The Blue Sangha
May 21, 2010 by Kevin Lyons 
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One out of every six people will suffer from a mental illness in their lifetimes, making it virtually impossible to go through life without knowing someone, a parent, a spouse, a child, a friend, a fellow worker or an acquaintance who will struggle from one of these afflictions. Unlike other illness such as Cancer or Heart Disease, the stigma of mental illness isolates those who most need to be included by society, to be bolstered by compassion and understanding and not to be made into an object of fear.
It would be comforting to think that practitioners, due to their years of meditation practice were somehow immune from Mental Illness. However, we have seen where this type of thinking leads and the consequences it incurs.
In the past the Sapashana group was very affective in helping practitioners get sober and remain that way. The purpose of The Blue Sangha is to facilitate a conversation and get practitioners, anonymously if they wish, to start talking about their struggles with Mental Illness whether it is Depression or Bi-Polar. If it’s in the DSM-4, you’re welcome here.
I have no idea if anyone will come and sit at this table but, that isn’t important. What is important is that a conversation has begun, a one sided conversation so far but, I hope that we can change that.
Love, Lhagthong Norbu / Kevin Lyons
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for starting this conversation, if it becomes one between more than two. Yes, I remember Sapashana (pronounced Sharpashana?). I never availed myself of it, though I’ve had my dark nights of the soul. What is your background? Are you a mental health practitioner, or someone who was helped by Sapashana?
The thing that concerns me at this time is what is called by some people (C.G, Jung, for example) “collective psychosis,” That is, how to remain sane in the midst of a society that is insane. At the global level, we have addictions of many kinds – addictions to ‘progress,’ to oil, to consumerism, to money, to greed, to economic and population growth, etc. – so that the dominant civilization (of which we are part) is a cancer on the planet. We have leaders who are apparently incapable of ‘thinking outside the box,’ and thus continue to choose the same old habitual patterns that continue to make things worse. As we know, one definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting a different result. But the result of the current societal paradigm is that humanity faces mounting crises that are spiraling out of control: economic, environmental and political.
Many people are writing about the disconnection from reality in our society, the inability to relate with facts and evidence, or to accept the truth, and the prevalence of irrationality and illiteracy. We have dangerous demagogues arising, such as Sarah Palin and Rand Paul, whose logic is utterly twisted and absurd but who gather hoards of supporters. As my husband says, we’re seeing “airheads” bubbling up everywhere.
My study for the last few decades has been the human disconnection from nature and the environmental crises that result from that. The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico should sober us all up. Our civilization’s lost connection with the sacred dimension of the natural world, which dates back many millennia, leads us to destroy our own habitat. That’s the fundamental insanity of our society, the root of our collective psychosis and of the addictive /obsessive-compulsive/irrational behaviors that are proliferating around us – at least from the point of view of ecopsychology.
Once we understand that it’s our society that is insane – disconnected from reality, the Dharma – our personal problems gain context, and it becomes easier to find the courage to leave the herd and seek our own sanity in the dharma. Our personal problems are not our own, they are planetary and they are inherited. That perspective can enable us to practice comprehensive compassion for ourselves and others , and to respond sanely to the turbulence and insecurity in the world.
With love,
Suzanne
Thank you Suzanne, for so articulately and quickly addressing this group insanity dimension.. I think that that is the crux of the matter. We live in a time where ignoring the shadow side of the group dimension has reached frightening proportions and allows all forms of charlatans , narcissistic megalomaniacs, and self-appointed gurus, to prey on people’s fears and herd mentality. Since Radio Free Shambhala was a direct reaction to a one group’s phenomenal ignoring of the “dark side,” and repressing all but the most “cheerfully mad” and madly cheerful manifestations, I would hope that the theme of group insanity, cultish behaviors and their recognition, and the refusal in these group manifestations, to “look” directly at relative reality, would remain paramount in this discussion.
Yes, a big thank you to Suzanne for a brilliant response. Joanna Macy wrote an article, “The Wings of a Bodhisattva”, in which she was saying that if, indeed, we believe in interdependence then All sentient beings are bodhisattvas. In more worldly terms, I would say the same for “Borderline Personality Disorder” or many of the other dis-es in DSM IV: Our western health care system seems to have a detached labeling approach, in part to satisfy the insurance business, the pharmaceutical business, and to avoid the necessity of going into our society ~ homes, neighborhoods, and communities ~ to do the work that needs to be done.
It seems “the darkness of mental illness” could use some light shining in from those who comfortably allow themselves a pre-judgment of an other’s experience; perhaps an enforced separation of self and other; and perhaps a stepping stone in the hierarchy we as sangha project in our individual path to enlightenment.
When we had a Sapashana group at Karme Choling, I remember Judy Robison reminding us that we All have addictions. This is an important conversation for sangha. Thank you. May it be of benefit!
Thus, nearly one-quarter of the residents at Rajneeshpuram were trained psychologists. That documented fact does nothing to increase one’s confidence in the ability of the profession to spot openly pathological behavior in contexts where its members have a vested interest. For, while most members of the Rajneesh community were not aware of the more grossly illegal activities going on there until after the fact, Sheela’s own “duchy” included suppression of any “negativity.” In her world, further, even constructive criticism qualified as that, and was punished accordingly. Of course, all that one gets out of that, other than an enforced obedience, is a superficially “happy” community of people—as in the Maharishi’s ideal society—reminding one too much of the Python sketch involving an unhappy man sentenced to hang by the neck (or meditate) “until he cheers up.”
Kevin:
I, too, am glad you started this conversation.
I believe there are two reasons why people who are dealing with (or have dealt with) mental illness would be reluctant to post here:
- There’s still a huge amount of stigma. I think mental illness is the last taboo in our society.
- Even if someone has gotten beyond the stigma obstacle, let’s keep in mind that anything posted on a public-access web site is basically in the public domain from that point on, and we have no idea who is going to see that information–both now and in the future.
I work as a public defender. Most of my contact with humans who are dealing with mental health difficulties is in that arena of criminal justice. However, the subject has concerned me as it might appear in Buddhist study and practice. I hope this interchange is vigorous.
I’d just like to continue the thread of Suzanne’s offering of nature ~ our connection, our disconnection and our direct experience with the earth.
I have spent the past four and a half years among the traumatized, marginalized, and categorized residents of Vermont’s largest city. Homeless war vets; homeless and hopeless children grown out of foster care; raped and battered adults; survivors of early childhood trauma; kids whose whole lives center around scoring pain pills; this list goes on and on…and I find myself astounded by the inhumanity of our approach to care. We are placing the onus of society’s sickness on those who are most in need of nurture. We are tossing our wounded onto concrete sidewalks and there are no Maitri Space Awareness rooms, no relief of digging in a garden, no floating on the water, no silence of a breeze in pine trees….no message of the need or a worthiness to partake of the earth’s gifts and support and non-judgmental embrace. To come alive!
It seems this spring there have been a great number of environmental atrocities: and yes, how we treat the earth seems to be a reflection of our humanity.
With love,
Steph
Hi Suzanne. To answer your question, I am not a Mental Health professional. My interest in this subject began when a member of my family started living with a Mental Illness. My wife and I became active in a mental health oversight board of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and with our board created a website http://www.mentalhelpinfo.org.
I share your concern about the mental health of the general public. The road rage, the in your face one-gunmanship and the reality TV culture that makes it a virtue to belittle other people., it’s not just bad, it’s BORING.
I think that all anyone can do who is a practitioner is to try to create a island of sanity through our practice and the wonderful teachings that we have received. I hope the answer is somewhere between giving up hope and drinking the cool aid with everyone around you.
Kevin,
I was really interested in your attempt to work with this issue. Yet…I agree whole heartedly with Andrew about the obstacle of stigma.
and also….There has been so much on this site that is (justifiably,) of RANT in nature…on and on. It is all so painful, and the articulate and well spoken spokespeople and research artists have contributed invaluable insights into the situation for me and others..
However, I have somehow tired of the fundamental topic, although it will always give me a heart thumping wallop whenever anything like it comes up. I’ve stopped reading the site at this point, too busy trying to get things done, I suppose…to really follow all the interesting trains of thought that have appeared in addition to the original rants..
I was interested in your idea…yet all the opening comments all seemed to turn your original idea of a coffee table chat about mental illness into something else, that go along with “the rant approach.” (the “rant coffee table,” I guess, and there is always a place for that..)
Meanwhile, it is a valuable topic, and I agree that many practitioners DO suffer from various forms of mental illness, “mental illness lite” or “mental illness not so lite.” “IT” runs in my family, it runs in me, and I feel that it is an ongoing practice in everyday life issue for me. I would be terrified to discus it on a forum like this one.
Also, it is too easy to get separated from a practice VIEW. ….a slippery slope of “discussing MY mental illness.” I would love to see the topic done well.
Earlier in the Sangha there was a warning against psychotherapy, and yet over the years it seemed to develop into a more dharmic approach. Thus, years ago in Naropa Institute, my therapist Virginia Hiliker would say, “What was the first thing your thought before you did such and such?” i.e. Examine your mind carefully!!
Thank you and good luck!
Ginny
What is the point of a “poison eater” if the peacock has no poison to work with?
Andrew and Ginny. I understand what you said about stigma but, stigma is a problem with education and although it may never be eradicated, by shining a light on the problem, hearts and minds can be changed.
I never thought I would see a time when anti smoking campaigns would make such a cut in the number of people who smoke but, it happened. Change like this only takes place over a long period of time.
Kevin,
I’m not sure what you mean about the smoking adds stopping smoking, and mental illness stigma. (I know I can be dense at times.)
In any case, I’m not that concerned really. We are caricatures of ourselves anyway, so it is probably not much of a secret to our friends and acquaintances. (Yet there is a line beyond which, we don’t want people to know, like if you get Alzheimers or semthing. better to hide it, or people won’t want to do business with you..)
Some mental illnesses have even been described as “sexy.” or romantic, or even appealing..in a symbolic sense… (A good friend of mine claims she is “autistic.” and proud of it!!) …rather than the image of a tormented soul, which I tend to conjure up out of experience with myself and others.
However, I like what Stephanie just said about the “poison eaters.” I have recently been feeling very happy: After all these years, carefully re- reading the famous chapter “The manure of experience and the field of Bodhi” by CTR, and it FINALLY makes sense!!! It is perfect for understanding how practice could help with mental illness…..
(so I may be a slow learner, but at least we have this oopportunity!!!)
totally awesome. My take is that: that chapter is a brilliant discussion of working with our poison in the path of accumulation all the way up to some sort of “real thing wakefulness..” intuition and inspiration becoming wisdom..
I REALLY like that our comments aren’t posted in the comments section.
Ginny
Stephanie,
I just wanted to say that I liked what you wrote earlier, about the issue of our disconnectedness with the earth and with those who need our care. I didn’t think it was a rant, just a very poignant and well written observation. It is so easy to forget what is happening on a global scale with the global warming situation, the seeming ignoring of it on a large scale, and the vast multitudes of people, suffering from war, poverty, natural disasters, whatever..
I wonder if there is a massive cultural direction of self centeredness and lack of awareness that is out of control… or if there is actually more hope after all. Al Gore said, in his movie about the global warming, that he felt saddened that no one seemed to be changing yet after all his work to point out the problems.
When I listen to NPR, for example, I hear of people who dedicate their lives to work constantly to help those suffering as you mentioned in an organic and sensitive way, as well as those fighting for the environment, but It seems to me that the tide is going in another direction. Really sad.
It is horrific and frightening to really think about.
In that vein, What a strange and challenging world the 17th Karmapa was born into!!!.
Ginny
Ginny,
Thank you (!) for writing:
“There has been so much on this site that is (justifiably,) of RANT in nature…on and on. It is all so painful, and the articulate and well spoken spokespeople and research artists have contributed invaluable insights into the situation for me and others..
However, I have somehow tired of the fundamental topic, although it will always give me a heart thumping wallop whenever anything like it comes up. I’ve stopped reading the site at this point, too busy trying to get things done, I suppose…to really follow all the interesting trains of thought that have appeared in addition to the original rants.”
Ginny, I always appreciate your frankness. I too am thoroughly tired of the ranting on RFS, even though much of it is articulate, etc. etc. By the way, although I don’t subscribe to sangha-talk and sadhaka-talk, my husband sends me a few e-mails from both, and — guess what? — there is plenty of ranting on those two sites as well.
Maybe it’s the nature of our sangha. Or to put it more broadly, maybe it’s just plain old human nature. Whatever it is, and as one of the three people who make RFS happen (Mark S is the main “hero”), I can plainly state that it’s a big issue for us. The three of us will be meeting today to talk about what to do.
There is far too much of a small number of people posting over and over, and often at great length. I know that others are reading RFS, but I don’t know how many. At this point the “talkers” (those who post) are fairly few in number. They mainly talk to each other, and the site has become a sort of in-group conversation. Conversation is fine; it’s a big part of what RFS is about, but this is more like a salon — a closed loop.
I am gasping for breath … Fresh air, someone, please!
I hope that Ginny’s perceptive comment, and my expanding on it, will inspire others to jump in. I think we are in danger of becoming irrelevant.
I realize that this sounds negative; I really care about RFS and the issues it deals with, and I don’t want it to become just an in-group talking among themselves.
We need concrete ideas about what we can do to change this “culture.”
Barbara
Well, it certainly shuts down conversation to take the position that everyone who disagrees with you is insane!
RFS has become irrelevant — with the main contributors here unwilling to entertain any contrary views.
It is a shame, because there is a lot that could be explored. I am currently teaching a course on the Sakyong’s seminar “Enlightened World” and I have been struck with the different emphasis that the Sakyong places on contemplative or analytical meditation from VCTR’s approach. The Sakyong’s approach is certainly traditional; it is the approach taken by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso as well. However, VCTR had a fundamentally different approach in teaching vipashyana and restricted his discussion of analytical meditation to teachings on lojong and tonglen practice.
Maybe the problem is that RFS was started as a forum that was “outside the tent” based on a belief that differing views could not be expressed within the Shambhala community. Once you take that position — which is pretty insulting to students who remain in the Shambhala community, there is very little to talk about. If you really want to have a conversation, I suggest changing the name of the website — and, more importantly, taking a more open minded attitude.
