Zen and Western Psychotherapy:
Nirvanic
Transcendence and Samsaric Fixation
Chung-Hwa Buddhist
Journal
by Sandra A. Wawrytko
Vol.4 July, 1991 pp.
451-494
P.451
Summary
Much has been said about the relationship between Buddhism
and
Western psychotherapy. I argue that both the ends and
the means
of Buddhist practice far exceed the limitations of
Western
psychotherapy in its dominant forms. This claim is
substantiated
by examining the underlying views of human
nature in the broader
context of cosmic Nature, as these
reflect the assumed nature of
the therapeutic task. Special
attention is given to the universal
human encounter with
death as the ultimate manifestation of
dukkha.My conclusions
may be summarized as follows:
1)Western
psychotherapy, rooted in ancient Greek assumptions
and represented
by strains as diverse as Sigmund Freud and
Abraham Maslow,
essentially views human nature as internally
weak and thus largely
controlled by "objective" external
forces. Consequently, it
conceives of its task in terms of
teaching patients to cope with
existing conditions, that is,
how to tread water in the samsaric
sea. Its response to
death, as expressed in Freud's later
theory of the Death
Instinct, is one of resignation as
demanded by the
scientifically validated fact of natural
necessity.
2) One of the few variations on this therapeutic
scheme,
tending toward Buddhism in general and Zen in particular, is
to
be found in Viktor E. Frankl's Logotherapy. As revealed
in
Frankl's dimensional ontology, he is more sanguine about
human
prospects and our ability to achieve
P.452
self-transcendence. Many parallels are to be found between
logotherapeutic
techniques and those of Zen, including
glimmerings of
enlightenmental insight into the key role of
suffering. Yet, Frankl
is never fully able to liberate
either himself or Logotherapy
from Samsaara, as reflected in
his view of death as a necessary
guarantor of life's
meanings.
3)Only Zen is able to transcend
both self (ego) and Samsaara,
by means of the resources inherent in
Original Nature. Its
attitude of detachment toward death, without
succumbing to
denial, epitomizes its overarching efficacy.
P.453
Much has been said about the relationship between Buddhism
in
general and Western psychotherapy. This is especially
true in
terms of various explorations of the "therapeutic"
potential
inherent in Zen Buddhism.(1) In part, Buddhist
tradition would
seem to corroborate the comparison, as seen
in the metaphor of
Buddhism as a medicine or therapy
dispensed by the enlightened
physician,theBuddha,to cure our
samsaric suffering.
Despite
these apparent similarities, this discussion
focuses on the need
for caution in the pursuit of comparisons,
for an uncritical
association of Buddhism with existing
forms of psychotherapy as
practiced in the West carries the
danger of reductionism,
whereby both disciplines are
compromised. When Buddhism is
reduced to being nothing more
than another form of psychotherapy,
with Sakyamuni Buddha
himself identified as a proto-therapist, a
valuable resource
is lost for the West. In being so regarded, Western
thinkers
need not delve deeply to reveal Buddhism's uniqueness,
but
remain content with superficial similarities.(2) This leads
to
such absurdities as the assumption that psychedelic
-----------------------------
1)
For example, see Erich Fromm and D.T. Suzuki, Zen
Buddhism
and Psychoanalysis (New York: Harper, 1960) and
Alan W. Watts,
Psychotherapy East and West (New York:
Ballantine Books,
1961). The parallels are more subtly
suggested by Frederick
(Fritz). S. Perls in his Gestalt
Therapy Verbatim (Lafayette,
California: Real People Press,
1969), where the text is sprinkled
with references to Zen
and terms such as satori are used
interchangeably with
psychotherapeutic concepts.
2) The same
reductionism is appallingly present in the many
attempts to provide
convenient, but simple-minded, contrasts
based on the geographical
categorization of East and West.
Buddhists would rightly be
shocked to read the following
description of the "Eastern" world
view by Irwin D. Yalom:
The Eastern world never assumes
that there is a
'point' to life, or that it is a
problem to be
solved; instead, life is a mystery be
lived. The
Indian sage Bhaqway Shree Rajneesh says,
"Existence
has no goal. It is pure journey. The journey in
life
is so beautiful, who bothers for the destination?"
Reconciling
this beautiful journey with the reality of Samsaara
is indeed
problematic. Even more disconcerting is the fact
that Yalom
seems to derive his conclusions from D. T.
Suzuki, as indicated
in the discussion prior to the above
passage. Existential
Psychotherapy (New York: Basic Books,
Inc., 1980), p. 470.
P.454
delic drugs can be a substitute for the self-discipline of
meditational
practice, in that they induce the same ecstatic
state and represent
a kind of expressway to enlightenment,
or that meditation is
primarily of interest as a means of
stress reduction. Even those
who more modestly suggest that
drugs be used merely as a
motivation for undertaking the
arduous path of practice, by
granting a glimpse of things to
come, fail to heed Buddhism's
fundamental precept against
intoxicants.
In the following I
argue that both the ends and the means
of Buddhist practice far
exceed the limitations of Western
psychotherapy in its
dominant forms. This claim is
substantiated by examining the
underlying views of human
nature in the broader context of
cosmic Nature, as these
reflect the assumed nature of the
therapeutic task. Special
attention is given to the universal
human encounter with
death as the ultimate manifestation of
dukkha.(3) My
conclusions may be summarized as follows:
I)Western psychotherapy, rooted in ancient Greek assumptions
and
represented by strains as diverse as Sigmund Freud
and
Abraham Maslow, essentially views human nature as
internally
weak and thus largely controlled by
"objective" external
forces. Consequently, it conceives
of its task in terms of
teaching patients to cope with
existing conditions, that is,
how to tread water in the
samsaric sea. Its response to death,
as expressed in
Freud's later theory of the Death Instinct,
is one of
resignation, as demanded by the scientifically
validated
fact of natural necessity.
2)One of the few
variations on this therapeutic scheme,
tending toward
Buddhism in general and Zen in
particular, is to be
found in Viktor E. Frankl's
Logotherapy. As revealed
in Frankl's dimensional
ontology, he is more sanguine about
human prospects and
our ability to achieve
3)It
is significant that the Chinese translation of Samsaara
(sheng(1)
ssu(3a))literally means "Life and Death".
P.455
self-transcendence. Many parallels are to be found
between logother-apeutic techniques and those of Zen,
including
glimmerings of enlightenmental insight into
the key role
of suffering. Yet, despite Frankl's
nirvaanic excursions, he
is never fully able to liberate
either himself or Logotherapy
from Samsaara, as reflected
in his view of death as a necessary
guarantor of life's
meaning.
3)Only Zen is able to
transcend both self (ego) and Samsara,
by means of the
resources inherent in Original Nature.
Its attitude of
detachment toward death, without
succumbing to denial,
epitomizes its overarching
efficacy.
1.Human Nature and the Nature of the Psychotherapeutic Task:
From Plato to the Present
To understand the aim of psychotherapy, and thereby evaluate
its
efficacy, one must first understand its subject. The
terms
"psychology", "psychotherapy", "psychoanalysis", and
"psychiatry"
all share a common etymological component,
"psyche", indicative
of this subject. Derived from the
Greek, psyche (4) (Latin,
anima) originally referred to
one's breath and eventually came to
be associated with the
soul or spirit. This was based on the
belief that the soul
departed from the body at death in one's
last breath, a
long-standing medical criterion of death. Hence
psychology
is the logos or study of the soul, psychotherapy
attendance
(therapia) upon it, and psychiatry the art of healing
it
(iartria).
(4)In Creek mythology the character of
Psyche is the feminine
personification of the soul. Her life
story includes a
forced marriage to a mysterious stranger
(subsequently
revealed to be Eros or Cupid) and conflict
with her
unsympathetic mother-in-law (Aphrodite, goddess of
love),
as detailed by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses. The plot,
suffused with Freudian symbolism, later re-emerged in the
fairy
tale of Beauty and the Beast. See Bruno Bettelheim,
The uses of
Enchantment: The Meanings and Importance of
Fair Tales (New
York: Vintage Books, 1977), "Cupid and
Psyche", pp. 291-303;
"Beauty and the Beast", pp. 303-10.
