A Contemporary Buddhist Psychology

A CONTEMPORARY BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY
By Bill Walz

Western clinical psychology focuses on the personal experience and history of an individual. As such, it explores a person’s distortions and confusions in perceptions, thoughts, emotions and behavior. It examines a person’s sense of self in relationship to their internal mental experience and their social interactions. Collectively these experiences comprise the personal egoic identity, a person’s sense of self-in-the-world as a separate entity in existence, seeking to find safety and significance.

While this is a very valuable study, it struggles to be a complete enough model to bring truly transformational psychological healing. Might we rather examine how true psychological healing would harmonize the individual egoic dimension with a realm of mind that is deeper, yet one largely neglected by Western psychology – awareness itself. We need an awareness-centered trans-egoic psychology.

For this, one effective approach is to bring the wisdom of ancient Buddhism into a modern context. While Buddhism is recognized as a religion, or a philosophy of life, it is, in a certain sense, an ancient-culture trans-egoic psychology. It is possible, borrowing from this tradition, to develop a completely modern trans-egoic psychology that honors the best psychological insights from both the ancient Buddhist and the modern clinical worlds.

When looking at Western and Buddhist psychology, the principle difference between them is in the model of mind. Western psychology is basically two-dimensional. It recognizes the conscious and sub-conscious dimensions of the egoic mind, while Buddhist psychology, in addition to recognizing the egoic realm, also recognizes and emphasizes a higher and deeper realm of pure undifferentiated awareness. These realms of higher and deeper awareness are seen in Buddhism as the realm of our true, unconditioned self, as well as the realm of universal consciousness and interconnectedness. This psychological perspective holds that it is only when these ego-transcendent dimensions of mind are experienced as the primary sense of self, rather than some vague metaphysical backdrop, that harmony and wisdom can be brought forward as the guiding consciousness for healthy egoic functioning.

Buddhist psychology and Western psychology both agree that the egoic experience is the product of conditioning, both bio-genetic-neurological and experiential. The difference is that Western psychology operates solely at this level, limiting its therapies to modifying the egoic mind’s most dysfunctional aspects through medication and emotion/thought-structure and behavioral counseling and interpretation. It can relieve grosser incapacitating symptoms, but does not offer a real cure. It is a mental illness model; it does not have a model for true mental health, while Buddhist psychology does

Buddhism recognizes the egoic dimension of mind to be a superficial, limited and deeply flawed mental representation of reality comprised of a matrix of concepts conditioned or programmed into the individual by genetic pre-disposition, society, culture, family and personal experience, creating, in a sense, an artificial reality. As it is superficial, limited and flawed, when ego is experienced as the primary dimension of mind and the seat of the self, humans suffer from a distorted sense of self-in-the-world, leading to distorted psychological, social, even spiritual functioning. In the non-scientific, metaphorical manner of Buddhism, this realm of mental representations or forms is referred to as “little mind,” while the realm of the unconditioned higher consciousness is referred to as “big mind,” the mind of all-inclusive awareness.

The little egoic mind exists within the big mind of clear awareness that is the unwavering witness to our experience. Our problems stem from the little egoic dimension, with all its conflicts and contradictions, being experienced as the primary, even the only, dimension of identity and reality. Little egoic mind is the mind of condensed fragments drawn from the limitless reality of life-as-it-is, creating the experience of personal separateness in a universe of separateness. It is so limited that, in Buddhism, it is referred to as the mind of “illusion” (samsara), life-as-we-imagine-it. Since it is a severely limited representation of the total integrated potential of life, it is deeply flawed in its representation. As this perspective is basic to modern life, we are faced with the situation, then, that we all are, more or less, crazy.

Western psychology then, is designed to address the “more” end of the spectrum, to help people stay within social “norms”, many of which are so arbitrary and limiting as to be crazy themselves in the bigger picture of human potential. The frame of reference for egoic little mind is always the mental forms of “me” and “the world-as-I-project-it-to-be.” It shapes what is possible in perception, thought and emotional/behavioral response to what has already been conditioned into a person as possible. As these perceptions are fraught with all the contradictions and conflicts inherent in the cross-purposes and confusions of their influences, which in turn, have been shaped by the egoic purposes of the forces that created them, it all adds up to a feedback loop that makes for insane people in an insane world, unconscious of the possibilities for real sanity.

A contemporary Buddhist psychology is based in the Buddhist observation that we have sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions, but we are not these sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions. We are much more. These mental phenomena are but psychological tools for conceptualizing, experiencing and engaging the world. We are, at our essence, the clear undifferentiated awareness within which the perceptions, thoughts and emotions of the egoic mind arise and pass – here – in this contemporary modern life. It is the mind of awareness that can access the true nature and potentiality of Life – much larger than the limited perspective of conditioned ego.

Such a psychology, of course, is also sophisticated in understanding and working with egoic mind, but it makes clear that who we are in our essence is not contained within the limits of our egoic mind. It is a psychology that holds that the ego’s conditioning can be transcended. It is a liberation from the confines of ego, about being a fully realized human being. It teaches that a person can essentially be healed of psychological dysfunction by shifting the sense of self from a locus solely in the egoic personality into primarily the transcendent dimensions of mind. It teaches that we can observe the distortions of the conditioned mind and make appropriate corrections from a dimension of perceiving wisdom deeper than thought. This realization is what Buddhism calls, “awakening.” Egoic identity is experienced as useful for social and utilitarian purposes, but no longer held as a person’s existential core.

Healthy ego is important. This is not an either-or proposition. Ego is what makes humans unique and gives us the ability to engage the world creatively. It contains our faculties for language, ideas and invention. It is our capacity to live in the abstractions of human society. But in a Buddhist trans-egoic model, when awareness and connectedness replace ego and separateness as the centerpiece of mind, the dysfunctionality of egoic experience can be greatly transcended. Egoic content can also be reconditioned through mindful perceptions and responses into a more effective, accurate and personally secure self-in-the-world.

Ego can now let go of its defensiveness, its need to dominate, to be right and significant. It can let go of its personal story of conflict as the measure of its importance. It can let go of its wounds. It can rest and heal, divesting itself of the life-long build-up of energy hoarded for its self-protection. It can relax. This allows for an authentic personality to shine through that has depth, ease, presence and effectiveness. The mystical Zen concept of “being nobody,” which means being fundamentally empty of identity in the neurotic conditioning of ego, then becomes comprehensible as a viable, highly effective way of being in the world.

“So, challenges the Zen master, “Show me your original face.”

From this orientation, the egoic dimension can also be reconciled with the higher and collective dimensions of mind that connect us to spiritual experience. This melding opens for a person the capacity to live from a wisdom and sense of connection within life. Instead of tampering with the parts, this psychology returns the person to their origin in healthy wholeness, nurturing the development of a vibrant, sane and wise personality.

Thought and emotion can now work effectively for us. Confusion evaporates, and we are no longer the prisoner of our thoughts, emotions and behavioral reactions. We become a more liberated and aware person living with an intuitive grasp of the appropriate role for ego in our lives. We become truly “awake” in our lives, experiencing with clarity our multi-dimensional reality of ego and awareness as the truth of who we are.