I apologize for a post that is off topic for this Cafe table.
Ginny and Barbara, I agree that the rants are tiring and a turn off. (I hope you don’t see my posts as rants!) But I really don’t think it is ‘just human nature.’ I think it is the nature of this time of profound and rapid change. It is part of the zeitgeist in which everything is getting shaken up and former expectations are being dashed. So there is an underlying (and justifiable) anxiety and insecurity, which is probably unconscious for many people, but expresses itself in polarization, debate, and rants. It’s all over the place if you read or watch the international news. It’s also all over the place in cyberspace if you read the comments in both alternative and mainstream media. It’s one of the danger signs of collective psychosis. People attach themselves to demagogues when collective anxiety increases.
I’ve been studying the nature of ‘paradigm change’ for decades, and we’re in a big one right now, exacerbated by many factors, such as overpopulation, resource and energy depletion, climate and ecological crises, natural disasters, etc. I find it amazing that people in our sangha seem to look no further than the situation in the sangha, and so they don’t see that our sangha is a microcosm of the larger situation in the world and particularly of Western civilization.
By the way, studying this stuff – deep ecology, paradigm change, ecopsychology, history, etc. – is how I came to terms with the dysfunctional nature of my family of origin, which I came to see as simply reflecting dysfunctions in the larger culture. And it also compelled me to take refuge in the dharma.
How to change the culture in RFS? I regret to say I have no suggestions.
Best,
Suzanne
PS: Just checked my email and found this quote from Ecobuddhism.org:
Every crisis is an opportunity, and we will be presented with the greatest array of opportunities in history. Survival will require us to evolve quickly, and to change our thinking, our habits, and our expectations. If we do these things, it is just possible that the society that emerges in the process will be far more stable, interesting, and beautiful than the one we see around us today. – Richard Heinberg
Heinberg is one of my primary teachers about Peak Oil and he’s expressing what many people are saying about the changes going on in the world.
As far as the original post goes, I think there is a philosophical element that can be hard for people to navigate in their practice. We talk about journey without goal, but honestly speaking when we enter the process of practice, we expect that we will be able to learn how to manifest the qualities of warriorship in our lives. This can be hard when people deal with ingrained habitual patterns such as depression or anxiety, and I’m sure there’s a lot of frustration when we are reading that we should maintain a sense of cheerfulness or doubtlessness but the feedback we get from our minds can be so far from that state. I think it can be very disheartening for people when they feel like their state of mind is so intractable. I’ve seen shambhala seminars aimed at people who struggle with mental illness, but I think it would be helpful for there to be teachers who are willing to honestly share their experiences with mental illnesses as it relates to their practice so that people don’t feel like they’re too fucked up to be warriors. Perhaps in some ways this cuts to a very basic question: why practice? Is a wrong view to be trying to achieve some openness and sanity, and how should people feel when their habitual patterns make it even more difficult than usual to have a sense of humor about their circumstances?
For the record, I think the vidyadhara struggled with some depression issues. Obviously his relationship with his mind was much different than most of ours, and im almost tempted to think that some of the sadness he experienced in his life was a springboard for him, but we can’t all be mahasiddhas.
Thanks Ashoka for getting back to the meat and potatoes of this stream.
Quite often people who suffer from Mental Illness are boxed into a corner when they are only seen as a person with a Mental Illness and not as people with a complicated disorder to live with but with as many hopes and dreams as anyone else.You mentioned that Trungpa Rinpoche struggled with Depression. I remember something about that when I read his Diane’s story of her years as his wife. If he did suffer from Depression then it only endears him to me.
You are right when you mentioned that sometimes the teachings suggest that we should face circumstances with a certain joyous heart and if you don’t feel joyous what does it say about us I think that often there is a problem with fruition stories. We like to think that our spiritual hero’s never had a unkind thought about all the trials their Guru’s put them through. After all The path is the goal and the goal is the path. I think that in the end there is something noble about a person who suffers from Depression or Bi-polar disease and everyday they have to get up and put their game face on.
Wow! So many great posts all at once!
I’m so happy to hear that RFS is attempting to keep this site healthy and helpful for its users. Thank you Barbara for your comments. It has GOT to be a total challenge to keep this site alive and well, given its content and scope, and human nature or paradigm shifts or whatever…
I do think one issue, is not just too many rants, which we all love at times… but “now what?” and how?? and that has also been explored to a large extent, I’m sure. And there was that idea That CTR said that his sangha would continue the lineage……
I like the coffee table ideas…allowing for more ways to hang out with each other, and not having to be “for or against.” Perhaps this is an organic way to move forward…
and Suzanne, I really appreciate your posts, rants or non rants, they are just so articulate and well thought out. The changing paradigm theory has got to be an enormous issue…things are changing so fast, and there is so much at stake. It is fascinating that you have actually studied it so well. I can just barely sense that it must be there. How about a coffee table with that???
And Ashoka, I love to hear how our gurus are human. ( I just LOVE it!) and there is that inspiration and question of: how do THEY deal with being human?
And what you said about people getting discouraged if they feel their own minds are unworkable. and how to help people with that. (as a community, or as a teacher.)
Related to that, I “did” the Naropa MA contemplative Psych program in the very early 1980′s, and in every class, the material we studied was various case histories or designed to show that we ALL shared the same symptoms of the patient. It was really serious to us at the time. Like: “EEEK! I’m being (what’s his name), in his boat lost out there in the ocean, not wanting to be discovered as a fake!!” (He committed suicide, and it was a big mystery for a while.) That was a common one.
I think the goal was to give us all HEART and warmth and understanding to really share and appreciate and be able to identify with what people in hard times are going through. Professional aloofness was regarded as NOT a good way to approach a client. Likewise, we need that attitude as a community.
In Mingyur R.’s book Joy of Living, he speaks about the panic attacks that he experienced and how he worked with them during three year retreat. I found the honesty of such a prominent meditation teacher on this subject to be very inspiring.
I have also been reading Glimpses of Abhidharma recently in the Collected Works of CTR. At the end of that volume of the Collected Works are six or seven talks that CTR gave to mental health professionals. CTR tends to favor an approach of creating an environment of kindness and sanity — and feels that this resonates with a patients inate wisdom, even in cases of severe psychosis (sounds a lot like Shambhala Training, although I don’t think that meditation practice is necessarily recommended in cases of mental illness). He also has interesting things to say about mental illness being rooted in aggression.
I am so glad this conversation is continuing. It seems we are bringing in pieces of our experience and creating a collage; and the reason I so deeply took refuge with this sangha is the incredible richness.
The basic “mental illness” label seems to be tricky because it has such a definite separation element. As well, there is the sticky wicket of unhealthy boundaries as a common factor in grouping people as having “mental illness” while on the other hand there is also the element of voicelessness.
So, I was thinking perhaps it would be helpful to sometimes think in terms of “mental healthiness”, and back to the Earth element, what Nutriments we as human beings, need.
Thank you all,
Stephanie
Just a post script ~ Ginny, I definitely feel that there are more people who are aware and care about our global environment. I hear it in the arts; from my wonderfully engaged fb friends; and the worldwide connections people are making.
We have the teachings. We are so fortunate. But oh, those pesky others. For me, some days it’s all about Level II. Cheers!
I just reread all the posts so far in this group. I feel sheepish about my first comment that some of them were rants. It was merely my own projection after all!! not reading attentively enough…and just projecting my previous frustration. (typical neurotic behavior!! Thank goodness for Maitri!!)
So also, I was wrong to suggest that some of these topics should have a separate coffee table, how narrow of me. As Stephanie said, it IS like a collage, forming naturally and respectfully and tenderly. and one really can’t overly restrict a topic due to its relation with so many other forces.
And the issue of how to work with the RFS container so as to stimulate a healthy culture really is a good and hard question. It is so important to find ways to work with our minds and our RFS community, (and beyond, of course!) as well as with the original situations that prompted this site to begin with. Perhaps there is that sense of despair going on about the macrocosm and microcosm, that makes us feel powerless. (Sorry. I don’t mean to include everyone in that statement, but at least I feel that way!) I think that is a Joanna Macy concept? …. I barely remember the title of her book…”Despair and empowerment in the nuclear age,” but the essence of it has burned a whole in my heart forever.
Because we really ARE facing a horrible set of Crises.
I just wanted to ask Suzanne: “Are there were any good books you would recommend that deal with “paradigm shift” in the “modern age??” About what we are all living in NOW???
thanks… Ginny
Dear Ginny ,Try “Blessed Unrest” By Paul Hawken ,How the largest movement in the world came into being ,and why no one saw it coming…viking books 2007..
lots of love
JP
Dear Ginny,
Thanks for asking. Blessed Unrest is a good one. I am working somewhat feverishly to get my Dharmagaians website finished and launched onto the internet. It is all about paradigm change and the major changes/crises in the world, from an eco-psycho-spiritual perspective, with hundreds of links to articles, videos, movies and books (all on the internet) on 20± topics related to paradigm change. I will announce it on my Facebook page, and hopefully through RFS, when it’s up. Hopefully in a couple of months.
Best,
Suzanne
Ginny, here’s something about paradigm change that’s shorter than a book and corresponds closely with my own view:
Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage? By Richard Tarnas – We have sought ever deeper insight into our individual biographies, seeking to recover the often hidden sources of our present condition, to render conscious those unconscious forces and complexes that shape our lives. Many now recognize that same task as critical for our entire civilization. What individuals and psychologists have long been doing has now become the collective responsibility of our culture: to make the unconscious conscious.
http://www.cosmosandpsyche.com/pdf/RevisionRiteofPassage.pdf
Tarnas teaches at CIIS in San Francisco and has written two magisterial works on paradigm change – each 500 pages ±: The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche. He first gave the rite-of-passage talk in the early- to mid-1990′s.
Best,
Suzanne
Dear John and Suzanne,
Thank you both!!! I will take a good look at the book, and read the article by Tarnas…
Suzanne, I am delighted that so much of your life’s work is wrapped up in this, it is so large. My Spiritual Friend told me that practicing Chakrasamvara is practicing with the entire universe in mind… and I think that really makes sense here! I try to do that in principle, but it will be interesting to get more details!!
So in a couple of months, I will look for your Magnum Opus. It sounds sort of like a “cosmic playground of the dakinis.” Meanwhile, I just hope that at least we can “pray.” (in the non theistic sense of course..)…These days are so sad. (as in the Oil spill and beyond..)
Thank goodness for the “good guys,” many of whom have been mentioned already on this forum.
love,
Ginny
Before this discussion runs out of steam, I want to thank Mark and the editors for giving The Blue Sangha .a table at the Sunshine Café. In the very near future The Blue Sangha will be a Google Group. open in the Rime tradition to everyone, but especially to Buddhists from every school who are living with a Mental Illness.
Many Thanks, Kevin
Dear All
Just a brief message after reading Suzanne’s posted essay –saw a brilliant documentary on channel 4 download called Us Now which details how technology is informing matters of governance and life in a worldwide fashion and thus creating may be a basis for a possible conception of worldwide governance.
Think this does relate to discussions about mental illness if we are seeing that also as a ‘creation’ of our bog-standard way of living life which creates alienation.
Not sure re rites in the west, not sure if we can go back to that –maybe just the coming together of people in groups will create ‘new’ rites eventually but on a worldwide basis…..yes its all very perplexing. Hope you can catch the doc – it also says stuff about the economics of the world which is good also.
Technical info that might be relevant to the financing of new initiatives re social services etc etc. check out the info on the bank mentioned in the doc –could be relevant for stuff in NS maybe -dont know if they are to things like this in Canuckland.
Suzanne hope you can mention the doc. on your website.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Thanks so much for starting this discussion. I’d be interested to see what folks have to say about living with mental illness and how they incorporate/use/work with it in their practice. I have a long history of chronic major depressive disorder. Working with that is a huge part of my practice, specifically how to be authentic without reinforcing habitual patterns or overlaying more layers of delusion to fit whatever my concepts are about warriorship… it’s a very interesting practice. I look forward to the Google group!
Hi Jacqui. It will take me a few weeks more to get the google group up and running but, you can be the first member. Thanks Kevin
I have lived with depression for most of my adult life, as has my father, my grandfather, and my great-uncle, who killed himself. Now my nephew has been diagnosed.
Living with this while being a practitioner brings one up hard against the stigma of any mental illness: if one is anything other than completely happy all the time, then one has failed to be a good whatever-you-are. It is a personal failure, and it suggests that whatever you have been doing (e.g. practicing Buddhism) does not “work” in terms of making you completely happy all the time.
Buddhists have not broken free of this, despite all of the wisdom about how mind and emotions function that is available in Buddhism and applicable to depression. I have been with sangha talk since the mid-90s and have been through several rounds of discussion of depression, usually after a sangha member has committed suicide. The question is always “How could he/she practice for X years and still commit suicide? There must have been something wrong with his/her practice.”
It reveals a subtle assumption that we make about Buddhism: that if we do it right it will fix us; we will become somebody other than who we are. The good/bad news about this is pretty clear in the teachings: it ain’t so. What we are is all we have to work with. We can’t make it something else.
This is where I feel that I have been able to be of use to other practitioners, when I have been able to overcome my own fear of the stigma. When someone asks me a question about being depressed in regard to their practice, my answer includes the fact that I have also been depressed. Something relaxes in people’s faces when I answer them that way. I think it ‘s very important that we be able to come from the fullness of who we are, with no apology to the teachings for that.
I taught a Level IV once when I was in the middle of a round of out-patient treatment. I wondered if I should withdraw, but I knew that that would be a hardship for the people who ran the local program, so I stuck with it. It was a very illuminating experience. On Friday morning I was a mental patient. Friday night through Sunday I was a Shambhala Training director. Monday morning I went back to being a mental patient. There was a rich teaching for me in that, about the thin transparency of all of our labels of ourselves.
