Emotions, neurosis and the path

However with neurotic conditions like depression and anxiety disorders things are much more slippery. All I can say is i've dealt with both these things since I've been young and buddhist meditation has proven just as if not more helpful than therapy (limited use) and medication (didn't seem to do anything except space me out a little.)
This can all get very complicated and I can completely understand its going to be a minority interest for people on these boards.

Chris and Jackson thanks for sharing your therapy experiences, I think something this thread has made clear to me is I've been probably been engaging in an inappropriate form of therapy for my needs. Where I live CBT is massively dominant orthodoxy and pushed by the government, probably because its quick and cheap, I like the sound of humanistic/existential schools it sounds like something to look into.

Chris - I did hesitate to write 'transcending the self' its probably not the best representation of buddhist teaching, just clumsily trying to establish the line past which western pyschology has traditionally not seen fit to cross. Things are slowly changing and I predict the lines will increasingly blur in the next 10 -20 years.

"The truth is that life is not always neatly organized into separate categories. My contention is that it would be wise to avoid the extremes of either (1) treating Eastern and Western paths/therapies as treating the exact same issues, or (2) treating them as though they treat completely separate issues. Removing that conceptual blockage, I think, will be more beneficial for all - client, therapist, and yogi alike."
Amen to that!

Nic, can you tell me more about how your meditation practice helps more with anxiety and depression disorders? Why do you think that is?

Thanks!

Hi Chris, well I'll certainly have a go at explaining.
Well the first thing is I think meditation has been more directly helpful for anxiety than depression but since a large part of my depression is based on the limitations anxiety imposes on my life and happiness, they are very interlinked.
Well I first came to meditation having done a fair bit of CBT so I was aware at least intellectually my thoughts and emotions were not 'me' , still I very much felt that they were. I was more or less completely identified with them, so when a situation that made me anxious (like simply being at work and interacting with people) I was that fear, being anxious was me, my self, a part of my identity that I didn't want but couldn't get rid of.

I started doing samatha meditation at my local buddhist, and learning about mindfulness, we did some mindful walking, cleaning but mostly sitting meditation following the breath. When you are more or less continually in some state of stress/anxiety just having that experience of being calm and relaxed is pretty damn helpful in itself, just to balance things out a bit. Also it opened up the possibility that there was a different way of being than my usual state if I could integrate that calmness somehow into my life. My teacher was good at suggesting how I could try to insert mindfulness into my daily life and that also helped somewhat when I remembered to do it.

Then after meditating for a while there was a point where I realised 'hey wait a minute I'm not by thoughts' on an intuitive level rather than just intellectually. It seems pretty obvious now but I can still remember how it felt like a revelation. Combined with 'i'm not my emotions' and 'i'm not my body' it offered a kind of space between 'me' and 'my issues' so I could start to disidentify with the thoughts and patterns of behavoir. This is kind of hard to explain but that breathing space seems absolutely vital in making any real kind of change. More options and possibilities become open when you are not completely and ridgidly identified with your so called personality.
Since I've started doing insight meditation (though I was arguably practicing it before without realising it) this process of disidentification has continued and anxiety is becoming less and less of an issue. I mentioned Pema Chodron in my initial post, and reading her books and using that tibetan method of working with your difficulties also really helped me in dealing with difficult emotions. Very simply it is about radical acceptance of feelings such as fear, rather than fighting with them, and having the courage to act whether you feel like dong something or not. 'Feel the fear and do it anyway' - there are parallels with behavoir therapy here.

So thats it really, I am much improved I can go into work now and not feel at all stressed or anxious most days, lots of things are easier yet there are still other things to work on, strangely the depression seems harder to shift even with anxiety lifting, its taken on a life of its own.

I hope that explains why I'm poking around buddhism looking for more answers

" This is kind of hard to explain but that breathing space seems absolutely vital in making any real kind of change. More options and possibilities become open when you are not completely and ridgidly identified with your so called personality."

That's what I was hoping you would say, or something close to it. Perfect that it comes from someone who knows, and from experience. Gold. Pure gold.

Thanks!

