Unwholesome Thoughts & the Breath Erik 3 12 31 19

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Transcript

Erik: Some examples.

Dhammarato: Hello, I’m here.

Erik: Yeah, disappeared. Oh, there we go. But it’s in my car, actually. Some examples of questions and stuff we talk about. But there, I guess with the cbt, they’re interested a lot in. I’ll give them an example of a time where I feel a lot of anxiety or something or. Yeah. And then kind of write down, like, what I felt and to what degree and, you know, some associated thoughts that I had and all that. And so it’s a lot of going back and referring to some old feelings that I had, I guess. And it. So it takes me. I just feel like it takes me out of the present moment and forces me to think and feel, you know, in a. Like a loser. Basically. It takes me out of the, you know, what I’m trying to. To train, you know, with your teachings and stuff, you know, with sati. And basically I feel like it’s forces me to do the opposite a lot of the times, even though they’re trying to teach me skills that I can use, I guess, in the present moment too. So. Well, I was just kind of wondering your thoughts on what you. If you. If they’re compatible or not.

Dhammarato: Well, ultimately, when psychology and the various psychologies, let us say, delve deeper than they have so far into the human mind and that neuroscience and all of the other good ideas that have been around are incorporated into psychology, it will become more and more noble. Now, you talked about cognitive behavioral therapy and use the word the va. And so there’s a couple of things to say. One is that cognitive behavioral therapy seems to have gotten started in, oh, I’ve forgotten the guy’s name. Now, the. It has to do with behavior. The word is behavior modification. And I’ll think of the guy’s name in a minute. But behavioral modification actually is a solid step in the right direction because the whole premise is that we are not stuck in our past or that we are not predetermined, that our behavior can be modified and by, let us say, extension of logic, given that most behavior is founded upon feelings, then a clear example of that is people behave angry and violent when they’re feeling angry. And so cognitive behavioral therapy is, you can look at that word, and what it appears is that they have been taking some of the teachings of the Buddha and incorporating it with. And I remember the guy’s name, B.F. skinner, who was doing behavioral modification and that that was the whole premise behind it. Now, in many cases, behavioral. Cognitive. Behavioral therapy has gotten into prisons. But what we have found about psychology from the Very beginning with Freud, he had a nephew named Edward Bernays. And Edward Bernays, there is a group of videos on YouTube called the Century of the Self. And it would be very good if you would watch that whole show series so that you can see basically what psychology has had as an effect upon a Western society in the past hundred. Now 100, let us say, 120 years.

Erik: Okay.

Dhammarato: All right. So the Century of the Self is about Edward Bernays and how he used Freudian psychology to come up with industrial psychology. Now, industrial psychology is actually the psychology that the industrialist will use to improve work. And so with psychology in that regard and cognitive behavioral therapy, it has to do with the VA and various prison systems. And that kind of thing is trying to change the behavior of the. Let us call them clients or the prisoners or the va, the veterans. They’re trying to change their behavior, and by doing so, they’re beginning or wanting to change some of the feelings. Now, the first thing that we should look at is that this whole idea or system is operated from the concept of the outside in. In other words, for the most part, both prisoners and VA have stress. And that that stress in World War I was called shell shock. And nowadays it’s called post traumatic stress disorder. Where post traumatic means that the trauma point is over now, but the people are still under a great deal of stress to the point that their life is disordered. And so the idea then is that we can get them to modify the way they deal with the stress. And maybe by doing so, that will begin to work with the stress itself to where what we’re actually doing, which is a more noble way is to deal with the stress itself directly. That it doesn’t have this outside therapist and the. And the individual. It doesn’t have the therapist client relationship. That the relationship that is best done is that the relationship of, let us say, the teacher’s student, but that the teacher’s job is not to keep that system going, of being the teacher with the student, but rather to bring. Allow the student with his own skills to come up to the level of the teacher so that now both are just friends, that I would rather be your friend than your teacher, and that that’s not the system set up either in the prisons or in the VA under this system that they’re called cognitive behavioral therapy. All right, now, they do have a shot in the right direction with the word cognitive, because that is really what we’re doing. We’re cognizing or we’re actually beginning to recognize or to see clearly what’s going on now. It is old, old psychology to dwell in the past. The psychologists call this psychia, psychological archaeology. And that one of the things that would happen would be that the people would remember something from their childhood or whatever to try to put things together of why I am like I am right. All right, well, I am like I am only right now and that I will be like this next time because I’m in the habit of being like this. But that post, or let us say that stress that happened in childhood does not fix and determine, just like in the military, being under stress in battle does not necessarily determine the future. That in fact you can take the man out of Afghanistan and he can stop reacting as if he’s still in Afghanistan. You’ve heard the saying, in fact, this is a good one. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. Have you ever heard that?

Erik: Yeah.

Dhammarato: Do you think it’s true?

Erik: No.

