Journal of Depression and Anxiety
Open Access
ISSN: 2167-1044
ISSN: 2167-1044
Sumedh Thero
Sumedh Bhoomi Buddha Vihar, India
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Depress Anxiety
People suffer from depression, discouragement, hatred, resentment, fear and anger. And those feelings give birth to more and more violence. Road rage leads to traffic injuries and deaths. Young people either shoot at peers and teachers or commit suicide. Spouses kill spouses or parents kill children or vice versa. Thus, our generation has chosen self-motivated war, invasion, and occupation as the principle weapon for creating safety and peace in the world and for establishing democracy. Of course, not everyone is functioning in negativity, but the energy of it surrounds us. We are swimming in the ocean with negativity even if we haven�t swallowed it. Those of us walking spiritual paths have a tremendous challenge if we are to counterbalance this negativity. Firstly, we have to overcome any negativity within. Then we can help to transmute the energies permeating the group psyche. How can we overcome destructive emotions (Narrated by Daniel Goleman, New York: Bantam Dell, 2003). It reports on a scientific dialogue between the Dalai Lama, Buddhist scholars, and Western psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. The book is very grounding and encouraging. It provides evidence that meditation definitely effects change, physiologically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. For thousands of years spiritual teachers have taught that negative emotions alienate us from other persons and the world around us has advocated meditation as a way to transform emotions and Buddhists have a 2,606-year history of investigating the workings of the mind and learning how to overcome our tendencies towards destructive emotions. Now scientific research and advanced technology have proven the effectiveness of these techniques. Western emotions tend to be judged good or bad according to their usefulness in structuring social life. Happiness, sadness, love, friendship, forgiveness, gratitude, regret (or remorse for having done something wrong), guilt and shame contribute to better interpersonal relationships, whereas anger, contempt, indignation and fear tend to break down the social fabric. Consequently, the Westerners in the dialogue were inclined to view the following as destructive states of mind: low self-esteem, overconfidence, harboring negative emotions, jealousy and envy, lack of compassion, and inability to have close interpersonal relations. They viewed constructive states of mind as, self-respect, self-esteem (if deserved), feelings of integrity, compassion, benevolence, generosity, seeing the truth, the good, and the right, love and friendship. As you can see, nearly all of these emotions, or states of mind, are directly related to interpersonal relations. vensumedh12@gmail.com J