I can see that SSRIs are a big no-no, I don’t see much discussion about TCAs like amitryptaline. I’m under the assumption that TCAs also affect serotonin uptake thus they would be a bad idea to mix. Unless I’m missing something?
So, I found a comment from a few years ago on this subreddit linking to a 1979 teaching by the late Lama Yeshe.
You Cannot Say All Desire Is Negative - FPMT
"Logically we can see that, from the Buddhist point of view, all human life, including our body, comes from the positive mind. It’s positive karma that produces this body that gives us the ability to enjoy things. But, as human beings, we have limitations. When the lamrim teachings highlight certain aspects of our life as negative, we can jump to the conclusion that everything to do with attachment is negative: “I am completely negative; the world is completely negative.” Then everything gets very dark, because that’s the exaggerated way in which we project or interpret it.
I want you to understand clean clear that we distinguish two things: negative, or sinful, and positive. Attachment, or desire, can be negative and sinful, but it can also be positive. The positive aspect is that which produces pleasure: samsaric pleasure, human pleasure—the ability to enjoy the world, to see it as beautiful, to have whatever you find attractive.
So you cannot say that all desire is negative and produces only pain. Wrong. You should not think like that. Desire can produce pleasure—but only temporary pleasure. That’s the distinction. It’s temporary pleasure. And we don’t say that temporal pleasure is always bad, that you should reject it. If you reject temporal pleasure, then what’s left? You haven’t attained eternal happiness yet, so all that’s left is misery.
But you should not make the mistake of trying to actualize temporary pleasure [as an end in itself]. You can enjoy it while you have it, but you should not squeeze yourself striving for it. The problem is the mind that believes temporary pleasure to be the best there is. That’s a total delusion, an over-estimated conception. Like looking at a cloud in the sky and thinking, “What a beautiful cloud; I wish it would last forever.” You’re dreaming."
The view he's espousing here makes a lot of sense to me as a someone fairly new to Buddhist practice. I picked it up last year because I wanted to lead a calmer, kinder, more equanimous life, and to reduce the craving and clinging that lead to negative states of mind. I have been to a Thai Theravada temple and a Jodu Shinshu temple, and am currently trying to find the sangha that's the best fit for me. My personal practice has definitely been beneficial, but as you'd expect there are a few points of friction.
As a lay person and a new practitioner, and as someone who finds a lot of fulfillment in art that wouldn't exist without human passion, in friendships and relationships that involve worldly emotional connection and enjoyment of impermanent things....I struggle with squaring my experience of the world with a practice that would immediately strive towards leaving passions and desires behind completely, even if I'm pretty convinced intellectually that the Buddhist assertion about suffering and liberation is correct.
Of course, to annihilate passion and desire you'd have to be liberated or enlightened, obviously most Buddhists worldwide aren't, and it seems to be the consensus among casual lay practitioners that it's ok to have emotions, enjoy things, want things, etc. without inhabiting those emotions and becoming reactive to them, letting your attachment to those feelings rule you, or becoming averse to the impermanence of these things. Ideally, I'd find my place in a sangha that approaches things from this direction while providing teachings and some communal life, because I wouldn't want to be totally self-directed and potentially take the easy way out/self-justify in too many ways lol.
So, my question is this: I get the impression that Tibetan Buddhism has more of a balanced relationship with worldly emotion and desire and is potentially less conservative in its approach to these things. Is Lama Yeshe's view representative at all of how Tibetan Buddhism approaches these issues? Or representative of Gelug? I know that when you get into the esoteric stuff, there's an element of incorporating traditionally "negative" emotions from a Buddhist sense into practice, which is less present in other traditions. Not that getting into Vajrayana is on my radar, but it's interesting. Is my read on this correct or do am I talking out of my ass here?
Thanks!