Hi all,

I am taking a series of seminars on Depression by a Jungian analyst and psychiatrist, and in one segment of his first presentation he spent some time  distinguishing John of the Cross' Dark Night phenomenology vs. clinical depression. I thought it could be interesting to share some notes I took here, as the line seems often blurred between these two things (certainly for me). I think most people here will be able to translate the 'God' language with a Dharma language:

''In Dark Night, one feels abandoned by God, helpless. In depression one feels rather punished by God (or by life..).

In dark night one thinks of death but not suicide. In depression one may think of suicide or wanting to die.

In dark night, faith is retained. In depression it is lost.

Dark night as a divine gift; making one realize the need for God (or for the Dharma).

Dark night as spiritual desolation due to disappointment in one's spiritual life.

In dark night compassion is retained for others who suffer. In severe depression one cannot think of other people.

In dark night one feels alone but not lonely. Loneliness is experienced in depression.

One can be in dark night accompanied by a sense of peace or rightness (this has to be the way it is). But in depression one feels there is something wrong going on, and feels dread.''

Personal reflection: Dark night will then be about feelings and thoughts one has about one's spiritual path, and not about feelings of guilt and/or of being unloved/unloveable like in depressive states. 

Thoughts?

I think these are very very good distinctions. Really well said --- and these kind of stuff needs to be said more often. Often people want to avoid/ignore or explain away their depression by using the language of meditation/spirituality, but this isn't honoring reality. And the fastest way to treat depression is to treat depression, which may include meditation, but no one should just meditate and hope it fixes their depression.

The meditative/spiritual dark night is fundamentally workable. It's purifying and humbling, but not necessarily traumatic. Now that said, there can be a lot of confusion about this as the dark night gets sorted out and understood. It is very very common to interpret the early experience of Misery for example as: I am fundamentally flawed, I'm not worthy of protection, I'm abandoned... etc. This is in a sense the "childish/selfish" form of misery that can linger into adulthood and all of us have a little piece of this in us. And this gets triggered in the Dark Night.

So we shouldn't get judgey if someone needs to work through their problems as part of their Dark Night. It doesn't mean that things are necessarily being done wrong. They might just need time to work through their confusion.

But mature meditative Misery - the knowledge/insight of Misery - is where it becomes clear that life is difficult and degrees-of-unfair and hard to predict, and it is like that for all beings and yet life goes on, and out of this results in a great compassion for ourselves and all beings. And also a sense of resilency, in the sense that someone is able to say "even though life is full of shit, that doesn't mean I need to FEEL like shit" or "Hell, too, is a place to live" as they say in Zen. Misery is sadness because we wish for a more just and merciful world, it's okay to feel this way sometimes. It's normal.

That is really the main distinction between depression and Dark Night: whether it is leading to a more mature and grounded awareness and acceptance of lived life. And leading to greater resilience in the midst of difficulty.

I think the term "dark night" as used by Daniel is not depression, and not the dark night of John of the Cross you are describing in the opening post. It is something else that comes from mediation and is characterized by specific stages in the progress of insight ( I think, 6 fear, 7 misery, 8 disgust and maybe others I'm an expert on Daniel's terminology). 

I think of it as having to do with suppressed emotions arising into consciousness caused by quieting the mental chatter we use to hide from our inner thoughts, and also glimpses into anatta that can be disconcerting/scary for some people, and in some cases for people who are not prepared for it.

I believe these effects can happen to meditators, but personally I haven't experienced the linear and cause and effect relationships of those stages as described in the progress of insight. I think they occur but due to various chaotic effects not cyclic or in a simple linear predictable manner. And these emotions that naturally occur in life might sometimes be attributed to meditation when they are simply due to the ordinary ups and downs of life.

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https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/5-dissolution-entrance-to-the-dark-night/

Your sources, Ben, Shargrol? 
I personally really don't agree it is as straightforward as this.

I hope I didn't convey that I thought that this was straightforward! I agree, it is not.

