I mentioned the other day the Four Great Efforts. What we are talking about here is the effort to prevent. Wise reflection is the most important thing in the effort to prevent. Let's look at these examples from the question. Chocolate. Now chocolate in itself is not bad, a little bit of sugar in the diet, a little bit of sweet is not something that we feel is any problem. However excessive wanting, wanting, wanting chocolates, sweets and so on of course is a problem. To reflect on the Dukkha of too much chocolate. Reflect on it. Reflect on what it does to your teeth. That was me as a kid, too much chocolate, too many candies, I lost one tooth. Not too bad, I have a spare, but it is a bit of Dukkha, believe me. So reflect on the Dukkha of having too much chocolate, reflect on the Dukkha of being obsessed with wanting chocolate. There are some people they have a love-hate relationship with chocolate. They don't really want it in the house, as long as it is not in the house it is fine, great. The minute it is in the house they eat it as fast as they can so that it won't be in the house any more. Ok, we have to really reflect on the Dukkha of this, we are a slave to this desire for a nice taste, but it is just a nice taste. We want to be stronger than that, we want to be tougher than that. To actually reflect on the Dukkha that is involved in wanting, wanting, wanting chocolate.
Now alcohol is different, it not only has the taste sensation for some people, but it also deludes our mind, it makes us drunk. Drunk on two levels, not only physically drunk but also our brain is gone. It is out of it. Do you want to be like that? Really, truly, would you want to be like that 24 hours a day? Of course, everybody would say, no, or nearly everybody would say, no. But the point is, do you even want to be like that? If you had a choice, at any one moment in time, right now, this moment in time, you have a choice to be totally sober with a clear mind and aware or you can be drunk, tipsy, laughing, giggling, making stupid jokes, what would you choose? Now hopefully all of you would say if you had the choice right now you would stay sober, that you would want to stay aware and so on. Now, what about applying that choice more into your life, over and over and over.
Now fortunately the situation with alcohol is becoming more well known in the world as to the problems that come with it. Many years ago I got statistics of hospital beds in Australia. 1/3rd of all hospital beds in Australia are there because of alcohol. 1/3rd I said! That is right. 1/3rd of all the beds are there with people from illnesses or injuries that are somehow related to alcohol. So it is becoming better known that it is not the best thing to indulge in alcohol.
So reflecting on the Dukkha of what people want you to do often helps you to be strong and say "No". It is difficult when our friends and families pressure us to be like them. But it just depends on how strong you want to be and how dedicated you are to the practice. For me, I have practiced for more years than some of you have lived so the ability to say "No" is very strong in me, it is not difficult for me to be around those sort of temptations. The person that I used to be, a person just like everybody else no longer exists, and I don't identify with that person any more. I identify with someone else, and in that way I am able to say "No" to these people. Reflecting on the Dukkha is very important, so you can make the dedication that you don't want to be part of that Dukkha any more.
Now a slightly different situation is when you are around people making unbeneficial jokes about other people. One of the hard things for me and Rosemary when we began teaching, was dealing with Americans, Australians, Canadians, etc., anyone who spoke English as their native language. We actually had more difficulty working with them, on one level, than we had with the Europeans, and this difficulty concerned humor. It was so easy for humor to start to move into the discussion and then often something unbeneficial would come out, usually from the other person of course, but Rosemary and I had to guard ourselves from getting sucked in to it, because that was our old conditioning. With Europeans, (other than British of course) and with Asians and other nationalities that don't speak English as their native language, it was so much easier for us never to have a problem with humor. This was because it is pretty hard to make jokes with Germans and French, because of the language and everything else. So this was interesting. We started to become more mindful whenever we were going to have interviews and just general conversations with native English speakers, to guard against getting sucked in to jokes that might be unbeneficial.
So to be more mindful with your speech, of course this is part of the practice. And you want to be more compassionate with your speech. You have to work on the effort to prevent in all of this, so that you are ready before the situation happens, and you are able to say "No". Or you are able to be more careful with your speech, as the case may be.