Meditation, Medication and Psychological Disorders.

The mind is likened to a pond of water. Restless thoughts are like pebbles thrown into the water. They send out a ripple of activity, disturbing the tranquil surface. When the water is constantly agitated with restless thoughts, we cannot see clearly to the bottom of the pond, which represents our inner wisdom. When we stop the restless thoughts, we calm the waters, enabling us to see clearly to the bottom—where our wisest, most enlightened self resides. -Dr. Neal F. Neimark, M.D.

James: Meditation calms the waters in my mind like a powerful medication, and unlike some of my psychiatric medications, meditation has no negative side-effects!! That does not mean, however, that someone should stop taking their doctor-prescribed medications. Meditation should be an augmentation of your current psychiatric medical plan, not a replacement. Unless otherwise advised by a medical professional.

We would never recommend a cancer patient stop their medication for a "meditation-only" treatment plan! Yet, I hear some well-meaning Buddhists advise people to stop their medications. That is dangerously short-sighted. I think the confusion stems from confusing the mind with the brain--both are interconnected, and need attention in the psychiatric patient, but should be treated differently. Medications aren't very useful in changing the mind. If so, drug addicts would be enlightened Buddhas!!! The illicit drug changes the brain chemically to give the impression of nirvana-like bliss, but when the drug wears-off, the user is left, once again with his harmful habits and cravings.

Consider this example:

The brain is like a computer, and the mind is like the screen or monitor. The screen/mind, will only project what the computer/brain feeds it. In this example, psychiatric medications wouldn't change the mind's karmic habits anymore than replacing computer screens will change the content being projected by the computer/brain. In the mind of someone with a psychiatric disease, the computer/brain is infected with a "virus" or disease, which spits-out jumbled-up imagery and sound (psychiatric symptoms). Being someone with a psychiatric disease, I know how helpful and vital psychiatric medications are for these medical conditions. However, the medications aren't a cure, there was something missing. I didn't feel like I had a complete treatment plan until I found Buddhism.

This is where meditation is most effective in aiding those with psychiatric conditions. It's the answer to the "What now" question. A lot of people suffering from medical conditions such as bipolar and schizophrenia know that medication alone isn't giving them relief from their suffering. Unfortunately, many believe that there is nothing else that can help them, which is why I often recommend Buddhism to fellow sufferers, so that they can get that extra help to assist their mental stability.

Meditation can be difficult for some patients with psychiatric disorders, especially if you have attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.) or difficulty concentrating. If you're first starting to meditate and find it difficult to concentrate then I recommend chanting meditation. It's also good for meditators without psychiatric disorders, especially on days when they are particularly agitated or distracted. It will help calm the mind while focusing it on something positive and ease distraction. The repetition will clear your mind to enable spiritual insight. An added bonus is that the resonating sound will relax your body to ease the tension and stress from the day built up in your muscles.

I'm not an ordained monk or meditation teacher, but as someone with a psychiatric disorder I've realized that chanting meditation is a great way to meditate on days when your thoughts are simply racing too much.

-i bow to the buddha within all beings-

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Top 25 CENSORED stories of the year

ProjectCensored.org; Wisdom Quarterly

Project Censored 2013 is now available

  

Project Censored director Mickey Huff was recently interviewed for "Inside Story."  He discussed the ongoing problems of censorship and under-reporting in the US. Moreover, he highlighted some of 2012's most significant stories -- like the emerging police state, Fukushima, Occupy -- published in Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution.

Censored 2013 focuses on the importance of independent journalism for democratic self-government. And it holds to account the corporate-owned ("mainstream") media for their failure to provide responsible and relevant news coverage.
  
The book has additional chapters of original analysis covering drones and targeted killing, “GuatánamoSpeak,” the democracy movement in Kashmir, corporate education “reform,” Iraq... 

