Depression & Anxiety & The Four Noble Truths

This dharma talk is about how depression or anxiety can assist in understanding suffering and waking up from suffering on the spiritual path. This talk also includes pieces of Amita's personal journey in healing/becoming free of depression.

Transcript

In this talk I would like to explain a brief bit about how depression and anxiety fit in with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and also about my journey as a practitioner with depression and anxiety,

What it's like to get free of the depressed mind.

So as I've mentioned several times in this retreat,

Depression and anxiety are great gifts in the Dharma because they point us to the ultimate of freedom,

Which is freedom from mind itself,

Freedom from suffering.

And working with our depression and anxiety is no different than the Buddha saying,

Mara,

I see you and seeing through the illusion of all of mind itself.

So they're great gifts for us.

Mary Oliver writes,

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.

So how do depression and anxiety liberate the mind via the Four Noble Truths?

First Noble Truth is there is suffering,

And I don't think any of you have to be convinced of that.

Sometimes as a teacher,

I talk with people and I'll talk about suffering and they'll be like,

What?

I don't have that.

And sometimes my jaw will just drop and go,

Really?

You mean you don't know what suffering is?

So really,

We know it.

We know it deeply from the inside out 24-7.

Sometimes horribly we know suffering.

Relentlessly we know suffering.

We don't have to be convinced of the First Noble Truth and the need to find the end of suffering.

The First Noble Truth has battered us most of our life.

So then that brings us to the Second Noble Truth of clinging is the cause of suffering.

And we also know this with depression and anxiety.

Clinging to any thoughts creates pain,

Especially the thought,

I don't want to be anxious.

You know how well that works.

I don't want to have a panic attack.

Just creates another panic attack,

Doesn't it?

I don't want to be depressed.

That doesn't work.

Something's wrong with me.

I'm bad.

I'm broken.

We've had these thoughts and we just see how much pain that is when these thoughts come about and we hold on to them.

And really we see the mind itself as pain when we have depression and anxiety.

And also this brings us to the Third Noble Truth of there is cessation.

Seeing the cause of suffering.

And you know,

We've seen this in our lives with anxiety and depression.

We've seen many moments where we thought we wouldn't survive.

I will die of this panic attack,

Right?

And then it's gone.

It came and went,

Didn't it?

Moments when many of us have been on the brink of suicide.

I certainly have.

And that moment came and went and we're all still here.

Moments where we were frozen in trauma flashbacks and we're all still here.

So we know about cessation in small and big moments.

And we know that these are like waves that can roll through and we keep going and we keep going.

This path is a lot like climbing mountain range and you think you're at the top and then you go,

Oh,

There's another ridge.

And then you climb that and there's another ridge and another ridge.

I crossed the Cascade Mountains when I was in my 20s and it just was an endless series of ridges.

That really brings us to the Fourth Noble Truth,

Which is that path to end suffering,

Which is really essentially just keep going further.

My teacher says further,

Further,

Further.

Why?

Because our true nature is not depression.

Our true nature is not anxiety.

Keep following that glimmer,

That one lone star to guide you on your long walk home through mountain range after mountain range.

So my life as a depressed person who found the Dharma,

Or the Dharma found me,

Really,

I thought about actually proposed a Shambhala book called What If The Buddha Had Depression?

And maybe what if the Buddha had trauma?

What would that have looked like?

Well,

It probably would have looked a lot like each one of our journeys.

So this is what life with depression looks like from day one.

Most of you can relate to this,

I think.

Day one,

Most of us are saying,

What the hell?

Most of us were ready to leave from the very beginning.

I certainly was.

I don't know about a lot of you,

But we were ready to leave from the very beginning,

Wondering what is wrong?

What is wrong here?

Something feels really wrong.

There is suffering,

First noble truth.

We don't really know what it is.

It's upsetting.

It's distressing towards our bodies.

Something feels wrong,

The first noble truth.

On a lighter note with that first noble truth is this little poem I found actually when I first started practicing about 30 some years ago from Sujata,

Who's now deceased.

He said,

Basically life is unsatisfactory because,

And he lists 10 things,

Because one,

It is not perfect.

Two,

We only get two weeks of vacation each year.

Three,

Our joys are impermanent.

Four,

No one gets out alive.

Five,

This is my favorite,

Our bodies have to be watched over and over again.

Six,

The freeway is crowded.

Seven,

We must be taught by pain as well as pleasure.

Eight,

Our name sounds dumb.

Nine,

We must argue that life is not unsatisfactory.

And ten,

Most of our happiness depends on mere thoughts of the past and the future.

So this feeling that something's wrong,

It often step birth for a lot of us,

Then turns into inevitably something's wrong with me,

Right?

