August Newsbyte

From a Buddhadhamma perspective all our suffering – yes all of it – arises out of a fundamental delusion as to who or what we are. That initial relationship to ourselves – the self, causes a relationship to the world which is unethical – always trying to manipulate the world to promote our own happiness.

The self just wants to be happy. But this develops acquisitiveness. The more we have – pleasure, riches, fame, power - the happier or safer we feel. And aversion arises when anything undermines our accumulations. Should the threat be greater than self, fear arises. These three unwholesome attitudes are the base upon which all our psychological problems arise – even psychosis.

It is important to remind ourselves that it is not just the unskilful actions we commit, but also the understandable, yet unskilful reactions we have towards those who harm us which are the cause of our dukkha.[i]

Similar to art, 99% of vipassana is perspiration and 1% is insight. Sitting with all our mental turbulences is to allow the heart to purify itself. Siddhartha Gotama had all the mental defilements that we suffer from before he became liberated from all suffering. We do not try to psychoanalyse them, or practise any form of psychotherapy. In fact, we don’t ‘do’ anything with them. To our amazement the heart heals itself. The perspiration is there because this can only happen in consciousness either as a felt emotion or a psychophysical pain. We have to bear the consequences of our past unskilful thoughts, words and deeds.

Psychotherapy has also been highly successful at dealing with psychological suffering. But its aim is conventional. It seeks to make the person feel better about themselves, manage mental diseases and develop a healthier accommodation to life.[ii] And drugs are useful too in managing severe mental illness so that a patient can live a meaningful life. And now 'mindfulness', what is recognisably a form of vipassana, has become a mainstream 'psychotherapeutic intervention'.

The confusion between psychotherapy with its conventional aim of accommodation to life with the transcendental aim of vipassana to realise the Unconditioned state of Nibbana, can mislead a meditator. At times it can be helpful to have psychotherapy as a supplement to meditation. However, to meditate as a supplement to psychotherapy is to miss out on the supreme goal of awakening to our true immortal nature[iii].