[Buddha-l] Buddhism and Psychology research

[Richard Hayes]

On Sep 2, 2010, at 16:58, "Dan Lusthaus" <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> You haven't read much abhidharma aside from Kosa excerpts and maybe some 
> dabbling in the Dhammasangani, it seems.

False. Any other wild guesses you'd like to make?

> Abhidharma aside, a very convincing case for the affinity between 
> contemporary psychology and early Buddhist theories about the mind is 
> Padmasiri De Silva's _Buddhist and Freudian Psychology_, which I've 
> mentioned before on this list, and Richard has claimed to have read.

Apparently you are doubting the claim. 

> This is like saying that Buddhists don't believe in selves. They don't. 
> Abhidharma breaks the skandhas down into numerous components whose 
> interactions give a mental and physical world.

Buddhists are still breaking "mind" into the same four skandhas that Buddhists were using 2500 years ago. Nothing new has appeared for over two millennia.

> "Scientists" today, btw, are not the sort of strict behaviorists you are 
> describing.

Nothing that I have said has anything to do with behaviorism, which most people rejected at least forty years ago. I never embraced it in the first place, so I never had to let go of it. Any other wild guesses you'd care to make? You seem to be on a speculative roll. 

> When you are better informed on the nature and literature of abhidharma we 
> can return to this example of inappropriate nasty speech.

Nasty speech? Since when did saying that science is intellectually more sophisticated than abhidharma nasty?

 Places like Harvard Medical and 
> MIT have much more progressive views. Time to catch up on current trends.

More progressive than Freud? Yes, I know. Most of what I have read in the area of psychology comes from Harvard, MIT and McGill. Those folks leave Buddhism and Freud in the dustbin of outmoded ways of thinking. But thanks for your touchingly empathic concern for the cultural backwaters of New Mexico. 

Richard