In the Realm of The Hungry Ghosts

Practicing a deeply Buddhist understanding, Dr. Gabor Mate works on the ground in the Hell Realms

For over ten years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté’s patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves? And why is it so difficult to stop these habits, even as they threaten our health, jeopardize our relationships and corrode our lives?

I listened to Sounds Like Canada this Friday; April 11, 2008 am where he was interviewed regarding the new book In The Realm Of The Hungry Ghosts Close Encounters With Addiction. Links to his other books are at his own web site.

CBC podcasting will, I hope, have a podcast up soon of this interview, which should show up here very very soon. (no, It doesn’t seem likely) From the preface of the book:

The inhabitants of the Hungry Ghost Realm are depicted as creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction where we constantly seek something outside ourselves to curb an insatiable yearning for relief or fulfillment. The aching emptiness is perpetual because the substances, objects or pursuits we hope will soothe it are not what we really need. We don’t know what we need and so long as we stay in the hungry ghost mode, we’ll never know. We haunt our lives without being fully present. …

Some people dwell much of their lives in one realm or another. Many of us move back and forth between them, perhaps through them all in the course of a single day. …

No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it is manifested in the lethal substance dependencies of my Downtown Eastside patients, the frantic self-soothing of overeaters or shopaholics, the obsessions of gamblers, sexaholics and compulsive internet users, or in the socially acceptable and even admired behaviours of the workaholic. …