Buddhism

Shoshin

Buddhism...The only religion (or better still "systematic method of gaining ones sanity") with an insanity-back guarantee if one is not made sane (satisfied) ....

Is there some truth to this ?

Jeffrey

no guarantees but Trungpa said that by its very nature mind has 'basic sanity'. sort of like a filthy kitchen has 'clean nature' underneath.

Earthninja

No doubt you quickly see how insane we are! But it's humbling and atleast we can now see our hands are dirty

karasti

I was thinking just the other day about how our court/justice system might change if we considered every person who committed a crime mentally ill in some aspect (no disrespect whatsoever to those who suffer with diagnosed mental illness, I mean it in a different way but lack a term that could differentiate). Really, spirtually anyhow, we are all pretty much mentally ill in that way. What if instead of putting people in jail we were able to determine what the root cause was of their behavior and got them appropriate treatment for it. Obviously, this would never work, it stemmed from wondering how Bhutan handles their criminals as a country with Buddhism as it's declared government religion. But really, we are all crazy, just some people cross the line in different ways due to different causes and conditions.

We just always do such a horrible job getting to the root of problems and only seek to resolve the symptoms: poverty, homelessness, drug/alcohol abuse, crime, medical problems...Sometimes I think the reason so many people have problems grasping global warming as a problem is because it's one thing that looks to the root to see where to solve it and a lot of people can't grasp that way of problem solving because they are thinking of it as solving symptomatic weather problems when that isn't the root, it's the result. We're always treating/dealing with the result.

Sorry, just random thoughts! I think we're all nuts, and the more we feel we have it together, the more nuts we probably are. The fancier house and car, the clothes, the job, all the hats we wear and titles we assign ourselves are just distractions to noticing who we are. We cover up the basis of who/what we are by pretending that all these things we do are completely normal. Seems nuts to me.

how

@Shoshin

I usually think of sanity as socially acceptable behavior
as opposed to insane which is socially unacceptable behavior.
This make sane and insane, simply views related to one's particular tribe.

I suspect that the path towards sufferings cessation involves losing ones tribal associations to the point where the judgements of sane and insane simply resolve into a discernment of what is harmlessness as opposed to what is harmful.

Shoshin

@how
"socially acceptable behavior =sanity" True...

When I first start to sit for meditation, what I found(No doubt also what many find) was a chaotic mind, one that wandered all over the place, moving from one thing to the next, back to the past then a hop skip and jump into the future(Nothing sane at all about that )…

And boy did it come as a shock...There “I” was ‘thinking’ “I” was totally sane and had total control over what I presumed were ‘my’ thoughts, instead “awareness” came to the rescue, proving me wrong.

These thoughts were running rampant, running a muck…But in a conventional/social sense (like most other members of society) “I” was deemed ‘sane’ (Welcome to the asylum ) …

The “self help” manual called Buddhism works as a tool, gently and gradually taking the mind from a mindfool state to a mindful state, from wonderfool (ignorance) to just plain wonderful ….