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| "Flame Tree" Delonix Regia Kowloon Hospital, Hong Kong 6 September 2012 |
A chance encounter with a decapitated and left-to-die Flame-of-the-Forest that had sprouted to life again was indeed too good to pass over. It was a wonderful surprise on a morning walk in the gardens of Kowloon Hospital.
The hospital is noted for its psychiatry wards. Recovering patients are often sent to the garden as a part of their therapy. As I wandered did I wonder how many would have seen this stump for its beauty and its relevance to their own circumstance - the stump that heals to sprout new beginnings. It set off in me a whole lot of thoughts.
Psychiatry literally means medical treatment of the soul, for in Greek psyche is soul and itary is medical treatment.
Psychiatry literally means medical treatment of the soul, for in Greek psyche is soul and itary is medical treatment.
As a daily visitor for the past few months to two psychiatric hospitals in Hong Kong I have come across patients with all types of mental illness.
Then there is nature, and the wonderful world of nature. There is the nature of various things that are compounded to make a body, a being, a thing.
Then there is nature, and the wonderful world of nature. There is the nature of various things that are compounded to make a body, a being, a thing.
There is also the nature of all things. The nature of all things is the secret of its life, the laws of its existence.
These can be further analyzed in to laws that govern inorganic processes such as heat, seasons, and climate. They can be analyzed in to physical or organic law, which is what operates in the animal and plants life. Then there is the law of causality or karma.
There is also the law of reality - the law of the mind that governs consciousness and mental factors that arise with the mind and the mental process. There are the laws of physical phenomena and material things, and the law of suchness.
There is also the law of reality - the law of the mind that governs consciousness and mental factors that arise with the mind and the mental process. There are the laws of physical phenomena and material things, and the law of suchness.
These laws of existence, the secret of lifem are known as dhamma or dharma in Buddhism.
If we do not upset nature or this natural law and live by it, then we should have less adverse consequences and thereby less suffering. In other words, if we jump in front of a moving train we can expect to be mowed down.
Reality in Buddhism is how we see the dhamma of all things: as-it-is (yatha bhutha). How we see things depend on our experience. At any given moment these are the manifestations that result from the fruition of the stored metal imprints or karmic seeds; the constituent from of everything known to us (sankhara). It is an ego-centric projection, an illusion.
If we do not upset nature or this natural law and live by it, then we should have less adverse consequences and thereby less suffering. In other words, if we jump in front of a moving train we can expect to be mowed down.
Reality in Buddhism is how we see the dhamma of all things: as-it-is (yatha bhutha). How we see things depend on our experience. At any given moment these are the manifestations that result from the fruition of the stored metal imprints or karmic seeds; the constituent from of everything known to us (sankhara). It is an ego-centric projection, an illusion.
This nature of our reality is predicated upon all things being taken as permanent forms when they are in fact temporary mental arisings and passings, and that all things including one’s self has a permanent nature or substantial self that exists without the aid of anything else, when in fact it does not.
The absence of permanence causes suffering. If one is to cease suffering then one must exercise mindfulness all the time: aware and mindful of reality, having the knowledge and vision of things as they are (yatha bhutha gnana dhassana). In its absence there is confusion, which is the normal nature of our minds, which can be overcome by concentration - so the emphasis on mindfulness and concentration.
Reality is subjective - can be two facets of the same thing for two people - must therefore be conditioned by the minds of these two different people. It is referred to as conditioned reality. All things known to us are conditioned reality. So you and I have different perceptions of the same reality. If we have similar backgrounds we may have somewhat similar perceptions..
Those who are ignorant of its deceit appreciate reality in a magic show as magic. It is a conjuring trick or an illusory feat considered magic by naive observers. Likewise the illusory feats of the mind are considered real by the naive observer.
Reality in dreams is very real to the observer although we may be physically far removed.
Feelings and perceptions arise out of contact with sensory objects or mental objects. Feelings will condition our perceptions and perceptions our feelings, almost simultaneously, and repetitively, and both will continuously update our stored knowledge or experience, that is the vast reservoir of knowledge that we have upon which both feelings and perceptions rely on upon contact with an object.
