How to Avoid Suffering in Life

if you could make season eight of Game of Thrones an enjoyable experience like that's what would the figured out that's what enlightenment is is living your life and being able to enjoy season eight of Game of Thrones that's enlightenment modern-day definition of enlightenment okay let's do let's do this question about suicide my question I don't have thoughts of suicide but my desire to live life to live is really low I don't want to die and my morals and ethics are really against suicide but how does how do one distinguish between thoughts of not wanting to live and wanting to die don't worry I'm not in danger of doing anything I just don't want my perspective I just don't want my perspective to change over time ah I'm assuming that by your perspective to change over time you mean you want to not start thinking about suicide as opposed to not wanting to live I hope your perspective changes over time but I hope what changes is your desire to live gets higher so let me read this again I don't have thoughts of suicide but my desire to live is really low I don't want to die and my morals and ethics are really against suicide but how does one distinguish between thoughts of not wanting to live and wanting to die fantastic question so I think it's important to okay so let's just talk about this is a great question I love it so I'm a psychiatrist I treat depression right so depression is like when people feel like their mood is really low and they feel unhappy and sometimes they can be suicidal they don't feel like doing anything they feel a motivated and sometimes what I'm treating someone with depression there comes a day where they come into my office and then I kind of assess them for depression so I use some kinds of tools like I'll use like something called the Beck Depression Inventory or the Hamilton depression scale and I'll have a conversation with them which is a very strange conversation they say I'm unhappy and like I feel like the depression has it gone away and based on the scales and I'll ask them like are you able to get out of bed every day they say yes can you go to work every day they say yes do you have difficulty concentrating no so why do you feel like you're depressed and they say like well I just don't I don't feel like doing anything I feel like my life like doesn't have any meaning and then I say okay so this is as far is your depression this is as far as treatment for depression can take you there's a difference between depression and unhappiness we've treated your depression the problem now is that you're unhappy and these are two different things and one of the biggest mistakes that's been made in like modern mental health thinking is that we've started conflating unhappiness with depression people who are unhappy say that they are depressed and that sort of makes sense because like that word works but there's a difference between a clinical depression and being unhappy right there's a difference between being ill and like having a life that has no meaning those are two entirely different things and so I think that the issue with lupus is the way I'd put it is there's a there's a huge difference there's a cavernous difference between not wanting to live or not caring to live and wanting to die and no no no so you guys are this is completely wrong depression equals over a longer time no what I'm saying is that the color and flavor these are two entirely different things it's like one is something you see and one is something you hear completely different spectrums not related at all but unhappiness leat leads to depression also untrue also untrue so I'm defining things in a particular way oftentimes people who are depressed are also happy unhappy but sometimes people who are depressed are content so you guys have to understand that the axis of your mind is different from like the axis of your othman or your true self that there's a difference between pain and suffering does that make sense like suffering and pain or two different things and so I think what lupus is dealing with is that they don't have a good reason to live because their life probably lacks meaning which is absolutely a problem but the solution to that problem is different from treating depression now in this case I would recommend that someone gets an evaluation for depression right because like you should just get checked out for depression but like so now the question becomes so a lot of people are thinking a little bit about you know what's the difference between these two can't they relate to each other sure they can relate because we everything can relate we're a human being and the different parts of ourselves interact but I'll give you guys an example so this is the example that I always use when I talk about pain and suffering so the first question is what's the difference between pain and suffering so like when I get a massage sometimes technically I'm in pain but it feels really good I'm not suffering at all it just feels really good when I'm on call like that's painful like it's painful to not sleep for 24 hours but I feel fulfilled like I feel like I'm doing good work and I don't suffer right even if we think about like physical pain like I got a flu shot the other day like that was painful but it didn't cause me suffering so Sanskrit is the best word to understand the best language to understand this would that talked about something called look look means suffering and what he said is that Lucas outside of the the mind actually that within the mind we experience emotions right like sadness and then Luke is suffering so I'll give you guys another example from my life so my dad passed away several years ago and I was sad and I was grieved but like I was kind of also you know like I thought it was his time and I understood that he had lived a full life and am I am I still sad that he's not alive today yeah but I'm not like I don't suffer because of it right it would be different if I lost my wife or lost my kids