Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) as a clinical case of depression

In this article, I want to reconstruct the life and experience of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, from the perspective of developing depression, overcoming it and formalizing the results of my own experience as a systematic teaching. I will consider the main aspects of the teachings of Buddhism in relation to getting rid of depression, chronic anxiety, fear, doubt, self-doubt.

I don’t mean to imply that Buddhism is limited to these aspects. It’s just that here I decided to limit myself to only them, answering exclusively the question: “How can the personal experience of Gautama Buddha and the conclusions from this experience help each of us cope with depression and anxiety?”

Since a lot of the articles on my site are about depression while others are about meditation, I think this article fits that format perfectly. And due to the fact that I myself had the experience of depression and the experience of getting rid of it with the help of meditation, this topic is doubly interesting to me.

Many, especially in the West, believe that Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion. In fact, it is both a philosophy and a religion. Depending on the tradition, different proportions of both can be observed. Although the philosophical, non-theistic, derived from direct experience aspect of the Buddhist tradition occupies a very important place there. I will devote this article mainly to this aspect, leaving out things that are either not inferred or are derived from experience with great difficulty, for example, the pantheon of various deities, dimensions of reality (worlds of hungry ghosts, asuras), etc. The concepts of karma and reincarnation could also be left out, since they are also religious, probably “non-empirical” (at least for most of us) concepts. But here I will talk about them. Because they, in my opinion, can have a very practical content.

It is important to understand that I am leaving a lot of things outside the brackets of this article, trying to reflect only a separate aspect of the Buddha’s teaching in it. Everything I write here is my opinion and my free interpretation.

I am not a Buddhist, nor do I belong to any other religion, but nevertheless, the story and experience of Siddhartha Buddha is very inspiring, motivating and curious for me. And I would like to do a little research on them here. Let’s start with anamnesis, that is, with a biography.

Anamnesis

“Feast like a sultan I do
On treasures and flesh, never few.”

Tool – Jambi

Of course, Shakyamuni Buddha is a legendary person. His biography, as, perhaps, the biography of any major religious figure, is overgrown with hyperbole and symbols. And I will try to take from this biography what is most likely to correspond to the objectives of this article. Something that, with a minimum degree of certainty, can be called facts “real”, and not mythologized.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born into a family of kshatriyas, the Indian class of warriors and rulers. The place of his birth is the territory of modern Nepal. According to one of the legends, his father, the head of the Shakyan state, heard a prophecy that his son would become either an outstanding ruler or a great saint. The father, wishing to save his son from the fate of becoming a religious figure, began to surround the offspring with innumerable luxury, wealth and beauty, protecting him from the kind of pain and suffering that were present in abundance both in ancient India and in modern.

As Timati sings: “… a golden child, used to living in luxury from the cradle.” These words can easily be attributed to the early period of the life of Prince Siddhartha.

He had everything a young man could dream of. Parents gave him three beautiful palaces, Siddhartha was surrounded by a carefree and idle life, full of exquisite pleasures. And the future also seemed cloudless: a marriage to a girl of a noble family (which happened when the prince turned 16), an immense legacy and wealth, power and glory. The young man knew neither grief nor need. There was no shortage of exquisite dishes, beautiful ornaments and sweet music, which could delight the eye and delight the ear. And the “caring” father carefully protected the young man from studying religion and spirituality, prophesying him the glorious fate of the ruler.

But not only wealth and luxury accompanied the life of the young offspring of the Shakya clan. Gautama was also very talented and showed unprecedented abilities in sports, competitions, and education. He also showed an amazing talent for meditation concentration, plunging into meditation without knowing anything about it due to his lack of spiritual education.

Four characters

But something did not suit Siddhartha even in his luxurious life. Curiosity, and perhaps the desire to sort out his own dissatisfaction, prompted the prince to secretly leave the castle and see at least with one eye what is happening outside of it. There he saw four things that made an indelible impression on him. The first three were: an old man, a sick man, and a decaying corpse. These things made the young man realize that old age, illness, death are the reality of life and you cannot hide from them in the bosom of luxury and hedonism.

But what determined the subsequent decision to leave the castle and devote his life to spiritual quest, perhaps, was the impression of the fourth “sign” that Siddhartha saw outside the walls of his home.