When feelings are in conflict with perceptions we will display low moods, lack of self esteem, loss of interest, suicidal tendencies and so on. All of this is referred to as mental depression in Western psychiatry. This happens when we misapprehend ourselves as two people, such as one who should not be suffering for I am me the all good person and one who is suffering for no fault of mine. It is our reality of our “I, me and mine” - our ego self. The two people in us may not be clearly evident to most of us.
We may also have that voice in our heads that either talks to us or gives a running commentary. Some of us who find this too much to handle seek the help of others, such as psychiatrists and counselors. A usual question asked by nurses upon admitting a patient is if there is a voice in the head. These voices can tell you to do many things including talking you out of eating when one of you say you must eat, usually experienced by those suffering from anorexia nervosa. Similarly some suffering form schizophrenia will experience the voice urging suicide.
We have minds that seize and become attached to an object or various objects and revolve around these objects. This is the usual delusional mind that we all have. But sometimes these attachments can be strong making you go on and on. And then you feel you are on top of everything, and on top of the world. This can affects sleep and you can have sleepless nights. Your mind will be very alert and working, no matter how hard you try to relax or sleep. After experiencing this for sometime the mind will shut down giving you a complete low mood, making you withdraw completely, ending in depression. The mind becomes confused, and feelings in conflict with perceptions. This all experiencing mind with or without a mind of conflict is what is usually referred to as bi-polar disorder in Western psychiatry.
When this confusion begins to affect the mind, usually both the minds, or by this time if you have multiple personalities then all of the minds, then it will affect the normal functions of the mind such as the working mind, the rationalizing mind, the plotting mind, together with resulting feelings and perceptions. A collection of these minds of various realities and conflicts is usually referred as schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is defined as a mental disorder. Its characterization includes the breakdown of thought processes and poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.
The mind can never be compartmentalized in to various divisions as we have done for it is one and dynamic. We do it for better understanding.
When we become more attuned with nature we will discover that the mind is mounted on energy. This energy is in everything. It is the nature of everything. If our bodies have an unobstructed flow of energy then we would be of peaceful mind and have a mind of lucidity and clarity, unobstructed or un obscured. So the mind can be used to project this energy for where the mind goes the energy must, therefore, follow. To be able to experience this one must have an extremely tranquil mind.
Mental illness can arise from a physical defect, congenital or acquired by damage to the brain, or by the mind itself - a mind that is not able to handle or process the input it receives. This can impair the normal physical functions of the brain, affecting our cognition, our perceptions and our reality.
There's this sweet old lady to whom I offered some tea. She tells me that she has one hundred umbrellas for sale. I suggested that I make some tea so we could enjoy it together she says she has tea as well for sale. I told her that was fine but it was a strange combination and why so? She tells me you open the umbrellas and drink your tea. And on further prompting she says that otherwise things will fall on the tea. I laughed long and hard for about a good two minutes. She then says that I am mad and I should go see a doctor, to which I laughed even louder and that's when she started laughing herself, laughing at this mad man. So here are two faces of reality. To her it is serious and to me so comical. And from the looks on her face it appears that I have a problem. As sweet as they come the sweet old lady is my mother. She is 93. We have many hours of fun I would think, or at least I do. There's never a dull moment. She has dementia.
Dementia is a progressively debilitating disease usually caused by neurodegenerative disease. It is where neurons of the brains begin to lose their ability to function gradually and irreversibly due to conditions affecting only or primarily the neurons of the brain. It is very common at old age. What is less common is the non-degenerative condition, which has chances of reversibility if the condition is treated. The symptoms range from the serious loss of cognitive ability such as loss of memory, attention, language and problem solving ability to disorientation in time, place and identity, in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging.
Treatment of mental illness is very different to other illnesses. There is no magic pill or immediate results. There is no reset button. The treatment is slow, usually with medication for psychosis or depression which dulls the mind so completely that the mind loses its ability to function. Without a functioning mind I see that changing it to see reality in a different light becomes impossible as it renders the mind completely useless. But medication is important, as these patients have lost their natural ability to be able to regulate the various chemical reactions that take place in their brains that control mental activity.
Reality is our magic, and to each her own. What is real and what is not, what is delusional and what isn't is usually determined in the public court of reality. If all of us determine that something is what it is then it is so.
So who is seeing things right and who is seeing things wrong? Or, say, who is sane and who is insane? Does it really matter for what matters is what is real to us, just like a dream, when we feel and experience everything as very real. And, that would be until we begin to see things more clearly, such as the illusory nature of a magician's trick.