P.456
The psyche concept likewise reveals a fundamental assumption
in
Western culture, namely the separability (dualism) of mind
or soul
and body. In the Phaedo Socrates speaks confidently
of this
separation at death (presumably drawing upon his
Orphic
background and beliefs). A distinct preference also is
shown for the
psyche over the body, which last is assumed to
be pure while its
material prison is a source of defilement
that must be overcome.
Psyche alone constitutes the "real"
me, the essence of my being.
(5) This assumption became a key
component of Christian theology
(although contrary to the Old
Testament views of Judaism, which
often posits a temporary
separation that ends with the resurrection
of the body at the
Last Judgement(6)).
It is noteworthy that
the same concept of the soul as "breath"
is found in another
Indo-European language, Sanskrit, giving
rise to the word
"aatman."(7) Thus, it may be said that
psychology is devoted to
the study of the aatman. Yet it is
precisely this aatman, at
the core of the Brahmanical
literature, that the Buddha
countered with his doctrine of
an-aatman (anaatta), the denial of
5)
In the course of the Socratic dialectic of the Phaedo, the
participants come to a consensus on the fact that "death
is
nothing more or less than this, the separate condition
of the
body by itself when it is released from the soul,
and the
separate condition by itself of the soul when it
is released
from the body" (Plato: The Last Days of
Socrates, Hugh
Trendennick trans. (Baltimore, Maryland:
Penguin Books,
1969), p. 108). Socrates goes on to
recommend this
separation, stating "So long as we keep to
the body...our
soul is contaminated with this
imperfection" (p. 111).
Hence, "true philosophers make
dying their profession" (p. 113).
6)
Daniel 12:2 states: "many of them that sleep in the dust of
the
earth shall awake to everlasting life, and some to
shame and
everlasting contempt", while Isaiah 26: 19
proclaims: "Thy
dead men shall live, together with my dead
body shall they arise."
Quoted by Jacques Choron in Death
and Western Thought (New
York: Collier Books, 1963), p.
81. Choron blames Paul for
importing this "pagan" idea of
the resurrection of the body into
Christian theology; p.
84.
7) The Indo-European root "anh"
("breath, soul, spirit")
provides the point of derivation for
myriad linguistic
developments -- including the Latin
"anima", Sanskrit
"atman" and English "animate". See Robert
Claiborne, The
Roots of English: A Reader's Handbook of Word
Origins
(New York: Timnes Books, 1989), p. 48.
P.457
aatman's reality. Accordingly, the task of psychotherapy to
care
for this very psyche/aatman is fundamentally wrongheaded
Buddhistically-speaking.
It amounts to attending to an
illusion, and represents a
state of being deluded by an
illusion in making it the focal
point of discussion.(8)
Freudian psychoanalysis is aptly named in
the sense that
it literally strives to breakdown (analyze) the
psyche into
its assumed constituent parts.(9) In fact, in his
analysis
Freud was heavily influenced by classical Greek sources
(as
he was with so many of his concepts), specifically Plato. A
vivid
and revealing image of a tripartite soul is offered in
the
Phaedrus:
Of the nature of the soul....let the figure be a
composite--a pair of winged horses and a
charioteer....the human charioteer drives his in a
pair;
one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the
other is
ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving
of them of
necessity gives a great deal of trouble to
him....The
chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying
the rein, glide
rapidly; but the others labour [sic],
for the vicious steed
goes heavily, weighing
8) Grave consequences follow from
this revelation with respect
to the Western philosophical
tradition, which also has
made psyche (in its intellectual
aspect) a focal point of
investigation. From a Buddhist
perspective this too has
been the pursuit of an illusion, a
series of footnotes to
Samsaara, from Aristotle's On the Soul
through Descartes'
meditations to Kant's transcendental ego and
Husserl's own
Cartesian meditations. The case of Descartes
does,
however, merit further study from a Zen viewpoint,
inasmuch as he begins by marshalling the forces of "Great
Doubt" needed for enlightenment. Unfortunately for
Descartes, his "Great Faith" rested in Catholicism, which
in
turn made the sine qua non of a "Great Death"
impossible
for him or, more precisely, unthinkable.
9) Freud is himself well
away of these etymological connections,
as he notes while
describing the psychoanalytic method:
"We have analyzed the
patient, i.e. separated his mental
processes into their
constituent parts and demonstrated
these instinctual elements in
him singly and in isolation;
what could be more natural than a
request that we should
also help him to make a new and better
re-combination of
them?"; Turnings in the Ways of
Psychoanalytical Therapy"
(1919) in Collected Papers, Vol. II,
John Riviere trans.
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1959), p. 394.
Freud even
compares the process to that used by
chemists in
distinguishing between substances in their
laboratories.
P.458
down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not
been thoroughly trained:--this is the hour of agony and
extremest conflict for the soul.....The right-hand
horse
is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck
and an
aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes
dark; he is a
lover of honour [sic] and modesty and
temperance, and the
follower of true glory; he needs no
touch of the whip, but is
guided by word and admonition
alone. The other is a crooked
lumbering animal, put
together anyhow; he has a short
thick neck; he is
flat-faced and of a dark colour; with
grey eyes and
blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and
pride,
shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and
spur.(10)
The two horses represent the motive force/energy of our
inmost
being, one of which can only be made to cooperate by
repressing
its natural tendencies. The task of the
charioteer,
representing reason, is to keep these two on the
right path and
compel them to work in unison. Significantly,
without their efforts
the chariot will go nowhere--nor can
they be traded for a more
manageable pair. Hence each of
these three elements--reason,
will, and passion--has an
indispensable role to play in effecting
the forward motion of
the vehicle (body) despite the
instability of their
interrelationships.
The Freudian Vision of the Psyche
Down through the centuries
the tripartite view of the soul
(and, hence, of human nature), with
its keynote of conflict
and tension, became ingrained in
10)Plato,
Phaedrus, trans. Benjamin Jowett and included in
The Dialogues
of Plato, vol. 7 of Great Books of the
Western World
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.,
1952), 246-47, 253;
pp. 124-25, 128. The means by which
the "evil" steed is to
be restrained are graphically
presented later in the text
(254; p. 128) : "the
charioteer...with a still more violent
wrench drags the
bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and
covers his
abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his
legs
and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And
when this has happened several times and the villain has
ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and
follows
the will of the charioteer."
P.459
Western consciousness through variations on the theme.(11)
Inherited
by Sigmund Freud, it was examined through the
lenses of
scientific materialism to produce his own unique
reinterpretation.
The essential mechanism of control, the
assumption of a need
to exert control over conflicting
forces, remains unchanged,
as does the sense of the
regrettable, but necessary, evil
inherent in our sources of
energy. However, Freud's
refinements seem to give the
dark-horse of passion almost
unstoppable power, while the
willing white horse is envisioned to
be a nay-saying nag.
This view of human nature has been aptly
described by
David Stafford Clark:
Freud,,.,struggled to help man find a way to elevate
himself above the savage beast, which, through no fault
of his
own, is always a part of him, The doctrine of
original sin
found no opposition from Freud, although
11)On a mundane
level, we have the model of the guardian angel
or conscience
opposing devilish temptations, both of which
vie for the
attentions of the befuddled decisionmaker.
Under the
influence of Aristotelian philosophy (On the
Soul, Book II,
413b), the seventeenth century British
philosopher, Thomas
Hobbes, speaks of the nutritive,
motive, and rational
faculties of the soul (Leviathan,
part II, chapter 29). The
three branches of the American
political system may similarly be
cited here: controlling
executive branch/ President, inhibiting
judiciary/Supreme
Court, and grass-roots
legislature/Congress. More
recently, theories about the
"triune brain" have emerged
in scientific circles whereby
"three basic brains show
great differences in structure and
chemistry, yet all
three must intermesh and function
together" (Paul D.
