Mahayana Buddhism Includes Psychology and Doesn't Lack Anything

Mahayana Buddhism Includes Psychology and Doesn't Lack Anything

Santiago: Approaching the understanding of mind from these two sides that humanity has developed: The ancient teachings of awakening (the Wake up line of development) and the modern western discoveries that the ancient masters didn't have access to (the Grow up line of the development), understanding how they support and compliment each other, can help solve sooo many problems, giving us a better framework for understanding why "awakened people" are such a mess sometimes, and possibly help us move counsciousness towards a more inclusive, compassionate and integrated space.



Kim: So how did ancient master become masters if they didn't have access to the modern Western discoveries of psychology? Nothing personal Santiago but this whole idea is utterly ridiculous. I'm going to offend a lot of people but I'm going to say it anyway. It is a misconception of those who are 1. poor practitioners and 2. practitioners of sutrayana. Combine the two and you end up saying stoopid shit like that.

Chris: So, Kim, do you mean to say that medicine hasn't advanced beyond the ancient Buddhist understanding of the physiology of the brain, it's chemistry and the like? Why does the Dalai Lama favor studying that same "stoopid shit?" Is he stoopid, too?

Kim: What does my comment have to do with criticising the development of medicine? Can't speak for Dalai Lama or his interest towards science but you ever heard him mention his psychotherapist?

Chris: So you aren't opposed to combining the practices of Buddhism and the discoveries and practices of modern psychiatry, neuroscience and medicine, Kim?

Kim: No. Did you get that impression?

Chris: Yes, I got that impression from the above exchange.

Kim: Things can always be improved but the mahayana/vajrayana path doesn't lack anything as it has delivered innumerable sentient beings to the other shore. I got no problem with folks combining psychology and buddhist practice but it seems to me that their 1. understanding of buddhism and 2. practice of it has severe shortcomings. That this is their understanding and that they come to this conclusion that buddhism can be bettered with the findings of Western psychology, is not the fault of buddhism and what it has to offer.

Chris: Then I'm a "stoopid" one because I firmly believe that the combination of Buddhism and psychiatry/psychology/etc. is more powerful than either one by itself.

Kim: Suit yourself. I'm just saying that even though combination of the two, sutrayana and psychology, go farther together than they go alone, it is an unproved hypothesis when it comes to anuttara samyak sambodhi.

I haven't seen a tantric lama speak of combining vajrayana and psychology but if anyone has references, please let me know. I'll then be happy to tell what is wrong with them and their bhumis, just kidding.

To be clear, I was/am looking for tantric lamas who speak in favour for combining tantra and Western psy and consider that the tantric path is doesn't go far enough.

Chris: Kim, I don't think anyone is saying quite this - that the path doesn't go far enough. What I'm asserting is that Buddhism and the science of the mind are congruent. They support and enhance each other.
Have you seen:
https://www.mindandlife.org/mission/
And:
https://www.dalailama.com/…/buddh…/science-at-the-crossroads

Kim: Yes, I understood what you're saying. I have never had much interest in scientific or psychological findings in relation to dharma practice but I am not against it, either. Each to her or his own but I just don't agree with a lot of folks who say that the buddhist system as a whole lacks anything in terms of comprehensive development. I am however highly critical about a lot of things in buddhism, buddhist paths and buddhists, and admit that for a lot of buddhists, therapy along the noble 8-fold path or paramitas, is a very smart choice. A lot of buddhist practice leaves so much untapped and rather enforces samsaric habits than releases them. A lot depends on the teacher too.

Among teachers who have turned out to be mess, there are tantrics as well but as far as I am aware none of these bad apples were practitioners which is what I mentioned in some of my prev posts. There is no way anyone, incl. a tantric lama will be able to do her or his work well, without hassles and scandals, without making sure of one's personal practice. So, I don't know of tantric lamas who were practitioners, who screwed up. All of them were nonpractitioners and therefore not actual examples or embodiments of vajrayana buddhism.

I am yet to finish the vajrayana path but maybe, when I finish the cleaning process in some distant future, I come to agree that the path of vajrayana lacks something. However, so far, I do not see the slightest indication that this would be the case.

Shargrol: It's interesting to me that I've mostly agreed with some of your statements about many of the scandal teachers not being very advanced as practioners and I've also mostly agree with statements like people who still have emotional/psychological baggage haven't gone far enough... but I've held of agreeing because I couldn't quite figure something out...

