Buddha believed in existential choice. We are free to choose our path, our way of living. in everything we do there is always a choice. The virtuous will choose the appropriately virtuous path. The non-virtuous will choose adifferent path. These choices are often blatantly obvious in our lives but we do not see them because we cannot understand they are there. The real irony lies in the fact that we apparently cannot and do not see what lies directly in front of us. We are in this sense truly blind.
Pretty much everything that is considered of value in Buddhist philosophy is embraced within the four noble truths which is why it has become the most celebrated and most representative part of Buddha’s teachings. Most of the things we know about Buddha’s thoughts are related to these four basic truths. An example would be ego. In Buddha’s terms ego would be an attachment to self. For Buddha there was a self, formed from five different constituents. The ego became present when one attached one’s identity to this self. Perhaps a quote from Buddha himself might illustrate this best, ‘Where there is self there is no truth, where there is truth there is no self.” So as can be seen desire and attachment to this sense of self became ego and led in his view to untruth.
BUDDHA AND NEUROSIS
When accurate historical detail is not available then a lot of detail can be inferred from consequence. If one moves backwards in history with Buddha it becomes self-evident that certain interesting consequences suggest certain obvious precedents. If you look at his philosophy for instance what Gautama did was to take the spiritualism ascendent at the time incorporating Vedism and Brahminism and make a profound leap from the extra-psychic into the intrapsychic domain. In many ways Gautama could legitimately be judged as the first person to introduce a true psychological perspective into the religious philosophy of the period. This is exactly what the Dalai Lama is talking about when he calls Buddhism a philosophical science.
What we do know is that this man, who we call Gautama, lived 2500 years ago when even the idea of psychiatry did not exist, but nevertheless created a form of psychological therapy which has been more effective in the treatment of anxiety than any other since. In other words all the scientific, psychological and neuroscientific advances in the treatment of anxiety over the last 160 years or more since modern psychiatry and psychology have been in existence have not produced one psychological therapy which comes close to competing with this ancient philosophy in terms of its primary aim of the alleviation of the distress of an anxious life. It would be accurate to say that in 2023 aspects of Gautama’s theories are more integrated and utilised in psycho-therapy today than any other single psychological theory in existence today. Across the range of mental health therapies in use today very few would not use strategies derived from Buddhist theory. Admitting to this reality is of course an entirely different matter. It is unfortunate but the truth for many in the contemporary world remains a very distant land.
The notions of cause and effect commonly known as predeterminism in psychological pathology are now accepted by most working in the field of socio-psychology. It was Freud and the psycho-analysts in the early twentieth century who have made us most aware of this. They suggested that trauma causes psychological pathology something that all of a sudden now appears to be obvious to everyone. Little do they understand that this was the basis of psychoanalysis which on the whole today is dismissed. The idea of events being predetermined by other psychological antecedents is now accepted as commonplace. A trifle before Freud, in fact some 2400 years before him Gautama-Budhha came up with the same idea. Cause and effect called ‘dependent arising’ became a fundamental underpinning of Buddha’s philosophy.
So, if we turn the idea of cause and effect or ‘dependent arising’ back on Buddha himself what would we find? Why did Buddha find his life so difficult and traumatising when on the face of it he lived a life that most of his fellow Indians would only dream about? What made his suffering such great suffering? What was the cause of his dukkha? If we believe in predeterminism, as he did, the answer to this question is obvious. The reason or causation for his great suffering lay in Gautama’s own mind. The answer fairly self-evidently would be in the pathology of Gautama’s own psyche, his own mental conflict and his own psychological anguish.
Two well-known quotes from Buddha himself suggest his own recognition and acceptance of this fact.
“Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind and produced by mind.”
And to explain suffering
“Speak and act with an impure mind, and suffering will follow you
as the wheel follows the ox, that draws the cart. “
This view that Gautama believed that his own mind produced the suffering that followed is the only reasonable theory to explain why this particular individual would have and indeed could have produced a theory so attuned to psychological suffering that it has remained pre-eminent over twenty-five centuries which one must admit is quite a feat. The only reasonable explanation for this is that the conviction he held came from his own experiences within his mind. We know that his self-proclaimed suffering followed him doggedly ‘as the wheel follows the ox’ for thirty-five years. If this is some simple coincidence then the whole question of predeterminism or interdependent origination in science would have to be reconsidered. Is an effect not the result of a cause? Is scientific aetiology used commonly as it is in determining predisposition an irrelevant consideration? I believe not. No-one working in scientific psychiatry today would accept that as a reasonable premise.
The old chestnut goes that 'if you ask a person what they specialise in you quickly discover what their problem is'. One could well be forgiven for inclining towards a line of reasoning that the fact that Gautama-Buddha produced a cure for a particular suffering, suggests that, that suffering was something he was very familiar with, almost certainly because he suffered it himself. It is commonly known in psychiatry that we are drawn intuitively to psycho-pathology which reverberates in tune with our own unconscious selves. This is why anxious people always seek out other anxious people. Quite often they marry them or at the very least are horribly smitten with them!
Given that the exact details of Gautama’s life cannot be known conclusively one could speculate that perhaps in actual reality he was a man that lived such a particularly traumatic and painful life that the production of this philosophy was part of an inescapable compulsion to extricate himself and his fellow man from this suffering. An alternative view may be that the average Indian life was at the time, so filled with material suffering, so full of deprivation and psychological suffering that this impelled his thoughts and actions. Or perhaps his fellow Indians at the time were simply such psychologically sensitive and vulnerable people so pained by normal everyday events that they found life intolerable. These are all viable speculations. Life was undoubtedly difficult and extremely hard-going for many Indians of the period.
