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

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 01 August 2007 17:25, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> Plainly I need to read my Tricycles

I don't think I've ever read an issue of Tricycle before the Summer 2007 
issue. My lovely wife sneaks a look at it now and then (when I'm out of 
screaming range and she can't hear me yelling PUT THAT THING DOWN!). She 
snook a peek at the issue in question and made bold to tell me that there 
were several articles in it either by or about people we know, so in a fit of 
egocentricity we bought a copy. It proved to be an interesting issue, but I'm 
not likely to buy another issue. When my wife sneeks a peak, however, I'll 
yell more softly. (Sorry for all the misspellings. They're their to entertain 
our grammatical friend Stephen.)

> The field of
> Buddhism and psychology seems fated to continually reinvent the wheel
> of the two traditions saying much the same thing.

I know of Buddhists in whom such a claim would surely engender apoplexy. But I 
completely agree with you. Well, almost completely. I have a minor quibble 
which I'll get to directly.

> 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.)

There is a very deep instinct in most of us to see ourselves as the standard 
by which all things are to be judged. People who identify themselves as 
Buddhists are not immune from this instinct. Insofar as they see themselves 
as Buddhist and therefore see Buddhism as the standard by which all things 
are to be measured, they are reluctant to admit that anything else is quite 
as good as Buddhism. To see modern psychology as isomorphic with Buddhism 
would be to admit that Buddhism is not uniquely insightful. If Buddhism had a 
Pope Benedict, he would be saying that psychoanalysis is "wounded". Thank God 
Buddhism has no popes.

> 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

Yes. No doubt this was a Freudian slip. (My imaginary sister used to wear a 
Freudian slip, which drove me wild.)

> 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).

While I agree with most of this, I do have one quibble. As I understand Freud 
and Jung, they both claimed that there are some things that will always 
remain unbewüsst. That is, there are some things about our motivations that 
we will never understand, no matter what. Some things that are unknown will 
eventually come to light, and the task of analysis is to bring those things 
to light that can come into the light. There was a huge debate on this topic 
on buddha-l in 1997 between me and a Canadian bhikkhu named Punnadhammo. It 
started when I said something about the Buddha's shadow (in the sense of 
unconscious). The Canadian bhikkhu said there was nothing about the Buddha's 
psyche that he (the Buddha) didn't fully understand. I challenged him on this 
by resorting to my favourite epistemologicial query: How do you know? He said 
his claim was true by definition. The word sambuddha just means fully 
awakened, he said, so the Buddha couldn't have been called a sambuddha if he 
had an unconscious. Zooks! Defeated by literalist etymology! (A small part of 
the debate can be found on my website: 
http://dayamati.home.comcast.net/therapy.html and other exchanges with him 
are found at http://dayamati.home.comcast.net/nirvana.html )

Speaking of all this sort of thing, there is going to be yet another 
conference on Buddhism and psychotherapy in New York on October 13. (For more 
information see http://www.enlighteningrelationships.org/ .) My task at the 
conference is to explain the abhidharma notion of karma in ten minutes. (An 
interesting sidelight is that when these folks asked me for a brief 
autobiographical blurb to put on their website, I mentioned that I am both a 
Quaker and a Buddhist. The Quaker half of my self-described identity was 
neatly edited out. I assume this error was another example of either a 
Freudian slip or a reluctance on the part of the organizers to acknowledge 
that one can really be a Buddhist if one sees the possibility that there may 
be some truth in other paths.)

-- 
Richard