Are we getting mindfulness wrong? Hello, and welcome to Psychology in 10 Minutes. I'm David B. Feldman. Today I'm going to be featuring my second interview with Buddhist monk Pra Pandit. If you haven't seen the first interview, don't worry, this one will still make sense, but please make sure to go back and listen to that one as well. This interview took place when I recently visited Bangkok, Thailand, and I knew I wanted to talk with Prabhanda.
because not only is he a Buddhist monk, but he also holds, very uniquely, a master's degree in psychology. So this was an opportunity to ask questions about the relationship between Western psychology and Eastern spirituality. In this episode, we're going to get deep into the topic of mindfulness, which is of course a technique that originated in Buddhism, but then Western psychologists borrowed for use in psychotherapy.
But the question is, did we get it right? In addition to that, we're also going to be exploring more generally the relationship between therapy and Buddhism. Now, by way of context, in our previous interview, Propandit explained that, according to Buddhism at least, we human beings are what he called a bag of stories.
In other words, we're constantly trying to understand ourselves, our world, and indeed the universe around us through the lens of our stories, or I guess you could call them our beliefs or concepts. And some of these are pretty basic, like the idea that we have an independent self that's separate from the world and other people around us. The difficulty is that our stories believe
and concepts are often in error. And so, without getting rid of these stories, beliefs, and concepts altogether, it's very difficult to achieve a lasting sense of peace or happiness or indeed enlightenment, at least according to Buddhism. But think about how psychotherapy works. Isn't psychotherapy all about story. And psychotherapists don't necessarily help us to completely eliminate our stories or beliefs or ideas, but rather, psychotherapists help us to explore those stories.
and understand them in greater depth. So, in that sense, isn't psychotherapy sort of counter to the aims of Buddhism? That's the question I put to Propandit at the very beginning of this episode. By the way, if you're listening to the audio-only version of this interview, please visit me at youtube.com slash at psychology in 10 minutes.
And while you're there, please remember to like and subscribe so you don't miss any of my future video content. And of course, I hope you enjoy today's interview. It seems to me, so I teach a course in personality theories and theories of psychotherapy. So I teach theories like Freudian or psychodynamic theory, cognitive behavioral therapy and theory, gestalt therapy and theory, and all of these are stories, right? They're all...
Well, they're models. They're models, which is a sort of set of constructs. So that's the sort of Western approach to psychology is a person comes into a therapist's office. They're often diagnosed. with a quote-unquote mental disorder diagnosis from the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So you get a diagnosis of major depression or panic disorder or whatever it happens to be.
then the therapist applies one of these sets of constructs, psychodynamic therapy, for instance, or cognitive behavioral therapy. to helping you understand the origins of your problem. Did they come from trauma? Did they come from your early relationship? Did they come from your cognitive distortions? Whatever, in whatever system. And then gives you a set of tools that come from these models. these construct systems to help you to alleviate your symptoms, to help you feel better.
What would be the sort of equivalent, or is there an equivalent, Buddhist approach? to something like major depression. or something like panic disorder. What's the Buddhist take on the traditional psychological method, and then what would be the remedy that a Buddhist practitioner would apply? So I want to just mention something I know you know. I'm not sure.
your watchers and listeners know but psychology is a lot broader than therapy for sure so my personal interest is far more into cognitive psychology than it is to therapy as for They practice. Again, I want to emphasize Buddhism is all orientated towards this thing called enlightenment. It is not orientated towards having less anger or being a little bit more happy or straightening anger psychology.
So I would say psychology works in that realm of the constructs or your conceptual universe and tries to reorder it and make it into a better universe, a better world that you live in by altering your... Sort of reframing things, changing the way you see things. And psychology is good at that and probably better than Buddhism at doing that. It researches that, it aims towards that.
But real Buddhist practice is all orientated towards this ultimate goal. So sometimes you can think of it like psychology can get you from... being messed up to being reasonably functional. Didn't Jung have a statement about that? It was Freud who said that psychotherapy's goal is to take you from a neurotic state of anxiety and unhappiness
to a normal state, a normal everyday state of anxiety and unhappiness. He was a real pessimist, and yet there's some reality to that. I mean, I think that's the first of the noble truths, right? That life... is sort of unsatisfactory or that suffering is part of life, even if you're quote-unquote psychologically healthy, whatever that means, right? So I've seen people get psychologically disturbed in monasteries and in practice. And the teacher or the place will tend to send them to psychology.
and send them to a psychiatric hospital. Because you need to be reasonably well-functioning before you can really engage in the emptying the Buddhism is. So really psychology is better at bringing up to that normal level of neurotic unhappiness that we're talking about. But then where do you go from there?