Hi Nic_M,

I've had the same experience of finding my mental state/mood beneficially impacted by meditation.

It's kind of complicated. In fact, any kind of chronic discomfort imposes a kind of rigor and discipline on the person who has to live with it. If, eventually, the person decides to make a concerted effort to get on top of the thing once and for all, then I believe a somewhat 'vipassana-cized' kind of process can be the result.

I've had this happen with myself to an extent. And I've seen it happen for at least one other person. Where the person is trying to gain an enhanced perspective or consciousness on some aspect of their experience, and as a result of making this effort over time, some of the benefits that we associate with formal meditation seem to occur.

I hope this is not too much of a tangent.

To me, a primary distinction between therapy and vipassana is that between content and form. The whole prajna enterprise.

A few months ago, I started to summarize it like this:

sila is about managing karma
samadhi is about coping with karma
prajna is about seeing through karma

I guess I'm saying that karma is a unifying theme (for me) in the Buddhist worldview.

I like that Nigel... thanks

"
'... being anxious was me, my self, a part of my identity that I didn't want but couldn't get rid of. .... When you are more or less continually in some state of stress/anxiety just having that experience of being calm and relaxed is pretty damn helpful in itself ..." "Well the first thing is I think meditation has been more directly helpful for anxiety than depression but since a large part of my depression is based on the limitations anxiety imposes on my life and happiness, they are very interlinked. " "Then after meditating for a while there was a point where I realised 'hey wait a minute I'm not by thoughts' on an intuitive level rather than just intellectually. It seems pretty obvious now but I can still remember how it felt like a revelation. Combined with 'i'm not my emotions' and 'i'm not my body' it offered a kind of space between 'me' and 'my issues' so I could start to disidentify with the thoughts and patterns of behavior" .. "So thats it really, I am much improved I can go into work now and not feel at all stressed or anxious most days, lots of things are easier yet there are still other things to work on" ... "I hope that explains why I'm poking around buddhism looking for more answers "
"

I can second Nic_M on all this. I remember trying strategies to gid rid of crippling anxiety, all unsuccessfully. Then when I actually started trying to meditate (rather than just reading about it and believing in it), I expected to develop the power of mind to control or transform anxiety by will. Obviously that didn't work. Then I figured if you actually sat in meditation for 10 days or 2 weeks with famous vipassana teachers you'd surely come out the other end with a cure for anxiety.

Fortunately in a setting where Jack Kornfield is patiently explaining and demonstrating theory and practices the unheard of might get through: allowing, opening to and investigating the enemy experience. Not sure how anything else could help anxiety more than that. Practicing for hours in meditation with opening through a lifetime of resistance to something painful - like humiliating, limiting anxiety - one finds a new way with it and gradually gains confidence to experiment with it in life situations. Slowly one's life can loosen up.

Then one can start to notice how all kinds of rationalizations, attitudes, beliefs, strategies and compulsions all come from trying to avoid the simplicity of allowing something. You start to see the "second injury" principle. The original fear and discomfort is nowhere near as messy as all the ancillary compensatory damage. Life and self can calm down and get simpler. It might be too hard to relax about the self-center when you feel hyper-mobilized by survival anxiety. But once meditation helps you work through the "emotional issues", maybe the same process can keep taking you along the continuum into the insight range of things? Seems that way to me. I never had enough insurance to go to a therapist (until this week!), but I'm not sure they would have done better than samatha-vipassana, even if approached from a pre-1st nana understanding.

Actually the combination likely would have been better or faster. Just found out that my insurance now lets me see an experienced therapist, recommended by friends, who I believe is also an advanced yogi (decades of zen, vipassana and vajrayana retreats and practice). I asked if we can start with cognitive-behavioral-emotional obstacles to my mindfulness and meditation practice. Just in the first session she helped me to glimpse some fear-based withdrawal patterns I wasn't yet conscious of. On the other hand I had a really good meditation that morning and we were able to look at things from that space rather than just spinning ideas.

"
I've had the same experience of finding my mental state/mood beneficially impacted by meditation.

