ME26

Buddhist Psychotherapy

ME26  01-04-2011       (4:00 to 5:00)

(Class Notes Only)

----------------

The Buddhism accepts the necessity of the wealth and the man cannot live without any wealth. The primary thing of living being is food. All living beings depend on food (Sabbhe sattā ahara thitikā). The poverty is considered as a suffering that we avoided (Daliddiyaṁ bhikkhave dukkhaṁ).

The Buddha taught a practical method to help mankind escape from the bonds of suffering (The Eightfold Noble Path). He's theme was the same: sīla (morality), samādhi control of the mind (samatha), and pañña (purification of the mind by wisdom). The Silas build concentration (Samadhi) easily, then insight knowledge arises seeing Rūpa (corporeality or nature of bodies) and Nāma (mind or mentality) as they really are. It should be known that the meditator can discern Rūpa.“In the Theravada Abhidhamma, rūpa is analyzed into 28 states as far as the Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha is concerned.”

Buddhism always points out the way to remove suffering. Man with poverty gives raise more difficulties to live long. According to Buddhism, if a man afflicted with poverty, he is led to do unrighteous things such as killing(pāṇatipāta), stealing(adinnādāna), struggling, and fighting and so on. The unwholesome (akusala) actions are mentioned in the sutta as follows:

Physical (body) is Killing living beings , stealing others things and unlawful engagement in sensual pleasures, Verbal is Lying, slandering, using rough words and gossiping. These are related to the physical, verbal and mental behavior of people.

Cakkavattisisihanada Sutta says, “When the wealth is not produced, the poverty may be developed; when the poverty developed, the stealing may be developed; when stealing developed, the production of weapon may be developed; when the producing of weapon developed, the fighting and killing may be developed”. The Buddhism always advised not to engage in bad activities. Therefore the richness of the wealth is necessary to prevent those activities.

We might have an expanded self-representation, but we certainly do not through such experiences wholly abandon the process of identification with self-representation; nor do we lose a metaphysical self, which from the Buddhist perspective we do not have to begin with.

Furthermore, ego functions that constitute the empirical or psychologically functioning self are not lost. Let’s for the moment accept that pride (māna), the sense, “the eye(cakkhu), the ear(sota), the nose(ghāṇa), the tongue(jivhā) and the body(kāya),” that I am higher, lower, or simply, “am” is a mental function that is sometimes present and sometimes absent from our consciousness(viññnāṇa).

The states may be instances when the mental function of māna is not operative; it is temporarily dispelled (tadanga-pahāna). We continue to struggle in the west to move beyond earlier models that pathologized non-ordinary states. Our inquiry would be more productive if we focused on discriminating clearly how spiritual states may retain ordinary functions yet complement these functions with other qualities.

The next form has to do with the meditative absorptions, that is, states of concentration during which the sense of self (māna) is absent, technically indentified as abandoned through suppression (vikkhambana-pahāna){pahana is discussion ‘pa + hana’}, The last form is insight realization. There actually are a variety states here: states in the higher stages of insight, states related to path and fruition consciousness, and those following full realization.

In particular, during and succeeding full enlightenment, identification with a particular sense of self (māna) would be given up through eradication (samuccheda-pahāna) leaving the practitioner free of such identification. Once meditators have embarked on practice and become familiar with the orientation of Buddhist inquiry, they may from time to time have variety meditative experiences in and out of meditation that will reflect ever-deepening realization, cognitive and affective, and culminate in dis-identification with the core sense of self. However, opens a valuable window when he points out that even in traditional psychotherapy, there are unintended and unnoticed moments of freedom from selfrepresentation.

This dissolution makes it possible for distorted images of oneself to change when they emerge in consciousness. The practitioner can be effectively harnessed to a task that Buddhism shares with other spiritual traditions, that of reducing identification with and attachment to our self-representations.

Particularly if she or he is in dialogue, or engaged in verbal self-reflection in the company of someone who can mirror, hold, or indentify spiritual states such as spaciousness, clarity or presence.

by Ashin Indaka (Kyone Pyaw)