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Is sanity required?
lobster
Crusty Veteran
I had a friend I visited regularly. He was insane. Very. He was a long time resident in a mental hospital. Most of his conversation made the wackiness of the Internet or David Icke type spirituality seem the height of mainstream sanity.
However I visited him because I discerned much spiritual development in his person. Over a period of years I concluded that conventional sanity, maybe through medication is essential for awakening. My friend was in a sense limited and limiting.
Is sanity required? What if this option is unavailable?
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Comments
A level of sanity perhaps...But if you ask me, "I" think that sanity is overrated
What is sanity @lobster ?
"One man's sanity is another man's insanity"
I have some experience in this. I think you can definitely still practice without entirely being sane. And probably it's hard to generalize across all conditions. But at times I have had 'loose associations' which might mean that you read things as 'code' or 'hidden messages'. That's just an example of one such condition and that condition can make it hard because of the distraction of getting and thinking about all of these messages. And then another factor is that the medicine can make you sleepy or feel sick even if it is helping you with other symptoms. And there are so many varieties of mental things. I know some people that get in arguments constantly with people online or their old friends or whatever.
Thanks @Jeffrey
I consider you, with medication, sane. Certainly sane enough for practice and realisation.
There are here, mentioning no names, people who have mental health or physical limitations who are delightful/able practitioners/good company.
I am not concerned with peoples labels but their realistic potential to look after and inspire crazy crustaceans. I am a small wheel in a mind field of Dharma ...
Some people are disabled by ignorance, illness, lack of medicine, lack of social skills, poverty, insanity, addiction etc. That is a small part of their being even though it may overwhelm at times.
My question is really about how much sanity or other environmental or good karmic factors are required? The dharma has been deeply understood by the uneducated, the immoral and the crazy. Thank Buddha.
Bankei criticized fellow Japanese Zen teachers who hid their own failure to realize Unborn Buddha-nature with, instead, a mish-mash of confusing old Chinese-language koan-anecdotes, the “dregs and slobber of the Chan Patriarchs” as he called the ancient lore! And he chided the overly clever who are deluded by their own cleverness. “I tell my students, 'Be stupid'!... What I'm talking about isn't the stupidity of (mindless) stupidity or (clever) understanding. That which transcends stupidity and understanding is what I mean by stupidity.”
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/Zen_Humor.html
There is hope
Sanity is such a slippery concept, isn't it? There's "crazy wisdom" and then there's just crazy. I'm sure Buddha's family thought he was insane at first. Maybe modern psychiatric care could have cured Gautama's obsession with the source of suffering before he had his mental breakdown and walked away from his palace to starve himself in the woods.
Of course, the story doesn't say he heard voices in his head telling him to do so. I think the 8-Fold path requires an ability to focus on what you're doing and enough grasp on reality to see the world as it is. Beyond that, I'm not sure you can make any generalizations.
We're all lost in the wilderness, but some of us are too busy fighting off imaginary tigers to find a way out.
From my pov stability is the nesscessary ingredient for practice. Most of my fellow friends are rather eccentric. In many ways it is fatal to measure our progress or fitness to practice based on the opinions of others
Roughly speaking, yes.
In my opinion - and I've been around these here parts for quite some time - Jeffrey is one of the sanest, most placid, logical and down-to-earth people here.
I wouldn't give myself that much credit, frankly.....
The window into insanity is an abyss of fear and loathing and heartbreaking isolation. How novel that we idiots can weigh how buddha-nature may or may not abide in madness. Is sanity required? Don't know.
Thanks guys.
I would agree with @federica
... and @genkaku
We can not approach awakening if we are deluded within delusion. We can not wake up by taking up dreaming as a path to awakening or intoxication a way to clear thinking.
This is why a semblance of balance and conventional sanity is a prerequisite in practicing dharma.
The reason I mention my friend is because some people have limited options:
“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
H.H. the XIV Dalai Lama
Once, early on, during what I think of as my Marine Corps Zen practice phase, I went to a sesshin or retreat run by a teacher I had never met but in whom I had a lot of faith. Sasaki Roshi was about as big as your thumb but going face to face with him was a bit like confronting Mount Everest.
