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With Shamatha meditation, the instruction is to rest your gaze on a spot - on the floor, about 3' out from where you sit.

Something I learned over the years was that this instruction is important. It's important because it teaches the student about a tool they can use in their practice. Kind of a hack.

When meditating, rest your gaze on your object (that spot on the floor). When you sense your eyes wandering away from the object, you are no longer meditating. Return to the object and resume meditation. Don't go all vise-grip on the object to prevent wandering. Just rest.

@FleaMarket said:
What's he say about speaking to the causes?

He says that disease is a process that encompasses a person’s entire life, from their early childhood conditions, trauma, work stresses, past and current mental wellbeing, to name just a few salient factors.

It’s a good book, makes a lot of sense. He says the reason so few people talk about trauma is because they don’t want to acknowledge society’s flaws, and that we might have to do things to make significant changes.

@Jeroen said:
Hmm arguing with yourself is not a good sign…

Maybe. A fun way to openly change an opinion past the edit limit.

I’m still reading Gabor Maté’s book on trauma and the toxic culture, and have just >arrived at the chapters on mental health, he seems to agree that diagnoses are only >useful as a shorthand for a set of symptoms and don’t speak to causes.

That makes sense. Just reading most of the names, it's just a labeling of a symptom. "Anxiety, depression, bi-polar" doesn't really explain much about why someone is. What's he say about speaking to the causes?

@how

Humanity does present a certain level of sameness in the material sphere. In Buddhism you could present this as our preference for unskillful means. Usually these are quite attractive on the short-term and poor on the long-term (if we add reincarnation, really poor on the super-long term too!).

Neuropsychology puts now really fancy labels to the origin of some of these unskillful behaviours and has mapped out different areas in our brain that are affected or the origin of some of these: poor attention and impulsiveness can mean something is wrong in your prefrontal cortex; a strong drug habit turns into a modification of your certain areas of your brain, etc.

Perhaps in the spiritual-metaphysical realm, it could be argued that a return to this "oneness" (all beings are Buddhas), breaking away from the 10,000 differences is the path towards liberation. It does help to bring compassion and end the three poisons (in my case).

Psychology takes care of the materialist cases (antipsychotic medicine for schizophrenics, cognitive-behavioural therapy for anxiety disorders); but this does not mean that the door to spirituality needs to remain closed and rejected because of it is lack of "measurable" aspects. One thing I've learnt from my Zen practice is how some things just fall and "make sense" on its own without any further thought / discussion. This can be dangerous though! Perhaps I'm completely deluded and I'm falling into traps. Then I tend to examine it using the 5precepts and 8NP.

I think psychology should remember where it came from: philosophical and religious studies regarding the ailments of the human psyche. While the material field has provided a lot of help and insight (better treatments, longer life spans, etc) it should not fall into the trap of their material view as the possession of absolute truth and consider that this scientific-materialistic path is a straight line heading towards the end of all suffering through science. New sources of suffering will eventually emerge unless we tackle the essence. That essence which is ahistorical and has been following us, for good and for bad, since bygone times....