MacLean, A Triune Concept of Brain and
Behavior (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1973), p. 7.
The assumption
of potential conflict among three
forces, which
nonetheless must work together, is perpetrated
here. The
parallels to the Platonic vision are striking,
although
now the ephemeral soul is replaced by the "objective"
fact
of the brain. A layering effect is posited in the human
brain: the core resides in the brain stem, designated the
reptilian brain, source of our survival functions, and
those
recalcitrant passions represented by Plato's dark
horse; a
mammalian overlay keeps us within the animal
realm of the
white horse, who is more refined in its
motives and behavior
than the reptilian root; the crowning
achievement of the
sophisticated neocortex, however, is
confined to primates,
representing the rationality of the
charioteer who must strive
to remain in command of the
whole.
P.460
his explanation of it was biological rather than
religious.(12)
What is unique about Freud's three components is that
they
are interconnected elements, rather than the three
distinct
faculties or entities implied in Plato's analogy.
Each evolves
out of its lower predecessor, struggling to
raise itself above
its own roots, in a psychic version of
Darwinian evolution. The
fundamental substratum, identified
as the Id (in German, "Das
Es"),(13) is an impersonal,
seething sea of psychic energies, a
microcosmic of the cosmic
soup out of which the universe emerged.
Freud links the Id
with instinctual drives, most prominently the
sexual energy
of the libido. These drives represent our primal
inheritance
(original sin?) of human nature shared with all
individuals,
past, present, and future. It can also be equated
with the
"beast within", that aspect of human nature that
directly
links, or binds, us to the primitive, material world
of
animals. Precisely because of this beast that lurks within,
the
savage hidden beneath a thin veneer of civilization,
social
structures must be rigidly enforced and legal codes
adopted.
The alternative is to plunge back into the
deplorable
"State of Nature", characterized by primal
instincts of
aggression and desire run amuck."(14)
12) David
Stafford-Clark, What Freud Really Said (New York:
Schocken Books,
1976), p. 243.
13) Debates have arisen as to the appropriateness of
standard
translations of Freud's terminology. The problem seems
more
crucial in the case of "Id" than that of "Ego." Bettelheim
suggests that we refer to the former as "the It" and the
latter
as "the I," while the "Super-Ego" becomes "the Over-I".
Having
noted the controversy,I shall continue to use the
traditional
renderings here.
14) Descriptions of this "State of Nature" can be
found in
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, one of the foremost
spokespersons
for this dominant self-vision in the Western world.
A terrifying
fictional account of the degeneration of
civilization occurs
in William Golding's Lord of the Flies (New
York: Coward-McCann,
1954), chronicling the savagery that
emerges when a group of
English schoolboys is marooned on an
island, turning them
from well-mannered little gentlemen to
murderous brutes.
Nor is the problem of psychic conflict deemed
to be confined
to the human race. The intergalactic dimensions of
this
phenomenon are set forth in the classic science fiction
film
P.461
Obviously such views of human nature and its roots contrast
sharply
with the "Original Nature" both valued and sought by
Zen. How odd,
then, that some have suggested Freud's morass
of instinctual
drives lodged in the Unconscious coincides
with the goal of Zen
mediation. For example, it is claimed
that "[t]hrough the practice
of zazen (Zen meditation), the
discriminating mind (the conscious
mind) is quieted and the
intuitive mind (the unconscious) is
liberated and identifies
with the universal mind."(15) Such an
interpretation is at
best a partial truth, representing yet another
manifestation
of the reductionist fallacy responsible for
serious
misconceptions of Zen in the West.
The Ego develops
out of the Id, serving as mediator between
the latter and the "real"
or social world. Since the Ego is
derived from sense data and
memories, what Buddhism refers to
as the five skandhas, it
constitutes individual consciousness
and the sense of personal
identity. In turn, the Super-Ego
emerges out of the Ego, two steps
removed from the Id, by
means of social conditioning, the
product of external
impositions, the demands made upon us,
particularly by
parental and other authority figures. The
Super-Ego's
function is essentially to inhibit the selfish
(natural)
tendencies of both the instinct-driven Id and
the
self-interested Ego. More informally referred to as the
conscience,
the Super-Ego is responsible for instilling
feelings of
guilt and anxiety that may in certain
circumstances escalate
into psychic imbalance.
In a "normal", integrated personality,
the Ego assumes the
reins, holding in check the recalcitrant
Id without
capitulating to the excessive demands of the
nagging,
negating Super-Ego. Despite the liabilities of both the
Id
and the Super-Ego, the Ego cannot afford to eliminate either.
That
would amount to
"Forbidden Planet" (1956). In the
story remnants of an
advanced, non-human civilization are
discovered by
Professor Morbius of planet Earth. Their
mysterious
demise is ultimately traced to a "dark,
terrible,
incomprehensible force", which turns out to be none
other
than "monsters from the Id". As the hero of the piece
states: "We're all part monsters in our subconscious.
That's
why we have laws and religion."
15) Claire Myers Owens, "Zen
Buddhism" in Charles T. Tart ed.,
Transpersonal Psychologies
(New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1975), p. 156.
P.462
self-mutilation, as well as undermining the delicate balance
of
power, The only hope for the Ego is to keep both Id and
Super-Ego
in check by constantly shifting alliances with
their polar
opposites. In fact, Freud declares "Man is lived
by the
unconscious,"(16) meaning that our life energy derives
from this
source and that our instincts are "the ultimate
cause of all
activity."(17) When we fail to give the Id and
the Unconscious
due respect, Freud observes, neurosis
results.
The
primary task of psychotherapy, then, is to help the
individual (in
the person/persona of the Ego as would-be
controller) to cope
with the natural contentiousness of these
three forces and
reinstate a balance among them.(18)
Regression lies at the
root of the neurotic imbalance. A
psychic mechanism of great
functionality, repression can at
times be too effective, too
efficient, in its attempts to
tame the Id, thereby thwarting the
flow of psychic energies.
Furthermore, by Freud's psychological
version of the
scientific law of the Conservation of Energy, this
energy can
be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
Out of
this transformation, neurosis arises.
Consider the
example of anger, as viewed within the Freudian
framework. Two
options are recognized when this emotion
begins to bubble up
from the primeval sludge of the Id into
consciousness: one may
ex-press the anger (literally, press
or squeeze it out) or
re-press/sup-press it (press it back or
under). The Super-Ego, as
guardian of social order and
harmony, often inhabits direct
expression of our anger,
particularly if it is directed toward
what is deemed to be an
inappropriate object (e.g., an authority
figure such as
16) Freud as quoted by Yalom, p. 288, from
Rollo May, Love and
Will (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), p. 183.
17)
Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis. 1939. Vol. XXIII
Standard
Ed., p. 150, quoted by Stafford-Clark, p. 136
18) In a popularized
adaptation of Freud's tripartite model,
the more personalized
labels of Parent (Super-Ego), Child
(Id), and Adult (Ego) have
been utilized. Nonetheless,
the Platonic and Freudian goal
of constructing an
integrated, well-balanced personality
under the control
of reason remains unchanged.
P. 463
one's father or mother). The psychic strategy of the Ego in
such
cases may be to banish the anger from consciousness.
Nonetheless,
the energy so generated cannot be destroyed,
merely rechanneled,
and so it is relegated to the wilderness
of the Unconscious. Freud
warns that this strategy leads to a
potentially explosive situation,
for the repressed anger will
eventually seek expression in other,
more indirect forms.
These may be as harmless as Freudian slips
or jokes or as
serious as neurotic manifestations of
paralysis or
hallucinations.
