The Power of Choice

An excerpt from the book Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg. (I have a simple review of the book here!) This is a perfect example of still how little we know about the power of the human mind. If in such stressful situation a simple thought and belief can overcome such adversity, what are the choices we are making in our lives today? Are we choosing distress, pain, disappointment or peace, freedom, life?

"In 1991 I attended a conference in India on emotions and health. One afternoon during the conference, the Western psychologists who had had a lot of experience treating victims of torture shared what they had learned about posttraumatic stress disorders. It seemed particularly important to them to pass along their expertise to the Tibetans who were there, because many Tibetans, particularly monks and nuns, have been tortured by the Chinese.

"These Western specialists first described what happens psychologically to survivors of torture: flashbacks, hideous memories, terror, helplessness, rage, despair, the sense of being dehumanized and degraded, the experience of feeling isolated and distrustful of others. They went on to discuss how to treat those suffering from these disorders: helping them to work through their fear and rage, and then helping them to feel more reconnected to the community and their own lives. These experts presented their knowledge and reflections with the belief that they were conferring something on the Tibetans: 'We want to give you this gift, because we know that the Tibetan people have had to suffer so much.'

"At the end of their extensive presentation, the leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama, who was attending the conference, replied, 'Well, the Tibetan people do not seem to experience things in quite that way.' He explained that though many Tibetans had undergone great physical pain when they were tortured, some reported afterward that they had focused on compassion for the people who were harming them so outrageously. They understood the terrible condition of a mind that would torture another.

"He pointed out that even those Tibetans who could not come to a place of feeling compassion while they were being tortured still had a deep belief in and understanding of karma. Thus they had a context in which to view what was happening to them. For them the torture was not a horrid visitation out of the blue. Nor was their understanding based on guilt: 'I deserve this.' Rather, the victims believed that there was an order, a meaning, a coherence to an experience even that terrible. That is why, the Dalai Lama explained, in his experience Tibetans do not tend to have posttraumatic stress disorder."