165: Retreat Dhamma Talk 60: Mental Illness

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Retreat series down the top, number sixty. We have been talking based on the Jaitany Pasana six pairs of consciousness that we can observe in our practice. And then separately we discuss in detail about five types of liberation. So to liberate the mind, one must culture the mind first. One must train the mind, guide the mind, culture the mind. And in here, if we are going to culture the mind, we need to understand a little bit about the mind. Buddhas taught us or pointed out to us there are three major faults in the consciousness. Three major faults in the consciousness if we want to train them. The first one is Dunika Sha. It's basically the mind is very difficult to tame. That's the nature of the mind. It's very difficult to tame. Second one is lahuta. The mind. The rate, the speed that they arises and pass away is so fast we cannot even comprehend it. Many, many, many times faster than the speed of light. What it means is this mind goes anywhere at once. It travels anywhere at once. It has no boundary, no limitation. Without control, it just goes. The mind goes without any border. And it's just like water looking for a hole to seep out. Same thing. The mind looking for an object and just goes wherever that object takes. Those are the three. So before you train, you train the mind, you must need to know what these are. So when you want to culture the mind, what you need? You need to discipline the mind, you need to guide the mind and you need to harness the mind. Because if you let the mind stay as it is, what we call normal, everyday normal, the mind will become wilder and harsher, crazier, and eventually it will cause destructive actions. Destructive actions and suffering. That's where it would lead if you keep the mind stay wild as it is. So in here we need to understand about ourselves. When we say we love ourselves, we focus mostly on the body. We keep our body really take care of our body really well. But if we don't take care of the body, which means we don't eat light, we junk food, don't eat on time, don't eat nutritious food, salty food, fatty food, super sweet food, you don't sleep properly, you smoke, you drink, you do drugs, that means you are not taking care of the body. And if you do that, drink too much lung disease, eat too much junk food, fat foods, artery plugs, high blood pressure, too sweet diabetes, automatically you will be contracted with disease depending on how you live and how you conduct the body. How you live means the way you eat, the way you sleep, eat, the way you drink. So the same thing. If you take care of the mind, especially while it is tender, in other words not, haven't gone too far up yet at the younger stage. We have to start at the younger stage. If we don't take care of the mind, we'll be contracted with mental disease. Just the body is the mind also will be contracted with mental disease and illness. And once you get this mental disease and mental illness, it will take control of your life and you will lose the opportunity to become a true human being. And let's see we are contracted with serious physical illness or disease. What do we do? We follow the doctor's instruction to a T. We are very attentive about what the doctor tells us what to do, what not to do, what to eat, what medication to take, and we follow to a T. Because we want to get well. But the funny thing is we don't really take care of our mental illness. And mental illness too. We got instruction. We've been diagnosed by the greatest physician, and we are being instructed by the world greatest physician of mental illness, the Buddha. The Buddha told us what the diseases are and he told us what kind of meditation to take. He taught us how serious it is. But we don't believe it. Physical illness, doctors say you do. Mental illness, the greatest physician said what to do, you don't. That's a fact. And the Buddha, he actually cultured his own mind. Nobody taught him. He learned how to do on his own. He cultured his own mind. Cultured danta. Pali word danta. And culturing mind means in one way, it's the ability to face all good situation, condition, all bad situation, condition without being attached and without having aversion. You don't get attached to anything that is good and beautiful and nice. And you don't have any aversion towards anything that is bad or disagreeable. That is the presentation of what a cultured mind is. And the Buddha taught us the way, in other words, the method, the technique, how to culture the mind, which he had discovered by himself. All Buddha's teachings are about how to purify the mind and how to keep the mind away from killing some mental defilements. And then become cultured and become a wise mind. That's the Buddha's intention and that's what he taught us. So that we become a cultured and a wise person. So in here we are talking about the body and the mind. Two parts, what we call self. And let's pick up the pain. The pain arises from the physical source, the body, as well as the mental source, the mind. It arises from both. But whenever we have pain in our body, whether it's in a back ache or neck ache or a little headache, or a little discomfort, we pay great attention, headache, dctalonol, little pain at the back, rub some linament, and so on and so on. As soon as there's a discomfort, physical pain, we take care of or we take action to eliminate it or to reduce that intensity of pain. Also, there's a mental source. A pain and mental source is arising all the time, but we don't pay any attention to it. We don't pay any attention