In this dualism of expression
versus repression, Freud sees
no solution but to dredge the
Unconscious (through Dream
Analysis, Free Association, etc.) in
order to drag the
repressed emotion to the surface. Once
exposed in the light
of consciousness, its hidden energies become
dissipated. It
is assumed that only by venting the anger in a
controlled
situation can we avoid suffering the affects of its
distorted
mutations. Fritz Perls echoes the Freudian line when
he
states "Any anger that is not coming out, flowing freely,
will
turn into sadism, power drive, and other means of
torture."(19)
Debates persist within the psychotherapeutic community on
the
veracity of this analysis. Recent studies have suggested
that the
mere fact of discussing one's anger (much less
expressing it)
has the effect of aggravating rather than
ameliorating it. This
implies that the situation is much more
complicated than Freud's
mechanistic model realizes. Unlike
hot air in a overfilled balloon,
we cannot simply find a way
to release anger in order to prevent it
from exploding.
The dualistic nature of Western thought processes
illustrated
by the Freudian model equally can be applied to any
emotion
or instinctual drive--from hunger and sex to fear and
aggression.
This either/or positing of a forced choice
between polar
extremes presupposes the existence of an
unresolvable dilemma
intrinsic to human nature. The psyche
thus is conceived as a
veritable battlefield upon which
natural instincts (the Id)
are pitted against civilized
standards of conduct (the
Super-Ego), in the midst of
survival imperatives (the
safeguarding of which is the
primary responsibility of the Ego).
19)
Frederick S. Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, John O.
Stevens
ed. (Lafayette, California: Real People Press,
1969), p. 76.
P.464
Comparing the Freudian analysis of emotion with Buddhist
accounts,
we see that Buddhist theory allows for a third
option over
and above the extremes of Western dualism:
extinction. Anger
(dosa) is a particularly apt example,
inasmuch as it is
identified as one of the three "poisons"
(along with greed,
lobha, and ignorance, moha)(20) The
Dhammapada devotes an
entire chapter (XVII) to the topic of
anger, recognizing it as a
self-imposed "fetter" (fu) we
must liberate ourselves from.(21)
Significantly, this same
passage (221) cautions against clinging to
either the body or
the mind (psyche). The image of the chariot
also appears,
bringing to mind Plato's analogy: "Whoso, as a
rolling
chariot, checks his uprising anger, him I call a charioteer;
other
folk merely hold the reins" (222). The element of
control
highlighted here would seem to correspond to the
prevailing
Western models. Nonetheless, it is not repression
that is being
advised--this would merely preserve the
unavoidable state of
tension. Rather, we are instructed to
eradicate the negative
emotion. This is borne out by the
subsequent passage (223) ,
where the methodology is
clarified--the anger (fen 4) is to be
"conquered" (sheng)by
means of non--anger (pu-fen). The Suutra of
Begueathed
Teaching recommends patience in such cases, for "the
angry
mind is worse than a fierce fire" while anger and rage "steal
your
merit and virtue" (22) Thus, anger or any other negative
emotion
is not to be repressed, but replaced. We thereby
avoid the future
dangers for both ourselves and others latent
within it.
Buddhism, then, allows us to transcend the Freudian dilemma
of
expression versus repression by means of this third,
transcendent
option. The
20) See, for example, the Kalama Suutra, in
which the Buddha
argues for the centrality of these three
emotions based
on empirical data derived from his listeners.
21)
The Dhammapada, trans. into Chinese from Paali by Shih
Liao-Chau and trans. into English from Paali by Narada
Thera,
in Vo.II, Sutras and Scriptures, the Bilingual
Buddhist Series
(Taipei: Buddhist Culture Service, 1962),
pp. 27-28.
22) The
Suutra of Bequeathed Teaching, 6, trans. into Chinese
from
Sanskrit by Kumarajiva and trans. from Chinese into
English by
Chou Hsiang-Kuang, included in Vol.I of
Sutras and
Scriptures, pp. 223-24.
P.465
extinction of negative emotion can be likened to the "blowing
out"
of Nirvaana itself, so that no smoldering ashes remain
from the
fire of anger that could later be rekindled.
Accordingly it is
said "Defilements of those who are ever
vigilant, who train
themselves day and night, who are wholly
intent on Nibbaana, fade
away."(23) Others have compared it
to the uprooting of a tree:
In the primitive Buddhist view of human nature
naamaruupa (name-form) was also called naamakaaya
(name-body) and satkaaya-d.r.s.ti (the attachment to
one's
own body). It was seen as being in this world by
sinking
roots in the form of worldly passions, while
the
co-dependent element of vijnaana [consciousness]
was the
trunk that grew out of these earthly roots,
opposed to the
earthiness of the roots by the principle
of clarity or
knowledge. This would seem to head us in
the direction of
an opposition between light and
darkness, but in fact
both are fed by the same sap of
kle`sa (worldly passions)
that flow through the human
mode of being. The
rational discrimination of
consciousness and the
correlative judgments of good and
evil may prune the branches
of appetite but they do not
uproot the tree. When the violent
wind of impermanence
strikes terror into one then the
extinction of all
suffering and skandhas, the elemental
negation of the
human mode of being, becomes a real
possibility. That
is the real issue in the extinction of
lust. Those who
ignore the co-dependency of clinging--lust and
think it
enough to deny the burning thirst of desire reduce
the
problem to a simple matter of trimming branches.(24)
If we interpret the Ego as vijnaana and the Id as kle`sa,
with
the Super-Ego being represented by "judgments of good
and evil",
we see that Freudian thera
23) The Dhammapada, XVII, 226,
pp. 27-28.
24) Takeuchi Yoshinori, The Heart of Buddhism: In Search
of
the Timeless Spirit of Primitive Buddhism, James W. Eisig
ed., trans. (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 95-96.
P.466
-py's denial of desire (repression) is just so much tree
trimming.
It cannot hope to uproot the fundamental cause of
tension in human
life. Buddhism's daring encounter with "the
violent wind of
impermanence", most especially reflected it
approach to death,
will be dealt with later. Here let us
examine more closely the
Buddhist doctrine of human nature
that allows its
radicalization or uprooting activity to
succeed, in contrast to
the absence of this possibility in
Western views.
The
Buddhist option, which offers a way out of the endless
cycle of
Samsaara rather than simply helping us to keep our
heads above the
samsaaric waves, is difficult for the Western
mind to fathom,
inasmuch as it poses a direct challenge to
the reigning world
view. It implies a degree of self-control
that defies the
deterministic "laws" of science. Thus, Freud
condemns the
concepts of freedom and choice as
"unscientific,"(25) even
though he himself also described the
task of the therapist as giving
"the patient's ego freedom to
choose one way or another."(26)
Simply stated, the Western
view envisions the human being as
irrevocably subject to
external controls, whether in the form of a
divine being or
the forces of Nature.
In contrast, Buddhism,
and Zen in particular, espouses a
doctrine of self-reliance
bolstered by the efficacious
internal resources of Original
Nature (hsing) . The
significance of this difference is
reflected in the role of
moral precepts in the respective
traditions. In keeping with
the Freudian model, ethical principles
tend to be seen in the
West as externally-imposed universal
25)
Sigmund Freud, as cited by R. May, Love and Will, and
quoted
by Yalom, p. 288.
26) Sigmund Freud, Tie Ego and the Id, vol. XIX,
Standard Ed.
(London: Hogarth Press, 1961, originally pub.
1923), p.
50: cited by Yalom, p. 288. The incompatibility of
the
free will assumed by Western morality and religion with
the determinism demanded by science continues to be a key
point
of tension and contention. Numerous creative
attempts
have sought to resolve the unresolvable--for
example William
James' candid assertion of his personal
preference for
indeterminism in his seminal essay, "The
Dilemma of
Determinism". Here again Buddhism offers an
option to
transcend--and dis-solve-the problem.