like then my suffering would be intense like there's a difference between sadness and suffering like there's there's a certain amount of peace that you can get like sure like of course I want my dad to be alive but at the same time you know like he lived a life and like he was an awesome dad and I'm grateful for the person that he was and it was his time to go and I can be okay with that right like if you think about a relationship where your long-distance with someone and you guys try things for 18 months and then the relationship you guys just saw really decided that it's like it's too hard we're just like it's too much work and this relationship is not going in the right direction and we should break up and both of you guys can be sad but you don't have to suffer because of it right you can both understand you can have some degree of peace or contentment and understand that this is the right thing even though it hurts like a flu vaccine so someone is asking can paint as physical suffering as mental no right so you can have mental pain too so the source of suffering is attachment it's not just an emotion it's attachment right so if we think about what what about my dad's situation would have left left me with more suffering is if I had like still wanted him to be alive if I had felt like he hadn't lived a complete life if I hadn't gotten from him everything that I really needed to if I was still attached to him being a lion like the way that I am with you know my family and my kids like I'm attached to them I don't want them to go anywhere like I'm not at peace with that so attachment is the root of suffering like for example I'll give you guys just another example about dating and friendship right so if I want to like date someone I can be attracted to them and I can ask them out and I can say hey do you want to go out on a date can I buy you dinner sometime and they can say no I'm seeing someone but thank you very much I'm flattered and then I can be disappointed but I don't have to be bent out of shape right like I don't have to go home and like cry into my pillow like I don't have to do that now if I was attached to her I would if I had like built up this like this castle and in my mind of like what our relationship was gonna be like this fantasy and that we were gonna go out and then she was gonna be my waifu and then we would get married and then you know she would like like we would spend Christmas like this and she would make me like breakfast every morning and then I would make her dinner every night and if I like built up all these attachments around the relationship then I'm going to suffer but if I don't have attachments if I understand that did I want to go out with her absolutely did I did I am I disappointed sure but I don't have to suffer well he's not intensely so suffering is related to attachment and pain and emotions are in the mind in attachment actually is rooted in the mind but like the suffering happens kind of outside of the mind so huh yeah so a couple of a couple of points okay so depression and unhappiness can be related but I think the main question here how do you know if if you're so many good question okay well I'm gonna stick with lupus is questions okay how do you end suffering or change it to pain if it makes sense it does make sense the first thing to understand is that like you can't avoid pain in life right there's gonna be disappointment there's gonna be sadness there's gonna be grief you can however do something about suffering so suffering is is about attachment and so the way to end your suffering is to cultivate something called Vairagya which means detachment so to be detached from the outcomes of your actions and the most important thing the most important source of attachment for most people that I work with is specifically with the outcomes of their actions so there's a big difference between wanting to ask a girl out and wanting her to say yes and being having an expectation or hope or fantasy that's based on that like an if you guys I used this because I mean I use the relationship example because I just I think it's like a raw example that a lot of people can relate to because it really captures this idea there are other examples let's talk about a promotion right I can want a promotion but I can also get like really caught up in it I can get really invested in the promotion the promotion means the world to me and if I don't get it my life is shattered so I'm attaching myself to the outcome it's like I want to go to Harvard or Stanford or Yale and so I like like it's and everyone can want to go there anyone can want to go there but it's the people who get attached to that idea who are devastated when they don't get it and then if you're not attached to it like you could still want something like I didn't want my dad to die but I understood it was his time right because there are some things that I've wanted a life that I didn't get which I'm bummed out about but I don't like suffer so I think what lupus needs to do is to understand first of all that you're you're you're probably lacking so your question a couple of questions one is how do you how do you move from suffering to pain and the answer is to cultivate detachment how do you cultivate detachment it's to focus on your actions instead of the outcomes of your actions it's the difference between I really want an a on this test and I'm gonna study four hours a day for the next week until I take the test those are two very very different things they may both look the same but what you tell yourself in your mind both of them may result in you studying four hours a day but it's what happens in here are you focusing on what you do are you focusing on what happens are you saying I'm gonna ask that girl out or I really really want her to say yes there's a difference between I like that girl I'd love to go on a date with her and I really really really want her to be my girlfriend she's the one she's the one right that's attachment you can see the