Dhammarato: No, it’s not true. No, it’s not really true. It is, let us say factually true in many cases that when young men do go out of the south into the city that in the beginning they can’t. But an example would be television announcers who are going to have to speak flat American, broad American English, have to stop using their Bostonian accent if they come from Boston. Okay? So we can change, train the mind. Or the boy that’s raised in rural Texas or South Carolina can in fact go to New York City and learn to become the way that they are in New York. That’s not recommended, but it’s possible that he can in fact hide his past by, let us say, dropping it. And so back to the story about the psychological archeology. Here’s a story that the guy goes to the psychotherapist with anger issues that in fact in many cases he just blows up and becomes an asshole. So after several months of therapy, he and the therapist, he tells a story that when he was four years old, his mom gave him a spanking. And so he and the therapist decide, oh, that he’s got anger issues now because of the trauma of getting spanked. And then they stopped there. If they’d gone a little bit further into it, they may have figured out that the guy, that the boy got his spanking because he was an asshole. That going back and looking for cause effect relationships can be quite complicated. And in fact, it doesn’t matter how things got started. That’s a really interesting point, is it doesn’t matter how things got started. Because once they’re already in motion, then we’ve got to deal with the situation as it is now. For instance, if you’re in a snow slide or an avalanche and you’re to bottom the mountain and you see the, the avalanche coming, you need to do one thing and one thing only, and that is get out of the way of it. But if you’ve got your camera rolling and whatnot, and you’re trying to figure out how this avalanche got started, you’re not going to get a good answer. You’re going to get buried under the answer. That’s what. And so there is some issues about cognitive behavioral therapy, but it might be of some value. It depends upon how much psychological archaeology that’s done. If it’s done only in the way of let’s get over that, then it has some value. But mostly what it’s done is finding a way of laying blame. For instance, oh, I’m an angry man now because my mama treated me badly when I was four. Therefore it’s okay for me to continue to be angry. In other words, it’s her fault. But within the concept of the teachings of the Buddha, the noble teaching is that everyone has to take full responsibility for their own feelings, their own thoughts, their own behavior Right now, that we cannot fix the past, not really. We can’t do it. It’s over. If that cup falls off the table and crashes on the floor, the only thing we can do is pick up the mess. We cannot put the cup back together again in the condition it was before it fell off. And sometimes they have really silly stories on movies and television about that. The cat, the real cat, got lost. So they try to bring in a substitute cat. And invariably, no matter what they do with it, they can dye his hair, give it a haircut or whatever. The owner is going to know this is not that cat, that cat, not this one. And so we cannot in fact, repair the past. It’s over. And yet these groups that are looking for it in the sense of post traumatic stress disorder, it was actually probably more accurate to call it shell shock, because the post traumatic stress disorder actually is now in intent on looking in the past to see that trauma rather than merely getting over now. There are other things other than psychological archaeology that the psychologists have had to deal with. One of them was anger management. In the, in the 1970s when I was in training, they, there was equipment that was available. There was in fact, a kind of small industry going where they would have batons, boxing gloves, a lot of padded war equipment so that people could have edit with each other in a group. Another example of that is pounding the pillow that I hate my mom. So here, take this pillow and pound this invisible mom here. This also came out of Fritz Pearl’s concept of the empty chair, of having a third chair brought up and say, okay, well, don’t tell me what you want to tell me about your mom. Imagine that mom’s right here in this chair. Tell her all about it. This was designed to bring up emotions, to bring up feelings. And in fact, many therapists prided themselves on how bad they could get their clients to feel during the session. They would always have a box of Kleenexes for the girls and a mallet for the boys, something to pound on. Okay, so this is not what we’re doing here. We’re not trying to work with the gross, but in the teachings of the Buddha, we’re actually looking at the subtle. An example of that would be that the definition of the word dukkha has been translated into English to our society. And for whatever reasons is they translated as suffering? Well, suffering is gross, but dukkha is better defined by using the word unsatisfying, not satisfactory. Well, that can be very subtle. And that it’s these subtle things that come up that if we dwell on them, we’ll get them going and bring them up. That always feelings start very, very small, very subtly, but they grow sometimes very quickly. And so what we’re going to be working with is to go for a more and more subtle way of doing things rather than staying at the level of gross. And by the way, those batons and pounding the pillow and doing that kind of stuff has lost favor in the past 40 years from the psychologist, because what was happening is that people who were, let us say, capable of living in the world, but they just felt really bad about it, they go to the therapist, they start bringing the anger up, and now they leave the psychologist office with both the stirred up anger and permission that it’s okay to express the anger. And so they go out in the world acting even more angry than they did, thinking that they’re going to get it out of their system. In fact, they’re not going to get it out of their system. What they’re doing now is repeating an old bad habit, making it even more ingrained. And they brought it up to the surface rather than leaving it as something subtle. So what the whole point of anapanasati is to start with the gross, which is actually quite subtle in and of itself is the breath, but it is something gross and that we can continue to keep paying attention to the breath. And so we’re beginning to develop sati while breathing, which means that we’re becoming watchful of the breath. We know that, we know whether we’re breathing in or breathing out. And this is the very first step of Anapanasati. Because as you’ll probably recognize that that’s actually even at the gross level of the breath, it’s hard to keep the mind focused on it. That the mind will wander away. Well, that wandering away is actually the mind in free association. And in the time of the Buddha, one of the trainings that he had as a prince was he was involved with elephant training. And so the Buddha uses elephants as an example on many things. And one of the qualities is that the elephant, if it is able to get free from its. They would put a big post in the ground, a big tree stump or whatever, and then they would use the vines, the cords, the rope that they had. They didn’t have steel chains in those days. And so by the elephant swinging his left hind foot, that’s where they would always attack, assuming that the elephant was always right handed. And so, but the elephant would swing that hind leg and every time that he would put more and more force on it, he could break free. And so the breaking free elephant, where does he go.

Erik: Back where it came from?

