The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Collected Works: Volume Two (85 page)

And that reflects in your work with others. It makes you more skillful in deeds and also gives you more of a sense of warmth and compassion, so you become more accommodating of others.

T
HE
V
IEWPOINT OF
H
EALTH

Buddhist psychology is based on the notion that human beings are fundamentally good. Their most basic qualities are positive ones: openness, intelligence, and warmth. Of course this viewpoint has it philosophical and psychological expressions in concepts such as bodhichitta (awakened mind), and tathagatagarbha (birthplace of enlightened ones). But this idea is ultimately rooted in experience—the experience of goodness and worthiness in oneself and others. This understanding is very fundamental and is the basic inspiration for Buddhist practice and Buddhist psychology.

Coming from a tradition that stresses human goodness, it was something of a shock for me to encounter the Western tradition of original sin. When I was at Oxford University, I studied Western religious and philosophical traditions with interest and found the notion of original sin quite pervasive. One of my early experiences in England was attending a seminar with Archbishop Anthony Blum. The seminar was on the notion of grace, and we got into a discussion of original sin. The Buddhist tradition does not see such a notion as necessary at all, and I expressed this viewpoint. I was surprised at how angry the Western participants became. Even the Orthodox, who might not emphasize original sin as much as the Western traditions, still held it as a cornerstone of their theology.

In terms of our present discussion, it seems that this notion of original sin does not just pervade Western religious ideas. It actually seems to run throughout Western thought as well, especially psychological thought. Among patients, theoreticians, and therapists alike, there seems to be great concern with the idea of some original mistake which causes later suffering—a kind of punishment for that mistake. One finds that a sense of guilt or being wounded is quite pervasive. Whether or not such people actually believe in the idea of original sin, or in God for that matter, they seem to feel that they have done something wrong in the past and are now being punished for it.

It seems that this feeling of basic guilt has been passed down from one generation to another and seems to pervade many aspects of Western life. For example, teachers often think that if children do not feel guilty, then they won’t study properly and consequently won’t develop as they should. Therefore, many teachers feel that they have to do something to push the child, and guilt seems to be one of the chief techniques they use. This occurs even on the level of improving reading and writing. The teacher looks for errors: “Look, you made a mistake. What are you going to do about it?” From the child’s point of view, learning is then based on trying not to make mistakes, on trying to prove you actually are not bad. It is entirely different when you approach the child more positively: “Look how much you have improved, therefore we can go further.” In the latter case, learning becomes an expression of one’s wholesomeness and innate intelligence.

The problem with this notion of original sin or mistake is that it acts very much as a hindrance to people. At some point, it is of course necessary to realize one’s shortcomings. But if one goes too far with that, it kills any inspiration and can destroy one’s vision as well. So in that way, it really is not helpful, and in fact it seems unnecessary. As I mentioned, in Buddhism we do not have any comparable ideas of sin and guilt. Obviously there is the idea that one should avoid mistakes. But there is not anything comparable to the heaviness and inescapability of original sin.

According to the Buddhist perspective, there are problems, but they are temporary and superficial defilements that cover over one’s basic goodness (tathagatagarbha). This viewpoint is a positive and optimistic one. But, again, we should emphasize that this viewpoint is not purely conceptual. It is rooted in the experience of meditation and in the healthiness it encourages. There are temporary habitual neurotic patterns that develop based on past experience, but these can be seen through. It is just this that is studied in the abhidharma: how one thing succeeds another, how volitional action originates and perpetuates itself, how things snowball. And, most important, abhidharma studies how, through meditation practice, this process can be cut through.

The attitude that results from the Buddhist orientation and practice is quite different from the “mistake mentality.” One actually experiences mind as fundamentally pure, that is, healthy and positive, and “problems” as temporary and superficial defilements. Such a viewpoint does not quite mean “getting rid” of problems, but rather shifting one’s focus. Problems are seen in a much broader context of health: one begins to let go of clinging to one’s neuroses and to step beyond obsession and identification with them. The emphasis is no longer on the problems themselves but rather on the ground of experience through realizing the nature of mind itself. When problems are seen in this way, then there is less panic and everything seems more workable. When problems arise, instead of being seen as purely threats, they become learning situations, opportunities to find out more about one’s own mind, and to continue on one’s journey.

Through practice, which is confirmed by study, the inherent healthiness of your mind and others’ minds is experienced over and over. You see that your problems are not all that deeply rooted. You see that you can make literal progress. You find yourself becoming more mindful and more aware, developing a greater sense of healthiness and clarity as you go on, and this is tremendously encouraging.

Ultimately, this orientation of goodness and healthiness comes out of the experience of egolessness, a notion that has created a certain amount of difficulty for Western psychologists. “Egolessness” does not mean that nothing exists, as some have thought, a kind of nihilism. Instead, it means that you can let go of your habitual patterns and then when you let go, you genuinely let go. You do not re-create or rebuild another shell immediately afterward. Once you let go, you do not just start all over again. Egolessness is having the trust to not rebuild again at all and experiencing the psychological healthiness and freshness that goes with not rebuilding. The truth of egolessness can only be experienced fully through meditation practice.

The experience of egolessness encourages a real and genuine sympathy toward others. You cannot have genuine sympathy with ego because then that would mean that your sympathy would be accompanied by some kind of defense mechanisms. For example, you might try to refer everything back to your own territory when you work with someone, if your own ego is at stake. Ego interferes with direct communication, which is obviously essential in the therapeutic process. Egolessness, on the other hand, lets the whole process of working with others be genuine and generous and free-form. That is why, in the Buddhist tradition, it is said that without egolessness, it is impossible to develop real compassion.