In my experience I have found that what works best when confronted by a person with a different reality to mine is patience, love, respect and understanding. This can apply to everyone, And if you do so you will see very different reactions in people.
How you convey your message is very important, esp. in the case of patients suffering from mental illness or dementia. Words account for a small part of communication. Intonation and inflexion in speech, eye and facial expressions, and body language is very important in getting your message across that you really care. So you have to really care if you want to see results, something that calls upon more than a perfunctory performance of one's duty. I have seen this dexterity in all of the staff I have come across at wards 9E and IJ2 at Kowloon hospital. The patients are content and most see rapid improvement. I did not see this at the other hospital in Kwung Tong, where I found most nurses were usually condescending and supercilious in their interactions with patients. The environment was quite different, not as tranquil and peaceful.
One interesting but worrying aspect I found with in-patients is that patients soon become dependent on the secure environment of the ward. A place that is all-found and secure seems to give them a sense of security and comfort and low anxiety. Most of the patients I came across had a predilection to return to the ward whenever their families took them out for the day. The longer the stay in in-patient care the more difficult it would be to function outside on their own, becoming more and more detached from the outside and the pressures that come with it. Some patients had been there for years. Anorexic patients, two of whom I know, who had shown signs of progress at the start of their treatment regressed once they settled in the comfort of the ward, the weight sliding back to just above the critical level. One of the patents was in her fourth or fifth year. The other is on her fourth month.
The tree that I called the Flame-of-the-forest is known as the Flame Tree. I called it just the way my mother called it out to me when I was a very young boy of perhaps 3 or 4, each time that we saw the riot of red on the trees in bloom. She still remembers it. It was always a welcome sight, like a breadth of fresh air, and much like a new mind on a bright new day.
Reality is subjective - can be two facets of the same thing for two people - must therefore be conditioned by the minds of these two different people. It is referred to as conditioned reality. All things known to us are conditioned reality. So you and I have different perceptions of the same reality. If we have similar backgrounds we may have somewhat similar perceptions..
Those who are ignorant of its deceit appreciate reality in a magic show as magic. It is a conjuring trick or an illusory feat considered magic by naive observers. Likewise the illusory feats of the mind are considered real by the naive observer.
Reality in dreams is very real to the observer although we may be physically far removed.
Feelings and perceptions arise out of contact with sensory objects or mental objects. Feelings will condition our perceptions and perceptions our feelings, almost simultaneously, and repetitively, and both will continuously update our stored knowledge or experience, that is the vast reservoir of knowledge that we have upon which both feelings and perceptions rely on upon contact with an object.
When feelings are in conflict with perceptions we will display low moods, lack of self esteem, loss of interest, suicidal tendencies and so on. All of this is referred to as mental depression in Western psychiatry. This happens when we misapprehend ourselves as two people, such as one who should not be suffering for I am me the all good person and one who is suffering for no fault of mine. It is our reality of our “I, me and mine” - our ego self. The two people in us may not be clearly evident to most of us.
We may also have that voice in our heads that either talks to us or gives a running commentary. Some of us who find this too much to handle seek the help of others, such as psychiatrists and counselors. A usual question asked by nurses upon admitting a patient is if there is a voice in the head. These voices can tell you to do many things including talking you out of eating when one of you say you must eat, usually experienced by those suffering from anorexia nervosa. Similarly some suffering form schizophrenia will experience the voice urging suicide.
We have minds that seize and become attached to an object or various objects and revolve around these objects. This is the usual delusional mind that we all have. But sometimes these attachments can be strong making you go on and on. And then you feel you are on top of everything, and on top of the world. This can affects sleep and you can have sleepless nights. Your mind will be very alert and working, no matter how hard you try to relax or sleep. After experiencing this for sometime the mind will shut down giving you a complete low mood, making you withdraw completely, ending in depression. The mind becomes confused, and feelings in conflict with perceptions. This all experiencing mind with or without a mind of conflict is what is usually referred to as bi-polar disorder in Western psychiatry.
When this confusion begins to affect the mind, usually both the minds, or by this time if you have multiple personalities then all of the minds, then it will affect the normal functions of the mind such as the working mind, the rationalizing mind, the plotting mind, together with resulting feelings and perceptions. A collection of these minds of various realities and conflicts is usually referred as schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is defined as a mental disorder. Its characterization includes the breakdown of thought processes and poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.