During the first private meeting with him, I sat still and awaited his counsel. He picked up his fan (still folded) and tapped it three times on the floor. "What is this?" he asked. And so I returned to my meditation seat and chewed on what his "this" might be. This was not one of the 'traditional' Zen koans. It was outside my intellectual collections of Zen information. Anyway I chewed on it.
And when I went back for my next meeting and he again tapped his fan against the floor and again asked, "what is this?" I gave a huge shout. That's what Zen students did in books and I thought I'd give it a whirl.
Sasaki looked at me with an expression somewhere between kindness and exasperation and said mildly, "You know, you don't have to be crazy to do this business."
Book-crazy bullshit ... he was right. He set me straight and I am grateful to this day.
^^^ Tee Hee.
Thanks for sharing.
I love the idea of trying a 'zen shout'. How embarrassing and rightly so. When I think on all the crazy dead ends and sometimes dangerous practices I have engaged in, it is a wonder I only gibber on a temporary basis.
Many of us, me for example, are willing to engage in practically anything except quiet discernment and attentive being.
No wonder the Buddha touched the ground on his enlightenment. Something real.
What is sanity? Or: what is insanity? Off course, the extremes are easy to “diagnose”, but the more subtle forms are not.
We usually refer to the average to consider something as normal or abnormal. However, what if most of us are a bit abnormal?
Maybe sanity is like cholesterol levels: for many years we didn’t know what normal levels are because everybody had high levels. Could the same be true for sanity?
^^^ I think @littlestudent it is normal to be a bit abnormal.
I am not talking about subtle nuances. I have experienced many crazy people in dharma centres. Some in positions of influence over others. Ay curumba. Their crazed behavour completely swamped their ability to practice. It was in effect impossible. They were often counter productive. Maybe you have come across temporary or unmedicated insanity? That is treatable.
We all suffer from some form of Mental Awareness Disorder...That's why we are seeking an eight fold cure....
Indeed. Temporary or untreated mental illness is addressable. Some mild conditions and temporary states are helped by practice. My friend was crazy even with medication. I am not sure how much progress was possible for him with current ideal dharma/spiritual and or medical help. He was very lost in his own hell realm reality.
Buddha Nature does abide there. The question is whether it is always reachable ... On the whole Dharma practice is difficult for those in coma ... for obvious reasons.
@lobster said:
Sanity is not necessarily required. It is usually helpful, but not a requirement.
Buddha Nature abides in everyone. As we all possess the Buddha Nature, it naturally abides in all the realms. Naturally, "getting there" (drawing out one's Buddha Nature) can be quite a challenge and it may be harder for some to "get to it" than others.
Peace to all
Mental health issues can be helped by dharma - not always, they can be aggravated or brought to the fore.
There are people on NewBuddhist with admitted mental health issues, including you. However I feel genuine progress and insight or just empathy and care arising. You are inspiring IMO, precisely because of the difficulties ...
This is very different from people whose illness limits their capacity to understand or relate on the most mundane level. What can be done in such situations may be limited.
I believe the reverse is also true. So many are programmed into a prison of their own thoughts. Mental health issues can have the potential to teach someone that we are not our thoughts better than a thousand dharma talks.
Good point @yagr
Learn from our craziness, health issues, dukkha etc. Absolutely right. I was intrigued by my friend, I wanted to know if the Buddha Nature could be crazy.
The answer is no.
Buddha Nature is not crazy. People are.
Now that's what I call profound,and soooooooooooooo true.....Especially now that much of Western psychology is starting to emerge as a Buddhism ie, BuddhaDharma....
Oh @lobster, thank ye for thy immaculate praise!
Regarding your last part:
Limited, yes, but for those persons, we do whatever we can. It can be a rough road.
I know a bit about those "limitations" and the "frustrations" (challenges)
I have a son who is "Educationally Mentally Handicapped" (full title)
He also suffered a crippling injury as a young adult.
Buddhism has helped him quite a bit.
Peace to all
It's almost 3AM and I'm awake, reading NB, and typing into my iPhone. Why do I do this? It is not getting me food, sex, shelter, or protection from predators. It is not getting me currency I can exchange for those entities, or for luxuries. Is it a sane thing to do?