It's kind of complicated. In fact, any kind of chronic discomfort imposes a kind of rigor and discipline on the person who has to live with it. If, eventually, the person decides to make a concerted effort to get on top of the thing once and for all, then I believe a somewhat 'vipassana-cized' kind of process can be the result.

"

Hi Nigel, I think there is something to this, although I wouldn't recommend it as a path, if a person is facing difficulties it can act as a massive motivation to get to the truth of things once and for all.

"...allowing, opening to and investigating the enemy experience. Not sure how anything else could help anxiety more than that. Practicing for hours in meditation with opening through a lifetime of resistance to something painful - like humiliating, limiting anxiety - one finds a new way with it and gradually gains confidence to experiment with it in life situations. Slowly one's life can loosen up.

Then one can start to notice how all kinds of rationalizations, attitudes, beliefs, strategies and compulsions all come from trying to avoid the simplicity of allowing something. You start to see the "second injury" principle. The original fear and discomfort is nowhere near as messy as all the ancillary compensatory damage. Life and self can calm down and get simpler. It might be too hard to relax about the self-center when you feel hyper-mobilized by survival anxiety. But once meditation helps you work through the "emotional issues", maybe the same process can keep taking you along the continuum into the insight range of things? "

mpavoreal,

Thanks for opening up, I can relate to everything you say here. I'm glad to find other people have had similar experiences with meditation and insight. I hope one day western pschology can find effective ways to expand these benefits to a far wider range of people.

Your new therapist sounds very cool, btw, I'm a little bit jealous.

For example, when anxiety comes up (which it often does for me), to turn to that anxiety and accept it mindfully, with the attitude that this is a conscious link in the mostly unconscious chain of mental events that points to what is causing the anxiety to arise. Or to put it another way, to meet the problem when it arises with mindful attention and listen to it, with the understanding that it is trying to tell me something. Which I can kind of see now, after writing this up, is basically an extension of the therapeutic practice I underwent. Strange... Also, very similar to mpavoreal's comments on Jack Kornfield: "allowing, opening to and investigating the enemy experience."

Of course, a regular practice of daily meditation along with ongoing mindfulness throughout the day will make it much easier to meet these moments with the right openness, focus, and attitude of listening.

I find that when I can manage to do this in the moment, I experience a sort of "zap", kind of like an electrical shock, and the feeling of resistance fading away. I don't usually have any kind of insight after that, it's very much a body/energy phenomenon for me. But there is usually a feeling of restfulness. I'll also add that it doesn't mean that same problem doesn't come up again a little while later. And again, and again. Though perhaps a little weaker.

I think it was Chogyam Trungpa who translated "dukkha" as "stress" (though don't hold me to that). And my attitude toward dukkha is that it's happening for a reason, it's our mind trying to point something out to us that we're simply not willing to look at.

I've also got some experience in therapy, though I was in therapy before I ever started a regular meditation practice. In fact, I picked up meditation as a response to feeling that I was "done" with the therapy, but still wanting to work on discovering myself. The therapy itself was a basic sort of question and response dialogue, with the therapist pointing me towards things I seemed to be avoiding.

However, my experience with therapy has lead to me somewhat question the idea of meditation not applicable to our "stuff". This seems to be a good thread to seek some clarification on the ways I look at these things, hopefully to everyone's benefit.
Though I understand (and have regularly experienced) how much time on the cushion can be wasted philosophizing and analyzing my thoughts rather than identifying and disembodying from them, there's still the fact that most psychological problems are both chronic and caused by something going on outside of our conscious awareness.

(just to clarify, by "problems" I mean "something that is bothering us", not "something that is wrong with us")

One possible definition of meditation is seeing what's going on in the present moment, inhabiting and growing our perceptive. Since whatever is bothering us is a chronic mental event, and since its cause is present but not within our conscious awareness, it would seem that adopting a meditative mindset when such problems arise would lead to a quicker confrontation and release of whatever is causing the problem.

(cont)

My questions are, is this over thinking the issue? Is trying to trace the problem back to its source by opening to what lies beyond it an example of holding on, when letting go would be better?

