The Second Day

I guess that’s the second day, not counting the first registration day, and I have become used to the teacher and his lectures. It is exaggerated when I would say that I like his teaching but I have learned to appreciate the good aspects of his lecturing style. I am also becoming aware of what meditation means. I am very far away from knowing what meditation is but occasionally I am getting a little glimpse of what it is supposed to be. Actually, up until now I only had one such a moment. For a few seconds, my body felt very light and it seemed like I was moving towards the ceiling and observing my own body from outside. This experience I only had once and for an extremely limited time. However, it has helped me to stay focused and to work hard for it to happen again. Being able to exit my body and separate my mind from the body, I thought was the realization that I am supposed to understand. But maybe I was simply hallucinating and this wasn’t a real meditative sate. Having said that, it is clear that I still have no clue how meditation works or could potentially cure mental illness. But I still have faith that I will get there. The book we are reading right now has a chapter called “Buddhist Approach to Mental Illness.” This tells me that there has been work done in that field I just have to understand it. Another thing I have discovered today which might help me find the answers to my questions is the fact that our teacher is a monk from the West who has worked at a Psychiatric Hospital after he came involved with Buddhism. I have not spoken to him yet on an individual basis but that is my next step.

Even though mental illness is defined a bit different in Buddhism from how the western world would define it, I still believe we can make inferences to the mental illnesses that we know. The book “Becoming your own Therapist” describes somebody with a mental illness as unable to see reality; “a mind that tends to either exaggerate or underestimate the qualities of the person or object it perceives.” (p.82). According to the author, Western psychology is too narrow and it would only include people who are obviously emotionally disturbed but it would not include people who have a fundamental inability to see reality. From his point of view, many people who are unaware of the nature of their dissatisfied minds, which is ‘reality,’ should be considered mentally ill as well. Following this definition, it includes far more people into the category of the mentally ill than Western standards would, it still includes the mentally ill. For the author of this book, the cure for all people who are mentally ill is to become aware of the “true” nature of their mind. One way of reaching this truth is by following Buddhist philosophy and meditating.

Now, Buddhist philosophy is very specific and I am not sure if I support everything that this religion represents. Being at Tushita and learning a lot of specifics about Buddhism made me realize (for now), it’s not so much about the religion but about the meditation which can help people out of their mental suffering. So even though, I am at Tushita my focus will still remain meditation rather than Buddhism as a whole.