Contexts and Dialogue: Yogacara Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind

Introduction

I N T R O D U C T I O N One major attraction of Buddhism to the contemporary world is its therapeutic value, which is derived from its penetrating insights into the human psyche and many of its practices. As David Loy observes, “Buddhism’s main point of entry into Western culture is now Western psychology, especially psychotherapy” (2). This is evidenced by the fact that “Buddhism . . . is increasingly being looked on, not just as a religion, but as a system for understanding and promoting personal growth, and as such it is seen as offering a much more positive idea of the nature of mental health, and a much richer repertoire of methods for attaining a sense of mental balance, well-being, and personal fulfillment” (Clarke 1997, 151). Since Carl Jung’s pioneering engagement with various strands of Eastern thought and the fruitful dialogues between psychologists Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Zen Buddhist D. T. Suzuki in the early decades of the twentieth century , many modern psychologists, especially those engaged in various forms of Buddhist practice, have greeted Buddhism with open arms (Claxton, 7). James Coleman even compares the role psychotherapy is playing in the introduction of Buddhism to the West to that of Taoism in bringing Buddhist thought to China two thousand years ago (228–229). Consequently, the psychological approach to Buddhism constitutes a major component of modern Western writing on Buddhism in both popular literature and scholarly works by therapists. The psychological approach to Buddhism is a multifaceted phenomenon . Mark Finn has identified three general attitudes of modern psychologists toward Buddhism: The first, or classical, view equates meditative experience and regression , with only the question being whether the experience is adap1 tive or not. The second view, represented by Transpersonal psychology , has argued that meditation represents an advanced state of psychological experience not contained by psychoanalytic categories and requiring new models of human possibility. A third view has been more impressed by the parallels between Buddhist and psychoanalytic therapeutics. (162) The first view is represented by Sigmund Freud himself, who regards meditative experience as a regressive “oceanic” feeling characterized by “a sensation of ‘eternity,’ a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded” (1961a, 11), and the feeling of “oneness with the universe ” (21). According to Freud, such an experience seeks “the restoration of limitless narcissism” (20) and a consolation of “infantile helplessness” (21). Freud was ambivalent about this oceanic feeling because he himself did not experience it and such a feeling is hard to deal with scientifically. This attitude is indicative of a time when there was a general misunderstanding or simple ignorance of Buddhism on the part of modern psychologists. As William Parsons summarizes, “[T]he oceanic feeling is but the psychoanalytic version of the perennialist claim that mysticism is ‘one and the same everywhere,’ and the occasional regression to the preverbal, preOedipal ‘memory’ of unity, motivated by the need to withdraw from a harsh and unforgiving reality, is the explanation behind the transient , ineffable experience of oneness with the universe” (35–36). Curiously though, “the equation of meditation with preverbal, symbiotic union or regressive oneness with the mother has gone virtually unchallenged within the psychoanalytic community. The most recent qualifications of this model have focused only on whether these experiences can be interpreted as adult adaptive ones, rather than purely regressive or defensive flights from reality” (Epstein 1998, 120). The second view is represented by Jack Engler, who advocates a developmental model to reconcile the conflict between the psychoanalytic practice of trying to strengthen the ego and the Buddhist teaching to transcend it (1984, 27). He argues that psychoanalysis and Buddhism deal with different phases of personal development: “It seems that our Western traditions have mapped out the early stages of that development and the Buddhist traditions have mapped out later or more advanced stages in which ‘decentering’ from the egocentrism of early development culminates in selfless altruism. And 2 contexts and dialogues neither tradition knows much about the other. They’re talking about the same continuum of development, but about different segments of it” (1998, 112). Engler has famously stated that “you have to be somebody before you can be nobody” (1984, 31, original italics). “This has not been clearly understood either by Buddhists or by Western psychologists who tend to see the two traditions as either complementary or competing, but in either case without a clear awareness...