Dhammarato: Exactly, exactly. It always keeps going back where he came from. So the manute, the animal trainers, they know exactly where to go get that elephant when he breaks free. And then, and the environment so that they caught him in this particular area, all they have to do is just go search that area and they’ll probably find him again. And after he gets free several times, he begins to stop working so hard at getting free and he kind of just stays there. This is the first training of the elephants. In those days. They expected the elephant to be able to break free and then they would go catch him again and bring him back and he would break free again. And we bring him back over and over and over again until the animal settles down. This is in fact what Anapanasati is, is we keep bringing the mind back and tethering it to the breath and it breaks away and goes away. And we keep bringing it back and bringing it back and bringing it back. And with that bringing back, that’s the sati. And in fact, that’s the training that we’re, that we’re working on, is to keep remembering what’s happening in this present moment now in the beginning, all that we have to do is to watch the breath. That’s the first instruction. But very quickly students recognize, hey, I can watch the breath, but the mind is still wandering around. And so now we begin to pay attention to, okay, well, now that we’re watching the breath and continue to watch the breath, and then it wanders away. Basically what it wanders away means is that the thoughts that were already there kind of take over and we kind of forget about the breath. And now the only thing that’s happening are those wandering thoughts. And so the second thing that we’re going to start working with is to get those wandering thoughts a bit under control by choosing or deciding what kind of thoughts we’re going to allow. And so we’re going to say, okay, we’re going to put a guard at the door saying that we’re only going to allow wholesome thoughts and not allow unwholesome thoughts while we’re watching the breath. Well, what happens is that we begin to understand that the unwholesome thoughts are that which will drag us away from the breath, but wholesome thoughts actually promote us being here now with the breath. And so thoughts of this present moment, thoughts about the breath. If we’re thinking about the breath while we’re monitoring or watching the breath, then those are the kinds of thoughts that will help us stay attuned to the breath and the breathing in this moment. And also you begin to pay more attention to not just the breathing itself, but other things that are associated with the senses. In that way, we begin to get in touch with the body. We begin to feel and experience the body. And as we do so, we begin to expand our awareness in this present moment. Well, the next thing that will happen is that we begin to understand that, oh, not just thoughts are arising and not just sensations of the body, but feelings are also arising, and they’re also arising kind of in the background. And so this is the point in which we start to say, okay, if I’m going to be guarding the mind and the thoughts, we should also be able to start guarding the mind for the feelings and to make sure that the kind of feelings that we have are the kind of feelings we want to have as opposed to having the kind of feelings that we don’t want to have. Okay, and here we go with that thought and the feeling of satisfaction. The thought and feeling of, this is pleasurable. This is a good moment. This is a zippity doo dah moment. I feel really good right now. So if cognitive behavioral therapy is pulling you in that direction, then that’s the good part. But if it keeps the student off in the past, trying to blame the trauma of his Afghanistan or the trauma of his childhood before he went to prison, then we’re not going to get very far that we need, in fact, to move the student away from that. Clear examples that the VA has had to deal with is that daddy came home from the war, he’s good, everything looks happy, he’s so happy to be with his family. And after a few weeks, he’s sleeping in bed and little Johnny comes to wake daddy up. But in that wake up, little Johnny is, first off, thrown in the air, grabbed by the throat, pounded on the bed, and now he’s being choked to death while daddy is in the process of waking up to recognize, why am I doing this to my own son always? Because when little Johnny came in and disturbed him, that caused the dream state. And the dreams that he began to have were the dreams of Afghanistan or wherever his duty was. And so now he’s in survival mode, not fully awake, but he’s still fighting. You still good to go. He’s still a good soldier inside. Okay? They call this post traumatic stress disorder, and I can understand why they do. But basically what it means is the guy, number one, needs to learn how to sleep better, and number two, that this is not an issue of what happened in Afghanistan. This is an issue of what happened right then when he’s choking his son because he’s not mindful, he’s not awake, that he is, in fact, really caught in and lost in the past. And so if cognitive behavioral therapy is actually doing its job, it’s to wake people up to recognize you are not the past, that if you wake up, you can get away from the past, but only if we are asleep or not mindful or let us say, just living in the habit. Been that habit that we developed over the course of our lifetime and sometimes heavily modified through these traumatic adult situations that then determines a new course or a new destiny or a new providence. This is what we mean by predetermination, that most people live their lives in already determined and that generally the society supports that in the sense of the society tells you as a little kid, okay, you got to go to school. And so the kid goes to school, he doesn’t like it. In a way, going to school. School is a stressful situation. And in that regard, everyone who’s gotten a public education in the west, or sometimes even in private schools, were worse. I hear the Catholic schools of the old days were really tough and a lot of people grew up under the stress. So everyone would have post traumatic stress. And so the word that we reserve for post traumatic stress disorder generally has to do with something really, really stressful that happened in the dog to where everyone has a whole lot of stress built up over time because of the more and more ingrained habits of not liking school. That if the number one job of the beginning teachers and the number one job of every teacher was to get the stud to like the subject that we’re teaching right now, then those kids will do a whole lot better. But no, many teachers still have the idea, oh, no, you’re here in this class, you do what I tell you to do. At the end of the semester, I’ll give you a grade. And that’s all the benefit you’re going to get out of it is your good grade. You take that test and make a high score and I get more money and you get a good, but that’s all you get. And so the kid learns it, but he only learns it temporarily. He doesn’t learn it because he likes it. So we’re all under stress. And doing psychological archaeology is only good up to a point. And the point would be that when I say that kids don’t like to go to school, you can reminisce a bit and say, yeah, I remember I didn’t like to go to school either, but that’s as far as it needs to go. Or we can say to the guy who was in Afghanistan, yeah, you got really stressed out in Afghanistan. And he has a couple of memories and say, yeah, I really got stressed in Afghanistan. The next thing the therapist should say, okay, you’re not in Afghanistan now. Stop behaving and feeling like you were in Afghanistan. Times have changed. It’s time for you to change, too. We are not predetermined or predestined to behave in a certain way. Which leads to one of my jokes. Okay, there is. Okay, you know that there is a big conflict within Christianity about free will. Do we have free will or do we not have free will? And many of them will come up to say, well, I have free will because God made me have it. I have free will because I have to have it. I don’t have any choice about it. So by saying that he has free will, he’s just kind of proven that he doesn’t.

Erik: Right?

Dhammarato: Okay, but there’s another way of looking at it, and that’s, this is the way that I would look. And that is we have will. It’s not free. It’s expensive.

Erik: Right? Yeah, I think you told me this one before.

