Chapter Eight: Abstaining from Intoxicants
The Bible makes much ado about the Nazirite avoiding grapes
and grape products. The rabbis expand the Bible’s concern. Why? Because at the
heart of being a Nazirite is the ability to focus clearly on reality, and being
drunk makes that impossible.
When the Bible and the sages worry about grapes, they are
really concerned with fermented grapes, wine. Wine was a staple of Jewish life,
and while there is little evidence of alcoholism in the Bible (Noah being a
notable exception), still the Nazirite needs all of her faculties clear.
I don’t drink wine. In fact I don’t drink any alcohol at
all. This is not a moral judgment on my part; I simply don’t like the taste.
Yet my distaste for wine was no advantage when taking up the Way of the
Nazirite, as I understand it.
Wine is to be understood literally as well as figuratively.
For the period of your Nazirite Vow you should avoid all alcohol, but that in
and of itself is insufficient. Wine is symbolic of a larger category of things
I would call intoxicants.
I define intoxicants as anything that fosters a false view
of reality; anything that keeps you off balance; and anything that gets you
worked up without a very compelling reason. In essence, wine, for the period of
your Nazirite Vow should be understood as needless drama.
Needless drama is anything that complicates your life. I
don’t think life is meant to be complicated. I do believe that life is quite
complex, just not complicated.
Here is the difference between complex and complicated.
Complex means that something is made up of a variety of interrelated parts.
Complicated means that something is confused and dealing with it becomes
difficult. The difficultly arises not from complexity but from confusion.
Confusion is the most common by-product of unnecessary drama.
What is unnecessary drama? I can’t answer that for you, but
in my life unnecessary drama, the drama that makes my complex but fairly simple
life complicated and difficult to navigate, is anything that seeks to put me in
control. When I seek to control life I introduce a level of dramatic
complications that always—and I do mean always—leave me drained, depressed, and
deserted.
I like the illusion of being in control. Of course, my
narrow mind doesn’t think this is an illusion. Mochin d’katnut really believes
it is in charge. It really imagines that it can control not only its aims and
goals, but also its success in reaching those aims and goals.
I was raised with this belief. It is one of the dead bodies
I carry around with me all the time: “You are in control; you are responsible
for outcomes; you are in charge, and if you are not in charge then someone else
is in charge of you and that is bad.”
I believed this for most of my life. Who am I kidding? I
still believe it, just not totally. I now know that despite mochin d’katnut’s
insistence otherwise, I am not in control. God is.
If you remember back a few chapters, my understanding of God
is that God is the source and substance of all that is happening at this very
moment. So when I say God is in control I don’t mean that there is a Person out
“there” somewhere who is pulling the strings and making things happen. If God
is everything, then to say God is in control is to say that everything is
happening exactly the way everything is supposed to happen give the conditions
that are present in this moment.
As I write this chapter I can look out my window and see
that it is about to rain. I am not surprised. Given the temperature, the level
of humidity, the season, and whatever else is necessary to produce rain, the
fact that it is about to rain only says that given these conditions raining is
inevitable. God isn’t deciding to make it rain. God is the reality that rains
when these conditions are manifest. And God is the manifest conditions as well.
One more thing: there is no “it” that is about to rain.
There is just the act of raining. English carries with it what Alan Watts
called linguistic ghosts. The “it” in the sentence “It is raining” refers to
nothing whatsoever. You cannot point to this “it” separate from the act of
raining. “It” is the raining.
There are no “its” in the absolute world of mochin d’gadlut.
“Its” exist only in the mind of mochin d’katnut. When you see the world from
the spacious perspective of mochin d’gadlut you don’t see “its” you see
happenings. The world of mochin d’gadlut is a world of gerunds and verbs, and
no nouns.
Mochin d’katnut sees the world as nouns: subjects and
objects. And because it sees a world of nouns it feels the need to control
them. Since these nouns are relative truths and not absolute Truth, they are
fictions and cannot be controlled. Seeking to control your life and the people
in it is like trying to separate the “it” from “It is raining” in order to make
“it” stop raining. It can’t be done.
Yet you keep trying, and the effort invites the needless
drama that stirs up the pot of your experience making it impossible for you to
see clearly and act wisely.
Abstaining from “wine” means abstaining from drama. For the
period of your Nazirite Vow you do your best to stop stirring the pot. You
allow things to settle, and when they do you are free to engage the world with
the seven qualities of holiness.