What or who was this fourth thing? Before talking about this, you can imagine a little what kind of contention was going on in the soul of the young kshatriya. He had wealth, a family, a high social status, bright prospects … But there was nothing? There was no happiness, satisfaction and harmony in the soul.

All things, the possession of which, according to public ideas, should be sources of unprecedented happiness and inner comfort, did not bring any joy, seemed meaningless. It is likely that Gautama has approached the line that many people approached and will approach both before and after him.

Ephemeral happiness

I often receive comments from the category: “I am young, successful, handsome, I have a wonderful family, good health, but I am absolutely unhappy!”

In such questions one can see some bewilderment, unpleasant surprise and hidden disappointment. “Why don’t those things that should bring happiness bring it?”
Almost everyone a person is told from childhood that material wealth, prestige and influence are very important things. It takes a lot of effort to achieve them, but when you achieve them it will be: “WOW! SUPER! Everyone will be jealous, and you will find a source of inexhaustible happiness.”

This belief is fueled, on the one hand, by the culture in which we grow up. Commercials, films, books show the image of a successful person who has achieved what he wants and what everyone should strive for (a good prestigious job, money, satisfaction of desires). On the other hand, human emotions and expectations also play an important role in shaping this desire. When we buy a new car, we experience joy. Let it be temporary, but we extrapolate it to our entire existence, gaining faith that if we can constantly buy what we want and satisfy all our desires, then we will be happy forever.

And it is precisely this expectation that can give rise to bitter disappointment. A person worked and worked so much, tried to be the first in school and college in order to get the desired benefits, but they cease to give him happiness!

How is this possible? And here arises not only bitterness, but also disappointment due to the collapse of ideals and faith, and the worst thing is the feeling of hopelessness! “If it doesn’t bring happiness, then it doesn’t bring anything.”

(Here you can see a curious feature. Often agnostics and atheists taunt believers, saying that these people live in an illusion, strive for an invisible God whose existence can neither be proved nor disproved, desire an afterlife, although no one returned from “for the halls of death. And they can contrast this with a person who lives a “real” life, strives for material wealth and increasing wealth instead of thinking about a mythical afterlife. But aren’t such people living in an illusion? Are their expectations of an incessant Many secular people are shrouded in more illusions than many believers.)

So, our Siddhartha met with the same hopelessness. He was 29 years old when he experienced symptoms of despondency and depression. But the suffering of his young heart did not result in an incessant hopeless sadness, because he saw that there was a way and salvation. And he saw this path in the “fourth sign”, the holy hermit, who did not have even a millionth of the wealth that the prince owned, but on the other hand, his whole appearance was illuminated by inexhaustible harmony and harmony with the world and with himself.
After that, when Gautama saw this shining face, he decided to leave the castle and go in search of …

You could close this chapter with a beautiful phrase: “And he went in search of himself!” But this is not true. Rather, the future Buddha left his ancestral castle not to find himself, but to on the contrary, to lose his I or to understand what I am not.

Finding a cure

“Prayed like a martyr dusk to dawn.
Begged like a hooker all night long.
Tempted the devil with my song.
And got what I wanted all along.”

Tool – Jambi

Most people in our time, when faced with depression, do not understand that it is time to change themselves and their lifestyle. Instead, they want to live in the old way, only without depression. And the whole industry of psycho-pharmacology is built on this desire. Doctors prescribe pills, taking which people can return to their unloved work, a family in which misunderstanding and discord reigns and drown out their internal conflicts with the action of drugs. Modern psychiatry is not interested in curing people, its task is to return an exemplary member of society to social life.

Psychiatrists are not faced with the problem of human unhappiness. The main trouble for them is this is the negative economic effect of the depression, which, according to official statistics, is quite significant. People do not go to work, or their work productivity and motivation drops due to chronic discouragement.

What would happen if everyone, faced with depression, began to go “in search of themselves” and along the way discovered that happiness does not consist only in continuous, exhausting work and shopping trips on weekends? Perhaps this could have a bad effect on the economy and GDP. We would see fewer products on supermarket shelves. “Terrible prospect”, isn’t it?

