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..."

Japan: Land of the Disappearing Buddha (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; World Geographic Channel

(The Long Search) "The Land of the Disappearing Buddha"

Brain zaps trigger lucid dreams (science)

Bahar Gholipour (LiveScience.com, May 11, 2014); Amber Larson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

What is a dream but an astral journey to Wyrd? (dreamingdog.multipy.com)

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Dream Dancer (Josephine Wall)

Lucid dreams, in which people are aware of and can control their dreams, are rare.

 

But now scientists have found they can induce this [magical] state of mind in people by zapping their brains with a specific frequency of electricity.

 

"I never thought this would work," said study researcher Dr. John Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard University. "But it looks like it does."

 

The Monroe Institute: Explore consciousness

 

The results showed that when the inexperienced dreamers were zapped with a current of 40 Hertz, 77 percent of the time these participants reported having what were described as lucid dreams.

"They were really excited," said study researcher Ursula Voss, of J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt, who designed the experiments. "The dream reports were short, but long enough for them to report, 'Wow, all of the sudden I knew this was a dream, while I was dreaming.'

 

Dream waves

(Bruce Rolff/shutterstock/livescience.com)

A lucid dream can be thought of as an overlap between two states of consciousness -- the one that exists in normal dreaming, and the one during wakefulness, which involves higher levels of awareness and control.

 

"If I'm aware, if I'm self-reflective, if I'm thinking about myself, about my past and future, that's normally a waking function," Voss said.

In lucid dreaming, we transfer elements of waking consciousness into the dream, she said.

 

Such overlap is also reflected in the brain waves that researchers can detect using electroencephalography, or EEG... More

 

"Waking Life"

(Waking Life) Dreaming on purpose and with a conscious objective (by Richard Linklater)

• 7 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams
• PHOTOS: The horror of prison-guard rapists
• Himalayas: The story of "the Roof of the World" 
• Police are dying in Los Angeles, LAPD confused 
• Paying a lot for specialty drugs? Big Pharma :)
• How young is too young to be suspended from school?
• Science: Life got better after "Black Death" (well, it couldn't have gotten much worse. Hooray for Nixon's Nat'l "Security" Advisor Henry Kissinger and other Nixon-era Globalists who want to decimate the human population!)
• Sun's glint wakes up world's deepest lake (Baikal)
• BOOM! Underwater explorer implodes six miles down 
• Will American Empire collapse like all others before it?
• Nagas in the News: "Pinocchio-Rex," cousin of T. Rex
• Exhibitionist Justin Bieber spotted topless, and almost bare back in L.A.'s Griffith Park!

Peruvian Buddhism, oldest in South America

Ashley Wells, Xochitl, Wisdom Quarterly; Annie Murphy, The World (PRI.org/BBC)

Peru is a land of ancient mysteries and Japanese Zen immigrants (apoturperu.org)

 

Buddhist meditation in Peru (pri.org)

A small group of people from the Japanese community recently gathered at the temple in Lima to chant and make offerings to their deceased relatives.

On the altar were plates of sandwiches and cakes, even a bag of Lay’s potato chips.
 
One of the unintended consequences of Peru’s booming economy is that life in the capital is becoming more stressful. Lima is covered in construction sites, competition for the best jobs, and housing is brutal, and traffic is horrendous. Still, people there are finding creative ways to relax in the midst of all that. Some of them are turning to Buddhist meditation.

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In 1903, Zen Buddhism arrived (SZ)

The oldest Buddhist temple in South America is just outside Lima, in a town called Cañete. It’s one large room with tile floors that feel cool under bare feet. The enormous altar is filled with incense, flowers, and small wooden statues that represent members of Japanese families that started migrating here in the early 1900s. Some families have also chosen to leave actual remains, in urns wrapped in knotted bundles of white cotton.

“Those urns contain remains of the first immigrants who came to Peru,” says Carmen Toledo, the temple caretaker, pointing to a few urns on the highest shelf.

She tells me that after Brazil, Peru has the second largest Japanese population outside of Japan. They hung onto a lot of traditions, Toledo says, building this temple and also incorporating Japanese food into Peruvian cuisine. More

Two suicide bombings kill at least 31 people in Volgograd

• Buddhism came to America 1,000 years ago, research reveals: How the Swans Came to the Lake
• Buddhist temple in Peru custodian of waning custom
• 110th anniversary of Soto Zen in South America 
• The first Buddhist missionaries in Peru
• Why Peruvians lock public streets, pay to use public parks 
• Dodging Molotov cocktails to protect Peru's ancient sites
• Peru: Book writing as spectator sport, writer combat
• Ballerina turns at-risk kids in Peru into pro dancers
• New interest in Mormonmission around the world 
• Theosophy: Peru "A Land of Mystery" Mdme. Blavatsky
  There, all along the coast of Peru, all over the Isthmus and North America, in the... as to the splendour of the temples, palaces, and cities of Mexico and Peru,.... modern ruins, and the images of Buddha and of some deities [devas], not to mention our.... existence of the largest and most ancient forests growing on the buried cities.

Buddhism arrived very early