I think what I was going through made me a better teacher of Level IV, rather than disqualifiying me. But what would people have thought if I told them? Would they have lowered their estimation of the value of the teachings because I was an imperfect vessel? It’s a very large and complicated issue and I’m glad for an opportunity to discuss it. I also have to add that if I thought there was any chance of me teaching in Shambhala again, I would probably not have written the last paragraph. That is the nature of the beast.
Hello Zer-me. I was very moved by how candid you were when describing your struggle with depression. I have also tangled with this disorder starting when I was thirteen and believing that what I was experiencing
was my fault because I was weak or cursed or both. At that time I had no way to describe what was happening not even to myself . I had to suck it up because frankly, there was little help for the walking wounded and we were expected to soldier on regardless of how badly it hurt.
Before I took refuge with Chogyam Trungpa at Tail Of The Tiger, he gave a short talk about becoming a refugee. Trungpa said that Happy people don’t go searching for the Dharma. Happy people see no reason to start on the path. Of course he was speaking about the motivation to find a teacher and study the teachings. And how our unhappiness was a manifestation of our basic sanity. And how this basic sanity is and was the dissatisfaction that, that could not be ignored. The dissatisfaction which turned into our paths. Our lifelong journeys.
Perhaps the best thing that can happen to those who suffer from a disorder such as Depression is that they discover that there are other people out there who practice and work and laugh even with Depression.
Years ago I knew someone who died in a questionable accident and I often wondered how isolated and alone people are who take their own lives and how a suicide is a disturbing ripple through time that leaves those left behind in possible peril. Suicide begets and begets. I have always found that thinking about the preciousness of human birth puts many emotions in perspective. The four reminders have always been a good guide.
Joyful to have such a human birth.
Difficult to find free and well favored
But, death is real, comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.
Unalterable are the laws of Karma.
Cause and effect cannot be escaped.
Samsara is an ocean of suffering.
Unendurable, unbearably intense.
Still questioning the healthy boundaries issue; as well, the many reminders I received while living at KCL around not sharing our practice with others ~ that it diminishes it.
I’ve been on a long bike tour soaking up, dancing with, the lush, the many, shades of green in VT. Am so grateful that I have had the opportunity to “do” the maitri rooms ~ along with a Judy Lief guided tour of now we are dead ~ This was the gateway to freeing myself of accumulated labeling in our health care system, a non-judgmental listener and accommodating space, and liberation from the hell of separation of self and other.
Ah hell. I’m going to qualify. I “have” PTSD. It was totally debilitating.
Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for disclosing. I had PTSD, which brought on a ‘dark night of the soul,” at least in my own case. As I imagine you know, PTSD is quite contagious, unlike some other “disorders.” I got it by being traumatized by someone who had it. I was repeatedly irrationally attacked – verbally and physically – by the person in whose house I lived. That’s the way it works – the traumatized traumatize others, unless the traumatized recognize the symptoms and come to an understanding of what’s really going on. In my case, this more recent episode helped me to understand the PTSD in my family of origin, and it also provoked me to investigate why PTSD is rampant in Euro-American culture. You know – the gun mania in the US, for example, not to mention alcoholism and other addictions. But the setting of healthy boundaries, as you mention, was a key to my climbing out of the hole that PTSD put me in, as well as stopping the attacks. Of course, years of meditation and warrior training played a big part too.
I’m glad you’ve had a chance to do a long bike tour, soaking up the lush green of Vermont. I remember the spring in Vermont very well – how the green just explodes suddenly after the long, deep freeze of winter. Nature is our best teacher. Trungpa Rinpoche once appeared to me in a dream a year after he died, and said, “I am the same as Nature. There is absolutely no difference.” I’ll never forget that dream! It gave me ultimate permission to follow my Nature-loving path.
Best,
Suzanne
Thank you, Suzanne. When I was very little (3yrs.) and trying to escape what was going on with the people in my life, I learned that if I walked outside into the fields and forest behind our house and continued to walk I would arrive at a freedom from the messages at home and into a totally welcoming and accepting embrace and the feeling of belonging. Of all the symptoms I have manifested, the triggers and the struggles, never have these things occured when it is just my naked mind and nature. Never. Ever.
To me, this really seems to “beg the question” about the nature of what is being capitalized (?) as Mental Illness. Throughout this conversation, in particular when the word stigma appears, I keep looking for good old fashioned dharma talk about how to recognize when we are projecting our neuroses onto others, taking responsibility, etc. We ALL do it. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t have a little bit of that.
Thanks all,
Stephanie
I have problems with any approach that tries to ‘therapize’ the mental illness of society. I suspect some people think Shambhala Buddhism is meant to do that, but… how? No overarching vision thingies, I mean how could it actually DO that?
I’ve had some discussions before and amicably (I hope) disagree. I think it’s a chimera which puts the problem on a level at which it isn’t really workable. If we don’t know how the individual mind works, assumptions about the vastly more complex interaction of society is highly questionable. Not that any observations are wrong as such, just unavoidably biased and almost certainly missing key elements.
If society is sick, it’s because of individuals in it, which Suzanne recognizes with her suggestion for some sort of disconnect with the cultural trance in order to regain health. This is also something we hear in dharma, the need to cut oneself off from the universal unconsciousness. It’s just that… any other cultural trance will develop the same or other inbred problems based on individual responses, not on a social structure that prevents or encourages cultural trance.
(I also believe many mental health problems are caused by a feeling of disconnection. Regardless if to something healthy or not people have a need to belong, so even if disengaging does lead to a higher truth, it may be something to pursue down the road. The same can be said about retreat practice.)
As far as I can see, the only thing for it is an individual approach. And one of the reasons we are in such a quandary about that, is that psychology is still so woefully primitive while pretending to already know everything. Virtually all models I’ve come across try to be an explanation of how the mind works, but are nothing of the sort. More like holding up a wrench and using that to describe how all tools in the world work.
Most models of mind and certainly diseases thereof, are fairly accurate and sometimes highly detailed descriptions of symptoms, but then with wildly varying assumptions, from mystical to purely materialistic, about the causes for those symptoms, out of which methods are developed to fix whatever the perceived problem, from lobotomies, electric shock, all kinds of chemical experiments on down to therapeutic approaches, like rebirthing, behavioral modification, positive affirmations, rolfing, etc. The successes of these approaches are very spotty, sometimes well below what any respectable placebo accomplishes, in terms of long term success.
Dharma, certainly shamatha, seems to offer a solution that is more about getting out of our own way and letting our basic intelligence or health, our basic goodness, find the sanity we need, (if society doesn’t get in our way) rather than trying to meddle directly with something we don’t really understand, like opening the hood of a car to fix it when we don’t even know what a spark plug is, (so it looks like we’re trying to do something but… )
Whatever happened with the Windhorse project and Ed Podvoll?
James
Funny you mentioned that.
A few months ago, I was listening to a local late night radio show, and a women was describing ing graphic details about Scientology. She whent out of her way to say Naropa Institute Wind Horse project help her from going nuts.
.
In 1994, I was with a friend in Khatmandu, and he gave me some bad news that freaked me out about a personal situation I had. He said “Why do you looked so freaked out?”. I then looked at a burning garbage dump across the street. It made me really depressed. I went into a blank stare. I went to Thrangu Rinpoche the next day, and said looking at the burning garbage… and he said “And you felt depressed.”
I said yes.
“
This is a great discussion and I would love to see it continue.
I’ve been thinking that we we really haven’t defined Blue, or Sangha either for that matter.
Also on my mind has been wondering if anyone else thinks this conversation is relevant in regard to the messages our MIs and Teachers send out.
Summer is here! A great opportunity to see how we’re doing with taking care of ourselves.
Steph
Hi Stephanie,
there has been a pretty wide range of nessages about depression from teachers and MIs over the years. Could you give some examples of messages you have received or heard being given to others?
I don’t know who made up the name “Blue Sangha.” Maybe that person could say what he or she intended? I see blue as having all the meanings that radiate out from the notion of “the blues,” and sangha meaning Buddhist and/or Shambhala practitioners. This can be (and already is) a discussion of how we work with depression and other issues of “mental health” as practitioners, and maybe more broadly how we work with painful emotions.
I was close friends to a founder of Sapashana and we talked often about the causes of addiction and denial, as well as obstacles encountered within Vajradhatu putting together something about NOT drinking in the midst of Trungpa Rinpoche’s sangha. He himself was encouraging, but accusations regarding samaya corruption and such from other quarters were not unusual.
Sapashana went in and out of existence, but when I was in need there were still a few twelve step groups meeting.
What I discovered there was an honesty I didn’t know I had been missing. With all the talk of genuineness, openness, directness and truth, I was surprised to find it, like a breath of fresh air, there. Maybe it wasn’t honesty as such, (that’s a hall of mirrors) but rather a context in which denial had no ground purpose or advantage, where it could not become viral.
I don’t mean to imply everyone was alcoholic by any means, but I believe the resistance to seeing alcoholism then might be related to how mental health issues within Shambhala are perceived or acknowledged (or denied). On this level it is a spiritual problem.
Of course mental health is mentioned at every MI program, but that’s implicitly about new people who know almost nothing about meditation, and the only message I got was: we are not therapists/ draw the boundary clearly/ and be careful out there. When it comes to anyone who is already a member or an official, the dynamic is quite different. The ability to recognize and respond appropriately to mental illness on that level in my experience falls sharply off, as if mental illness cannot exist there, and if you perceive it, that is a reflection of your own neurosis.
I have encountered appointed Shambhala officials who I am certain had some kind of disorder. I don’t mean unenlightened, arrogant or neurotic. My guess in a couple of encounters is Border Line Personality disorder: pathological dishonesty, manipulative behavior moving into very destructive behavior.
It is interesting that Stephanie Potter mentioned BPD. I’ve come to believe, and have come across some professional confirmation, that people with BPD are for a couple of reasons attracted to spiritual groups. If so and such people attain positions of responsibility, they can do considerable damage.
I’m bringing up denial because I drew again and again a blank trying to get responsible parties in Shambhala to be, well, responsible. For all intents and purposes mental health problems and the results thereof, unless someone is actually non-functional or are starting to create bad press, is not acknowledged within the Shambhala administration.
To work with alcoholism, addiction or any form of mental health problem which likely have roots in a spiritual problem, to work with the world directly as higher teachings suggest, maybe the first hurdle before that’s even a shape on the horizon, is to cut through denial. Isn’t that what the first noble truth is about on some inner or secret level?
In the inspiration that giving denial no ground or value, is significantly different than ignoring it.
Good Morning!
To briefly respond to Zirme and James, I’d like to tell the story about how I came to this sangha.
In trying to “treat” my trauma (diagnostic symptoms), the medical profession tried a lot of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. Whatever feeling like my self feels like, medications sure felt worse. One day as I found myself walking into the line of traffic I went to the emergency room to discuss what was happening and the doctor, after looking at my history said: “Look. You’ve tried just about every drug in the book, why not look at it as a spriritual problem, get off the drugs and deal with it.” My sister recommended Karme Choling because it was close, and I signed up for an extended in-house retreat. Later, I was on staff twice, the latter as Suzann Duquette’s assistant.
What I would like to say about all that is, within a container, a community, and a lot of time on the cushion, I learned to work with my mind, as an ally, and that mind is the same as everyone else’s. There is a false dichotomy set up in our entire approach to mental health care, and the language that has been built around our medically (mis)informed system perpetuates a myth.
The other thing I would like to say, speaking as an advocate for the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, as well as a volunteer for the marginalized, categorized, and traumatized residents of the city of Burlington, that I have witnessed a great deal of abusive language from teachers and mi’s directed towards those who have come to the teachings with the same experience as anyone else, except more of it. One example is right at the beginning, at Level II, and the amazing amount of aggression directed towards student’s experience. We seem to treat the “lower” levels as training grounds for new teachers.
I do not feel, as one high level teacher said to me, that my karma is worse than his because of my suffering. I feel fortunate that I have had this experience in this lifetime because there is a level of compassion in my understanding of the world that is too often, and sorely, missing in our western buddhist community.
And I chuckle, and apologize to Ginny, for another rant!
May the sangha flourish, sincerely,
Stephanie
Good Morning!
To briefly respond to Zirme and James, I’d like to tell the story about how I came to this sangha.
In trying to “treat” my trauma (diagnostic symptoms), the medical profession tried a lot of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. Whatever feeling like my self feels like, medications sure felt worse. One day as I found myself walking into the line of traffic I went to the emergency room to discuss what was happening and the doctor, after looking at my history said: “Look. You’ve tried just about every drug in the book, why not look at it as a spriritual problem, get off the drugs and deal with it.” My sister recommended Karme Choling because it was close, and I signed up for an extended in-house retreat. Later, I was on staff twice, the latter as Suzann Duquette’s assistant.
What I would like to say about all that is, within a container, a community, and a lot of time on the cushion, I learned to work with my mind, as an ally, and that mind is the same as everyone else’s. There is a false dichotomy set up in our entire approach to mental health care, and the language that has been built around our medically (mis)informed system perpetuates a myth.
The other thing I would like to say, speaking as an advocate for the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, as well as a volunteer for the marginalized, categorized, and traumatized residents of the city of Burlington, that I have witnessed a great deal of abusive language from teachers and mi’s directed towards those who have come to the teachings with the same experience as anyone else, except more of it. One example is right at the beginning, at Level II, and the amazing amount of aggression directed towards student’s experience. We seem to treat the “lower” levels as training grounds for new teachers.
I do not feel, as one high level teacher said to me, that my karma is worse than his because of my suffering. I feel fortunate that I have had this experience in this lifetime because there is a level of compassion in my understanding of the world that is too often, and sorely, missing in our western buddhist community.
And I chuckle, and apologize to Ginny, for another rant!
May the sangha flourish, sincerely,
Stephanie
Stephanie wrote: “I have witnessed a great deal of abusive language from teachers and mi’s directed towards those who have come to the teachings with the same experience as anyone else, except more of it. One example is right at the beginning, at Level II, and the amazing amount of aggression directed towards student’s experience. . . .I do not feel, as one high level teacher said to me, that my karma is worse than his because of my suffering”
The fundamental attitude required of someone in the position of teacher or MI is an appreciative interest in other people’s neuroses, the texture of other people’s experience. That is the ground out of which it is possible to teach. If the teacher approaches the student’s personality and life circumstances with scorn, there is no basis for teaching.