In all seriousness, what is sanity? Pure, objective, dispassionate sanity precludes spiritual development, doesn't it? Spiritual development requires me to see things that aren't there, believe things that cannot be demonstrated, understand phenomena that have no physical basis or manifestation. In short, spiritual development requires insanity.
@Steve_B well said.
It is of course a special folly/crazy/idiocy ... Dervishes regularly refer to themselves as 'idiots'.
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/sufi/stories.html
Surely insanity it is leaving behind the conditioning of human society and nearer to enlightenment than most of us will ever be?
This is a subject close to my heart. someone very dear to me, with a family history of serious mental health issues, is being guided by inexperienced dharma teachers who are doing great harm. By encouraging and confirming delusions as reality, and offering to help (at a cost), they encourage the belief that only their teachings can drive off these hungry ghosts/aliens/phenomena. If I question the wisdom or authenticity of this, I am told it's because I lack understanding or guru devotion. It is difficult to know how I can help.
Thanks to the OP for raising this issue - it's been on my mind very much lately - and I am very much interested in your views.
I was a "serious seeker" for several years, while simultaneously being very successful, normal, ordinary etc. Had two big woo-woo experiences that got confirmed by teachers as milestones. I thought I was powering towards enlightenment!
Then a third one happened and I descended into psychosis. I never fully recovered my formal sense of self and find life to be simultaneously more rewarding and difficult ever since. I guess that's what happens when the ego gets a severe hit.
That's been several years ago and I discontinued my meditation practice and other inner activities as I lost all hope in ever making any progress or attaining anything beyond a basic level of human contentedness and sanity (which has happened through time, being on medication some of the time etc).
Recently, I've restarted my meditation practice. My therapist agrees it might be beneficial. I no longer imagine powering through to enlightenment, but rather just sit with as little preconception of what should happen as possible. Feels good. I'm happy about it. Maybe genuine progress, Enlightenment, etc., is not in the cards for me - but simple pleasures/victories might be. Ah, what a dream it was...
New to the forum. Hope to converse with ya.
Welcome!
When I put my first steps on the Path, I was told that the journey is as important as the destination. I’m too new to know if that’s true, but in any case the journey is fascinating!
To me, this 'path' is the only one we can traverse -- it involves only one's self -- our unique perspective will always be more than a blip - but that's just me.
That doesn't sound too good.
No, that doesn't sound great, @Tara1978, but are there any outward signs of this harm or is it your fear that they will do harm? I can only speak from my own experience of growing up in the Episcopal (protestant Christian) church and much of the time, some of the stuff that doesn't make sense or 'click' goes in one ear and out the other. Perhaps that is what happening with your friend/loved one, as well. Just because someone thinks they are teaching by expounding on whatever, doesn't mean they will pick it up especially if it doesn't rez with them.
Unfortunately it has been completely absorbed as a cure, which must be endured to drive out the bad karma, utter tosh in my view, but some people have very strong charisma which can be mistaken for wisdom or power.
Maybe I need to talk about being sane with my doctor.
In the words of someone wise (and I have absolutely no shadow of a clue who said it first) -
"We can't save Everyone."
All we can do is lead with what we know to be true for ourselves.
And maybe we can make a difference for one person.
But making a difference for just one person, will have in itself, been an overwhelming triumph.
I think I need a "check-up-from-the-neck up", my lift doesn't go all the way to top and I am one sandwich short of a picnic. It might have been all the shocks I received when working as a sparks, though some would call that free treatment.
I would have to be "under the doctor" though.
One name we use for what happened to you is "Zen Sickness", but that's only labeling something people observe but don't really understand. When you're hanging onto the Enlightenment Cliff with your fingernails, sometimes you slip. I submit to you that the path you're on now might be the right one. Welcome!
^^^ agree with @Cinorjer
The path is not without its dangers. Something the ultra-ineffectual forget to sress to the neophytes. It is why good sane, genuine, teaching and dharma friendship is so important. The good news is you are on the road to overcoming 'psychosis' induced by not being prepared.
Genuine insight requires balance, grounding, polishing. We have meditation for this. We have sila to provide the nature of sanity. Have you been through the rapids and the rocks? Onward.