Top 25 Censored Stories

1. Signs of an emerging Police State
2. Oceans in peril
3. Fukushima Nuclear disaster worse than anticipated
4. FBI agents responsible for majority of terrorist plots in US
5. First Federal Reserve audit reveals trillions loaned to banks
6. Small network of corporations run global economy
7. 2012: The International Year of Cooperatives
8. NATO War Crimes in Libya
9. Prison slavery in today’s USA
10. HR 347 would make many forms of non-violent protest illegal
11. Members of Congress grow wealthier despite recession
12. US joins forces with al-Qaeda in Syria
13. Education “reform” a Trojan Horse for privatization
14. Who are the Top 1 Percent and how do they earn a living?
15. Dangers of everyday technology
16. Sexual violence against soldiers on rise, under wraps
17. Students crushed by One Trillion dollars in student loans
18. Palestinian women prisoners shackled during childbirth
19. NY police PLANT drugs on innocents to meet arrest quotas
20. Stealing from public ed. to feed prison-industrial complex
21. Conservatives attack Post Office to break Union and privatize
22. Wachovia Bank laundered money for Latin drug cartels
23. US covers up [another] Afghan massacre
24. Alabama farmers look to replace migrants with prisoners
25. Evidence points to Guantánamo dry boarding

(Marc Pilisuk) The unjust foundations favoring the 1% over the 99% are everywhere. The Occupy Movement has found many targets among the corporate elite. The financial and extraction sectors have been clearly located (Phillips and Soeiro, 2012).  But one hard to find target is the behind-the-scenes force propelling us toward nuclear war...

• REPORT: Media Freedom Foundation Project Censored
• Project Censored Book Release Celebration Party
• VIDEO: California "Censored 2013" book release
• Occupying the Merchants of Death

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Smoking weed in front of Buddhist monks

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Yogi Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Sanskrit, ganja (medicinal Cannabis sativa)

BODHGAYA, India - "Smoking weed in front of Tibetan monks"? It's not as bad as it sounds. The headline might more correctly read, "Intoxicated Hindu mendicant dancing, ganja in hand, in front of Tibetan lamas at Buddhism's enlightenment grove."

  

The precincts of the Bodhi tree are sacred ground visited by hundreds of thousands of Buddhist pilgrims every year. (It is the most Buddhist town in the world, with authentic temples from every Buddhist land, from stately Japanese zendos (dojos) to a mysterious and fascinating Bhutanese dzong).

  

Sadhus: India's Mystic Holy Men (DH)

But the grove is controlled by Hindu holy men and Indian government officials, not Buddhists. The Maha Bodhi Society has a presence, but the sannyasis and sadhus (Hindu spiritual wanderers) run rampant.

  

Devotional exiled Tibetans travel down from Himalayan Dharamsala, Himalchal Pradesh in the north of the country. Some do 108,000 (yes, one-hundred and eight thousand) prostrations around the Maha Bodhi temple next to the tree, a genetic ancestor of the original enlightenment tree Siddhartha sat under.

Why would a wanderer behave like a madman (pagal) in front of pilgrim monks? Why would a spiritual wanderer go about smoking marijuana or hash? It is the custom of some Hindu ascetic holymen. The lamas could not be too put off since Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism has a long and storied history of spiritual madmen epitomized in the saintly-sinner figure Milarepa.

• Colorado, Washington await federal response to new pot laws
• Prostitution legal in parts of Nevada
• Bon Jovi's daughter arrested after possible heroin OD
• Crime regular feature of life in every American city

The Dharma in the West

Hookah pipe Buddha ashtray (Raezyx/flickr)

Sure these things happen in the chaotic East. But would anyone dream of firing up a peace pipe in front of Vajrayana lamas? We can't imagine. However, stranger things have happened. Many Tibetan monks (great rinpoches, lamas, even alleged tulkus) are falling. It's not self-immolation of the attention-grabbing sort that's bringing them down. They often explain that they want to "taste" the allure of the West. What was it about America in the 1960s that was so intriguing to the most powerful generation in the world? In "My Dinner With Andre" Andre explained the little Tibetan monk who went off kilter gorging himself on Western excesses. There is the real life story of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who may have been the source of Andre's account. There are American lamas like Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Surya Das around which swirl rumors and controversies of sexual impropriety.

• Controversial "Buddhist" teachers and groups

So what's a little ganja to those violating other precepts? Monastics are not using or abusing drugs. We are. And we think they would be okay with that. "Let's get Buddha'ed," we say as if that meant let's get high. Medical cannabis abuse is no mild vice -- and it is no way to any kind of enlightenment or transcendent wisdom. It's a circuitous route to here, so some call it an insidious trap. So which is it? It's not Buddhist. Smoke and you, too, can dance in front of Tibetan monks like an addict sadhu in the video above. But instead of owning up to it, one can use euphemisms and claim it's a spiritual endeavor, a Milarepa-like-madman "quest."
  

