Psychology in Buddhism

Related Terms

Dharma/dhamma psychology; NeoZen; New Buddhist Psychology; Psychology of Relational Buddhism; Relational Buddhism; Relational Dharma

Description

Born a prince some 100 generations ago in the clan of the Shakyas (kindness), the Buddha (awakened one), named Siddhartha (having all worldly wishes fulfilled) Gautama (most victorious on earth) before his awakening, was a fallible human being who lived at the foothills of the Himalayas in the Iron Age. Living comfortably, like many urban citizens nowadays, Siddhartha was eager to uncover life’s meaning after observing duhkha: suffering due the predicament of birth, illness, aging, and death. Historically, his teaching (Dharma, Sanskrit) countered Brahmanism by contending “neither theism nor atheism.” The Buddha’s way was explained down the ages as a religious quest, metaphysics, ethics, and recently as a psychology. This is possible due to the principle of upaya, the “skillful method” enabling the Dharma to adjust to various cultures and times.

The term “Buddhist psychology” (BP) was coined by C. Rhys Davids in her 1900 Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics. She dealt with the Theravada (Elders’) three baskets transmitted orally during four centuries and subsequently written down in Pali on palm leaves in the first century before Common Era (BCE). The first basket is about rules for bhikkhus, Buddhist scholars; the second is about the Buddha’s discourses; and the third contains abstractions of the discourses, made until the fifth century BCE. The size of these scriptures is about ten times the bible. The size of the Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Sanskrit scriptures, written during the first century BCE until the twelfth/thirteenth century, is about 50 times the bible. BP reflects a confluence of Buddhist scriptures and western psychological science. While psychology refers to the study of mind and behavior marked by the start of Wundt’s laboratory (1879), the term “psychology” did not exist in the languages through which Dharma is rendered. In BP, the mind is not located in the head but in-between people’s hearts. In first instance, BP aims at experiencing “emptiness,” comparable to the universe’s black hole dissolving everything and nothing. Emptiness is not a goal in itself but a reset point for prosocial behavior. Meditation awakens to Dependent Origination-arising-peaking-subsiding-ceasing of experience, the Buddhist insight par excellence.

The Buddhist quest is to end duhkha by improving interpersonal conduct. Based on the enlightening view that “to be means to inter-be,” a meaningful life is pursued through the Immeasurables, social meditations of loving-kindness, empathic compassion, and shared joy, filling in the emptiness. These are serene actions to antidote the Poisons of greed (causing economic crises), hatred (causing global terrorism), and ignorance (causing daily misery). The most recent development is that BP concurs in many respects with social construction, a psychology emphasizing human interconnectedness by proposing “relational being” (Gergen 2009), by contending that “transcendental truths” are nonfoundational (empty), and by asserting that psychological processes are not so much under the skin as they are in-between people. Do individuals come together to form relationships or is it out of relational process that the idea of “independent agency” is derived? (This chapter is largely based on Kwee, 2010)

Self-identification

Science

BP identifies itself as a human science. C. Rhys Davids’ (1857–1942) pioneering endeavors might be considered as the first generation of BP studies founding a basis for two subsequent generations after WWII. Building on this “old” BP, a second generation is endowed by Padmasiri de Silva’s An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology (1979, 4th revision: 2005) and David Kalupahana’s The Principles of Buddhist Psychology (1987). The second generation was also landmarked by Mahayana authors like Daisetz Teitaru Suzuki (1870–1966), Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987), and Alan Watts (1915–1973). Psychology’s “grand old men” who embraced the Dharma were William James (1842–1910), Carl Jung (1875–1961), Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), and Erich Fromm (1900–1980). The “psychobiologist” Francisco Varela (1946–2001) may be added to this list.