Pretty much everything that is considered of value in Buddhist philosophy is embraced within the four noble truths which is why it has become the most celebrated and most representative part of Buddha’s teachings. Most of the things we know about Buddha’s thoughts are related to these four basic truths. An example would be ego. In Buddha’s terms ego would be an attachment to self. For Buddha there was a self, formed from five different constituents. The ego became present when one attached one’s identity to this self. Perhaps a quote from Buddha himself might illustrate this best, ‘Where there is self there is no truth, where there is truth there is no self.” So as can be seen desire and attachment to this sense of self became ego and led in his view to untruth.
BUDDHA AND NEUROSIS
When accurate historical detail is not available then a lot of detail can be inferred from consequence. If one moves backwards in history with Buddha it becomes self-evident that certain interesting consequences suggest certain obvious precedents. If you look at his philosophy for instance what Gautama did was to take the spiritualism ascendent at the time incorporating Vedism and Brahminism and make a profound leap from the extra-psychic into the intrapsychic domain. In many ways Gautama could legitimately be judged as the first person to introduce a true psychological perspective into the religious philosophy of the period. This is exactly what the Dalai Lama is talking about when he calls Buddhism a philosophical science.
What we do know is that this man, who we call Gautama, lived 2500 years ago when even the idea of psychiatry did not exist, but nevertheless created a form of psychological therapy which has been more effective in the treatment of anxiety than any other since. In other words all the scientific, psychological and neuroscientific advances in the treatment of anxiety over the last 160 years or more since modern psychiatry and psychology have been in existence have not produced one psychological therapy which comes close to competing with this ancient philosophy in terms of its primary aim of the alleviation of the distress of an anxious life. It would be accurate to say that in 2023 aspects of Gautama’s theories are more integrated and utilised in psycho-therapy today than any other single psychological theory in existence today. Across the range of mental health therapies in use today very few would not use strategies derived from Buddhist theory. Admitting to this reality is of course an entirely different matter. It is unfortunate but the truth for many in the contemporary world remains a very distant land.
The notions of cause and effect commonly known as predeterminism in psychological pathology are now accepted by most working in the field of socio-psychology. It was Freud and the psycho-analysts in the early twentieth century who have made us most aware of this. They suggested that trauma causes psychological pathology something that all of a sudden now appears to be obvious to everyone. Little do they understand that this was the basis of psychoanalysis which on the whole today is dismissed. The idea of events being predetermined by other psychological antecedents is now accepted as commonplace. A trifle before Freud, in fact some 2400 years before him Gautama-Budhha came up with the same idea. Cause and effect called ‘dependent arising’ became a fundamental underpinning of Buddha’s philosophy.
So, if we turn the idea of cause and effect or ‘dependent arising’ back on Buddha himself what would we find? Why did Buddha find his life so difficult and traumatising when on the face of it he lived a life that most of his fellow Indians would only dream about? What made his suffering such great suffering? What was the cause of his dukkha? If we believe in predeterminism, as he did, the answer to this question is obvious. The reason or causation for his great suffering lay in Gautama’s own mind. The answer fairly self-evidently would be in the pathology of Gautama’s own psyche, his own mental conflict and his own psychological anguish.
Two well-known quotes from Buddha himself suggest his own recognition and acceptance of this fact.
“Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind and produced by mind.”
And to explain suffering
“Speak and act with an impure mind, and suffering will follow you
as the wheel follows the ox, that draws the cart. “
This view that Gautama believed that his own mind produced the suffering that followed is the only reasonable theory to explain why this particular individual would have and indeed could have produced a theory so attuned to psychological suffering that it has remained pre-eminent over twenty-five centuries which one must admit is quite a feat. The only reasonable explanation for this is that the conviction he held came from his own experiences within his mind. We know that his self-proclaimed suffering followed him doggedly ‘as the wheel follows the ox’ for thirty-five years. If this is some simple coincidence then the whole question of predeterminism or interdependent origination in science would have to be reconsidered. Is an effect not the result of a cause? Is scientific aetiology used commonly as it is in determining predisposition an irrelevant consideration? I believe not. No-one working in scientific psychiatry today would accept that as a reasonable premise.
The old chestnut goes that 'if you ask a person what they specialise in you quickly discover what their problem is'. One could well be forgiven for inclining towards a line of reasoning that the fact that Gautama-Buddha produced a cure for a particular suffering, suggests that, that suffering was something he was very familiar with, almost certainly because he suffered it himself. It is commonly known in psychiatry that we are drawn intuitively to psycho-pathology which reverberates in tune with our own unconscious selves. This is why anxious people always seek out other anxious people. Quite often they marry them or at the very least are horribly smitten with them!
Given that the exact details of Gautama’s life cannot be known conclusively one could speculate that perhaps in actual reality he was a man that lived such a particularly traumatic and painful life that the production of this philosophy was part of an inescapable compulsion to extricate himself and his fellow man from this suffering. An alternative view may be that the average Indian life was at the time, so filled with material suffering, so full of deprivation and psychological suffering that this impelled his thoughts and actions. Or perhaps his fellow Indians at the time were simply such psychologically sensitive and vulnerable people so pained by normal everyday events that they found life intolerable. These are all viable speculations. Life was undoubtedly difficult and extremely hard-going for many Indians of the period.