Healing the Mind for Lasting Happiness

The last two posts have discussed where we mistakenly seek happiness (outside ourselves), and how we often seek types of happiness that can't last, to which we cling which ultimately causes more suffering.  Yet, happiness is possible even if we can't change our outside circumstances or have previously been traumatized.

Consider how fragile the body is.  You can get a simple paper cut, and if it isn't cared for properly, it can get infected and you can die from it.  You can sprain or break your ankle and end up with a permanent disability.  Although true, the body is also remarkably resilient.  If properly cleaned and cared for, such as putting a splint on the ankle, the body can heal the most horrible wounds.

Does the mind have a similar ability to heal its wounds?  It can certainly be injured.

The sprained ankle keeps getting worse even while it is trying to heal itself if you don’t splint it and you keep repeating the actions that damaged it.  Similarly, the mind can’t heal properly if you keep doing the same things over and over.  Unfortunately, this is what we usually do.  

Have you noticed how problems seem to repeat in your lives, especially with our families and the relationships we care the most about?  We maintain the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that keep us locked into an unhealthy pattern, continually re-injuring ourselves.  We can either practice these thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and therefore strengthen the bad habits, or we can practice with them and gain insight, wisdom, and ease.

Meditation is the splint for our injured minds – it helps to clean the wound.  It provides support for changing the habits, which gives the mind the rest, the time, and the stability it needs to begin to fully heal.  But just like a sprained ankle, the mind does not heal immediately.  It can be re-injured easily.  Like the ankle, even after it is healed, it may always be weaker in one direction.  By knowing that, however, you can take steps to keep it from getting re-injured in that direction.  

We spend a lot of our time practicing dissatisfaction, so it's no surprise we have gotten so good at it.  Meditation not only can help to break that pattern, but to retrain new positive patterns.  It is important for new meditators to realize that there are many types of meditation, and there is a progression that can be followed.  At first, we usually focus on breathing or calming meditations (sometimes called shamatha or mindfulness meditations).  These can certainly help us to reduce our feelings of stress.  But ultimately that's not really enough.  We really want to get to a place where we don't get stressed out but feel a sense of calm and ease even when stressors are present.  Mindfulness is just the first step to that goal, although it is a necessary one because it helps us to achieve the clarity and stability to go to the next steps.  Contemplative meditations (sometimes called vipassana or insight meditations) help us to retrain our habitual reactions.  Meditation, however, is still only one third of the Buddhist path, which also includes ethics and philosophical/psychological practices.

Deep down, we know that seeking happiness outside ourselves will never be fully successful.  Buddhism has many techniques, practices, and paths to help us find the ability to live with ease through all of our stresses.  The goal becomes having a deep sense of well-being even as we experience the full range of human emotions, rather than trying to reject "negative" feelings and grasp after ecstatic feelings.  Not every approach will be right for everyone, but that's one of the great things about Buddhism - you are encouraged not to believe in anything until you try it to see if it works for you.