NoFap as Meditation

Deep in the Blue Mountains last year, I sat in the middle of a silent vipassana retreat. If you're never been to one of these things, imagine having everything you like and enjoy stripped away until you're left with two meals a day and a bed. Oh, and you can't talk to anyone and you're meditating for 11 hours a day.

As you can imagine, even two weeks feels maddening at times. Interestingly, the worst days for most people are Day 2 and Day 6. Who knows why, but the pattern exists nonetheless. On those days, it feels like your brain is eating itself alive. It wants FREEDOM, BURGERS, SEX, YOUTUBE, PHONE, and it wants it now. Your brain has never had to just sit with itself for this long, with nothing to do but settle into the present moment and be at peace with itself.

It really does feel like you're going crazy. But what's really happening is that you were always this crazy, but were never given the space and time to notice it before. It's like walking into your bedroom and suddenly seeing that the walls and floor are crawling with insects. Did I really sleep peacefully in this bed? you think. It's practically shivering with spiders and cockroaches. It's a scary realisation in some ways, but a healthy one. This is what the Buddha wanted you to notice: that in your mind is being clouded by impulsive cravings. They come out of nowhere and ram into you at full speed. One second you're scrolling Instagram and a bikini picture pops up: the next, you feel a strong tug at your groin and a rising craving in your torso. And instead of seeing "hey, that's just a little craving coming to pay a visit, he'll move on in a minute", you get totally lost in the craving. You find your finger opening an incognito browser almost on its own. Almost.

* * *

If you're doing NoFap, you're pretty much guaranteed to experience compulsive thoughts, fantasies and cravings sometimes. The NoFap community likes to use military metaphors here: the cravings are like enemy troops, and you must CRUSH them with your willpower. "Sexual cravings and pornographic thoughts are the enemy". But I actually think that this frame of mind can be really counterproductive for a lot of people. By framing it as a struggle, you can end up feeling like you're constantly under assault.

"But MK" you say. "I am under assault. I hate these cravings and I wish they'd go away."

I understand the feeling my friend. But I am totally sincere when I say there's another way to approach these difficult feelings, an approach with I think is more skilful, more exciting, and definitely more fruitful.

There's an old Buddhist story. The Buddha is visiting some disciples in a village. One evening, some of the disciples hear that Mara (the Demon King himself) is on his way to town. They panic. "We should prepare terrible masks to scare Mara away!" one man says. "No, we should collect weapons to chase him out of town!" says another. "No, we should all run inside and hide under our beds!" cries a third. They run and knock on the Buddha's door. "Buddha, Buddha!" they cry. "The Demon Lord Mara is coming to town. What shall we do?"

The Buddha smiles kindly at his disciples. "Prepare my table" he says. "I shall invite Mara in for tea."

Here's the thing. All kinds of nasty thoughts, cravings and impulses are going to pop up. You're a human being, and that's part of the package deal. But what if, instead of fighting with these feelings, you invited them in to tea?

Consider yourself a scientist. When you embark upon your NoFap journey, you're actually engaging in a kind of inner science experiment. The experiment is set up by you avoiding PMO. Now, with an open and warm curiosity, you await the results. And sure enough, those lab chemicals in your brain fizzle up. "Porn! Porn!" the chemicals say. Now, what kind of scientist would you be if every experiment you just smashed up all the test tubes in fury as soon as the reaction began to occur? What if instead, you just watched what happened, with a clear and curious mind? To jump between metaphors, what if you invited the demons in for tea?

This is the core of mindfulness. You expect all kinds of things to move through your mind and body. These things appear and they disappear, impermanent and new in each moment. Sometimes they're nice, sometimes they're annoying or unpleasant. But you have a wonderful opportunity here, my brothers, to learn about your own minds and how you get swept away in old patterns of thought and behaviour. It's not a burden to experience cravings. It's actually an opportunity, to get curious about the mental critters that come and go in your own mind. When thinking this way, it can actually be fun or exciting to see undesirable old thoughts popping up.

If you relax, and consider your self not only a Fapstronaut but a Psychonaut, NoFap can be a wonderful meditation on desire and equanimity. By observing thoughts and feelings with space, objectivity, curiosity and 'friendliness', you transcend them. In those moments, they stop defining you or driving your behaviour. They're just clouds, passing through the great open space of the mind. They fall as rain and dissipate, given time. Only the wide open sky remains. What an opportunity we have my friends. To see ourselves clearly, and to move beyond struggle to a space of awareness. In this space, there is great power.

* * *

It is Day 6 of the vipassana retreat. I sit on my cushion the meditation hall, eyes closed. My knee aches. No, my knee is in agony. This kneeling position had seemed so comfortable when I first sat down. How long ago was that? Thirty minutes? Fifty? With my eyes closed there is no way to tell. When will the hour be up? I listen for the chanting that will signal the end of the session and my release from this torture. But there is nothing but silence, and the subtle sounds of other meditators breathing. We are strongly discouraged from changing our posture or position.

It feels like I've been on retreat for years. I can't do it anymore. No, that's not true, I can do it. But I don't want to. Oh god I just want to escape. Settle down I remind myself. It's just sitting and paying attention. Nothing hard about that.

But my KNEE. Oh my god, the pain is like a thousand burning suns. I swear I can feel ligaments tearing. Can you do permanent damage to yourself by sitting for too long? Will I need knee surgery? Can you die from pain? My mind races. Surely the hour is up. It must be. I need it to be. I need to get away from this pain, it's too much. I would say it's evil but no, it's beyond even malevolence. It's like a cruelly indifferent law of the universe, a Lovecraftian demon eating me alive without even noticing my struggle. No, that's melodramatic. But this pain, oh my god.

I stop.

In a moment, I see. I have been caught up in a flood, a parade of little demons and thoughts, jabbering in my ear and tugging at my emotions. Little demons of desire. It is not my knee that hurts. It is my inability to just be with my demons, as they come, and watch them go.

I take a deep breath. I focus my attention on my knee. I am open, curious, objective. I watch the pain. I see its shape, its pattern, the way it moves and pulses. It's not bad really. It just is what it is. I sit with it, like a friend. Eventually, it leaves. It will probably come back, I remind myself. But that's okay.

A million other cravings jump out at me. Porn, food, entertainment. But my mind is suddenly as clear and open as the sky.

I smile, and invite my demons in for tea.

 

Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you appreciated the description.

You're absolutely right, 10 minutes of meditation a day is the beginning of a world of difference.