Which inevitably then leads to,

And I need to fix it.

It's kind of sad.

It all started from just like life is unsatisfactory,

First noble truth.

And then we end up with this crazy hall of mirrors of trying to fix something where there's nothing really wrong,

But we've decided something's wrong with me and we need to fix it.

It's a crazy scheme.

And then,

You know,

The minute we decide something's wrong with me,

We need to fix it.

It's like off to the races.

And you know,

Our life force energy,

Every waking moment starts to get behind,

What can I do to fix it?

How do I dial down the pain?

How do I dial down the crazy,

Right?

How do I dial down the suffering?

And I just,

And I made a list of all the things.

Like I had my first suicidal thought at age five to get some relief.

I started compulsive eating at age six to get relief.

I started physically cutting at age nine.

I had a love addiction to boys at age 10.

I had anorexia and bulimia at age 12 to 24.

I had a sex addiction at age 16,

Alcohol addiction at age 20,

Exercise bulimia 20 to 50,

Therapy and meditation addiction 24 at present.

You know,

Those are,

The last is a positive addiction,

But it's still this fixing the cycle of pain that really was just the first noble truth.

All thanks to cure the fact that life felt wrong.

Really my,

One of my first teachers,

Ah Chansmador,

He just said,

If I had just stopped at noticing and he says,

There is suffering,

There is suffering.

You don't need to say anything more other than that.

There is suffering.

But you know,

Here's this funny journey with all these things I just listed.

One hill after another,

After another,

After another.

I've been mountain climbing for many years.

And you know,

Then we have this fourth noble truth of we keep going and we keep going even when it's utter darkness.

And there's a really nice poem about this from a Dharma practitioner named Alan Bass.

It's called The Thing Is.

The thing is to love life,

To love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

Your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you,

It's tropical heat thickening the air heavy as water,

More fit for gills than lungs.

When grief waits,

You like your own flesh,

Only more of it an obesity of grief.

You think,

How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face between your palms,

A plain face,

No charming smile,

No violet eyes.

And you say,

Yes,

I will take you.

I will love you again.

This is our journey.

I will love you again and again and again.

And we keep going.

And we don't do this alone.

As many of you have realized,

We've got therapists,

Friends,

Our fourth grade teacher,

An uncle,

An uncle who didn't molest us,

Dogs,

Cats,

Horses,

The sky,

A lake,

A mountain stream,

A friend,

A Dharma teacher.

I had a body worker,

As I mentioned the first night,

Who just kept telling me every week,

Are you beating yourself with an inch of your life again?

Stop.

She'd scream at me,

Stop.

And then,

You know,

One day months and months later,

I was beating myself within a yard of my life and then within a mile of my life.

And then one week,

I'd forget to beat myself with an inch of my life.

And it was all because she cared enough to yell at me about this.

So really,

We heal as a collective.

That's the beauty of this journey.

So there's all this suffering to fix what wasn't really anything wrong.

And the beauty is,

The beauty of the Dharma is eventually despite ourselves,

Life will start to reveal the truth to you.

Like I talked earlier about the dukkha being a wheel that's off center that will eventually reveal itself.

Eventually what's wrong?

When we're thinking in wrong view,

We have an illusion,

It starts to break down.

And reality starts to speak to us.

So the first time reality spoke,

And it pushes the untruth out.

So I was on a three month retreat,

Might have been my second,

Third,

I don't remember,

It was December,

It was winter.

It was really cold and I went outside one early morning,

6.

30,

And the sun was just coming up.

And I'd had this just battering of self-hatred,

Like I always did on retreat,

Just over and over,

You're a piece of crap,

You don't deserve to live.

What right do you have to be here?

Just over and over again,

That treadmill of self-hatred.

And all of a sudden I looked up and the morning sun was coming up and there were these birds just sitting on a wire and they were all puffed up because it was cold and they were just chirping away.

And all of a sudden I went,

Those birds have a right to be here just because they are.

And then I thought,

That's true of me.

Why not?

And all of a sudden for the first time it hit me,

I have a right to be here because why?

Because I'm here.

It was like the dumbest thing,

But it was like,

Oh yeah,

I'll be darned.

I have a right to be here because that's reality.

And the birds don't question it,

So I don't need to question it.

So the unworthiness piece just kind of dropped off.

I realized that reality was fine with me being here,

It was only my mind that was arguing with it.

And then what happens when reality starts to show us these things is our systems start to relax.

So that big chunk of untrue dropped away,

My system started to relax more.

Okay,

I have a right to be here.

The Buddha did this.

He touched the earth when he was being hit by the armies of Mars,

Whether it's self-hatred thoughts or dancing women and demon heads,

Doesn't really matter.

