Spacious Minds

Spacious Minds argues that resilience is not a mere absence of suffering. Sara E. Lewis's research reveals how those who cope most gracefully may indeed experience deep pain and loss. Looking at the Tibetan diaspora, she challenges perspectives that liken resilience to the hardiness of physical materials, suggesting people should "bounce back" from adversity. More broadly, this ethnography calls into question the tendency to use trauma as an organizing principle for all studies of conflict where suffering is understood as an individual problem rooted in psychiatric illness.

Beyond simply articulating the ways that Tibetan categories of distress are different from biomedical ones, Spacious Minds shows how Tibetan Buddhism frames new possibilities for understanding resilience. Here, the social and religious landscape encourages those exposed to violence to see past events as impermanent and illusory, where debriefing, working-through, or processing past events only solidifies suffering and may even cause illness. Resilience in Dharamsala is understood as sems pa chen po, a vast and spacious mind that does not fixate on individual problems, but rather uses suffering as an opportunity to generate compassion for others in the endless cycle of samsara. A big mind view helps to see suffering in life as ordinary. And yet, an intriguing paradox occurs. As Lewis deftly demonstrates, Tibetans in exile have learned that human rights campaigns are predicated on the creation and circulation of the trauma narrative; in this way, Tibetan activists utilize foreign trauma discourse, not for psychological healing, but as a political device and act of agency.

Sara E. Lewis is Associate Professor of Contemplative Psychotherapy and Buddhist Psychology at Naropa University. Follow her on X @DeathRebirthLab.

Spacious Minds thus offers a brilliant illustration of how the anthropological study of the mind provides an innovative avenue to illuminate and engage with the very material world of policy, politics and power.

Sara E. Lewis's Spacious Minds is an important and engaging work for those interested in cross-cultural psychology and well-being, anthropology, diaspora studies, those seeking a better understanding of the complexities designing public and mental health interventions, and all who seek to understand 'sociocultural practices that bolster communities under duress.'

Lewis' expertise in both Western and Tibetan approaches to trauma and resilience could not be more needed at this time, and Spacious Minds distills her expertise in a manner that is scholarly, engaging, and accessible to lay readers, clinicians, and academics alike. Her work is a profound reminder that there is no one right way to understand or experience trauma, nor one right way to recover from it.

Tanya Luhrman, Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor of Anthropology and Professor, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University:

In the best tradition of anthropology, this book shows us that when suffering and distress are imaged differently—and when the nature of the mind is understood differently—trauma is not traumatizing, at least in the same way. This is a wise and thoughtful book.

Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Emory University:

This beautifully written and important work poses a timely and thought-provoking question: If cultures can produce moral injury, can they also produce resilience? Lewis shows brilliantly that the Tibetan exile community, characterized both by adversity and cultural resources for transforming adversity, holds important lessons for our reflection. Highly recommended.

Gerald Roche, University of Melbourne:

The book makes a significant contribution in broadening our understanding of resilience from a cross-cultural perspective, and also in deepening our understanding of a significant facet of Tibetan Buddhist culture in a nuanced, respectful and non-tokenistic way.