But this last post made me realize what it is: it really is more about the practioner's attitude than the practice.

If someone is honest with themselves and continues to see their blind spots, the ways they are not finished, and owns that fact and works on it --- well, then there isn't going to be much of a problem and the practice won't matter much either. If someone is doing mindfulness meditation, tantra, therapy, or centering prayer... if they stay humble and honest, they will keep seeing their imperfections. And if they stay motivated and aware of their imperfections, they will improve.

In fact, I would put my money on a dedicated non-meditator (in therapy or doing religious centering prayer, for example) over a half-motivated vajrayana practioner -- you know what I mean?

I have no idea to inspire people to have high-ideals for themeselves and their practice. It's really the only way to live, but there is no external reward. No one will give you a reward for your practice. And what having high-ideals really means, if you are doing it right, is that almost every moment and every day and every week and every year will feel like a failure. You mostly see and feel the imperfections. But every moment, day, week, year, you continue to refine yourself because you can see and feel your imperfections. That's what it means to really pursue excellence.

Unfortunately, it's clear that these scandal teachers would much rather rest on their past successes and create a mental framework where they are at a kind of pinnacle that can't be surpassed (or they might humble brag and say they are near the top) and then project any remaining shadow sides on the people around them - distancing themselves from awareness of their imperfections... until the whole thing comes crashing down.

Anyway, ultimately I don't think people can rely on any particular framework for waking up and growing up. But the path is obvious and right under our nose.

Kim: I think that attitude is very much part of the practice. It is spoken very widely about by masters of the past. Obviously, "practice" is not only sitting practice.

You hit the nail on the head with, "what having high-ideals really means, if you are doing it right, is that almost every moment and every day and every week and every year will feel like a failure. You mostly see and feel the imperfections. But every moment, day, week, year, you continue to refine yourself because you can see and feel your imperfections.".

I can identify with that. It is not "fun", if you do it right.

Remaining vulnerable and open to have one's faults pointed out is an absolute necessity. It is easy to plateau and become self-confident in a dualistic fashion without it. I'm sorry if I get on people's nerves but still, I agree with Culadasa when soon before his case broke out said that the path (sutrayana) he has followed "doesn't go far enough" and that, "As you progress on the paths of awakening, the changes of you recognising them (parts of our pscyhe) as something that needs to be purified, diminishes." It is a striking statement coming from him. From what I have seen, sincerity or bad attitude never seemed Culadasa's weak point. Actually, to me he seemed to have an admirable character which obviously had a lot to do with what he accomplished/s in his life.

A tantric would never say what Culadasa did for the simple fact that if you practice deities, archetypes of enlightened mind, there is no way for becoming blind to one's own blindspots. It is impossible because the deity doesn't allow it. One simply keeps feeling bad as long as there is something wrong with one's view or attitude.

http://openheartopenheart.blogspot.com/…/culadasa-john…

Santiago: No offense on my part Kim, I'm grateful that we live in times where anyone has a right to express their opinion (although that's also a pain in the ass sometimes :grin. I just wonder, what is your expertice on modern Western psychological discoveries? Is it big enough to make the claim that the ancient Masters understood what this science has discovered? Did they also know about quantum physics, or even general newtonian physics? I'd just say that whenever someone thinks they have the Dharma all figured out (or figured out enough to deny new approaches that they themselves don't understand well), then THAT'S an utterly ridiculous, ignorant, shitty idea.

Kim: Hi Santiago.

I am not an expert of Western psychology or sciences but if I may, perhaps a bit of an expert of meditative yoga. Yogis, such as Shakyamuni Buddha, Guru Rinpoche and numerous others sought to find a solution to remove dualistic suffering through the doctrine of emptiness and practice of various yogas. They succeeded and that's how the whole thing got started, which is why there are people who attain the same what the ancient masters did, to this date. I do not know quantum physics but I doubt anyone has ever diminished or removed their self-based confusion (dukkha) through it. Reg. healing through psychology, I am sure it happens but whether this outcome is valid as buddhist practice, is a good question. Actually, it probably is an entirely irrelevant question to a lot of people who just wish to remove their knots in one way or the other.

