‘Just One More’ with Noah Levine

‘Just One More’'‘ Thoughts on Ajahn Amaro’s book on appreciative joy. How often does that thought arise in your life? Whether it's about potato chips or thinking, “I'm just gonna …or… I've already kind of contemplated this 3700 times but I'm going to go over it one more time before I get to sleep. Let me just think about this a little bit more.” The core formula of Buddhism is that it's our relationship to pleasure, craving – it’s Taṇhā  the Buddhist word thirst – that is the cause of our unhappiness, the cause of our suffering.  The good news is it's not your fault. It's just what it's like to have incarnated as a human being with the nervous system and a survival instinct and there is craving. We all have it. The bad news is, it's here to stay on some level or another. The second chapter of the book is named, “Desire is a Liar”. In your history, how often have your desires misled you? How often are you so convinced, “I want? I need just one more. I have to have.”   And not just drugs. All of the time in your relationship to pleasure, in your relationship to people, places, whatever it is. How often is it leading you down a dead end? Ajahn Amaro says, “when the mind says, ‘I must have, or she's got one I need one, or I've got to have a better one than him,” we shouldn't consider that it's telling the truth. I like that. We shouldn't even consider that our minds are telling us to the truth.  When our mind says things like, “This! I have to have it. Just one more.” That is the thinking problem. It's not that the mind thinks. That’s not a problem. It’s that we believe what we think. He says you shouldn't even consider that it is telling the truth. It's an impulse that the mind is coming up with, and that certainly we don't have to go along with it. Did you know that? Did you know that you don't have to go along with what your mind is telling you to do? I did not know that which I'm pretty sure is why I'm an addict in the first place, because my mind just kept telling me to chase pleasure and I just kept saying, “yes Sir!” I did not know I had a choice before I started meditating, before I started bringing mindfulness. That I had a choice was a revelation. It was an intervention. Wow.  I don't have to do what my mind is telling me to do. It's simple logic. It's an impulse that the mind is coming up with and certainly we don't have to go along with it. If we learn to watch that impulse and recognize that it's a lie, we will not get caught in it. Then we won't have to create the feeling of disappointment or lack.  We will find that we are much more content and happier with the way things are.