Dhammarato: Yeah, okay. It is expensive. Why is it expensive? Is because we have to take the effort to get out of the fact that we don’t have free will because we are, let us say, in the habit of doing things in a certain way. And so we don’t have any will over that, but we can say, no, I’m now going to take the effort that it does take to come out of that and to live our lives correctly. So part of the effort is. Is going from the gross, the breathing, down to more subtle, the thoughts, down to even more subtle levels, the feelings, so that we begin to get in touch with actually how we feel at a very basic, basic level. And how we feel at a very basic level is generally broken down into three groups. One, I like it. Two, I don’t like it. And number three is I’m not sure whether I like it or not, or I both like it and not like it, or I’m confused. I haven’t made up my mind yet whether I should like it. An example of that would be that the. Let us say that the guards are. The military people are on a very, very high ridge looking down into the valley, their own guard. And when they see someone coming into the valley, they get very curious. Who is this? Is this friend or foe? Do I like it or do I not like it? Well, in the beginning, they don’t know, and so they become extraordinarily curious about who is this that’s coming? Well, in a way, everything that comes your way, we see that way. In the beginning, we may not quite understand what it is. And sometimes that not understanding what it is will stay with us. It will stay with us in the sense of doubt. We’re not sure what it is that can grow into fear. We don’t know what it is, and therefore we don’t know whether it’s dangerous or not. Let’s take the safe way out and consider it dangerous. So let’s go ahead and attack whoever it is in the valley. We don’t know who they are, but they might be dangerous. And so let’s start shooting at them now. We don’t even have to wait until we figure out whether they’re a friend or not. We’ll just start shooting. Well, you see, that happened a lot in Afghanistan because it was really hard for them to figure out, is this friend or foe? And they got really confused. And with that confusion comes fear. Well, the same thing Then is happening almost all the time. Someone comes into the yard and we don’t know who it is. We get on alert, or even sometimes a thought will come in and we don’t know whether we like that thought or not. And so we become confused. Like thoughts of Anapanosati can put people into a great state of confusion because they don’t understand what it is yet, but they want to know. Now, generally, this state of confusion then will lead to fears and doubts with an upon usti Doubt about am I practicing right? Doubt about can I do it? Doubt about am I following directions correctly? And all of that kind of stuff. But those kinds of doubts will also be there in the therapy sessions for the cognitive behavioral therapist. Now, remember that the therapists themselves are trained within a certain style, but that the therapists themselves are not free from stress. That you can in fact talk to the. To the therapist in that place and ask them, are they completely free from stress? And every one of them will more than likely have to admit that no, no, they’re still all stressed out. And the answer would be then, well, maybe I should be your therapist then, because I’m not always stressed out. I found a way to not be so stressed out. By the way, I know of exactly one example of that. His name is Greg. I won’t tell you too much about him other than I think he’s dead now. But when he was in Thailand several years ago, that was his intention, was to go back to VA because the amount of money that he got from the VA was dependent upon whether or not he went to the therapy sessions. And so reluctantly, he left Thailand. He left Watson Mok to go back to those therapy sessions. But his intention was to go straighten them out, to come to a place where there’s no reason to have stress. Well, the thing about bringing the stress up is not necessarily the best way to deal with it, because if you keep bringing it up and reminding yourself and feeling stressed and whatnot like that, that’s just continuing the habits of it. That we need to have a different kind of cognitive therapy. And that cognitive is in this case, to recognize. And the word would be sati. To remember it, to recognize it, to see it. And if that’s the case of what they’re teaching, then they’re teaching the right thing is to recognize that stress when it comes up. And the sooner you recognize it, the easier it is to deal with it.

Erik: Yeah. See, they are using that. Would you call it psychological. Archaeological. I cannot think of the word right now.

Dhammarato: Psychological archaeology. Yes.

Erik: Right. Yeah, they are using that, but not very far in the past. And it seems only use as an example to teach me skills how I can react differently in the future.

Dhammarato: Hang on a second. Hey, so there’s somebody in the yard they don’t like. Easier to clean up. You stop. So go ahead. So yeah, they do psychological archaeology.

Erik: Yeah. But it seems only to use that as an example to teach me new skills and how to react to those types of situations in the future. So. Yeah. But it does require me to recall the past and to. To feel the way I felt in the past and. Right. So it always brings me out of the present moment, usually into feeling a lot of anxiety and that of a loser. So I just don’t. That that’s what’s brought up a lot of doubt with that. That type of therapy is. It’s always. Every time I go to therapy, I end up feeling worse, usually. And then I have to use anapanasati to feel good again. So.

Dhammarato: I understand. Exactly. Let us say that you’re at point A and your intention is to go to point B, but that the directions say you go opposite of that. So if you don’t want to go from here to here, going in that direction doesn’t actually look productive. In other words, if you’re here to be free from anxiety, then why would you want then to go back and experience that anxiety other than let’s basically say to get a load of it, to recognize it, to see it. So now that you’ve got that anxiety. Okay, so the distinction would be here is that in the cognitive behavioral therapy, they’re trying to get you to feel bad in order to teach you a lesson about feeling bad to where Here we’re actually intentionally working on feeling good, knowing that the bad feelings are going to come up. That’s your habit. You can’t avoid them.

Erik: Exactly. Yeah.

Dhammarato: And so because you can’t avoid them, they’re going to come up. Now is the time to experience them, but only in the sense of letting them go. But we can see it if we. If we recognize, for instance, if we got a great big pile of mess in our hand, let us say that it’s a piece of bad fruit that’s full of animals. But the original thought is, this is a good piece of fruit. And so I’m going to pick it up and carry it with me. And then you find by carrying it, that has got worms in it. And the worms start coming out while you’re carrying it. And you recognize that, then you want to throw it down. Okay, so we don’t want to have it. Once we see what it is, we decide that, oh, that’s dukkha. That’s unsatisfying. That’s unsatisfactory. That worm actually does own that piece of fruit. Now, it’s not mine. I thought it was mine, but it’s not. It belongs to the worm. And so it is unsatisfying. It is unsatisfactory. So we let it go. So if we can do that on a regular basis, then we’re creating new habits so that we spend more and more time in satisfaction and less and less time in carrying around stuff that is unsatisfying while we think that it is satisfying. And then we become disappointed that everything ultimately is unsatisfactory until we know how to see things correctly. And so I would say don’t spend time feeling depressed. If they want to bring something up, say, yeah, I remember that. But I don’t want to feel that way right now.