The mind can never be compartmentalized in to various divisions as we have done for it is one and dynamic. We do it for better understanding.
When we become more attuned with nature we will discover that the mind is mounted on energy. This energy is in everything. It is the nature of everything. If our bodies have an unobstructed flow of energy then we would be of peaceful mind and have a mind of lucidity and clarity, unobstructed or un obscured. So the mind can be used to project this energy for where the mind goes the energy must, therefore, follow. To be able to experience this one must have an extremely tranquil mind.
Mental illness can arise from a physical defect, congenital or acquired by damage to the brain, or by the mind itself - a mind that is not able to handle or process the input it receives. This can impair the normal physical functions of the brain, affecting our cognition, our perceptions and our reality.
There's this sweet old lady to whom I offered some tea. She tells me that she has one hundred umbrellas for sale. I suggested that I make some tea so we could enjoy it together she says she has tea as well for sale. I told her that was fine but it was a strange combination and why so? She tells me you open the umbrellas and drink your tea. And on further prompting she says that otherwise things will fall on the tea. I laughed long and hard for about a good two minutes. She then says that I am mad and I should go see a doctor, to which I laughed even louder and that's when she started laughing herself, laughing at this mad man. So here are two faces of reality. To her it is serious and to me so comical. And from the looks on her face it appears that I have a problem. As sweet as they come the sweet old lady is my mother. She is 93. We have many hours of fun I would think, or at least I do. There's never a dull moment. She has dementia.
Dementia is a progressively debilitating disease usually caused by neurodegenerative disease. It is where neurons of the brains begin to lose their ability to function gradually and irreversibly due to conditions affecting only or primarily the neurons of the brain. It is very common at old age. What is less common is the non-degenerative condition, which has chances of reversibility if the condition is treated. The symptoms range from the serious loss of cognitive ability such as loss of memory, attention, language and problem solving ability to disorientation in time, place and identity, in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging.
Treatment of mental illness is very different to other illnesses. There is no magic pill or immediate results. There is no reset button. The treatment is slow, usually with medication for psychosis or depression which dulls the mind so completely that the mind loses its ability to function. Without a functioning mind I see that changing it to see reality in a different light becomes impossible as it renders the mind completely useless. But medication is important, as these patients have lost their natural ability to be able to regulate the various chemical reactions that take place in their brains that control mental activity.
Reality is our magic, and to each her own. What is real and what is not, what is delusional and what isn't is usually determined in the public court of reality. If all of us determine that something is what it is then it is so.
So who is seeing things right and who is seeing things wrong? Or, say, who is sane and who is insane? Does it really matter for what matters is what is real to us, just like a dream, when we feel and experience everything as very real. And, that would be until we begin to see things more clearly, such as the illusory nature of a magician's trick.
In my experience I have found that what works best when confronted by a person with a different reality to mine is patience, love, respect and understanding. This can apply to everyone, And if you do so you will see very different reactions in people.
How you convey your message is very important, esp. in the case of patients suffering from mental illness or dementia. Words account for a small part of communication. Intonation and inflexion in speech, eye and facial expressions, and body language is very important in getting your message across that you really care. So you have to really care if you want to see results, something that calls upon more than a perfunctory performance of one's duty. I have seen this dexterity in all of the staff I have come across at wards 9E and IJ2 at Kowloon hospital. The patients are content and most see rapid improvement. I did not see this at the other hospital in Kwung Tong, where I found most nurses were usually condescending and supercilious in their interactions with patients. The environment was quite different, not as tranquil and peaceful.
One interesting but worrying aspect I found with in-patients is that patients soon become dependent on the secure environment of the ward. A place that is all-found and secure seems to give them a sense of security and comfort and low anxiety. Most of the patients I came across had a predilection to return to the ward whenever their families took them out for the day. The longer the stay in in-patient care the more difficult it would be to function outside on their own, becoming more and more detached from the outside and the pressures that come with it. Some patients had been there for years. Anorexic patients, two of whom I know, who had shown signs of progress at the start of their treatment regressed once they settled in the comfort of the ward, the weight sliding back to just above the critical level. One of the patents was in her fourth or fifth year. The other is on her fourth month.
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