Dharma doesn't seek to explain all possible things, just those of our mind. It adresses a very specific problem, that of self-delusion, and I know that through these means full enlightenment can be attained. Tantric guru yoga, in which one tunes in with some enlightened master such as those mentioned above or some other, reveals this. When one spends sufficient time in guru yoga it explains a lot of the tantric path in comparison to other paths, of one's own buddhanature and about the concerned mahasiddha guru. I can agree with what the tantric tradition says that this is an extremely valuable and unique experience that cannot be acquired by any other means. From that experience I can testify that perfect enlightenment is possible and that real masters do not have shadows or unresolved psychological issues, and that they do not behave in ways like samsaric beings do. If you wish to see one in person, Amma the hugging saint is one, though not a buddhist. I'd say Rana Rinpoche is another one, though I haven't yet met him in person. Their energetic radiation is completely different from others, incl. very experienced meditators.

Sutric buddhism doesn't have tantric guru yoga, so consequentially practitioners of those paths generally do not gain this experience. It is actually possible to get the same "transmission", if you will, from chanting of the Refuge of the Three Jewels or Bodhisattva Vows, but then it is very common for sutrics to not realise that there is an element of transmission or energetic charge related to these prayers. I have actually never seen this being pointed out by any teacher of sutra but nevertheless, the same potential is there. This is a common problem in established tantric buddhism as well, although the probability is higher since the energetic charges from lineage masters, deities and prayers are more.

A Brief (and Funny) Note About The Primitive Behaviour of Human Animals

A Brief (and Funny) Note About

The Primitive Behaviour of

Human Animals

Human behaviour is more primitive than we might want to admit. We are capable of creating art and show compassion for strangers but at the same time we also act like undeveloped simpletons, blindly following drives and needs such as survival, procreation, eating and sleeping in our daily life. When our most basic needs are not met, our animalistic nature is shown. In untrained and ethically poorly defined mind, greater potential and subtleties are nonexistent.

We look and measure other people, just like animals do and label them safe or unsafe, desirable or undesirable, attractive or unattractive. Here's a funny story.

Several years ago I used to go to a restaurant that was attached to a gas station. I frequented that place every day, as did about a dozen of male manual labourers. I used an entrance that was just next to the dining area. I opened the door and stepped in. Hearing the noise of the door and seeing someone come in, these guys always raised their heads from their plates to see who came in. At first, I didn't think much of it until I figured, that them probably not realising it, they were measuring me to find out whether I was alpha, someone tough and potentially dangerous or if I was weak and no threat to them. For few months, every day that I went there, I stepped onto their territory in a relaxed manner, wiping my shoes gently into the door mat, not making a number about myself. As I came in appearing like someone who didn't have much power, the guys just shrugged their shoulders, maybe even chuckled at me. Then one day I came up with a social experiment to test whether my perception of the situation was correct or not. The next day when I stepped in, I hit my boots strongly against the mat, pretending to shake snow off of them, and coughed loudly with chest broadly opened chest. With my strong masculine habitus I sent these guys a message that I was not someone they could fuck with and their reaction about me was instantly different. They put their heads down quickly, instead of taking a long judgemental look at me. They quickly returned to mind their own business, instead of passing a judgement of my inferiority. I was amused. I thought of pushing my experiment further, by walking to someone's table, looking them straight into their eyeball and taking their plate. This is a pronounced example but similar things happen every day. My point is that animal behaviour is very much part of our human life. I recall another example.

Even a neanderthal finds it funny.

Once I was travelling from Helsinki to Northern Norway to do a retreat there and had to change planes at Oslo airport. I had time, so I went to a cafe to have lunch. I sat down and noticed that there was a gentleman, dressed up in a very fancy suit on the table in front of me. I overheard from conversation he was having with his friend that his name was Frank. Funny thing about Frank was that even when he clearly was someone who had money and taste, and therefore likely life and lifestyle that reflected his wealth and class, everytime he took a bite of his food, he hunched over it and in a strange, bit of aggressive way glanced at his surroundings, as if someone was after his sandwich. I was looking at this man, probably in his 60's, with a stylish haircut, dressed in what might have been a 2000 dollar suite, act like an aggressive lion over its prey. It was both absurd and extremely funny! I played with a thought of going over and grabbing that sandwich but I think Frank had bitten me in the neck, if I had! I had never before seen human being act exactly like an animal.