The third generation is primarily gathered since 1987 in the Dalai Lama’s “Mind & Life Institute” <www.mindandlife.org> which promotes a science of mind. To its inner core belongs Allan Wallace, Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson, Paul Ekman, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. The latter devised an outpatient training “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction” which sparked “mindfulness-based cognitive therapy” and a number of kindred programs <http://marc.ucla.edu>. Other cognitive-behavioral approaches have also included mindfulness, e.g., Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Whether these mindfulness meditation-inspired approaches deserve the predicate Buddhist is questionable because they conceive mindfulness as a universal method and conceal its Buddhist origins for their patients (Shapiro and Carlson 2009). A less known group, the Transcultural Society for Clinical Meditation, founded by Yutaka Haruki, is particularly committed to advance BP http://transcultural.meditation.googlepages.com. Promoting a “new” BP, this society integrates evidence-based data connecting the Dharma with psychology in order to arrive at a “social-constructionist-clinical-neuro-Buddhist psychology” (Kwee et al. 2006; Kwee 2010).

The psychology of social construction offers a metaperspective asserting that truth, reality, knowledge, and facts are community-based; that meaning, values, morality, and ethics are a cultural consensus; that objectivity is a relational achievement – verstehen is more important than erklaeren – and that language is a pragmatic tool to constitute nonfoundational “truths.” Clinical psychology prescribes an evidence-based approach of outcome research. Belonging to the most effective and efficient, the cognitive-behavioral approach gets on well with most of the Pan-Buddhist tenets. This accordance was explored by pioneers in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly by William Mikulas, Padmal de Silva, and Maurits Kwee (Kwee 1990). As a neuropsychology, BP is on the lookout for neuroscientific correlates of Buddhist concepts and practices. Initiated in the 1950s by neurophysiologists A. Kasamatsu, T. Hirai, and Y. Akishige, BP seeks, among others, for brain-based evidence of the Buddha’s 6th sense (mind’s eye) capable to perceive dharmas (the smallest units of experience) during meditation (Austin 2009).

Religion

Buddhist classical thought evolved from the Buddha’s pristine discourses as extant in the Theravada suttas’ onto the Mahayana sutras which criticize the early traditions as not prosocial enough. All scriptures were written from the first century BCE until the seventh century by anonymous authors. The sutras can be subdivided in the Perfection of Wisdom sutras and the Buddha-womb sutras which include loose texts called tantras. Nagarjuna, also known as the second Buddha, commented on the wisdom sutras through his Madhyamaka school (second century) and expounded “emptiness only” to attain by a “via negativa.” This school alludes to an intermediate phase in an evolution that moved from the Buddha to the last innovation of Yogacara “meditation only” school (fourth century) championed by Asanga and Vasubandhu who commented on the Buddha-womb sutras and complemented Nagarjuna’s “emptiness of emptiness” which they regard as a horror vacuum. Their “via positiva” containing metaphysical flirtations, deemed to be merely cognitive representations against the backdrop of emptiness, eventually grew exponentially. A Mahayana subcurrent, called Vajrayana (Adamantine Vehicle), foremost practiced in the Himalayas, evolved from Yogacara’s metaphor of deified Buddha-natures. Thus, an extensive cosmology developed; see Table 1 for a sample of categories. By having the teachings resemble a theistic religion, the upaya campaign succeeded in luring the meek into a declining Dharma.

Psychology in Buddhism, Table 1 Vajrayana divine cosmology against a backdrop of emptiness^©: a sample

Characteristics

BP is to be distinguished from Dharma interpreted as a religion. As a clinical and neuropsychology, it bears strong resemblance with the stimulus-organism-response paradigm widely used in cognitive-behavioral psychology. Dharma as social construction applies a family of redefined terms. This is in accord with Wittgenstein’s observation that meanings of words are constructed, while they are actively used by a community in service of its particular needs. Thus, a Dharma qua religion applies a “language game” of religion, while a Dharma qua psychology applies a “language game” of psychology. A social constructionist idiom of ten keywords is submitted in the following vocabulary:

• 1. Instead of Buddhism: Dharma. Translated as Buddh-“ism” which came to denote religion, philosophy, metaphysics, or ethics, Dharma refers to a way of life for which there is no western equivalent. Nonetheless, Buddhism can be used as a container term like in “Relational Buddhism.” With a capital D, it is differentiated from dharma with a simple d: perceivables, conceivables, imaginables, knowables, memorables, dreams, illusions, and delusions; manifesting in protean versatility, they all continuously change qua form and content.

