Mindfulness

The general rule of healing our emotional, psychological and then by extension our physical and spiritual bodies is this:

  • Awareness is healing. Becoming aware of emotional pain and injury and coming to peace with it heals mind, body and spirit.
  • The painful parts of our life that we refuse to look at and develop awareness of take control of our lives and run us. This negative energy causes us to behave in unskillful and harmful ways creating painful relationships with ourselves and others.
  • Good Psychotherapy in combination with Mindfulness practice is a very effective way to develop awareness of what makes us unhappy and provides a road map for healing and experiencing greater satisfaction in our lives.

Based on recent research there are three primary factors to happiness. They are:

  • Gratitude
  • Generosity
  • The ability to see the positive in the unpleasant

Based on what is listed above, what do eastern philosophical teachings and spiritual practices contribute to to psychology? There isn’t a short answer to this question but I’ll attempt to address a few key points.

Psychotherapy is based on a developmental model. While growing up we develop habits in response to our parents and other caregivers that no longer work for us as adults, especially if they were formed due to painful childhood experience. As adults, they are outdated and ineffective. If we keep doing these early learned behaviors we find ourselves depressed, anxious, in painful relationships, and/or find ourselves saying and doing things that hurt others. In psychotherapy we try to examine those patterns. Once they are recognized they can be changed or eliminated. Then we are more able to live in the present, without the past interfering with our lives.

Sigmund Freud was one of the early western thinkers to seriously study the human mind as a science. He started his work about 100 years ago and what has come from that is what we know today in the west as Psychology and Psychiatry. Freud very much wanted psychology to be a rigorous scientific discipline. Today many academic Psychologists spend their career do research on human behavior and and on the physiological effects of the the mind on the body providing the world with useful scientific research on human behavior.

The more contemplative view, which Buddhism is part of, starts from the belief that out basic nature is “open-awareness”, the ability to be present for all experience without pushing uncomfortable experiences or memories away and without grasping at pleasant experiences and being disappointed when they end anyway.

Buddhism has been referred to as “The science of the Mind”. The Dali Lama made this point and added that in the west we have done amazing scientific inquiry into understanding the natural world. He states that for 2,500 years Buddhism has done a similar inquiry into the nature of the mind. He now envisions that the two disciplines need to come together and learn from each other. As a result the Mind & Life Institute was started.

In his book Path of Wisdom, Path of Peace His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Felizitas Von Schonborn write that:

It is possible to understand the Buddhist teachings as a method of psychological healing, comparable to psychotherapy, that teaches us how we can master destructive forces like anger, envy, and greed. Human beings seem to be a bundle of different qualities and psychological processes. We should attentively examine our qualities and be alertly aware of our experiences in order to recognize what we truly feel and think. At the same time, the personality of human beings is not seen as a unified whole. According to these teachings, the heart of consciousness is composed of various elements, the five types of attachment, or skandhas: body, sensations, perceptions, instinctual forces, and consciousness.

In the Eastern traditions the teachings and practices provided instruction to help people become better human beings with the motive being to gain Enlightenment or Awakening “for the benefit of all sentient beings.” The goal is not individual satisfaction but benefiting all of creation. Granted in doing this you might benefit yourself as well but that is sometimes considered to be a secondary motivation.

To summarize, in the West our focus is much more individual. We use Psychology to become a better person. In the West we strive to be happy, to have meaningful relationships, success in our work, and a sense of joy and fulfillment. Outside of some religious organizations there is not a lot of dialog about benefiting all beings. It tends to focus on the individual and the family and what is good for them. However, it can be said that helping individuals to be happy and well-adjusted will ultimately have a positive affect on all sentient beings much like in eastern philosophical systems. The end result could be the same.

The combination of the contemplative approach from the east with the more investigative approach from psychotherapy creates a powerful method for overcoming our limitations and moving into more of our true nature and creating joy and meaning in our lives.