Suicide is a big problem among troops returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Can Vipassana help those who have experienced the horrors of war come to terms with their experience?
Would it be too risky without a teacher's guidance?
Okay, there's two issues that are interesting to me here.
The first one is the question of whether meditation can be risky.
meditation can in certain instances trigger, and by meditation throughout this I'm going to be talking only about the meditation I teach, okay?
So we're not, we have to be clear that what I say doesn't apply to all meditations for sure.
Some meditations are extremely dangerous and from my point of view and but specifically speaking about the meditation teaching that I practice, it is
admitted that it can can trigger certain dangerous mind states that are already there that are that are lying dormant inside but far and away the most like how do I say this in in the vast majority of cases like 99% of the time
meditation won't be dangerous at all.
This meditation will only serve to help any condition across the board.
So the question of danger almost never comes up in this meditation tradition.
If it's a taught correctly, b practiced correctly.
and see maybe understood correctly which but understanding of course informs here let's just say if it's understood by the meditator correctly whether that comes from from yourself or it comes from a teacher or from books or whatever so
The question of whether one can do it without a teacher is a little bit more interesting because obviously the most likely place to gain confidence and understanding in the practice is from a teacher.
So if you don't have a teacher, where are you going to get this understanding?
How do you make sure that your meditation is proper?
I would still say the biggest point to be made here in this regard is that this meditation is incredibly easy to understand.
There isn't much room for error.
Basically what I'm trying to say is it's not
It's not something you should worry about.
Risk.
Maybe I shouldn't practice meditation because it's too risky.
I think it's an invalid or it's an improper thing to suggest or to think.
Meditation is innocuous.
It's more or less harmless.
It's not something that's going to hurt you.
The worst thing that happens in this tradition is people get bored.
turned off, afraid of the meditation and stop meditating.
That's far more common than any sort of risk because you're not creating anything in this meditation.
You're just looking at what's there.
And if there's horrible, horrible things there, you just don't want to look at them.
It doesn't happen that you get excited about looking at them.
If there's no harmful things there, then it's easy and the meditation proceeds smoothly.
But the question of whether it's risky is not one that I would be interested in entertaining.
Now, for people who have PTSD, this is the second interesting aspect of this question, is what is PTSD?
And what happens when a person who has PTSD practices meditation?
And I...
think we have to broadly separate this into two categories of people those people who have experienced traumatic events passively and those people who have been active participants in creating traumatic experiences and
Being specific, those people who have done horrible things themselves versus those people who have just experienced horrible things.
From a Buddhist point of view, there's a big difference.
Our claim is that it matters quite...
strongly whether you've done bad things or whether you've just had them happen to you.
Now it may not seem like that.
At first blush it appears to be the same thing.
You are traumatized either way.
So that is how it feels, how it appears on the outside.
what you'll find is that's really only the shell of the problem.
That's fine.
In the beginning, it's all going to look the same.
Someone who's experienced trauma, whether they were the one causing it or whether they were the victim or the perpetrator, there's little difference on the surface.
But once you dig in deep, and once the person begins to get the hang of the meditation,
That's where the two paths veer apart to a great extreme.
A person who has experienced great trauma, no matter how great, is quite capable of progressing in the meditation of healing and finding themselves and finding balance and becoming centered.
A person who has done horrible things is far less likely to find that sort of balance and center.
They have a corruption inside.
They've been hurt deeply by their own actions.
The guilt that a person who's actually done bad deeds feels
is far more real, visceral, intense than a victim who feels guilty or someone who feels guilty for whatever other reason.
I had a woman who was raped by her father when she was a child and she came to me when she was 40
And she looked like a ghost.
And I've told this story before, but she was one of my greatest success stories.
And I didn't do anything.
I had no idea what had happened to her.
I just knew that she came in, she looked like a ghost, and she had something she wanted to get off her chest.
I mean, I guess she'd gone to therapists, and the idea was to always tell.
