Two Lessons from Tenzin Palmo

    Most of us start life eager to learn how to control, make & accumulate things & experiences to make us as happy, safe & comfortable as possible. Some remain at this stage for life.
    Some become frustrated from repeatedly failing to achieve deep, sustained peace & satisfaction despite controlling, making & accumulating all sorts of stuff & experiences. Some - probably many - stay at this 'life sucks, and then you die' stage for life.
    Some then turn to religion or spirituality, assuming the magic is in ancient rituals, places, & practices. And a wondrous 'honeymoon period' can occur in religion / spirituality which feels very much like falling in love. Sadly the 'high' doesn't last, and along with it, enthusiasm for religion / spirituality can peter out, leaving adherents with nothing more than a social club for those trapped in 'ordinary unhappiness.'
    A growing number of people sense that there must be a deeper, wiser way of being than wallowing in anxiety / depression. And of course shamans, mystics, saints & serious meditators have known, spoken & written about wisdom traditions for thousands of years: shamanism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Christian Mysticism, Sufism, etc. http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial .
    Mature mystics tell us that becoming a mystic does not make all our difficult challenges disappear. With lifelong practice, mystics gradually integrate mystical insights into their daily lives. This means that they gradually become less-and-less focused on personal concepts, preferences, likes & dislikes, etc and more-and-more focused on the welfare of others. This profound shift in consciousness eliminates more than 90% of unnecessary (self-inflicted) suffering: no longer getting angry the many, many times 'things don't go our way.' HOWEVER, mature mystics still experience constant change, aging, sickness, pain & death; and actually feel their own & others' hurts & sorrows much more than the average person BUT experience it all from a very different, much wiser perspective, with little if any suffering.

    “Humans live through their myths, and only endure their realities."
        Robert Anton Wilson. “Cosmic Trigger 1. Final Secret of the Illuminati.” Hilaritas Press, 2016.

    What we hear or read about mature mystics are 'myths' to those who've had little or no mystical experiences, but are simply the reality experienced by other mature mystics, regardless of their background, geography, or time.

 
    “… there is within me something greater, something far more wonderful than I have yet been able to show to the world … something intrinsically good …” 
    Rev. Roshi P.T.N.H. Jiyu-Kennett, “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press, 2002.

    "There is something greater than us, this nondual reality of which we are a part. And you’re always connected to it. There’s no way not to be connected. But you can block it. And unblocking is what these practices are for." 
    Rami Shapiro. CHALLENGING BELIEFS: Are You a VICTIM of Spiritual Misguidance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rZLlvXFQ7k

    One of the many mystical insights we are ALL capable of receiving is that "there is within me something greater." After this, instead of fearing we're alone, meaninglessly lost in a hostile universe, we KNOW that each of us is a precious, integral part of the intelligent loving Source of all there is.

    “View all traditions and views as non-contradictory, 
      And as true expressions of the Buddha’s teachings.”  
            Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, ‘Heart of Compassion”

    Highly-evolved beings like Sri Anandamayee Ma understand that "the 'personalized gods' of organized religion - whether Brahma, Buddha, Allah, or 'God the Father' of Christianity - are 'like ice, different forms of what is really only [the] pure formlessness' of water: 'When you become attracted and get in touch with a particular Divine form, as you become more absorbed in it, you one day find out that S/He is indeed the formless. Then you see that S/He is sakara [with form] as well as nirakara [without form], as well as beyond both.'"