Erik: Right? Yeah, yeah, that’s how I feel a lot when. Because they’ll try to. They really try to push me into feeling like that. And I don’t want to feel like that.

Dhammarato: And I don’t blame you. I don’t want to feel like that either. I’ve had a stress. I know what it’s like. And when it does come, I’m not saying I’m completely free from it, but when it does come, I see it. There you are again. And so this is the way to start approaching it that you. That you can remember. In fact, in most cases, you can’t help but remember because that stuff just there. But you don’t have to dwell in it. You don’t have to get stuck in it. You don’t have to be confused by it, and you certainly don’t have to be stressed out with it. You can say, yeah, that was stress, but I’m in the past. This present moment, I’m in therapy, sitting here. I am not out on the battlefield. So I can feel the way that I want to feel now.

Erik: In the same way, though, is in an upon usati by pushing those bad thoughts and feelings aside. Now is that. I can’t think of the word right now, but is that kind of doing the opposite and avoiding problems that we should be facing?

Dhammarato: Ah, but if that. Actually here’s. You just struck on something just extremely important.

Erik: Okay?

Dhammarato: Avoiding. Avoiding problems that. That you should be facing. In fact, maybe the problem. Let us say that the imagination of the problem is that the problem is a big problem. And it should be faced going at suffering as if it were. Excuse me, Dukkha. As if it were suffering. And that you’ve got to stop suffering by facing your suffering. Oh, no. Oh, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute. First off, we’re looking at very subtle things, not very gross things. So another way of saying it is, hey, there are no problems for me to be facing. So why am I bringing up and making a problem that. That I should face now rather than face it later, when in fact there’s no problem much to face, Are we not, in fact, by facing these problems now, manufacturing these problems now. And if we’re not manufacturing problems now, then maybe we don’t have to manufacture problems later. You see, it is a good idea for the guys who are in stress to recognize that their stress came from. I’m using the word Afghanistan. You know what I’m talking about. Because if you were a World War II guy, you’d still have the same problem, but it would be because of below wood or something. No, That’s World War I. But in any case, it’s a good point for guys to recognize, number one, that they are under stress. But number two, because it happened in the past and I’m living in the past, and that the present anxiety that I have is because of old, bad past experiences that I don’t need to work with. So there’s no reason for you to be. Even when you bring it up. Here’s something. Even if you bring up the old past bad experience doesn’t mean that you have to have the feelings now that you had then. You can in fact remember a really tragic situation and feel really good in the present moment that yes, you had that tragedy and yes, you felt very bad when that tragedy happened in a short time afterwards. But remembering that tragedy doesn’t mean that you have to remember the feelings. Also, that you can change the way that you feel about it. So you can choose when you’re reminiscing. When they ask you to reminisce, you can say, ah, yeah, I remember that incoming. I saw that big old thing coming right here and it blew up right in my face and tore up half my body. Ha ha. Because I went to va and they put me back together again. Thank you very much.

Erik: Okay, Imagine it takes quite a bit of practice to get to that point.

Dhammarato: Okay, well, all right, now, you know what? You need to practice on feeling good even though there are thoughts of the past. Because you see, even though I spent a little bit of time talking about the incoming, getting blown Up. The real point is that I’m over that now. And so dwell on throwing that out. I’m not there anymore. I’m here now. And here now is quite nice. I’m satisfied with it.

Erik: Okay, so basically there’s no value in ever investigating the past or I remember. Okay? So, for example, there was a moment when I was talking to my therapist recently where I was feeling a lot of anxiety because it was after, you know, recalling one of these past events. And I could feel the pressure in my head, you know, like that instinctual protecting of the neck and the head that we talked about. I could feel the muscles, the muscles tightening and stuff. And so my therapist was really interested in investigating further into, you know, into why I was feeling this way and all that. But you’re saying what’s really important is just at that point is to just practice Anapanasati and gladden the mind and get back into a state of joy and happiness. And it’s really not important to recall.

Dhammarato: I would say it like this rather than it’s important to recall it. I would go so far as to say you can’t help but recall it.

Erik: Yeah, yeah.

Dhammarato: That it’s going to come up from time to time. There’s going to be triggers, there’s going to be memories, there’s going to be memorabilia. You might see a photograph, and that photograph then gives you a thought and then another thought. And now you’re back on the battlefield. Now you’re getting the hell blown out of you. Okay? And so that’s just it. It goes like that. That’s how the mind works. And not only that, but there is a survival mechanism built in that we call it the self preservation instinct. But a better way of talking about it is an organization or an organism protection instinct. Without that, life wouldn’t exist. Or it would exist in very primitive forms. It’s only because of this ingrown program to protect the self. This gives us a lot of false positives. Why? Because if you see a rustle in the woods and two of you are out there and one of them immediately starts, takes off and runs away, and the other one turns around to see what it was, it may in fact be his daughter. Okay, so the one who ran away that way, he saw it as a false positive because he thought that it was a predator and in fact it was benign. But he chose out of fear. He didn’t know what it was and so he ran. Now, let’s look at it this way. Suppose it was a predator. Guess who gets eaten Right.

Erik: The one who stuck around to figure out.

Dhammarato: Right. The one who wanted to write the curious one. Curiosity killed that cat. And so the one who has the false positive. Oh, I don’t know, it may. It may be dangerous. I’m going to treat it like it’s dangerous, actually is a survival mechanism. It worked well. It still works well in certain cases. But by and large, right now your life is not life full of danger. Maybe in Afghanistan, the danger was high. Everybody had to be on great alert. But right now you don’t have to be on that kind of alert. Things are not dangerous. And we can see that with the cognitive part of the mind. We can see that with the frontal cortex to where it is the reptilian brain that is the protection mechanism. And so what we do is we remember the stress and then we start to feel stressed out again is because the reptilian part of the mind is in operation. We need to take a few deep breaths, get the frontal cortex operating so that we can recognize. Wait a minute. I’m safe. There’s nothing to fear here. What is this anxiety that I’m having? Let me take a deep breath and breathe into that so that I can feel good. I don’t have to feel anxiety because I am in the habit of feeling anxiety, but I have to see it because it’ll creep up on you.

