“Nothing touches me lately”: Depression and Zen

There’s a song by The XX which goes:

I turned a blind eye
Let the borders get wavy
Nothing touches me lately
Shouldn't I be having fun?

There’s a question in the AMA that a lot of people think shouldn’t be there:

What do you suggest as a course of action for a student wading through a "dharma low-tide"? What do you do when it's like pulling teeth to read, bow, chant, sit, or post on r/zen?

People sometimes ask: Why is this even here? What does this question have to do with zen?

I actually have a couple of friends who’ve been clinically diagnosed with depression. I myself have perhaps been quite miserable at some times as well.

I think I was talking to someone regarding psychological angst and they quoted Boddhidharma curing the second patriarch’s “troubled mind”

Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching #507
The second patriarch asked Bodhidharma, "Can I hear about the Dharma seal of the Buddhas?" He said, "The Dharma seal of the Buddha is not gotten from another." The second patriarch said, "My mind is not yet at peace; please pacify my mind for me." He said, "Bring me your mind and I will pacify it for you." The second patriarch said, "Having looked for my mind, I cannot find it." Bodhidharma said, "I have pacified your mind for you."

Baqiao said, "Diamond scratches a clay man's back."

The logic seemed to be that illumination cured everything and was as simple as no longer complaining. No longer conceptualizing the pain-mind. Losing attachment to troubles. Maybe the 3rd AMA question is a question not for buddhas but for mortals. For buddhas perhaps there is no suffering, no concept of what that might be.

I listened to a someone regarding the zen usage of words like “anxiety” and they were talking about how anxiety was only diagnosable as a disease after Xanax producing pharma industries lobbied for it. The person seemed to be saying that Zen could cure a lot of troubled people. I don’t believe too much in this idea. I don’t necessarily think becoming a monk is a good path to happiness.

I recently saw a woman who was on the path of meditation and buddhist philosophy and she seemed to have reached a point of depersonalization. Maybe that is also interesting, on one hand it seemed she had no longer any attachment to her life narrative or to relationships with other people or to material things. On the other hand she did not seem very happy with this. I think the video was called “the cost of” the buddhist path or of enlightenment or of something. Seemed to me like one kind of meditation sickness which I heard some teachers warned about.

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Submitted February 23, 2023 at 08:36AM by 2bitmoment https://ift.tt/NSZHjJt