So most of psychology doesn't really address the further perfections of character so you research folk I looked some years ago at Seligman who have this optimism happiness yeah so there are some schools of psychology that do address this But really Buddhism or enlightenment tradition says, well, what's the ultimate goal of this? And the only way to the ultimate goal is to step out. altogether from this world of constructs or conceptual universe that we build for ourselves.
So I'm curious what you think about the importing of mindfulness as a practice into the West. I think I totally agree, I'll have to think about it more, but I think I totally agree with you, this notion that The goal of Buddhism, if you can say that, and the goal of Western psychology are very different. Western psychology is to help you maybe reduce certain symptoms, to reframe your worldview or the way you're talking to yourself, to raise your self-esteem, to be less depressed.
Whereas the sort of goal of Buddhism is a much larger goal to get beyond these stories, as you're saying. And yet, Western psychology has really imported mindfulness as a technique. And sometimes it's called, there's mindfulness-based stress reduction, there's mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. They're all a little different, but the research shows they work. They work. 16 sessions or something of these therapies can help decrease depression, decrease anxiety. But I've definitely heard...
Buddhists, including some of my teachers who are from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, criticize mindfulness and say it's really commoditizing one aspect of Buddhism. But I'm wondering, can mindfulness be extracted and used in this instrumental way? Is that even meaningful? What are your thoughts about it?
Yeah, but then lots of things reduce depression like exercise, treatment, getting a pet dog. Socialization, being out in the sun, yeah. I mean, not that these will cure a major depressive disorder, but they help. Yeah. So there's two separate things in my view here. One is what...
Buddhism can learn from psychology and cultural psychology and what psychology can learn from Buddhism. There is no reason why psychology shouldn't take good techniques from Buddhism and use them in psychological goals. or apply them to patients in a psychological setting. However, that's not going to point to the ultimate. So Buddhists, and I think you mentioned some Tibetan monks, might get a little bit pissy because their technique is now being used for something else.
so we should be clear when psychology is taking mindfulness for example as a practice They are taking that and using it for psychological purposes. So it's not going to be orientated towards the same goal that it was in Buddhism. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. If a tool or a technique works then use it. We're not ideologues here, for sure. However, I'm going to stress here that mindfulness as it's used by psychologists and even as it's presented in many...
of the mindfulness factory schools. Sure. Meditation schools is actually not the mindfulness that was in the original suitors. Talk about that. That original mindfulness goes a lot further. And it's very different to what you would find normally. Talk more about that. I'd love to hear about that because the mindfulness, just for people who are listening, mindfulness in the Western sense as a psychological technique. is often presented as a set of techniques for being in the here and now.
in a non-judgmental, self-compassionate way. So the practices are often meditative, though not always. So it can be meditating on the breath. noticing your thinking, when you notice self-critical thoughts. describing them, letting them go, similar to sort of Vipassana meditation. But there's also other techniques. There's techniques like mindfully eating a raisin and noting what it feels like. But the purpose is really to get you out of your...
Out of your mind and into your life. That's actually a phrase from acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a mindfulness-based approach. So getting you out of your thoughts and into the present moment in a self-compassionate way. That's often the way it's presented in the West. But I hear what you're saying. Actually, the Buddhist notion goes way further.
So I put mindfulness into three broad categories. The first category is by putting your attention onto an object. So you put your attention onto the breath. where you put your attention onto the feet as they're moving you can also use a mantra you can use various forms of body awareness i love qigong it's another form of putting attention onto someone by putting attention onto an object We call it an object because it's an object of focus or an object of attention.