"Oh, Buddha, to be like you! (Moondoxy)

Were alcohol or intoxicants part of the path, the Buddha would have pointed to them as aids rather than obstacles. Or he would have remained silent on the matter. That he thought them such a serious obstacle that he listed alcohol as a path of doom in the Five Precepts is serious.

Could there be a difference between drugs? Do some serve only to blot out and obtund consciousness rather than to expand it? It is certainly our position at Wisdom Quarterly that some natural substances (DMT, alkaloids, iboga, Amazonian vines that make ayahuasca and natema, etc.) may have some benefits to the awakening of the pineal gland/third eye. But booze and high-THC (low-CBD) weed stocks and caustic synthetic chemicals? Wake up. Reality is better than this or we would advocate making the best of this illusion.

(LINK) The wyrd world far beyond dulled consciousness

• Flouride (Prozac, toothpaste, tap water, etc.) calcifies Pineal Gland

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How to get your Zombie to kill

Making Manchurian Candidates?

 Phil Stewart (Reuters, "Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies"); Wisdom Quarterly

What does a Manchurian Candidate look like? (indybay.org)

   

There's nothing to fear but fear (and zombies).

Halloween and the Day of the Dead are coming soon, so here's a true-life scary story.
   
BOGOTA, Colombia - The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus. 

   

Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.

   

Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine,  which has been embraced by thieves and rapists.

[Expect to see scop' on the dance floor as soon as pushers manage to get ayahuasca, iboga, and the dreaded GLINT into tablet form.]

   

"When I woke up in the hospital, I asked for my baby and nobody said anything. They just looked at me," Fernandez said, weeping. Police believe her son Diego was taken by a gang which traffics in infants.
  

WATCH: To be cool in school Jerri Blank had to stoop to glint (Strangers With Candy)

 

Colorless, odorless, and tasteless, scopolamine is slipped into drinks and sprinkled onto food. Victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.

   

In the case of Fernandez, the mother of three was rendered submissive enough to surrender her youngest child.

  

Most troubling for police is the way the drug acts on the brain. Since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors.

 

"When a patient (of U.S. date-rape drugs) is under hypnosis, he or she usually recalls what happened.

  

But with scopolamine, this isn't possible because the memory was never recorded," said Dr. Camilo Uribe, the world's leading expert on the drug. Scopolamine has a long, dark history in Colombia dating back to before the Spanish conquest. 

   

Legend has it that Colombian Indian tribes used the drug to bury alive the wives and slaves of fallen chiefs so that they would quietly accompany their masters into the afterworld.

  

Nazi "Angel of Death" Joseph Mengele experimented on scopolamine as an interrogation drug. And scopolamine's sedative and amnesia-producing qualities were used by mothers in the early 20th century to help them through childbirth.

  

Finding the drug in Colombia these days is not hard.

  

How to react to fear of secret-zombie agents and operatives? Buy a kit? (Examiner).

   

The tree which naturally produces scopolamine grows wild around the capital and is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its yellow and white flowers. 

  

The tree is popularly known as the "borrachero," or "get-you-drunk," and the pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.

  

"We probably should put some sort of fence up," jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota's botanical gardens, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere. "If you ate a few of those, it would kill you."
  

Although scopolamine can be easily extracted from the seeds, experienced criminals hardly ever bother with them, police say.

   

Pure, cheap scopolamine is brought across the border from neighboring Ecuador, where the borrachero tree is harvested for medical purposes, Uribe said. The alkaloid is used legally in medicines across the world to treat everything from motion sickness to the tremors of Parkinson's disease.

 

The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it's not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. Some analysts blame it on a culture of crime in the Andean nation, home to the world's largest cocaine and kidnapping industries, not to mention Latin America's longest-running [CIA-sponsored] guerrilla war.

  

There are so many scopolamine cases that they usually don't make the news unless particularly bizarre. One such incident involved three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick.

   

Losing all willpower, the men readily gave up their bank access codes. The breast-temptress thieves then held them hostage for days while draining their accounts.

   

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota takes scopolamine very seriously and offers staff tips on how avoid being drugged. One piece of advice may seem obvious: Don't let your drinks out of your sight when at a Bogota bar or nightclub.

