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ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Therapy, Meditation, and Human Bogusness

Jack Bragen
Saturday April 06, 2019 - 03:54:00 PM

When a meditation practitioner, who is in some instances the same person as a mental health treatment practitioner, (but at work) behaves weirdly toward you, it is sometimes because they have problems, and not you. 

Therapy is its own system and is not the same as systems of meditation or mindfulness. However, there is a significant amount of overlap. Most therapists will probably tell you that they practice some form of mindfulness but will probably also tell you that they function from a place of "not strictly enlightened," or "not strictly Zen," depending on their individual practice and their view of themselves. 

Again, therapy is its own system. Many therapists don't practice Buddhism at all; some could be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other. Yet, modern therapy shares a lot of concepts with parts of Buddhism. This is because the knowledge base in therapy must at least partly include characteristics of the healthy and unhealthy mind. The characteristics of the human mind don't differ depending on what tools are being used to study it. Buddhism is in large part a study of how the human mind works. And psychology is a study of the human mind, one that is a lot newer than Buddhism. 

In any group of people, (and a group exists because they or someone has decided people fit a category) there are going to be some individuals who are more conscious than others. There are some people within a group you could call "meditation practitioners" who behave bogusly, just as in any other group. 

I was at a Zen monastery in which a couple of the members who assisted seemed to single me out based on either a perceived disability or based on the observation that I am overweight and not extraordinarily well-dressed. A man tried to stop me from participating in the walking segment of the meditation because he believed I couldn't keep up. He put a hand to my shoulder, and this was not okay, nor was it very "enlightened." ** 

And, when a meditation practitioner is also a therapist, they are likely to assume that they are in a totally different and better spiritual place compared to recipients of their treatment. 

People should be openminded to the possibility that most mentally ill people are smart and aware people. Instead, most people go by a person's external appearance, or by their peers' comments. What does a smart person look like? How does a smart person behave? What about someone's appearance would make them look like a newspaper columnist and freelance author? What mannerisms would they have? How would they speak? 

Don't judge a book by its cover. My cover allows me to blend into environments in which I frequently live. Thus, someone might not notice me if I got in a line to receive food from a food bank. Someone said of me that I "blend in." And the person who said this asserted that it was "a compliment." 

Thus, Buddhist practitioners are subject to the same human errors as are treatment practitioners in the mental health treatment system. And, really, every human being is subject to some level of bogusness. There is never a way of escaping human error. And we will undoubtedly pass along the characteristics responsible for these errors to our successors, which are the artificial intelligences we are now creating. 

It is easy to be intellectually gifted, but it is hard to the point of impossible to change anyone else's mind. If you pit therapy against meditation, which one do you think wins? I have to say, neither, because both are hamstrung by the users. 

 

**Addendum to Zen monastery incident:  

Prior to the male assistant putting a hand of restraint on my shoulder, I'd meditated in a half lotus, something I wasn't limber enough to do. When we were asked to stand, I was in too much pain to immediately stand because of my legs being wrenched. This caused a disruption in their service. However, I still object to this treatment. I believe it was initiated by that individual and was without consent of one of the masters. I am including this note to be fair. However, my points concerning human flaws are still valid, and I believe most Zen students and masters would wholeheartedly agree.