Healing Violence

Mental health means non-violence. The moment physical, verbal or mental violence arises, mental health is absent. The Dalai Lama, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman (author, Emotional Intelligence, Destructive Emotions, A Force for Good) use the term: emotional hygiene, mental hygiene. 

We are, by nature, non-violent creatures. We do not have fangs, or claws for grasping prey. We do not enjoy eating raw meat dripping with blood. We prefer the colors, smell and taste of fruits.

The human mind is capable of causing enormous harm. The human mind, the same mind, has enormous potential to do good, to benefit countless others.

It’s very important that we get to know our mind, how it functions, what are its constituent parts, what are the causes for happiness and inner peace, and what are the causes for suffering and violence. If we do not familiarize ourselves with our own mind, with how the wish to harm others arises in the mind, and with the importance of applying antidotes against harmful intent, against the wish to harm others, when it arises in the mind, we ourselves will not be happy. The wish to harm others is itself a moment of suffering.

The Public Health Model to Heal Violence explains how the wish to harm others arises in the mind. The model presents the mental causes for the wish to harm others. Breaking the model down into more steps shows how violence arises in the mind in finer detail. 

In Israel, and outside Israel, there is a lot of violence. People are violent towards one another, in the family, in the community, and at every level. If we want genuine peace, we will need to change.

Tibet was once a very violent society. The Tibetans internalized the importance of education for non-violence, and for 1300 years (with some gaps here and there, like during the reign of King Langdarma), the Tibetans created a compassionate society, a society that values virtues such as humility, patience, contentment, rejoicing in the joy of others, respect, kindness, honesty.

The different religions are precious precisely because they are treasuries of methods and ways to cultivate virtues, good qualities. Secular people also need practical knowledge in cultivating virtues and reducing violence.

It’s possible to overcome the wish to harm anyone. In Judaism, the person who overcomes the wish to harm anyone is called a hero (גיבור, gibor),

Peace Pilgrim on the true hero:

"It concerns me when I see a small child watching the hero shoot the villain on television. It is teaching the small child to believe that shooting people is heroic. The hero just did it and it was effective. It was acceptable and the hero was well thought of afterward.

"If enough of us find inner peace to affect the institution of television, the little child will see the hero transform the villain and bring him to a good life. He’ll see the hero do something significant to serve fellow human beings. So little children will get the idea that if you want to be a hero you must help people."

Peace Pilgrim Book pp. 117-118 (p. 135 of the PDF)

Peace Pilgrim, Steps Toward Inner Peace, 30 languages

—
The path to peace runs through the heart.
“Anything that softens the heart.”
A meaningful life is a life spent helping others with sincerity and kindness.
Dialogue is the path to peace.  
The Middle Way Approach
http://mwa.tibet.net/
Public Health Model to Heal and Eradicate Violence
http://therealjannaweiss.blogspot.com/2014/08/getting-to-root-of-violence-integrative.html

--
Translated from Hebrew http://cafe.themarker.com/post/3425779/
 

Happifying

Inspired by the Buddha's Twelve Links of Dependent Origination and Happify.com

We often think of happiness as being due to external factors, as a noun or an adjective. Happiness has no verb form. It's a little sad that there's no happiness verb. Without a verb, all we can do is hope for happiness, wait for it, long for it – happiness remains an object somewhere out there in the distance. Sometimes, we get lucky and we experience it a bit.

Thinking of happiness as being dependent entirely on external factors is totally mistaken. We incorrectly think of happiness as either being outside of our control, or being dependent entirely on external factors, such that I try, endlessly and tirelessly, to control them.

In reality, my happiness mainly depends on me, on my mind, on internal causes within me. Happiness is a state of mind, and my mind is essentially the only thing that is in my control – as long as I train it. Right now I'm at the mercy of my mind. But through mind training, it's possible to change that situation, to change habits of mind, to gradually become happier and happier, and eventually, to develop genuine and lasting happiness.

There are causes for happiness and causes for suffering. When we abandon the causes for suffering and adopt the causes for happiness, we happify ourselves.

Public Health Model to Heal Violence

The Public Health Model to Heal Violence can help us understand how the destructive emotions that mess up our happiness, that obscure the supreme happiness, the hidden inner radiance that lies within each one of us, that hover like a cloud hiding the sun, arise.

Let's look more closely at what happens in the mind when the mind engages with any object.

 What happens in the mind?

Since our mind is untrained, as soon as we engage with any object, as soon as the mind perceives an object, as soon as an object appears to the mind, and without us noticing it at all, that troublesome “I” is already there. Because of the “I” point of view, the “I” perspective, the "I" misperception, “I like” and “I don't like” immediately pop up and forcefully overtake us. As a result, we grasp at the object, reify the object, give the object a concreteness that it doesn't really have. “I like” so intensely that I MUST get that thing. I hate so much that I HAVE TO get away from it or destroy it. 