• 2. Instead of the four Noble Truths: 4-Ennobling Realities. Truth smells of transcendence, while sacca from which truth is derived might also mean real. Ennobling is preferred because one will not become a nobleman by walking the Buddhist talk. A similar rationale applies to the 8-Fold Balancing Practice.

• 3. Instead of “right”: balancing (for samma) to denote eight factors entwined in a transforming practice: view-understanding, intention-thought, speech-communication, action-behavior, living-habitude, effort-commitment, attention-concentration, and awareness-introspection. Obviously, right means not wrong. Because these are dualistic terms, nondual balancing reflects the process of the “Middle Way.” BP offers a practical guide toward awakening to Dependent Origination, emptiness/Not-self, and interbeing while balancing in life’s journey. Balancing implies a spirit of equanimity/serenity. NB: dogma and sin are anathema in the Buddhist Dharma.

• 4. Instead of suffering: duhkha which refers to life’s nonsatisfactoriness, hence the adjective “existential” is applicable. Due to existential impermanence, imperfection, and gnawing imbalances, duhkha is not a punishment or sacrifice but a disquieting “dis-ease” to be endured with regard to what the next moment will bring. This gives rise to agony due to angst, anguish, aversion, despair, discomfort, frustration, lamentation, misery, pain, sorrow, and stress. Enduring duhkha becomes cyclical through “rebirths” of emotional episodes.

• 5. Instead of a paradise in the beyond, Nirvana as a state/trait of mental coolness, i.e., the result of extinction of ignorance-craving and its affective-behavioral ramifications (greed-grasping/hatred-clinging). While greed hides anxiety (fear of shortage) and sadness (grief of loss), hatred hides anger (other-blame) and depression (self-blame). It may also refer to happiness amidst adversity, smiling contentment, and silent emptiness.

• 6. Instead of reward/punishment or fate, Karma as self-chosen intentional interaction (Kamma Sutta). The Buddhist Karma is not a “bank account” of demeanor like in the following mind-boggling teaching anecdote (koan). Once in 521, Bodhidharma visited the Emperor Wu, a great patron of the Dharma. Having built many priories, he asked what merit his generosity had earned. “No merit” was the answer. Flabbergasted, he asked what the supreme essence of Dharma is. “Vast emptiness, nothing holy,” was the reply. Finally, he asked, “Who are you?” “Don’t know,” said Bodhidharma alluding to “Not-self.”

• 7. Skandhas: behavior, affect, sensation, imagery/cognition, and awareness, these BASIC modalities, move in a flux, are anchored in biological processes and in social interactions. Constituting the “provisional self,” they are subject to habits of clinging/attachment. Ultimately, this self is empty which is obvious if its reified and abstract nature is understood. BASIC’s emptiness implies that there is no ghost in the machine or a soul to identify with, a notion discarding reincarnation. The Skandhas are the Buddhist down-to-earth-all-and-everything dismissing metaphysics and a psychological cornerstone of interbeing.

• 8. Instead of the Eurocentric term “enlightenment,” “awakening” which is the pristine meaning of bodhi. The root budh means “to be wakeful and aware of,” i.e., not to be illusioned by a self/soul or delusioned by a god. As from the Age of Enlightenment (eighteenth century), scientists believe in “timeless truths” and declared the supremacy of rational-empirical/logical-positivistic science. Dharma illuminates by means of heartfelt interpersonal understanding rather than through the calculating mind.

• 9. Mara: a projection of inner states. The seducing demon Mara symbolizes inner foes, i.e., fears of death, illusions of self/soul, delusions of celestial beings, and the six realms. The realms are bliss-pride (gods), envy-struggle (demigods), greed-ignorance (animals), hate-anger (hell fires), craving-grasping (hungry ghosts), and doubting-clinging on the one hand and awakening-Nirvana on the other hand (humans).

• 10. Because the Dharma does not acknowledge sinners and saints, the arahant is not a saint but someone who has overcome her/his proverbial inner enemies.