That’s why “pills for depression” were invented.

Antidepressants are a lubricant for a broken screw. It can still wear out a little, but then you still have to throw it away.

But at the time of the Buddha, there were no doctors who, with the help of magic potions, would help him continue to enjoy the beautiful dancers in his luxurious castle. Hit or miss. Or you go into the woods to look for the cause of your suffering, etching it out of yourself with blood and sweat, fasting and discipline, reflection and meditation. Or you live in grief and despondency, drink too much or commit suicide.

Siddhartha chose the first path.

At that time in India there were many itinerant teachers, gurus, yogis. They traveled through the hot deserts, impenetrable jungles, cold and inhospitable mountains of the Indian subcontinent, gathering disciples and followers. Prince Gautama joined several such groups at different times, wanting to find a way to dissolve his suffering in his sweat and blood, fasting and discipline, reflection and meditation.

Under the guidance of ascetics, the future Buddha reached unprecedented heights of meditational concentration due to his outstanding abilities. He was engaged in the murder of his flesh, followed severe fasts, exhausting his body so much that once he nearly drowned from weakness while washing in the river.

But he realized that all these cruel methods do not bring him closer to the truth and understanding the causes of suffering, but only suck energy and health out of him.

Get rid of depression

Then he sat down under the spreading branches of the ficus and, having sworn to himself that he would not move until he reached enlightenment, he plunged into meditation.
According to legend, he meditated for 49 days until he woke up, realizing the cause of suffering and a way to overcome them, having gained an understanding of their past lives, the law of karma and reincarnation.

It also meant personal recovery, complete deliverance from suffering and the acquisition of enduring happiness and inner harmony, independent of external circumstances.
In other words, Siddhartha received not only wisdom, “insight” into the nature of things, but also found happiness , which he aspired to. However, wisdom and knowledge are inextricably linked with happiness, and in some respects are one with it. Whereas suffering is the result of the deepest delusion.

Under the spreading branches of the ficus, the 35-year-old man Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, which means “awakened”.

First psychotherapist

After gaining understanding and wisdom, the Buddha doubted whether it was worth sharing them with others. People are shrouded in passions, illusions, they only care about fame, sex and money. How can they grasp such a profound and sometimes counter-intuitive truth?

Thus reasoned Siddhartha, but then changed his mind, deciding that some people would still follow him and be saved from the suffering of this life. And he became, according to one of my readers, the first psychotherapist. A man who helped people get rid of their persistent depression, doubts and insecurities, anxiety and fears.

The Buddha traveled around India and attracted students to him, attracted by a teaching in which there is no class inequality, the authority of the Brahmins and their monopoly on spiritual knowledge is not proclaimed, and clear instructions are given for finding happiness and harmony. Everyone, according to the Buddha, could reach his state, approaching perfection and truth.

In his approach to people, the enlightened Siddhartha was distinguished by unprecedented psychological flexibility. He did not attach himself to aspects of his own teaching and to religious dogma, but told people what they needed to hear in order to become happier and free from suffering. Therefore, his words, spoken to different people, may contradict each other. There is no truth in the teaching, it is only a finger pointing to the moon, but the moon itself is high in the sky, and not in the mouth of a person, even if he is enlightened!

Also, there is no place in the teaching for sedition, blasphemy and sacrilege. The perversion of the truths that the Buddha preached will be no more sacrilegious than the phrase: “alcoholism leads to happiness.” If a person follows this instruction, then he will simply fall into dependence and suffer, but there is no blasphemy here. Also, the teachings of the Buddha were in the nature of instructions for overcoming suffering, and if a person did not want to follow them, then there was his sacred right.

Buddha preached his teaching for 45 years until he died a peaceful death at the age of 80, surrounded by his disciples.

Subsequently, one of the world’s religions, which is most widespread in Asian countries, grew out of his sermons. On the territory of Russia, Buddhism is the religion of the regions of Tuva and Buryatia. In his native India, where the Buddha was born and preached, Buddhism did not become a popular religion, yielding not only to Hinduism, but also to Islam, Christianity, and Sikhism. Buddhists make up only 0.8% of the total population of this country. Although there are beautiful places in the Himalayas where this religion still lives. While in one of them, I am writing this article.

