Ancient wisdom survived for a very good reason. Will you use it?
Published in Orient Yourself
Jan 16 (Medium.com)
Did you know the entire foundation of Freud’s work has been called ‘pseudoscientific’ by critics?
He wasn’t studying the norm of human psychology. He studied neurotics and sexually repressed beatniks on the fringes of society — figuring out all the reasons why our minds go downhill.
So if, from its very inception, Western psychology’s study of mental health has been all about its negative axis, can it show us how to find the (permanently) positive?
Not a chance.
So upgrade your toolkit, quickly
The term mental health is thrown around without any real acknowledgement of the etymological implications of phrasing it the same way as physical health.
Just like the body and its various systems, your mind has inputs and processes, too.
Except these encompass much more: worldview, habits, and cultural beliefs, in addition to the nervous system.
The Dalai Lama once remarked that a mental affliction is anything that disturbs the balance of the mind.
By that definition, Western Civilization is practically a gigantic insane asylum that actively encourages affliction in the form of big box shopping, horror movies, trauma-pornographic news stories, and outrage activism.
But that’s precisely why the technique to come out of this madness is so radically simple.
Test yourself with this
Eastern and Western paradigms of psychology differ, but there is one thing that is just common sense, across cultures and civilizations.
People who can keep their cool are always considered more mature than those quick to ignite the flames of passion.
It’s epitomized most succinctly in the following verse from one of the most popular Hindu philosophical texts, the Yoga Vasishta:
To be unperturbed is the foundation of blessedness (sri). One attains liberation by it.
To human beings even the conquest of the three worlds, without the conquest of the mind, is as insignificant as a blade of grass!
In Indic cultures, the honorific sri often precedes the names of great leaders or spiritual teachers, but the word itself means abundance.
The greatest prosperity and highest achievement in a Dharmic civilization is the eradication of mental perturbances and the ability to function in a world full of them without being imbalanced and possessed by their pull.
This is the great tragedy of the modern world
Despite all the rapid influx of Eastern philosophical ideas like mindfulness, have we actually managed to integrate East and West?
We’re barely able to acknowledge our cultural and psycho-philosophical poverty, in comparison to Asia!
If Western psychology had started seriously studying living Buddhas, accomplished yogis, and Olympic-level meditators sooner, it might have come to the conclusion that there is a profound level of freedom from afflictions that should be the point and purpose of psychology in the first place.
Thankfully, the tools to get there are now more accessible than ever, and it’s never too early to start.
This technique is precisely what the West needs
Your inner imperturbability is the litmus test. Not only for how you function in outer life, but how effective your inner one is (with all its so-called meditation practice).
- If you get easily disturbed by outer and inner events that pop up, practice slowing, steadying, and stilling your mind until you regain control over your reactions.
Developing resilience to affliction is all about remaining balanced in the face of it.
The practice calm-establishing meditation is the most common prerequisite of all higher Buddhist practices; it’s even been said that without this trait fully established, we don’t even have minds. Our minds have us.
This message is echoed in the Yoga Sutras, which say the ability to fix your mind on one object (most commonly the breath, a mental image, or the mind and the appearances that arise within it) should be the method for overcoming afflictions.
It’s so simple
We place the object, and detach from our tendencies to get caught up in anything else.
We detach even from our willpower’s tendency to get itself hijacked/caught up in something else. “You” are now a calm, instantly self-correcting, laxed but bright witnessing awareness.
The profound difficulty of this dawns when you realize how deeply we’re conditioned into doing the opposite: of humoring the afflictive tendencies.
Distraction, lethargy, sensual desire, rumination, and aversion multiple whenever we are mindless enough to let them.
Yet this too can be overcome merely with continued practice, which provides a powerful new conditioning!
If you’re keen on learning more about specific meditations from a well-reputed scholar, the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies has some free recordings of guided meditations that have profoundly helped me.
Mental health isn’t about mental illness
It’s about developing resilience to it.
Thinking of my mental health as a spectrum was the easiest way for me to begin recovering from chronic dysthymia and social anxiety.
If insanity and illness are at the bottom, then the opposite end isn’t health and stability.
It’s enlightenment, or total freedom from the afflictions in the first place!
This is something worth striving for, no matter where you are along the path. And the first step to that freedom?
The smaller freedom of simply being able to sit for 20 minutes at a time, observing a point of focus, and releasing the mind’s obsession with distraction.
Before long, you’ll know exactly what it means to be resilient.
Written by Rami Dhanoa
·Editor for Orient Yourself
Re-thinking human potential with meditation & Indic philosophy.