big mind

On Monday night, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and many of his students engaged in a fascinating and powerful dialogue with Zen Master Genpo Merzel at the EnlightenNext World Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Genpo Roshi was delightfully funny and disarmingly frank, displaying an impressive spiritual depth born of 37 years of Zen practice and teaching

Question:

Addiction is defined as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” What makes so many of us prone to addiction in its various forms? What causes us to be open to this enslavement? And how do we begin to undo it?