Expert: Alex Wilding - 11/20/2009

Question
Hi Alex

I'm having some real problems at the moment with meditation and, more specifically, Buddhism. I'm 25, female and British but living in Paris. I have been meditating for about a year now (mindfulness of breathing and loving kindness meditation) and have recently started doing Zen meditation.

I've had anxiety problems since I was about 15 and have periods of low mood (I guess mild depression) and some OCD problems too. Great!

I feel like Buddhism has told me that all the things I used to use and the strategies I used to employ to cope with my low moods and so on are not good enough, and that meditation and the Dharma are the only possibilities for finding happiness.

Usually what I would do when feeling low is to distract myself - to have a bath, listen to some classical music, call a friend, watch a film. But I have read in many many texts, books and internet sites that distraction is essentially not an effective thing, and it's better to accept your negative feelings and your low moods and just observe them, and eventually you'll cut to the heart of the problem and it'll go away. Buddhism says the heart of the problem is attachment.

So now what I feel like I ought to do is not distract myself, not take a bath, not do some work, not watch a film, and certainly not strengthen my attachments to other people by calling a friend or my parents. This is what I did six weeks ago during a period of grim depression, and of course it made it worse. I ended up sitting in my room in a pretty awful state for two days.

I then, slowly, came out of that depression and started seeing friends again, enjoying music and so on, but not without a little voice in the back of my head nagging me, saying "you're just distracting yourself. this is not the buddhist way and is therefore not the way to happiness."

Now, the last couple of days, that little voice has got stronger again and I'm feeling depressed, vulnerable, drained, fearful, negative, hopeless, etc.

I'm really not sure what to do. If the little voice in my head (i.e. my instinct, my conscience) can't be trusted, what the heck am I supposed to trust?

I know that distraction doesn't get to the heart of the problem and get rid of it, but I think a lot of Buddhist teachers are either wrong or not careful enough when they say that one shouldn't distract oneself. There is a hell of a lot to be said for distraction, i.e. it keeps me from spending days on end crying, not eating and not sleeping.

I don't want to stop meditating and I don't want to say goodbye to Buddhism. I just want to find a way that doesn't stimulate my anxieties and my obsessions so much and lead me to even more suffering.

Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes

K   (please don't write my full name in your response as I don't want to be google-able! Thanks :-) )

Answer
Hi K,
Don't worry about the name - this site is very careful with privacy, so I don't even know it!
I think your instinct is right when you fear that many teachers are "not careful enough when they say that one shouldn't distract oneself"; that advice is meant for someone happily practicing away in a little cell - that person should get on with the practice rather than thinking about their friends, humming folksongs, polishing up their string of beads, putting their texts in order, making yet another cup of tea...
On the other hand, there is truth in it. Perhaps the way to look at it is this: you seem to have already recognized that distraction is not the ultimate solution; going out more and more, playing music until later and later in the night, watching more and more TV: it can all spin out of control. For some people, of course, this whirlpool leads to even more destructive distractions, like hard drugs, abusive sex and so on.
OK, so far so good, but (and I think you already know this) you have to be reasonable, be kind to yourself. Consider food, as an example. Starvation is not a good response to overeating, is it? In fact I think some people feel that refusal to eat enough can often just be part of the same problem that causes overeating in slightly different circumstances.
So my little bit of advice, for what it is worth, is to build on what you have already seen - distraction is not an ultimate solution, but excessive avoidance of distraction is just the mirror image of the same problem. Perhaps in your circumstances, while meditation practice is good, of course, you might do better with very "gentle" distractions. Long walks in the countryside may not be easy if you are in Paris, but in parks and quiet suburban streets, perhaps. (I have a great fondness myself for walks through the network of back lanes in the urban area where I live, the ones where the garbage bins are put out and cats scurry through gaps in the corrugated iron fence as you approach. But not everywhere has that kind of thing.)
And one last thing - don't worry too much about feeling negative and fearful. Life IS often, genuinely, simply and plainly crap.
I hope that helps a bit.
PS - the system won't tell me your address, so I can only add this PS to reply to your other comment. It was Engineering Science at Christ Church. Yes, very nice place, though not perfect! Where were you? Mail me directly if you like (alex@chagchen.org). I'll try to delete this PS in a day or so if I can.