And they would always ask what happened.
I didn't ask.
I wasn't interested.
I kept her in the present moment.
And when she was crying, I said, just be mindful of crying.
It doesn't really matter.
why you're crying be aware of the sadness be aware of what's happening now
Anyway, long story short, after a couple of weeks, she looked like a different person.
She left, she was smiling and totally relieved.
She came back and she had color in her face.
She looked human again.
It was really, she looked like a ghost when she first, she didn't look human when she first came in.
And when she left, she looked alive.
A person who has committed bad deeds, there are cases where a person can make a mistake and realize their mistake.
But a person who has systematically and intentionally engaged in warfare, killing other people,
There's something deeper there that you won't see at first.
It's not readily apparent.
The person might seem functional in society, but there is something that once that outer layer is peeled off, you'll see the poison, you can see the corruption in their mind.
And that's much more difficult.
It can be healed, of course.
But it's much more difficult.
Now, these people are the ones for whom it is dangerous no matter what.
And even with a teacher, the teacher has to be careful because these people are
susceptible to exploding, wreaking havoc on the meditation, on meditators in the meditation center, and attacking the meditation teacher.
I mean, there are stories of this, where a meditator has, some commit suicide, there are
These are the problems.
So I don't have a quick solution for that one.
And I think we have to separate the two out.
And the best thing that comes from that, I think, is a cautionary warning to people, anybody thinking of going into the army, anybody thinking of going into the armed forces of any type.
you can't really go back.
There's a long, long road to get back to the state where you, before you had done the terrible things that are done in war or any profession where killing is involved.
Even police work, becoming a police officer is, well, if you ever have to kill, it's hard to go back.
So people who have PTSD, who are traumatized, these sorts of people I think we should focus on.
Let's make two points here.
The first point is those who have done, in regards to PTSD for those who have done bad deeds, we have a very difficult and long road.
And these people, if they're committed, then go for it.
But they have to be careful themselves because their minds are going to be twisted and they'll be inclined to react
improperly in the same for the same reasons that they reacted improperly before by killing by hurting by by harming others and and as a cautionary tale for those thinking to do it who think that killing is just an act and it's just one more it's just one moment and you can decide any time oh I'm not gonna kill anymore it doesn't really work that way what's done is done the life can never be given back
after it's taken and the other point is in regards to those who have PTSD from seeing death seeing horrible things maybe even experiencing trauma such as rape or torture starvation whatever in any kind of horrible thing that the side effects of war
For these people, we have much more hope.
Just one anecdote I want to say before I forget in regards to the first group.
I spent some time with a man who was in war when I was in California.
He was married to a Thai woman, so he drove us around a little bit.
And he was probably the most horrible person I've ever had the pleasure of spending, of being in close quarters with.
He said that people asked him what he missed most about being a soldier and he said being able to kill people.
I think he meant it because his attitude to things was
was horrible.
The jokes he told were racist and really cruel and awful.
And yet he would be sitting there.
I think he was on heavy medication, if I recall correctly, for PTSD, I guess.
But he was a sergeant.
Anyway, so that's what I think of in regards to this first group of people who have actually done bad things.
It's quite difficult to ever hope to get to them.
Something that we should think about.
The second group, those who have experienced the trauma, I don't see much problem in letting them meditate on their own.
I would think if they have good theory and basic meditation practices, absolutely I would go for it.
I would encourage them to pick up a book, start meditating, preferably in the tradition that I teach.
Pick up my book.
It's the one that I plug, it's the one that I encourage, but absolutely.
In this meditation tradition I can pretty much guarantee that, not 100%, but 99% guarantee that nothing bad is going to happen and you'll only start to understand your problems better
In fact, the more you learn, the more you read, the more you study, the more you'll be able to deal with fear, anxiety, stress, paranoia, etc.
And be able to overcome all sorts of stress.
I mean, if this woman who was raped by her father can do it, it's hard to find something worse than that.