until and unless it becomes the focal point, center point of our attention. In other words, it becomes really bad, really serious, such as going into deep depression, don't want to do anything, and so on. Only then we think we are something wrong with it. We can't focus our mind, mentally agitated, irritated all the time, angry at everything and anything, then you think, then we think that something wrong with the mind, mental illness. But before that we don't think we are anything wrong with it. That is how our perceptions are. How presented, how it manifests into the larger scale, in the big picture, in the scale of the world. So let's look at our history of a world. In the history of our world, if you look at it in the past, we have suffered from major famine, diseases, and war. Famine, disease, and war. We have suffered in the past. And if you look at right now too, we are still suffering from this. We still have a lot of famine in many countries in the world. Some people still dying from hunger. And diseases, no need to say. It is still some diseases we take care of with the science, advancement of science, and they we eliminate it, it disappear. But another, a new one comes on, it just can't stop. You eliminate one, another one comes up. That's what the disease is happening right now, right here. And also war. It becomes more prevalent. You heard about war more often and more widespread than before. War going on everywhere. We are talking about past and present, and for the future, it is sad to say these will keep on growing. They will in the future we'll still have famine, we'll still have diseases, major serious diseases, and we'll still have war, even a bigger war. And of course we develop science to prevent famine, to have very powerful pesticide resistance, germs resistant, grains and drugs, and so on and so forth. We think we are trying to solve the problem. With the science, advancements of science, and we think we believe we succeeded. But this advancement of science, science is a tool, simply a tool. Science is neither good nor bad. Science is neither evil nor good, but it is the people who use that science. Make that science become evil or make that science become good. We need to keep in mind, it is not the science, it's not the technology. It is us who are using it, deciding to use in what way makes it evil or good. That's what science is. We are really depending on science nowadays, but we have to be careful of how we used it. And here as a society, as a society, we give great emphasis on the physical disease. We know in the past, three four decades, major diseases come out. Within a year or two, we managed to formulate a medicine and we wipe about in the past too. In the Middle Ages, pigs come in, and about a century ago, Spanish fruit come in. We managed to push this back. And now is COVID-19 coming in. We are fighting a war with the disease. But we think we are fighting the war against the disease, against the virus. But accurate, that is not true. We are fighting ourselves. Think about it. We are fighting ourselves. These mental diseases. Everything is fighting ourselves is about our mind. It's not the body, the mind. The mental speeches are spreading. Because of these mental diseases, one of the popular words nowadays is climate change. Climate change speeds up. Okay, climate change, it exists throughout the past history of the world. It changes. Ice age go back and forth, polarity and the north and south, it changes, but it changes very gradually and noticeably so that living beings on earth can adjust and flow with it. But our mental diseases are so bad we are pushing that mental disease, that with the mental disease, the change of the climate a lot faster speed than before. This climate, I'm not just picking up a word from the modern news or modern science. Over 2,500 years ago, Buddhists taught us about it in a discourse called Conditions, Patna. I'll take one line from it. That one line is Utu Bojana Bi. Upanitya is panisya is strong dependence, powerful dependence. We have to depend on it. Not just casually, it's as a very powerful force, strong force. But they said, Utu, it's a climate. And the Buddhas live the food and the climate together. And those two are conditions of strong dependence for living beings to exist. Utu bhajanambi, upa michaya, bicho. This climate change and the linkage to the food, Buddhists show us this is very vital for living beings. Because of this climate change, automatically the food supplies changes. In other words, all the fathers will become dry and semi-desert, you can't grow, food supply stop, famines come in. We talk about famine now. We know in some countries it's very bad that will become widespread worldwide at one time. If we don't take care of ourselves. But not with humans. But now we are taking over their territory and we are doing the border crossing. And these virus and bacteria and germs are not compatible with the human existence. And that's how the diseases will spread. Where does it come from? It all comes from our own mind. Our mind is the one who's creating. We think we are progressing. But whenever we do, there is the wicked greed, the prophet is the loba. Wicked greed. That is the one that is disbalancing the nature, the balance of the nature. So in here, once we have this population-thinning disease and famines, what happens? Automatically, instability to the humanity will come. War happens. As soon as the instability to human security off. They have to move, they have to move. And nowadays we have all the borders. Mass migration will happen, disbalance will happen, and chaos will