T
HE
P
RACTICE OF
T
HERAPY

The task of the therapist is to help his patients connect back with their own fundamental healthiness and goodness. Prospective patients come to us feeling starved and alienated. More important than giving them a set of techniques for battling their problems, we need to point them toward the experience of the fundamental ground of health which exists in them. It might be thought that this is asking a great deal, particularly when we are working with confronting someone who has a history of problems. But the sanity of basic mind is actually close at hand and can be readily experienced and encouraged.

Of course, it goes without saying that the therapist must experience his own mind in this way to begin with. Through meditation practice, his clarity and warmth toward himself is given room to develop and then can be expanded outward. Thus his meditation and study provide the ground for working with disturbed people, with other therapists, and with himself in the same framework all the time. Obviously, this is not so much a question of theoretical or conceptual perspective, but of how we personally experience our own lives. Our existence can be felt fully and thoroughly so that we appreciate that we are genuine, true human beings. This is what we can communicate to others and encourage in them.

One of the biggest obstacles to helping our patients in this way is, again, the notion of a “mistake,” and the preoccupation with the past that results from this. Many of our patients will want to unravel their past. But this can be a dangerous approach if it goes too far. If you follow this thread, you have to look back to your conception, then to your family’s experiences before that, to your great-grandfathers, and on and on. It could go a long way back and get very complicated.

The Buddhist viewpoint emphasizes the impermanence and the transitoriness of things. The past is gone, and the future has not yet happened, so we work with what is here: the present situation. This actually helps us not to categorize or to theorize. A fresh, living situation is actually taking place all the time, on the spot. This noncategorizing approach comes from being fully here rather than trying to follow up some past event. We do not have to look back to the past in order to see what we ourselves or other people are made out of. Things speak for themselves, right here and now.

B
UDDHISM AND
W
ESTERN
P
SYCHOLOGY

In my days at Oxford and since then, I have been impressed by some of the genuine strengths of Western psychology. It is open to new viewpoints and discoveries. It maintains a critical attitude toward itself. And it is the most experiential of Western intellectual disciplines.

But at the same time, considered from the viewpoint of Buddhist psychological tradition, there is definitely something missing in the Western approach. This missing element, as we have suggested throughout this introduction, is the acknowledgment of the primacy of immediate experience. It is here that Buddhism presents a fundamental challenge to Western therapeutics and offers a viewpoint and method that could revolutionize Western psychology.

Creating an Environment of Sanity

W
ESTERN PSYCHOLOGY
and the Buddhist tradition have had an interesting history together. Western psychologists first studied Buddhist philosophy as a “second thought”—or secondary interest. But at the beginning of the century, as Zen and Theravadin Buddhist meditation began to be more widely practiced rather than purely studied, psychologists became interested in these disciplines and in further aspects of Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan vajrayana tradition. In fact, we could say that the hospitality created by the interest and efforts of Western psychologists is what has made it possible for us now to present a proper and full understanding of Buddhism on this continent. In particular, the interaction between Buddhist and Western psychology has provided fertile ground for the establishment of Buddhism in the West.

In this article I would like to present Buddhist psychology and practice in further detail and also mention briefly some differences and similarities between the Western psychological disciplines and the Buddhist approach to working with people. Both the Western psychological tradition and the Buddhist tradition place great emphasis on the importance of upbringing and environment in determining the way people develop psychologically. We could say quite safely that, from the Buddhist point of view, people’s basic psychological problems come from neglect in their early years or from the fact that their environment wasn’t adequate. This is one of the key places where people develop psychological problems. A whole range of psychological problems comes from individuals being mismanaged by their parents or by their teachers in school. In most cases, parents and teachers have good intentions, but often the environment they create for children is not adequate because of lack of money or lack of skillful means in handling situations. There is some shortcoming in the environment.

This is not to say that parents or teachers or uncles and aunts have to be rich. But they can be skillful enough to provide some psychological hospitality in the early stages of child rearing. There should be a basic sense of welcome, a basic sense of health in the child’s environment. There should be some goodness. On the whole, there should be no lying or twisting of logic or pretending that things are other than what they are. If those types of distortion are allowed to build up, then children—who, by the way, are extremely intelligent—begin to see through the deception around them and the unskillfulness that pervades their upbringing. But even though they may see through what is happening, nonetheless, they become victims of their upbringing and are affected by it in later life. This can produce inferiority complexes or some kinds of schizophrenia when the children become adults. Worst of all is the basic attitude of hatefulness and resentment toward individuals; and as adults, children brought up in an atmosphere of hatefulness will direct that hatefulness toward their children. Whenever there is aggression and disliking in any aspect of the environment as you are growing up, that is the ground of insanity, from the Buddhist point of view.

Insanity does not usually come from passion; it usually comes from aggression, from resentment and disliking. By
insanity
here we mean hurting others and hurting yourself, so that there is no gentleness and no sense of helping others. So insanity and aggression are closely connected.

The point of aggression is to keep yourself intact. You refuse to deal with anybody else at all. In fact, if anybody touches you, you want to attack them. It is very straightforward, in that sense. You don’t want to take part in the world. That is the problem of aggression. So insanity based on aggression comes from the fact that a person doesn’t want to relate with the world because the world has been too punishing to them, particularly in their early years. In some cases, too much hospitality is a form of aggression: it can make people claustrophobic, as well. Hospitality becomes smothering: parents want to impose too much hospitality on their children. In that case, the situation is still unbalanced; there is still a lack of sensitivity in the environment.