Relevance to Science and Religion

BP moves away from Dharma viewed as a religion toward becoming a psychology of transformational dialogue. Although upaya permits presenting a “sky-god religion,” Dharma is not a religion as commonly viewed. BP will not satisfy seekers of eternalism or annihilationism. Instead, a “neither all nor nothing” is proposed which cancels out the existence of a god as well as the nonexistence of god, leaving us behind with “nontheistic emptiness.” Nontheistic means neither gnostic/theistic nor agnostic/atheistic and even not something in the middle: god is a nonissue. Instead, BP promotes mind’s emptiness as a reset point from where to cultivate prosocial feeling-thinking-interacting. Its sole aim is to end duhkha by an experiential/experimental understanding how the mind works. Not conducive to inner freedom, metaphysics, dogma, creed, belief, omniscience, and miracles are viewed as impossible to confirm or deny nonsense. Never claiming to be a godly authority, the Buddha never assigned people to worship him. Notwithstanding, he is usually listed alongside Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. The Buddha does not belong to this Abrahamic company because at bottom his Dharma considers godheads as delusional. Rather than god created man, the adage “first man created god and then god created man” is endorsed. Later adherents of the Chan/Zen denomination even admonished to kill the Buddha and advised to urinate on Buddha statues or to clean ass with scriptures, thus clarifying that concepts are empty. Phenotypical similarities mask genotypical differences: vodka and water taste differently.

Sources of Authority

James, founding father of American psychology, embraced Dharma as a psychology. He not only recognized its psychology, he also agreed on the notion of Karma (the interplay of intentional meaning and relational action), acknowledged that we “normally” are only half awake, drew on Dharma when framing concepts, e.g., the “stream of consciousness” and “pure” experience, and addressed the value of mindfulness on the wandering mind.

Ethical Principles

Robin Hood’s morality is different from the sheriff’s. By the same token, BP is a morality without ethics which concurs with the social constructionist “nonfoundational morality of collaborative practice” (Gergen 2009). Ethics are rooted in differing interpersonal values and variegated communal conduct. Because absolutisms are anathema, BP’s morality is based on relational motives. The focus is on the relational process itself in reflective negotiation and transformational dialogue as exemplified in the Jataka allegories wherein the Buddha lied and killed. Thus, Dharma is not a theory of ethics but a psychology of Not-self and interbeing. Avoiding karmic nonvirtues of body (killing, stealing, misconduct), speech (lying, divisive, harsh, idle talk), and mind (envy, harmful intent, erroneous views), BP cultivates responsibility in relationships through generosity, virtue, renunciation, insight, effort, forbearance, honesty, resolution, kindness, and equanimity.

BP and social construction view morality as a collaborative practice that goes beyond moral absolutism and relativism. It offers a morality continuum ranging from a rigid to a tolerant sense of “right.” Meaning on what one cares about in life is generated in togetherness and provides value in relationships. However, there are multiple voices within one community. What is acceptable in one relationship is not necessarily acceptable in another relationship. Various relationships generate various moralities. On the other hand, congealing moralities create a space of “them” and “badness.” If one group considers itself as morally just, others are bound to be wrong. The Buddhist stand is practical and submits that a morality that claims to be “transcendental truth” is inimical to human well-being. Because BP is not a set of rules, the moralistic terms evil and good are avoided in favor of un/wholesomeness.

Key Values

Although BP is not an ethical system, this does not imply that the Buddhist roadmap does not advance values. The Buddhist way of life embodies wholesomeness by cultivating virtue versus greed-hatred and savvy-wisdom versus ignorance. Known as the root Poisons, greed, hatred, and ignorance are to be eradicated for the sake of relational harmony; ignorance refers to unawareness of the mind’s functioning. Continuously lured by illusions and delusions, the mind, once awakened from enticing dreams, is ready to cultivate the core virtues of the Immeasurables. These are relational stances to be multiplied through contemplation, visualization, and walking the talk. Teaching social meditations to as many people as possible is the Buddhist practice to make love go round in the world.

