Renunciation and Mindfulness.
In this series on 8 ways to establish deep wellbeing in the new year, I began by writing about the importance of intention and vision and then wrote about renunciation of what’s in the way of that vision. Today I want to talk about the relationship between renunciation and mindfulness.
Renunciation isn’t a sexy topic. It runs counter to our materialistic consumer culture. There are no best selling books or popular retreats on the topic. Nevertheless, it’s a critical part of human wellbeing. Renunciation involves setting aside, mediating or stopping behaviors which bring negative results.
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The word “karma” suggests a simple cause and effect relationship between actions and results. What we do and say brings results. Those results can either contribute to more happiness and wellbeing or they look like more suffering and harm. Actions bring results, so it makes perfect sense that for us to experience the result of more wellbeing that we’d restrain ourselves from doing things that compromise it.
So we engage in a practice of drawing lines in the sand. We consciously set intention’s to renounce or reign in behaviors which bring negative results.
The very act of establishing limits on behavior does something very important. It helps us cultivate awareness.
If you decide that in 2023, you want to renounce raising your voice to your partner, you draw that line in the sand for yourself, you can’t help but become aware of when you approach that line…or even cross it. Because the line is there, we’re better able to watch ourselves, to pause and to inquire with ourselves about what’s going on. Drawing the line supports awareness.
Earlier I described “karma” as a cause and effect between actions and outcomes, but there’s more to that process. There is something that comes before action. That is intention or motivation.
We do what we do for extraordinarily good reasons. When we draw a line in the sand and boundaries on our behavior, then we have an opportunity to look at what motivates our behavior.
I’ve been through a few cycles in my life of quitting sugar. The reason I quit sugar is because the results of the behavior are bad. Eating sugar begins a cycle of craving. When I eat it, I eat too much. Sugar makes me feel terrible the next day. And if I continue the cycle too long it breaks down my immune system and I often get sick. Over the long term, sugar consumption is tied to metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Adopting a policy of abstinence with sugar allows me to study what happens in me that, in turn, motivates the behavior. For me, it’s very clear that stress and anxiety are the core motivators. Sugar has a numbing quality. As a “sober”person, sugar is really the last addiction behavior I have left.
But what gets revealed in stopping the behavior and studying the conditions in which the behavior arises, is that I realize that the behavior isn’t the most important part of the equation. While sugar does have its own addictive quality for me, the behavior itself is often secondary to the anxiety. The anxiety is the thing that needs attention. Then the question becomes, is there a different and more generative response to anxiety and stress than numbing? The answer is yes, there are many, many ways to address anxiety without an addictive behavior. Most ways are generative in the sense that they support wellbeing, while sugar (like other addictions) ultimately compounds suffering.
All of this is revealed through the process of renunciation. When we stop something we have the opportunity to bring awareness to whatever is going on underneath the behavior. We can drag that stuff out into the light, study it and ultimately learn to respond in ways that support wellbeing instead of compounding our suffering.
Intention/motivation + actions = results.
Renunciation allows for awareness which supports a different response and therefore a different set of results.