A Buddhist Ideal of Mental Health: Balancing Attention, Emotion,

1
A Buddhist Ideal of Mental HealthBalancing
Attention, Emotion, Cognition

• B. Alan Wallace
• Santa Barbara Institute for the
  Interdisciplinary Study of Consciousness

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Human Nature

• Essentially sinful and neurotic?
• Essentially good and sane?

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Genuine Happiness, Human Flourishing

• Not simply stimulus-driven pleasure, emerging
  occasionally on the hedonic treadmill
• A way of flourishing that underlies and suffuses
  all emotional states, that embraces all the
  vicissitudes of life
• A way of engaging with life without confusion

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Central Elements of Mental Health

• Attentional balance
• Emotional balance
• Cognitive balance

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The Framework of Buddhist Practice

• Ethics
• Mental Balance
• Contemplative Insight

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The Nature of Mental Afflictions

• Mental processes that disrupt the equilibrium
  of the body and mind
• Craving
• Hostility
• Delusion

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Attentional Balance

• Normal, untrained attention is said to be
  imbalanced and dysfunctional due to its
  vulnerability to excitation and laxity.
• These attention disorders are to be remedied
  through the cultivation of stability and
  vividness.

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Two faculties used to balance attention

• Mindfulness the ability to sustain voluntary
  attention continuously upon a familiar object,
  without forgetfulness or distraction.
• Meta-attention the ability to monitor the
  quality of the attention, swiftly recognizing
  whether it has succumbed to either excitation or
  laxity.

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Relevance for Society

• Integrate Buddhist techniques for enhancing
  attention skills with proper nutrition, exercise,
  psychological counseling, and biofeedback.
• Advance understanding of mental health.
• Develop attention skills for education and
  optimal performance in a wide range of human
  endeavors.
• Prevention and treatment of attention deficit and
  hyperactivity disorders.

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Emotional Balance

• Recognizing emotional imbalances
• Excessive craving and aversion
• Excessive elation and depression
• Excessive hope and fear
• Emotional deficit and hyperactivity

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Cultivating Emotional Health

• Loving-kindness
• Compassion
• Empathetic joy
• Equanimity

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Remedying Afflictive Emotions

• Remedy craving with loving-kindness
• Remedy aloof indifference with compassion
• Remedy depression with empathetic joy
• Remedy obsessive agitation with equanimity

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Cognitive Imbalances

• Cognitive deficit failure to perceive what is
  present in the six fields of experience
• Cognitive hyperactivity conflation of conceptual
  projections with perceptual experience

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Cultivation of Cognitive Balance

• Four Applications of Mindfulness to
• The Body
• The Feelings
• Mental States Processes
• Phenomena at large

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Human Nature, Revisited

• The habitual state of the afflicted mind is one
  of dissatisfaction and unease.
• The ground state of awareness is innate bliss,
  luminosity, and serenity.

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Conclusion

• Genuine happiness is cultivated by way of ethics,
  mental health, and insight.
• Mental health is cultivated by way of
  attentional, emotional, and cognitive balance.
• A meaningful life consists of the integrated
  pursuit of truth, happiness, and virtue, then
  service to others on that basis.