Conceptualization

Nature/World

BP deals with the world out there as well as with the internal world which comes about by personal history in a cultural context and through a multitude of other social influences. Dealing with a relationally generated mind, the 4-Ennobling Realities is an interpersonal psychology, there is duhkha which originates and ceases in codependence, and the remedy is an 8-Fold Balancing Practice. The nature of existence is determined by relational processes, implying a view that the individual is an exponent of relationship and of the 3-Empirical Marks of Existence. Due to the world’s impermanence-imperfection, duhkha comes about: craving for permanence, grasping to perfection, and clinging on an abiding self. BP deconstructs erroneous views on self/I-me-mine. Although we need provisional tools in daily life, quasi self-identifications like a name, ultimately, there is no self. Whatever one says about self, it cannot be the same in the next moment of the flux.

Human Being

Human being as “biochemical-sensing-moving-thinking-emoting-relational being” is accountable for intentional interaction. In Karma lies the opportunity for a turnaround despite an unfortunate past. According to a review, intentional activity determines sustainable happiness for 40%, circumstances account for 10%, and genetic endowment explains 50% (Lyubomirsky 2008). We are relational beings because we “inter-be” (Avatamsaka Sutra), as (1) bodies conceived in sexual interaction, (2) interactive speech from the cradle to the grave, and (3) mind viewed as extended in between people rather than as self-contained. Change comes about as effect in body/speech/mind. The body subsumes movements (B) and feelings (A, S), the mind subsumes visualizing (I) and conceptualizing (C), and speech subsumes interrelationships. Thus, the BASIC-I of interbeing is constructed. Body/speech/mind concurs with the bio-psycho-social paradigm of self-organizing living systems operating through feedback and feedforward loops in self-perpetuating cyclical processes (Kwee 2010). Body/speech/mind is thus a subsystem of an interpersonal metasystem called interbeing (Heart Sutra), which is equivalent to relational being that exists in interaction rather than behind the eyeballs (Gergen 2009). Relational being implies the emptiness of solitary selves, the Buddhist proposition par excellence. Focusing on interactions, “you-me” binaries crumble; viewing persons as manifestations of relationships, individuals are empty of the private. Even thoughts cannot be solipsistic as they emerge from a history of language and relations. “Relational Interbeing” does not discard psychobiology but completes our humane nature.

Life and Death

BP’s raison d’être is to end duhkha; thus, metaphysical questions remain unanswered (Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta). Instead of questioning – e.g., “Is the world eternal or not, or both, or neither?” – a simile is told on a man shot by a poison arrow to emphasize action. The man would die if rather than treating him, one quizzes the archer’s name, caste, appearance, home, the arrow’s type, etc. Awakening does not require being a scientist or knowledge on the origin of life.

Once, the Buddha explained that he is a peerless arahant who had conquered his inner enemies, i.e., quenched his inner fires. Having attained Nirvana, he was going to beat the drum of “deathlessness” in a blind world (Ariyapariyesana Sutta). Deathless refers to liberation due to nonattachment – noncraving/nongrasping/nonclinging – to what is born and dies. Deathlessness is attained by uncovering the unborn, like in the Zen question: how does my face look like before I was born? Such is not a task of reconstruction; nothing can be done but to detach and “dissolve” the question. Nirvana is featureless, colorless, tasteless, and formless and has been around like space, before realizing it is here. Deathless is a state/trait free from conditioning/conditionality from the concepts of birth and death by terminating the habit of attachment.

Notions of life after death and reincarnation are atavisms, indigenous cultural beliefs, which have become part of a local Dharma. There is nothing to transmigrate across lives without a soul. BP’s rebirth is a cyclical emotional episode recurring as relational scenarios of depression, fear, anger, sadness, joy, love, or serenity. Other worldly vagaries on rebirth are to be eschewed.

