Using Depression on the Path

Think that the nature of your mind is clear light, buddha nature, so you can be free from all problems. The delusions, all the mistakes of the mind, are all temporary. Even though delusions have a beginning, they can be ended. That is why stains, all suffering, which comes from delusions, can be pacified. Buddha explained all the methods and path to do that. By practicing that, you can definitely overcome them.

You have a good heart now and you can develop this and expand it to all sentient beings. It is like when the Buddha was a bodhisattva, and cherished each and every sentient being, offering extensive benefits to them.

The best thing is to use the depression. There are many meditations on thought transformation, but the key thing is to use depression like a weapon, a bomb, against your self-cherishing thought. You committed non-virtuous actions and depression is the result of that. It is like the enemy, the self-cherishing thought, likes harming you with depression. So, now you use the depression that the self-cherishing thought has given you in the same way—you hit back at the self-cherishing thought, which so far hasn’t allowed you to achieve enlightenment, not even liberation from samsara, or to have any realizations. It has only made you suffer for beginningless rebirths, up until now.

As long as you keep the ego, as long as the ego dwells in your heart, it will be the same; it will hook so many problems, especially obstacles to practicing Dharma. It won’t allow you to have any attainment in the future: liberation or enlightenment. It will continuously make you suffer torture in samsara, and keep you in samsaric problems.

When depression comes, use it against the ego, the self-cherishing thought, which has given you the depression. Then rejoice, “How wonderful it is to have depression, which can destroy the ego.” Rather than the ego defeating you, you defeat the ego. Rejoice how it’s wonderful to have depression. It means you have succeeded in the prayers you made in the past to experience all the sufferings of other sentient beings, especially the important one, all sentient beings’ depression. Think, “I am experiencing this for all the sentient beings who are experiencing depression now and who will experience it in the future.” By experiencing this for others, for numberless sentient beings, depression becomes the path for you to achieve enlightenment. That means it becomes the path to enlighten all sentient beings, and the cause of happiness of all sentient beings. So, this should be your top meditation, the best one.

Therefore, depression becomes like a wish-granting jewel, the most precious thing, fulfilling your own wishes and those of all sentient beings for happiness: the numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, asuras, suras, and intermediate stage beings. Look at it as positive. You can use both methods: using depression to destroy the ego and experiencing depression for all sentient beings. Both ways you use the depression to generate bodhicitta and develop bodhicitta. In this way, it makes your life more meaningful than not having depression. If you did not have depression, your life would be filled with distractions and you wouldn’t practice Dharma sincerely, experiencing suffering for all sentient beings. Your depression gives you the opportunity to do that all the time.

If you have depression due to a particular reason, for example a relationship problem, meditate on that situation. If the depression is without reason, then do the meditation as I have explained here.

Using depression to develop compassion enables you to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. It enables us to free sentient beings from suffering more quickly, and bring them to enlightenment more quickly. So, enjoy all these benefits of depression by thinking about them.