        Diane Perry felt a strong call to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun when she was 17. As part of her training, renamed Tenzin Palmo, she spent 12 years meditating alone in a 6x6 foot cave in the Himalayas at an altitude of 13,000 feet.
    Most of us can become very upset over ridiculously trivial inconveniences - "first world problems." For context, Buddhists consider the entire realm of existence as 'samsara' - an endless circle of birth and rebirth mired in 'dukkha' - suffering (but more accurately, ‘unsatisfactory’).  
    Tenzin Palmo's reaction to a problem can be a valuable lesson for ALL of us:
    "One spring as the snows melted, her cave flooded. Sick and soaking wet, Palmo sat in her meditation box examining her plight. ‘I was thinking, “Yes, they were right in what they told me about living in caves. Who would want to live in this horrible wet?” It was cold and miserable and still snowing. 
    Then suddenly I thought, ‘Are you still looking for happiness in samsara? We’re always hoping that everything will be pleasant and fearing that it won’t be.’ Suddenly, she realized, ‘“It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. Samsara is dukkha. There’s no problem. Why expect happiness? If happiness is there, happiness is there. If happiness isn’t there, what do you expect? It really doesn’t matter.” 
    When I felt that in my heart, this whole weight of hope and fear just dropped away. … It was an enormous relief. … Why do we make such a big fuss when we suffer? It doesn’t matter. We go on.”

    Even before she left England for the Himalayas, Diane Perry started doing a Buddhist mantra practice of chanting ‘Om Mani Padme Hum.’ This practice reinforces the practitioner’s focus on compassion for other beings.
    She "was working in a library and couldn’t say her mantra aloud, so she began repeating it silently in her heart. ‘Within a very short time, my mind split and there was this quiet, calm, spacious mind with the 'Om Mani Padme Hum' reverberating within it, then there was this peripheral mind with all the thoughts and emotions. The two minds were detached from one another. This gave great poise to my mind and the ability to exercise far more choice over my thoughts and feelings because I was no longer immersed in them.’”
    Lawrence Pintak “Lessons from the Mountaintop. Ten Modern Mystics and Their Extraordinary Lives.” Sentient Publications, 2025. 

    If you're naturally empathic to the plight of others, continuously repeating (internalizing) the mantra, 'Om Mani Padme Hum' will gradually open & soften your heart and you'll feel warmth radiating from your chest. SUPERCHARGE THIS WITH Loving-Kindness Meditation: http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/12/deeper-dimensions-of-acceptance.html 
    If you have a more devotional temperment, and feel more at home with Christian spirituality, try using the mantra, 'maranatha' - Aramaic Christian exclamation meaning "Our Lord, come!" or "Come, Lord Jesus!" used in some Christian meditation practices.
    If you feel more comfortable with a secular mantra, try, 'Om (Aum)' - the sound of the universe, creation, and wholeness. Other secular mantras, "I am grounded," "I am calm," "I am safe," "I am loved," "I am enough," "I am at peace."

    With steady practice, our command center gradually shifts from being exclusively fear / thought-based ("fight / flight / freeze"), located in our head, to being increasingly love / compassion-based ("tend & befriend"), located in our heart. This intentional process of "de-armoring" our heart, allows us to perceive everything - joys & sorrows - of life with progressively greater sensitivity. 

 

“God dwells within you, 
as you.” 
Muktananda


“No effort is lost, 
No obstacles exist.” 
Bhagavad Gita

 

     

Illustration from onbeing.org

Core Beliefs and Mental Health

     Our personal core beliefs, no matter how unaware we may be of them, nevertheless powerfully guide & influence our life. And many educated, Westernized people have core beliefs based on scientific materialism. Scientific materialism is entirely appropriate for physical sciences, BUT makes no sense at all as a worldview, particularly when dealing with our identity, the meaning of life, and other existential matters. These most critical aspects of life have been studied by the world's wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Ignoring this depth of knowledge, and assuming by default that science has all the answers is "profoundly alienating, depressing and delusional."

     Wisdom traditions can be compared to politics. Many politicians put self-interest & their own party's success, ahead of the welfare of their country. Such "partisanship" is tearing the US apart. However, politicians who take their job seriously, primarily serve their country's, & ideally the world's, best interests. Wisdom traditions, taken seriously, guide practitioners toward ethical behavior, unconditional love of self & others, and the capacity to gracefully navigate life's most difficult existential challenges. Like politics, religions have a shameful history of incompetence, bad actors & criminals. Nevertheless, both politics and wisdom traditions - when taken seriously - are absolutely vital & irreplaceable for a deeply meaningful life.

