Inside Yoga 89 (18/11/13)

In the 1990s I was spending quite a bit of time in Dharamsala, in northern India, a small town which is the seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and the Dalai Lama’s home since he fled Tibet in 1959. It is a congested little settlement with Tibetans, Indians and foreigners (some resident and many were tourists) going about their daily business.

In the main street there was this scruffy old Indian man, who in the West would have been called a tramp, but in Dharamsala, he was treated with a little more respect than the tramps we know here.

He lived in a small shack, which looked like a newsstand, and was nothing more than a tin box, raised off the floor within which he could sit and sleep. I was told that the locals had built him this building for him to live in, and they would look after him, they bought him a new outfit (cotton shirt and trousers) which was white when I first saw it. Admittedly, the local people’s generosity did not extend to a wardrobe of outfits, so he wore this one outfit – as tramps do – and within weeks it was grubby. The locals also gave him food and cut his hair at least once while I was there.

I was curious about this man: he was allowed to stay on this congested main street, which was a narrow pedestrian street with market stalls on both sides, so busy you would have thought the traders would have got rid of him ages ago because he would be bad for business.

I asked about him and was told that years ago he appeared one day and has been there ever since. Since arriving all those years ago he has not spoken a word, though he did mumble and groan a fair bit – so no one had been able to learn anything about him, not even his name, or what was his story was.

Some days I would see him standing by his shack, eyes fixed on the mountain that rises above Dharamsala (which itself, is perched on a ridge high above the plains below, in the foothills of the Himalayas), and some did wonder what was he doing, and more importantly, what was he thinking?

Dharamsala is a spiritual place, residence of the Dalia Lama and other holy Lamas, and many more devotees. In place filled with so much spiritual devotion some thought he was praying or offering respect to the mountains. And this is the reason am writing about him. On the surface, he was judged to be a tramp and madman, but in this part of the world, in India and also in Tibetan culture, there was a different view. He was looked after and treated with respect, because perhaps he saw or knew something we didn’t? Was he in contact with something spiritual or powerful? He was in his own world and here they let that happen.

In contrast, he would have been locked away in a western country, out of sight and harm’s way – perhaps in a caring institution, but nonetheless, somewhere where we don’t have to see him. We could argue that he was there because India does not have a care system like ours, which in the 1990s was true, and perhaps since we were in a settlement filled with Buddhists this was altruism in action? Perhaps this was the case but I saw this treatment all over India and the South Asian region, where madness and weirdness is treated differently.

You could say we – in Western countries – are so scared of our own demons that we must hide away anyone and anything that shakes our calm ideal of existence to ensure that everything is sanitized and safe.

It intrigued me that the view of the tramp in Dharamsala was that he was given the benefit of doubt: perhaps he knew something that we didn’t, had seen something special or was in communion/contact with higher beings? Cross and harm the tramp and risk being punished by the higher beings that protect him – it was simply bad karma to harm him. Superstition it might be, but it seemed that it did result in a man, who in my time there never harmed or did anything wrong, was able to live in peace.

In contrast in the West we do seem to have a mad view of mental illness. Everything has to be labelled and put into a box – and given loads of drugs to solve it. There of course very serious cases of mental illness and people who are undoubtedly a danger to others and themselves, but I do think that we have a got a bit carried away medicalising just about everything we can.

As any meditator knows and sees from their own practice, when we really observe our thoughts while in meditation and we become more self-aware of our tendencies and thought patterns we see how mad our thoughts can be and often are. But we don’t panic and lock ourselves up or rush for the medicine cabinet to pump ourselves full of drugs that block and dull our senses into submission to the point that we don’t worry anymore – is that a way to live?

It strikes me that it is worse nowadays, much more than I was a teenager, as these days teenagers that cannot concentrate are told they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when perhaps they are just going through puberty and need to channel this energy into something (eg football, swimming etc). For example, the Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps has ADHD and it is reported that he beat (or controlled) this disorder through the discipline of his swimming routine.  Boys will be boys, why give them a neurosis along the way?

Teenage girls have to go through their own hoops, with puberty causing so many changes and society these days demanding so much of them in terms of being a woman. Many years ago, I had an American girlfriend  who told me how drugs helped her cope with the teenage years (to keep her sane) yet when I was listening to this I kept on thinking that surely it was wrong to help a girls get through the teenage years through the use of drugs.

Before I get in trouble for my comments and get told I do not understand how bad it can be some teenagers, I am thinking of cases where it appears that these are not severe cases. They are just kids being kids; and having all those worries and panics that teenagers get – us adults surely remember them? Perhaps it is better not to give a child a diagnosis of a mental illness when so young, because this becomes a weight to carry for the rest of their lives burdened and trapped by a condition they cannot drop because it is their identity now!

Meditation teaches us to let go of what we do not need, and I would say we do not need these burdens of mental illness. Most of us at some time must have thought “I am mad”, or “I cannot handle all this”? Why feed this thought to the point that leaves us unable to let go of it?

A respected meditation teacher now in his 80s, called Ram Dass, attracts large audiences to hear him speak. He is reported to have said, if all his thoughts were visible in a speech bubble above is head for everyone to read, no one would come to hear him, because he too, at times, has mad, bad and crazy thoughts.

Many years ago I realised that we can overcome these labels by using other labels to disarm the negativity – semantics is a potent tool. For example, there are times we get depressed, but this does not mean we are suffering from depression. I would reply, when a friend would say that I am depressed, that I am not depressed, I am simply having depressing thoughts. Thoughts come and go, like our breath does, whereas medical conditions foisted upon us by others or ourselves are harder to get rid of. So why invite them in, in the first place?

That is our mind: it is like a wild elephant that needs taming, but with gentle persuasion and friendship – not cruel ropes and whips, and strong drugs.