4/ Editorial introductions

Chapter fourteen concerns addictions: Clients' addiction to substances and other sources of security, as well as carers' need to intervene. It also concerns a set of means by which any of us may transcend such dependency and craving. Paramabandhu Groves relates these themes in his work to the Buddhist view of craving as a root of suffering, suggesting that as a result of the various forms of craving in which we all indulge, suffering arises. The Buddhist conceptualisation of ethics is introduced and Paramabandhu argues that through meditation techniques to enhance mindfulness and love, essentially through stillness and reflection, we may experience more fully what is going on in our own experience, allowing us in turn to respond more creatively to the difficult states our clients are in. In being with them rather than immediately trying to do something we can help them, also, to be with what is happening, rather than succumbing to craving for something else and aversion to what is there. This inaction, he argues, paradoxically, is the only way in which real change may evolve.

It may be of interest to consider the Buddhist view relating also to sanity and madness, in this regard. A pivotal stage on the Path for Buddhists is that of Stream Entry, where the degree of insight into reality (things as they really are) has reached a point where the disciple need make no further effort to progress, carried as s/he is inexorably towards the goal of Enlightenment by the sheer strength of the current. From this point onwards is said to be sanity, whereas up to such a point of Insight is said to be one form or another of essentially mad experience. The fetters that one representation of the Path claims must be broken to achieve this state of Stream Entry, include dependence on a fixed view of oneself, that is as unchanging and static; and dependence on moral observances (and rituals) as ends in themselves, rather than as tools to be used to grow.