Erik: Yeah. And it’s interesting too, because when you’re in a state of anxiety, you’re also not thinking as clearly as when you’re not in a state of anxiety. But it seems that therapists are interested in talking to you when you’re in a state of anxiety. But it’s kind of counterproductive.

Dhammarato: If he’s a good therapist, he’ll tell you, hey, man, breathe. Take a deep breath.

Erik: Yeah.

Dhammarato: Has any therapist ever told you that?

Erik: Absolutely not.

Dhammarato: Oh, my.

Erik: I’ve had quite a few.

Dhammarato: Yes. Take a deep breath, get some oxygen going, break that anxiety up, change your blood chemistry a bit so that anxiety, then that comes up. We either do things to make it bigger, shutting down, talking about it, going back and reliving the experience, bringing on the anxiety, or we can take a deep breath and say, yeah, I remember that, that happened, but I choose now to come out of that anxiety at that point of the stress. I didn’t have a choice about it, but now I do have a choice. If I can remember, if I can cognize a bit, I can recognize right now I don’t have to feel bad. I can feel good. My choice. Everything is your choice here’s. An interesting point, and that is that the way that Bhikkhu Buddha dasa and the way that the Buddha looked at kama is in fact post traumatic stress disorder. But the actions of our past gave results in the past. And so we get into that cycle, that cycle of doing this and getting this result over and over and over again. Dwelling in anxiety. Thinking about the past, for instance, brings up anxiety and keeps the thing alive. That’s comma. And the cycle that it’s in is called samsara. And your choice is to break that up. Now, that’s also the intention of the psychologists. They just don’t go right after it. They think that, though, they got to bring it up and get you really all messed up before they can talk you out of it. But you don’t have to do that. You can have those traumatic memories without feeling the trauma. So, in fact, if that’s what they’re doing in the session for you, this is the right time to practice what I’m talking about. That just because you’re remembering a bad thing that happened doesn’t mean you have to feel bad right now. That you can get over it, you can let go of it, you can remember it, but you don’t have to fall into that hole every time that hole appears. This is basically what Greg wanted to change about the cognitive behavioral therapy that he had in la. Hey, you don’t have to stay there. You can come out of that hole. In fact, the best thing to do is to see the hole coming and step aside without falling into it. So does this answer your question?

Erik: Yeah, I think so.

Dhammarato: Great. Well, next time we’ll talk about some of the details of what we’ve been talking about in general today. And that is the first thing is the gross or the big is to talk about the breathing. Then we begin to work with the thoughts, and eventually we begin to work with the feelings, because the feelings often are quite subtle until they grab you by the throat, they sneak up on you, and then they grab you. So we’re going to start walking with them when they’re sneaking up on you before they grab you.

Erik: I’m looking forward to it.

Dhammarato: Excellent. When was the last time you had a session with the cognitive behavioral therapy?

Erik: Not this past Monday, but Tuesday, but the Tuesday before that. So I think I meet with them next Tuesday.

Dhammarato: All right. Well, the next time you have the therapy, Walt sitting there singing zippity doo da zippity I got my arm blown off, but that was a wonderful day.

Erik: Yeah, well, I won’t let them bring me down.

Dhammarato: Yeah, right, Right. Oh, there. That. That’s actually a Latin phrase. That is all. I forgot the Latin itself, but it’s translated is don’t let the carp. The word is basically carperum, but it’s meant in the sense like sandpaper.

Erik: Mm.

Dhammarato: And you talk about rubbing the wrong. Don’t let those. The sandpaper get you down. Don’t let the. The way that is translated is don’t let the bastards get you down.

Erik: I won’t.

Dhammarato: Okay, remember, you don’t have to step in the holes that they’re trying to remind you of.

Erik: Right. Okay. That’s a good way to think about it too.

Dhammarato: Excellent. Well, good luck with that. We’ll see you soon.

Erik: All right, thank you. Have a good rest of your day.

Dhammarato: All right, great. I’d like to hear about that.

Erik: Bye.

Dhammarato: See you. Okay, bye.

Summary of this Dhamma Talk

This Dhamma talk by Dhammarato contrasts the Buddhist approach to dealing with ‘dukkha’ (dissatisfaction) with that of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). He emphasizes the importance of direct experience in the present moment through ‘sati’ (remembering), particularly focusing on anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing). Dhammarato critiques the tendency of CBT to dwell on past traumas (‘psychological archaeology’), which he argues can reinforce negative feelings and habits. He advocates for cultivating ‘wholesome’ thoughts and feelings, recognizing subtle dissatisfaction, and consciously choosing to let go of unwholesome experiences rather than engaging with them directly. Ultimately, the talk promotes the understanding that we can choose how to feel in the present moment, independent of past experiences.

