Buddhist and Western psychology: fundamental differences in understanding mind and reality

Buddhist Psychology

Compared to Western Psychology, what are the characteristic features Buddhist approaches to the mind? To what extent can these fruitfully interact?

Psychologist Daniel Goleman sums up one of the central disparities in the different views of mind between Buddhism and Western thought. He states:

It seems that one of the biggest gaps that must be crossed between the Eastern and Western approaches to the mind is that the scientific method requires an objective third-person approach, whereas Buddhist practice is clearly a subjective first-person phenomenon.

Increasing use of Buddhist Practices in Psychotherapy)

Goleman makes a clear distinction between scientific thought and the idea of objectivity and Buddhist practice. This in effect means that the Western model of mind and reality is based on the fundamental tenets of science. Western scientific thought is essentially dualistic and is constructed on the assumption and belief in the reality and existence outside of the mind of the ego or self as a separate entity. Buddhism is essentially non-dualistic and has for centuries maintained that self and mind are illusions and obstacles to the true knowledge of reality of enlightenment. This is of course a radical simplification of the Buddhist stance which also varies from school to school.

Many Western psychologists and scientists do not understand this severe distinction and fundamental difference between the two views of reality. Western psychology still in many instances misinterprets the Buddhist Philosophy of mind as a form of extreme subjectivism - as "... A subjective first-person phenomenon." Buddhism in fact rejects the entire subjective-objective dichotomy that Goleman refers to as the "objective third-person debate."

The difference between East and West can therefore be seen within the trajectory of this understanding of reality in terms of subject-object dichotomy in the West and a transcendence of this dichotomy in the east. This amounts to a radical and severe difference between the two perceptions of reality. Many psychologists, even after Jung's writings on Zen and Eastern philosophy and psychological thought still perceive Buddhist philosophy through the lenses and filters of the Western mode of subject-object division. For example, Goleman continues to state that when it comes to exploring the mind in the framework of cognitive neuroscience, the maximal yield of data comes from integrating what a person experiences -- the first person -- with what the measurements show -- the third person. The late Francisco Varela, with colleagues like Evan Thompson at York University, proposed an integration called "Neuro-phenomenology," which elegantly ties together first-person experience, a second person trained as an interlocutor, and the standard third person, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Varela has a brief presentation of this method in my book Destructive Emotions. He points out the need for highly trained observers of the mind and proposes that seasoned meditation practitioners can play this role.

This seems to ignore the distinction between the two reality systems and the central characteristic of the Buddhist philosophy and psychology of mind. One of the central contentions of this paper is that, within the ambit of the dualistic thought structure in Western science and medicine, the Buddhism of mind cannot be adequately incorporated or even understood. However, a further area of exploration is that there are areas in which Western psychology has opened itself to the non-dualistic mode of thought in Buddhist mind philosophy. In many instances the principles and techniques of Buddhism or at least derived from Buddhist practice, are altering the dualistic mindset of many Western psychologist and theorists

It should be emphasized at the outset that the central disparity between the Eastern and Western view of mind lies not only in the different approaches to mind but in the very philosophical and theoretical concept of mind that informs these opposing views. The Western view of mind is based and centered on the idea of a permanent self, mind and ego as both an objective and subjective fact. On the other hand the Buddhist view is that these aspects and mind itself are illusionary and in fact mind is, in the final analysis, an obstruction to enlightenment and impedes the understanding of reality and realization of the true non-dualistic view of mind. Western psychology, as part of the Western scientific enterprise, has been built around a belief in the reality of self, mind and the cult of personality; whereas Buddhist's view these three concepts as existent but illusionary obstacles to true-mind. The difference between a dualistic and non-dualistic perception is the crucial and central criterion which separates Western and Eastern psychology.

However, during the second half of the Twentieth Century there were many theorists who attempted to bridge the gap between East and West in many fields, including psychology. The advent of post-modern thought in all disciplines in the West created a new perception and realization of the relativity and representational nature of Western scientific concepts and assumptions. Strict dualism and the subject-object dichotomy where questioned by scientists like Heisenberg and others and there was a general and growing realization that non-dualistic views of reality were an option that could not be ignored in the basic questioning of the Western scientific ethos.