difference between that like her she's cool I'd love to go out out with her and she's the one she's the one I know she's the one like she's the one that's attachment so if you're suffering in life chances are the source of your suffering is something related to attachment another good question wouldn't being detach make someone feel numb all the time no in fact the exact opposite if you live a detached life you feel more fulfilled right because think about this for a second if you're if I really want to go out with her and let's just play this this tape through to the end yeah I know lupus so I'm tempted to say if you like we got we're gonna switch to meditation but you should come on stream or if you want to hop on discord we can talk now but so yeah so we're gonna do we're gonna okay so let's just take a step back okay so first thing is suffering comes from attachment peace come peace or contentment comes from detachment now most people think that apathy and attachments are the same thing they think that detachment means not caring no just listen to what I'm saying okay I like a girl I think she's attractive I want to go on a date with her does that mean that I don't care no it doesn't mean that I don't care I have once I have desires but it just means that I'm not like bent out of shape about her right and so then what happens is if I asked her out and she says yes then the question becomes like what is what is that what how do you think that that person feels hmmm how does that person feel good right I'll tell you what it feels like it feels like christmas came early this year that's that's what it feels like to them right it's like yeah she said yes right and that's different from with the attached person if she says yes and the person is obsessed with her he actually doesn't even feel great he feels like like I mean he's gonna get so obsessed right he's like oh my god like this is gonna be like this is the first step to everything else like this is gonna be amazing like oh my god this is gonna be so awesome she's gonna be she's perfect I knew she was perfect I knew it they get obsessed whereas the person who she says yes it's like yeah man like we're let's do this like let's have fun no what I love is completely different okay so the interesting thing is that attachment and expectation are related okay when you have attachments you have expectations I'm asking her out and I expect her to say yes I'm putting my eggs in the yes basket and so then the question becomes so if attachment has to do with expectation detachment has to do with a lack of expectation so detachment lack of expectation how do you feel when you don't expect something and you get you you absolutely right so like buying the buying a lottery ticket and winning the lottery you would feel amazing no question not buying a lottery ticket and finding a winning lottery ticket in your pocket would feel even better right like it's crazy so this is where I've okay so we're gonna talk about meditation and so like I want you guys to do something for me so what I want you to do and we'll get to lupus in a second okay so what I want you guys to do is pay attention to which moments of the week between now and next week so let's let's do another discord set of like write a paragraph to a page about which moments were you the most happy like try to find a moment to pure happiness like it doesn't have to be a big happiness but just like the purest like the most untainted moment of happiness so when I say most happy it implies like you know something big has time I'm not talking about the size of the happiness I'm talking about the purity of the happiness so when is like a moment that you just like when is like when are the purest moments of happiness in your week and where are the purest moments of suffering in your week and really describe them describe the scenario and then see if there's any relationship between an X the existence of an expectation and that happiness or disappointment you have to catch yourself right you have to pay attention because it's gonna be tiny tiny things tiny tiny times so I'll tell you guys what it is for me which is like I solicit hugs and kisses from my two daughters all the time I still listed them I asked for them and then if I don't get them I'm bummed out if I do get them I'm happy but there are some times sometimes where I'm just sitting there I'm not doing anything I'm like cooking or something like that and one of my kids walks around and is like daddy I want to give you a hug and then they give me like this really really great pot and on in that moment I feel in pure bliss right that's pure bliss that's pure happiness I mean don't get me wrong it feels great when when like I need a hug and they give me a hug right yeah oxytocin right and so like you guys are talking about game so like I'm gonna I'm gonna just drive this home okay so Game of Thrones if you guys want to re-watch Season eight do you think if you watch it the second time around you're going to enjoy it less or more you ah why Yeah right because you had this expectation for it to be like a satisfying conclusion and it wasn't it was disappointing and so if you go and Yuri watch it you know it's gonna be a [ __ ] show you have no expectations you know it's gonna suck and then you can enjoy you can just like look for all the glaring potholes and you can laugh at each one and so just think about this if you can make season eight of Game of Thrones an enjoyable experience like that's what would the figure it out that's what enlightenment is is living your life and being able to enjoy season eight of Game of Thrones that's enlightenment modern-day definition of enlightenment

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 204,940

Keywords: depression, mental health, suffering, how to avoid suffering, how to avoid suffering in life, how to deal with suffering, what does it mean to suffer, buddhism, religion, spirituality

Id: V4ta_jcw5zY

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019