I also recognize and have experienced a danger in this, of trying to seek out problems experiences and "do battle" with them, which is the opposite of a non-manipulation of experience. But on the other hand, if this is used as a tool to confront the experience when it arises (in daily life or in a moment dedicated to only meditation) it could perhaps prove beneficial.

Wow, yeah. Good question. My version of dukkha (suffering) is that there is something about the way our mind connects to the world that is just not satisfactory and that leads to a generalized malaise. I always felt there was something that was just "off," even from the time I was very young. To me dukkha is not about emotions. It's about the difference between what we expect and what we actually get as we go about our business from moment to moment. If what I expect is never quite what I get then that's what causes dukkha. This sense is not processed out in front of us until we really dig into it using meditative technologies and investigation. Maybe that's why you sense it as being part of an unconscious chain of events, Ian. It's not that we can't experience all the steps. It's that we normally just don't because they happen very, very fast and we ignore the processing of them from the developed habits of a lifetime.

If we can bring expectation and experience more into alignment through practice then the sense that our experience (what we get) is "off" is lessened, maybe even eliminated. So we don't need to get rid of anything but rather just know what's really going on and be able to let it be what it is.

Just my own little theory.

Hi Ian,

You bring up some good points. I don't know if Trungpa translated dukkha as "stress", but I know that Thanissaro Bhikkhu uses "stress" in place of dukkha in his sutta translations. Whereas I feel that dukkha is stressful, I don't think translating the word dukkha is all that helpful. It's better left untranslated, much like the word "jhana". I like to think of dukkha as the experience of being stuck in the movements of mind (ego), which is inherently painful. Waking up out of this perspective is such a relief! - even if only temporarily.

To answer your questions directly: "is this over thinking the issue? Is trying to trace the problem back to its source by opening to what lies beyond it an example of holding on, when letting go would be better?" As usual, the answer is "it depends".

I don't see any danger in approaching meditation practice in the way you described, at least not at first. It's good to spend some time clearing out the junk that is keeping you from being able to remain some stability of mind (concentration). After some time, the junk shouldn't get in the way of being able to concentrate. If you can concentrate, you can drop the junk and stick to insight practice for some amount of time each day. If you want to make time to work on psychological stuff, that's OK too. I see no reason why you can't make time for both.

~Jackson

Thanks for the explanation Chris, I like this a lot. If dukkha is not about emotions, that means in order to transcend dukkha, we don't have to worry about getting rid of problematic emotions. More properly, we have to learn to interpret and integrate our expectations about them correctly, as things actually are (which would do a lot toward alleviating them anyway, I would guess)

I can appreciate that what appears unconscious to me is likely just happening too fast for me to pick up on. I guess my question is how the psychological concepts of repression and the sub/unconscious fit in here, if at all.

Though maybe unconscious/repressed isn't the right word for it, actually. I guess I more mean the parts of our psyche that we not only do not see (cause they're going too fast) but that we also actively don't WANT to see (cause we don't like what we EXPECT is in them). I would imagine they're large sources of both dukkha and negative emotions, but as experiential phenomenon, we should be able to disembed from them, if we can overcome the desire to avoid them.

Anyway, would love to stick around and keep talking, but I am leaving the office now, off to pick up groceries. Be back tomorrow.

And just to share, my favorite definition of dukkha ever is actually from wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha

Both the "meaning" and "entymology" sections make me smile. : )

I see Jackson snuck in while I was typing. Perhaps it is Thanissaro Bhikku I am thinking of. And I like that, a middle path between clearing out the junk and stabilizing the mind, both important. Though I would also ask, having dropped the junk once concentration is stabilized, does it ever get picked up again, or only in so far as it gets in the way of practice?

As mumuwu says above, psychology could be considered a kind of sila practice. Though sila is never "finished", that never ending battle does still seem to be a worthwhile one, assuming insight is continued apace.

" Though I would also ask, having dropped the junk once concentration is stabilized, does it ever get picked up again, or only in so far as it gets in the way of practice?