In Psychology the work of Jung and others laid the foundations for Humanistic and Transpersonal psychology which attempted to incorporate Buddhist principles and even therapeutic techniques into psychology. This paper will assess some of the central aspects of this vast and complex field.

McIntosh 38/39)

The relationship to attachments is one of the concerns found in contemporary social psychology. Attachment structures form one of the critical points in the social construction of the Western ethos and socio-psychological makeup. In this field attachment is seen, as it is in Buddhism, as a continual pattern of never-ending desire for further attainment and objects. "Social psychological research on subjective well-being supports the assertion that people's desires consistently outpace their ability to satisfy their desires."

McIntosh 39) further issue that relates to Western psychology and the Buddhist view of attachment is the nature of existence as impermanent.

The nature of existence is that nothing is permanent. Therefore, even when people attain the object of their attachment, it is only a temporary situation, and people's attempts to maintain the object of their attachment are ultimately doomed to fail. As people struggle to maintain possession of things to which they are attached, those things inevitably continue to slip through their fingers, so people with attachments suffer.

McIntosh 40)

There have been many psychological studies on the effects of attachment structures as a form of neuroses in the West.

2.1 Yogacara

Among the many schools in Buddhism dealing with mind, one of the most significant in terms of Western psychology is the Yogacara or mind-only school of thought.

This school of thought best exemplifies the above ideas about mind in Buddhism.

Yogacara was the second important philosophical school to develop in Mah-y-na Buddhism. The distinctive nature of this doctrine is derived from its comprehensive view and analysis of the experience of mediation or the practice of yoga. The term mind-only can be confusing and the focus on cognition in this school of thought has often been interpreted incorrectly as rigidly implying that reality is constructed of mind-only, and as a form of idealism. An analysis of the doctrine however provides a very different and more extensive interpretation.

At the centre of Yogacara is the overarching Buddhist foundational concept of the karmic wheel of birth and death and the search for praxis towards liberation and enlightenment. This relates to a central concept in Yogacara, that in order to overcome the ignorance that prevents humanity from attaining liberation from the karmic rounds one has to focus on the processes involved in cognition. (Yogacara) This doctrine does not suggest that external objects to the mind do not exist as such, but rather that they are constructs of mind only.

Their sustained attention to issues such as cognition, consciousness, perception, and epistemology, coupled with claims such as "external objects do not exist," has led some to misinterpret Yogacara as a form of metaphysical idealism. " (ibid) The key to understanding the importance of cognition and "mind-only" in the Yogacara school of thought is that in terms of this thinking, consciousness itself is only real in a relative and representational or constructive sense and, simplistically put, acts as a 'tool' for the eradication and reduction of illusionary practice and thought in the search for true reality. Therefore, in terms of Yogacara, consciousness or mind itself is illusionary and is used to penetrate the world of Samara.

To this end the doctrine evolved a technique to understand the inner workings of the mind through enlightened cognition.

The school was called YogAcAra (Yoga practice) because it provided a comprehensive, therapeutic framework for engaging in the practices that lead to the goal of the bodhisattva path, namely enlightened cognition. Meditation served as the laboratory in which one could study how the mind operated. Yogacara focused on the question of consciousness from a variety of approaches, including meditation, psychological analysis, epistemology... scholastic categorization, and karmic analysis. (ibid)

The study of cognition is in essence a method of understanding the influence of mind in both the creation of illusion and seeing though the misconceptions about reality.

The rationale of Yogacara is therefore a process of understanding mind and consciousness and reducing the effect of appearances in the search for reality.

Western psychology

From the above albeit very brief overview of some aspects of mind in Buddhist philosophy, the disparity with Western thought becomes clear. In Western thought on mind there is a propensity to see reality in primarily dualistic terms and mind or consciousness as a reality in itself and not as an illusionary mechanism. However, modern psychology theory and praxis has attempted in many areas to cross the divide separating Eastern and Western thought. For example, the concept of attachment has been aligned with the modern psychological concept of 'ruminative thought'.

