It’s not a call to lemming-like suicide as you might think. Perhaps another C.L. maxim of a similar nature would shed some light. “Give and give until you say goodbye.” Or – as a man named Ecclesiastes once put it “To everything there is a season. And a time to every purpose under Heaven.” Meaning there is a time to run and a time to stop. When it’s appropriate to run you run flat out. When it’s appropriate to stop you stop.

I thought of this today as I was watching a Sunday morning political news show. By the time you read this ,we will either have a new President or a lot of fat cat lawyers will be very busy. I have strong opinions about whom I would like to be our next President. Whatever happens, however, I have let go of the outcome.
Letting go of an outcome is a tough concept for some people. They see it as not having faith in yourself; giving up; being negative. To admit that you may not get what you want may appear to be defeatist. In fact – nonattachment to the outcome of your actions is a strong peaceful position to take in the world. It all comes down to what is controllable and what is not.

My personal commitment to having my guy be the next President is within my control as are my actions which spring from that commitment. I can give money, time and effort. I can attempt to sway undecided voters and I can man the phones to get the vote out on November 4th. But the actual final national outcome of the election is not within my control.

So I give and give until it’s not appropriate to give anymore. I run until it would be unwise to continue running.

I see what Reality presents to me and I respond to it.

Zen Master Yasutani, in his “Eight Beliefs in Buddhism”, said that a person commits suicide because he cannot live in the way in which he would like. At first glance, this seems a little cold-blooded; such a selfish explanation for a devastating act which can hurt so many people.

But when we think about it, we realize that it is true.

When someone is in such suffering, despair, pain or anger that they decide not to continue living, they are not accepting their life just as it is is at this moment.

They want something other than what they ended up with. They also are not accepting the possibility of change, either in their circumstances or in their own responses.

I think Yasutani could have extended his observations to addiction.

Notwithstanding physiological and biochemical changes which can eventually occur in the body, each addiction begins with one wilful act.

It is usually an act which we choose because it takes us away from life as it is just right now.

If we feel empty and unsatisfied we may try to fill the hole with shopping or gambling or eating. If we experience ourselves as not smart enough, funny enough, interesting enough – or just plain not enough – we may try to change the way we are through drugs or alcohol.

A central Buddhist teaching is that we cause much of our suffering because we try to form permanent attachments to things which are, by their nature, impermanent.

If we are lonely or in despair we attach to this feeling as if it will always be the nature of our lives. What we could do, instead, is to look at the situation, accept it for the way it is just now and take action to change things.

At the minimum, if we can’t see a way out from our unhappiness, we can look for other possibilities to change our own response.

The 12 step Serenity prayer illustrates this duality of controllability and non-controllability beautifully:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the Courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It’s the last part that’s a little tricky for some.

An addicted mind can have difficulty in determining what’s within it’s control and what is not.

In fact, the only thing that any one of us can control is our behavior. We cannot control our thoughts, our moods, our feelings or the thoughts, moods and feelings of others.

We can, however, control what we say and what we do.

This is where our power lies.

TA-CD stimulates the increase of antibodies to cocaine in the bloodstream. The antibodies bind to the cocaine molecules and the resultant molecules are too large to reach the brain.

The theory behind this novel treatment is that if the pleasurable effects of the ingestion of cocaine are substantially reduced or eliminated the positive reinforcement that the body associates with cocaine will be blunted. This can give the addict an opportunity to break the cycle of addiction and abuse.

This same company is also representing TA-NIC, a vaccine which will hopefully do the same thing for non-smokers looking to break the habit. Seems like a logical next step that the tobacco industry should step up to the plate and put some money into developing this one.

You can read more about these two developing products here