Outline of this Dhamma Talk

• [0:03-2:01] Introduction & Issue with CBT: The talk begins with a student sharing their experience with CBT. They describe being asked to recall past anxieties, write about feelings and thoughts, which pulls them out of the present moment and makes them feel like “a loser.” They feel it goes against the practice of ‘sati’. The student asks if CBT and Buddhist teachings are compatible.
• [2:01-2:39] Psychology’s Evolution & BF Skinner: Dhammarato begins by saying that as psychology incorporates neuroscience, it will become more “noble.” He notes that CBT stems from behavior modification and BF Skinner. This represents a step in the right direction by asserting that behavior can be changed and is not predetermined. He points out CBT acknowledges behavior is based on feelings.
• [2:39-6:17] History of Psychology & Industrial Psychology: Dhammarato references Edward Bernays and the documentary “Century of the Self” on how psychology has impacted Western society, creating “industrial psychology” - which is psychology for industrialists to improve work, which is now linked to prisons, veterans, etc. He explains that CBT is designed to change behavior, therefore feelings, and that this approach is “outside in”.
• [6:17-8:35] Outside-in Approach vs. Direct Approach: Dhammarato points out that both prisoners and veterans experience stress, such as PTSD. CBT attempts to modify how they deal with stress, but Dhammarato advocates for working with the stress itself directly by using a “teacher-student” relationship with a goal of the student becoming as skilled as the teacher - not as a continual “therapist-client” relationship. He wants to be the student’s friend not just a teacher.
• [8:35-9:38] Cognition & Psychological Archaeology: Dhammarato concedes CBT has value due to “cognitive” which means to see clearly what is going on. He identifies traditional psychology as “psychological archeology” which dwells in the past. He emphasizes that who we are is only right now because we are in the habit of being like this.
• [9:38-11:21] Past Doesn’t Determine the Future: Dhammarato asserts that past stress, like childhood or battle, does not determine the future. He uses the analogy of “you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy”, which he states is NOT true.
• [11:21-13:22] Story of Anger Issues: He tells a story of a man with anger issues who blames a childhood spanking. Dhammarato uses this to illustrate the complexity of cause-and-effect and that the cause of the problem is irrelevant now.
• [13:22-15:33] Dealing with the Present Moment: He states it doesn’t matter how things started; you must deal with the present situation - like an avalanche, where you just need to get out of the way instead of analyzing how the avalanche started. Psychological archeology, Dhammarato asserts, leads to blame shifting (“I’m angry because my mama treated me badly”), while Buddhist teachings emphasize taking full responsibility.
• [15:33-16:34] The Past is Over: The past cannot be fixed. A broken cup cannot be put back together. He uses the analogy of a substitute cat for a lost cat that will never be the same as the original cat. Post-traumatic stress disorder is less accurate than “shell shock” because it looks for past trauma rather than simply getting over it.
• [16:34-18:35] Critique of Anger Management Techniques: Dhammarato recounts outdated psychology methods like anger management with batons, boxing gloves, and the “empty chair” technique designed to bring out emotions. He says that therapists would try to get their clients to feel really bad. He states “this is not what we’re doing here.”
• [18:35-20:53] Dukkha as Unsatisfactory, Not Suffering: He explains that ‘dukkha’ is often translated as “suffering,” but it’s better understood as “unsatisfactory.” Unsatisfying is subtle and these subtle things grow quickly. Dhammarato states that we need to work with subtle things, not the gross and using tools like batons is now out of favor because people get permission to act on the anger they stir up rather than releasing the anger. They also ingrain it and brings it to the surface.
• [20:53-24:37] Anapanasati & Elephant Training Analogy: The goal of anapanasati is to begin with the gross, which is the breath but is actually quite subtle. The goal is to develop ‘sati’ (mindfulness). He uses an analogy of elephant training, where elephants are tethered but break free and go back to where they came from. Eventually, they stop trying to break free, the goal of anapanasati is to bring the mind back to the breath over and over, developing sati.
• [24:37-27:40] Watching the Breath, Thoughts & Feelings: Dhammarato explains that initially, students only watch the breath, but they recognize the mind wanders. He says that they begin to monitor the thoughts and choose ‘wholesome’ thoughts, not ‘unwholesome’ thoughts, and ‘wholesome’ thoughts promote being here and now. He states that they also begin to recognize the sensations of the body and their feelings. He says that they begin to “guard the mind” by watching the feelings that they want rather than the feelings that they do not want.
• [27:40-28:35] Cognitive Therapy: Good & Bad: Dhammarato explains that there are good feelings “this is pleasurable” and so on. He states that if CBT moves you in that direction, it is good, but if it keeps you blaming past trauma, it’s no good.
• [28:35-31:38] PTSD & Predestination: Dhammarato uses a story of a father choking his son after waking from a dream of war as an example of how people get lost in their past due to a lack of mindfulness and not being awake. He believes it’s more accurate to describe this as living in the habit - which can lead to predestination and that society reinforces this through stress in school.
• [31:38-34:25] Teacher’s Job is to Make Students Like Learning: The number one job of the teacher is to make their students like the subject they are teaching. If the student does not like the material, they only learn it temporarily. Everyone is under stress. He states that psychological archeology is only useful to recognize past experience.
• [34:25-35:15] Free Will vs. Expensive Will: Dhammarato transitions into a joke about free will. He says we have ‘will’, but it is not ‘free’, it is expensive because we must put in effort to get out of the habit of doing things.
• [35:15-37:07] Subtle Levels: Breathing to Feelings: The effort involves moving from the gross breath to more subtle thoughts and eventually to feelings. Basic feelings are broken down into three groups: “I like it”, “I don’t like it”, and “I am not sure”.
• [37:07-39:54] Doubt, Fear & Confusion: He describes the initial curiosity when encountering something new, like a guard seeing someone coming into the valley. This can evolve into doubt, which can turn into fear. He explains people often choose to be cautious and aggressive rather than curious. These feelings occur when people begin to practice anapanasati.
• [39:54-41:38] Therapists Are Not Stress-Free: Dhammarato challenges the assumption that therapists are free from stress. He shares a story of a man named Greg who went back to the VA with the intention of “straightening them out” by teaching the Dhamma.
• [41:38-42:57] Sati & Recognizing Stress: Bringing stress up is not a good way to deal with it because it ingrains the habit. Instead, one needs “cognitive therapy” which means sati - to remember, recognize, and see stress when it comes up.
• [42:57-45:30] Using Psychological Archeology as an Example: The student states that their therapist uses psychological archeology only to teach new skills and how to react, but that it also causes them to recall and feel past anxieties, pulling them out of the present moment. They say they usually feel worse after therapy. Dhammarato understands this and states that if you are at Point A trying to get to Point B you should not go the opposite direction.
• [45:30-48:12] Feeling Good vs. Feeling Bad: Dhammarato explains that CBT tries to make you feel bad in order to teach a lesson about feeling bad, but the Buddhist approach works on intentionally feeling good, knowing bad feelings will arise as habits. When these feelings arise, you need to “let it go”. He uses an analogy of a bad piece of fruit with worms, saying that you throw it down once you recognize it is unsatisfying. He states if you do that regularly, you will spend more time in satisfaction.
• [48:12-50:23] Don’t Dwell in Depression: He says not to spend time feeling depressed, you can remember it but not feel the way that you felt at the time it happened. He states that you can have those dramatic memories without feeling the trauma.
• [50:23-51:40] Avoiding Problems vs. Manufacturing Problems: The student asks if pushing away bad thoughts and feelings is avoiding problems. Dhammarato says that “maybe the problem is the imagination of a problem.” He asks if we are not manufacturing problems now by trying to face them.
• [51:40-53:39] No Need to Have the Feelings of the Past: Dhammarato says it is a good point for people to recognize they are under stress, that they are living in the past and have anxiety because of past experiences, but that they don’t need to work with these. He uses the example of a tragic past, that while you felt bad then, you can choose to feel good in the present.
• [53:39-56:37] Practice Feeling Good: Dhammarato states, “you know what you need to practice on - feeling good”, even when you have thoughts of the past. He reiterates that he is not in the past, he is here now.
• [56:37-59:36] Self-Preservation & Survival Mechanism: The student states they could feel their muscles tense in therapy, and the therapist wanted to investigate why. Dhammarato states that they will recall memories. He then describes the survival mechanism, which he calls the organism’s protection mechanism. He uses an example of a rustle in the woods as a “false positive.” People who act cautiously for no reason may survive, and that is why we have these tendencies. He says that while that was helpful when there was high danger, that most people do not need to operate under those conditions now.
• [59:36-61:30] Operate Frontal Cortex: Dhammarato says the reptilian brain is causing this response, and you must take a few breaths and get the frontal cortex operating. He states, “I don’t have to feel anxiety because I am in the habit of feeling anxiety.” He says therapists seem to talk to you when you are in a state of anxiety, which is counter-productive. You must break the anxiety with oxygen and change your blood chemistry.
• [61:30-63:07] Karma & Samsara: He explains that the way the Buddha looked at “kama” is related to post-traumatic stress disorder, which causes cycles and negative feedback loops (samsara). Your choice is to break that cycle. He says psychologists have the same intentions, but they believe you have to get worse before you get better.
• [63:07-64:20] Come Out of the Hole: Dhammarato states you don’t have to “fall into the hole” that is caused by those memories. This is what Greg wanted to change, he wanted to show you could come out of the hole, and the best thing is to see the hole before you fall into it. He gives a preview of next week’s talk about gross (breathing) to thoughts to feelings.
• [64:20-66:05] Zip-a-dee-doo-dah & Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down: Dhammarato laughs with the student. He tells the student to go to therapy singing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. He shares a Latin phrase that translates to, “Don’t let the bastards get you down” and to not step in the holes of the past that try to remind you of bad things.
• [66:05-end] Wrap Up: They end by wishing each other a good day.

