HH Dalai Lama: Countering Stress and Depression | Hacker News Reader

HH Dalai Lama: Countering Stress and Depression

dalailama.com

103 pointsrblion34 comments

I really like this message. It has a lot of similarities to a life-changing (for me) audiobook that I recently finished (Brian Tracy's The Psychology of Achievement).

Here's a short summary:

If the situation [can be remedied], then there is no need to worry about it. ... The appropriate action is to seek its solution. Then it is clearly more sensible to spend your energy focussing on the solution rather than worrying about the problem. Alternatively, if there is no solution ... then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you cannot do anything about it anyway.

If you are motivated by a wish to help on the basis of kindness, compassion, and respect, then you can carry on any kind of work ... and function more effectively with less fear or worry, not being afraid of what others think or whether you ultimately will be successful in reaching your goal. Even if you fail to achieve your goal, you can feel good about having made the effort. But with a bad motivation, people can praise you or you can achieve goals, but you still will not be happy.

[In order to not be overwhelmed by the difficulties,] it is vital that we make every effort to find a way of lifting our spirits. We can do this by recollecting our good fortune.

[Negative thoughts and emotions - such as hatred, anger, pride, lust, greed, envy] are thus the cause of our destructive behaviour both toward others and to ourselves.

There are many methods [to train the mind] ... It is this pattern of thought [focus on turning adversity to advantage].

... one of the mind’s most marvellous qualities is that it can be transformed... [Those who attempt to transform their minds] will become more disciplined and positive.

The problem with the no reason to worry argument is that it is not my logical brain that worries - it's the lower emotional parts of my brain, which is sadly not going to be persuaded by logic.

that's why you should train your mind constantly (meditation basically means mind training) to not let your emotional parts take over the logical brain in an obsessive way.

The problem is not having a negative emotional thought, but obsessing over it and letting it overpower the other thoughts you have.

Most of the time the negative thoughts are just imaginations, histories that our mind creates and makes real. For example; it's late at night, your daughter or girlfriend hasn't returned home yet and their phone is off. You start to imagine the worst scenarios (accident, rape, cheating, whatever..) and your mind is stupid enough that it starts to believe them and making those scenarios real. You start to get worried, then anxious, then angry at them for not thinking of you and how worried you are. Maybe you are really angry when they get home and scream at them just to discover that they have been somewhere safe all night and just ran out of battery.

Being able to realize that those scenarios are just creations of your mind and snapping out of the obsessive loop of thoughts it's one of the most important things you can learn in life.

"that's why you should train your mind"

henryw's summary is good, but it misses that point: an important part of the article is developing the mind over time. The same way one gradually learns a skill like programming, one can learn to develop some of the things mentioned in the article. (I only wish I would have read such an article 10 years ago and gotten that point.)

It's not worth the regret though. I find myself thinking I wish I'd done my first year of university differently (I was a shut in), but then I remind myself that even though I made bad choices for the wrong reasons, they still led me to some good things. All I can do is try to make good choices from this point onwards.

> Being able to realize that those scenarios are just creations of your mind and snapping out of the obsessive loop of thoughts it's one of the most important things you can learn in life.

Great. I'd like to add that even the person/individual or "I" is a creation of the mind, that upon observation melts away. This in my experience has been the single most important "event" in "my" life (the "my" itself not having any tangible meaning).

The key: mindfulness, or coming back to the present moment over and over again till silence becomes natural.

I'm learning about mindfullness for trying to beat my depression. I experienced a few days of utter relaxation out of the blue before christmas, so I know that it's a real thing that can be achieved.

I'm hoping that a combination of anti-depressants and learning to live in moment will be what allows me to finally beat this.

Edit: Thanks for the reading suggestions, I'll try them out and see what sticks :)

Have you read Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn? http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-There-Are-ROUGH/dp/140130...

He is my favorite author when it comes to meditation because he focus on mindfulness and not Buddhism or more "spiritual" things as most meditation books do. He also has tapes for guided meditation that are a good way to start meditating everyday.

I highly recommend Pema Chodron's 'Taking the Leap' http://www.amazon.com/Taking-Leap-Freeing-Ourselves-Habits/d...

Having been there wrt depression, part of being with the moment is to not let habit take hold. This book is the clearest I've seen on seeing habits and letting go of them.

If you are in depression, do continue your regular treatment and anti-depressants till the docs allow you to stop. Once you are treated, then mindfulness/ being in the Now, can move you to happiness and freedom. I say this because no one (I've read) has said this cures depression. And the root of depression can be bio-chemical. However, in the long run, you would give up medication (hopefully in a year), and then the "present moment" is the key. The beauty is that is becomes easy and natural after a while. If you've suffered (been unhappy) then you have the motivation not to give up, to take this through to completion.