follow. In other words, nothing but suffering, suffering, suffering. And we created this. We speed it up, we push it up. That's what it is. Why? Because of the mental disease. So these kind of catastrophe, wall-wide-scale catastrophe, famine and war and disease, it has existed in the world. In the world, it existed. And still existing now, and it will still exist in the future. So probably you say, okay, it happened in the past, it happened now, it will happen with that. It's just a logical sequence of interpretation. For the Buddhist, from the Buddhist point of view, it is even deeper and more certain than that. As a Buddhist, we believe in the principle of Kama Vipaka, the law of cause and effect. The law of cause and effect is we are here, we exist. Our existence is due to our actions from the past. Actions from the past created it and we are the result of it. Vipaka. Action from the past is karma, our existence is vipaka. And in our existence, we created more actions. And these actions will have A reserve, which means we have another rebirth. Keep on going. But whenever we, we as a humanity does, whatever humanity does, we do both things, good and bad. I called it salt and pepper karma, the black karma and white karma, salt and pepper. So we have all these wholesome actions and unwholesome actions as a humanity doing it, and it will keep on going. And when it keeps on going, it can go only in two directions. One direction is to become better and better and better, another action is to become worse and worse and worse. But as we have said, like a child, the mind is like a child. If you give a freedom, it goes towards the bad things, the bad habits, love the bad, form of bad, unwholesome. That is the nature of the mind. So it tends to be become more and more unwholesome, unwholesome, unwholesome. That's where we are heading. And this nature of unwholesomeness has become so much piled up. Piled up. Moral corruption becomes worse and worse. That is how you can see it. The other one we say, unwholesome, karma, vibaka. In our real world, we see them as moral corruption. That is the effect. Moral corruption becomes worse and worse. And every countries in this world, if you look at it, you will find it. In other words, moral corruption is so prevalent, it is so strong, it becomes the cause. And the catastrophe of the world is the effect. This moral corruption producing more carbon dioxide, moral corruption producing climate change, and the whole cause and effect go on. That is one obvious point I'm finding out. But there are so many things, of course. It will be endless if we keep on talking about it. Moral corruption. That's the one that is creating the catastrophe of the world. Through that we created wars, through that we created famine. There are people starving, and there are places they don't want their commodity to drop, so they throw away the food into the ocean so that they can maintain the price. They manipulate the prices. That's moral corruption. That's moral corruption. That's how we are creating our own disaster. And that is mental illness. The base, the root is. So these are the modem examples in a larger scale. I'm trying to weave through our Dhamma talk and present what the Buddhas have taught us. I'll give a few from the very specific example from the scripture. So this is the at the times of Buddha. It's in the scripture. It's about a monk or a bhikkhu. Bhutikutta, bhikkhu, his name is Bhutikatta. And this monk, he's one of the monks who is following the Buddha and practicing as taught. And at one point his whole body is full of virus, infection basically. Infection, bacteria, and junk. And the fellow bakus take care of him at the beginning. But it becomes worse and worse, and that the foul smell is so much. And all these. All these disease and liquids and falling up and smelling and stinking. Eventually, the other bhikkhu stopped taking care of him. They can't take care of him. And Buddha's aware of it. As he's aware of it, he came over, he didn't tell anybody anything, any other bhikkhu. He himself goes to that monk, he takes care of it, changes bandages, he changes clothes, he gives him a bath, and really take care of that bhikkhu. So of course, when Buddha himself is doing that, other bhikkhus come and help out and do the same thing because they cannot sit at the sideline. And that is how one of the winiya, the rules and regulations of a monk to follow, comes up. When a monk is sick, the fellow monks must take care of it. That's the top priority. You must even drop your practice and take care of it if it's need be. That's one of the rules. You don't discourage another monk who is in suffering and in diseased. That's a little sideline how winiyas are formed during the time of Buddha for the monks. So this monk he is happening like that, and the reason is in one of his past life, of course, Buddha with his great mind told this, what happened. At one point he was, let's call it a hunter for little animals and birds. He trapped them. And what he does was he sells them for his livelihood so that he can make money to live. That's what he does. So when he does that, if he catches them and if he kills right away, and if he cannot sell it, it will be wasted. And also, if you can sell a fresh meat, you get more money. I'm guessing. So what he did was when he caught these birds, he clips their wings so that they cannot fly away, run away. Little animals break their legs so that they won't run away, and he can just keep it in the cage within the fence. And when people once it he would grab it out, kill them, and sell it. That is his livelihood. Because of