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Mental healing in Buddhism Phramaha Suthep Supandito ABSTRACT The basic knowledge we should know and keep in our mind. The three general characteristics of all things:
All things mean everything, and it is the reality of all things that it has to change or to be changed continuously. In comparison, the age of Fujiyama is longer than the age of the sakura blossom. Each one is different from each other. But all they are substantially same under the three general characteristics. Why we have to know? All we are is a subset of all things which continuously flows in the wave of change. So if we do not know the three general characteristics, it means that we do not know ourselves, even though we can finish many degrees from many universities. Without knowing ourselves, we become alienated from ourselves. This is a very important cause of suffering. So, we should stop being busy, quit things which make us waste time - away from knowing ourselves. We should learn about relation between body and mind, between lives and environments, being and non-being - so that we can manage and keep them in balance. Life and illness of life: In Theravada Buddhism, birth, aging, illness and death are normal properties of life which we cannot avoid, at all. If we realize these types of suffering, and know how to live with them harmoniously, more than 90 percent of our daily stress/sufferings will decrease immediately. This means that most of illness originates from wrong thinking or ignorance. Three groups of illness:
When we get sick for the first and the second group, we can go to see doctors, take medication or have an operation, etc. Then how does sickness operate in the third condition? Will we still be alive with incurable illness until die or we will learn to live with it without fear and suffering? In Theravada Buddhism, there are two kinds of healings:
Nowadays, it is obviously found that there are many modern ways of healing for physical illness. On the contrary, there is a few methods for healing mental illness. This is why we still find mental patients, which drains government resources and wastes a lot of time and money, in almost every society all over the world. Buddhist Healing: Buddhism focuses on mental healing more than physical healing. In the Buddha’s biographical history, he sometimes allowed monks to compassionately compound herbal kinds of medicine for general people. The Buddha, himself, sometimes, took medicine for physical healing and mentioned that he got sick physically, not mentally. For mental healing, we need a special vaccine. It is a consciousness which is produced by training the mind to stay with the reality of life, by ourselves, or with proper guidance from others, time after time. In the Buddha’s biographical history, there once was a young lady who lost her beloved husband from snakebite, two sons in an accident and her family in a home arson-fire. She had immense sorrow, to the point that she could no longer control her senses. She became insane. People came to know her only as the ‘insane one’. Nobody took care of her or gave her any assistance. Without direction and a goal for life, she wandered and cried all over the country, until one day coming across the Buddha. With compassion, the Buddha awakened her from insanity, encouraged and taught her the reality of life. In the final moments of the teaching, she suddenly realized and attained enlightenment. She had bad luck and then had good luck because of visiting the great spiritual doctor: the Buddha. Today, if we face immense sorrows like her or we acquire mental illness, what do we do? Nowadays, there are more than six-trillion people in the world’s population. Some of them are born as mere ‘quantity’, but few are born as ‘quality’. Without leaning and self-development, living for one-hundred years is meaningless. On the contrary, with learning and developing ourselves, living for only a mere day is meaningful. We may not be healthy or a wealthy one; but, if we are the one who always awaken ourselves to learn how to live harmoniously with the reality of life – we become one of the wise. We become very lucky to have encountered the Buddha. We have the spiritual vaccination for the mental illness. Living in the world for a long or short period of time becomes of no importance. We may pass many sakura blossoms, but they become meaningless if it is only a quantitative life. Therefore, we should cultivate the habit of awakening consciousness – to establish a quality life. Phramaha Suthep, the Director of Planning Division, has written a small article - See the Attachment. He will try to build his article into something a bit larger than what you see here. As of now, he does not have an abstract. Brief biography
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