The Common Sutras of Balance
“Don’t run after pleasure and neglect the practice of meditation. If you forget the goal of life and get caught in the pleasures of the world, you will come to envy those who put meditation first. ”
For a few months in the spring of 2020, I ended most days with a small chocolate bar - the pleasurable cap on indistinguishable days of parenting "and" working. (Quotation marks to imply that such a thing is nonsense.) This reach toward the tasty pantry shelves makes Ayurvedic sense. Ayurveda tells us that when we lack the resources required for resilience (Ojas), we buffer life's difficulty (hardness - kathina) with sweetness.
The opening quotation is from the Dhammapada ("The Path of Dharma"). It may seem like it's emphasizing a widespread impression about the Buddha — that he was a real buzzkill who hated your chocolate and your Wayfair habit. This is far from the truth. The Buddha warned against the suffering that comes from attachment to pleasurable things, not the pleasure itself.
Further in this collection is the verse, "There is no better gift than the gift of the dharma, no gift more sweet, no gift more joyful. It puts an end to cravings and the sorrow they bring." Essentially, practice helps us connect with what truly brings pleasure. When we cannot connect with practice, we reach for what provides a less enduring happiness. Since it does not endure, we repeatedly reach, even if it accrues other anxieties.
And as a parent of a relentlessly resistant sleeper, nothing brings greater joy than good sleep, a genuine laugh, and the crying that may arise when we admit we're having a difficult time. The common thread (sutra) of these three things is that a balanced nervous system facilitates them in the right quantities.
As spring is so evidently washing away the remains of winter, I hope we are all able to make space for a season of that which genuinely supports. Rest assured, in that balance, there is space for chocolate, too.