his greed, so that he can get the maximum amount of money for the fresh meat. And at the same time, the mental state of cruelty is in his mind. Without cruelty, you can't do it. If you have compassion, you can't do it. But that's how he lived. And all these birds and animals, they got infected and suffer and die. That is what he had done in the past. Okay, past karmic action. And the result he is paying in this life. As a big coup, he is paying. He comes out of boils and infections and vowels and in pain. That's what is happening. So that is cause and effect, pointing out what the cause and effects are. And of course, remember that salt and pepper karma, those are the pepper karma, black karma. And in his life too, many, many lives ago, he just practiced, he did many good things, and he practiced enough in this life at the time of Buddha and this life of bhaku, he has enough paramy. In other words, he has accumulated enough good practice so that he can have an attainment. He has a parameet to become arahat. But even though he has a parame to become arahat, he has suffered because of what he has done. That is a law. So on his deathbed, that's so serious, he's going to die. On his deathbed, what he did was he observed the pain with Nandupasana. He observed the pain in such an intense and focused that he actually became arahatta before he passed away through observation of the pain. So just finding out the actual fact and the scripture of how karma vipaka operate and how Satipathana can be a part of this painful life. To release from that pain. Hunting, he hunts. His hunting is due to loba. He wants money. He hunts to make money. And he's hunting and torturing and killing. Gleefully, gleefully. Because he has dosa, great volition of dosa. And this potentiality of karma, what he has done followed, and he even has to pay in his last existence before he became an arahat. The same thing in the world, what we have done, all the dark black karmas, is piling up so much now we are paying in our world-wide scale. One modern word is moral corruption is so great, we are creating our own disaster. So in here, okay, Dosha. That's a loba. This one is Dosa is a mental illness. Loba is a mental illness. Just an example to put it, how dosah can change the mental state. Let's say you saw a deer on the road under your headlight of a car. They see the big glaring two eyes, light beaming, and they froze. Why do they froze? There's a danger coming because that's a fear. The fear froze everything, both mentally, first of all, and then physically it manifested into. That's what Dorsap can do. And also human us when we have intense anger, great anger. We have already established these kind of angers and stress can produce high blood pressure. Some people even got to the brain hemorrhage and died through the moment of anger. At moments of anger, people got heart attack. And so on and so on. Read in a medical book, you'll find these things. What anger can do. Anger is a mental illness can do to the body. That's mental illness tosa. Let's take a little bit of example here. Okay, this is something that everybody can understand. STD, sexually transmitted disease. Why do you get that disease? It is your great desire, it is your great loba towards the sense pleasure of a touch. Loba is a mental illness. Alcoholics. It's a disease. Why? You have the greed for that drunken mind. Starting with it. Drug addicts, sex addicts. What? That grasping greed for that sense pleasure. Loha. That is how the mental illness and physical illness are connected. And the third disease is called Moha. Delusion, we call it illusion, delusion, uncertainty. Understand this way, this illusion and delusion always associated with loba and dosak, greed and anger. Because you won't do those angry things and then wicked desire if you fully understand, you wrongly understand that is moha. So these three things, lobad, dosha and montha, are the mental illness. So let's go back to our physical illness. Whenever we have a physical illness, we go to the root and take care of the root cause. Your artery is plucked in your heart. The surgeon will go right to the spot and take it up, they prop it up, they put the stems right to the root. If you just beat around, have a little massage, have a little acupuncture or run around, it wouldn't temporarily it might maintain. But if you go to the root, you take care of it. The root cause. If you can go to the root cause, that illness or disease can be taken care of. And the same thing too, mental illness. The mental illness, the Buddha has taught us how to cure or take care of these mental illness. Go right to the root. Right to the root. Don't treat the symptoms. Don't treat the symptoms. You must treat the real cause. Only then you can take care of it. And also nowadays in modern science, they are proof now. I think maybe about 75%, 70-75% of the physical illness and disease, the causes come from the mind. Mental illness is the cause. About, according to science, about 70-75% of physical guys are directly related to the mind. So what is the root cause of the physical illness? Mental illness. What is the root cause of the mental illness? Lopa, dosa, and moha. That's a fact. We all know about it. And modern-day doctors, if we have disease and illness, what do they do? They give us, they guide us how to eat, what to eat, what not to eat, how to live hygienically, exercise. These are parts of the prevention. Curing processes, they will give you antibiotics, medication, surgery, and so on. The doctor gave us both prevention technique and curing technique methods. And the same thing, the Buddha taught