Reality

Reality of the unawakened is determined by the sensorium of the visible, hearable, smellable, tastable, and touchable. Reality of the meditator is determined by the mind’s eye able to perceive dharmas. BP hypothesizes that the neuroplastic brain functions as a sixth sense organ with the capacity to perceive the mind, its activities, and its contents. Meditation enables to see “things as they really become” and to discover that dharmas move in Dependent Origination (codependence, interdependence, or nonindependence). Reality may be “true” in one community but “false” in another one. Beyond community, there is thundering silence. Like the self, reality is provisional, linguistically coconstructed, and arranged in a dance of meanings. Even if unveiled by science, data are man-made, intersubjective, relative, and inextricably space-time-culture bound. Conceived as narratives, they are amenable to amendment and to be replaced by more functional social constructions going forward. Actually, this is happening in the present transition of the Dharma from a religion toward a “Psychology of Relational Buddhism”.

Knowledge

The Buddhist community is studious. BP appreciates qualitative and quantitative research as provisional knowledge on three levels of inquiry: objective (third person neuropsychology), intersubjective (second person social psychology), and subjective (first person clinical psychology and meditation). Although objectivity is fictitious, it would be unwise to neglect statistical indexes, e.g., of the weather. BP endeavors to gain insight in the genesis of experience and in the nature of knowledge. Sensory data, even if neutrally observed, are biased by inference conditioned by cultural beliefs. Even objective validation of subjective experience by sophisticated brain imaging machines is guesswork and communal construction. Resorting to neuroscience seems to be another cultural conviction rather than a final revelation of mental states. Real for those who work within the tradition, it is questionable whether such mapping is the reflection of the world that should be privileged or is just another site of speculation. If no reality claim is privileged, there is no need to eradicate anything but to listen instead to the different voices of strange bedfellows which intersecting could spawn creative outcomes. Recognizing the pragmatics of knowledge in realizing awakening, BP advises not to carry a raft around once arrived at the other shore.

Truth

The concept of “transcendental truth” is anathema in BP which aims at experiencing emptiness via a dialectics of negation (“neither this nor that”). We live in a provisional reality of meaning and values emerging from culture and history constructed in relationships and concatenated to action. Relationships create meaning which motivates action abandoning the invaluable while participating in new relational endeavors ever making new realities and ways of life possible. This understanding of truth and reality does not constitute a belief as it is not conclusive. Dharmic “truth,” if any, is nondual: neither true nor false.

Perception

Perception is relevant in the unwholesomeness uprooting Buddhist meditations alluded to in the 8-Fold Balancing Practice. The first step is to tame the restless mind by dhyana which is the cultivation of concentration by using the breath as an anchor. It works at one pointedness, contentment, equanimity, and stillness (see Table 2).

Psychology in Buddhism, Table 2 Quadrant of mindfulness meditation^©

Mindfulness aims at illuminating consciousness and consists of attention-concentration/awareness-introspection. Dhyana is a run-up to mindfulness, encompassing Samatha meditation leading to Samadhi (stabilization) and Vipassana meditation leading to Sunyata (emptiness). While Samatha-Samadhi, comprising means and goals, operates like a metonym (there is no way to mindfulness, mindfulness is the way), Vipassana-Sunyata is purposeful by intending to further wise reflection. The quadrant clarifies that mindfulness starts by cultivating composure, tranquility, and equanimity of body/mind (including inner speech) due to relaxed concentration and bare attention by neutrally observing perceptual stimuli. Practice shifts this quiescence into a nonsuppressing state of stable flow in absorption due to gentle concentration on occurring dharmas in full presence and clear comprehension resulting in the extinction of emotional arousal (Nirvana). Having thus healed afflictions, one progresses onto cultivating mind/body (including inner speech) by cleansing the doors of perception in order to be able to see in a “special way,” i.e., perceive “things as they really become” (in Dependent Origination). This insight comes about by remembering attentiveness and by being vigilantly watchful in discerning un/wholesome Karma. By staying heedful in wise introspection and in unclouded luminosity of clear comprehension and discernment, the mind gradually shifts and/or suddenly drops toward a bottomless emptiness/selflessness, also called luminous “suchness” or liberating “zeroness.”