The three main destructive emotions or the three root destructive minds or mental states that we need to abandon are: (1) Ignorance, our mistaken view of self/ego/"I," (2) Attachment/Greed, and (3) Aversion/Hatred/Anger.  

A trained mind, a mind that is mindful of itself, discerns the stages that precede the intense splitting. The ability to discern the mind moments that precede the arising of attachment and aversion (splitting, dualistic perception) frees our grasping at the object and reduces our destructive emotions. We begin to become the masters of our own mind, instead of being its subject, instead of being enslaved by it.

In this image, we can see what really happens, without our noticing it, without our realizing it. One of our sense consciousnesses (seeing, hearing, etc.), a physical sense organ (eyes, ears, etc.) engages with an object. We discern an object. This is Contact. Alternately or additionally, our mental consciousness engages with a non-physical object, for example: love, truth, ethics. We discern these non-physical objects with our mental consciousness, not with our sense consciousnesses (after our eye consciousness and the physical eye engage with text, in this instance). 

Immediately after some object appears to the mind, immediately after Contact, we feel, we experience, we perceive, one of three feelings, one of three possible perceptions: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Neutral is not very interesting, not so important. Every mind, every consciousness, every sentient being, will always feel an infinite continuity of “pleasant” and “unpleasant” (and neutral). This is Feeling.

A mind that is free of suffering experiences pleasant and unpleasant, but does not grasp strongly at the pleasant and the unpleasant. The pleasant and the unpleasant simply pass; they come and go, arise, abide and disappear. The drama happens when the mind grasps strongly at the “pleasant” and “unpleasant,” and as a result, also grasps strongly at the object.

This perceptual error of a solid, permanent, independently existing ego is responsible for all the destructive emotions, for all our negative emotions. All the violence in the world comes from this mental misperception. If we want to cultivate happiness, to happify, and if we want a more pleasant world for all of us, the way to expel violence from our hearts and to eradicate violence in the world is through learning, through education, by mindfully observing the process by which the destructive emotions arise in our mind.

Once we understand that we are all interdependently linked and interconnected, that my happiness depends on your happiness and vice versa, we will not want to harm any other being. We will be ethical and happy. Lack of ethics is like mud that clouds water when we stir a cup of water and mud. The mental mud can only settle by practicing ethics and honesty, and then we can start to discern the internal mental process I described. I pray and wish that everyone's mental mud settles.

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These are the days of the Tibetan New Year, the Year of the Fire Bird. I wish everyone a happy New Year, health, long life and the realization of all our compassionate wishes.

Being Human: The Person

What is a human being? What is a person? How does he or she exist? We'll look at various aspects of the person. First, from a scientific perspective -- not the science we're used to, but a scientific perspective that accords with reality as it is. 

Outdated materialistic view of fertilization of the egg (ovum) by a sperm cell

What Is the Person? Science 
The person or a human being is made up of two main parts, a body and a mind. The body is matter, and consciousness, the mind, is non-matter.
Every person has two lineages, a physical lineage of the physical body -- our parents and all the forefathers and ancestors up until the lake in Africa where the first human being was born, and everything that preceded that lake, up to the amoeba, symbiosis with mitochondria, the formation of the first RNA segment in the primordial soup. 
The second lineage is the lineag of consciousness, of awareness. Our present consciousness, our present mind, our present awareness, is a continuation of the previous mind moment. The first mnd moment in this life (the mind moment that followed its previous mind moment met a fertilized egg (zygote), which is the beginning of the gross physical body. So not only do we have countless fathers in the physical lineage, but we also have countless mothers who raised and cared for us in our various bodies and our many and changing mind moments in our countless previous lives. That's how it is. 

Super-subtle mind (body-mind), 'spirit,' meets fertilized ovum (Image: Dirk Laureyssen)

A model that accords more closely with reality as it is: Meeting of the mind ('spirit' in the model, the most subtle or very subtle or super-subtle mind or body-mind) with the fertilized ovum (sperm + egg).
Dirk Laureyssen's website: http://www.mu6.com/life.html 
Dirk Laureyssen details the fertilization process in the video on karma. Recommended.

The Religious View of the Person Is Closer to Reality As It Is Than the Pseudo-Scientific Materialistic View

Now we can understand that the religious model of “mother, father and holy spirit” – with all the variations in the different religions and the many terms – is closer to reality as it is than the pseudo-scientific materialistic model of biology as it is taught today.

In the Old Testament we find:

“Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the soul of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2: 7) According to the Old Testament, all human beings were created in the image of God; every person has a godly soul, a living spirit, is a living sentient being. The biblical view is more in agreement with reality as it is than the materialistic model. In other words, with regard to the understanding of what a person is, the religious view is more realistic, more scientific, than the materialistic view.

Contradiction Between the Religious (Jewish) View of the Nature of Existence and the Scientific View of Reality As It Is

From a scientific perspective, every being originates in a way that is similar to the above model:

being = body + mind. Animals are also sentient beings. They also have a mind and the basic nature of the animal's mind is no different from the mind of a human being. Animals have the exact same potential to realize the nature of their mind in some future lifetime.