us about mental illness. And in here, Buddha actually gave us many, many methods and techniques how to take care of mental illness. How to prevent and how to cure. That's the kilesa, it's the virus of mental illness. And this mental illness, the virus, we can find it in a progressive form. We can try them in an obsessive form, and we can find them also in a latent form. These virus have different forms, three different forms. What is this virus? Kilesa. So you can call it transgressive kilesa, obsessive kilesa, and latent kilesa. So you have to attack them directly, whatever that is. Trangressive kilesa. Let's call it as a gross nature. What you actually do physically. You go out and beat them or you shout them, you're angry at them. Physical deed and verbal deed. Those are transgressive forms. Trangressive kilesa. Antidote is basically morality. In Buddhists, we call it five precepts. What to avoid, what to reframe so that we won't hurt or harm others as well as yourself. And if you observe these precepts morality, instantly it will take care of the congressive form of kilesa or congressive kilase virus. An obsessive kilesa. What is obsessive kilesa? In a very simple way. It is wanting to break the five percepts. You haven't broken yet. Morality control it, you don't do it, but still in your mind, you still at times, at situations, at conditions, you still want to break that five percepts. I just use the precepts. There are five precepts, they are eight percepts, nine percepts, ten percent, two hundred-seven precepts for the mouse. But let's stick with five percepts. And in your mind, jealousy and envy is arising for others. Conceit is always there. How dare! Jealousy, envy, conceits are in your mind, even though you don't just take it out and put it into action physically and verbally, but still in your mind. That is the obsessive form of virus, obsessive killita. That one Buddha gave us another tool. It calls samatha. Concentration meditation. If you practice concentration meditation, you can keep them under Rabb. These thoughts, the jealousy, the envy. As long as you have concentration meditation, they are under rubbed, they are at bay. So even meditating concentration, there are two types. One is the jhanic concentration. That's the concentration meditation. Another one is called kanika. Samadhi, momentary concentration. That comes from satipattana vipassana. Two line. Jhana concentration from the samatha practice. Kanika or momentary concentration is from the satipattana vipassana technique. Two different. But regardless, both do the same thing. They keep it under rub. That is how you can take care of the obsessive form of virus or kilesa. And the last one is latent form of kilesa or latent form of virus. This one is first and foremost, you think you have overcome it. I think you are okay, you have finished your job, you have finished your work. That's what you believe. Because it's been a long time, you don't have these kilesa in your mind, in your speech, in your deed. But sometimes, for some people, when under a set of conditions, they just simply arise. That is latent kilesa. You don't even know that you have it. But suddenly at a certain point, it pops up. So what to do is when you have that, oh I still have it. And you have to keep building that five-controlling mental faculties. Build again and build again and build again till it is totally uprooted. You get totally uprooted when you become a arahata makeup. Till then you have to keep on fighting, keep on practicing. So in here, okay, let's go back to our modern-day classic. We want to travel to the third world countries whether malarias are or whether smallpox are or whatever kind of disease are, before we go to that country, we get an immune shock so that we won't get infected. That's prevention, that's what we do. And so the same thing in the field of the mind. We need to take immune shock if we are going into the domain of kilesa, domain of mental illness. But the sad thing is that the domain of mental illness is everywhere. We are in there. If we are not mindful, we are in there. But if we are mindful, then we can prevent it. How can we prevent it? Simply put, first of all, refrain. Refrain is avoidance, morality. Restraint. Restraint is not engaging with sense pleasure as little as possible. Restraint. You can even put it eight percepts, nine percepts, ten percepts. When you get eight, nine, ten, then you are cutting off the sense pleasure from your daily life. That's restraint. Reframe, restraint. And be mindful in all your activities, daily activities. Be aware, be mindful. Whether you are at home or at work, whatever routine at home and whatever jobs you are doing at work, be as mindful as possible. Every day, practice based on your lifestyle. One hour or two hours of formal meditation. Go to retreat whenever possible, short-term retreat, long-term retreat. By doing so, you will keep this mental illness at bay. By doing so, you will keep the kilesa at bay. That's what you can do as a prevention. But regardless how much you do, when a certain favorable condition for the kilesa to arise, it will arise. And total elimination of these kilesa, mental illness or the viruses, is only possible. When you take the medication of arhatta mega or arhatta meca binya wisdom. When you get the wisdom of the fourth noble person, then you totally eradicate all the mental defiance. May all of you be able to practice and live according to the instruction of the Buddha. His prescription. Follow his prescription to a tea, and may you all be able to eliminate the mental illness once and for all. As soon as possible.