Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C06542
“Do you think it is wise to introduce our friends or family members who have such strong problems that they need years of psychotherapy to come back to a normal, what means peaceful life to the Buddhism, to meditation, or to both? Could that help far away from a Buddhist country? Which way of doing this would be best? Should we give them books about Buddhism or meditation? Should we discuss what we learned about? Should we send them to Thailand? Or what should we do?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
First you should understand that one should study Dhamma and understand Dhamma in order to prevent such unfortunate situations, like when people have big psychological problems. People ought to study Dhamma first in order to not get into such things. But when people have already gotten themselves into this kind of trouble, then it is much more difficult to deal with. One can’t expect any quick or immediate results.
When people already have psychological problems, heavy ones, then we just deal with the circumstances with the situation as it goes. So one should first look at it in this way. The person who already has nervous problems or mental illness isn’t able to understand the Dhamma. They may sit and listen to Dhamma talks but they don’t really understand what is being said. They can’t understand.
The person who is able to help them must be very skillful, very clever, have a lot of experience to know how and be able to help them. First one must talk to them until they can understand and accept for themselves that the reason they’re in the situation they’re in is because they don’t know anything about Dhamma.
First they must realize the problem they have and admit it, and then recognize that the reason it happened is because they don’t know anything about Dhamma. If we can get this across to them then they might start to get interested in Dhamma, and then we will have some ability to communicate to them, at least a little bit, and we can work from there.
So we must be able to get across to them that Dhamma can help them. If we can get this idea across enough that they will listen, then we teach them appropriate understanding of Dhamma until they can follow along. And then take what we have told them about and think accordingly, to think in lines with the Dhamma that we are giving to them. And then so that they can start to develop some mindfulness, some awareness, so they can kind of start to pull their mind together to overcome the tremendous dispersion and distraction, restlessness of their mind, or their anxiety, or the tension and nervousness, or whatever it is. If they could start to think in terms of Dhamma correctly, they can start to pull their mind together and be mindful.
As far as we can see, books won’t do any good. Books aren’t nearly as good as talking with someone. To talk with them directly, maybe give them some very simple advice about very basic approaches to meditation, and then take it step by step from there, has some potential. So we encourage them, support them, and kind of lead them along until there is some samādhi, their minds stabilize a bit. And then when they have some samādhi, we can develop it further, help them further from there.
Books are of some use before people have these problems, or when they are about or starting to have these problems. Then books can be of use. It appears that no one so far has written a book specifically for people who are getting sick in this particular way. We should study the sick individual a great deal until we know the circumstances and the characteristics of the illness, we understand where it comes from, we see how it affects the person. We need to study this person very carefully to learn these things.
Sometimes we make ourselves ill in the same way. We kind of fake it, like we have the same problem so that we can speak with them more easily. So that is all we can say on this subject.
From the retreat “Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination,” as translated from the Thai by Santikaro
Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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