You are starting that step out of the conceptual world and into something raw and more experiential. However, the mind is still directed outwards. So what you are doing is replacing your tendency or obsession with thinking and feeling of thoughts and emotions and past and future.
and you are replacing it with something clearly present like eating a raisin or... breathing mantra visualizations something like that which are purer and more sublime things to put your attention onto the role in Buddhism whatever you put your attention onto your mind takes that characteristic so if you put your attention onto Something lovely. Something nice. Fluffy kittens. I hope you like fluffy kittens. I do. If you don't like... I'm a cat person. No. Better than dogs, that's for sure.
joking I like capybara there you go there you go So if you put your attention onto those kittens, after a while, your mind starts to become a bit warmer and a bit more compassionate and a bit more friendly. If you put your attention onto things that you dislike, your mind will start to take on that characteristic. I usually use Donald Trump as my example. So I'm thinking Donald Trump. Now you either...
think, yes, he's going to make America great again. Or you think, no, he's going to lead America to the end of democracy. Whichever way it is that you think. You mind? starts to think about that subject that's now the object to focus your mind will take on that characteristic it will become agitated or unhappy or hopeful depending on your political outlook so whatever you put your attention on your emotional state your mind state will start to follow that characteristic
So we should be careful about what we put attention on. Yeah, good point. The breath is very handy because it's neutral. You don't normally get very excited about the breathing, and yet it's not unpleasant, especially if you feel it. so putting your mind onto the breath and having the breath there as a as a crutch or a place to station consciousness gives you a very serene and pleasant
and stable way of being. From that sense of neutral stability, then you can start to tap up emotions and things a bit more wisely. However, that's still all of that that I've talked about is still externally focused. Yeah. The next stage of mindfulness is not to be mindful of what you are doing, washing the dishes, walking, breathing, but mindful of yourself. So in traditional Buddhism, first thing that you place attention onto is Sunday body.
called the foundation of mindfulness the second thing you put your attention onto is the pushing and pulling or the liking and the disliking that you have In normal life. So... disliking and disliking everything that comes into your attention you will have either liking or disliking or neutral about it However, you never look at the things you are neutral about. You never spend time thinking about things you are neutral about.
You probably don't spend much time thinking about the recent election in England with a conservative government, with a new Labour government, because you're neutral about it. So you won't put very much attention onto it. saying in the room you don't notice the color of the walls because you're neutral about to
Almost all of our life is spent dwelling on the things that we like or we dislike. According to Buddhism, if you have the tendency to dwell on things that you dislike, your mind will be based in the path. If you have the tendency to dwell on things that you like or you want to get, your mind will tend to be future or reinfected.
So past orientated tends towards depression, future orientated tends towards greed. This is one of the original psychological personality theories called greed, hatred and delusion. The second foundation of mindfulness is you become aware of yourself. That is the liking and the disliking or the pushing and the pulling that's continually moving you around. Now you're not so much concerned with what you're looking at, you're concerned with this.
reaction your valuing process your internal valuing process Yes, but we don't need to make theories or constructs. It's just there. Liking and disliking, pushing and pulling. I want to get it. I want to move away from it. And how much of the lie... Our own lives are continually ruled by this god of liking and disliking. Even just subtle liking and disliking can push and bullying it to all kinds of...
trouble or good and bad thing term. The third foundation is to be aware of your Ajita, your mind. This does not refer to your mind as in your thoughts, it refers to your mind state. Is your mind bright or dull? Is it expanded or contracted? Is the mind greed, hatred or delusion? Is the mind in compassion? Is the mind concentrated? Is the mind scattered?
This is bringing mindfulness, what I would call the second stage, this being mindful of yourself while you are doing things in the world. And this includes being mindful of your own thoughts, which is a tremendously powerful practice. However, the next stage of mindfulness after that is simply remembering. So mindfulness, the word Sati and Sambhajanya is translated as mindful. Sati means to reflect. Sampajangya really means your own consciousness.
So you draw a distinction between when my mind is lost in a story and when my mind has returned to this. kind of knowingness after a while that becomes your meditation system All you have to do is keep hold of that remembering. That's the third step of mindfulness. This is the getting beyond the constructs that you were talking about, getting beyond the stories we tell. So it's not what you're focusing on. It's not even yourself focusing on those things.
but a sudden growing awareness of this beautiful consciousness or jitta that lies behind everything else Once you start to identify that, that starts to really blossom and bloom and drive the spiritual path. Even just the taste of it, touch of it, some people have done it through drugs, through near-death experiences, through chants, through religion. just touching and getting a hint of what the mind really is behind all of this stuff.
will drive you on a spiritual path for life. Is this what is meant by enlightenment or nirvana? This is the opening of the path. This is the opening of the mystic path. You get a hint of it. That was an interview with Buddhist monk Prah Panda. Keep in mind that if you're listening to the audio-only version of this podcast, you can head on over to youtube.com slash at psychology in 10 minutes or simply youtube.com and type psychology in 10 minutes into the search bar.
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