Discoveries of the Buddha

So what did the Buddha discover while meditating? What is the cause of suffering and how to get rid of it? If this discovery was so important and revolutionary, then why are so many still suffering?

The last question is not difficult to answer. I’ll start with the first part of it, with the “discovery” itself. Alan Wallace in his book Minding Closely writes that during the time of the historical Buddha, many different yogis and teachers wandered around India. Many of them had their followers and their teachings. They could also have phenomenal abilities of meditational concentration: to introduce themselves into deep meditation and stay in it for a long time without food or drink. The fact that the Buddha meditated for 49 days was not a great achievement by the standards of that time.

What set him apart from other teachers was that he claimed that sitting in the lotus position under a tree, maintaining an immobile concentration throughout the days and nights, is not even half the battle! It’s just a necessary stepping stone to something more. With the help of still meditation, we develop the important skill of detached concentration in order to penetrate the essence of things, to know suffering and overcome it!

If we start this without the appropriate skill, then our attempts will be like a blind surgeon with shaky hands trying to perform a complex operation!

I’ll stop here for now, but it’s an important takeaway that can be applied to dealing with depression or anxiety. To get rid of this, it is not enough just to sit and meditate! It is necessary to apply the skills of concentration and awareness in order to see what is behind these ailments and remove their cause!

So why are people still suffering?

The Buddha made a major discovery about the cause of suffering. Yes, he did not use precise measuring instruments, he simply observed the work of his own consciousness and drew conclusions. But still, personally, I consider the product of its focus to be a discovery no less in scope than the discovery of the atom or gravity. And the latest science of human consciousness has only recently begun to come to the conclusions of this discovery. So why does everyone use what Copernicus and Newton discovered in practice? Even without Einstein’s theory of relativity, the construction of a satellite navigation system is not complete. And the discoveries of the Buddha have not yet become well-known, generally accepted.

It’s not difficult to answer this question.

Who reading this article hears the story of Gautama for the first time? I think the majority. Some people, if they have any ideas about the teachings of the Buddha, then they belong to some stereotypes from the category: “Buddhism teaches you to give up everything and go to the mountains and meditate”, “Buddhists destroy their feelings”, “Buddhists meditate into the void, immersing themselves in nothingness, their ideal is death.

Another reason why this happens is that it is indeed the experience of the Buddha expressed in the teachings (we must understand that Buddhism is less a set of dogmas and more an expression of the experience of a particular person – a “religion of pure experience” according to the classification religious scholar E. A. Torchinov) is counter-intuitive and somewhat paradoxical. Instead of looking for new ways to please his feelings and find other ways to escape from displeasure, Siddhartha met with his suffering, began to study, to know it!

Admit it, this is the least that a person who suffers, in particular, is depressed, wants to do. He wants the pain to go away as soon as possible, instead of observing and studying both it and what it is made of. And this, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, lies one of the causes of human suffering.

And the third and most important reason for the unpopularity of the Buddha’s methods lies in the fact that they involve regular and persistent practice. It is not enough just to accept some dogmas on faith, to believe in some divine concept, fully relying on sacred texts. Attaining even a fraction of Buddhahood requires practice, practice, and more practice, backed up by independent exploration of one’s own mind, the valuable product of which can only be obtained from independent experience, and not from reading sacred texts.

Teaching about overcoming suffering

To consider the Buddha’s teachings as a system for overcoming suffering in general and depression in particular would not be such a big exaggeration. The Buddha said: “I taught one thing and one thing only, and that was suffering and overcoming suffering.”

During his 49-day meditation, the Buddha penetrated his mind into the essence of suffering and realized how to overcome it. Many people, especially people from the West, having heard this story, may think that Siddhartha, having fallen into a deep trance under a tree, experienced the power of some divine revelation, comprehended some higher, transcendent truth, completely transcendent to this mortal existence.

But that’s not entirely true. Due to the fact that Gautama had exceptional concentration skills since childhood, having a clear talent for meditation, in addition, he greatly strengthened these skills when he studied with yogis and saints, he could bring himself into a state of such pure, clear, emotion-free and addiction-free perception that with the help of him, had the ability to comprehend the true nature of things. No, no one seems to say that he mentally looked into other galaxies or saw the structure of the atom. His focus was his own mind, his own inner reality, and his own suffering.

