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Authors: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Fabrizio Didonna
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states, in the West
our ability to influence the external reality has by far surpassed the power
we have over ourselves. Today we are at a point at which illness is seen as
something that invades us and as such must be fought against using external
means that are often, unfortunately, just as invasive.
As Goleman (2003) has clearly pointed out, in the West, medicines have
become the most common solution to dealing with destructive emotions,
that is, those that create significant suffering for ourselves and others. With-
out questioning the fact that pharmaceuticals that alter and stabilize mood
have helped millions of persons, it is possible to point out alternative ways to
control the mind. Differently from modern science, which has concentrated
on developing ingenious chemical compounds to help people overcome the
most intoxicating emotions, Buddhist psychology offers more difficult paths
to recover involving a series of methods aimed at training the mind through
the practice of meditation.
From a Western point of view, mental health is defined by defect as
absence of psychiatric pathologies, that is, in the West normalcy is the aim.
However, in Buddhist psychology, for example, normalcy is only the starting
point for practicing the principles that lead to freedom from suffering and
mental uneasiness.
Tibetan Buddhism has a very refined psychology that has been practiced
for more than 2,000 years as well as a model of well-being that extends our
concept of mental health. Buddhist psychology has developed an elaborate
model of the mind that, as is the case for every complete psychological sys-
tem, describes how perception, motivation, cognition, and emotions work
in detail and analyzes both the causes of human suffering (etiology) and the
ways out of this suffering (therapy). It has developed its own representation
of the mind and how it works as well as its own definition of mental health.
Over the centuries, it has defined a precise map of how changes in the mind
and body have a reciprocal influence on one another and has developed a
series of techniques aimed a voluntarily controlling these changes.
This psychology allows Westerners to have a complementary vision and
perspective with regard to some of the more central questions of modern
psychology: the possibility to cultivate mental health, the nature of the mind,
the limits of the growth potential of human beings, and the tools and meth-
ods needed to enact changes on the psyche.
Negative and Positive Mental Factors
In the Buddhist model of the mind and mental health, the measurement used
is a single moment of the mind characterized by several mental factors. The
concept of “mental factor” partially corresponds to the Western concept of
Introduction
7
“emotion,” but this is not the appropriate term since some of the factors are
cognitive or perceptive (Goleman, 1991).
Every mental factor has unique properties that influence our perception of
reality and our subjective experience moment after moment. For this reason,
the primary cause of changes in experience should not be attributed to exter-
nal realities, to objects, but rather to the properties of that specific moment
in our mind and conscience. It is also well known in Western psychology
that any fact in our life can be considered pleasant or unpleasant depending
on the situation we find ourselves in and the “lenses” we wear to examine it.
Every mental state, every moment of the mind, is made up of a changeable
variety of properties that can be combined in order to determine a particular
mental state and its tone (Goleman, 1991). Abidharma, one of the branches
of Buddhist psychology, takes about 50 mental factors into consideration,
half of which are considered to be negative or harmful in as much as they
distort one’s perception of reality, and the others are considered to be posi-
tive and beneficial. The rule of mental health in this system
our ability to influence the external reality has by far surpassed the power
we have over ourselves. Today we are at a point at which illness is seen as
something that invades us and as such must be fought against using external
means that are often, unfortunately, just as invasive.
As Goleman (2003) has clearly pointed out, in the West, medicines have
become the most common solution to dealing with destructive emotions,
that is, those that create significant suffering for ourselves and others. With-
out questioning the fact that pharmaceuticals that alter and stabilize mood
have helped millions of persons, it is possible to point out alternative ways to
control the mind. Differently from modern science, which has concentrated
on developing ingenious chemical compounds to help people overcome the
most intoxicating emotions, Buddhist psychology offers more difficult paths
to recover involving a series of methods aimed at training the mind through
the practice of meditation.
From a Western point of view, mental health is defined by defect as
absence of psychiatric pathologies, that is, in the West normalcy is the aim.
However, in Buddhist psychology, for example, normalcy is only the starting
point for practicing the principles that lead to freedom from suffering and
mental uneasiness.
Tibetan Buddhism has a very refined psychology that has been practiced
for more than 2,000 years as well as a model of well-being that extends our
concept of mental health. Buddhist psychology has developed an elaborate
model of the mind that, as is the case for every complete psychological sys-
tem, describes how perception, motivation, cognition, and emotions work
in detail and analyzes both the causes of human suffering (etiology) and the
ways out of this suffering (therapy). It has developed its own representation
of the mind and how it works as well as its own definition of mental health.
Over the centuries, it has defined a precise map of how changes in the mind
and body have a reciprocal influence on one another and has developed a
series of techniques aimed a voluntarily controlling these changes.
This psychology allows Westerners to have a complementary vision and
perspective with regard to some of the more central questions of modern
psychology: the possibility to cultivate mental health, the nature of the mind,
the limits of the growth potential of human beings, and the tools and meth-
ods needed to enact changes on the psyche.
Negative and Positive Mental Factors
In the Buddhist model of the mind and mental health, the measurement used
is a single moment of the mind characterized by several mental factors. The
concept of “mental factor” partially corresponds to the Western concept of
Introduction
7
“emotion,” but this is not the appropriate term since some of the factors are
cognitive or perceptive (Goleman, 1991).
Every mental factor has unique properties that influence our perception of
reality and our subjective experience moment after moment. For this reason,
the primary cause of changes in experience should not be attributed to exter-
nal realities, to objects, but rather to the properties of that specific moment
in our mind and conscience. It is also well known in Western psychology
that any fact in our life can be considered pleasant or unpleasant depending
on the situation we find ourselves in and the “lenses” we wear to examine it.
Every mental state, every moment of the mind, is made up of a changeable
variety of properties that can be combined in order to determine a particular
mental state and its tone (Goleman, 1991). Abidharma, one of the branches
of Buddhist psychology, takes about 50 mental factors into consideration,
half of which are considered to be negative or harmful in as much as they
distort one’s perception of reality, and the others are considered to be posi-
tive and beneficial. The rule of mental health in this system
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