-Kim, 3.7.2019

Going Back To The Source Of Looking

Going Back To The Source Of Looking

Dr. Jordan Peterson,

”Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching, or investigating, or looking for, or having. We must see, but to see, we must aim, so we are always aiming. Our minds are built on the hunting-and-gathering platforms of our bodies. To hunt is to specify a target, track it, and throw at it. To gather is to specify and to grasp. We fling stones, and spears, and boomerangs. We toss balls through hoops, and hit pucks into nets, and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull’s-eyes. We launch projectiles at targets with bows, guns, rifles, and rockets. We hurl insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. We succeed when we score a goal or hit a target. We fail, or sin, when we do not (as the word "sin" means to miss the mark). We cannot navigate without something to aim at, and while we are in this world, we must always navigate.”

Dr. Jordan Peterson

Animals, most of them anyway, remain attentive of their surroundings. They do this to know whether they are safe or not. Human beings also go into this primitive mode, for example in stressful situations. Soldiers of special forces, such as SEALs, are taught how to disengage from tunnel vision caused by fearful reaction by returning peripheral vision by looking left and right, which is a classic meditation exercise in the buddhist tradition. Our gaze reveals and reflects our mental state, whether instinctual, habitual or meditative.

Seeking from Outside

In the above quote, Dr. Peterson describes what in yogic teachings is called seeking from outside. Yogic tradition says that unsatisfied beings seek pleasures and relief to their existential confusion outside of themselves, rather than from within. It is an instinctual habit for humans to seek happiness and acceptance from outside. We try to fill the void within with foods, drinks, love, sex, money, possessions or by asking affirmative responses from our boss or parents. We go about our life by trying to fill the void within. However, the nature of all experiences, pleasant or unpleasant, is that they pass and therefore cannot make us permanently content.

The tragedy of habitual seeking is that it takes a lot of repetition and a solid belief in the material world, until people begin to realise that pleasures are fleeting. A new car or an amazing orgasm won't keep us happy for long. When relief and satisfaction vane, again, we begin to seek from outside and so it continues. We blindly follow our wants and desires. This is cyclical existence, going around in circles, bumping our head to the same wall again and again. This is ignorance of our true condition.

Becoming Aware of the Origin of Looking

Teachings of yogic meditation are primarily interested in breaking the vicious cycle of seeking. It is unsatisfactory so why keep repeating it? When we manage to do that, stop seeking from outside, our mind comes to rest in its natural condition. When that happens a recognition of our natural state takes place. At that moment, our mind meets and merges with its source. This source is called by many names in religious and philosophical traditions. The name for it is irrelevant, may those so inclined debate on that. However, the actual experience of it changes lives and liberates. There is nothing more satisfactory than knowing oneself without a narrow identity and a storyline. The thought of this experience might be scary but the actual experience is very pleasant, imbued with freedom, clearmindedness and creativity.

So, we aim our attention to our externals. We project our gaze to things. We looks at things, one after the other, we seek, we seek, we seek... When we do this from morning until night, we become tired because our vital energy gets scattered. What happens here can be compared to beacon that projects its beam of light outwards. As mentioned, this is seeking from outside that can never make us happy.

A simple way to stop looking outside is to bring our attention back to the physical eyes and the area behind the eyes inside our head. When we become aware that we have gone into the searching mode, looking at things external to us, we simply bring our attention back into the head or back to the source of beacon's light. This can be learned after a little bit of experimenting.

What happens with this is that becoming aware of the source of looking, interrupts seeking (1) and makes us aware of our natural mind (2) that is effortlessly aware and knows things, experiences and events appearing in the mind.

Fulfillment

Tradition of yoga is very old. It has specialized in solving existential problems caused by the sense of us having a self or me within us, in our thoughts, ideas and emotional reactions. Through the valuable teachings and meditative exercises such as the one above, it offers to solve our internal conflicts by making us aware of our liberated condition. Numerous generations of female and male practitioners have verified, that such methods are effective in solving neurotic and deluded behaviour. By becoming aware of our instinctual and habitual human animal behaviour, yogic practice helps us become clearminded, satisfied and realistic human beings, not by adding anything to us but by recognising what we already are.

Thank you for reading,

-Kim Katami, 29.6.2019
Open Heart Sangha,

www.en.openheart.fi

What Is Depression And How To Heal It?

What Is Depression And

How To Heal It?

By Kim Katami

Open Heart, www.en.openheart.fi

This short article views depression and ways of healing it from yogic or meditational, as well as existential perspective.

