that, if other humans can do this, so can I. The unskillful way is to compare attainments with others.” There are so many ways we can feed including, feeding on the intellect, feeding on anticipation. We can even wallow on unpleasantness if we feel someone will rescue us. This actually matches a lot of what psychologists say, that anticipation and plans for enjoyment are often the main part of the enjoyment.

Blameless Feeding

For Thanissaro, memory is used to watch the cause and effect of your practice to “remember what you did and the results you’re getting.” Showing that he’s not afraid to point out practices that he thinks won’t work, Thanissaro says, “‘Who am I?’ is a useless question. Do I feel gratification? That is worth asking. If I don’t like how I’m eating, where am I looking for gratification? How do I deal with this hunger? Look for a way of feeding that is totally harmless.” He challenges again and asks “what are the ignoble things you had to do to get pleasure?” He wants the practitioner to look for happiness that doesn’t require you to hurt others. Then there’s “no denial and regret because the feeding is blameless.”

The Committee

As you continue practicing you will be “seeing the connections between what you’re doing, the results of what you’re doing, and realizing you can do it better.” Because we recognize experience with labels, they all have a little bit of clinging stress, of feeding based on what is recognized as being a better or worse label or recognition. He wants us to “use the stillness to see more subtleness of who [we] are feeding inside.”

Similar to Carl Jung’s Archetypes, and Freud’s Ambivalence, Thanissaro looks at our desires as a committee that weighs desires. Certain voices, based on our habits, are louder than others. He guides us to “strengthen the wiser members of the committee and starve the other ones.” Of course we don’t have to think about doing this, but just begin breathing nicely and feed the right voices before we get carried away. Seeing ever more subtle forms of mental pain helps tilt the ambivalence towards less pain. He says, “knowledge of what’s bad about something changes the perception towards dispassion. You lose your taste for it.” This inclines the mind towards Nirvana, which is often called “the deathless” or “the unconditioned,” which is different from a concentration mental state, and promises the deepest rest of all the contemplative practices. Actual food, for someone who has weaned themselves into Nirvana many times, is transformed into something to keep the body strong to maintain practice.

Facing Death

So why all the fuss over these practices and even making a life out of it? Thanissaro asks “how are we going to handle the suffering of death when it happens?” The pain we are slowly unraveling with meditation, if we don’t practice, is going to be there when we age and experience illness and death. To have a to go through a quick weaning process of our addictive attachments when we are closer to our actual death, will be more emotionally painful than dealing with it earlier on. It also relieves a lot of unnecessary stress when one is alive and well. A person’s body can be in better shape than someone who is older, but their mind may not.

As Thanissaro reminds the listener, death can come at any moment and does not ask permission. He asks, “are you ready?”

After The Wedding Susanne Bier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZzxmZuOvKI

There is ultimately more wisdom from someone who has lived most of their natural life. They understand how much we can forget and how ephemeral our life dramas are in the grand scheme of the universe. Pema Chödrön is a perfect living example of this and I’ll leave you to watch this Belfast Buddhist interview below, where she tells us from her own experience.