The Shadow of Moroni, Part III · 9 January 2008
Ok, let's wrap up this series before we all get thirsty.
I started with the yoga the year after I stopped with the alcohol. And then when my first arresting ashtanga transformation occurred another year after that, a lot of ascetic tendencies got locked in. Stuff I’d put in my body, sensory stimuli I’d tolerate, the rougher-edged personalities among friends: the threshold of what I wanted in my world got pushed far, far back by the nadi shodana.
That’s another story, you know. You do this practice and at some transformation point your nervous system might get touchy and it might change your bearing on the world. It’s not easy for you or your loved ones; but revolution is like that. I’m not judging what was my process because I don’t regret it and I wouldn’t take it back. But I am experimenting with it now—seeing how much room I have for play in this permanent, radical revolution.
I imagine that if I had not quit drinking before the nadi shodana wave hit, I’d have done it then. For me personally—and that is all I can assess—I doubt that deepening a second series practice and initiating pranayama and meditation practices would have been possible at all if I had not existed in a simple, fairly non-toxic, environment. It just took too much inner focus and environmental support to build up those practices. Seriously: I think that without a certain level of monasticism, I would not have had the clarity or intensity I needed to set some foundations. Yes that is a bold statement to make about what is also supposed to be a practical, daily kind of yoga for the householding set. But there it is.
And also: it is easier now. The world does not feel like it might take me out of my practice the way it might have—would have—when practice was new and I lacked the force of habit. But practice can get so precious and isolated from the world, and I want to blur the boundaries between it and everything else. Get less monastic, not more.
Thus, contra monasticism: salmon in November. And like I keep trying to get around to describing: on the solstice I finally drank.
It tasted nice. Pinot noir is something I can sort of appreciate like the artisans and merchants who are closest to its roots. L and I worked in a Willamette Valley vintner’s restaurant throughout college, took some seminars and tours, and drank a great deal of what the rich valley silt had to offer up. Even a half-decent pinot to me feels nourishing; and a decent one feels like art.
As I wrote earlier, my body didn’t ask for wine the past five years at all; and in fact my first several attempts to drink failed by force of habit. New Years 2007: big disappointment. The Editor's 30th: foiled again.
Though suddenly when I opened up to alcohol again, it again became so easy to want. Now once I’ve had a drink, the greed for another is—suddenly—very strong. Maybe this is a small scale experience of falling off the wagon, though I don’t pretend to understand the intensity of chemical torture and dependency a severe alcoholic would experience. In any case, for me, “mindful drinking” (check on Choygam Trumpa for infamous interestingness) is going to be difficult if not bullshit.
Here's the experience. As soon as the buzz starts—which is now almost immediately—I want to use the sauce to go deeper into non-control. I actually don’t know how much of this is my immaturity—I have not grown past my 14-year-old relationship to alcohol—and how much might be chemical reaction. It feels more ornery than chemical. There is just a petulant fascination with moving quickly toward that point where the lights go out.
God. I don’t know how many people experience the process I’m describing. Yes: it is troubling. But—no kidding—I don’t know if it is entirely different from my desire to let go in practice.
Isn’t that odd? The edge here is not just attraction and not just repulsion: it’s a strong desire for loss. Not transformation so much. Just loss.
Greeeat. Well, coming off the solstice, a decent number of badly-selected wines greased down my holiday with the in-laws quite nicely (though seriously: it was reassuring to see that even under conditions of extreme desire and a handful of empties I won't waste myself on White Zin), and then I sat on the plane home feeling the greed for not one but three drinks. An obese man with a coalmine-quality cough and cracked grey thumb callouses a centimeter thick sat next to me and happily (sweetly) drank two little whiskey bottles straight. Yes, there I am. I let that grasping drain out of me as we flew back down the coast, and haven't gone in to it again.