What Is Depression?

Depression, like all other forms of mental illness, is a vicious impediment and many in the modern societies suffer from it. Western psychology and modern medicine offers aids in the healing of it as do various methods of yogic meditation.

Depression is a state of mind that causes partial or complete paralysis of one's mental and emotional functions. Severe depression makes one unable to exercise one's own will power. In cases of lesser depression, one is still capable of momentary exercise of will which makes the healing of the illness quicker.

To someone depressed, distraction due to great volume of thoughts or out of proportion emotions are not a problem. In fact, a depressed person has few thoughts and emotions. Depressed person is not restless.

According to yogic psychology, depression is caused by something called substrate consciousness or simply, subconscious mind. Typical for this aspect of the human mind is emotional flatness and dullness from lesser to greater degree. Normal functions of thinking, feeling, enthusiasm and happiness are clouded by grey veils of the subconscious mind. These mind-fogs put the concerned person into a state of paralysis and meaninglessness.

The psychological anatomy of man can be categorized in the following way(*):

1. Subject-self. Me, I.

2. Object-selves. Thoughts and emotions.

3. Substrate consciousness. The basis of all phenomena.

4. Awareness. Buddha-nature.

(*) from What's Next? On Post-Awakening Practice

Before discussing ways of healing depression, I'd like to consider the cause of depression from the existential perspective.

Why Am I Here? Life Without Deeper Meaning

Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and author, from Advice for People With Depression,

”People who don't have enough order in their life tend to get overwhelmed. If someone comes to see me and says they're depressed, I always ask them a standard set of questions. Do you have a job? If you don't have a job you are really in trouble in our society. First of all, your biological rhythms tend to go off the rail because there is no reason to go to bed at any particular time and there is no reason to get up... They also don't have a purpose. People aren't good without a purpose... We absolutely understand the circuitry that underlies positive emotion, we know how it works. Almost all the positive emotions that any of you are likely to experience in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things. It will be a consequence to see that things are working, as you proceed towards a goal you value. That's completely different and you need to know this because people are often stunned... So if you don't have a job, you don't have structure. That's not good, plus you tend not to have a point, so you are overwhelmed by chaotic lack of structure and you don't have any positive emotion... Sometimes you see people who are depressed who have no job, no friends, no intimate relationships, they have an additional health problem and they have an alcohol-drug problem. My experience has been that if you have three of those problems, it's almost impossible to help you. You're so deeply mired in chaos that you can't get out... One of the things I tell people who are depressed is to get a job. You need a job, find some friends, get out in the dating circuit, see if you can establish an intimate relationship. Put together some foundational pillars that your life rests on. That's the practical thing to do.”

Dr. Peterson also mentions the helpfulness of anti-depressants for those severely depressed.

What I would like to add to this rather typical, and I am sure often helpful set of practical advice, is to consider whether the depressed person is miserable due to existential reasons.

Personally, I suffered from depression for many years in my youth. It wasn't diagnosed, and therefore not correctly understood by people around me, which is why I often got the same advice as Dr. Peterson offers above: just get a job, get friends, just do this, just do that and if you can't do that, start taking drugs and then do it. By this statement I do not mean to misinterpret Dr. Peterson who I greatly admire. I am simply formulating the way depression is typically viewed.

Problem with this advice is this.

What if the person in question finds no value in getting up in the morning to get to a meaningless job? What if she or he finds no value in pursuing the common options of education, career or intimate relationships, that others do? What if these things mean nothing to her? What if her problem is more foundational than that?

Having been a professional meditation teacher for over 10 years, I have met hundreds of people who, like me, suffered of depression, had no meaning in life and were existentially lost. If this is the cause of depression, then the only way to become healed of it, is to recognise oneself not as the human storyline with its successes and failures, but as boundless freedom, devoid of the sense of me-ness. It is deeply unfulfilling and unsatisfactory to only know oneself as an entity tied into one's physical body and whatever culture and people we are surrounded with. This existential crisis cannot be fixed with common worldly solutions, for the only way to solve it is to go beyond time, place and the personal storyline, and access the ground of being that is nameless, ageless, timeless and groundless, ever fresh, brimming with liveliness and common to all living beings. Different main streams or vehicles (skt. yana) of buddhism look at this task from their own perspectives but common to all of them is to offer ways to quench this fundamental existential hunger. This is what dharma is for, to give experiential answers to existential questions.