He just touched the earth and he said,

Do I have a right to be here?

And she said,

Yes.

And then he woke up.

So it was the same process.

Mine was depression,

His was something else.

So then the second reality that spoke,

We have this,

I don't have a right to be here,

Something's wrong.

Then we have that I have to fix something,

Right?

So the second reality that was spoken,

It wasn't very glorious,

Was I just exhausted myself from trying to fix this problem of depression that I never really had.

And it's funny,

My teacher,

Ajahn Chanti,

He had a similar struggle,

But not with depression.

He had a little meditation hut in his parents' backyard and he gets so frustrated with not getting away from sitting,

He banged his head against the wall.

And there was actually a hole in the wall and when his parents took down the meditation hut after he woke up,

They kept a little square wall where he had banged a hole in the wall with hitting his head because he was so frustrated.

And it's just that sense of you just fail over and over again.

You know,

I tried all these things to fix the depression and they didn't work and meditation therapy just banging away 24 years.

And finally what happened was I just gave up.

I was given up,

I should say.

I didn't give up,

I was given up.

And it was just at that moment,

Again,

It was almost like the grids,

There was this moment where I said,

You know what,

I'm willing to have this depression and anxiety come and go the rest of my life,

Whatever.

It was just a total like fine.

And it wasn't like I'm trying to accept it so it would go away.

You guys know that.

It was just like,

If I'm willing,

I'm totally willing.

It's not a strategy anymore.

It just,

Bring it on.

Bring it on.

And at that moment,

It was like this hall of mirrors of hating,

Mind hating itself,

Which is a total crazy game.

The mind that looks at it and says,

Well,

You should get rid of the depression.

Well,

It's the same mind telling itself.

This hall of mirrors of mine.

And that being surrendered,

Giving up,

That was a precursor to what happened maybe months later which was,

I was just on a silent retreat.

It wasn't even much of a silent retreat.

I was kind of laying in bed most of the time and hanging out looking at the woods.

I just saw that there was really no depression.

The depression revealed its empty nature and something happened where the depression just did a 180 and I just saw there was nothing there.

And then after seeing there was nothing there,

It was like a caboose and the train car just left the train unhooked.

And that was the end of ever identifying with the depression.

It's been 17 years.

And you know,

The depression I saw was like a constellation,

Like the five aggregates of self.

You know,

I can still have low energy,

I can still have negative thinking,

I can still have sadness,

I can still maybe have the bio,

The body chemistry in my body,

But they don't get traction because I saw there's nothing there and it's like realizing there's no Santa Claus.

You don't go back.

I mean,

It's kind of like,

You kind of go like,

Oh yeah,

I can see how people really identify with this.

But it's no longer something I can grab onto.

I'm just sharing this because this is my experience and hopefully it's helpful to one of you.

It's like the Big Dipper,

You know,

There's all these stars up there in the constellation of depression.

There's no Big Dipper there.

But we certainly look up at the sky and it's the first thing we see.

And we go,

Look,

The Big Dipper.

There's nothing there.

And the really cool thing was in that moment when the depression just undid itself by itself,

Not because I was doing anything.

And it was sort of an embarrassing,

Well I'll be darned moment.

Like what have I been doing all these years?

There's always a slight moment of embarrassment with deep insights.

Like you kind of scratch your head like,

What happened here?

And this voice said to me at that moment,

It said,

You know what?

Your idea of self is going to go the same way.

Same thing's going to happen with this selfing thing you do.

And then that was it.

I didn't hear anything after that.

I was like,

Hmm,

Okay,

Bring it on.

And since then,

The last 10 years really,

The self,

The will has been revealing its empty nature as well.

And I'm not doing much.

I just keep showing up and practicing and being available,

Listening.

And the self is like crumbling around me.

Sometimes it's kind of horrifying,

But other times it's really great.

So free.

It's like the self keeps getting pulled away in chunks.

And I was joking with some people the other day,

One of my friends,

She had one of these blankies that you carry around as a kid and her mom didn't want her to have the blankie.

So her mom started cutting it in smaller and smaller pieces until my friend just had this little piece left that she was carrying around.

And I feel like life's doing that to myself and her.

It used to be like I had a big blanket wrapped around me and now I've just got this little piece that I'm carrying around.

And part of what happens with this is that the division between inner and outer is just disintegrating.

This idea of not two,

Not two,

Not two things that the Zen folks talk about,

That's coming alive.

The gateless gate is coming alive.

The other day I had a really clear waking vision of almost like this empty doorway in infinity and my body,

Mind,

Was the empty doorway and just life was just coming in and out.

This empty doorway and I'm like,

Wow,

That's it.

That's about it.

And this empty doorway that life is just moving in and out of like the tides now.