The teacher whose response to your suffering was to be proud of the superiority of his or her own karma, does not understand the first thing about karma (hint: perception and response, not cause and effect). Again–who told this person he or she could teach? What you describe is abuse, not instruction.
Hello All. If I have one enduring memory of CTR it was that he could always see and work with one’s basic Buddha Nature which is intrinsically pure and beyond all attempts to categorize it or cover it with typical dualistic vision. It was because he was able to touch each individual that each individual felt welcomed and cared for.
To answer a previous question as to why I named this group The Blue Sangha, Probably because of the blues but Sangha because this is a type of Sangha or sub-Sangha, with it’s own experience grounded sometimes in segregation and bullying and other times grounded and humbled by having to live with a mental illness.
I feel that this is what it is. many people have come to Buddhism , driven by their suffering hoping to be able to come to terms with their personal demons. I always thought that depression would one day go away. That if I reached a milestone in my practice it might be lifted but it hasn’t and it won’t. Working with Depression is fine. CTR body never healed after his accident but, he went on, sometimes depressed, to inspire thousands of people. I’m quite glad that people have been sharing their experience’s . I used to think that a lack of problems was a sign of a good practitioner but, I was wrong. This is the path and the path is the goal. Kevin
Dear All,
Maha appreciation and gratitude this morning for everyone here; for being a part of, a witness to, a deeply transformative process.
At times this has been like the Gulf hole in the earth, and there has been a lot of emotional reactivity. This morning I came across a reminder that The Four Immeasurables act outside emotional reactivity. Yahoooo!
Again, thank you all so much. May the sangha flourish. Sincerely,
Steph
Baxk in the 70s, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said “if you can sit on a cushion, you can meditate”.
He was referring to people taking anti depressants for their depression problems, and was sugesting they should meditate instead. He was somewhat anti medication for mental illness.
On the other hand, during a group audience at Marpa House, after Thrangu Rinpoche gave a talk saying along the lines that basic goodness / sanity unfolds it’s self naturally, I asked him about a friend who cracked up when she was 19 years old with bi-polar / schizophrenia. People usually come down with schizophrenia around that age, and how she can only function when she takes here anti depressants. He said people like her should take her medications and stay on them. They’ve suffered enough. Unfortunately, my feeling was that the Vidyadhara felt mental illness could be dealt with by meditation alone.
I think scientifically by now, we know schizophrenia is a physical disease , and they can provr this by showing how the brain’s neurons which normally are patterned like good soldiers are pointed in different directions. They have also proved in CAT scans that they do indeed hear voices like real voices.
My question is, I’d like to hear from people who take anti depressants find they really work. I was given anti depressants back in 2003 during my final stage of interferon treatment, which is notorious for causing depression.
I found they didn’t work (for me).
Rob.
First of all, CAT scans and such show what’s happening, but it shows nothing about cause and result. They don’t know how the brain works, much less the mind. They really don’t know. It has also been proven that meditation or any kind of specific mental discipline actually changes the way one’s brain works. There is ample evidence for that as well. Is shamatha enough to tip the balance? I think it may be sometimes. And shouldn’t one try that before medication, even if it is a struggle?
I never had the impression Trungpa Rinpoche was adamantly against medication, even if he did make it not seem like the first choice.
It was my impression that he encouraged people try to get through problems without that kind of help if at all possible, but if it wasn’t working, one should get the help one needs. I know he acknowledged that some people couldn’t or shouldn’t do shamatha; that in some cases it could exacerbate pyschosis. If that were the case, I heard he said, then they need to do whatever they need to do, before they enter into that kind of practice. He understood there has to be a somewhat healthy basis from which to operate (“The Four Foundations of Mindfulness” is a good description of that.)
I think this has to do with the ‘toughness’ of the Kagyu he sometimes bragged about. Basically, and it makes sense to me anyway, if I can tough through a problem I have without some form of medication, then I am that much more able to relate to that or similar problems when they arise again. It is perhaps only timing or chance that I didn’t land in a doctor’s office where I was prescribed something or other, because I was certainly no stranger to self medication.
Again, doesn’t mean never use medication, I don’t believe Trungpa Rinpoche ever said that, even if he didn’t encourage it.
Does anyone know of him ever telling someone to stop taking anti-psychotics or antidepressants? If he ever did request that, I can’t imagine it would have been done without some form of fairly constant monitoring and support.
Trungpa Rinpoche was not naive about how confused we can be, nor did he think that shamatha was the solution for all problems, even if he did think it was the only way to enter higher practices and overcome ego.
In reply to Rob’s question, I have been taking anti-depressants for 10 years, and they have definitely helped me as a person and as a practitioner. It took time to find the right drug or combination of drugs, and that has changed over time. It’s not a one-shot deal. You need a doctor who knows who you are and is willing to work closely with you to find that balance point between the Black Hole (what I call my depression) on one side and being too drugged to engage with life on the other side. I don’t know what Trungpa Rinpoche whould think about this. He doesn’t have to live every second of my life. I do. My own Lama thinks that if one has the sort of chemical imbalance that runs in my family, medications may be necessary for one to reach the point where one can even begin to practice.
That said, I know that meditation practice of all kinds (shamatha, yidam practice, dzogchen practices) are also effective in their own rrealm in helping one learn what thoughts are, how to work with them, learn what sense perceptions are and how to enjoy them, how to experience the beauty and preciousness of life.
I do not think that either-or thinking is helpful to anyone when considering the question of medication for depression.
I “think” recall Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche saying people didn’t have time to get depressed in Tibet because they were such hard workers, so if he was anti meds, it could have been a cultural thing.
I most definitely can think of occasions where people stopped taking their meds, and had significant negative personality changes.
Hello all. When I lived at KCL in 1974, we had a Dhatun in which every participant had to team up with someone and cook at least twice. Sometimes we cooked casseroles
because they were easy to prepare.Someone was not happy with the food and spoke to CTR about the cooking situation. Suddenly we had a new rule to abide by, the no casseroles during dathun rule.Of course we all got in step and it would be a number of years before casseroles were served at KCL.Some years later I asked Rinpoche why he had forbidden this type of cooking. He said that he had never forbidden them but, had suggested that we cook other things as well.
I wasn’t surprised by what he said. In fact, this type of story, repeats itself many times while he was alive but the fact of the matter was that CTR was pragmatic if he was anything. The idea that CTR would suggest to someone who was battling Bi-Polar disorder or Major or even mid range depression, that they stop taking their meds is ludicrous. I can see him telling the Worried Well that perhaps they should try meditation for awhile to see if it helped their condition. This is understandable.
Rinpoche had a phrase that he used about how someone needed to be at a kitchen sink level to hear the teachings. I believe that this is true but, Mental Illness is not a static condition and while someone might not be at a kitchen sink level today, they could certainly move from an acute stage to a more chronic but manageable point in whch they could expand their lives through meditation practice.
I don’t think anybody suggested Rinpoche actually said to stop taking their medication(s).
Kevin
Also what I was trying to say was my impression of what the Vidyadhara was sayng was that he felt most forms of mental illness was psychological, not physical. We do now know many forms of mental illness is physical. Different Buddhist teachers have varying opinions about this. I just kind of disagreeing with him. Believe me, I have in the past. You can hear me on many a tapes of his public and restricted talks questioning everything. .
Rob
Rob,
I disagree that it is ‘definitively known’ that some diseases are chemical based.
While it is absolutely true chemical imbalances can be observed, and working with those chemical imbalances themselves can be productive, it is still very much unknown and perhaps unknowable how the mind works. Hell they (the ones who ‘know’ about these things) don’t even know what consciousness is, much less how the brain or mind works. They just don’t know and the honest ones will admit it with admiration and deep respect for what they are studying.
All doctors and scientists are seeing at this point is higher resolution details of what is going on at the moment. But that’s kind of like sitting on a river bank watching how it moves around the rocks you can see, and claiming to know all about it’s source and where it will eventually end up.
There is also scientificy evidence that when we use our minds in a certain, way, like for instance meditation but also any repeated activity or discipline, that the mind changes physically in observable ways.
This doesn’t negate the effectiveness of chemical intervention when people are in distress. It does however indicate that there may be more we could do ourselves with proper guidance and instruction from realized beings.
I would trust almost nobody with that sort of guidance, it isn’t something MIs, acharayas or other s with agendas should be entrusted with particularly, but I do believe it can exist.
As someone earlier posted, our tendency towards black and white thinking is probably too restrictive in this realm, there are lots of possibilities yet.
James
Explain to me then why schizophrenia mostly hits people when they are 18 – 19 years old.
Coincidence? I doubt it.
Rob
Rob,
I can’t explain why, and neither can the people who observe that phenomenon. They can only say what they see, and then conjecture, sometimes wildly, about the causes.
Just a very quick look gleaned at: http://www.schizophrenia.com/hypo.php
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“Experts now agree that schizophrenia develops as a result of interplay between biological predisposition (for example, inheriting certain genes) and the kind of environment a person is exposed to. These lines of research are converging: brain development disruption is now known to be the result of genetic predisposition and environmental stressors early in development (during pregnancy or early childhood), leading to subtle alterations in the brain that make a person susceptible to developing schizophrenia. Environmental factors later in life (during early childhood and adolescence) can either damage the brain further and thereby increase the risk of schizophrenia, or lessen the expression of genetic or neurodevelopmental defects and decrease the risk of schizophrenia. In fact experts now say that schizophrenia (and all other mental illness) is caused by a combination of biological, psychological and social factors, and this understanding of mental illness is called the bio-psycho-social model.”
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What this indicates, Rob, in relationship to schizophrenia, and which I think we can safely extrapolate to other disorders, is that it is not purely a chemical imbalance or genetic disposition even as that is a contributing factor, but also a slew of other influences, some entirely external, but some, and this is the point at which ‘rock meets bone’, that have to do with how we ourselves work with our minds and interact with the external world.
How we do things in itself actually has physically observable effects on the structure of the brain. There is indeed some research with observable recordable statistics, some cataloged in “Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama” edited by Daniel Goleman that indicate if not prove that meditation can help to ‘protect’ the mind in significant and real ways.
Interestingly one of the synonyms for vajrayana is “mind protection”. Not like a pill one takes and is cured, but as an ongoing discipline that changes the structure of the brain and how synapsis fire and interact etc..
It is also likely that a number of similar but different diseases are all labeled schizophrenia due to the sciences not being advanced enough to discern that they may have very different causes. Depression too can be due to very different things, sometimes internal chemical imbalances, or external events, or sometimes neurotic patterns we get caught in. It isn’t just one thing with one cause, and therefore one cure.
In the inspiration of the talk “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness” in the book “The Heart of the Buddha” where Trungpa Rinpoche says: “The purpose of meditation practice is to try to save oneself from psychosis.”
Funny you mention Daniel Goleman. He’s a friend of mine, and helped to sponsor me on a retreat program last Summer.
There is a lady who has autism, and is famous because she has written several books on animal behavior. I’ve heard her interviewed on NPR’s show Fresh Air (with Terri Gross) twice. I wish I could remember her name right now.
She now teaches at University Of Colorado Ft. Collins campus (I believe..May it’s the Colorado Springs Campus).
She was asked how she managed to pull out of her autism enough to function and she explained how. I forgot how she did it. Maybe somebody out there heard that interview, can can explain it for us. I think it may have something to do with a regimen of routine behavior.
When I was a teenager, one of my best friends had a sister who was autistic. She was given Thorazine daily (a powerful drug), and eventually put in a school that was run by the University of Chicago. where they blamed autism on the parents. They were actually given blow up people balloon dolls that were to represent their parents so they could punch it, and let off her hostility (she had very good parents).
Eventually, they found out she had brain damage, and was born with it..
For James Elliott (and anyone else who would like to know): I am Ed Podvoll’s sister. Ed (or Mingyur) died of colon cancer in 2003. He had been in retreat in a monastery in Biollet, France for 12 years. He returned to Boulder in 2002 having been diagnosed as a Stage 4 cancer. Ed, though ill, continued to practice and teach from home during the last year of his life. His daughter and I visited with him a number of times that last year (she and I both live in California).
I believe the Wind Horse project continues. Jeff Fortuna, Ed’s colleague and friend in Boulder, continues to work with the project and would know about its progress. I am sure he would be happy to speak with anyone about it.
My brother did a lot of good work with troubled people (our mother, among them). A Swiss film maker did make a movie about his work and shot scenes with Ed in Boulder during the last year of my brother’s life. If anyone is interested, I can give them details.
Good wishes to all of you.
Myra Podvoll Spicker
Foothill Ranch, California
mspicker@aol.com
Dear Myra Podvoll Spicker,
I just wanted to say what a wonderful gentleman your brother was,beloved by many and most of all by his teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Many good whishes and blessings to you
John Perks
Thank you John Perks. It was good to hear about my brother. I do miss him. Thank you for writing about him.
Myra Podvoll Spicker
Hi Folks,
Back to the theme of Blue Sangha, I just came across a great companion to Trungpa’s teaching on Cool Boredom in Sam Keen’s _Inward Bound_. (Originally published as What to Do When You’re Bored and Blue.) The chapter _The Joyful Art of Doing Nothing_, has a long quotation from _Myth of Freedom_ (which Keen calls a “rhapsody on boredom”) and the book in general speaks to what we variably call depression. No Rainbow Without the Blues!
Hope this is helpful to someone,
May the sangha flourish,
Steph
I was waiting for a bus today, and this lady was sitting at the bustop VERY loudly talking to herself.
You can’t tell me schizophrenia is not organic, but psychological.
I’ve seen this all too many times before.
Rob–I saw the same thing in Union Station in DC at 6am one morning–a young lady was talking quite loudly and gesturing wildly at some unseen antagonist. Turned out she was talking into some sort of headset thingy for her cellphone, technology I’d surely have known about if I got out more often.