  

Still, at least three visiting U.S. government employees here have been drugged and robbed over the past two years. Other American victims from time to time appear at the embassy seeking help, still shaking off a scopolamine hangover.

 

"I remember one case; an American reported being drugged," an embassy official said. "He says to his doorman, 'Why did you let them walk out with my stuff.' The doorman says, 'Because you told me to.'"

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NEVER AGAIN (until the next time)

One-year anniversary of Norway's mass murder
Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

Norway's right wing monster defiant and on trial in Oslo (AP/Scanpix/NTB pool)

Manchurian candidate or The Joker (Seeker401)

OSLO - On Sunday Norway paused to commemorate the 77 victims of Anders Behring Breivik's bomb and gun massacre. His mass murder shocked the peaceful Scandinavian nation a year ago. 

  

But the tragedy, according to the prime minister, has brought Norwegians together in defense of democracy and tolerance.

   

It may have also inspired American would-be-doctor-turned-mass-murderer and likely unwitting victim of psychological "mind control" experimentation John Holmes, the Aurora Assassin. (He is now heavily drugged against his will with pharmaceutical grade psychotropic substances to remember nothing and say even less while on trial).

 

Breivik, 33, is a right wing fanatic motivated by misguided patriotism and Islamophobia which led him to murdering Norwegian children to cast xenophobic suspicion on non-Norwegians. He has not only admitted to the July 22, 2011 murders but bragged about it as he has attempted to inspire others to his hateful cause.

  

First Person Shooter

Was Batman-fanatic James Holmes listening, or was he simply reacting to living in a gun-happy police state that wants periodic mass murders to occur so it can crack down on civil liberties, gun laws, and personal freedoms once regarded as American as Winchesters and Indian natives.

   

Almost exactly a year later the unthinkable happened again going from peaceful Norway to violent Colorado, not far from a previous mass murder of young people by white assailants in the tragedy known simply as Columbine.

   

Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma (likely a stooge/fall guy for a certain clandestine federal agency), Jared Loughner in Tucson, that unnamed U.S. sergeant (Staff Sgt. Robert Bales) and war criminal in Afghanistan who (acting with others never to be named) killed 16 with most of them children, all the way back to Hitler's inner circle of co-conspirators and their Eichmann-style followers.

   

But race can never be mentioned as any kind of contributing factor to any type of crime in specific, not in American. The Virginia Tech shooter was not white, which "proves" race has nothing to do with any kind of particularly horrific terrorist crimes against humanity. Sure, all the people who planned, ordered, and carried out the most horrific mass murders in history (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were white, but that doesn't count because... It just doesn't. It's racist to even talk about it.

  

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho

White or not, it does not seem likely that all of these were actually individual acts of terrorism and "A Clockwork Orange" ultra-violence. Instead, a phenomenon known as the creation of a "Manchurian Candidate" seems far more likely, if far less plausible due to our mainstream media conditioning. 

 

In Norway, as many pledged "never again," a lone wolf or jackal having his day was blowing up eight then shooting 69 others to death to destroy the post-Viking Scandinavian ideal of being inclusive and multicultural.

  

Timothy McVeigh

On Sunday's anniversary of the massacre, tarps covered windows of bomb-damaged buildings on the plaza as cement blocks only permitted pedestrian traffic. Mounted police and bomb-sniffing dogs were on hand, but security was not overbearing. Norway will not go down the road of being controlled by reactionary responses to domestic terrorism. It remains a free and open society.

Why But Why?

Why would any agency or clandestine entity do this -- put "monsters" in our midst and nightmarish terrors in the media? The military-industrial complex with its PsyOps has a motive. And it is to create widespread panic and crippling fear/paralysis.  In the illegal invasion of Iraq it undertook -- with our tacit approval or patriotic pride and only relatively few protesters -- was openly called a campaign of "shock and awe," a needless display of overkill to terrify the world watching the televised and slickly produced cable news network version.
  
While the revolution will not be televised, the neo-conservative-corporate war certainly will. And in the meantime, we can expect more "bizarre and inexplicable lone wolf killers who are completely responsible for themselves and had no one tamper with them or put ideas in their heads" in a line up displaying the "banality of evil" the Nuremberg trials uncovered. Nothing else is going on. Believe the TV. And go back to sleep.

