The Healthy Mind: Mindfulness, True Self, and the Stream of Consciousness

330 Pages·2018·2.334 MB·English

by  Henry M. Vyner

THE HEALTHY MIND

In The Healthy Mind , Dr. Henry M. Vyner presents the fi ndings of twenty-seven
years of research spent interviewing Tibetan lamas about their experiences of
the mind. The interviews have generated a science of stream of consciousness
that demonstrates that the healthy human mind is the egoless mind, given the
paradox that the egoless mind has an ego. Vyner presents this science and also
shows his readers how to cultivate a healthy mind. T he Healthy Mind features
extensive interview excerpts, theoretical maps of the egoless and egocentric mind,
discussions of the history of science, and thought experiments that unpack the
implications of his fi ndings. This is a useful book for all those interested in the
dialogue between Buddhism and psychology and in understanding the nature
of the healthy mind.
Henry M. Vyner, MD, MA is an adjunct professor at the Center for Nepali
and Asian Studies at Tribhuvan University—the national university of Nepal. He
is a physician and cultural anthropologist, and has spent the last twenty-seven years
doing a body of research on the nature of the healthy mind amongst Tibetan
lamas living in south and central Asia. While in Nepal, he was also a visiting
scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, and held a prior position as a
research fellow at Tribhuvan University. Prior to his work in Asia, he served as
Director of Research at the Radiation Research Institute in Berkeley, California.

THE HEALTHY MIND
Mindfulness, True Self, and
the Stream of Consciousness
Henry M. Vyner
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Henry M. Vyner to be identifi ed as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vyner, Henry M., author.
Title: The healthy mind : mindfulness, the true self, and the stream of
consciousness / Henry M. Vyner.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business, [2019] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2018009364 (print) | LCCN 2018026501 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781315122649 (eBook) | ISBN 9781138564831 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781138564848 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315122649 (pbk)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism—Psychology. | Awareness—Religious aspects—
Buddhism. | Consciousness—Religious aspects—Buddhism. | Mindfulness
(Psychology) | Mental health—Religious aspects—Buddhism.
Classifi cation: LCC BQ4570.P76 (ebook) | LCC BQ4570.P76 V96 2018 (print) |
DDC 294.301/9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009364
ISBN: 978-1-138-56483-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-56484-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-12264-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Visit the eResource: www.routledge.com/9781138564831
To all of the lamas that I have interviewed
and
to the freedom of Tibet

CONTENTS
Preface: Cultivating the Wild Stream of Consciousness ix
Semantics and Synonyms xv
Acknowledgments xix
PART I
Introduction 1
1 Ego and War: 9/11 3
2 The Healthy Mind Assumption 23
3 Lopon Tegchoke Interview: The Primordial Wisdom of
the Natural Mind 44
PART II
Science of the Stream of Consciousness 55
4 Tibet: Entering the Stream of Consciousness 57
5 A Cultivated Blind Spot: A Phenomenon Is a
Phenomenon Is a Phenomenon 77
6 Ode to the Stream of Consciousness 97
viii Contents
PART III
The Egocentric Mind 135
7 The Place of the Ego in Nature 137
8 The Egocentric State of Mind 152
9 The Vicissitudes of the Ego 171
PART IV
The Egoless Mind 207
10 The Goodness of the Natural Mind: The Control
of No Control 209
11 The Egoless State of Mind 222
12 Meditation: The Cultivation of the Egoless Mind 257
13 The Future of the Egoless Mind: The Science 281
14 The Future of the Egoless Mind: A Psychology of Peace 289
Index 298
PREFACE
Cultivating the Wild Stream of Consciousness
The journey that took me to Asia to do twenty years of research on the nature
of the healthy mind with Tibetan lamas began when I started meditating at the
age of twelve. At that point, I didn’t know what meditation was. I vaguely knew
there was a religion called Buddhism, but again, I knew nothing at all about it.
Not even the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. The journey to Asia began
when I spontaneously stumbled into doing what I now know to be meditation.
I would go down to the lake near our small horse farm and let my mind
run free out in the space over and around the lake. It was just that simple, and
I began to do it regularly. The operative phrase here is “run free.” This was the
beginning of my pursuit of the wild stream of consciousness and the natural
state of mind it engenders.
I let my stream of consciousness run free because I saw it as a way to be as
open and honest as I could possibly be with myself about everything that was
going on in my mind. That freedom was for me an antidote to the conformism
of the life around me, and I wanted to escape that conformism and be what I
thought was real.
At that point, I didn’t know it yet, but there were two separate traditions in
the history of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism that had made a related discovery towards
the end of the fi rst millennium AD. They had both recognized that the simple
act of letting the stream of consciousness run free, absolutely free, was the key
to cultivating an enlightened mind.
Those two lineages still exist today, and they are known as the DzogChen
and Mahamudra traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. The DzogChen tradition, in
particular, developed and championed meditation practices that allow the stream