I am wondering if "drinking practice" may be more trouble than it is worth unless I recognize on the level of my body that I’m no longer a confused kid in a cornfield, and that one more drink is not one of the ways--so far as I can tell--to the void.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: evolution
, having a body
, integration
, morality
, self-deception
Previous entry: The Shadow of Moroni, Part II / Next entry: Zee
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
How very interesting. It’s worked the other way for me: all it took was to be split into doing Intermediate only and I started buying wine, eating for England and going out.
Posted by: Vanessa · Jan 10, 03:23 AM · #
Hi (Ov0). In my life ashtanga has also made me more monastic, and made me avoid alcohol. Not that I was ever a lush. I’ve never been able to hold more than two drinks of anything, including wine. But a glass of wine now and then is good for health. Even if it’s just for relaxation. For me those “now and thens” occur maybe once a month or once every other month.
Cheers, Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Jan 10, 04:49 AM · #
There’s a lot I want to say and I don’t know if it’s going to make sense, but here goes.
I think it’s all about enjoying your life, whatever that means to you, and dancing with healthy edges. If you (the generic “you”) want to eat steak, drink wine, indulge in extracurriculars once in awhile, do it. We don’t get do-overs and guarantees in this life, and regrets are cheap. No day but today, no time but right now.
If you can drink, appreciate the wine, and enjoy the one drink or the feeling of being pleasantly tipsy and occasionally overindulging with friends, why not? What’s the harm? But drinking until you don’t remember the night before, till you get to that “loss” point, that’s going over the edge and then you ask yourself (as you’ve done here, if I’m understanding correctly) what’s going on underneath. There are people who never feel quite so alive as when they’re dancing with danger. Yet, there are ways to let go and get to that release point which are healthy and positive (practice, sex, love). The rush gets transferred.
Go dancing with the limit. In fact, do the tango. Figure out what works for you. It’s all a process.
p.s., I love what Vanessa said and I might be doing something similar? But with new degrees of self acceptance, which for me is different and new.
Posted by: Anna · Jan 10, 07:11 AM · #
I agree with Anna… Obviously, we’ve already established that I am of the drinking camp… Working in the wine industry from two different angles makes it difficult to resist. :)
I just read an article in the Wine Enthusiast about treating wine as if it was a food, to be consumed at mealtimes. Of course, I like drinking a glass of wine as I prepare my meal, but I guess we could consider that a “snack”. I think Americans have this strange attachment to alcohol as “taboo,” and it’s easy to understand why considering our government outlawed the stuff for 13 years just seven or eight decades ago.
Have you considered half bottles of wine to help you touch lightly without going overboard? If you send me your address, I will send you a wonderful little “Pocket Pinot” from the Willamette. But I certainly don’t want to be an enabler here.
Or better yet… Come to Paso Robles, and we’ll take a day and go visit a few wineries. And we’ll spit the stuff out all day without swallowing a drop.
Well, maybe we’ll swallow the good stuff…
Posted by: jenna · Jan 10, 08:26 AM · #
Compelling stuff, a “drinking practice”...I wonder what would happen if you considered that practice the same way you consider a meditation, pranayama, or asana practice? For example, is pinot noir more like khumbaka? Mayurasana? Is it something you “breathe into”? What about its relationship to inner noise/inner quiet? How’s your “witness mind”? What is your “drinking practice” practicing?
Posted by: patrick · Jan 10, 09:54 AM · #
You know… your term — “drinking practice” —reminded me of a few passages I read in a book on the topic of Tantra. One of the principle ideas behind Tantra, as I understand it, is that the mind’s connections to the senses are sharpened, made more refined. The Tantrik uses his senses to become more aware of his/her world and to connect with people. Wines are very, very sensual. They’re not just about the alcohol, as you know, but offer infinite complexity to be taken in by the various senses. This “drinking practice” may really be something, eh?
Posted by: Carl · Jan 10, 11:13 AM · #
Oh what great responses from you this morning. Thank you, all. I sense that if it is drinking supervisors that I require for the establishment of an, ugh, drinking practice, I have an international team of support. Any other offers?