• Gun sales up tenfold after Colorado shooting
• Anders Breivik Norway massacre anniversary 
• Jerry Sandusky "serenaded" in prison
• America's last free speech radio (Pacifica)

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Nepal, My Nepal

Arun Shrivastava, South Asia Correspondent (Salem-News.com)

(Hscindia) The Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre (MIMC) is a great example of one person's vision: Ven. Sanghasena established the MIMC in 1986 to offer both spiritual instructions as well as desperately needed humanitarian services to impoverished people in the remote Buddhist land of Ladakh, India, which neighbors Nepal in the Himalayas. A dedicated team of social workers, teachers, doctors, monks, nuns, community leaders, and care-providers have created an integrated community at Devachan, Ladakh. More

Nepal Privatized and Sororized

...The Communists, led by two closet-Christians, Prachanda and Bhattrai, perhaps supported by the Catholic Queen in Delhi, declared that Nepal is a "secular state." The Vatican declared its secular credentials too, long ago, so long as one was Christian and paid rent to the Pope.

  

The Mafia is slightly different: they guarantee respectable jobs; modern day Marxists and the Vatican do not, not even to their diehard slaves. Nepal’s so called NGO brigade should learn this unpalatable truth.

During the ten year long armed rebellion against the monarchy (1996-2006), the majority of the rural population and many in urban areas supported the Maoists. However, when the Maoists captured nearly 40% of the 602-member Constituent Assembly, they wanted democratic centralism akin to the former Soviet Union. 

  

The other 60% opposed it for all sorts of reasons. The State Restructuring Commission came up with two options. But they seem to be unacceptable to various ethnic groups for various reasons... 

  

The Maoists received foreign support, funds as well as arms such as M56 assault rifles and Heckler and Koch G3. Rebels were caught by the army and released again. The legitimate government’s forces received M249 light machine-guns, widely used by US armed forces. The death toll from the peaceniks’ arms was 4,500 [government side] and 8,200 [rebel side]. This was much less than the relatively young Madeleine Albright’s “price-worth-it” 500,000 Iraqi infants, and later 1.5 million Iraqi dead, and over 100,000 Libyans killed.

Nepalese civil society

Who cares that civil society is out there to defend people’s rights when the price is always worth it? Dead folks do not complain. NGOs, modern-day vultures, complain only when their folks are dead or done in, in every sense -- culturally, socially, economically, politically.

During classical imperialist forays mercenaries went in to kill. But after WW II, empire was built by economic hit men (EHM). Post-1990 has been the golden period of sociocultural hit men (SHM) spearheaded by cash-rich INGOs and floor-sweeper local NGOs and Christian fundamentalists.

  

These are ably supported by the insidious, drug peddling, racist, “indoctrination centers [of] the Chabad cult that teaches children that the Chabad Rebbe is the Moshiach and that they have to do what the Rebbe tells them to do.” [4] Young Israelis are as much ensnared into cocaine snorting as the young Nepalese. That’s modern-day civil society. Hard drugs, sex, cult following, music, and democratic free-thinking are the opiates of the masses.

  

Behind this façade lies the globalist-corporatist agenda of enslavement and that is beyond the comprehension of the civil society morons. Nepal’s youth is done in. More

• Are Jewish "Chabad" schools funded by drug money?

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Coca-Cola and Karma (cartoon)

Why do soft drinks use bubbly soda? It is the only way to make that much sugar palatable. Sugar ends up being more toxic and addictive than the little cocaine once used.

  

Former exec regrets Coke's marketing campaign

Text: Nola.com/Newsflash, The Washington Post News Service, with Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON - Todd Putman stepped up to a podium Thursday ready to break with his past.

   

Spread before him was a ballroom full of public health officials and community activists, gathered for a "National Soda Summit" on how to loosen the soda industry's grip on the American appetite.

   

The conference marked the latest salvo in a barrage of recent attacks on makers of unhealthy food and beverages, especially soda.

• Coca-cola's secret recipe revealed
• Modern recipe uses synthetic excito-toxins

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I, announced plans to ban super-size sodas from his city's restaurants, movie theaters, sports arenas, and bodegas. Disney will no longer run junk-food ads with its children's programming. First lady Michelle's book about the White House vegetable garden, released Tuesday, notes that the only drinks offered during family meals at home are milk and water.

