The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
25 February 2024
“Medication is only to cure the body. As far as for the mind, you don’t need medication.”
Question: When someone is diagnosed with psychosis as in schizophrenia disease can he still meditate?
Than Ajahn: To meditate, you need to have mindfulness. When people have mental illness, it means they don’t have mindfulness, they are like drunken people. A drunken person has no mindfulness, so it is very hard for him to control his thoughts, a drunker is similar to a person with mental illness. The reason why he becomes mentally ill is because he lacks the ability to control his emotions and his thoughts. His emotions and his thoughts multiply to the point where he can no longer handle them. If somehow he can regain mindfulness, then he can cure his mental illness, and he doesn’t need to go to see any doctor, go for therapy or take any medicine because this is pure mental illness, it has nothing to do with the body.
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Question: What does the Dhamma say about pharmaceutical medication, I am forced to take antipsychotics, and the medication makes me tired and sluggish for a while. Is taking the medication against the 5th precept about intoxication?
Than Ajahn: Medication is only to cure the body. If the body is sick and it needs medication to make it well, then you take it, no problem. But as far as for the mind, you don’t need medication. What you need for the mind is calmness. The only way to make the mind calm is to meditate, to concentrate the mind on one object and make it to become peaceful and calm.
After you have the ability to calm the mind, when you come out of that state, you should use contemplation to teach the mind to let go of the body, and so when anything happens to the body, it will not hurt the mind.
This is the goal of Buddhist meditation, to free the mind from being hurt by the body illnesses or its dissolution.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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