(Source is personal communication, Shargrol, November 2024 )

It seems to me that a difficulty is that many people start meditating because they are depressed or have other psychological problems. This is the water they are swimming in. It is then very hard to tease apart suffering experienced as part of gaining knowledge of suffering and suffering that is just there to start with.

It is also hard to tease apart the benefits of meditation. For example, moving from depression to a more ordinary experience could be a benefit of meditation and a person having gained that benefit might teach the techniques used to gain that benefit, but those techniques might not provide a benefit to someone who is not depressed. And, of course, the opposite is true. Techniques that work well for people who are not depressed might not work for those who are. 

It would be great if there were a way to assess the water that a new meditator is swimming in and tailor a course of techniques to that. Unfortunately, that's not usually how it works. Books, teachers, groups, etc., usually take a big tent approach, which is great, but it tends to go hand in hand with a one-size-fits-all policy. 

Just to add my anecdotal evidence to the festering data pile. 

Ben, everything from your notes above about depression I have experienced in dark night stages and most of what is writted about darknight I have experienced while depressed. 

I had pretty severe depression, suicidal ideation etc for many years before the dharma. 

I do think the dark night is different, but I don't think it's necessarily emotionally different. The consequence of working through my first darknight is that I largely stopped having depression. After that all of my mental health struggles were relatively well defined experiences of trauma or neurosis. 

​​​​​​​We might agree here that darknight can tend towards negative experiences, harsh vibrations, dark self talk... But getting into the nitty gritty of definite emotional effects or definite meanings being derived isn't as easy to verify. A lot of this stuff can change wildly person to person. A lot of this might feel the same and be discussed differently person to person. 

​​​​​​​Just my own idiosyncratic data, I'm nuts so... Don't know if it's useful, certainly don't know if it's the same for everybody. 

I think it's tempting but often not useful to frame insight stages as the emotional content that may arise during them. I think it's more useful to see them as stages which may potentially give rise to certain emotional or mental qualities. Think of it like a very subtle shift in our experience or understanding or I basically always want to say neurology that can give rise to different sets of emotions, different shades of the human experience, different facets of our psyche. 

​​​​​​​The stages are I suppose very subtle shifts in how experience and our understanding of experience is fabricated. It's on a much more fundamental level than meaning or emotion. At least this is my best understanding of it. 

​​​​​​​I don't know personally if the dark night / dukkha nana conflagration (is that a word? Edit: it's not the right word at all) is helpful. But it is now cultural so here we are. 

Yeah, the idea of there even being Dark Night >nanas< really doesn't become obvious until someone has done a lot of sitting and perhaps not unless someone is doing a residential retreat. It's really when you can spend the day watching at how the mind moves into contextual frames and have seen it several times that the idea of a nana even makes any sense. 

Hi Olivier,

The source was from a seminar by Dr. Lionel Corbett, Jungian analyst and psychiatrist.

Thanks all for contributing to this discussion. 

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Those are good theological symbols and examples. The Dark Night to me feels like the debate in the mind where on onside there is an argument for indulging in enjoyable seeking for pleasure, which seems reasonable, but the insight meditation highlights the dukkha that was always there and it magnifies the pain and conflict that's physically felt. The problem is that the argument for enjoying peace is just starting, so when objects are abandoned, the meditator is stuck without objects, and things can turn meaningless and depressing quick, if new objects aren't found right away. This is why there's a need for concentration.

​​​​​​​Peace as object comes later when there's enough time to suffuse old habits. As time passes, the inclination to chase pleasure is met with the "it's not worth it" response in the nerves, and one changes one's mind and begins to enjoy renunciation instead. Depression happens when there's no new object, and no point to life. Peace happens when feeling restful is now prized.

The theological examples above are more about faith in an afterlife, and therefore it takes on the same feelings that people have of a relationship with a parent or deity, including feelings of belonging, acceptance, reward, or loneliness, rejection, and punishment.