‘A Doorway Out of My Hell Realm’

Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Community, and their work focuses on how Buddhist teachings can support a sustainable path to recovery. In their new book, First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviors, they lay out practical tools for uprooting harmful habits, building emotional resilience, and reconnecting with our bodies.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Vimalasara to talk about what first brought them to meditation, how the Buddha’s teachings have supported their path to recovery, and what we can learn from Buddhist understandings of addiction.

How did you first come to Buddhism? That’s always an interesting question. I would say that it was meditation that brought me to Buddhism. When I began to experience meditation, I was like, “Wow, I can get high on this, and it doesn’t cost anything, and it isn’t illegal, and it doesn’t take up any space in my luggage!” I think what’s more interesting is my journey to meditation. When I was 17, I was a street dancer in the nightclubs, and that was the place where I first experienced non-self, moments where I just lost the self and was really in the moment, totally here and now.

Before that, as a kid, I grew up in orphanages, and if you were caught speaking at night in the dorms, you were hauled out of your bed, and you had to stand opposite a wall with your hands on your head. You never knew when you were going back. At some point, I think I really enjoyed it. I didn’t mind having to stand with my hands on my head, and I could see that it was really taking me into meditative states. Then, at the age of 15, I was incarcerated for shoplifting and being a runaway kid. I did a lot of solitary confinement, and I would just go into altered states. So I think in my young years, I was moving in the direction of Buddhism. Meditation was my raft then, and it still is now.

You’ve written extensively about how Buddhism can support a sustainable path to recovery. So how has Buddhism helped you in your path to recovery? I always say I got my recovery in the rooms of dharma halls. When I go back to the four noble truths, when I learned that our life is characterized by suffering, it was like, “Oh my God, I’m normal,” because I thought I was the only one who suffered. It was all about me, and I thought that there was something desperately wrong with me that I was experiencing this suffering. At that time, I thought the only way out was to take my life. The teachings gave me space. It was a doorway to something different—it was a doorway out of my hell realm.

How do you define addiction from a Buddhist perspective? I think addiction can look different for each individual, but at the end of the day, we’re all addicted to self, aren’t we? If we strip away all the other addictions, we’re really addicted to the self and trying to protect this self.

One of the characteristics of addiction is craving. I always say that the Buddha’s teachings are the oldest recovery program that we know of. It’s said that the first discourse that the Buddha gave was that there was addiction to hedonism and there was addiction to self-mortification, both of which are lowly, coarse, and unprofitable, and what we want is a middle way. One thing that characterizes addictive behaviors is when we’ve lost the middle way, when we become polarized and we’ve gone to an extreme.

If we strip away all the other addictions, we’re really addicted to the self and trying to protect this self.

Other characteristics include clinging, compulsion, and continuing to do the same behavior despite the consequences. It’s really interesting, as a kid, I can remember my house parents at the dining room table, and they seemed to be obsessed with madness. They would ask, “What’s the first sign of madness?” It would be talking to yourself, and the second sign of madness would be hairs growing on the palm of your hand, and the third sign of madness would be looking for hairs on the palm of your hand. If only they had told me that the first sign of madness is habitually doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome!

You write that if we want to be free from addictive behaviors, we have to face experience without identifying with it or running away from it. So how do we begin to do this? This points me back to the story of Prince Siddhartha’s awakening. When the prince went into samadhi, he experienced every imaginable mental state arising in his mind, and he did nothing. He just allowed the thoughts and watched them arise and cease.

For me, I can be impatient, and when something arises, I want to get rid of it, and then I resist it. But what we resist persists. And so how can we just ride that wave of energy? Just as the waves in an ocean arise and cease, can we allow our emotions to arise and cease? Just as there are dark clouds and bright clouds that come and go, can we accept that there are dark thoughts and bright thoughts, and they’ll pass by?

It’s really a practice of learning to be with all experience so at some point we don’t even label it as negative or positive or bad or good. It’s just all experience. In this way, we’re training to come home to the breath and to the body.

Anything else, Vimalasara? The dharma is radical if we allow it to be. It can really turn the wheel of our lives. It isn’t just about sitting cross-legged on a cushion—it’s much, much more.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.