I have never, ever valued sanity as the world is full of hateful and exploitative lizards like El-Trumped the patron saint of hairdressers. People seeking to keep their youth, wealth, safety or gods commands are busy killing, selling dreams or wasting life on trivial pursuits. Where is the sanity?
It is on the far shore. In peace and metta.
Thank you @Cinorjer and @Lobster for your kind comments.
The thing is, the only thing I ever felt really passionate about, or most passionate about, was "the Dharma". So falling off the wagon completely, or so I thought, was a blow not only to my worldy self but to my whole sense of life purpose, values etc. Not fun!
I've been in therapy for a year, and it's been slow work, but I think it's working to an extent. Will be starting group therapy in a few weeks as well. Those two things, plus my newly re-started simple meditation and regular excercise (there is finally a swimming pool opening where I live!) is what I hope will bring more balance/peace to my life and hopefuly prevent future episodes. For a change, I am cautiously optimistic and determined to beat this ilness.
I agree with you Lobster about the insanity of the supposedly sane and powerful. I've often mused about why my episodes get labeled as crazy and needing medication when I've never done anything even in the same league as crazy as some of the politicians for instance.
Glad to join the forum.
Yes, @marcitko, politicians are in a league of their own.
But I believe another thread is addressing that.
Welcome to the forum.
Peace to all
When I was a krill (young lobster), I thought along these lines. Through sleep deprivation, drugs and fasting I would break the coventions of my conditioning by sending myself crazy. This I achieved when I realised the person looking at familar objects was perceptually different.
That was a dangerous experiment. There was no enlightenment there.
The raft of conventional being, allows us to build rafts, look after our duties and needs and not be swamped by the unfit mind crazed by [insert conditions]. In other words the conditioning does drop away in a mind fit and strong enough for dharma. A crazed mind is a broken raft that spends its time falling apart ... that is my experience ...
I think Buddhism, though old, is a new kind of sanity. If you look at Near Death Experience literature, it is pretty clear that there is more than just this life and it's scientific materialism. It takes a while, but you can free ourself from that education-applied coat of consensus "sanity", and once you start looking, you can find wider perspectives, maybe even find some examples of extraordinary events in your own life.
So it depends on how you choose to extend the "pure sanity" of materialism with topics such as consciousness, the effects of meditation, what we know about life after death, the details of spiritual emergency and so on. You might start reading about Jung, or encounter the curious case of the book A Course In Miracles.
Ultimately the whole project of an inclusive sanity depends on clear vision, freedom from delusion and having ones view distorted as little as possible by desire pulling you and aversion pushing you. If that sounds familiar it is because it's a classic application of the three poisons. Steps on the path... So you would expect Buddhists to be among the sanest people out there, surely?
How you view some of the more esoteric claims of Buddhism, such as Mara or the 31 realms of the cosmology, is another matter. Short of becoming enlightened and journeying there in spirit, these things are hard to verify, and the source material could be polluted by old thinking, incorrect transmission of the old oral Buddhist tradition, or a number of things. I think it is natural to have a few reservations...
Not in my experience ... they are needy, deluded, ignorant, whingers ... and that is just me
Just wait till you meet the bald headed sari wearing freaks who give up all semblance of normality. 
[off to the hell realms for lobster ...]
Fortunately I have brief moments of semi-sanity and have met some lovely nuns ...
The insane think they are sane...And the sane think they are not insane.....
The paradox of Sanity & Insanity ...Go figure
"I don't suffer from insanity...I quite enjoy it !"
It has been interesting to revisit this thread... I awoke tonight with a phrase ringing in my ears that I should examine which parts of my thinking gave evidence of being insane.
But do we really know what insane is? There is illogical, although one could argue that emotions are illogical. There is turbulent, where churn is making one leave the well reasoned paths of sanity. There is deluded, where an incorrect framework of assumptions leads one astray. Are there any other flavours?
Did the Buddha ever say anything about insanity?
Yes...I recall him saying "You don't have to be mad to practice the Dharma, but if you're gonna practice the Zen way, it helps....."
(Only joking 
)
Is sanity required?
Maybe not. But it won't hurt to have some.