  

The logic behind these moves has been repeated so often it is practically a mantra: The nation is in the throes of an obesity crisis, and sodas account for an outsize share of the sugar pouring into American bellies.

   

Putman, 51, shares that view. But he is also driven by another motive: From 1997 to mid-2000, he was a top marketing executive at Coca-Cola.

   

"It took me 10 years to figure out that I have a large karmic debt to pay for the number of Cokes I sold across this country," he said. On Thursday, he came to settle it.

   

He wanted to give an inside account of what he contends has been a drive by Coca-Cola to replace not just its direct competitors but all beverages in the American diet -- a campaign for what the company called "share of stomach." He wanted to warn about the industry's focus on young people and minorities.

• Former Coke executive wants to market health now
• “Unthinkable! Undrinkable! Murders in Colombia, Child Labor in El Salvador, Stealing and Polluting Water in India, El Salvador, and Mexico” (ymlp.com).

But mostly he wanted to level the playing field.

   

"I'm not against soft drinks per se," he began carefully. "What I am for is balance of power. And I think the power has shifted in the wrong direction. The resources, the scale, the intelligence, the strategy these companies use is intense.

   

"We need to take all that thinking...all that strategy and convert it -- jujitsu it -- to healthy products."

   

Such a mission would have been inconceivable to the man who joined Coca-Cola back in 1997, Putman said during an interview before the speech. More

• VIDEO: The people's power to boycott 
• One question for Max Keiser of Karma Banque
• How to live debt-free in debt-ridden world
• Cocaine manufactured by Coca-Cola

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Discouraged.

***WARNING: LONG Rant ahead that's not your typical "Kittens and flowers" Buddhist post***

I'm struggling lately in my Dharma practice. I haven't meditated in months--not because I don't want to because I do, but I just can't get myself to do it. A large part of it is my mental illness that makes finding motivation extra challenging. Especially when the heavy medicating drugs I have to take to prevent mania and psychotic episodes zap me further of the will to do much of anything. It's difficult to fully convey how difficult it is to over-come.

Furthermore, I deal with a constant level of depression just beneath the surface of even my best days where I feel fairly decent. And please don't say, "Everyone gets depressed" because deep, clinical depression isn't like just having a bad day. Irregardless of that it's just an insensitive thing to say to someone who is living with clinical depression. It's chronic and biologically based on chemical imbalances in the brain.

And it's not as easy as just taking a pill because I already do, and still there is this underlying level of feeling like life isn't worth it. People think just because there are medications that they are cures--they help take the corners off the sharpest symptoms but they don't "cure" you in the sense that they don't bring you to the level of those who don't live with a severe mental illness.

Ironically, I was attracted in part to Buddhism because of it's psychological benefits, and I still believe it has immense help for those dealing with mental illness. However, Buddhism is difficult for anyone let alone for people with mental health challenges (unless you're enlightened, and how many can honestly claim that?). And it seems that the more I think I know about Buddhism the less I actually do. Everyone loves that "honeymoon phase" when you first taste the Dharma and it literally changes the way you see the world for the better but then the nitty-gritty, hard work begins and at times you stop and ask yourself, "Is this really worth it?"

It is. Buddhism can be a real bitch, and sometimes I wish I could just adhere to a religion where blind faith was about all I needed to do. However, I have felt those fleeting moments of enlightenment too profoundly to abandon the Dharma. I'm just discouraged about how poor my practice is right now, and has been for some time. An aspect of this discouragement stems from a lot of anger that I struggle with on a daily basis, which is, in part, again, rooted in the schizoaffective disorder.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder (or, A.D.D.) in conjunction with the affective side of things (affective simply means mood disorder, or bipolar. So, schizoaffective disorder is a combination of some schizophrenic symptoms and some bipolar symptoms). A.D.D. is a condition, which (in part) prevents the brain from being able to screen out stimuli that most people can relegate to the background.

So, while I am also hearing and listening to you talking to me, I can also hear at the same time: birds chirping outside, the kids screaming in their yard as they play, the traffic noise, the humming of the refrigerator and other appliances, the lawn mower going in the distance, etc. and I can't screen it out to focus simply on the conversation. All of this noise at once raises the stress in my mind and makes me impatient with the inability to focus on just one sound, which often makes me angry. In addition, I am hyper-aware of what is going on in the world and I get so angry because I just see humanity (and especially here in America) doing everything it can to destroy itself, its environment, its economy, its political system of democracy, its compassion for those who need assistance, its decency toward others in public places, its health care system, its acceptance of minorities and those of different sexual orientation, and on and on.