How To Heal Depression?

Substrate consciousness, that part of the human psychology that causes depression, is not at all foreign to yogis, professionals and masters of meditation. It has been discussed by adepts and practitioners for many hundreds of years and therefore yogic traditions have ways of dealing with it, in other words, they have ways of dealing with the part of mind that causes depression.

Here, I would like to present one and very effective way for healing depression by recognition of the natural state, one's natural innate stress-free condition. It is called Dynamic Concentration, which is an uncommon form of concentration practice.

Concentration practices are commonly taught with low intensity. For example, when mindfulness of the movement of the breath (p. anapanasati, skt. prana apana smriti) is taught, the student is instructed to keep his attention gently on the breath and return the attention back to the object when distracted. In a similar way, when mantras are recited, they are always recited with gentle concentration, never with high intensity, with stronger or even explosive focus.

This light or gentle focus can be compared to a volume knob of a stereo system. In this example light focus is analoguous to low level which produces low but still audible volume of music. This would equal perhaps 5-10% of the total volume output. However, the volume knob can be turned higher. It goes up to 30%, 60%, 90% and with each level we hear a corresponding change in the volume. Turning the volume high has an immediate effect. In this analogy, zero would equal not having concentration at all, yet not being distracted either, i.e. the natural state. 90% would already be very loud and not very enjoyable for an extended period of time. However we all have times in our lives when for a moment we want to turn up the music. And how wonderful it is! The neighbours maybe don't like it but it is fun nevertheless.

Regardless whether we follow the breath or chant mantras, the same can be done in yogic practice. Dynamic focus greatly changes the effect of the concentration practice. With light focus, as in commonly known shamatha, with constant distractions it takes time to calm the monkey mind. Whether an exercise of light focus ever cuts through the layers of the subconscious and substrate minds is rightly questionable. It takes years of long hours of daily training to build the muscle of concentration to get the benefits of shamatha meditation (tib. shine). This approach is followed by a large number of Buddhist methods. I think that there are better and more effective ways of doing the training, especially for householders whose daily time for practice is limited.

Concentration can be momentarily heigthened, like turning the volume knob high suddenly to create a short (0.3-2 seconds) explosion-like, momentary peak. This creates a quick punch of sorts, like an explosion that can be controlled. This punch hits through all of samsaric mind and reveals the natural state in a very short period of time. We are discussing an exercise that indirectly has been used in Buddhism and many other yoga and dharma teachings for centuries through meditation, recitation, religious art and yogic exercise and yet very few schools have realised the immense value of dynamic concentration to give it a central place in their teachings...

Dynamic concentration can be adapted to fit the view and practices of any yogic approach... It is very easy for anyone to test whether dynamic concentration really works. All you need is a few minutes of time and a comfortable place to try it(*).

(*) from What's Next? On Post-Awakening Practice

The Effect of Dynamic Concentration In Pictures

From these pictures you can observe what Dynamic Concentration, sharp use of focus, actually does in one's mind and how the explosive power disperses the greyness and foggyness of mind that the substrate produces, to reveal the natural clarity of the normal state.

Bird seen naturally, without depression or other forms of distraction.

From left to right: 1. Bird seen naturally. 2. Bird seen during mild depression. 3. Bird seen during strong depression. 4. Bird seen during very strong depression.

From left to right: 1. Bird seen partially naturally after some Dynamic Concentration practice. 2. Bird seen even more naturally after more Dynamic Concentration practice. 3. Bird seen almost completely naturally, without the grey layers of substrate mind, after a proper and decisive use of Dynamic Concentration.

Conclusion

I guess all humans question their existence at some degree in some stage of their lives. For some, it passes quickly and doesn't grow to become a great issue or even the most important issue in one's whole life, while it does for some. Whether one considers her- or himself to be on the spiritual path or not, one can have illnesses and ailments, both physical and psychological, according to one's karma and genetics. 

In this short article I have tried to convey the basic understanding of depression and the structure of the human mind, and described a simple exercise how depression or many other types of mental obscurations can be dealt with.

Thank you for reading,

-Kim Katami, 27.6.2019

Open Heart Sangha,

www.en.openheart.fi

Read more about Dynamic Concentration from What's Next? On Post-Awakening Practice and watch video examples of this exercise on this playlist at YouTube.