"

So from this I naturally ask: what is a distraction?
If by concentration we mean a sort of 3rd Gear concentration, that is, discovering the innate stability and clarity of awareness, then there are no categories of phenomena that are intrinsically distracting, including "junk". Once we discover this natural stabiltiy and clarity that is always already the nature of simple awareness here and now, then we can extend the number of cases it includes (beyond the sensory/body feeling) by allowing mental-emotional movements back into the "picture" of our practice. We can notice that they don't add or subtract from natural awareness. Even disturbing emotional states can be directly seen to be harmless to this innate stability.

Yes, that's right. If it hasn't been made abundantly clear yet then let me say it as bluntly as I can -- emotions are not the problem. How you react to them, whether it be to run from them or to try to hug them too tightly (aversion and clinging), that is the problem. Emotions are like any object (chairs, beach balls, thoughts). They just are. It's your relationship to these things that is problematic, or not. Not knowing just what emotions are (objects) causes that over-reactivity to them. Our flawed relationship to objects -- that's the difference between what we expect and what we get

"So from this I naturally ask: what is a distraction?
If by concentration we mean a sort of 3rd Gear concentration, that is, discovering the innate stability and clarity of awareness, then there are no categories of phenomena that are intrinsically distracting, including "junk". Once we discover this natural stabiltiy and clarity that is always already the nature of simple awareness here and now, then we can extend the number of cases it includes (beyond the sensory/body feeling) by allowing mental-emotional movements back into the "picture" of our practice. We can notice that they don't add or subtract from natural awareness. Even disturbing emotional states can be directly seen to be harmless to this innate stability."-jhsaintonge

Lovely! Thank you, Jake.

"[E]motions are not the problem. How you react to them, whether it be to run from them or to try to hug them too tightly (aversion and clinging), that is the problem. Emotions are like any object (chairs, beach balls, thoughts). They just are. It's your relationship to these things that is problematic, or not. Not knowing just what emotions are (objects) causes that over-reactivity to them. Our flawed relationship to objects -- that's the difference between what we expect and what we get "-cmarti

Yes! Thank you, Chris.

And thank you, Ian, for being willing to engage and ask important questions.

Thanks Chris and Jake for the explanations. So just to sum up:

Jake, so from a 3rd Gear perspective, the goal, so to speak, is settling into that innate stability, which helps us to see the "disturbing" emotions as inherently harmless in themselves.

And Chris, the more we come to know emotions as-they-are, aligning our expectations to the reality of those emotions, they less we over-react. And the less we over-react, the more the "disturbing" emotions are seen to be just "emotions".

Sounds good to me, thanks guys! : )

"

Jake, so from a 3rd Gear perspective, the goal, so to speak, is settling into that innate stability, which helps us to see the "disturbing" emotions as inherently harmless in themselves.
"

Hi Ian! Just to put a fine point on it, what I'm referring to is my own experience of "concentration" practice within the scope of Buddhanature teachings from various Tibetan lineages.
The specific insight, ability, attainment or whatever you want to call it that I was referring to belongs to that "concentration" practice. Linearly, it would be followed by "insight" practice, which is a light-handed phenomenological inquiry into the relationship between empty awareness on the one hand, and thoughts, feelings, sensations and their objects on the "other". The goal of this insight practice is the clarification of this natural state that is discovered in the concentration phase, which means seeing that thoughts, emotions and sensations etc are actually none other than this very empty luminosity-- which is disclosed on a lower rung of the spiral so to speak as this innately stable and clear awareness. Just so no one gets confused by your use of the word "goal"! What I described is really the *beginning* of a process of refinement or deepening understanding, at least as I understand it!

Yeah, I'd actually intended to use "goal" instead of goal, but had forgotten. Hard to achieve something that's already innate! And as you point out, there is more to it than just the innate stability as well. Thanks for clarifying.

Seeing as you use "concentration" and "insight", I was wondering if these types of practices are referred to (within the Tibetan lineage you practice) as Samatha and Vipassana?

I've done a bit of work with Tibetan groups and noticed that their definitions of Samatha and Vipassana seem to align more with what you describe here than with the way Samatha and Vipassana are usually described on this site. Just curious if my understanding of this is at least somewhat in line with what you're talking about.

Just trying to line up some terms and defrag the old hard drive....