Month: September 2017

The Sense of Thought

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The Sense of Thought

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“Whatever you see you must be mindful of as it really is. Whatever you hear you must be aware of as it occurs. Whatever you smell you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you taste you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you touch you must be aware of as it really occurs. Whatever you think or think about you must be aware of as it really occurs.” – Buddha

 

The Buddha identified not five senses as traditional Western thought does, but six sense doors; vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, touch, and thought. The first time I read this I was taken aback; thought as a sense! I always considered thought as processing sensory information, not as a sensory experience itself. Indeed, Descartes stated “Cogito ergo Sum”, “I think therefore I am.” Thinking was the ultimate evidence of existence, not just a sense impression. But, for a moment reflecting on Descartes phrase “I think therefore I am,” I along with many others realized that the “I” refers to something other than the thinker! Something is sensing thought, even thinking about this.

 

It is not clear that thought is a separate sense. Rather it appears to take advantage of the brain systems used for processing information from the external world. That is why we can “hear” our internal voice, “see” imagined scenes, or “feel” remembered emotions. Also, chefs can “taste” and “smell” imagined dishes; mentally combining ingredients. There’s been a long standing controversy in Psychology regarding whether there is thought without some kind of internal sensory experience, called imageless thought. The issue is not resolved but what is clear is that the vast majority of thoughts involve mental images. Hence, it appears that thoughts are not something other than the traditional senses but take advantage of them. Perhaps we sense thought through sensing the influence of thought on the traditional senses. But, still something is sensing this and it isn’t the mind, the source of thought.

 

There is clearly, however, imageless experience or awareness. Awareness itself observes sensations and thoughts, including the images accompanying thoughts, but does not itself have images. It is pure contentless awareness. In advanced meditative states, this contentless awareness can be directly experienced. Even the novice practitioner can experience this by paying close attention to the gaps that exists between thoughts. But, the thoughts that the Buddha was talking about are the processes of the mind and these appear, for the most part, to involve images. These, in turn, appear to be experienced, not by the mind, but by something else that we label awareness.

 

We appear to be incapable of truly controlling thoughts. We believe that we are in control. But, meditation practice immediately reveals that we can’t. Try as we may to concentrate on one thing, control our thinking and focus our attention, the mind inevitably wanders off into other things; planning for the future, ruminating about the past, interpreting experience. We don’t seem to be able to control it. Rather than being in control of thoughts, thoughts appear to be in control of the mind, but do so in such a sneaky way that they provide the illusion that we’re in control.  As Eckhart Tolle said “Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don’t even know that you are its slave. It’s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.”

 

We may not be able to control our thoughts, but we can step back and witness them. Just like our awareness senses lights, sound, etc. it can sense thoughts. This is why the Buddha classified thought as a sense. If you watch these out of control thoughts it begins to dawn on you that there’s a distinct separation between your awareness and thoughts. The thoughts begin to appear almost alien, like they’re not really yours. As Eckhart Tolle said “So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence – your deeper self – behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.”

 

So, the fact that we can’t control thoughts adds to the case that thought is, as the Buddha said, a separate sense. Just like our classical five senses we can’t control their content, we can only experience them. This is an important insight. As Jon Kabat-Zinn said ““It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not ‘you’ or ‘reality.’ For instance, if you have the thought that you have to get a certain number of things done today and you don’t recognize it as a thought but act as if it’s the ‘the truth,’ then you have created a reality in that moment in which you really believe that those things must all be done today.” So, by recognizing thought as just another sense, the inner self, the awareness of sensing, is revealed.

 

This can be practiced, especially during meditation. Watching thoughts is what you do in open monitoring meditation. You simply watch them and don’t react to them; just letting them arise, and fall away. Here you can clearly observe thoughts passing through, completely out of control, but when you don’t dwell on them, they pass on through and disappear. But, nonetheless, whether they stay or not, they are experienced. It can’t be emphasized too much what an important insight this is. As Eckhart Tolle observed “The most decisive event in your life is when you discover you are not your thoughts or emotions. Instead, you can be present as the awareness behind the thoughts and emotions.” This is when you begin to realize the nature of your true self. This is when you begin to see things as they really are. This is when you begin to awaken.