Awakening & Psychological Growth

Awakening & Psychological Growth

From Awakening & Psychological Growth by Michael Taft,

"Waking up will not solve your psychological issues—which unfortunately is exactly what most people think it will do and are looking for. It will not automatically make you nicer, or make other people like you more. It won’t solve your depression, your obsession, or your narcissism."

In buddhism, awakening in general, is defined as familiarisation with the empty or selfless nature of mind. It is true that little familiarisation leaves much of the self-based terrain alive and this can and does lead to mistakes and problems, even scandals and traumas, unfortunately. It is little or too little familiarisation (or too little awakening) that is the problem here, not that buddhism, as a philosophy, wouldn't work or "go all the way". I am a fan of Western psychology but I do think that if taught and applied correctly, buddha dharma doesn't require support from it. Having said that, I don't recommend stubbornly sitting (sticking with one's chosen method of dharma) with one's problems if there is no indication of both awakening and psychological growth.

Buddhist methods vary and teachers' understanding of their own methods and ability to pass it on varies greatly. Even something very basic, like the meditative exercise of following of the breath or the meaning of taking refuge, can be taught very differently, which affects how the students learn and internalise it. The differences in learning can be vast depending on the method and the teacher, even if the theory is the same. Someone can be a teacher from a highly considered tradition, such as vajrayana, but be a poor practitioner and not much of a teacher, while a dedicated practitioner and skilled enough teacher from a lower vehicle can make his or her students advance and transform significantly. On the other hand, a vajrayana teacher, who is familiar with the natural state and sees into the underlying principles of practices, can make his or her students progress very fast. So, the questions of method as well as pedagogy are very important, as is the level or depth of the teacher's awakening.

To have use for dharma teachings, one has to acknowledge one's own confusion, or suffering caused by a sense of me-ness. Without this discontent one has no need or motivation for practice, and doesn't see the point of it either. On the other hand if one acknowledges one's confusion, and immaturity because of that, it feeds one's motivation to practice for one's own liberation for the sake of all beings, as it is taught in mahayana. But if you get your belly full from one or two shifts, possibly become a teacher, or a worshipped guru who has comfortable life with money and services, your growth stops there. It stops the moment you become satisfied. More importantly you only understand a fraction of what buddhism points to with emptiness or nature of mind. While anyone with one or few shifts can understand something of emptiness, only a fully awakened one, a buddha, really knows it. This leads to a whole another discussion but I'll try to stick with the topic.

The Heart Sutra states, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form". Confused self-based (samsaric) mind is realised to be empty of self. "There is no one here! Woohoo!". Once this realisation expands to cover most of one's mind, one's training takes a different turn, that of becoming a human being again, instead of remaining as transparent, colourless and formless emptiness. The thing is that emotions don't go away or stop with realisation of emptiness but instead of them causing selfing, they become expression of the natural state. Because one has solid ground in the empty nature of mind, emotions and expressing them becomes an embodiment of one's awakening. It is OK to feel hurt, vulnerable and angry, that is the training here and really it is all part of the same training as before. In this way, one becomes healed as a human, instead of remaining a human-shaped non-human who has no self or emotions. This is, of course, if one has human traumas. Not all do but I think many attracted to dharma or spiritual teachings do, because once again you need suffer to have use for dharma.

But I think that in many cases there simply isn't enough familiarisation with the natural state, i.e. insight is insufficient, to get to the stage of emotional healing.

Hope this is useful.

- Kim

Psychologist on Guru Yoga

Psychologist on Guru Yoga

Q: Guru yoga is actually also a practice of developing devotion especially when practiced with a Tibetan buddhist teacher, is that right?

A: Yes, well, I have to say that is where I always went a bit against the grain. My devotion flows easier towards an icon such as Padmasambhava than to a living teacher because I could also see that this was just a human being with his habits. To see him as perfect you could say that I failed in this but I think I couldn't do it and didn't want to. I think if you do guru yoga well then everything the guru does, feels and says if perfect but also everything you do, feel and say yourself is perfect. It means your ability to be critical is also buddha. Now we are talking, that's something you can work with. But if your abilities are seen as confusion and everything the guru does as perfect I think that's a distortion if you'll allow me. It's a misconception of what guru yoga is.

Answered by Hans Knibbe, psychologist and dzogchen-teacher.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5O63W5WBwg