Our Life Is Shaped by Our Mind

How one practitioner’s dedication to finding a cure for human suffering changed the world.

There is a story about a man named ‘Sid’ who was deeply concerned with the subject of mental health and well-being. Particularly with the cause of emotional suffering and distress which he saw everywhere in the world around him.

At about age 30, he decided to dedicate his life to finding an answer for the condition and enrolled in a well-regarded school specializing in managing and curing the condition. For years he read and practiced the processes taught at the school for identifying the causes and cures.

However, at the end of his studies, he was not satisfied with the results of his training and informed the head of the school he was leaving.

The Journey for Knowledge

Sometime later, he arrived at another center of learning and enrolled determined to find a cure. Again, Sid applied himself diligently to mastering the practices and cures taught at the school.

Upon leaving, he joined other graduate practitioners and together they determined to perfect their skills to cure the condition by practicing what they had learned upon themselves to experience the results firsthand.

For years they modified their diets and practiced extreme physical and mental conditioning routines they had learned in their training. They experimented with variations in their programs to more deeply understand and master the full scope of what they had learned. Only then they reasoned would they be masters of their practice and able to help others.

But as the story goes, even this work failed to produce the desired result Sid was seeking. He now realized that if he was to break through, he alone would have to examine the question and find the answer.

In Search of a Way

One day after years of solitary study, in a moment of clear insight he arrived upon the answer he had been searching for. He understood the source of all emotional suffering lay in the presence of thoughts within the mind that directly impacted one’s emotional state.

He saw that thoughts themselves were ‘objects’. Substances with form that could directly affect one’s internal well-being. Like a glass filled with water to the brim, if a stone is dropped into the liquid, it displaces a quantity of water equal to its mass thereby changing the state of the water. Once removed, the empty space left by the stone could again be filled with water returning the glass to its original state of balance.

The Four Principles

This led Sid to his first breakthrough which was: emotional distress or suffering is a naturally occurring phenomenon and ever present. It is caused by the presence of a displacing ‘though object’ unbalancing the natural state of the mind.

Second, he noted that the origin of displacing thought objects can be traced directly to an external source such as an event or person, or an environmental condition forced upon an individual. Equally, it can be caused by an internal displacing ‘thought object’ created within one’s own mind.

Third, he established that emotional suffering could be remedied with lasting results if the correct or ‘right’ processes were applied restoring balance and well-being.

Forth and finally, he developed a distinct program of ‘right’ practices to move an individual from a state of emotional distress and suffering to a state of emotional/mental well-being going forward.

A New School of Practice

Like the schools he had first studied in, Sid had also developed an original alternative explanation for the cause of suffering and codified a ‘right’ method to correct it. However, the new method had yet to be proven in practical situations.

He understood that he would have to subject his findings to peer review and ‘clinical trials’ to establish whether or not he had found a better way to remedy the condition of emotional suffering.

Upon returning from his solitary research, Sid encountered a group of his former peers with whom he had studied and practiced years earlier. As he expected, there was some reluctance by his former colleagues to give his findings a hearing. A common occurrence for those in any trade, occupation and profession that break with convention. For them, he had become an outsider and a renegade to the profession and its traditions.

However, in time his peers began to accept his work and eagerly enter into training to become master practitioners in the new school he had founded. Energetically they promoted the new system of well-being and it flourished.

Hundreds and eventually thousands of people were introduced to the methods and practices of the new school, and new students came seeking to learn and become trained practitioners.

For many years the new school flourished under the guidance of its founder who observed that while he had accomplished what he set to do decades earlier in his life, his contribution like so many innovations before him, would eventually fade into the story of history along with himself and his students.

But some works, for reasons not fully understood, are destined to outlive their original creators affecting people in future generations equally as those who experienced the work in its original time. What history has named the enduring quality of craftsmanship, or ‘excellence of execution’ found in every trade, occupation and profession in the world.

When a work, a finished result that often takes thousands of hours over years to produce, measurably affects the life experience of those who come into contact with it, regardless of place or time we label it a masterpiece.

And so it happened with ‘Sid’ born Siddhartha Gautama, who produced a work that did indeed change the understanding and treatment of human suffering and well-being in his time, as it does to this day more than twenty-five centuries later for those who know him as ‘The Buddha’.