It makes me wonder what's the point of doing anything?!! Why participate in society and voting when it doesn't seem to make a difference or matter. What is the difference between letting karma do it's thing and predestination because some Buddhists seem to just shrug their shoulders in the face of struggles as if to say, "Eh, it's just karma doing its thing--what's the point?" And, yes, I know that suffering is inevitable and everywhere. I know that the world is not the place to look for stability. However, it seems that in response, many Buddhists take the default position to disconnect from society and disregard politics.

Yet, I struggle with this solution because it seems rather fatalistic, nihilistic and a form of avoidance. It seems to me that we owe it to ourselves to try and do our best to make it a better world--even if it can never be perfect. Aren't we making things worse if we just disconnect from society? Don't we have a duty to try our best to help build a better society? What if everyone just disregarded politics and civic responsibilities? Isn't it a bit selfish in a way? If no one tried to maintain some sort level of a stable world then it seems to me that some dictator would just take advantage of that and wipe out whole sections of the globe. Isn't that basically just letting suffering multiply? It's one thing to realize that suffering on some level is inevitable. However, to just disconnect seems to ironically cause more suffering from less and less good-hearted people participating to crafting how a country's general society behaves.

I'm certainly not giving up on Buddhism by any stretch but I'm discouraged today and it has been building. I guess my discouragement is with a lot of things but my Buddhist practice has me a bit frustrated, dispirited and depressed. I know it's not Buddhism that is the problem, and I know that I have a lot of work to do but please don't just post simplistic comments saying things like, "All you have to do is 'A' or 'B.'" Or, "You're problem is 'X.'"Everyone is full of advise but it's all easier said than done.

I'm not necessarily looking for answers, or advice--just some sympathy and assurance that I'm not the only one with these discouragements. I mean, intuitively I know that I'm not the only one but the things I hear sometimes from my fellow Buddhists makes me feel like I missed out on some meeting where everyone gained enlightenment. I'm not any kind of expert and I've got plenty of rust around the edges but I am always skeptical of people who seem to think they have it all figured out and that they're going to set everyone straight on how to be like them.

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The Dharma Police

There is a post over at my friend Kyle's new blog about the precepts. I posted a comment, which I wanted to turn into a post of my own here about the subject because it is one that interests me a lot. I firmly believe that one can still drink a beer now and then and still be a very good, kind and serious Buddhist. As well as still take the precepts seriously. I aspire to lose weight but I still eat a cookie now and then. Does that mean all my efforts to eat healthy the rest of the time a waste and insincere? Of course not. Not everyone is able to commit to the precepts completely. So is it fair to say people who don't steal, kill, misuse sex or lie but do drink or smoke a cigar or even a joint from time to time aren't serious Buddhist practitioners??? They may not be eligible for monk hood but how many of us can say that anyway?

If someone isn't ready to give up alcohol completely then leave them be. Wouldn't it be better to encourage their Buddhist practice in other ways where the are making progress? Rather than say it's black and white and since you still drink or smoke you're not a sincere Buddhist? To do so isn't realistic, compassionate and in fact it's hypocritical. How about not eating meat? I keep all the precepts quite well except for the occasional drink, cigar or joint. Yet someone else might keep them all except still eat meat, which in my view isn't in keeping with the first precept of not killing. However, I would never call someone who does eat meat an "insincere" or "bad Buddhist." I have no moral ground to stand on to make such an accusation nor do many in the Buddhist community.

Personally, I dislike eating meat, however, I don't jump into someone else's underwear to chastise them for eating meat. It's none of my business and I know I don't like people being the "Dharma Police" with me. So if we're going to play Dharma Police then pray tell me, which of the two people is a "better Buddhist?" The non-meat eater of the non-intoxicant taker? Neither. We all have struggles with at least one of the precepts. Except maybe the Dalai Lama but even many monks I'm sure can't keep them all. We need to remember that none of us are living how we should because if we were we won't be here in samsara right now. I do think the precepts are good and helpful but they are not commandments except perhaps for monks. Rather they are recommendations on how best to live so that we reduce suffering as much as possible.

