[Buddha-l] monks, meditation and trauma

[S.A. Feite]

On Apr 7, 2009, at 5:56 AM, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Steve Feite writes:
> "Matthieu Ricard points out in his Google talk that when talking to
> various refugees who escaped from Tibet who were severely abused and
> tortured by the Chinese, one of their greatest fears was *that they'd
> lose their ability to feel compassion for their to torturers* (!). So
> much of who they were and what they did and how they saw the world
> was about generating and maintaining lovingkindness for all beings,
> that the thought of losing that ability was just unthinkable."
>
> I would be very cautious about taking these sorts of reports too  
> seriously,
> or without further examination. I know Tibetans who don't find a  
> healthy
> expression of outrage something outside their "practice." And there  
> are some
> courageous Tibetan women who were abused and raped in Nepal while  
> escaping
> from Tibet who have attempted to organize and mobilize to bring  
> some justice
> to the situation and to make such passage safer. Anger is not  
> absent from
> their vocabulary.

I would suspect the aforementioned example would be the exception  
rather than the rule. It could be that trauma avoided might be  
proportional to meditative expertise. It might also be an interesting  
comment on what aspects of neural circuitry support healing and which  
parts are potentially damaged.

I think the more Buddhist take on this might be that given the  
reality of neuroplasticity, no one is a prisoner of karma.

BTW, that example by Matthieu Ricard is from the documentary _Monks,  
In the Lab_.

>
> As for searching for ancient Buddhist cures for PTSD, that would be  
> naive.
> PTSD as a diagnosis is not simply about flashbacks, or exactly what  
> was
> understood as shellshock, etc. Sex abuse, especially of young  
> children, is
> also a common cause, and in such cases there are few if any  
> "flashbacks"
> (therapists are rather worried about false memories, an issue Freud  
> already
> came to recognize). What makes PTSD a distinct diagnosis, and not  
> just a
> fancy name for trauma or haunting memories, is a full complex of  
> symptoms
> and issues which typically engulf and thoroughly influence a  
> person's entire
> behavioral and mental orientation, and it is frequently suicidal. When
> properly diagnosed, it is not your garden variety traumatic  
> aftereffect, and
> remains, even for the leading professionals, very difficult to treat.

Nonetheless, there appears to be some success with (mindfulness)  
meditation. Scientists like Siegel provide a reasonable explanation  
for why this is the case. As they say 'change your mind, change your  
brain'.