If he has thoughts that he could or would communicate given an actual method of augmentative or assistive communication that actually works, you are robbing him of that chance.

The mother of a non-communicative autistic child interprets her son’s random jabs as she would like… and for some reason (read: profit), the publishing world enables her delusion with “feel good” stories and a book deal.

The video presents a short but punchy cautionary tale about how communication (especially with the vulnerable) is precluded when we (as loved ones, journalists, and media consumers) fail to think critically (read: empathetically) about what we’re seeing.

Many modern Japanese women are bored with their lives and they use ‘organ language’ to express this frustration…

Medication and the small life-style modifications suggested by professionals for some women no doubt often help to ease the sense of oppression that patients experience. At the same time, medicalization can act as an ‘opiate,’ and can deflect attention away from the social origins of distress.

This report offers guidance about adopting subjective well-being measures in official government surveys to inform social and economic policies and considers whether research has advanced to a point which warrants the federal government collecting data that allow aspects of the population’s subjective well-being to be tracked and associated with changing conditions.

Among the general public and behavioral scientists alike, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the best known and most widely used tool for demonstrating implicit bias: the unintentional impact of social group information on behavior.

The idea that racial bias exists in places more so than in people can be a disorienting idea for many of us born and raised within cultures that predominantly treat places as neutral and passive while prioritizing the importance of individual actors and their internal states and motivations. In general, when most of us think about a concept like sexism, we think about people (like misogynists). We are unlikely to think about spaces causing people to be sexist.

The basic claim of this dissertation is that there is a concept of the ‘Unconscious’ in early Buddhism independent of the theory of bhavaṅga or ālayavijñāna.

It is possible to care without helping. It is also possible to help without caring. Given these two options, most people would choose the second, especially in difficult moments. Dear reader, this is an honest book.

Help requires the establishment of an interpretive context or system of meaning — a relationship, in several senses — in which help does not threaten the creativity, autonomy, or personhood of the helpee and in which, instead, help facilitates development and strengthens the self. This is a creative act.

When we observe people around us, one of the first things that strikes us is how different people are from one another.

Personality is a carefully created balance of traits and behaviors in each unique person.

If the sense of self is doxastically anchored, then it will be anchored in the sort of belief that is ascribed along an action-based rather than judgement-based avenue.

A Western-philosophical exploration of the different levels of the “self” delusion.

Three fundamental ways of approaching the relationship between Buddhism and science are outlined: (a) rejection (Buddhism and science are not, and cannot be, compatible); (b) acceptance (Buddhism and science share important commonalities); (c) construction (Buddhism and science are compatible because they have been made compatible in the course of specific historical processes).

… with special emphasis on the distinction between construing Buddhism as a “living” versus “dead” tradition.

None of us should be defined by the mental health conditions or psychosocial difficulties that we experience, or by any single aspect of who we are. We should be respected as individuals first and foremost.

While the simple “say this instead of that” format erases a huge amount of nuance and complexity, the guide is still a valuable and practical primer on how to talk to and about people who are going through difficult times.

Currently, mindfulness is most often assessed [by psychologists] with self-report questionnaires. Although additional work is required, mindfulness questionnaires have reasonable psychometric properties and are making important contributions …

Measurement of mindfulness as a multidimensional construct shows that present-moment awareness can be unhelpful unless accompanied by a nonjudgmental, nonreactive stance; moreover, nonjudgment and nonreactivity may be only weakly related to present-moment awareness in people with no meditation experience.

Data analyses showed that Buddhists were more likely to attribute bad outcomes to internal, stable, and global causes, but their well-being was less affected by it. Thus, these results indicate that the “depressive” attributional style is not that depressive for Buddhists, after all.

… explanations do things to us and change the way we think about the future and change our expectations for who we can be

On the interaction between story-telling and medicine in psychological disorders.

At these meetings a group of international European scholars developed a shared understanding of Buddhist doctrine and meditation that has become widespread, namely, the notion that Buddhism is, first and foremost, a noetic science the principal concern of which is the transformation of human psychology.

The nacent, Western engagements with Buddhism and psychology became entangled during the 1930s, forever reshaping both.

… how hereditary (nature) and experiential (nurture) variables interact to influence the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals

A powerful lecture and part of the movement to destigmatize mental illness.

We have brains in order to get along with each other […] Trauma destroys the capacity to imagine

How PTSD operates as a personal, cognitive response to a social breakdown and what that says about society and recovery.

Avalanches above, business continues below.

異なる声の元が
喉元までとどく
そこまで見えたものが
消されてしまう前に

Bad things are easy to think about! It’s the good things that are difficult, because the kilesas don’t like them.

An afternoon chat about emptiness.

… too many people live life as if they’re in a fast car: looking through the window, always going on to the next thing

Ajahn Brahm explains how going slow allows us to see the beauty in life and ourselves.

Bhikkhus, there are these ten fetters.

Five lower and five higher.

Wisdom and consciousness–these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them

Venerable Sāriputta deftly defines a bewildering array of terms.

… indeed there is no thing there

A beautiful reading of this wonderful and profound sutta on realizing the essence of emptiness.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

A classic of modern psychology, Thinking, Fast and Slow explains the two halves of our brain and how they contribute to our sometimes-less-than-rational behavior.

Our inability to recall how we really felt is why our wealth of experiences turns out to be poverty of riches.

A classic of modern psychology, Stumbling on Happiness explains in detail the cognitive biases that prevent us from accurately predicting what will make us happy.

Note, an editted version of this article appears as chapter two of From Craving to Liberation.

The life enriched by meditation is three dimensional: it’s not a completely different realm, it’s providing a new and clearer perspective.

In meditation we have this delicious, wonderful experience of being nobody… It’s boring. That’s the point… You can’t expect to feel inspired all the time… [But] remember that all of those great monks and nuns and teachers, they all started off — every one of them — with confused minds. They weren’t pure and peaceful right from the beginning. They got where they are through effort. And there’s no reason why you can’t put forth that same effort.

A dhamma talk at Cittarama (Malaysia) on the purpose of meditation.

Meditation can be seen as the ultimate in “[restructuring the] lower-level components” of the mind. We abandon all the higher-level cognition built upon words and concepts and return, as much as possible, to the preverbal experience in order to “re-engage and reshape” our way of being in the world.

If you can intentionally kill out of compassion, then fine, go ahead. But are you sure? Are you sure that what you think are friendliness and compassion are really friendliness and compassion? Are you sure that some subtle aversion and delusion have not surfaced in the mind?

The key principle in Buddhism is that understanding sets you free. It’s not about attaining or creating anything, it’s about simply understanding things as they are

… how lust, hatred, delusion and other negative emotions are considered to cause physical and mental pain among [unenlightened beings]

My favorite part of this lovely article is its subtle normalization of the ariya and pathologizing of puthujjanas—a rhetorical flip from our usual conceptualization that I hope catches on!

What lies behind this insistence on love is a worry: without a deep-seated fear that one day love would no longer exist (or exist in the same way) why would anyone feel that they have to insist upon it so much?

Applying Buddhist wisdom to an area of our life we all care about deeply — our relationship with our loved ones — Ajahn Jayasaro makes the teachings relatable and applicable. An excellent sermon and well worth a read.