Comments on: Reframing Mental and Emotional Pain from a Buddhist Psychology Perspective https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/ Science, Psychiatry & Social Justice Fri, 14 Jun 2024 01:01:48 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 By: Birdsong https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283220 Fri, 14 Jun 2024 01:01:48 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283220 In reply to J.

J, you don’t seem to get the point: Buddhist practice is more intuitive than conceptual—and therein lies its effectiveness.

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By: No-one https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283202 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:32:11 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283202 In reply to J.

Haha. I can’t really see much difference in what we’re saying, except obviously awareness, being the simple illumination of what is, has no gender itself. Only the happenings IN awareness can be masculine or feminine, or in the case of the human body alone, actually male or female. But your view on transitioning is similar. If it is the result of self-acceptance and self-understadning that’s one thing, but if it’s an emotional reaction based on jumping to the conclusion that I’m in the wrong body, then I feel this is a recipe for life long disappointment, which to admit to would be to admit that you had ruined your life pursuing something you were adamant that you wanted (you’d have to be adamant to get it). At least this is the risk. And thank you for admitting you’re fear of female genitalia!! I love a bit of honesty.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283189 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:09:21 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283189 In reply to Birdsong.

For more on subject-object split vis a vis “God” from a materialist perspective also see Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283188 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:06:50 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283188 In reply to Birdsong.

For more on ‘subject-object split’ see Indian Advaitist philosopher Sankaracarya and Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283187 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 18:04:15 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283187 In reply to Birdsong.

I like this contribution.

Seon is Korean Zen, and Ch’an is Chinese Zen. Or is Zen, Japanese Seon? Or is Zen, Japanese Ch’an? Guau!!

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283185 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:59:27 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283185 In reply to Birdsong.

Perhaps we should eat only one next meal to satiate our hunger for the rest of the days of our lives.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283184 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:53:45 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283184 In reply to Birdsong.

The Abhidhamma is the manual of Buddhist philosophical psychology. I also agree that we should study this treatise.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283182 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:49:53 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283182 In reply to No-one.

By the way, Tenzin Gyatso (Dalai Lama) is head of Gelug school — that’s a Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana school. Zen is a Japanese Mahayanist school, not a school of Vajrayana.

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283181 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:38:30 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283181 In reply to No-one.

I agree that parents should encourage and support their children. What does that look like in concrete practice?

I disagree that awareness is beyond gender because my body consciousness is a subjective consciousness. I was born with a penis and I have grown from a boy into a man. I think there are more important issues that topics such as gender ideology distract us from. Then again, importance is relative to one’s experiences. My history indicates that it is superficial to focus too much on one’s flesh-and-blood body. I have also had times in my life where I have spent too much time thinking about my own. Maybe one’s emotion body can seem more real than one’s flesh body. I think happiness comes from within. So if you think that you’re a woman born in a man’s body for example, why should you mutilate yourself to validate that feeling? If it were a true experience for you then wouldn’t experiencing it be its own meta self-validation? Why should surgery follow?

I’m asking sincerely. It appears to be a never-ending abyss if you expect happiness to come after some next consequence. I also think in this way sometimes. It seems to be a form of masochistic self-denial.

Yes, I am a man and I am frightened by a clitoris. Keep the vaginas away from me. Siddhartha Gotama instructed his disciples that monks are supposed to avoid contact with women. (I am not a monk, just a bit of a misogynist who likes learning about all sorts of niche interests.)

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283180 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:26:34 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283180 In reply to No-one.

“Insanity” is a convenient way to marginalize people. I can see that you don’t care but I, for one, do. What you call the Buddha sounds more like an excuse to discard effort. If you take no interest in the life or teachings of the Buddha, I feel very surprised that anyone listens when you talk about the Buddhadharma.

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By: Birdsong https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283174 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 16:55:00 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283174 In reply to No-one.

“It’s a form of insanity that you don’t see this.”

Agree 100%. And I’ll bet Siddharta Gautama himself would agree too…

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By: Birdsong https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283132 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:28:53 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283132 In reply to Birdsong.

And what is the most co-dependent relationship? A “psychotherapeutic” one.

IMHO.

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By: No-one https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283131 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 07:28:43 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283131 In reply to J.

I’ve come across Grof who, although quite a simple investigator, has investigated amazing and mind blowing aspects of human consciousness, but I’ve not heard of “Knowledge of the Womb” and it’s an alluring title! I hope there’s an audio version because I can’t read anymore and haven’t opened my mail for 2 years. Numbers and letters make Mother Nature go mad, and we are that Mother Nature gone mad through words and numbers. Take away the words and numbers and you are basically a tree that talks and f*cks! Sorry. There are ants in my pants.

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By: Birdsong https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283128 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 06:40:04 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283128 In reply to Birdsong.

“…Fromm declared: ‘Psychoanalysis is a characteristic expression of the Western man’s spiritual crisis, and an attempt to find a solution. The common suffering is the alienation from oneself, from one’s fellow man, and from nature; the awareness that life runs out of one’s hands like sand, and that one will die without having lived; that one lives in the midst of plenty and yet is joyless.’ [9]. Fromm continues: ‘Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s being; it is a way from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love.’ [9]. ‘What can be said with more certainty is that knowledge of Zen, and a concern with it, can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split’.[10]”

– “Buddha philosophy and western psychology”, Nih.gov

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By: Birdsong https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283122 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 04:03:52 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283122 I think if more people in the west studied Buddhist psychology 98% of them wouldn’t end up in a therapist’s office or seeking psychiatric drugs as in it there lies a foreseeable end to toxic guilt and the forever search for co-dependent relationships with earthly (or otherworldly) beings.

