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There's a kind of one-liner from Alcoholics Anonymous that says one drink may make you feel like a new person and then

the new person has to have a drink. And I was thinking of it because most people I know have

habits that they want to change and they range from mildly unhealthy to real life-threatening

addictions. But whatever the level of harm, part of the suffering is knowing, okay, this is bad for me,

I should be able to change it, what's wrong with me that I can't.

You might know that one.

So in both Buddhism and Western psychology, the understanding of grasping,

of holding on tightly to experiences, whether it's our roles, you know, our identities,

it's a natural part of being human. It's not a mistake.

You know, in fact, it's part of how we navigate existence, that kind of holding on.

And yet when grasping takes over, it morphs into suffering.

And we see it enmeshed relationships, that restless chase for the next pleasure, addictions,

compulsions,

is the habits that make us feel trapped.

So in our current world, these energies of grasping an addiction are intensifying,

and that means that they're in the atmosphere, they're affecting us.

And collectively we're caught in a real web of addictive behaviors,

whether we think of the pull of sugar, endless scrolling on screens to compulsive shopping,

binge watching, overworking, numbing ourselves with substances. And on a larger scale,

this same grasping shows up in overconsumption that we know about, the addiction to fossil fuels,

...