The purpose of this research is to examine the contention that meditation in Tibetan Buddhism heals emotional and mental illness. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context from which the assertion that meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist modality has curative properties, and then to discuss the historical origin of Buddhism's various forms and the general Buddhist world view, together with meditation theory and techniques, and finally to suggest an evaluation of meditation from the Buddhist world view that has the effect of elaboration as well an alternative conceptual and sociological dimension.
To see how a connection can be made between Tibetan Buddhism, meditation, and the relief of emotional or mental illness, it will be instructive first to explore the background of Buddhism itself. Buddhism originated in India in the third and fourth centuries B.C. and reached throughout Asia, overlapping with the spread of Christianity. It took some four centuries to find its way to China and Tibet, but the world view took hold there decisively. Buddhism arose in China as an alternative to Confucian rationalism and class distinctions and moved toward individual mysticism (Wright, 1959, passim). This is connected to the idea that Buddhism contains egalitarian elements and that "all men had the potentialities for Buddahood" (Tsunoda, de Bary and Keen, 1958, p. 114). In each of the countries to which Buddhism spread, it took on culture-specific characteristics. This explains the emergence of various schools of Buddhist thought in China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, and Thailand, from Mahayana, Theraveda, and Tibetan (Lamaist) Buddhism on the mainland to Ch'an or Zen in Japan.
But in all schools of Buddhist thought, which overlap and converge in various ways, there are certain common elements of belief. The most crucial of these are the Four Noble Truths, as follows:
1) that all life is inevitably sorrowful; 2) that sorrow ...