The slightly overlapping categories track a process of social deconstruction in order to start a process of social reconstruction through the Immeasurables. Sabbasava Sutta advises to implement mindfulness “rightly” by introspecting karmic intentions/actions wisely, i.e., with a beginner’s mind. Note that “choiceless awareness” implies that there is no prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy for what occurs in the spaces of body/speech/mind while observing dharmas. “Apperception” is a preconceptual perception in the absence of preconceived ideas. Thus, telescoping our inner galaxies and using body/speech/mind as a laboratory, we encounter dharmas which are empty on the ultimate level but full of affect on the provisional level. Inner speech, self-dialogue, or self-talk occurs during the entire process up to the point of emptiness. The mindfulness-based approaches mentioned in section “Self-Identification”, i.e., the awareness arising by “paying nonjudgmental attention on purpose and in the present moment,” are limited to the first two quadrants and are not the pristine mindfulness by excluding BP (Davidson and Kabat-Zinn 2004) and its notions indispensible for understanding Dharma, like Dependent Origination, emptiness/Not-self, and Karma.

Time

Time is socially constructed, thus an illusion. Although based on consensus, time is within us rather than out there. It is on agreement that we live in 2012 because most people follow the Christian calendar. Based on the year of the Buddha’s death (in 483 BCE), Buddhists contend that we live in 2495 (i.e., 2012 + 483).

Consciousness

Consciousness is like life itself enigmatic. Comparable to electricity, we cannot see consciousness, but nonetheless we know it exists through its working like by our capacity to respond. Awareness is a function of consciousness which ranges from deep sleep to full alertness. Clarity of mind can be enhanced by cultivating mindfulness. Mahasatipatthana Sutta refers to cultivating mindful awareness within four frames of reference: the body and its activities (feelings: sensations and emotions) and the mind and its activities (thoughts: visualizations and conceptions). Mindfulness is the general factor of subsequent practices comprising 12-Meditations, i.e., (on the body’s breathing, behaviors, organs, elements, decomposing, and feelings, and on the mind’s hindrances, modalities, senses, awakening factors), the 4-Ennobling Realities, and the 8-Fold Balancing Practice.

Rationality/Reason

Mind usually functions at the prerational, irrational, and rational levels, seldom at the postrational or wisdom level. Rationality renders the view that freedom of choice prevails in determining Karma or psychological fate. BP concurs with cognitive-behavior therapy, particularly rational emotive behavior therapy (Kwee and Ellis 1998) and cognitive therapy (Kwee et al. 2006; Kwee 2010). Both endorse the view that though we cannot control birds flying over our heads, we can prevent them from building nests in our minds. Sallatha Sutta points at rationality as an outcome of meditation: hit by an arrow the unskilled mind grieves and laments, while the skilled mind is not distraught; it grieves and laments not. While the trained mind only feels bodily pain, the untrained mind feels bodily and mental pain as if hit by two arrows.

Mystery

Based on suttas (Rahula 1997), BP demystifies by emphasizing meditation and interpreting sutras in a nonmetaphysical way. Although Mahayana with its more than 12 denominations including Zen is mysteriously exotic, the Vajrayana schools of Tibet with its many magical rituals are conspicuously secretive. Wisdom is hermeneutically locked in puzzling teachings; unlocking requires guru worship.

Relevant Themes

The concept of Karma carries religious and secular meanings causing a plethora of misunderstandings. In Brahmanism, it is a law of cause and effect stretching across reincarnated lifetimes toward rejoining Brahman. A judicial account of retribution, this Karma determines fate, like one’s caste. The Buddhist Karma renders a completely different meaning. The Buddhist pristine interpretation is psychological, not metaphysical. Action is a function of intention (seed) and conducive to its fruit: feeling/affect/emotion. In BP, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. “Evil” can be done without any purposeful intention. Without a god banking merit or demerit, BP is a psychological system of Karma transformation and collaborative practice. Commemorating that the Buddha was a “karmavadin,” a craftsman who dealt with Karma and who analyzed (vibhajjavada) the motivating cause (hetuvada) of un/wholesomeness (Hetu Sutta), the twenty-first century clinician/coach/activist might want to walk in his footsteps to alleviate duhkha and promote contentment for all. Hopefully, the present psychology of Relational Buddhism is helpful to this end.

Cross-References

Abhidhamma, Southern