Jenna, let’s do this. It would be great fun, and very exciting education for my palate. (Also, I will send my address!)
It’s interesting. Very many people are watching this discussion. I don’t know where you all are coming from, but hello. I have a feeling that one reason the subject irritates readers is that—yes—we see drinking as “one of life’s pleasures” and a joy senseless to forego.
Due to my history with alcohol, this is not the experience I’m addressing. Picture the refined and beautiful Jenna out on a deck in Napa, tongue to palate and head tilted back in the sun. Now picture a man in rags stumbling through Managua dust, buoying a Coke bottle of home-made guaro that tastes like bitter metal and makes the throat burn. I’ve never been either, but the spectrum of my experience is closer to the latter.
So when I reflect on this relationship, I’m not reflecting on pleasure so much as a history of escapism. Drinking to lose yourself, looking back, is only interesting the first time. Mostly, for my part, it’s stupid and weak. Some people, it helps them for a while. We find empowerment where we can, and maybe sometimes the best we can do is just tranquilize. But there is no reason I need that and I’m grateful for the five dry years to realize this.
My reactions to alcohol over Christmas were messed up, friends. I have a difficult MiL, and I used the sauce to give her a bit of the intimacy for which she grasps. To give it to her falsely. And, in other cases, I just amused myself by interacting with wine as an alternative to interacting with people. After drinking all day on the 25th, on the 26th I could not stop thinking about more. This might not have been clear if it weren’t a stark contrast to my recent past. But I bet none of this is unique in this crowd, even if it’s not unproblematic.
Is there the possibility of Epicureanism to replace a mis-placed all-or-nothingism? Given just the sensation of good wine, it is worth a try. In truth, wine is all that interests me anymore, really, except for the era-specific madelines of Miller Genuine Draft (fuck off, hipsters; that is farm-kid fare) and the warm artisanal bocks on tap in the Willamette Valley.
I think that if there is going to be a non-bullshit practice it’ll involve shifting the sensation-center from the prefrontal cortex (the house of buzz) to the palate. Very short distance, really, backwards down the well-traveled route of my little spinal-breathing practice.
Catch and release drinking practice? Full involvement in the action, without attachments to the, er, “fruits” of the action?
Is there a tapas of alcohol drinking, or is such a notion pure bullshit? Maybe for me, observing the chemical greed as it arises (after half a drink) and seeing if I can stay with it instead of doing fight-or-flight (fight: moralizing against drinking and never doing it again; flight: running right into the rabbit hole) actually does require something like austerity. I don’t know. Maybe I am kidding myself. :)
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 10, 12:24 PM · #
First, “fuck off, hipsters”...LMFAO applause
Second, there might just BE a tapas of liquor practice. You are well-placed, historically/personally/chemically, to inform us about this.
Third: discipline/tapas is good for walking binary tightropes like chemical greed/moralizing. Come on, you’re writing a dissertation, you know all about tightroping a commit-to-write/take-day-off binary.
Posted by: patrick · Jan 10, 12:42 PM · #
Even if you’d never mentioned that you practice ashtanga yoga, I bet I could’ve guessed that you do. You’re 100% steretypical.
Posted by: Carl · Jan 10, 01:24 PM · #
Owl, you are 100% smart and cool!
I sent you an email because both Moroni and blacking out are familiar to me. Though I am now comfortable drinking within the boundaries of excess.
Posted by: KATIE · Jan 10, 01:52 PM · #
Stop it. No “drinking practice” for you any more. Just disregard it, totally. For you, it is too dangerous game… OK.
You know you are. Be attentive to that knowledge only. Whenever you want a glass of wine, your attention should be there.
Nothing is wrong with you except the idea you have of yourself. It is not you who “practice drinking”, it is the person built on foundation of your body, by circumstances and influences. You are not that person.
