[Buddha-l] FW: Three year Research Associate, UK, Indian & Buddhist theories of self

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Plainly I need to read my Tricycles (my subscription has not yet 
lapsed, though my attention has). But I still read buddha-l and can 
join the conversation here before I get around to reading Bhikkhu 
Thanissaro's article.

Richard wrote

> I think something like a Freudian or Jungian notion of ego is at work 
> here. I
> don't think the Freudian notions is reified. It is certainly not 
> static and
> unchangeable. As far as I can tell, the only view of self that 
> Buddhists
> denied was any notion that depicts the self as static, uncaused, 
> unchanging
> and permanent. But what the Buddhists denied is something that no one 
> in
> modern times ever affirms. In other words, the Buddhist view has really
> become the standard view in modern thought.

Not only do I agree with this, but I'm frequently surprised by the 
difficulty of simply admitting this and moving on. The field of 
Buddhism and psychology seems fated to continually reinvent the wheel 
of the two traditions saying much the same thing. Where and why would 
we assume--as so many do--that they'd be saying something different? (I 
mean that question; it's not just rhetorical. Our bias to 
simultaneously assert the near isomorphism of Buddhism and psychology 
and also to assert they have radically disparate views on "the self" is 
strange and wondrous to me.)

A quick correction. Richard wrote,

> What Freud talked about was the unconscious (das
> Unbewüsst), by which he meant psychologically active impulses to 
> action of
> which a person is not fully unaware.

I presume you meant to write "not fully aware," Richard, but I think I 
prefer the way you in fact did write the thought. When Freud called the 
greater part of our psyche das Unbewüsst, he did not mean it was 
utterly unavailable/unknown to us. Indeed, constant energy must be 
focused on keeping much of the unconscious unconscious. Stop the flow 
of that energy and the barrier begins to dissipate--usually to the 
good. Even given that constant energy, "the return of the repressed" is 
finally inevitable. So, we are, as Richard says, "not fully unaware" of 
the unconscious (and the conscious, too).

Franz Metcalf