“Buddha Philosophy and Western Psychology”, Nih.gov

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By: J https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283118 Thu, 13 Jun 2024 02:34:13 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283118 In reply to No-one.

Man has the power of creative reason which is the ability to willfully increase his potential relative population-density by bringing his mind into greater cohesion with the negentropic order of the universe. This is what separates us from the animals. In a healthy economy human beings constantly advance technologically which allows our civilization to support more and more members of our species.

There’s a book you might like called Knowledge of the Womb, written by a Greek psychiatrist who pioneered a science called autopsychognosia. Stanislav Grof’s perinatal matrices also stand relevant. The truth is, the womb can be a very traumatic experience.

From the perspective of established Buddhist doctrine, nirvana and samsara are essentially one similitude.

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By: Lina https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283108 Wed, 12 Jun 2024 23:27:36 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283108 Thank you so much, Diane, for this excellent summary of the theory of the five hindrances. I will share your article with a friend who is very identified with “her ADHD” and thus looks at herself as if something was wrong and defective about her.

I told her that we Buddhists think that restlessness and worry are a very common and normal thing. And that we would describe her personality style simply as one that has a lot of it but that it was not necessary to think it was bad or wrong.

I explained to her that she was adding another layer of pain by condemning it on top of the unpleasant experience herself and she instantly understood that that was the case. I also told her that she could find out about what her agitation was really about by learning meditation.

I also told her that agitation was not the only “annoying” thing one can have. When I told her that its opposites were sloth and torpor I think she was already feeling a bit better about herself: At least she didn’t have too much of those!

If you are interested in my feedback about the overall drive of your article: I think your approach is still pretty clinical. You are still trying too hard to stop the bad things. I would try to even more let go of that approach.

It is not necessary to adapt the eightfold path to the “special needs” of anyone, not even to folks with mental health issues. The standard teachings work for anyone at every time and in every situation. It is just that you have to be smart to chose what “practice” might be best four you when you have chronic psychic problems or when you find yourself under a lot of pressure.

Sometimes, for example in a depressive episode, yoga, doing crafts like sewing, cleaning, and going for long walks are preferable to silent retreats. Metta or prayer practices might be more helpful than Zen meditation ect. And I think that if you could support people in chosing the right combination of practices at the right amount (less is more) and at the right time. That would be very helpful for so many people.

What I think is totally unnecessary is to apply techniques like questioning believes as is suggested in CBT and what you also talk about above. I don’t think that they are in accordance to the Buddhist teachings. It is not an intellectual understanding of they’re “dysfunctionality” that makes us able to let go of them.

Buddhist psychology claims that it is only an intuitive understanding about something causing us pain, wisdom, that is able to do so. Wisdom arises simply by following the teachings and the practices. We can’t push or pull or squeeze our minds to more inner freedom. When we practice with ease and right effort good results will come naturally.

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By: No-one https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283046 Wed, 12 Jun 2024 06:02:14 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283046 Mommy, I hate my body. OK then, you must be in the wrong one. Why not iron out your pancake breasts! Then you’re a man and everything is fine.

Or we could try and make our kids feel loved, encourage self-love, which implies self-acceptance, and then if they decide to transition it won’t be a result of our mental pathology. Only the body can be male or female. Thought can think ‘I am male or female’ but this is no-fact. Awareness itself is beyond gender, and masculine, femanine and neutral currents of consciousness pass through us all. Instead we go for the socially conditioned auto-rejection of what is and encourage creatures of nature to become something they can never be, which is what they are not. Thus the world goes mad.

I’m sorry – this is not strictly relevance because it is the simple fact, and there’s no place for simple facts in a culture dominated by opinions, conclusions, theories, assumptions, social norms and other destructive non-facts issued from a social mind that forgot the clitoris even existed out of fear. We see ladies jump on chairs to escape the mouse or spider. Well you’ll frighten a man even more with a clitoris. Unless they are a gynaecologist, which is of no comfort to women at all.

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By: No-one https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283044 Wed, 12 Jun 2024 05:53:58 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283044 In reply to J.

I expect you’re right, but who cares? The Buddha was you minus all the crap in your head including your religion and practices. Why not ditch the junk and become the Buddha? It is a form of insanity that you don’t see this.

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By: No-one https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/06/buddhist-psychology-perspective/#comment-283033 Wed, 12 Jun 2024 04:27:31 +0000 https://www.madinamerica.com/?p=257068#comment-283033 I’m channelling Mother Nature for you: “Hey, I beat the beat, you eat the beat, then beat the beat, I beat the beat right, I beat the beat tight: I beat the beat boss so betray me and die/ I am the bobcat and the elephant: I am the night and her unconscious fist: I have your head locked in between my tighs: I’ll turn you gunners into daffodils.” PS, the only reason we unconsciously created civilization is that we were unconsciously recreating the womb through our actions, which is the nirvana principle of total environmental non-violence or equinimity. But instead we created office furniture and spectacles and need electric shocks like coffee and donald trump to keep us awake. Woops

Oops

Telephone tomato
Telephone tomato c*nt no
Telephone tomato
Jo Biden’s face is on my c*nt yo
Donald Trump’s dick is in my face yo
Rishi Sunaks lips are on my dick yo
My needling dick is up his arse yo
Telephone tomato
Telephone tomato c*nt no

Have a nice day.

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