And this again can cause bewilderment and misunderstanding in a Western person. We are used to the fact that the subject of scientific research is mainly the world around us: atoms, electrons, electromagnetic interaction, planets, gravity, which is the so-called “objective reality”.

Ah, what happens inside our consciousness is not the same “real” for science. Thoughts, emotions, fears, doubts are all products of “subjective reality” or simply the result of the interaction of physical forces that are behind them. I am talking, for example, about electrical impulses within a neural network, which, according to modern science, are the physical substratum of our thoughts, more worthy of research than thoughts themselves.

Studying human consciousness, science very often studies it as if “from the outside”, measuring the increase or decrease in activity in certain areas of the human brain, the release of hormones and neurotransmitters. The result of this approach in psychiatry was the use of antidepressants, the action of which is aimed at changing the biochemistry of the brain, and not at working with specific phenomena of consciousness (experiences, thoughts, emotions, resentment, complexes).

The effectiveness of this approach, I think, is not very high, especially when antidepressants are used as the only type of “treatment” without the use of therapy. I can say that modern science knows very little about the human mind and how to make that mind a happy mind. Confirmation of this, again, may be the number of antidepressants prescribed to people. We do not know what to do with human mental suffering, so let’s drown it out, suppress it and disguise it for the time being, just as we clean the dirt accumulated in the apartment under the sofa.

We can see the reflection of all these trends in the culture that surrounds us. What we are not taught at school and at the institute, what sciences we just do not study! But we are not taught the most important thing: how to get rid of what we suffer because of anger, doubt and envy? How to clear your mind of addictions and momentary emotions in order to see reality as it is? How to find calmness, concentration and clarity in order to sort out your inner problems, as Siddhartha did and become a happy person?

Western science has long begun to explore the outside world. Physics was formed many years ago, while the science of man, psychology, appeared relatively recently.

Why is it so important to explore your own mind?

This should be done not only in order to overcome one’s own suffering. But also because our mind is all we have. It is the only mediator between us and external reality. We cannot perceive it in any other way than through our mind. And Western researchers devoted themselves mainly to the study of what is perceived, and not what perceives and determines the perception itself. Having studied the features of our own mind, we will also better understand the surrounding reality, because it contains the imprint of our own consciousness, as an organ of perception inseparable from the process of cognition.

For the Buddha, the phenomena of his mind, his inner reality, his suffering were as real as the tree under which he sat. Instead of examining his mind from the outside, he looked inward with his refined perception, purified in meditative concentration. It was not some kind of revelation from above or a shamanistic intoxication of trance. On the contrary, his vision of the problem was extremely clear, and his mind was extremely sober. This is the degree of sobriety, which is achieved only by persistent and long practices. He saw what kind of problem existed inside him, why it appears, whether it can be solved and how to do it.

And this experience was not some kind of abstract and deeply transcendent existing reality. Everyone can get it. Anyone can reach Buddhahood and check if Siddhartha was right in his conclusions or not. In his sermons, the former prince insisted that people should not take his words for the truth in blind faith. So that they show a healthy doubt in his words and seek to independently verify their truth in practice. If they are false, then the Buddha’s discoveries simply will not be revealed to people in the space of their own experience and will not lead to deliverance from suffering. And if they are true, then they will work and help solve the problem at hand, the problem of human suffering.

The Buddha did not deny the need for faith. Any attempt to explore the reality both around us and within us requires a certain amount of personal conviction in the result, namely faith. The invention of the microscope was preceded by the belief that, at the micro level, reality might look different than what our eye shows us, which sees objects whole and solid without voids inside.

The Buddha looked into the space of his mind and told people what he found there. But he suggested that everyone arm themselves with their own microscope and see what is going on there, while maintaining a minimal amount of faith in order to maintain their research interest and not go astray. Relying on someone else’s, ready-made experience, but not following it blindly, get your own experience! That which is true, that is. What is false is not! That’s the whole science!

What kind of discoveries did the Buddha make? How can they help us get rid of depression? Read about it in the next part of the article.

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