Perhaps if schizophrenics would conspicuously wear these headsets in public they could talk as loudly as they wanted and noone would regard it as weird or scary. Just a thought…
There was no head set. I checked. She was wearing raggy clothes, and came one the bus still talking to herself.
The mention of schizophrenia here reminded me of something I read recently. It is from “Quantum Leaps” – a small book of anecdotal essays I really liked by Jeremy Bernstein from 2008. It is a quote by the Dalai Lama in the essay/story entitled “Quantum Buddhists” (he figures largely in the piece – describing his visit with a group of monks to CERN, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva):
“Another significant set of issues in quantum mechanics concerns the question of measurement. I gather that, in fact, there is an entire area of research dedicated to this matter. Many scientists say that the act of measurement causes a “collapse” of either the wave or the particle function, depending on the system of measurement used in the experiment; only upon measurement does the potential become actual. Yet we live in a world of everyday objects. So the question is, how, from the point of view of physics do we reconcile our commonsense notions of an everyday world of objects on the one hand and the bizarre world of quantum mechanics on the other? Can these two perspectives be reconciled at all? Are we condemned to live with what is apparently a schizophrenic view of the world?”
You’ve probably heard the saying that the mystic swims in a world that the schizophrenic drowns in.
On a different note, I personally believe that many mental health problems have a physical origin. If you take a strong, healthy adult and pump him full of enough of the right kind of poisons, his brain and other organs will stop functioning correctly, and you can induce many forms of psychosis this way.
For instance, I’m sure it must be a coincidence (?) but the symptoms of autism are almost identical to the symptoms mercury poisoning.
Not that people reading this should go out and poison anyone, of course. But you also shouldn’t let anyone do that to you or your children, directly or indirectly, if you can help it.
Edward
Most schizophrenics start to experience their symptoms at the ages of 18 or 19.
It would take a pretty selective poison to strike at that age.
I ‘m afraid it could be genetic, or or at least think some people are more biologically open or triggered by outside influences.
It wouldn’t be compassionate at all, as some people think (not you I think) to dismiss it as a mental indulgence gone overboard thing.
If one wants to blame it on Karma, well that’s not helpful either, when their is medication to help make extreme bi-polarism (a word I made up) or schizophrenia. Some people even become capable of meditation practice.
Rob
My guess is, schizophrenia, and similarly autism, and for that matter cancer, is not one thing with one cause. Everyone who suffers from it doesn’t have it due to the same causes. It’s similar to how some people are rich and some poor.
These kinds of terms seem to be umbrella terms which cover a plethora of diseases which are not yet really understood. Even though symptoms may be the same, the causes for individuals may be very different, and may be something not at all easily understood as this one cause and therefore this one result.
It may be organic, or environmental, various combination of causes, or maybe sometimes, (especially when it involves how the brain works – which is really speaking a fledgling pioneering science) a quirk of higher intelligence, a cost of evolutionary experiments so-to-speak. (I read autism, for example, occurs much more often with highly intelligent parents.?)
The reason this is interesting is that in modern medicine, any new treatment goes through a regime of testing based on the principle that if doesn’t work significantly better than a placebo for a large and a randomly chosen sample group, it is written off as worthless – even if it was 100% effective for some of the people! It’s really kind of primitive and accidental from one point of view, and may actually prevent delving deeper in certain directions rendered economically unfeasible by such a system.
My impression is, if the doctors think it’s wacky and weird, aren’t making progress and can’t identify with it, then it’s labeled schizophrenia. Then a process of trying various medicines begins to see how it goes. Sometimes works great, but not always.
The Windhorse project by Ed Podval based on a more wholistic and humanistic grounding in social support structures mentioned earlier, is another form of treatment, which I’m sure also has its successes and failures.
In the olden days – pre-industrial times – in Germany, the mentally ill were sent to live in the countryside where they were given simple tasks on the farms and became grounded in natural processes. This was the way people were restored to functional sanity.
These days, Autism has sometimes been ‘cured’ by allowing autistic children to spend significant time in wilderness. The movie The Horse Boy is about a family that went to Mongolia to find a shaman to cure for their son’s autism. It worked!
http://www.horseboymovie.com/Film.php
Autism has been linked to “nature-deficit disorder,” which, as the name suggests, is a disorder related to the lack of significant exposure to and experience of the natural world. Google Nature Deficit Disorder and you get plenty of hits. Here’s a kind of typical summary:
“Others wonder if a collective “nature deficit disorder” among children plays a factor in rising autism rates. Outdoor exposure has long been associated with healthier cognitive functioning in children, with reduction in Attention Deficit Disorder symptoms and greater emotional capacity. But new findings suggest it could impact autism, too. Last year, Cornell University researchers found higher rates of autism in counties where more households subscribed to cable and children under the age of three regularly watched TV. The Amish, with almost no exposure to TV, have little evidence of autism, notes the study.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/autism-environmental-causes-460708
For many articles on psychology, mental functioning and disorders, and their relationship with Nature, see my Ecopsychology Links page at http://www.dharmagaians.org/5-11-L%20Ecopsychology%20Links.html
I’m sorry Suzanne
You haven’t worked with people (children) with autism,. And to say Shamanism worked on schizophrenia in one swipe?
And you were allowed to teach at Naropa?
Now onder told my mom and grand parents to stop donating to them years ago.
This artsy fartsy stuff is NOT compassion when it comes to serious issues such as mental or physical health..
Green my butt.
Goodness, Rob, that’s quite a reaction. How do you know what I’ve worked with? I didn’t say shamanism worked on schizophrenia in one swipe, I said there is a film about a boy with autism who was helped. Look at the trailer at the link I provided. Look at the ecopsychology links page that lists studies that are being done. Ecopsychology isn’t artsy fartsy or new age. I wonder where your prejudice comes from and what it is grounded in.
Alert! What follows is an opinion.
When I first heard about nature deficit disorder and the problems to which it might be related, it seemed like a no-brainer. I know for myself that time spent in “nature,” even just a city park, always lifts my mood. The best thing for me is to get all the way out of the city, to a place with a functioning ecosystem, by which I mean one that was not designed by people and does not require people to maintain it. It allows me to see the intelligence and patterns of the natural world, to realize I am like that as well and I do not have to work so hard at making myself happen. Everybody needs to know these things (which are also available to people through meditation practices). Without them, we become depressed, autistic, all of the mental illnesses that are increasing in so-called civilized societies. People evolved in relation to the rest of the natural world. Now we try to live without that. Is it any wonder many of us get lost?
By the way, I do not include schizophrenia in this discussion, because it seems to me like that is a different beast, something structural in the brains of the people who “have” it. The only people I have known who absolutely could not meditate were two schizophrenics. They really could not recognize their thoughts as thoughts.
These discussions often bring up painful emotions and disagreements, I’ve found. Part of the trouble seems to be certain assumptions being made on either or both “sides”. For example, many people feel that if someone asserts that mind underpins brain, they are necessarily diminishing the very real mental suffering people experience, or implying such people are at fault for not being able to find their way to happiness or balance.
I don’t think the two assumptions follow one another at all. Suffering is suffering; it doesn’t need to defend itself. It should call forth empathy and compassion. Likewise, it is not diminished by positing a non-materialist model of consciousness.
The dominant paradigm today does stop at materialist causes–chemical, biological, genetic. But of course dharma asks: isn’t there something deeper than what we can see and measure? It speaks of subtler, immaterial levels of consciousness, with a complex system of pranas, nadis, and bindus serving as a link between the subtle consciousness and physical phenomena.
This means that there are many entry points at different levels for working with mental suffering. I don’t see any problem with this, except where a dogmatic view enters in and says: this is the only way, for all people and situations.
Any acute phenomena present obviously need to be worked with first, following which other approaches might be able to go deeper, as people have suggested here. I do also agree with James that in this realm we’re dealing with a highly complex mesh of causes and conditions all interacting with one another.
Zer-me Dri’med wrote, “The only people I have known who absolutely could not meditate were two schizophrenics. They really could not recognize their thoughts as thoughts.”
That’s very interesting, Zer-me, from an MI perspective. I can also think of a couple of schizophrenics for whom that was true.
Thanks also for your thoughts on the restorative power of nature.
There is no doubt that certain Mental Health Disorders respond to treatment better than others. There have been many breakthroughs with Depression, using a variety of Psychotropic drugs and therapy, and every day people decide to stay on the drugs or to get off them with the hope that the serious symptoms that they had experienced before will not return.
There are of course other disorders that do not respond very well to any type of traditional treatment, PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder to name two. Last Spring I went to a very special graduation ceremony held at a non-profit called NEADS. http://www.neads.org At NEADS dogs are trained as Psychiatric Service Dogs for returning Veterans who have been injured in combat and who are victims of PTSD.These dogs are trained to interrupt mood and to physically intervene when they feel their masters are stressed, withdrawing or Depressed.
I have a great belief in the power of animals to make us whole and that is why I think what Suzanne said is pertinent.
Mental Illness does not conform well to off the shelf cookie cutter approaches to therapy. It is usually a number of different factors that work. We really can’t afford to ignore possible therapies. Each therapy has to investigated and accepted if it works and discarded if it doesn’t.
Hello-
In retrospect, my last post was probably off-topic and perhaps insensitive to what is being discussed here.
My apologies!
Alison
I did blow off some steam again, but I have had hands on experience with working with people with autism, and suspect some people here don’t.. Of course, environment is important. Don’t feel putting people with brain or psychological disorders in the same building is necessarily useful, for example. The Dalai Lama asked many years ago what they did with crazy people in the west. When he was told of institutions, he thought it was funny (as I recall) because he felt if you put crazy people to together, they’ll just get crazier. I don’t know what Tibetan people did with crazy people in Tibet. Perhaps t didn’t exist as much there. I know some Tibetans feel that blindness is caused by demons, and they would shun them, which was very useful to blind people.
However, autism is much deeper then an environmental thing,. and inclusion with regular people, or changing the environment alone will not help.If some of can recall, negative reinforcement and “white noise” therapy was tried in the 70s and 80s. It didn’t really work, and was outright abusive (this was for kids with autism who were self destructive). Many parents do give up on children with severe autism, and let them become wards of the State,because because they have tried everything, and it was emotionally and financially draining.
There is that famous animal behaviorist who I have heard on Fresh Air at least twice, and she was able to come over her autism to such a rate, she is now a professor on animal behavior, written several books, and is an animal rights advocate. Can’t think of her name.
James, a reply to your comment on the other thread: you’re quite right in what you say, of course. But I suspect you’d also agree that the larger question of “the state of science” is open to some interpretation. In that comment I was focused more on what I see as the popular, mainstream understanding or paradigm, encouraged by an enormous amount, the vast majority in fact, of what gets reported as “science”. Ever since the development of quantum physics and relativity theory a deeper level of science has moved beyond simple materialism and billiard-ball causality, but you wouldn’t know it from the daily barrage of headlines informing us of one radically reductionistic “discovery” after another. I feel the developments you speak of have yet to percolate down into the now leviathan *industry* of science.
This website is by a man blind from birth, His skills and joy for life are an inspiration for all, He Has much to teach those not visually impaired. I first learned of him from an article in the Atlantic journal, cited in this post on his website. Just to say being different is simply another way. By the way Rob
the well known woman you mentioned is Temple Grandin.
http://behindthecurtain.us/2010/10/03/why-i-do-not-consider-myself-an-apple-fanboy/
Suzanne, I could not agree with you more. I grew up in west Texas, an environment most cannot imagine, kind of like the Australian outback.
Anyway, hanging out in the bush from the age of five onwards, with lizards and scorpions, snakes and spiders, really saved my life, life at home was not all that great.
When I moved to Boulder in 1974, I continued. The greenbelt around was a wonderful solace. Walking is good. Walking in nature is a revelation
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fprousseau.htm.
w
Accidentally posted on another thread… sorry for the confusion. Leaving off a remark to Dämcho to which he already responded…
I can’t agree more about the therapeutic benefits of nature, camping saved my sanity a few times. But creating a label like “Nature Disorder Deficit” says very little about the causes and effects and is somewhat problematic when talking about real illness, rather than neurotic discomforts.
Is it a benefit because we are away from household detergents, radon gas, the constant hum of electronic devices, artificial light cycles and so on, or is there something out there in nature we are imbibing or that effects us?
According to WIKI Richard Louv went around the country trying to prove this thesis based on anecdotal evidence. That’s fine, but until it is recognized by others, it is only a pet theory. From the description in WIKI, one could just as easily and in my opinion more accurately say watching TV is the culprit.
Just because something helps, I mean really really helps, doesn’t mean that a lack of that thing is the cause of a problem. Like if I take an aspirin and it relieves my headache, that doesn’t mean I was suffering from aspirin deprivation.
This matters when recommending nature as cure for something. Did it help someone with autism? Maybe, but how many and how come? If we don’t really know that, and instead jump to the conclusion that it was the lack of nature in itself, we may never discover whether that person was helped due to something else, like maybe simply the attention they received or getting out of wherever they were or something else, or a combination of factors.
Would it make any more sense to label people we think are neurotic as having MDD (meditation deficit disorder)? I swear there are some candidates out there for whom meditation is the cure, but a disorder? I’m sure I’ve been thought of that way. Don’t think we can get away with it, but will start using it to see. MDD.
Kevin,
Agree that all doors should be open, but they should be examined thoroughly before labeling. Passed your info along last night to someone who has PTSD. (In a longer talk, think he’s working with something else, but…) Would love to hear more about BPD, a disorder which I think is ignored even exacerbated within spiritual communities, sometimes with disastrous results.
Hello, Harold Turner. I remember you. Thank you for the Rousseau link. I find it delightful and dharmic!
There is an entire philosophical current that addresses Western civilization’s ills in relation to its cutting itself off from Nature, and the effects on the human psyche of separating humans from nature. The philosophy is called Deep Ecology. Nature deficit disorder is a theory that falls into or comes out of that philosophical current. The study of the neuroses of modern Western society has been going on for decades. I encountered it as an undergraduate in the early 1960s in a sociology course. So people in the fields of philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and more recently, economics, have all been investigating the neuroses and psychoses that result from Western cultural conditioning and education – and the way we live!