The foundation of the fifth precept is about intoxication and not everyone who has a beer or two after work get intoxicated. Not everyone drinks to the point of acting like a fool and in a headless manner. Yes, it's true that it has that potential but there is such a thing as moderation and the majority of people who drink, smoke a cigar or joint do so responsibly. The other issue at hand here is that not everyone's body is the same. Some people can't ingest these substances without doing it to excess, however, many can handle them without acting stupidly. For example, I am able to drink or smoke a joint without going crazy. However, I know that caffeine is one substance that I can't ingest much because the caffeine can increase my bouts of mania or actually trigger one to where I get anxious to the point of real suffering.

So, I stay away from caffeine for the most part but do I condemn the thousands of monks and millions of practitioners who drink tea or coffee? Of course not--It's not my business nor do I believe responsible use of such substances is always bad or a hindrance to our practice. Caffeine is very much an intoxicant and addictive if misused yet traditionally Buddhists not only don't add it to the intoxicant list; It's encouraged to stay alert and awake for meditation. Drugs are drugs so if we're going to condemn people who drink alcohol or smoke marijuana then we need to say the same for caffeine drinkers. If you have a problem with a substance then don't ingest it and get help if you need it. However, not everyone who ingests these things is doing them irresponsibly or dangerously.

And what about people who over-eat, which is damaging their body to the point of risking heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and obesity, which can all be deadly. Food can be an intoxicant because chocolate for example is stimulant with all the sugar in it. Excessive sugar intake can cause diabetes, which is another serious and harmful disease, which like heart disease, etc. causes people a lot of suffering. Yet who amongst us would frown upon obese people from attentinding sangha or trying to practice the Dharma to the best of their abilities? Wouldn't it be better to see people find relief in the Dharma even if it's not total relief than compeltely alienate them by comdeming them and calling them insincere, irresponsible or immoral Buddhists???

It's not realistic or our place to say people don't take the precepts seriously if they can't keep all of them 100% of the time but have a weakness with one or two of them. Even if you think it's a "sin" I would remind you of what Jesus said to the crowd quick to stone a woman who, "sinned" "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." If we are following them as best we can but still falling short like most of us then how can we not be sincere Buddhists? Who can say that they honestly keep them all at every moment of every day? None of us. I'm not encouraging killing by any means but even murderers aren't turned away from the Dharma while they serve their sentence for their crime. There are prison sanghas who embrace these folks. Yet who would call their interest in the Dharma "insincere?" Who wants to cast the first stone? I bet we could look into your life and find some stuff that you're not proud of or that would be objectionable to someone.

If you're not keeping each one of those precepts all the time then you don't have a leg to stand on when being so harsh toward others. Why not spend our time bolstering each other's practice and finding where we can come together and inspire each other rather than going around and keeping track of who's "sincere" and who isn't based on how they live their life? If the precepts were to be followed by the letter of the law then they'd be commandments. We all have to be careful not to think we're squeaky clean when it comes to our behavior. Even IF you keep all the precepts all the time I can assure you that you're doing something else that isn't "Buddha-like." Or will do something like that at some point between now and when you die. If you were doing everything, "right" then you'd be enlightened on the edge of never being reborn. I doubt many of us are in THAT boat. At least those who might not be perfect in your eyes have found the Dharma in the first place, which while they might realize enlightenment in this life at least they are trying their best to better themselves.

We all do what we can and it's not our job to question the sincerity of others unless we're enlightened like Buddha. At the same time I think it's admirable that many keep the alcohol and intoxicant precept. Just don't get too holier-than-thou about it all or I might rescind my admiration. Ha!! The reason that I think that the precepts are recommendations is in part because Buddha knew that not everyone could keep them but he didn't want to turn people away from his teachings that would bring them relief from suffering regardless. Perhaps keeping the precepts 100% and 100% of the time is the ideal and something we should all aspire to. However, moderation is a key in Buddhism too. Buddhism doesn't require us to be perfect nor does it say the asceticism of completely giving up worldly pleasures is skillful either. Buddha taught moderation and those of us who do still enjoy some worldly pleasures should at least get some credit for doing it in moderation rather than condemned as "faux Buddhists" or whatever else nonsense might be said about us. Let's just try and be more kind and compassionate toward each other. We're all doing our best.

~Peace to all beings~

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