Once I understood “wine” to refer to drama, it wasn’t
difficult for me to highlight the things that feed the dramas of my life. Here
is the list of intoxicants I have drawn up for myself. You may use my list or
come up with your own, but however you do it, you have to be very clear with
yourself about what it is introduces drama and complications into your life and
thereby keeps you off balance.
1. Television. I am a TV news junkie. I love to bounce from
CNN to MSNBC to Fox News. Not that I am looking for the Truth; I simply get off
on the hype and intensity of the presentations. I also watch a lot of police
dramas: all the variations of Law & Order, JAG, and CSI.
2. Email. My inbox is stuffed with the rants and raves of
people addicted to drama. I don’t learn much from the email, but I like the
rush it gives me.
3. Magazines. I read
dozens of magazines a month: newsmagazines, science magazines, business
magazines, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, and Jewish magazines. I read them for
information certainly, but also for the buzz I get from the ads and the flood
of ideas for new projects that both the articles and ads provide.
4. Candy. I eat lots of candy. I usually deny this, but I am
trying to be honest here. I love chocolate, especially cheap chocolate: my
intake of M&Ms alone should send me into recovery. I eat this stuff when I
am anxious. It feeds the drama that is making me anxious, and then, because I
worry about my weight (another needless drama) it adds a new drama of its own.
5. Salty foods. When I feel like I ought to cut back on
sweets, I turn to salty foods, telling myself that these are less of a
distraction for me. No so. Whether it is a Chunky bar or a bag of Fritos, I eat
this stuff to avoid dealing with reality.
6. Gossip. I do my best not to gossip. I also do my best to
encourage my friends to gossip. That way I can get the drama with out the
guilt.
When I take the Nazirite Vow I go on a media fast, a sugar
and salt fast, a gossip fast, and a drama fast. The first two are not that
difficult, while the latter two require constant vigilance.
The way I stay vigilant is through a Jewish spiritual
practice called Shmirat haLashon, Guarded Speech. Shmirat haLashon refers to
the quality of your communication: verbal, written, and bodily. Usually Shmirat
haLashon focuses on gossip, but I use to it with regard to all communication:
both what I say and what I hear.
As you engage in any kind of communication be aware of the
tone and texture of what is being communicated. If the communication lacks
compassion, grace, patience and the other qualities of godliness, stop
mid-sentence and start again. If you are too caught up in narrow mind and
cannot speak from a place of spaciousness, excuse yourself and plan to meet
with the person later when you can prepare yourself for a more holy encounter.
If you are on the receiving end of gossip or listening to hyped, biased and
overly dramatic ranting on the television or radio, turn it off.
Remember you are not giving this stuff up forever (though
with regard to gossip you might consider it); you are simply abstaining from it
for the period of your Vow. No need to panic.
A shorthand tool for
practicing Shmirat haLashon is to ask yourself three questions before
communicating anything to anyone: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
If it isn’t true, don’t say it. If it isn’t kind and it
isn’t necessary, don’t say it. If it isn’t kind but it must be said, then take
care to say it in line with the seven qualities of holiness.
What happens when I abstain from these drama inducing
stimulants? First a sense of panic arises: I am afraid I will be bored out of
my mind. What will I do with all the time I normally spend reading magazines
and watching television? If I don’t gossip, what will I have to talk about with
people?
It takes a bit of deep breathing to get over this. I am
addicted to drama, and there is a period of painful withdrawal that I must
endure when entering into the Way of the Nazirite.
The period does pass, however. And when it does there is a
level of clarity that I find surprising. It is as if my mind were a glass of
muddy water constantly being stirred by these addictive dramas. When I put them
aside, the water calms down, the dirt settles of its own accord, and I can see
things much more clearly.
What do I see?
My main concern is seeing God more clearly in, with, and as
all things. The truth is, however, that lots of other things get clarified
first. I am not suggesting a cause and effect relationship here. I really don’t
know if one has anything to do with the other, or if one is simply easier to
clarify than the other. But I will attest to the fact that when I calm down and
the mud settles and the water clears, I see my priorities more clearly.
Without allowing the addictive dramas of my daily life to keep
me off balance, I see just how simple my life really is. There are people I
love and who love me; I need to honor and tend to them. There are projects I
want to do and those I don’t want to do; I need to focus on the former and
minimize if not eliminate the latter. I see that I get myself entangled in all
kinds of problems when I avoid being straight with people. I see that much of
the pain in my life is self-inflicted. In short, I see where I ought to be
going, where I am in fact headed, and how to get back on the original track.
This is not magic. It is just what happens when you cleanse
the Garment of Speech by abstaining from needless drama.
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