Psychologists who have moved over into ‘ecopsychology’ have become very critical of traditional schools of psychology that isolate human clients from the environment beyond the nuclear family. Quite a few people in the fields of ecopsychology and deep ecology have expressed the view that our civilization and culture is autistic. Here in Holland, there’s quite a lot of evidence to support that view.
But, James Elliott, let’s you and I not get into a lengthy argument about this again. I’m posting this information for others who might be interested as well. Information about all of this is thoroughly covered in my website, Dharmagaians.org – especially on the links pages.
I’d just like to thank Suzanne for her steady input regarding nature, the effects of a toxic environment on our minds, and the healing power of reconnecting with nature. When people with relatively healthy minds experience such powerful changes when practicing in a natural environment, indeed to experience the Nature of mind, how can we argue against the vast potential for minds that are more fragile, have been wounded, are suffering deep confusion and separation? It seems we continue to talk about the wounds in extremis rather than focusing on maitri and the basic ground for working with our minds.
I don’t believe that, in this age, we will experience too much nurture, too much non judgmental listening, too much compassionate space, too few labels of another’s experience.
This sangha is so incredibly fortunate to have such a rich lineage of teachings. There is no greater luxury than to be able to practice the dharma. We do this for the benefit of all sentient beings. Why do we continue to separate people who are suffering, label “them” as separate?
Gosh, we already have to carry the burden of being called Western Buddhists. Do we really have to buy in to the western medical model without holding it up to the light of the dharma? In the next edition of the DSMV, happiness is being listed as a disorder. For myself I don’t see this book helpful beyond creating a data base for insurance and pharmaceutical companies and our doctors who rely on a system – for – profit. Does this book in any way soften our hearts?
Thank you all, and may the sangha flourish.
Steph
Steph wrote: >In the next edition of the DSMV, happiness is being listed as a disorder.<
Whoa–really? Can you say more about this?
Thanks, Stephanie – esp. for this: “There is no greater luxury than to be able to practice the dharma. We do this for the benefit of all sentient beings. Why do we continue to separate people who are suffering, label “them” as separate? … Do we really have to buy in to the western medical model without holding it up to the light of the dharma?” Really!
December 20 2010
Remorse for joining the conversation without the continuity of a computer. Veritable sieve in the container and I’m looking at it closely. Yay for the amazing streaming of the Karmapa 900. Wow.
~ Zerme ~ I picked that up on facebook, and again, remorse for the lack of continuity. Can’t find the link; as well since then there are now posts about “‘they’” are talking about dropping 4 personality disorders from the next edition. It amazes me that we are fighting in Washington for insurance for our fractured crazy system <3.
~Suzanne~ really. "…we continue to separate people who are suffering, label them as separate?…"
I say: If one person has borderline personality disorder we all have borderline personality disorder until all people are free from suffering.
May the sangha flourish, and for as long as space endures, love to this conversation.
Cheers ; )
Yeah, sure on some ultimate level if one person has BPD we all do, but… that’s kind of like saying if one person is poor we all are. It has zero practical application. One still has to DO something. And in order to do something, one simply must discriminate between various dharmas or differences or needs.
We are not all the same in terms of what each of us needs in order to progress on the path, or even in terms of what we may need to regain the kind of basic sanity necessary to practice genuine mediation or especially higher tantras.
I know someone who thought themselves a healer; accu-pressure message, light and aroma therapy that sort of thing. She had a big encyclopedia of various diseases with pictures and descriptions, causes and treatments. She threw it away one day because she said seeing these diseases and thinking about them causes them. It’s up to you, but I myself would not go to a doctor that wants to avoid looking at disease. It makes no sense.
Avoiding descriptions is in my mind not a solution but an avoidance of one’s own perceptions.
If something is to be done, then descriptions of what is going on are essential and unavoidable starting points. You can’t skip over that. In terms of practice not skipping over that is indeed part and parcel of shamatha, even if it’s not the goal. If one is accepting and rejecting based upon this kind of focused discernment the problem does not lie in the descriptions or our perceptions.
If your going to cook food, you can’t just say “It’s all food”, you have to get into the details of each ingredient, what it brings to the meal, how and when it’s applied, temperatures, timing, appetizers and harmonious deserts, etc. in order to have not only an edible but delicious repast.
I’d like to recommend an hour-long program on Democracy Now!:
Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood
Dr. Maté has written several intriguing books on mental and physical illness and early childhood development. I find his perspective to be revelatory. For example (this is just one small excerpt from a very long transcript on many subjects):
“Well, when I looked at the kind of people that would be coming under my care in palliative care, but also the kind of people who would get sick when I was in family practice, a number of salient characteristics presented themselves. One was the repression of anger. People didn’t know how to express negative emotion. They were afraid to do so or did not know when they were angry. People who were pleasers, they tried to always not to disappoint other people. They never knew how to say no. They took on everything without a murmur, because they saw their role as always being the caregivers and the caretakers. And they had an exceedingly powerful sense of duty, role and responsibility.
“Now, if you look at the role of healthy assertion of boundaries and anger, for example, it’s actually there to protect you. I’m talking about healthy anger. It’s not there to attack anybody; it’s just there to protect your boundaries. That’s the same role as the immune system has. The immune system also functions like a brain. It has memory, it has reactive capacity, and it has learning capacity. In fact, the immune system has been called the “floating brain.” And it’s in interaction with the brain up in our heads.”
In this interview, Gabor Maté discusses attention deficit disorder, also ADHD, autism, asthma and a host of other diseases and addictions in relation to early childhood brain development, and the role of nurturing or neglect and abuse in brain development and emotional development. Quite fascinating and provocative.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/24/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress
Radio Free What.
.A few weeks ago, I saw another case of a man talking to himself and disheveled.
He was not wearing any headsets. The environment was not causing his insanity, unless it was genetic.
A camping trip would not have helped him out.. It was quite obvious he took a few already.
As a teen age kid., I used to listen to Radio Free Chicago in the early 709s. It was a Hispanic station that turned radically left and psychedelically motivated ic past midnight.
Those of us who watched Underground News in the early 70s in Chicago may remember when John Lennon and Yoko Ono were interviewed on a local UHF TV station in Chicago.
Soul Train got it’s beginnings on a similar UHF station in Chicago.
The rest is history.
To compare Radio Free Shambhala with Radio Free Cuba is bull.
Google Radio Free Chicago and youy will find it is quite cosmopolitan.
The Dharma Farts have actuality turned into the the un rebellious.
If a 50 plus yrear old Guru is what it takes, welcome to the George Forman Club.
Time to admit to them seves at this point.
Dharma Brats are OLD.
Get Used to it.
Birth, Old Age, Sickness, and Death exists.
Those who proclaim they quit carrying a heavy pack are
proclaiming they quit carrying a heavy sack on themselves.
Suzanne, thanks so much for the link to the Gabor Maté interviews. None of this is news to anyone who meditates regularly, but it’s good to see the inseparability of mind and body being discussed so thoughtfully. What I found particularly interesting was Maté’s notion of a “Bermuda Triangle,” into which all the solid research on the relatonship among the nervous, immune, and hormoanl systems seems to disappear. If the connection between psychophysical stress and disease, for instance, has been proved via the almighty double-blind study, why is this not part of the treatment of disease? It’s a juicy question.
I would just like to address the Borderline diagnosis again. And again, it is one word to cover such a broad range of experience on the part of the patient and too _narrow a view_ on the part of the therapist. It just really seems to me that we are willing to buy into these words as a shortcut to compassionate listening.
As far as what Rob said about the disheveled man talking to himself: Again, what I am hearing is Rob’s experience of _him_. As well, no one is saying a camping trip is going to cure everything, but it is a vastly different and much kinder view of caring for the walking wounded.
Temple Grandin, living with autism and writing about her experiences with animals, is one example of how animals can provide a healing environment more humane than trying to relate to our manufactured world. Another example is Rupert Isaacson’s “The Horse Boy”, following the changes in his autistic son as they trek into northern Mongolia.
I feel strongly that if we allow any limiting, set, external language influence our view we are missing the the most joyous part of the journey.
I would like to share his, Discourse on the Great Lam Rim by HH Thubten Gyatso, theThirteenth Dalai Lama. It gives me a different perspective to that vehicle with no brakes and no reverse. His comments on and about the Path have helped me more than once.
THE BODHISATTVA IS LIKE
THE MIGHTIEST OF WARRIORS;
BUT HIS ENEMIES ARE NOT
COMMON FOES OF FLESH AND BONE,
HIS FIGHT IS WITH THE INNER DELUSIONS,
THE AFFLICTIONS OF SELF-CHERISHING
AND EGO GRASPING,
THOSE MOST TERRIBLE OF DEMONS
THAT CATCH LIVING BEINGS IN THE
SNARE OF CONFUSION
AND CAUSE THEM FOREVER TO WANDER
IN PAIN, FRUSTRATION AND SORROW.
HIS MISSION IS TO HARM IGNORANCE AND DELUSION,
NEVER LIVING BEINGS,
THESE HE LOOKS UPON WITH KINDNESS,
PATIENCE AND EMPATHY,
CHERISHING THEM LIKE A MOTHER CHERISHES
HER ONLY CHILD.
HE IS THE REAL HERO,
CALMLY FACING ANY HARDSHIP
IN ORDER TO BRING PEACE, HAPPINESS
AND LIBERATION TO THE WORLD.
Damn, here I go again on another “dark night of the soul” . Anxiety is kicking my ass up one wall and down the other. The intensity is overwhelming. How many years of this shit will I have to go through? Doesn’t any kind of karma wear out at some point? I know I can’t fight it off and I can’t seem to surrender and let it be. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I fear for my sanity. If there is some kind of wisdom in no escape I guess I have not seen it yet. I don’t expect any kind of answer. I guess I am just venting.
Om Mani Padme Hum
Dear David,
I would like to posit that your anxiety is an appropriate response to today’s insane world. Your heart is open, you feel deeply and since we are all connected, you suffer along with all those who are suffering; this is a sign of basic sanity. It’s also a bitch to feel so much, no? My tension level has also risen lately along with the catastrophe in Japan, the earthquake and tsunami devastation and now the threat of nuclear radiation and a new war (possibly simply for oil again) and all the retrograde, fascist bills against the poor and middle class the Republican right is promoting and the killing of wolves and GMO proliferation and, and, and…it is all truly crazy making. So you aren’t alone and I genuinely empathize. Maybe get a set of Reggie Ray’s CDs—Your Breathing Body—many excellent guided meditations there for grounding, moving energy around skillfully and integrating emotions into the body. The challenge, as always, as practicioners, students of VCTR’s, is to see the world, with all its fucked-upness and ourselves in pain as sacred.
I wish us all good luck as the insanity accelerates.
Brigid
David, I sympathize totally with where you are. Having been there pretty much all of my days too… And as much as ever now. Thank you for your generosity in sharing. And I agree very much with Brigid that this shows you’ve got true health and goodness there.
Personally, I’d rather feel too much than too little. Maybe one day I’ll be able to ride this intensity of energy better and channel it more and more into compassionate activity. Most of the time these days I count it a success that I got out of bed and didn’t completely fall apart before getting back in! Anyway, for now, I hope you are able to find some regular moments of space in the darkness, regular periods of relief from the pain, and some good nourishment from others.
Brigid, I would add to all the insanity you speak of a social system (especially in the US) that has created probably an unprecedented degree of isolation and atomism. Several people wrote earlier about how crucial it is that we reconnect with the natural world. I very much agree with this but think we suffer equally from disconnection from one another. Particularly we lack warmth and physical closeness–especially those who experience “singleness” for far too long. This is really a poisonous situation, I find. And it seems to have been getting even worse maybe–at times of anxiety people tend to retreat further into “nuclear” relationships in the (understandable) hope of finding security. At least, this is my experience.
The only other thing I would add is: let’s also hope, fervently, that the insanity *doesn’t* accelerate. Things are bad in all kinds of ways and we need to know that, but I also feel strongly that we need to stay positive, even at the risk sometimes of seeming outrageous. I find that I just cannot use this phrase “the Dark Age”. Because I think by doing so we run the risk of closing off certain other possibilities, of helping to fulfill the prophecy as it were. I know the phrase is in the Sadhana of Mahamudra etc. So obviously it has its purposes. And I know there are so many horrible things going on, such horrendous, multi-layered confusion. Still, I resist the temptation to reify it all. Let’s just do our very best to fulfill our bodhisattva vow and save the whole sacred and unspeakably beautiful thing. How does VCTR put it? (I’m away from the book at the moment): let’s never stop contemplating, even in the midst of this degraded situation, enlightened society. The good aspect of hope. I find I’m lost when I can’t stay connected to this anyway.
Hello Brigid and Damcho, Thank you for your kind comments. Maybe sometimes dark and light accelerate together, like some kind of coemergence. In the horror of the Japan reactor problems, truly heroic people are sacrificing their lives to try and save others, that is warriorship far beyond any I could muster.
Hi David, I feel you must be right about that. That’s a great way of putting it.
Hey David. I know what you’re saying because the same thing happens with me sometimes. In my experience, there is nothing to be done except to hold your seat as much as possible and to keep paying attention, even though it can be very uncomfortable. I like to think that there is some kind of wisdom struggling to get through, or maybe just some kind of communication about something…
Take good care!
Thanks Jacqui, I think there is a lot of wisdom in what you say. Sometimes all you can do is just be there with it. I once even thought of writing a self-help book with one page, one sentence…
“Just don’t fucking kill yourself.” That about covers it sometimes.
David, thanks for the laugh. I have soooo been there. In fact, that’s been my mantra at times… “Just don’t fucking kill yourself.” Anyone care to translate that into Tibetan or Sanskrit so it sounds a bit more classy?
Hi David, Brigid and damchö, this is a great discussion, one that I’ve been having with myself and with a few friends almost continually this month! It has indeed been a very intense and volatile time, at least as I’ve experienced it, as the headlines have shown, and as the astrologers have described.