 

“Since, if one leaves the senses of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body & mind uncontrolled,
then evil detrimental states such as greed, lust & discontent invades & dominates the mind!
Therefore does one train control of the senses, guarding the senses, holding back the senses,
and one keeps in check these six wild-running senses…” – Buddha

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and on Twitter @MindfulResearch

 

Ease Medical Student Stress with Mindfulness

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Ease Medical Student Stress with Mindfulness

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“I realized that the majority of my stress was self-generated. I put an inordinate amount of pressure on myself to succeed and get work done. Luckily, through mindfulness techniques, I gained some serious insight as to what makes me tick. I paid attention to my inner self and tried to implement changes in my life that could alleviate stress. To my surprise, I would perform far better in school because of these changes.” – Daniel Olson

 

Medical School is challenging both intellectually and psychologically. Stress levels are high and burnout is common. It’s been estimated that 63% of medical students experience negative consequences from stress while symptoms of severe stress were present in 25% of students. The prevalence of stress is higher among females than among males. High stress levels lead to lower performance in medical school and higher levels of physical and mental health problems, especially anxiety and depression. Indeed 50% of medical students report burnout and 11% have considered suicide in the last year.

 

Obviously, there is a need to either lower stress levels in medical education or find methods to assist medical students in dealing with the stress. One promising possibility is mindfulness training. It has been shown to reduce both the psychological and physiological responses to stress. It has also been shown to reduce stress in students, to help with the negative consequences of stress, and to reduce burnout in medical professionals. So, it would seem reasonable to suspect that mindfulness would be related to medical students’ ability to cope with the stress.

 

In today’s Research News article “Coping, perceived stress, and job satisfaction among medical interns: The mediating effect of mindfulness.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479094/, Vinothkumar and colleagues recruited medical interns and had them complete measures of mindfulness, emotion regulation strategies, perceived stress, and job satisfaction and then conducted a regression analysis to determine the relationship between these variables.

 

They found that the higher the levels of mindfulness and adaptive strategies to cope with emotions the lower the levels of perceived stress and the higher the levels of maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions the higher the levels of perceived stress. Additionally, the higher the levels of mindfulness the higher the levels of adaptive strategies and the lower the levels of maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions. In other words, mindfulness was associated with lower perceived stress and adaptive strategies and lower levels of maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions.

 

Applying a mediational analysis revealed that adaptive strategies to cope with emotions had a significant relationship to lower perceived stress levels but that relationship was due to mindfulness, such that adaptive coping was associated with higher levels of mindfulness which in turn was associated with lower perceived stress levels. Alternatively, maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions had a significant relationship to higher perceived stress levels but that relationship was due to mindfulness, such that maladaptive coping was associated with lower mindfulness which in turn was associated with higher perceived stress levels. In other words, the relationship between adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope with emotions with the interns’ perceived levels of stress was completely due to the coping strategies relationships with mindfulness.

 

These are interesting results that suggest that how medical interns go about coping with emotions is important in regulating their responses to stress and that this is due to the fact that these coping strategies are associated with the interns’ levels of mindfulness. It has been well established that mindfulness is associated with lower perceived stress levels. The present results suggest that coping strategies affect mindfulness producing changes in stress levels. These results further suggest that instructing medical students in how to cope with emotions may be helpful in lowering stress effects and thereby improving their performance in school and in their later careers and decreasing burnout.

 

So, ease medical student stress with mindfulness.

 

“the use of mindfulness and meditation become ingrained in the fabric of medical care-and alleviate the suffering of countless practitioners and while allowing us to take better care of our patients — and ourselves.” – Jeffrey Taekman

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and on Twitter @MindfulResearch

 

Study Summary

 

Vinothkumar, M., Arathi, A., Joseph, M., Nayana, P., Jishma, E. J., & Sahana, U. (2016). Coping, perceived stress, and job satisfaction among medical interns: The mediating effect of mindfulness. Industrial Psychiatry Journal, 25(2), 195–201. http://doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_98_14

 

Abstract

Background:

Past research studies on the exploration of attributes to the stress of doctors/medical interns were reported more often than the types of coping strategies, healthy practices to strengthen their internal resources to deal effectively with the stressful situations.

Objectives:

The present study was conducted to find such internal resource – “mindfulness” as a mediator of coping, perceived stress, and job satisfaction among medical interns.

Methods:

A cross-sectional descriptive study comprised 120 medical interns forms from various medical colleges in Mangalore were recruited and completed the assessment on mindfulness, cognitive-emotive regulation, coping strategies, perceived stress, and job satisfaction from doctoral interns were collected.

Results:

Initial correlation analysis results indicate that adaptive coping strategies significantly associate with greater mindfulness and less perceived stress. In turn, mindfulness is negatively correlated with nonadaptive coping strategies and perceived. Job satisfaction showed no significant relationship with any of the other variables. Mediational models indicate that the relationship between adaptive coping strategies and perceived stress was significantly mediated by mindfulness. Furthermore, partial mediation between nonadaptive strategies and perceived stress through mindfulness indicates that respondents reported a high level of nonadaptive strategy experience and a lower level of mindfulness can be counterproductive as they encourage the ineffective way to deal with the stresses.

Conclusion:

The implication of the results were discussed with suggesting a possible intervention to improve the adaptive strategies and mindfulness among the medical interns.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479094/