Go through Eckhart Tolle and Mooji (on youtube). "Power of Now" is good. Start this moment.

Thanks for the advice.

I've recently restarted on anti-depressants. I was on them previously and didn't realise they were helping because the effect was quite passive, I came off them suddenly when I moved house and the next few months went... badly. Luckily I don't suffer any bad side-effects from the one I'm on, so I don't have a problem with trying it long-term.

I'm interested in mindfullness and CBT because I want more constructive thought patterns to allow me to stop it getting so bad again in the future.

Will take a look at those videos.

The problem with medication long-term is that it may keep you in a drowsy state and not allow you to be alert and aware. If the medication is stimulating (like coffee), then it can result in too many thoughts so that the silence is not experienced.

Anyway, that's your call. Getting out of depression is the most important thing first. Keep practicing being in the present moment, and staying alert and thought-free as much as possible alongside.

Ditto'd.

The key insight is that you can control your own thoughts when you pay attention to them, and through your thoughts you can control your feelings. Your old habits will come back while you're not paying attention, but sufficient attention and conscious practice will change the habits your brain follows when you aren't paying attention.

Whether you use the language of Buddhism (meditation and awareness), folk psychology, or modern psychological (cognitive therapy), you will be using a practice that has not only deep traditional roots but also modern scientific evidence of effectiveness.

Is there a good resource that explains the DL's approach to achieving this in a more practical way? "Train your mind not to worry" is great advice but not easy to apply without more specific guidance. He hints that his approach is called "mind training" and is a Buddhist tradition. Is that another name for meditation or is it something else?

I don't know much about it, but I believe it is called lojong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojong).

> If the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no need to worry about it. In other words, if there is a solution or a way out of the difficulty, you do not need to be overwhelmed by it. The appropriate action is to seek its solution. Then it is clearly more sensible to spend your energy focussing on the solution rather than worrying about the problem. Alternatively, if there is no solution, no possibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you cannot do anything about it anyway.

This is all well and good, but what if you don't know there is a solution. Only "worrying"/thinking about it will you know if you can find one. And then the solution itself might be difficult to reach or people disagree with your solution etc leading to stress.

It would be so cool if the Dalai Lama posted on Hacker News.

Just sayin'.

Don't let your surroundings determine your mental state. The guys who survived the concentration camps in Germany were the ones who had found peace, meaning and value in their lives even in the worst condition imaginable. Practice being happy for no other reason then choosing to be happy. I'll add years to your life.

The guys who survived the concentration camps in Germany were the ones who had found peace, meaning and value in their lives even in the worst condition imaginable.

Do you have any evidence?

Victor Frankl - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

(thank you tomedme for the URL correction)

Correct wikipedia URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

Using the holocaust to prove your self-help mantras is pretty indefensible.

Who said that? Memoirs from survivors suggest that (as one would expect) the experience left them scarred for the rest of their lives.

Some. Memoirs from some survivors suggest that. Memoirs from other survivors suggest otherwise. The long-term response to the trauma varied, widely.

Point to the memoirs from survivors that suggest otherwise...

Frankl is the canonical example. But also telling is the portion of Spiegelman's "Maus" which tells of his release from Auschwitz, entitled "And now my troubles began..."

Spiegelman's father, not him. Downvote all you want, but trying to find the positive side of of concentration camps, trying to find why you're world view is validated by anecdotes from those experiences, its really lame.

I know it is Spiegelman's father: it is a memoir of Spiegelman Sr's experiences, as told to Spiegelman, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is not that anyone is trying to find the positive side of concentration camps, as if such a thing existed. The point is that some people managed to keep their spirits intact, and, in the words of the poster above, find peace, meaning and value in their lives even in the worst condition imaginable.

Is it lame to remember that even when we can't control our external circumstances, we still have some ability to control our response to those circumstances?

Yes, if I had devout followers and full financial support and security myself, not to mention hollywood friends, I would not have much stress too...

If I had all those things, I would still stress. Primarily due to a feeling that I don't deserve what I have.

Just because the message comes from someone in a position of authority, it doesn't make it any less valid.

Well, if you were a self-entitled jackass like DL, you wouldn't.

(Let the politically correct downvoting begin...)

Ad hominem aside, it's been well documented that wealth and success don't make people happy, but there's a lot of evidence (and more coming out every day) that mindfulness and self-awareness actually do.

Your cynicism does you a disservice here.

You need to educate yourself on some of the happiness research that is ongoing. It appears that people are very, very bad about predicting what will make them happy. There is also apparently something like a happiness equilibrium -- lotto winners and recent amputees actually return near their previous happiness level, one year after their "event".

http://www.biopsychiatry.com/happiness/happiness-measured.ht...

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