     The quote below is from a Buddhist perspective, but those who take any wisdom tradition seriously (are working towards or are at Culliford's or Fowler's 5th or 6th stage: http://www.johnlovas.com/2018/10/nurturing-nonpartisan-human-maturation.html or http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/11/fowlers-six-stages-of-faith.html) tend to have surprisingly similar perspectives. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and other mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are secular practices, based on Buddhist principles.

     “Cross-cultural psychiatric research shows that the Western understanding of all mental illnesses, such as depression, is profoundly influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations. Mental health care providers, drug companies, and patient-advocacy groups typically regard mental illnesses as ‘brain diseases’ in which the patient has little choice or responsibility. As journalist Ethan Watters comments, ‘The mental-health ideas we export to the world are rarely unadulterated scientific facts and never culturally neutral.’ Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry in London writes, ‘Western mental-health discourse introduces core components of Western culture, including a theory of human nature, a definition of personhood, a sense of time and memory, and a secular source of moral authority. None of this is universal.’
     From a Buddhist (& other wisdom traditions') perspective, the materialist view of the human mind – reduced to a composite of electrochemical processes occurring unconsciously in the brain – is profoundly alienating and depressing precisely because it is essentially delusional. Watters writes:
     ‘If our rising need for mental-health services does indeed spring from a breakdown in meaning, our insistence that the rest of the world think like us may be all the more problematic. Offering the latest Western mental-health theories, treatments, and categories in an attempt to ameliorate the psychological stress sparked by modernization and globalization is not a solution; it may be part of the problem. When we undermine local conceptions of the self and modes of healing, we may be speeding along the disorienting changes that are at the very heart of much of the world’s mental distress.’
     The only cure for this culturally induced mental illness is to awaken from our culturally acquired delusion so that we can grapple more effectively with our habitual mental afflictions. The process of adopting a Buddhist (or other wisdom traditions') view of human nature and the world around us is actually designed to induce a profound disillusionment with all mundane concerns. This has served as a motivating force for many Buddhists (& others) to take monastic ordination or devote themselves to a life of solitary contemplative practice. From the perspective of modern clinical psychology, such disillusionment and malaise could easily be diagnosed as clinical depression, calling for therapy, including drugs, to restore the renunciate to the Western ‘norm.’ In the United States, one fourth of the population has a diagnosable mental illness, and from a Buddhist (& others') perspective, even what passes for normal mental health looks more like mental illness – for which the only cure is a radical shift in one’s worldview, values, and way of life.
     William James is not alone in regarding Indian spiritual traditions as promoting a kind of pessimism and nihilism. But Buddhism, unlike modern psychology, proposes that mental afflictions are not innate to the human mind. They are rooted in ignorance and delusion, so they can be irreversibly dispelled through direct insight into the nature of reality. ... the essential purpose of sentient existence is to free ourselves from the fundamental causes of suffering ... by coming to know reality as it is.
     In stark contrast, the modern view of human nature is that we have evolved through natural selection in such a way that all our mental processes have survival value, including egotism, attachment, and hatred, despite the grief they bring us. They are intrinsic, inescapable features of the human mind; any attempt to defeat them could only be a futile and frustrating endeavor. Freud sums up the modern materialistic view by declaring that there is no possibility of achieving the goal of the absence of pain and displeasure and of experiencing lasting pleasure: ‘all the regulations of the universe run counter to it.’ From a Buddhist (or other wisdom traditions') perspective, the view that an individual’s consciousness terminates at death is utterly nihilistic, and the belief that there is no possibility of gaining freedom from suffering, except through personal annihilation, is deeply pessimistic and self-defeating.
     Within the Buddhist context, spiritual practice ... refers to a worldview, meditative practice, and way of life that lead to a lasting state of genuine happiness.”
       B. Alan Wallace. “Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic. A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice.” Columbia University Press, 2012.