Psychology
Bob Rich’s Self-Therapy Guide: My Greatest Teacher
In this series, Dr. Bob Rich teaches you how to leave behind depression, anxiety, and other forms of suffering all too common in our crazy world. Recovering the Self published three sections of Bob Rich’s book From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide in a series of posts – the first section ending with the quest for meaning and the second section concluding with The Development of Resilience.
The third section of Bob’s work was marked by special attention to various techniques and practices that are helpful in controlling depression. It concluded with a discussion on values and their implication in therapy. Bob now shares the final section of his self-therapy guide that delves deeper into the practical side of his therapy work illustrating with examples from individual cases of his own patients. In the 10th post in this section, Bob introduced readers us to the familiar but special state of mind called “flow” as explored in detail by well-known psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi. Now he shares his greatest source of learning and the most important lessons in life.
My Greatest Teacher
His name was Siddhartha Gautama. Over 2500 years ago, he established a great philosophy, which many people mistake for a religion. However, you can benefit from his teaching and stay a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Christian, or an atheist.
So, you can keep your current belief system, and gain from this chapter. You merely need to accept the validity of a few scientific findings and adopt ways of thinking that may be new to you. You can be a “secular Buddhist:” follow the teachings without practicing any ritual. That’s what I’ve done all my life.
There is a remarkable similarity in the therapeutic applications of Buddhist thought and modern psychology; e.g., the Dalai Lama has written several books that recommend actions just like some of what I’ve covered above. His book The Art of Happiness ranks with Seligman’s Authentic Happiness and Csikszentmihályi’s Flow as one of the standards of positive psychology.
In relatively recent times, therapeutic practice has moved explicitly toward a Buddhist-inspired direction. Several approaches, like ACT, are mindfulness-based, and there are many other overlaps.
Buddhism differs from any religion in that that the Buddha told us never to accept anything on someone else’s authority, but to check it out experimentally, through personal experience, something like, “This has worked for me. See if it works for you.” If it doesn’t, there is every chance that you can use the idea to invent a method for yourself that will work for your unique makeup and situation.
I won’t give you a primer on Buddhism. If you’re interested, there are many sources of information, based on each of the several versions of this wonderful belief system. However, here are a couple of important points.
Time is an illusion
The past is history. The future is a mystery. I give you a PRESENT. (Pity this only works in English.) Look at a river. Glance away, and look back within a split second. It seems the same, but the water has moved. It is actually different.
A problem with our European-based culture is that it’s caught up in the past and future. We tend to beat ourselves up because of past events, and worry about things that may or may not happen. Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” There are hundreds of quotes saying this. One I like is from Shannon Alder: “The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in the realism of NOW.”
You might enjoy “Buddhism for Christians” http://wp.me/p3Xihq-LL (a discussion I’ve had with a Christian gentleman). It is one of four relevant essays at my blog, the others being “I is a Paradox” http://wp.me/P3Xihq-dk “Vipassana Appraisal” http://wp.me/p3Xihq-96 and “Second Vipassana Appraisal” http://wp.me/p3Xihq-d4
Noble Truths
The second point is the source of all the negatives, and what to do about it. This is the heart of Buddhism: the four “Noble Truths.” The first three are important for understanding what I describe below. The relevant terms have no English equivalent, but this is a reasonable approximation:
“All life is suffering. All suffering is from attachment. So, to stop suffering, let go of attachment.”
Let’s expand this.
The Buddha didn’t imply that life is continuous misery with no relief, but that even good times tend to have underlying niggles. Nirvana is whenever these disappear, not only from consciousness, but even from the stream of unacknowledged thought and feeling below it.
Because only this instant exists, nirvana is only for now.
Attachment is when I want something. If I dislike any aspect of my current moment, I want it to go away. If I like something, I want it to continue indefinitely, and am anxious about losing it. This second aspect is why even good times are suffering. “Oh, I want this to last forever” is a recipe for disappointment. Nothing does.
So, the way to enjoy the good things is to enjoy them now, but not be attached to having them beyond this instant. And the way to be content despite the negatives is to allow them, and not be worried about their continuation. I have a standard joke for this situation, say being late for an appointment because the train is behind timetable: “It’s probably not fatal, and even if it is, that’s all right.”
When you can let go of attachment, suffering stops, and you’re in nirvana. If you can achieve this as an ongoing state, you are enlightened.
– Dr. Bob Rich