If you want this,

It's going to be available to you.

This is not something special happening to me.

It's where this depression anxiety path leads to eradication of all identification and all clinging and all self.

And it's almost like in some strange way the movie of me is kind of undoing itself and going in reverse.

And I'm just becoming this thing before all the stories,

Which is like we talked about earlier,

The life,

Not my life,

But Kayola,

The life,

The life.

And the life is not depressed or anxious.

It's not good,

Bad.

It's not wonderful.

It's not horrible.

It's just the life happening through this doorway of me.

And even the idea of things happening in time is starting to really get mixed up as well.

That's an interesting one.

And what's kind of the practice now is,

You know,

It used to be a lot of energy was around manipulating my life situation,

My life situation.

And now that creates rope burns on my hands.

Like every time I try to hold on to anything,

It's like you're getting your hands are getting burned because you're anywhere you're clinging the second noble truth.

It just creates instant pain.

And the precepts just naturally happen because the minute you break them,

You just feel instant pain.

Yeah,

Some of you are nodding,

You know.

And the last thing I'll mention about all of this falling away,

And it starts with depression anxiety and works towards the division between yourself and others and the idea of self at all is this really deep quiet starts to take over.

And it's not an I've got it,

I've lost it kind of quiet game.

Like early on in retreats,

You get this deep quiet and then you'd be like,

Damn,

It's gone.

You know,

A week or two later,

Or you get it and you'd be constantly checking over your shoulder like trying to maintain how to keep that quiet.

Oh,

It's wearing away and darn,

I gotta go on another retreat.

But this kind of quiet that's just constantly online,

It's just happening.

And I could speculate as to why,

But it doesn't matter.

I feel the same quiet in here as I do in Sea-Tac Airport and the security checkpoint one.

Because it's not about maintaining it or creating it.

It's in the body.

It's as the Buddha said,

Unshakable.

And he has a really nice saying,

He said,

Come into this empty house your heart and know the way beyond the world.

So our work in this practice is to find this unshakable way beyond the world in our heart.

And our gut in Hawaii,

They talk about way down here they call it the nau.

It's this beautiful empty space of creation.

And in the end,

This quiet becomes something that can hold all circumstances and all opposites.

And this quiet that you are becomes the resolution of all things.

It becomes the redeeming presence of love in the world.

Just you being quiet.

Adyashanti says it quite well,

He says the middle way,

The middle way is not compromise or mediocrity.

The middle way is to embody the immensity of the opposites.

So this quiet can embody the immensity of the opposites.

And you all have this right now.

Just all the untruths maybe that are layered over it get freed,

Get liberated by themselves slowly,

Quickly.

And then you just get to be you,

Which is this unshakable quiet.

So I'd like to close with a poem by a woman in our sangha,

Greater sangha,

That was a fellow traveler in depression and she too overcame depression.

It's called Dear Human.

Dear human,

You've got it all wrong.

You didn't come here to master unconditional love.

That's where you came from and where you'll return.

You came here to learn personal love,

Universal love,

Messy love,

Sweaty love,

Crazy love,

Broken love,

Whole love,

Infused with the affinity,

Lived through the grace of stumbling,

Demonstrated through the beauty of messing up,

Often.

You didn't come here to be perfect,

You already are.

You came here to be gloriously human,

Flawed and fabulous,

And then to rise again and again into remembering.

But unconditional love,

Stop telling yourself that story.

Love and truth doesn't need any other adjectives.

It doesn't require modifiers,

It doesn't require the condition of perfection.

It only asks that you show up and do your best,

That you stay present and feel fully,

That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as you.

It's enough,

It's plenty.

Play and work and live and die as you.

That's enough,

That's plenty.

So let's set them in.

Reviews

I needed this talk. Flawed and fabulous was all I needed to hear. Thank you 🙏

It’s 4:20 am and my mind wasn’t letting go of suffering . So I grabbed insite timer on my phone. I searched ‘dysthymia’ and depression came up . I’ve studied the four Nobel truths and a Dharma teacher Phillip Moffit from Spirit Rock changed my life enough to keep going. So I chose your talk. I know your words are true. All the other teachers on Insite timer are true too but they all sound the same. I get it now. I’m going to close by saying you’ve helped me tonight. And I’ll keep climbing the next ridge and the next ridge. Tonight was just another episode of dysthymia . F You dysthymia. Love is the answer. Love Life. Goodnight and Thankyou.

Very soothing, authentic perspectives, thank you for sharing these with us!

🙏

Thank you for sharing, I feel less alone in my journey🙏🤍

Yes, your experience is helpful, thank you for sharing and thank you for your presence in this world. Namaste 🙏🏼✨