To me and many others meditation seems like a perfectly fine
and beneficial practice. I do not meditate myself but I know people who have
benefited from it.
After all, there are no chemicals involved. What could be
wrong with a little self-exploration, or better, with a little added
mindfulness?
Today, mindfulness meditation is one of the latest forms of
psychotherapy. It tells you to slow down and smell the petunias, to focus on
what you are doing, to live in the present and to relax.
What could be wrong with that?
Of course, there are many kinds of meditation.
Traditional psychoanalysis has always involved meditation.
It does not include Buddhist chants but it encourages an introspective journey
into your mind. (I discussed the point in The Last Psychoanalyst.) Psychoanalysis has never been a conversation between
patient and analyst.
Now that psychoanalysis has faded from the scene, a more
Eastern form of meditation has become more popular. And apparently more
effective.
Yet, when something seems too good to be true, when it seems
to provide an utterly risk-free path to enlightenment and mental health, we
should ask questions.
Until I read Tomas Rocha’s Atlantic article, I had hesitated
to ask such questions. I still do not know enough to do more than speculate,
but the research performed by Brown University physician Willoughby Britton is
certainly worth considering.
Rocha raises some important questions:
We have
a lot of positive data [on meditation]," she[Britton] says, "but no
one has been asking if there are any potential difficulties or adverse effects,
and whether there are some practices that may be better or worse-suited [for]
some people over others. Ironically," Britton adds, "the main
delivery system for Buddhist meditation in America is actually medicine and
science, not Buddhism."
As a
result, many people think of meditation only from the perspective of reducing
stress and enhancing executive skills such as emotion regulation, attention,
and so on.
For
Britton, this widespread assumption—that meditation exists only for stress
reduction and labor productivity, "because that's what Americans
value"—narrows the scope of the scientific lens. When the time comes to
develop hypotheses around the effects of meditation, the only acceptable—and
fundable—research questions are the ones that promise to deliver the answers we
want to hear.
"Does
it promote good relationships? Does it reduce cortisol? Does it help me work
harder?" asks Britton, referencing these more lucrative questions. Because
studies have shown that meditation does satisfy such interests, the results,
she says, are vigorously reported to the public. "But," she cautions,
"what about when meditation plays a role in creating an experience that
then leads to a breakup, a psychotic break, or an inability to focus at
work?"
Let us be mindful and slow down. Britton makes excellent points.
The first and most obvious is that mindfulness meditation
should be led by a Buddhist monk. In today’s America it is often led by a
physician. One imagines that this helps patients get their sessions reimbursed.
If you are practicing meditation with a Buddhist monk you
will be aiming at something more than enlightenment. You will end up belonging to a new
community.
If you are learning meditation from a physician, you would not
have such a goal in mind.
One should consider the psychosocial difficulties that arise
when your meditation cuts you off from your world and does not provide you with
a new community.
Obviously, some people are so well grounded in their community--even their company-- that meditation might help them to function better within it. but, anyone who
is detached and lost, who suffers from anomie, might be ill served by a
meditation practice that detaches him further, that sends him into psychosocial exile.
Then again, even Buddhist meditation includes experiences
that correspond to what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night of the
soul.”
I would hypothesize that this occurs when someone who is transitioning
out of his old community has not yet arrived at his new community.
Rocha offers this version, from a Buddhist meditation
teacher:
Shinzen
Young, a Buddhist meditation teacher popular with young scientists, has summarized
his familiarity with dark night experiences. In a 2011 email exchange between
himself and a student, which he then posted on his
blog, Young presents an explanation of what he means by a "dark
night" within the context of Buddhist experience:
Almost everyone who gets anywhere with
meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, [and]
disorientation. …The same can happen in psychotherapy and other growth modalities.
I would not refer to these types of experiences as 'dark night.' I would
reserve the term for a somewhat rarer phenomenon. Within the Buddhist
tradition, [this] is sometimes referred to as 'falling into the Pit of the
Void.' It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No
Self. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling … it turns into the
opposite. In a sense, it's Enlightenment's Evil Twin. This is serious but still
manageable through intensive … guidance under a competent teacher. In
some cases, it takes months or even years to fully metabolize, but in my
experience the results are almost always highly positive.
Of course, you might not want an
insight into emptiness and the void. It is not too encouraging to think that it
might take years to “metabolize” the breakdown you experience when you get so
completely into your mind that you are completely lost to other people.
For my part, I suspect that an
individual who throws off his old community will lose his sense of identity. He
will no longer know who he is or even if he is.
Philosophers and psychologists assume
that your identity is a state of consciousness that tells you that you are who
you are.
And yet, I suspect, again as I
argued in The Last Psychoanalyst, that identity depends far more on how
we look to others. If one day you wake up and go about your daily routines, but
no one you know recognizes you, you will start wondering who you are. If people
are all calling you by a name that is not yours, you will start feeling that
you do not know who you are and that you do not exist as the person you were.
It is not an accident that some
people, when they join holy orders change their names.
5 comments:
Your comment on the role of the community in Buddhist practice is very insightful. In Buddhism we have the three treasures; the Buddha, the Dharma, the teaching, and the Sangha, the community you practice in. There is a well-known teaching in Buddhism, concerning this: When his disciple Ananda told Sakyamuni Buddha that the Sangha was the most important part of the practice, the Buddha said:
"Say not so, Ananda, Say not so, the Sangha is the whole of the practice."
Meditate or medicate?
Just watch a movie instead.
One can never have enough movies.
Mindfullness became very popular, because CBT has no part of work with transference. It works only with logical thinking, and logical part, so when the problem (f.e. anxiety) starts from amygdala, not from newest part of the brain, CBT does not work. Thats why they counted on mindfulness. This is "third wave" of CBT, like "third wave" of feminism :) The problem is, that in borderline personality, or with psychosis, meditation does not work good. They will have to recognise the existence of transference sooner or later. Mindfulness will not help them.
I believe mindfullness is so popular because being a busybody is even more popular ... half the country wants to tell the other half how to live, what they can eat or say or what sort of health insurance to buy ... the reality is most of these busybodies make a mess of their own lives ...
too many people worry about helping their fellow man and don't manage their own life very well ... these folks use mindfullness to try and have a bigger impact on the world ... they all want to be famous and special ...
very few of us are actually special ... we are all "different" but being different doesn't make you special ... mindfullness navel gazing may just force you to realize you are insignificant in the scheme of the world (as you actually should be) when all you want to do is CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR COMMUNITY ...
For Jocker and anyone else who is interested in "transference" I have analyzed it in my book, "The Last Psychoanalyst."
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