P.467
standards handed down by God, or, as for Freud, an
incorporation
of external authority figures in the guise of
the Super-Ego. Thus,
the human response to the Moral Law is
characterized by
compulsion. Immanuel Kant, despite his
description of humans as
legislating the Moral Law by virtue
of innate reason, uses language
clearly indicative of force
and conflict.(27) A contemporary
scholar, under the obvious
influence of Freudian thought, succinctly
observes: "Morality
is the means by which we accomplish our
repression".(28)
For Buddhists, however, the moral precepts or `sila
are
regarded in a different light. Moral precepts are not
imposed
upon the individual from without, but are voluntarily
observed as
an expression of Buddhist compassion.(29)
Although compared to
"a yoke upon the organs of sensation,"
they do not constitute a
form of repression. Rather than
seeking to tame what has already
"gone astray", the precepts
act as preventive measures:
`sila exponentializes negation to the power of infinity
until at last it steps outside the social realm of
ethical order altogether and takes the radical form of
a
withdrawal from the world--asceticism and poverty--
that is
almost inhuman in form.(30)
27) See, for example, Kant's
discussion, "On the Relation of
Theory to Practice in Morality in
General", in On the Old
Saw: That May Be Right in Theory, But
it Won't Work in
Practice, E.B.Ashton trans Philadelphia:
Unviersity of
Pennsyvania Press): "duty is itself nothing
but the
will's restriction to the condition of a
universal
legislation; "(pp.46-47) "being virtuous, one bows to
his
duty in the act(pp.48); self-denial"(pp.52); "man will
revere his duty above all else, will wrestle with the
countless ills of life as well as its most seductive
temptations (pp. 54).
28) Paul Bohannan, "Go to the Ant, Thou
Sluggard", Science 82,
April, an essay included under the column
heading "Being
Human". Specifically Bohannan is referring
here to the
social need to repress individual drives of sexuality
and
aggression, citing as an authority Freud's Civilization
and Its Discontents.
29) For an enlightening discussion of this
point see Lily de
Silva, "The Scope and Contemporary
Significance of the
Five Precepts", in Buddhist Ethics ond the
Modern World,
Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Sandra A. Wawrytko
eds.,
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1991).
30)
Yoshinori,p.29.
P.468
Two points in this passage are especially deserving of note:
1)
the way in which the `sila transcend social convention,
including
the Super-Ego, and 2) the further transcendence of
humanness
itself. The latter point, a unique aspect of
Buddhism's
radicalization of our being, ties in with
Mahayana's
assumption that the Buddha-nature pervades all
beings, as
reinforced by the universal compassion expressed
in the ahimsaa
(non-injury) precept.
Delving more deeply, the Buddhistic concept
of human nature
emerges, sharply contrasting with the dominant
Western view
discussed above:
the human person is basically pure, but in allowing oneself
to be exteriorized one takes evil karma upon oneself,
just
like iron that rusts because it has been left
exposed to
the elements. That evil karma then rusts the
subject to the
core, like rust corroding the iron. It
is something that
takes place without and yet
penetrates within unhindered
to corrupt the core of the
subject. The fault here lies
completely and totally
with the subject.(31)
Yet, precisely because the responsibility lies completely
within
ourselves, we likewise have the means to become
purified. As
an oft-quoted passage of the Dhammapada (l65)
states:
By oneself, indeed, is evil done; by oneself is one
defiled; by oneself is evil left undone; by oneself,
indeed, is
one purified. Purity and impurity depend
on oneself. No one
purifies another.(32)
In Buddhism, then, one must be a savior only to oneself and
cannot
fulfill this function for, or expect it to be
fulfilled by,
another. This is both possible and necessary
because one has the
responsibility and resources to do so.
31) Yoshinori,
pp.29-30.
32) Dhammapada, p.77.
P. 469
Among all Buddhist sects, none is more adamant about self-
reliance
than Ch'an or Zen, as is repeatedly emphasized by
Hui-neng, the
Sixth Patriarch, in his Platform Suutra. Here
`sila is referred
to as one of the five forms of incense
(along with samaadhi,
prajnaa, liberation, and liberational
knowledge), which "perfumes
us from within; we should not
seek it without." (33) Hui-neng
refers to the twofold process
of letting go of past misdeeds and
guarding against future
ones, tasks to be performed by ourselves
alone. Our Original
Nature, in sharp contrast to Freud's nefarious
Id, is not the
source of our problems but rather of their
solution. The
"repentance ritual (hui)" described by the Sixth
Patriarch
does not require another to whom our appeal is directed
nor
anyone from which forgiveness is received. Although it
involves
a vow for the deliverance of an infinite number of
sentient
beings, the vow is similarly explained as being
self-directed:
It does not mean that I, Hui-neng am going to deliver
them. And who are these sentient beings, potential
within
our minds? They are the delusive mind, the
deceitful
mind, the evil mind, and such like -- all
these are
sentient beings. Each of them has to be
delivered by
one-self by means of one's own Essence of
Mind [Original
Mind]; only by one's own deliver-ance,
is it genuine.
The ultimate refuge, then, lies not beyond us, but rather in
our
Original Nature; each should take refuge in the Buddha
within. No
reference is made to any other Buddhas: "hence if
we do not take
refuge in the Buddha of our own Mind-essence,
there is nowhere else
for us to go." In this respect Hui-neng
is in perfect accord
with the teachings of the First
Patriarch, Bodhidharma, and his
33)
These and subsequent references to the Platform Suutra or
Suutra Spoken by the Sixth Patriarch, Chapter II, are
taken
from the record of Fahai, Wong Mov-lam trans., rev.
by Dwight
Goddard, included in Vol. I of Sutras and
Scriptures,
pp.365-73. The English rendering has been
amended in some
places.
P.470
key insight that "This mind is the Buddha",(34) which has been
described
as "Mahayana Buddhism in a nutshell."(35)
Zen Repentance is
suggestive of existential therapy's task
to "to de-repress, to
re-acquaint the individual with
something he or she has known
all along....Above all, the
philosopher and the therapist must
encourage the individual
to look within and to attend to his
or her existential
situation." (36) The similarity in
perceptions does not,
however, translate into practice.
"Existential guilt," the
sense of self-transgression or failure to
realize one's full
potential that emanates from regret remains
steadfast.
Confrontation with one's responsibility is
necessary to
expiate such guilt, but too often it remains repressed
until
the self-victimizing victim succumbs to death.
Irwin
Y'alom discusses the pervasiveness of existential
guilt in Western
society in terms of both clinical experience
and contemporary
literature. In the latter context he
provides an insightful
analysis of Franz Kafka's modern
classic, The Trial, as an
explication of one man's
self-indictment, self-conviction, and
self-avoidance, ended
only by his death:
Kafka's man from the country was guilty--not only
guilty of living an unlived life, of waiting for
permission from another, but he was guilty, too, of not
accepting his guilt, of not using it as a guide to his
interior, of not "unconditionally" confessing--an act
which
would have resulted in the door "springing
open."(37)
34)
Bodhidharma. "Bloodstream Sermon" included in The Zen
Teaching of Bodhidharma,Red Pine trans. (San Francisco:
North
Point Press, 1989), p.9. Bodhidharma further
insists that one
must look into one's Original Nature
in order to discover a
Buddha and assiduously avoid
savior figures in the forms of
external Buddhas or
bodhisattvas, which are but illusions
associated with
the mortal realm.
35) Red Pine, in his
commentary to the "Bloodstream Sermon",
p. 16, note 12.
36)
Yalom,p.16.
37) Yalom, pp.280-85.
P.471
The presupposed limitations of human nature would seem to be
instrumental
in these failures. Conspicuously lacking is
Buddhism's
structural basis for implementing the necessary
self-assertion,
what Hui-neng outlines as "the Ritual of the
three-fold Guidance",
in terms of the Buddha, the Dharma and
the Sangha.(38)
Beyond the Freudian Vision: Original Nature versus Original Sin
It may be objected that there is more to Western
psychotherapy
than Freud, and this is indeed true.(39) Many
therapists, from
Freud's own time until today, have taken
issue with this
all-encompassing determinism regarding human
nature and human
motivations. In particular there have been
many whose evaluation
of the Unconscious has been much more
positive than Freud's fear
and trembling over our latent
instinctual drives. C.G;. Jung, for
example, redefined the
Unconscious in terms of its collective
resources of
creativity. Moreover, a self-styled "Humanistic"
trend has
taken hold in America, purporting to offer an alternative
to
both Freudianism and Behaviorism, which heretofore have
dominated
the psychotherapeutic scene.
