from BBC Radio - Mindfulness and Madness

From BBC Radio - an excellent program on meditation and its shadow sides and mental issues:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0738hm2

Jcbaran wrote:

From BBC Radio - an excellent program on meditation and its shadow sides and mental issues:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0738hm2

This is a good report, especially the first half (not clear why the reporter thought it necessary to go into TM and the yogic flying silliness).  It should empower people to ask the right questions before participating in intensive meditation courses.  I'd like to download it but unfortunately can't find it as a podcast ( ? )

The program is a bit all over the place and out of balance.... but to really cover this fully would require a much longer discussion with different points of view... I agree, the old TM stuff is a whole different discussion really... less about the challenges and shadows of meditation practice and more about fraudulent studies from a cultic organization

there are programs on the internet that convert YouTube videos into mp3 audio files that you can save... there could be others that capture audio programs... the YouTube programs are great since so many videos, it's a lecture or discussion and the audio is key, not the video of people sitting on a panel - and then you can easily listen when you are not connected to wifi

Yeah, a good program but as you say a little bit all over the place. As I remember it both of the people who had serious mental episodes did so after going to week long silent retreats as a first introduction to mindfulness practice; to my mind a bit like taking a car out on the freeway before you've learnt to drive.

Mindfulness techniques like all meditation practices are designed to affect the mind. It should therefore be approached with some care and certainly not jumped in to at the deep end. It sounded to me like whoever was running the retreats was on a bit of a power trip and did not properly know what they were doing.

The following two extracts from a VA handbook gives a clearer indication:

Quote :

Remind participants that learning mindfulness may paradoxically increase their stress initially. We like to use the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote from Full Catastrophe Living, “…it can be stressful to take the Stress Reduction program (page 2).” Participants may enter the class expecting their stress to go down right away. In fact, this is not the case; MBSR asks participants to notice whatever arises during class sessions and homework practice – including painful sensations, thoughts, and emotions. In this way they are asked to greet with friendliness and nonjudgmental attention what they usually react to and resist.
Reminding participants that MBSR may be challenging in a number of ways – from getting to the class, to finding time to practice, to listening to other group members – can help them re-adjust their expectations and prepare them for the challenges and opportunities ahead. This is especially important because among Veterans, we have found that dealing with difficult group dynamics can be particularly stressful; this may actually increase their stress in the short-term.

------

We feel that a policy of broad inclusiveness is a patient-centered approach, and consistent with the original model of MBSR. Specifically, we suggest accepting all Veterans who have a desire to participate in a mindfulness group after attending an orientation session (see chapter 22), and who do not
have one of the following exclusion criteria noted in the medical record:
  Current psychotic disorder
  Poorly controlled bipolar disorder with mania
  Borderline or antisocial personality disorder
  Substance use disorder or alcohol use that poses a safety concern or is associated with an inability to keep appointments
  Suicide attempt or suicidal ideation with intent or plan, self-harm within the past month, or psychiatric hospitalization within past month.

Teaching Mindfulness to Veterans: A Resource, Kearney, David, et al., 2015

And this is in the context a groups having medically qualified leaders, not over enthusiastic and untrained ones. I would be pretty certain that the same strictures would apply to most other meditative techniques. Doesn't J D Salinger in Zooey have someone go mad through practising the Prayer of Jesus? Presumably something he had witnessed or heard of.

The spiritual illnesses that can come from practice, especially mishandled or misdirected practice are all too infrequently talked about. The great scourge of western monasticism in the middle ages, so decried as rife by Aquinas and Cassian, was accede. In its modern guise of chronic fatigue syndrome it is rife again but no one talks of it, except on occasions where it is taken as a badge of deep progress. I don't know what causes it or how it can be cured, but my own view is that it arises from practice that loses its 'beginners mind' and slips into passivity, quietism or negativity. But that's just my guess. As the darker side of practice catches up with the mindfulness movement hopefully they will apply their slightly more scientific approach to understanding the spiritual / mental ills that practitioners are prone to and learn how to deal with them rather than sweep them under the carpet. Denying their existence on the grounds that anything as all encompassingly wonderful as mindfulness couldn't possibly cause any problems.

mstrathern wrote:

In its modern guise of chronic fatigue syndrome it is rife again but no one talks of it, except on occasions where it is taken as a badge of deep progress. I don't know what causes it or how it can be cured, but my own view is that it arises from practice that loses its 'beginners mind' and slips into passivity, quietism or negativity. But that's just my guess.

A good book which deals with these problems in considerable, and persuasive detail is DT Suzuki's The Zen Doctrine of No Mind. He starts from the famous sutra of Hui-neng and gives a scholarly analysis of the many historical (and some not so historical) blind alleys of Zen. I can't recommend it highlly enough really. The book deals mainly with Chinese Zen, it's full of quotable passages. But here's just one:


"The dominant idea prevailing up to the time of Hui-neng was that the Buddha-nature with which all beings are endowed is thoroughly pure and undefiled as to its self-being. The business of the Yogin is therefore to bring out his self-nature, which is the Buddha-nature, in its original purity. But, as I said before, in practice this is apt to lead the Yogin to the conception of something separate which retains its purity behind all the confusing darkness enveloping his individual mind. His meditation may end in clearing up the mirror of consciousness in which he expects to see the image of his original pure self-being reflected. This may be called static meditation. But serenely reflecting or contemplating on the purity of the Mind has a suicidal effect on life, and Hui-neng vehemently protested against this type of meditation."

yes it is known as fooling oneself,and bringing a spiritual path down to ones own level, but The serene reflecting society is an improvement on reformed soto zen sect
Thinking thinking 
dualistic thinking
where do the weeds grow now

chisanmichaelhughes wrote:

Yes from my nievety  of 40 years ago that sums me up I thought all people who meditated and were teachers would be on the right track, and not do or say all of what we have seen them do or heard them say. The prolem  for me was and id the need for spiritual direction balanced with ones own practice

Right on, I for one started out armoured with the certainty of perfection around the corner. The truth is the world is not perfect, at least in the sense I was thinking of, and will never be, nor will I. Ah well, time to find some new windmills to tilt at.