The Buddhist Path as Therapy

Amber Larson and Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Thanissaro, "Healing Power of the Precepts" (Noble Strategy); Mary Loftus (Psychology Today, Sept. 5, 2013); Sunny

Fairness or martyrdom? When virtue becomes a vice (Jeff Riedel/psychologytoday.com)

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Virtue becomes a vice? (PT)

The Buddha was a kind of doctor [referred to in some sutras as a "master physician"], treating the spiritual ills of living beings [human and devas, also referred to as "the teacher of gods and humans].

The path of practice he taught was like a course of therapy for suffering (disappointed) hearts and minds. This way of understanding the Buddha and his teachings or Dharma dates back to the earliest texts, and yet it is also very current.

Buddhist meditation practice is often advertised as a form of healing, and quite a few psychotherapists now recommend that their patients try (mindfulness based) meditation as part of their treatment.

 

After several years of teaching and practicing meditation as "therapy," however, many of us have found that meditation on its own is not enough.

Psycho Mike (Suicidal T.)

In my own experience as a Western monk and abbot of Wat Forest Monastery in California (Thai Theravada), I have found that Western meditators tend to be afflicted more with a certain grimness and lack of self-esteem than any Asians I have ever taught.

Our psyches are so wounded by modern civilization that we tend to lack the resilience and persistence needed before concentration (serenity) and insight practices can be genuinely therapeutic.

 

Other teachers have noted this problem as well and, as a result, many of them have decided that the Buddhist path is insufficient for our particular needs. To make up for this insufficiency they have experimented with ways of supplementing meditation practice, combining it with such things as myth, poetry, psychotherapy, social activism, sweat lodges, mourning rituals, and even drumming.

The Buddha's full course

The problem, though, may not be that there is anything lacking in the Buddhist path, but that we simply haven't been following the Buddha's full course of therapy.

 

The Buddha's path consists not only of mindfulness, concentration, and insight practices, but also of virtue (sila), beginning with the Five Precepts. In fact, the precepts constitute the first and most basic step on the Buddhist path.
 

Balance? (Jeff Riedel/PT)

There is a tendency in the West to dismiss the Five Precepts as Sunday-school rules bound to old cultural norms that no longer apply to our modern society. But this misses the role the Buddha intended for them: They are part of a course of therapy for wounded minds/hearts. In particular, they are aimed at curing two ailments that underlie low self-esteem, regret and denial.

 

When our actions do not measure up to certain standards of behavior, we either regret the actions or, worse, engage in one of two kinds of denial -- either denying that our actions did in fact happen or denying that the standards of measurement are actually valid. These reactions are like wounds in the mind... More

(Sunny and the Sunliners) Self-esteem low? Depressed after a bad relationship? "It's Okay," says Sunny. "Ha, ha, ha/ It's all right/ I've been hurt before/ It's all right/ You don't love me anymore/ Maybe someday/ I'll find a way without you/ Ha, ha, ha/ Who am I kidding?/ It's okay/ Baby, I can see/ It's okay/ But, but would it make you happy?/ Maybe someday/ I'll find a way without you./Ha, ha, ha/ Someday, it won't be long/ You're gonna find yourself all alone/ It's okay/ Baby, I can say see/ It's okay/ I will set you free..."

Climate chaos: Forest fire rages in Los Angeles

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The Colby Fire is raging in the deep foothill suburbs of Los Angeles and moving west due to wind gusts and the state's continuing drought.

Temperatures are in the eighties, humidity is at 10%, and the chemtrails -- which seem to be more about geoengineering and toxic weather modification attempts lately, more so than spreading heavy metals and aiding HAARP experiments. Right wing AM radio has been laughing heartily at the misnomer "global warming" due to the polar vortex and dropping temperatures across the country, even the very chilly nights in California. But climate change is general and punctuated not a simple linear increase in across the board measures. All temperatures do not rise everywhere to call it warming.

Such simpleton logic and climate-denier misinformation is alarming. Increases in rain and flooding in one place means drought and fire in another. Hurricanes and cyclones spinning out of control is not a harbinger of a new ice age. Our declining snowpack shows movement in the other direction.

• Glendora police have taken three people into custody in connection with a 1,700-acre brush fire that ignited in the Angeles National Forest north of Glendora early Thursday, [bur]ning homes and prompting mandatory evacuations. More

Glendora castle burns (sgvtribune.com)

And geoengineering (cloud seeding, aerosol chemical cloud/haze cover, squeezing more rain out of weather systems, redirecting hurricane paths with atmospheric agitators...) does not correct what human activity is disrupting. Their are natural cycles, and there are exacerbated cycles. Human doings are aggravating the problem. The result?

Monsoon patterns are changing; forest and freeze zones are retreating north; seas are acidifying; poles are melting (in general as seen over time); coral is dissolving; toxic fuels are leaving their mark; and corporations are raking in record profits. 

No one can successfully deny that the climate is generally worse -- hotter, colder, wetter, drier, and more chaotic. Look at the places it used to snow, used to rain predictably, used to cool, used to remain above water.

• PHOTOS: Firefighters try to protect the main house as a fire burns a section of Singer Mansion on Kregmont Drive in Glendora (Los Angeles Times/Irfan Khan)

The central question is, Why? Even if all the planets in the solar system are growing warmer, our human-created pollution, our annihilation of ecosystems, our monocropping, our allowing of endless military-industrial complex war and crushing poverty, all of which exhausts natural resources, is contributing. 

What FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, and similar ideologues are doing is unconscionable.

Why would rightwingers, such as Tea Party racists and Tea Party egalitarians (are there many?), help the Koch Brothers, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council, the source of most actual conspiracies affecting the US and the world), Chevron, BP, and transnational corporations continue to ruin the planet while denying that something is terribly wrong? Sea levels are rising. Fukushima and nuclear sites on the East Coast of the US are contaminating. And Republicans, with plenty of help from their brothers the nominal Democrats, are colluding.

Meanwhile in nearby HOLLYWOOD-Land...

The West's version of Bollywood (the world's largest producer of movies, located in Mumbai/Bombay, India) does not stop even when the hills are on fire, the skies are choked with smoke, and a second coming of a post Ariel Sharon messiah is ready to launch (or be launched by the NSA, Mossad, and similar spying agencies around the world). Nominations were announced and it is looking very good for "12 Years a Slave," based on the true story of the American slave trade, and Amy Adams in "American Hustle," based on the true story of Abscam. "Gravity"? Bullocks. And better luck next time, Tom Hanks. See all the nominees: Oscar.go.com