These claims notwithstanding, an
abiding consistency in the
view of human nature as inherently weak
and constitutionally
inept in its dealings with natural forces
remains. The
assumption of a fatal flaw has gone largely
unchallenged.
Buddhism's emphasis on self-reliance goes against the
grain
of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The latter is constructed
around
the core assumption of Original Sin passed on from the
primal
parents (and beyond our control). The corollary of
this
theological assumption is Christianity's need for a
sacrifical
victim, in the person of Jesus, to expiate our
collective guilt
as Savior of all humanity. That this
assumption continues to
suffuse Western culture is evidenced
by Jean Delumeau's exploration
of the "cultural history of
sin in the West":
38)
Hui-neng,p. 370.
39) Nonetheless, Yalom observes "Freud's ideas
have so
influenced the field that to a great extent the
evolution
of dynamic thought is the evolution of Freud's
thought";
p. 59.
P.472
I think that sin exists, I feel its presence in me.
Furthermore, I cannot see how one can eliminate
the idea of
an Original Sin, whose scars we still bear.
Freud felt this and
tried to explain it, while both
Bergson and Gouthier observed
that "everything happens
as if there were an original defect
in man."
My book must therefore not be taken either as a
refusal
of guilt or the need for a consciousness of sin. On the
contrary, I think it will shed light on the excessive
sense of guilt and "culpabilization"...that has
characterized Western history.(40)
One corroborating example from the realm of psychology
can be
found in Abraham Maslow. Heralded for his upbeat
theories,
Maslow emphasizes an optimistic striving to reach
the pinnacle of
one's individual potential under the banner
of
"self-actualization." Despite this effusive terminology,
however,
Maslow has little hope concerning the self's ability
to thwart
impinging forces, especially when compared to Zen's
confidence in
our Original Nature. While Maslow asserts the
goodness or neutrality
of what he deems our "inner nature" in
the grounding assumptions
of his psychology, he goes on to
provide the following
characterization of that nature:
It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome
by habit, cultural pressure, and wrong attitudes toward
it....Even though denied, it persists underground
forever pressing for actualization....every falling
away
from species-virtue, every crime against one's own
nature,
every evil act, every one without exception
records itself
in our unconscious and makes us
40) Jean Delumeau, Sin.and
Fear: The Emergence of a Western
Guilt Culture, 13th-18th
Centuries (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1990).
P.473
despise ourselves.(41)
This passage resonates with both Freudian views of the psyche
as a
plaything of external powers and the experience of
existential
guilt. Conditions beyond our control occasion
denial/repression
of certain fundamental aspects of our inner
nature. The insistence
on commitment to our "species-virtue"
also demonstrates that Maslow
is not prepared for the radical
transcendence of humanness required
in Buddhism's conception
of Original Nature.
Similarly,
Maslow's oft-cited "Hierarchy of Needs" reflects
a recognition of
human limitations. According to this theory,
five successive
levels of needs, expressive of universal
human nature, must be
met:
l)physiological needs
2)security
3)social,
interpersonal needs
4)self-esteem
5)self-actualization
Satisfaction
of the "higher" needs presupposes prior
satisfaction of the
"lower". A species of determinism is at
work here, though it is much
more subtle than the determinism
in Freud's system. Maslow assumes
that l) our physical needs
(food, sleep, etc.) are the sine qua non,
the bottom line, in
human life. Thus, only when they are first
fulfilled can we
seek 2) to solidify our position psychologically,
from which
point we can move on to 3) human interrelationships.
After
the need for others has been realized we must 4) acquire a
positive
self-image before we are able to 5) maximize our
potentials in
the fullest sense. Such, for Maslow, is the
irrevocable demand
of human life, a universal and
inter-cultural phenomenon.
41)
Abraham Maslow in his Introduction to Toward a Psychology
of
Being, 2nd ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold
Company,
1968), pp. 3-5. Under these same assumptions
Maslow discusses
the nature of anger; his comments invite
comparison with the
Buddhist notion of the "three
poisons" mentioned above:
"Anger is in itself not evil,
nor is fear, laziness, or even
ignorance. Of course,
these can and do lead to evil
behavior, but they
needn't."
P.474
The model found in Buddhism again differs greatly. Even if
we
assume that the fifth and final stage, self-actualization,
is
inclusive of enlightenment (a most optimistic assumption),
the
other four steps pose the possibility of indefinite
postponement.
When, indeed, can we be certain those other
needs have been
fulfilled, such that we are at last liberated
from natural
necessity? How far do our physiological needs
really extend--how
much food, sleep, etc. is necessary before
progressing to a sense
of security? What is an appropriate
means of assuring security--a
stable job, a six-digit income?
Without human bonding is a
sense of security indeed
impossible? Even then how broad and
intricate must this human
network be in order for one to
feel fulfilled? Most
problematic of all is the emphasis on
self at what are
assumed to be the highest levels of
development. Zen
practitioners would seem to defy their own
nature when they
defy the promptings of what Maslow takes to
be natural
necessity. What shall we say of those who forego
fulfillment
of the lower level needs while meditating --abjuring
food,
sleep, human interaction, and all sense of self (much less
self-esteem!).
Are they, then, not human? Buddhism's element
of
self-transcendence, including a transcendence of the
human, is
again crucial here. Perhaps Maslow has misjudged
human nature,
ascribing to it limitations that are neither
universal nor
insurmountable.
Another problematic aspect of Maslow's view is
his emphasis
on the polarities of growth and deficiency. We must
either
move forward or remain defective. The "process of healthy
growth"
is elaborated in terms of mutually exclusive choices:
"a never
ending series of free choice situations, confronting
each individual
at every point throughout his life, in which
he must choose
between the delights of safety and growth,
dependence and
independence, regression and progression,
immaturity and
maturity."(42) In Zen, however, realization
rather than growth
is the focus--realization of our
pre-existing and pristine
Original Nature. There is nowhere
to grow to, nor is there an
innate weakness or defect to be
healed.
42)Maslow, p.
47.
P. 475
Death: The Ultimate Challenge
Of all the dualisms that riddle
psychotherapy in the West,
the most challenging of all revolves
around life and death.
Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz fantacizes
escape from this
inescapable and terrifying reality:
....for a short time there is no death
And time does
not unravel like a skein of yarn
Thrown into an abyss.(43)
Like its religious predecessors, psychotherapy is challenged
to
offer a response to the fact of human mortality. Western
religion's
response has largely taken the form of denial,
made possible by
positing the existence of another realm
beyond the material.
Thus, our mortality is limited to our
physical being and does
not affect the soul or psyche.
Accordingly, the central
event of Christian
theology--ritualized in the
Mass--is the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through
his own conquest of
death, Jesus has imparted salvation and
immortality to all
believers, precisely as the primal guilt of Adam
and Eve has
been imparted to all human beings. The sins of the
parents
are visited on the children while, conversely, the glory of
the
"Son of Man"/"Son of God" is equally available to all.
Freud,
of course, was less sanguine and as a scientist
had grave
reservations about religion, characterizing it as
"an attempt to
get control over the sensory world, in which
we are placed, by
means of the wish-world, which we have
developed inside us
as a result of biological and
psychological necessities.
But it cannot achieve its
end....lts consolations deserve no
trust."(44) In his later
years Freud was compelled to confront the
perennial problem
of death without the benefit of religious
consolation. Most
importantly, he was forced to modify
43)
Czeslaw Milosz, "The Garden of Earthly Delights", Unattainable
Earth (1986).