Stop analyzing. Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is no central point from where your drinking practice originate. Small habits can be stopped by opposite actions but deep rooted desires must be experienced. But once experienced, there is no need to confirm the same experience again and again. Generally speaking, all your desires comes because you don’t know who you are, so you imagine yourself to be what you are not. From that imagination, desire of a glass of wine, and overwhelming activity, in order to escape your own ignorance.
Liberation of drinking habit is not result of some means skillfully applied, nor it lies in yoga nor in any other practice. Every effort you make is just conflict between incompatible desires. Recognize them, see how they clash into each other, and they dissolve. Deepen and broaden your awareness of yourself, that’s all.
Don’t rely on your mind to stop drinking. Don’t fight, just disregard it. Mind, thoughts are just words, nothing else. Mere words… of what use they are to you? Go beyond your thoughts. You know you are. Be attentive to that knowledge only. Whenever you want a glass of wine, your attention should be there. Where? In the sense of your identity, that is before thoughts.
Posted by: zee · Jan 10, 06:30 PM · #
On a physiological level drinking to blackout and to the point of “escape” is pure and simple alcoholic drinking – no other way around that fact. Alcoholism is a disease (genetic and environmental etiology) that kills and destroys all it touches and the only known effective treatment is abstinence. Why diminish the experience or consciousness? Why as a human being seek the vegetable realm? I know, I know all too well, “psychic relief”.
Posted by: e&sj · Jan 12, 09:58 AM · #
...and on another note on the topic of booze as spiritual practice. This is romanticism gone awry in sad and pathetic ways. As I understand it, we lost two of the best communicators of this age to ugly, nasty, rotten alcoholic deaths in their prime: Alan Watts and Chogyam Trungpa. Some kind of Maha Samadhi there.
Chögyam Trungpa (February 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and a Trungpa tülku. Widely recognized, both by Tibetan Buddhists and by other spiritual practitioners and scholars,[1] as a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, he was a major figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method. His controversial career is characterized by his style of “crazy wisdom” by his Western followers. Physically weakened by years of heavy alcohol use, he died in terminal stages of heart failure2 at the age of 48.
Don’t let that heart failure thing fool you – abuse of booze kills the heart and every other organ eventually. And its a freaking hideous, vile and bloated way to go. Its pretty clear he died of from alcoholism at the young age of 48.
Some, a few, can handle this mix of intoxicants and spiritual practice. For those who can’t, can there be any other higher form of delusion and denial? Who can argue with “I am participating in this self-sabatoging behavior to get closer to God”?
Posted by: e&sj · Jan 12, 10:46 AM · #
Well, to put a very fine point on it, I’m not saying I’m an alcoholic. And I won’t say that. The history of blackouts is horrible and stupid; and it is done because one morning I woke up and started listening to my body. And what it told me was to stop, not to give it more. FWIW, blacking out was at least as much social as chemical when it was happening: this is how everyone in Yellowstone country learns to drink.
On the other hand, my love of asceticism to the point of non-participation in relationships, and my tendency for all-or-nothing, black-and-white ways of doing business, are also needing to be examined. I’m working with what I’ve got. No easy answers.
Of course, all the stuff about “drinking practice” is deeply in jest. But there is a question here of whether I can have a drink now and then with friends, and have that not be some sort of crisis. If relationships are my most basic practice, then what food or beverage I put in my body while doing relationship is “practice,” in a modest sense.
But yes, the idea of taking alcohol to get closer to God reeks. I agree. I was first introduced to the concept of “mindful drinking” years ago at Trungpa’s place, Gampo Abbey. That was when I was still repulsed by alcohol, so the argument struck me as particularly pathetic and deceptive.
Talk about socially-conditioned (not just chemically-conditioned) alcohol problems. Here were “renunciants” who had basically never been interested in drinking, talking about how intrigued they were by Trungpa’s “drinking practice.”
And at the same time, that’s crazy wisdom for you. I’ll never be as visionary or brilliant as CT, so I don’t really think I understand him or can have the final say in judging him.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jan 12, 04:14 PM · #