As far as the mental ability to realize the nature of the mind in this lifetime, in this present body, there is an enormous difference between human beings and animals. There is a huge difference between the intellectual capacity or cognitive ability of animals and humans. The essential, true or basic nature of the mind, and the innate potential of each and every mind, are the same for humans and all other beings. While in the limited condition of the animal body, an animal does not have the possibility to improve or transform its mind

The enormous possibility we have in this lifetime to realize the full potential of the true or basic nature of our mind distinguishes humans from animals.

It is a mistake to deduce that because of the marked difference in our cognitive/intellectual capacity and the cognitive or intellectual capacity of animals, that there is also a difference in the basic nature of the mind. There is no realistic basis for such an assertion. An animal's mind can take rebirth as a human being and the mind of a human being can take rebirth as an animal. What kind of rebirth we have depends on what we think and do in this lifetime.

The Place of the Human Being in Judaism

At the literal level of interpretation, the Bible (Old Testament) relates the lineage, ancestry or history of the Twelve Tribes, the Children of Israel. After the Story of Creation, the Bible does not start with Abraham, but with Adam (Man). We are, first and foremost, human beings, children of Adam.

From there, the Bible moves on to Noah – we are a nation or a people as all people, we are all members of one human family, we are all brothers and sisters. Then we come to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Twelve Sons (and two daughters)....

A Bible Lesson Based on the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama usually introduces himself in the biblical sequence.

When he talks about himself, he opens with, “I am one of 7 billion human beings.” Therefore, the first priority he dedicates his life to is cultivating and promoting secular science based basic human values, values that every person needs in order to be happy in life.

Secondly, he says, “I am a Buddhist monk.” So the second most important thing in His Holiness' life is to develop interfatih understanding, between all the religions of the world and between the different Buddhist traditions.

At the third level of identity he says, “I am Tibetan.” So his third life priority is to devote his time and energy to a solution for the suffering of the Tibetan people. When the Tibetan problem is resolved, he will not need to dedicate himself to that issue any longer.

What About Us?

“Kindness (courtesy, treating others with respect, self discipline) precedes the Torah.” At least six of the Ten Commandments deal with universal basic human values. “Love your neighbor as thyself, where neighbor is any and all people, is a great priniciple of the Torah”. “What is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor is the (essence) of the whole Torah” – the whole Torah in a nutshell (“on one foot”).

Do we view ourselves in the right order? In the order in which the Bible presents the issue of identity? Are we first and foremost human beings? Without being human first and foremost, we cannot be good Jews, good secular people, good Marxists, good capitalists, good right or left wingers or good whatever-we-happen-to-be. In other words, to be a good Jew means to be a good person. We can change the identity designation: To be a good x means to be a good person. (Fill in the blank.)

The broadest view, the view that encompasses “all beings,” “all our rebirths,” “all the three times” and helps us to “find the similarities” between all of us, is an excellent habit of mind. Every way of looking at things that decreases a strong view of “self and other”, of “me vs. you” is an excellent way of seeing that increases peace within ourselves and peace in the world.

May all beings be happy. Happiness for all.

More Aspects of the Person and the Mind (that I took out of the main text for easier reading)

The human being or the person can also be divided into three main parts. For the division into three, some say: person = body + mind + name (label) and some prefer: body + mind + speech.

We can expand the discussion to the 1. gross, 2. subtle and 3. most subtle or very subtle or super-subtle levels of body and mind. At the super-subtle level, body and mind are indivisible. Levels of Mind http://therealjannaweiss.blogspot.com/2012/04/buddhism-science-of-mind.html

For a more detailed understanding of the mind from a scientific perspective, you are invited to visit Prof. Paul Ekman's Atlas of Emotions. Negative, destructive, i.e., egotistical self-centered, emotions belong to the domain of “mind” and not to the physical body (matter). The mind governs, controls or leads the body. For example, destructive emotions, stress, can cause many diseases.

The original Hebrew post is titled "Jewish Identity Chapter 11: Adam" and has a P.S.: If the title “Jewish Identity” bothers you, you can change it yourself to “Human Identity” or “Secular Identity” or to any other identity that suits you. There's no point in getting upset over nothing.  

Jewish Identity Series - English translation follows Hebrew
Chapter 1: Altruism in Judaism
Chapter 2: Einstein and Universal Responsibility 
Chapter 3: I and Thou -- and We 
Chapter 4: Jewish Renewal
Chapter 5: Universal Ethics
Chapter 6: Reincarnation
Chapter 7: Compassion -- Hebrew only -- a translation of this page on Chabad.org  
Chapter 8: Rabbi "I'll Be Walking" and Mindfulness of Speech
Chapter 9: Meditation
Chapter 10: The Heart

Chapter 11: Adam -- Hebrew only -- this post

Chapter 12: ABC ~ Aleph Bet