44) Sigmund Freud, new Introductory
Lectures on
Psychoanalysis, Lecture 35. "A Philosophy of
Life" included
in Vol. 54 of the Great Books, p. 878.
P. 476
his earlier view of human nature as motivated exclusively by
the
Pleasure Principle to explain the persistence of
contradictory
behavior. Hence, to the primal instinct for
pleasure,
identified as Eros, was added the "Death
Instinct"Thanatos.(45)
A new manifestation of the eternal inner conflict ensued
from these
dual manifestations of the Id, with the forces of
life (sexuality)
confronting those of death. Thus, according
to Freud's analysis,
the human being seeks both pleasure or
prolonging/propagating life
and its extinction in death.
Somewhat paradoxically, both of
these instinctual drives are
grounded in the same end--homeostasis
or the elimination of
tension. The tension, experienced as
pain created by
unfulfilled instinctual drives, is eradicated by
satisfying
those drives, as pleasure results from the reinstatement
of
balance in the organism. Death, on the other hand, represents
the
elimination of all tension, by eliminating the organism
along with
its potential for both balance and imbalance.
Ultimately, then,
the instinct for self-destruction detected
by Freud seeks to return
us to pre-life oblivion.
It has been suggested that Freud sought
in the Death Instinct
"a natural correspondence between the
inevitability of
physical death and the drive of the human
personality to
accept this, even to seek it unconsciously in a
mixture of
biological fulfillment and resignation."(46) In other
words,
this was Freud's means of making scientific sense out of an
indisputable
fact, fitting death into the deterministic
scheme of things as
a "natural" consequence. Freud himself
alludes to the comfort
that can be derived from the Death
Instinct hypothesis: "If we
are to die ourselves, and first
to lose those who are dear to us, it
is easier to submit to a
remorseless law of nature, to the sublime
necessity, than to
a chance which might perhaps have been
escaped."(47) Indeed,
Freud speculated
45) See Freud's
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).
46) Stafford-Clark, p.193.
47)
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Standard Ed.,
Vol.
XVIII, James Strachey trans. (London: Hogarth Press,
1968), p.
45.
P.477
that the "pleasure principle seems actually to serve the
death
instincts,"(48) giving the latter ultimate priority in
the psychic
realm--pleasure as the means to the end of death.
As Freud himself
puts it 'the aim of all life is death'. (49)
The fact that no
alternative exists may seem to provide
scant comfort, especially when
compared to the "escape route"
outlined by the Buddha in the
Four Noble Truths, and the
Eight-fold Path in particular.
Ironically, or perhaps simply
misguidedly, Freud uses the term
"Nirvaana-principle" as
identical with the Death Instinct
designating a stabilizing
force with "the aim of extinguishing, or
at least maintaining
at as low a level as possible, the
quantities of
excitation",(50) representing "a need to restore an
earlier
state of things".(51) Yet, it also offers a point of
entry
for exploring the differences between Western
psychotherapeutic
and Zen approaches to death.
The major trends in Western
psychotherapy, as exemplified
in Freud, teach people how to cope
or come to terms with
existing social reality. The focus is on
balancing inner
drives and outer expectations. Freud offers an
insightful
description of his own intentions:
We have formulated our therapeutic task as one of bringing
to the knowledge of the patient the unconscious, repressed
impulses existing in his mind and, to this end, of uncovering
the resistances that oppose themselves to this extension of
his
knowledge about himself....out hope is to achieve this
by
exploiting the patient's transference to the person of
the
physician....I have expounded elsewhere the dynamic
conditions
in the new conflict we lead the patient through,
which we have
substituted in him for the previous conflict
of his illness.
(52)
48) Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 63.
49)
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 38.
50) Sigmund Freud, "The
Economic Problem in Masochism",
Sigmund Freud: Collected Papers,
Vol. II, Joan Riviere trans.
(New York: Basic Books, Inc.,
1959), pp. 255-56.
51) See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp.
56-57.
52) Freud, "Turnings in the Ways of Psychoanalytic Therapy",
pp. 392-93.
P.478
However, while one may cure a neurosis by treating it as
an
aberrant attempt at conflict resolution and make one fit
to
re-enter human society, no cure is offered or sought for
the more
fundamental problem of Life and Death. Thus,
psychotherapy
serves primarily as a means of self-adjustment
to Samsaara (aptly
rendered as Life and Death in Chinese).
Dukkha, reinterpreted as
tension, is dealt with by reference
to the instinct for pleasure or
the elimination of tension in
homeostasis. But, being ultimately a
futile endeavor, the
Death Instinct alone provides the final
resolution of all
tensions. Awash with determinism, Freud's
view seems
congruent with the Buddha's Noble Truths, at least in
part:
I. Life is dukkha/tension.
II.Dukkha/derives from
ta.nhaa/instinct.
III.To end dukkha/tension we must eliminate
ta.nhaa,
as the proximate cause of dukkha or,
more
fundamentally, eliminate the ignorance (avidyaa) which
is its root cause (that is, satisfy instincts through
the
Pleasure Principle or else obliterate them through
the Death
Instinct).
Conspicuously absent is the fourth and final
truth
outlining the Eight-fold Path. No practice leading to
transcendence
is offered. Without this component the analysis
of Life and Death
loses the optimistic edge of Liberation,
being replaced by Freud's
resgination to "sublime necessity."
The transcendence of Samsaara
for Nirvaa.na--or the Zen
realization of Samsaara as
Nirvaa.na, Nirvaa.na in
Samsaara--is likewise unimaginable.
To summarize, for Freud and most psychotherapists in the
West, human
nature is hopelessly burdened by the collective
weight of the Id
forces that forever dictate and delimit our
actions. "Original
Nature" thus represents a kind of
enslavement rather than
Zen's means of liberation. All that
remains is to make the
best of a bad situation by
rationalizing it scientifically.
For Freud the problem of
Life and Death is biologically posed, and
hence must also be
resolved biologically (that is, through the
Death Instinct).
In Zen, however, the self-generated bonds
of desire,
clinging, etc. allow for our own action to dissolve
the
problem of Samsaara by seeing its mergence in Nirvaa.na.
P. 479
Although both psychotherapy and Zen recognize our problems
as
self-generated--whether in the form of existential guilt or
"sin"-only
Zen provides the means for "conquering"
conditioned genesis
by opting out of the cycle completely. At
the root of this
difference lies psychotherapy's fixation on
the psyche -- aatman,
the illusory ego-self--as opposed to
Zen's adherence to the real or
Original Nature, characterized
as anaatta/anaatman. As a
consequence, psychotherapy is not
only seeking solutions in the
wrong place (namely Samsaara),
but also is searching for the wrong
object (aatman). Hence we
cannot help but remain enmeshed in
impermanence (anicca) and
delusion.(53)
II. Variations on the Psychotherapeutic Theme:
The
Logotherapy of Viktor E. Frankl
Not all forms of Western psychotherapy fall into the same
traps
as those noted above. In the following I shall discuss
one
school--Logotherapy--that manifests certain qualities
indicative
of a striving for transcendence in the direction
of Zen. At the
same time, it falls short of a complete
liberation from samsaaric
bonds. The reason for this failure
further illuminates the
differences between Zen and Western
psychotherapeutic trends.
Logotherapy--literally "therapy through meaning" (logos)
--originates
from Viktor Frankl's sense of the limitations
and misperceptions
of his predecessors. More specifically,
Frankl offers his own
"dimensional ontology" to supplement
the oversights of Freud
(whom he studied) and Alfred Adler
(Freud's erstwhile student and
one time heir apparent whose
school Frankl once belonged to). Frankl
asserts that Western
psychotherapy has failed to grasp the
53)
Fritz Perls illuminates this point: "This is Freud's great
discovery--that there is something between you and the
world....Freud's idea that the intermediate zone, the
DMZ,
this no-man's land between you and the world should
be
eliminated, emptied out, brainwashed or whatever you
want to
call it, was perfectly right. The only trouble is
that Freud
stayed in that zone and analyzed this
intermediate thing.