Beginning last weekend, I experienced several days of being so sensitive that I was on the edge of tears and couldn’t hold back the tears much of the time. Extreme emotions including anxiety, fear, rage, grief and despair were bobbing around in my psyche. There were moments when I wondered if I was having a “nervous breakdown.”
But, like Brigid, I recognize that “anxiety is an appropriate response to today’s insane world.” Like Damchö, I’d rather “feel too much than too little.”
The astrologer Eric Francis, who I read every week, wrote on 3/18/11 regarding my Sun sign:
“You have to pass through one last rift of dark psychology before you break free into an emotionally clear space. You’ve grown accustomed to being a little less than clear, and more sensitive than usual. This combination can create a situation that stirs up some emotionally rooted fear — old fear, related to some cryptic ancestral material. This may have you feeling fogged in at the moment. I know that when you’re experiencing emotions in your immediate psychic environment you’re going to assume that they’re exclusively about you, but I suggest you consider the possibility that you’re burning off something from the distant past. Do so boldly, let yourself be carried by the wave of emotion and let yourself be lofted to a higher, safer orbit. Through this process you will gain an incredible perspective, where you will see your potential and your options clearly.”
Eric also wrote, regarding the collective situation: “In terms of how to process all this disaster…, my own preference is to be aware rather than to pretend something is not happening. My preference is to stay connected and creative and curious rather than to pull away. I choose to embrace this moment with a sense of adventure rather than dread. This is a moment of collective awakening. It may be the beginning of the very moment of collective awakening, here at the edge of the world.”
Maybe the intensity we are feeling is burning off ancestral karma! Maybe this is necessary for the collective awakening!
“one last rift of dark psychology” ? sounds good to me! lol
Yes, the troubles in Japan and the Middle East are very disturbing… it’s like the whole world is nuts and is self-destructing through ignorance, aggression and greed. Especially ignorance.
Here’s something I read recently, about how our minds and world events could be connected: Aurobindo: world events are shaped by non-physical forces Not a very Buddhist way of looking at things, but perhaps it has some resonance with how tonglen works.
The other thing for me is to make sure I take my health supplements… when I forget to take them, I start feeling depressed, like the world is horrible and out to get me, nobody loves me, etc. etc., but all that grand philosophy seems to be as much based on my own blood chemistry as anything else…
Warm greetings, a little late, to all you lovely ones.
Would it be reasonable to say that if we’re fairly aware of what is happening currently in the world, and are NOT depressed, then maybe that’s a sign of insanity?
We’re in a time of unprecedented turbulence, beyond the insecurity of a world war. At least you can win a world war. Defeat the enemy, etc.
What we have here is a situation of almost complete insecurity, a Ph D course in Impermanence.
All the ‘institutions’ of infrastructure – the basic ground of our social order – are proving untrustworthy. Guardians and stewards (banks, the military, the law, healthcare, corporates, governments) are found to be corrupted. No economy – or even state – can be guaranteed as stable. Supplies of basic commodities for survival (food, water, fuel) are increasingly insecure. We have eaten or polluted most of the earth, and now the fundamental integrity of our ecosystems is either irreparably damaged or on the brink. And along with seismic violence and crazy weather, we now have no fewer than six nuclear reactors gone critical, right next to the ocean, and no status reports. If it was a horror movie, you’d say it was over the top.
Yet most people just clip coupons and poddle along. Others are imagining disasters that aren’t even happening. While we may be able to avoid the panic, we must also take care to test for vital signs sometimes and make sure we haven’t just shut down to avoid experiencing what is occurring.
Praise and honour to those who are prepared to witness the truth in themselves and the outer world.
It’s a hard road, and it’s important to cry when crying is due, feel loss, be shocked, feel despair, feel alienated, horrified. Whoever we are, some of this turbulence is affecting us all, and the sheer edge-iness of it will bring up stuff for us like a shovel.
Meanwhile, what is this oft-quoted, yet largely unapplied advice . . .?
“When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world … Healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world.” CTR (GES?? )
The dharma – truth of the situation – is the same energetic truth as ‘connection with the earth’. The earth doesn’t bullshit, it is completely honest. Connecting with the fire, water, earth and living sap in ourselves also, we find out what we’re made of. If we had that connection, we would sob at the loss of the 95% of big fish in the world that humans have killed, and nearly all the big mammals. And the wanton disruption of the elemental cycles of the beautiful system called Planet. And the hundreds of millions of people who have been killed, broken or displaced. I think if this knowledge doesn’t knock at the gates of our unknowing, then what will? We cannot help but be part of it.
Love to all
Susie
xx
PS: Apart from the lucrative pursuit of ‘deep diving’ into – rather than out of – this tempest, I must suggest two more practices that can be genuinely helpful.
Firstly to settle in a good space and slowly read the text that starts:
The Sadhana of Mahamudra: Which Quells the Mighty Warring of the Three Lords of Materialism and Brings Realization of the Ocean of Siddhas of the Practice Lineage
“This is the darkest hour of the dark ages. Disease, famine and warfare are raging like the fierce north wind. The Buddha’s teaching has waned in strength. The various schools of the sangha are fighting amongst themselves with sectarian bitterness; and although the Buddha’s teaching was perfectly expounded and there have been many reliable teachings since then from other great gurus, yet they pursue intellectual speculations. The sacred mantra has strayed into Pön and the yogis of tantra are losing the insight of meditation. They spend their whole time going through villages and performing little ceremonies for material gain.
On the whole, no one acts according to the highest code of discipline, meditation and wisdom. The jewel-like teaching of insight is fading day by day. The Buddha’s teaching is used merely for political purposes and to draw people together socially. As a result the blessings of spiritual energy are being lost. Even those with great devotion are beginning to lose heart. If the buddhas of the three times and the great teachers were to comment, they would surely express their disappointment. So to enable individuals to ask for their help and to renew spiritual strength, I have written this Sadhana of Mahamudra . . .”
(BTW if you need a copy, I have it in Word, please email changeco@clear.net.nz)
The other thing I found really good was to watch Robin Williams in The Fisher King (1991, an unsung gem), and whoop and laugh out loud.
Much love
Susie
xx
This life is characterized by suffering.
I think our practice is to work on increasing our capacity to open our hearts and minds to it. Instead of forever just running away from it screaming.
Learning to *stay*, to tolerate it, enter it, work with it. Develop a bit of intestinal fortitude.
Things have always been terrifying, horrific and ‘dark’ in the world. We used to worry about starving and being eaten by dinosaurs. We’re animals. We’ve been killing, starving and destroying since time began. Every era in history has been characterized by terror and horror.
Things are pretty cushy and wonderful for us in North America compared to the rest of the world. The thing we seem to suffer most from is social isolation, loneliness, and nothing to do.
I find the best antidote to terror, despair, and anxiety is to work hard, and help others. Clean up the house, have a chat with a neighbour, scrub the bathroom, help someone old or ill, invite someone over for lunch, do the laundry. Do something creative. Work for the local Green Party. Lobby for alternative energy.
W.S.
Not so sure re: being worried about being eaten by dinosaurs, notwithstanding the “Jeezus riding a dinosaur” motif of some fundamentalist theme parks…..
I DO think that some degree of depression these days can be a sign of some degree of vipashyana. But along with that comes the opportunity / ability to relax the mind. And if you can’t cut through, well then maybe you are depressed!
Valuable teaching re cutting through in difficult circumstances: Patrul’s commentary on the 3 Statements of Garab Dorje, and the technique presented there…
I’ve been contemplating the chapter on the Charnel Ground in the Sadhana of Mahamudra Sourcebook. When I first heard the Vidyadhara talk about the charnel ground at a seminar in Boulder in 1975, I thought about it as an exotic metaphor.
Charnel ground: “a place to die and a place to be born … a wasteland of some kind … an abandoned place where nobody would want to hang out…. It does not try to hide its truth about reality: there are corpses lying all over the place, loose arms, loose hands, loose internal organs…. Jackals and vultures are roaming around, each one devising his own scheme for getting the best pieces of the corpses. That is precisely what we are doing in this country and in this world…. *This* is the charnel ground, and that is why we don’t like it.”
I just could not get it that the United States right then was the charnel ground, and that one had to build one’s mandala right in the middle of all the conflict, corruption, death, decay, predation, chaos, injustice, poverty, etc. I was one of the people he talks about in that talk – people who are looking for a perfect situation, or who want to reform the world – whose attitudes he characterized as “spiritual materialism.” It took a lot more experience of the world and of myself to see what he was saying in that talk.
He talks about our habitual impulse to avoid our own experience: “[T]he chaos that takes place in your neurosis is the only home ground that you can build your mandala on. If we are looking for something else, then we want to reject that ground and find a better, higher, more loving, less aggressive place…. Large areas of our life have been devoted to trying to avoid discovering our own experience.”
He says, however, that we can discover that the charnel ground is workable. Then it becomes our “working basis. It is the expression of our neurosis, which we have to work with. We begin to find that there is enormous strength and power behind it. We are not trying to get away from the charnel ground…. Building the mandala is actually part of the charnel ground principle…. We decide to work with our charnel ground … because there is so much devotion and faith and trust in our own sanity already. Our sanity automatically becomes a rock… it is everywhere, in every one of our hearts.”
So accepting charnel ground = discovering/claiming sanity!
I am actually quite surprised at how helpful I have found the comments here. When I am in a difficult place with anxiety/ depression ect. I tend to be extremely cynical. I have tried all the words and concepts and tricks I can find and nothing makes it any better. I do think there is some intelligence that just wants to cut through all the words. Now I am starting to think that words, when they come from a place of empathy or compassion, actual can make a difference. Shocking!
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” J. Krishnamurti
Dear David ,Sometimes things are so raw in our lives that we can barely hold on to any type of positive outlook. But regardless of this, we have to try. I have a daughter who has been ill and hospitalized with Borderline Personality Disorder for most of the past twelve years. During that time there have been periods where I entered moods so dark and sad that barely any light could penetrate. I felt angry at how unfair it was that my daughter or anyone for that matter had to suffer the way she did. I felt that she had been cruelly adducted by something I couldn’t reason with.
I discovered that there is a blessing in impermanence in that moods as I described are mitigated by change. We can’t thankfully remain in that type of hell without it changing into something else.
If were honest with ourselves then we do the very best we can each day by taking care of ourselves or in learning how to forgive ourselves for our shortcomings. There is a statement in the book Zen Mind Beginners Mind that I have always loved. ” Regardless of what is happening the background is always in perfect harmony” David, like the imprint of a bird in the sky.
If you can take a look at http://www.mentalhelpinfo.org. The Recovery section has some good links.
Thanks Kevin, Yes, there is the rub isn’t it. In the midst of this charnel ground, this samsaric horror show. We must somehow find a way to realize the background, the space, the impermanence. If we have any compassion failure is not an option.
[excerpt from HEDJKR’s commentary on Trakpa Gyaltsen’s Parting from the Four Attachments, Nepal 2009, Talk 8:]
At a basic level, our perception is the only way we have of knowing everything that we think we know about life and reality. Our so-called everyday lives are no more than a continuous flow of perception; that’s all we have to work with. Perception is the process we use to determine our position in relation to everything.
All we practitioners need to do is change our perception, which in turn will change our relation to everything. The process of re-educating our perception requires us to change our mind. Right now, we are used to thinking that what we see is definitely how it is in reality. So we have to re-train our perception and get used to thinking that what we see is definitely not how it is in reality, and learn that our perceptions only appear to us as we misperceive them to be, as sensed through our fog of emotions.
Once again, as Thranghu Ripoche said about a bi-polar friend of mine who was going through a lot of psychic pain.
“She should take her medications, and stay on them. She has suffered enough”.
That was at a group audience at Marpa House in 1993, so there were witnesses to his statement.
I do have to apologize for my bad typing, and impulsiveness when I do type.
Usually if I don’t type at all though, I’ll say nothing.
Mingyur Rinpoche discusses how he dealt with his own anxiety fits through meditation in his books.
We all aren’t perfect.
Rob
Does anyone recall the story that CTR told about how Marpa reacted when finding out his son had fallen off a horse and died. It may have been the Marpa seminar. In any case, Marpa reacted as any father would. He cried and mourned his son. I don’t think that we ever transcend that type of suffering. Or at least I hope we don’t.
I find myself in hellish torment. Perhaps I have fucked up big time and I am heading to vajra hell. I beg the noble sangha, please please please say a mantra or a prayer for me and all who suffer.
David, is there someone you could phone, or go and visit? Human contact can help so much. Just to be with someone, talk to someone in person. My heart goes out to you, I have so been there.
Hi windy,
I practiced with dharma friends and talked last night. I am going to see my father his wife and and old friend today. I am around my wife most of the time. Sometimes being around people helps me forget about myself just a little bit. Most of the time in my mind it’s all about me me me me me me and my suffering, how truly hellish. Why in the hell can’t I let go?
Dear David,
I will re-emphasize how crucial it is to move your meditation practice from your head into your body, especially when this much volatility is present. Surrendering to the earth and allowing it to absorb your angst will help to dissipate its hold on you; you are not separate from the earth and the earth can heal you. Go outside and lie down directly on the ground. NOW.
Again, sincere good luck to you, amigo. You can do it.
Brigid
Hi David,
When I get like that, in my own private hellish torment, I’m usually hating myself, others, and/or ‘the way things are’. I’m refusing to accept any of it, or forgive anyone or anything. It feels like I’m in the midst of a roaring inferno. There is a rigid, harsh, unworkable quality to the torment. There is *judgement* involved..
Relief, and a breath of air in the flames, only come with remembering about gentleness and compassion. Eventually, a moment comes when the core of me is moved to soften, and the flames recede, and I can breathe again, and open up.
Is your torment at all like that..?
windy
hello Brigid, I did go out and lie on the earth. it is freezing cold here so I did not stay for a real long time but i am glad I did it. Thanks
Yes, Windy, my torment is very much like that. I want so much for things to be different and my ego does not get it’s way.
It is probably time for me to post less. I am hogging up a lot of space on the board. Also people are probably tired of hearing me whine. Thanks everyone
Hi, David and all,
Since this cafe table is for those of us interested in the intersection of meditation and depression, I do not see David’s cry for help as whining. I only wish I could reach through this computer and help somehow. My comments below are from my own expereince and not intended as any kind of quick fix: just ways to get the door open a crack and let some air in.