Special Attention Points

• Pali Terms:
  • Dukkha: Consistently translated as “unsatisfactory” rather than the common “suffering.” He emphasizes the subtlety of this dissatisfaction.
  • Sati: Translated as “mindfulness” or “watchfulness,” particularly in the context of breathing and recognizing thoughts and feelings.
  • Anapanasati: Mindfulness of breathing as the core practice for developing ‘sati’.
  • Kama: Actions of the past that give results in the present.
  • Samsara: Cycle of doing something, getting a result over and over again.
• Distinctions from Western Interpretations:
  • Psychological Archaeology: Dhammarato critiques the Western psychological focus on dwelling in the past as being counterproductive.
  • Suffering vs. Unsatisfaction: He emphasizes that dukkha isn’t primarily about intense suffering but rather a more subtle sense of dissatisfaction present in all experiences.
  • Anger Management: He rejects the notion of trying to “get anger out of your system” as counterproductive.
  • Direct Experience: He emphasizes directly working with stress rather than a therapist helping you cope with it.
• Practical Application:
  • Anapanasati: Dhammarato repeatedly returns to anapanasati as the main practice, emphasizing watching the breath, recognizing when the mind wanders, and bringing it back.
  • Guarding Thoughts & Feelings: He instructs students to choose wholesome thoughts and feelings to support present moment awareness.
  • Letting Go: He advocates for recognizing unwholesome experiences (like bad fruit) and letting them go without dwelling on them.
• Recurring Themes & Phrases:
  • “The present moment”
  • “You are not the past”
  • “Unsatisfactory (dukkha)”
  • “Watchfulness (sati)”
  • “Don’t step in the hole”
  • “You don’t have to feel the way you felt then”

Key Practice Instructions & Recommendations

• Anapanasati as a Foundation: Begin practicing mindfulness of breathing. Watch the breath, and when the mind wanders, gently bring it back. This is the core practice.
• Monitor Thoughts and Feelings: Be aware of thoughts and feelings. Choose thoughts and feelings that are wholesome and supportive of present moment awareness. Be mindful of the “subtlety” of negative feelings (dukkha).
• Let Go of Unsatisfactory Experiences: When you recognize negative or unwholesome experiences, like a bad fruit, don’t dwell on them. Choose to let go and return to the present moment.
• Remember the Past, Don’t Relive It: You can remember past experiences, but you don’t have to relive the emotions. The past does not determine how you feel right now.
• Choose to Feel Good: You have the choice to feel good in the present moment, regardless of what has happened in the past.
• Apply this in Therapy: When in a therapy session, and asked to recall the past, acknowledge it but move forward into the present moment. Practice feeling good and let go of the desire to dwell in the past.
• Sing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah: Don’t take yourself too seriously and remember to stay in the present moment.

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