Attachment-based thought is consistent with the social-psychological concept of ruminative thought. Ruminative thought is thought directed at some unattained goal. Typically, ruminative thoughts are repetitive, intrusive, and unpleasant. According to Martin and Tesser (1989), people only ruminate when an important goal is blocked, and they continue to ruminate either until the goal is attained or pursuit of the goal is abandoned. Recall that attachments are the things that people desire, that people believe will make them happy, in other words, important goals.

McIntosh 41)

Another aspect that has been introduced into Western thought and supported by the popularity of Zen Buddhism in the Western culture is the idea of the relativity of thought and mind. This is close in some ways to the Buddhist concept of mind as essentially illusionary.

Social psychology has long recognized that thoughts necessarily rely on relatively stable representations, and that these concepts are used to represent an ever-changing reality. The clearest example of this is the schema. Schemas can be defined as mental representations people use to organize perceptions (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). In other words, schemas guide people as they interact with the phenomenal world, providing a filter through which people perceive the world.

McIntosh 41)

The psychological literature also provides a number of studies on the relevance to modern psychology of the concept of "mindfulness."

In her research, Langer (1989) used the term mindfulness to describe "a state of alertness and lively awareness" (p. 138). According to Langer's concept, mindful people see new possibilities.

McIntosh 48) The work of Cark Rogers can also be mentioned in this regard. He is considered as the one of the founders of Humanistic Psychology, and has incorporated many Eastern therapeutic techniques and theories into his work. (Quitmann, 1985, p. 14)

Possibly the most promising signs of interaction between East and West in psychology was the development of the Transpersonal School of Psychology in the 1960s. Transpersonal psychology's concept of the person and of the world is similar to that of humanistic psychology. However, in contrast with the latter, the experience and the explanation of alterations of (or the turning off of) "normal" consciousness and the limitations of the self are central to transpersonal psychology; these alterations transcend everyday life. In the attempt to explain these phenomena, non-Western psychology (e.g., Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga, and Sufism) is consulted. (Cummins, R. D, 1996. P 112)

Another development is the postmodern psychotherapy which has made a point of including the Buddhist understanding of mind into its theoretical framework. Buddhism and postmodern psychotherapy are similar to the extent that they both attempt to understand the Mind and find a way to alleviate human suffering.

Buddhist Practice and Postmodern Psychotherapy)

4. Conclusion

The above references only apply to some of the attempts of Western psychology to come to terms with and incorporate Buddhist forms of understanding into the contemporary discussion of the mind. There are numerous other studies and research papers that see an increasingly important need to understand Buddhist concepts of mind in modern psychology. However, while there are different degrees and levels of integration and communication between East and West, the central difference has yet to be overcome. The world of the West still confronts a reality which it sees in essentially dualistic terms; while Buddhism sees the word as purely a construct of mind and therefore illusionary in the final analysis. It is this basic deference between a dualistic and a non-dualistic mode of thought that is the central difference between Western and Buddhist understanding of mind.

5. Bibliography

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McIntosh, William D. "East Meets West: Parallels between Zen Buddhism and Social Psychology." International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 7.1 (1997): 37-52.

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Prebish, Charles S., ed. Buddhism: A Modern Perspective. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.

Rieber, Robert W. Asian Contributions to Psychology. Eds. Anand C. Paranjpe and David Y.F. Ho. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988.

Scotton, Bruce W., Allan B. Chinen, and John R. Battista, eds. Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

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YogAcAra. Accessed January 10, 2005. http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:f3vSrzFGKh0J:www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/bios/Lusthaus/yogacara%2520-class%2520version1.pdf+Yogacara+school+argue+that+reality+is+mind-only&hl=en&start=11

Zusne, Leonard, and Warren H. Jones. Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989.

There are many other areas and complexities that cannot be dealt with in terms of space in this is paper. The above is only intended as very general overview only.