Since no one else has mentioned it, I would add that exercise is vitally important. I come from a long family history of what’s called “anxious depression.” It’s the last thing one wants to do in this state, but getting out and moving the body, vigorously, really does help. My favorite exercise for depression, when I can afford it, is the weight-lifting machines at a gym. Chest presses are especially effective. Maybe they open the heart area, I don’t really know. If you can’t do that, just go for a long, fast walk, and pay attention to sense perceptions. There is a shutdown of the sense perceptions involved in depression and sometimes just placing a lot of atttention to the sense perception can help.
I heard a very interesting interview with Cheri Huber on the Sounds True podcast recently. It’s called “There’s Nothing Wrong with You,” and she talks about how depression, with which she is personally very familiar, is based in self-hatred. She recommends an interesting exercise, too much to enter here. You can get to it from the Sounds True website, “Insights at the Edge” is the name of the podcast.
David. I agree with what Zer-me said about excercise. She is right.. A good cardio- vascular workout like a spin class really seems to burn through some depression. I have found that thirty minutes of strenuous excercise three times a week lifted my spirits considerably.
Hi David. I don’t see your posts as whining at all. Please take good care of yourself and try not to be so hard on yourself.
Sending much love…
I thought of another thing I would like to say both as a reminder to myself and because it might be useful to other sufferers of anxiety/depression. I think it is very important not to lash out and blame others for our suffering. I marvel out how much support I get from the people in my life and now even the people on this board. I think most of my aggression is self-directed. As bad as that is for me personally, it does not seem to offend other people or drive them away much. When you are in a dark place, even a tiny point of light coming in from outside can be a very big deal.
I hope that you find this video link about two dogs having lunch in a diner a nice diversion from our melting planet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwlMVYqMu4
The Blue Sangha is now on Facebook.
Kevin, would you care to elaborate on what you just said about Facebook? I’m looking for work, and I certainly would not want what I have written here to be out where a potential employer could find it.
Hi Zer-Me I am going to open a Face book Blue Sangha. Nothing that has been written to the RFS Blue Sangha will be transferred to the Facebook page. I know that people including myself have said things in confidence and I will not betray that confidence.
The reason I am starting a Blue Sangha on facebook is to open it up to practitioners from other Buddhist traditions or at least that is the plan. The Facebook Blue Sangha will be a clean slate however, there are no guarantees that anyone will join. As for The Blue Sangha on RFS I will continue as long as people want the chat table. I am very grateful that this chat table was given a chance to thrive. Kevin
Hi Zer-Me I am going to open a Face book Blue Sangha. Nothing that has been written to the RFS Blue Sangha will be transferred to the Facebook page. I know that people including myself have said things in confidence and I will not betray that confidence.
The reason I am starting a Blue Sangha on facebook is to open it up to practitioners from other Buddhist traditions or at least that is the plan. The Facebook Blue Sangha will be a clean slate however, there are no guarantees that anyone will join. As for The Blue Sangha on RFS I will continue as long as people want the chat table. I am very grateful that this chat table was given a chance to thrive. Kevin
Hi Zer-Me I am going to open a Face book Blue Sangha. Nothing that has been written to the RFS Blue Sangha will be transferred to the Facebook page. I know that people including myself have said things in confidence and I will not betray that confidence.
The reason I am starting a Blue Sangha on facebook is to open it up to practitioners from other Buddhist traditions or at least that is the plan. The Facebook Blue Sangha will be a clean slate however, there are no guarantees that anyone will join. As for The Blue Sangha on RFS I will continue as long as people want the chat table. I am very grateful that this chat table was given a chance to thrive. Kevin
Oh rats, does this mean I won’t be famous for being batshit crazy?
Seriously though, I hope the page is of benefit like this one is..
Crawling out of hell
Tips for those who suffer from anxiety and depression.
First off, the disclaimers. These tips are not to be construed as medical advice. If you have a problem with acute anxiety or depression see a doctor or a mental health professional. If you take the words of some dude on the internet to be as important as a doctor or a mental health professional then you are some kind of idiot. So don’t sue me. My only expertise is that I have been through hell and somehow managed to live to tell the tale. I do not have a cure. I have gone through anxiety and depression for years, and I will probably do so again. I intend to survive them. At best some people will find these tips helpful some of the time. There is no dogma or gospel truth here. Everything is subject to revision.
1. Drink lots of water. Even if you have to pee every hour, it is good to flush out. If your urine looks so dark and thick that it might crawl away by itself, that is a bad sign.
2. Eat a light simple diet. Rice and corn are good, also almost any fruit or vegetable. Beans are ok too buy don’t overdo it. Eat very little or no meat or dairy products. A lot of people are allergic to wheat and probably don’t realize it. Don’t eat it unless you are sure it does not bother you. The downside of the light diet is that it gives you more energy and can actually make the anxiety worse at least in the short run. Drastic fast changes are rarely good. Many American seem to have a superstition that if they don’t eat a lot of protein everyday they will starve. This is nonsense as far as I can see. Tip2b. If you are an anorexic tip 2 does not apply to you Go eat a bacon double cheeseburger damn it.
3. See a doctor and find out if you have underlying health problems that could be causing the anxiety/depression. Explore your anti-depressant options. Some work well for some people, some don’t. Only you can say what works for you.
4. If you are in an acute crisis a tranquilizer like a zanax or a valium can be a lifesaver. Again see your doctor. I don’t regard these types of drugs as a cure or permanent solution, but they can help to survive to fight another day.
5. Stay the hell away from alcohol and weed. This kind of self-medication might provide some kind of short term relief, but the backlash can be literally deadly. It should go without saying, stay away from hard drugs like coke, meth, and heroin. These things are a ticket to hell.
6. Meditation and prayer can be helpful. Don’t be too ambitious, be gentle with yourself.
7. Try to relax. This is easier said than done but it is still worth trying.
8. Talk to family and friends. Try to be honest about what you are feeling. Denial is not helpful. Try not to lash out and blame others when you are hurting. Everyone needs help and support sometimes. There is no shame in it.
9. Just don’t kill yourself. Suicide is never the answer. If you are honest with yourself you will see it is the suffering you want to end, not your life. If you were to kill yourself how do you know where you will end up? It might be an even worse place. If you have loved ones think of how terrible it would make them feel. Even if you only have hated ones, living well is the best revenge. Get well and happy and rich and show those bastards. Don’t go out like a chump or a loser.
It is my hope that these tips will provide a little relief to someone suffering. If I am in the wrong in my words, I am truly sorry. Many times in my life I have fervently wished to die. I am very glad my body was smarter than the thoughts in my head because I am still here. I can still smile, and like the great Muhammad Ali says, “I am still pretty”
May all being be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
Om mani padme hum
I think I am starting to understand vajra hell. When one’s own mind is filled with fear and anxiety, where is there to escape to? You can’t get rid of your own mind. I can’t escape this horrible suffering and I can’t give in to it. Maybe some Buddha can see through it, but it is all just a myth to me. It is not my experience. Here I am in reasonably good health, well loved by good people, with money in the bank, there is no reason to be in hell, and yet I am. I wish I could tell you all how to avoid this fate but I am not even sure how I got here. If I could see some cause for my fear and anxiety then I could do something about it. It just seems to come endlessly out of nowhere for no reason. Please say a prayer or a mantra for me and all beings who suffer.
May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
Oh, David, I’m so sorry to hear you are suffering this way. I send you the cool, peaceful, spaciousness of the tonglen outbreath, and hope that you can give this to yourself. That spaciousness exists beyond thought and concept.
OM MANI PADME HUM HRIH
Thanks for the kind words Suzanne.
I wish I could see the space in my mind. I seem to be stuck in a kind of negative feedback loop where fear feeds on fear, terror feeds on terror. I seem to be insane. I don’t think I am a threat to myself or others because I have zero interest in violence. I am not even depressed, just very absorbed in overwhelming fear. I am writing because it gives me a slight sense of perspective or relief. Thanks to everyone.
Hi David, I know it doesn’t help a whole lot to say this, but I’m really in the same place as you, and have been for many years now. I could more-or-less have written your words myself. When I look back at my life I see that sometimes I live in the 3rd circle of hell, other times the 7th, other times the 22nd, other times the 89th… That’s really it. I have to go back a long time to remember a point when I was “just” depressed…
(God that sounds horrible, sorry folks.)
And coming back to this thread reminds me that I’d always wanted to thank you for your post of March 31. That was the beginning of an especially dark period which I am still in. But your advice there is great. There are a couple of those I need to follow a lot more than I do–especially number 1 I think…
The only thing I can say is that somewhere in the depths of my experience there is some kind of knowledge of insubstantiality, and also the power of mind. Even though I can rarely contact that power at this point, and even though fear and grief are so strong and I often simply feel condemned, I know that that feeling just doesn’t make any sense from the standpoint of dharma.
I will definitely send prayers and aspirations out to you. Recently the death of a beloved dog that I know got me back to sitting a little for the first time in a very long while. Right before bed. I am trying to keep it up. Managed it for a week, then fell off again. I know it’s good to do, even necessary to do. And I think it even helped my sleep a little (which is a major disaster area). Sitting was impossible for the longest time because it has been associated for many years with the experience of humiliation and condemnation, emanating from my time in SI. Those feelings are still there. I avoided them for the week I sat solely because my focus was on this beautiful, beautiful dog with such a pure heart, who gave so very much to his human companion.
I too send cool spaciousness to you, in the deep wish that things shift for you very soon. Become a little softer, enabling you to contact that ground of peace that all the wisest people from every tradition assure us is there. And I also wish for you some true joy, because we need this too.
All good!
Thanks so much Damcho. Somehow it helps more than you know to hear your words. I know I am not the only one to go through these sort of feelings and it helps to remember that we are all in this together. May the Buddhas bless you for your generosity.
[may i offer this excerpt of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's commentary on Sachen Kunga Nyingpo's Parting from the Four Attachments, Nepal 2009, from Talk One.]
DISCIPLINE IS NOT A BURDEN, SHENPA IS A BURDEN
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Modern-day people are often faced with a tendency to depression, and this is despite having all the latest conveniences. I have concluded that most of our depression comes from a lack of even mundane discipline, never mind religious discipline. We are free to do whatever we like, yet we don’t even know where to begin or how to proceed. But you may find that even a simple discipline like tidying your room each day between 7:30 and 7:45 actually softens your chronic depression…
Near the end of the Uttaratantra, Lord Maitreya stresses that it is vital to hear and read as much as we can in order to gain access to the spiritual path. And furthermore, if we are serious followers of dharma, merely hearing and reading are not enough; we have to contemplate. And by contemplate I mean we have to determine whether this path is a suitable one, and whether we are able to follow it. We have to ask does this path make logical sense, or is it all just a big misunderstanding. Just because the Buddha supposedly said so, we cannot simply trust that what we hear is the truth. We have to analyse for ourselves if this path of dharma applies to us, and so contemplation is a must.
Suppose we have an hour to practise: the first fifteen minutes, we should listen to or read dharma; for the next fifteen minutes, we should contemplate, since hearing and contemplation deserve equal time; and for the last thirty minutes, we should practise meditation. If you are serious about following the path of dharma, you have to meditate. To hear and contemplate but not meditate is like reading the menu over and over but never ordering; what is the point? You must meditate. And what is meditation? Meditation is remaining completely and one-pointedly with our sure confidence in the dharma, which we gain from hearing and contemplation. More about that later.
Thanks for the good teachings John. I can see that discipline is a key point for me. Trungpa Rinpoche named me Discipline Banner. So I think he saw my problem is that area. I have managed to overindulge in just about every way possible. Reading might be helpful because I have become extremely cynical. I have lost my religion so to speak. I tend to think that belief is a disaster. But that is a belief in itself. It’s hard for me to see that sometimes belief is useful.
From the point of view of myself, an unenlightened sentient being. Fear is the most powerful force in the universe. Relative fear, that is to say fear with a know cause, is not so bad. If a bear is chasing you in the woods, you can choose fight or flight. You could even choose to hold still and hope the bear goes away. The bear might be terrifying but in 15 minutes you probably will have escaped or the bear will have killed you. There is some kind of end or resolution to it. When you are trying to escape the bear you will not doubt your own sanity. You may fear the loss of your life, but that would seem like a pretty sane response to the situation. A much worse kind of fear is the fear of your own mind. You could try to fight the fear but if there is no apparent cause, you are fighting a ghost, fighting empty space, there is no hope to win. You could try to escape, but how can you escape your own mind? Wherever you go, there you are. Trungpa Rinpoche was so right, many warnings must be given. Better not to begin….ect. Once the path is begun there are only two choices enlightenment or vajra hell. Enlightenment seems like some far away myth to me. Vara hell seems quite real and immediate.At this point I am not sure if I am eternally damned but at the moment I can’t picture a place any worse than where I am. Maybe I am a cautionary tale. I entered the path with arrogance and ambition and now I am paying a horrible price. Don’t be like me. Anyone who isn’t in hell should feel very fortunate and grateful. Be gentle with yourself and not too ambitious.
May all beings be free of suffering.
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Deus Ex Machina
Your so-called hell
Is mind’s creation
What else can it be
It has to come from
Somewhere first
Mind torments us
With scenes of fire
But where else does
The fire come from
But from our mind
Mind turns us into
A nervous wreck
Scared to be struck
By the blow that
Comes from above
Mind smites itself
In life as a hedge
Bribing the saviour
Of the obsequious
To bestow mercy
Dear David,
A friend just posted the following on Facebook and I immediately thought of you and what possibly seems to be your condition of being an involuntary empath:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~ Krishnamurti
May you find peace in any way you can. I find Byron Katie’s The Work to be very helpful for on the spot dismantling of thoughts or feelings caused by thoughts.
Love, Brigid
I would like to share this link about Depression and a student of Zen.
http://www.beliefnet.com/Health/2000/09/Suffering-Zen.aspx?p=1