by Peter Carlson | Aug 29, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This discussion combines Peter’s 33 year history as a mental health professional, certified as an addictions counselor, combined with 37 years practicing mindfulness meditation. Addiction is described as a behavioral disorder that may or may not include substance dependency, laying out five criteria for a behavior to qualify as addictive, referring to the work of Anne Wilson Schaef that suggests American culture experiences addiction at an epidemic level. Peter also described addiction as a full rendition of Buddhist craving and clinging and as a maladaptive attempt to avoid or dull aversion, with desire as the enticement. The Four Noble Truths concept of Buddhism was reviewed to suggest effective intervention into the addictive process. The practice of mindfulness of breathing meditation is suggested as allowing a person to be aware of and tolerant regarding the urgency of craving and investigating the distorted beliefs that are always associated with an addictive process and then using detachment and renunciation to avoid acting out the addictive routine and instead understanding and modifying the distorted selfing story to address the root causes of the addictive process. Meditation is not the sole resolution of the problems of addiction; the practice is a foundational companion for practices such as the 12 step systems of various recovery groups (Meditation and prayer are step 11 of the 12 steps). The explanation of addiction was followed by discussion among those attending regarding the issues of addiction in the U.S.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: Dukkha And Addiction Notes
The next talk will focus on sampajjana, the four clear comprehensions of Buddhist commentary as a valuable tool for understanding and adapting effectively to the complexity of current American culture. Please note that a major hurricane is predicted to pass over the Florida peninsula over the Labor Day weekend and this may postpone the usual meeting and posting for a week or so.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:00 — 109.9MB)
by Peter Carlson | Aug 22, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk describes how craving and clinging generate and sustain depressive thought processes. Peter has used Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy as part of his psychotherapy practice for over 30 years and uses a combination of classical Buddhist concepts and contemporary research on cognition to explain how mindfulness of breathing and lovingkindness practices can be beneficial in overcoming this mental health disturbance, which is epidemic in current American life.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: BUDDHISM AND DEPRESSION
Next week’s talk will focus on Dukkha and Addiction. Peter regards addiction as extending beyond substance abuse to problematic behaviors, that is, maladaptive responses to stressful experience.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:18 — 119.6MB)
by Peter Carlson | Aug 15, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk focuses on the arguably epidemic levels of anxiety Americans experience in these stressful times and what mindfulness of breathing meditation can offer as a way to manage the increasingly complex and uncertain aspects of contemporary life. Peter has implemented mindfulness strategies as a mental health professional to help clients cope with various anxiety disorders for over thirty years. The emphasis on the talk is on the correlation between the Buddhist concept of craving and the feelings of impulsive reactivity characteristic of anxiety disorders. Even though the core of Buddhist practice seeks liberation from the fundamental dukkha of life, modern research and clinical practice demonstrates the effectiveness of mindfulness and lovingkindness practices for overcoming anxiety as well as depression. The discussion was followed by discussion of how participants experience anxiety and how regular meditation practice has been beneficial.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: Dukkha As Anxiety
Next week’s discussion will focus on Dukkha as Depression.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:43 — 109.4MB)
by Peter Carlson | Aug 8, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk is focused on the second of the two causes of dukkha which is clinging, upadana in Pali; last week’s posting of July 31 was focused on the other cause of dukkha, craving, tanha in Pali. Peter described ego as a dynamic process of the brain during which sorting through and prioritizing various sensory stimuli in the creation creates a “self”, emphasizing that this process is affected by “confirmation bias”, a psychological process which overrides new considerations, emphasizing already organized memories in self-state identifications. This is clinging, and it inevitably creates a more or less confusing conflict between what the mind creates from memory and what actually happens. He used the example of a personality organized around prior conditioning towards perfectionism that is adversely affected when a failure occurs, generalizing a mistake into “I am a stupid failure!”.
A Buddhist concept called sunnata (soon-yah-tah) was described, traditionally translated as emptiness, which misrepresents the term as similar to the space between stars. It is better understood as, for example, the absence of any determining description regarding sound before being interpreted by the mind’s confirmation bias. Referring to a concept that Daniel Siegel terms the “plane of possibility”, the progression of self-forming process was related to as being clearly investigated and understood through the cultivation of mindfulness of breathing, which allows insight into more creative and flexibly adaptive self-state organizing processes to alleviate the conflicted personality confusion of dukkha.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: Dukkha As Mental Confusion
Next week’s talk will focus on clinical anxiety as a pschological example of dukkha, suggesting ways that mindfulness practices can bring relief to this mental disorder. Peter, who has a 35 year background in psychotherapy, will focus on how mindfulness has been clinically effective in resolving this condition, which is reaching epidemic proportions in current American culture.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:58 — 111.6MB)
by Peter Carlson | Aug 1, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk is the first of two addressing the problem of dukkha in current life. The first talk addresses craving, using the term distress to relate to subjective experience in this media-saturated consumer culture. Stress has two forms emotionally: distress refers to unpleasant experience and eustress refers to the stress associated with pleasant experience; Peter pointed out that consumerism cultivates distress through comparing one’s current life with the “happiness” that will come from consuming whatever is being advertised. Both distress and eustress generate adrenaline and cortisol, two hormones that activate the body; chronically high levels of cortisol are associated with stress-related disorders of the body and to clinical anxiety. During the talk, Peter emphasized how daily mindfulness of breathing practice lowers both circumstantial levels of stress and the cumulative effects of chronic stress, using the image of “The last straw that broke the camel’s back”, comparing the accumulation of stress to all the straws that preceded the last straw. Mindfulness practices generally lower stress, making it less likely to accumulate the “straws” of current life.
This talk was followed by discussion regarding contemporary stresses such as economic worries, the threats of mass violence, ecological changes, political strife and racial tension, with commentary about how to apply mindfulness practice to alleviating the distress and confusion that results from being deluged by contemporary media.
Next week’s talk will emphasize clinging, which Peter refers to as confusion, relating this to the complexity of modern life and the conflict between the ideal self and the immediate experience of confusion and doubt when the ideal isn’t achievable, suggesting ways that mindful investigation can clarify experience.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk and include statistical data regarding the levels of stress experienced in U.S. lifestyles: STRESS AND THE DHAMMA
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:07 — 110.1MB)
by Peter Carlson | Jul 25, 2019 | Listen to Dharma Talks
This talk is the first in a series that focuses on representing contemporary cultural distress as dukkha, the fundamental dissatisfaction we all experience. Peter reviewed the three forms of dukkha described by the Buddha: dukkha due to physical discomfort, dukkha due to mental fabrication and dukkha due to the impermanent fluctuations of life circumstances. During the next several weeks various causes and conditions conducive to dukkha such as consumerism and the rapidly escalating nature of modern media will be described relative to the practice of mindfulness of breathing meditation. Peter, through his training and experience as a mental health professional, made a distinction between the mental health benefits of regular meditation practice and the truly liberating goal of the practice which is the transformative experience of nirvana, the unconditioned. Mental health is a foundation through which liberation can be realized.
Here are the notes prepared for this talk: Awakening Through Distress and Confusion
Next week’s talk will focus on current levels of stress experience in this culture, using contemporary statistical data.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:57 — 111.6MB)