He didn't consider the self-awareness
or world-awareness; he
didn't consider what we can do to
be in touch again."; pp. 49-50.
P.480
complexity of human nature. He seeks to expand the definition
beyond
reductionist tendencies that make the human "nothing
but" another
organism governed by drives for sexuality or
aggression (the rat
model) or malfunctioning component (the
machine model).(54) It is
here that Frankl begins to resonate
with Zen's insights.
Frankl's scheme can be summarized as follows:
Freud--Will to Pleasure, the physiological dimension
(sexuality, sensuality, hedonism--the infant stage)
Adler--Will
to Power, the psychological dimension
(money, politics,
fame--the adolescent stage)
Frankl--Will to Meaning, the
noological dimension
(spiritual--the adult stage)
Love/experiential values, what one takes from the
world (an
external source of meaning in other human
beings, Nature,
etc.)
Work/creative values, what one gives to the world
(an internal source through service, creations, etc.)
Suffering/attitudina1 values, one's interaction with
and
response to the world.
Of special significance in Frankl's
ontology is his attempt
to account for transformational elements in
human nature, our
inherent human resources for self-transcendence
able to act
alongside and beyond instinctual drives. In
this
"ontological" dimension lies his "height psychology",
countering
the "depth psychology" of Freud and others.
Frankl's
discussions do not focus on the conflicting forces
of Id, Ego,
and Super-Ego; nor does his therapeutic
interaction with
patients necessitate delving past
experiences, particularly
childhood traumas, as the causes of
present neuroses. Frankl
supplements the scientific methods
of Freud with existential
philosophy (and at one point even
referred to his school as
Existential Analysis). He descries
the pan-determinism
54)
See Viktor E. Frankl, The Unheard Cry for Meaning:
Psychotherapy and Humanism (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1978), pp. 55-57.
P.481
or all-encompassing sense of determinism inherent in Freudian
thought.
In its places he proposes a reinstatement of freedom
and
responsibility. Unlike the majority of therapies,
Logotherapy
is receptive to the healing potential of
spirituality, seeing
such currents as part of the cure rather
than a symptom of
neurosis.(55)
Nonetheless, as a scientifically trained
professional,
Frankl is not completely comfortable with the
inclusion of
religion. His coinage of the term "no1ogical" (from
"noos"
and "nous", "mind"), although essentially descriptive of
spiritual
expressions, allows him to clothe his discussions
in a mantle of
respectability imparted by a Greek derivation.
Despite his advocacy
of "cosmic meaning", Frankl's treatment
of religion tends to be
similarly circumspect. In general God
remains for Frankl an
indispensable, but eternally
unprovable, hypothesis, much as it
is for Immanuel Kant in
his "als ob" moral philosophy. (56)
By putting meaning uppermost in his analysis of human
nature,
Frankl orients his therapy toward helping patients to
realize their
personal life meaning. The lack of such meaning
Frankl identifies as
the mass neurosis of modern times--the
Existential Vacuum--a
gaping hole resulting from a
disconnectedness. between fact
and values that can only be
bridged by meaning. The parallels to
Buddhist Sunyata are
manifest here, although in the latter case
no pejorative
value judgment is attached to this ultimate
expression of
reality. The Vacuum or Void then becomes our final
target
rather than something to be avoided.
55) In this
regard, Frankl quotes a letter from Sigmund Freud
to Ludwig
Binswanger in which Freud states that he had
"already found a
place for religion, by putting it under
the category of the
neurosis of mankind." Frankl goes on
to observe that "Even a
genius cannot completely resist
his Zeitgeist, the spirit of
his age"; The Will to
Meaning: Foundations and Applications
of Logotherapy (New
York: New American Library, 1969), p. 27
56)
Frankl's ambivalence toward religion is perhaps best seen
in
the closing lines of his unpublished play,
"Synchronization in Buchenwald", where the protagonist
calls
out in turn to his dead mother, brother, and God.
The first two
respond from their afterlife environment,
while the response
from God is simply a thundering
silence.
P.482
The Logotherapist and the Zen Master
Frankl's therapeutic
method manifests certain similarities
to Zen. For example, like a
logotherapist, the Zen Master's
finger points to the moon of
Original Nature without being
able to impart that nature to the
disciple.
Moreover, the importance of self-reliance is stressed
in
both Zen and Logotherapy--as Frankl notes "truth imposes
itself
and needs no intervention".(57) Frankl rejects an
approach that
would presume to give meaning to the patients
or it create it for
them, since each person possesses the
freedom and responsibility
to realize their unique meaning,
for "the meaning of our lives is
not invented by ourselves,
but rather detected".(58) Thus, he
compares the role of the
logotherapist to that of an
opthamologist, that is, one who
corrects the patient's vision so
that they may see reality
for themselves, as opposed to a
painter who presents a
picture of reality to the patient: "The
logotherapist's role
consists in widening and broadening the
visual field of the
patient so that the whole spectrum of
meaning and values
becomes conscious and visible".(59)
Yet another area of congruence is found in their
respective
methodologies. A characteristic logotherapeutic
technique is to
help the patient realize their own unique
meaning and
responsibility in life. This is comparable to the
dynamics that
exist between the Zen Master and the disciple
aspiring toward
seeing their Original Nature. The patient,
like the Zen
practitioner, begins at the level of
hyperreflection--an
excessive concern with one's own problems
to the exclusion of all
other concerns. In the patient, this
condition may manifest itself
as a wallowing in self-pity,
one is deeply sunk in one's own
Existential Vacuum, and
oblivious to the surrounding reality.
The Zen student,
although intellectually aware of the samsaaric
nature of this
suffering (dukkha)--as well as its
universality--seeks the
Buddhist means of ending it, as outlined in
57)
Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 175.
58) Frankl, Man's Search
for Meaning: An Introduction to
Logotherapy(New York: Pocket
Books, 1963), p. 157.
59) See Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p.
174.
P.483
the Four Noble Truths. However, existential or lived awareness
is
lacking. The problem then becomes fixation on
enlightenment,
becoming what Pai-Chang aptly describes as
"one who is fond of
the raft and will not give it up,"
"intoxicated by the wine of
pure things."(60)
The initial task of the logotherapist/Zen
Master is thus
to broaden the vision of their charges through the
process of
dereflection, gradually turning the focus of attention
toward
reality as a whole. In the context of Logotherapy, this may
take
the form of paradoxical intention, an unexpected
response to
the patient's seeking of solace. For example, in
response to a
distraught patient's litany of travail Frankl
pointedly asks
"Why do you not commit suicide?"(61) The
similarity to the Zen
koan is obvious here.(62) Both pose a
jarring challenge to our
trite expectations, thereby
challenging us to draw upon more
than mere conditioned
response--the primal resources of Original
Nature in Zen and
the noological dimension in Logotherapy.
Both thus
demonstrate Frankl's insistence on the need for
creative
tension as "an indispensable prerequisite of
mental
health"(63)-- in sharp contrast to Freud's assumption of
homeostasis
as the optimum state of an organism. For Frankl,
one "is questioned
by life; and ...can only answer to life by
answering for his own
life",(64) a process facilitated by the
person of the Zen
master or logotherapist. Moreover,
paradoxical intention is
seen to be "a useful tool in
treating obsessive, compulsive
and phobic conditions,
especially in cases with
underlying anticipatory
anxiety."(65) What better description
could be given of the
dukkha inherent to the human condition,
infected by the three
poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance!
60)
Sayings and Doings of Pai-Chang, Thomas Cleary trans.
(Center
Publications), pp. 30-32.
61) See Gordon W. Allport's Preface to
Frankl, Man's Search
for Meaning. p. vii.
62) A discussion of
this topic can be found in Cliff Edwards'
"Logotherapy and Zen:
Anecdotal Approaches to Meaning"
in Sandra A. Wawrytko ed.,
Analecta Frankliana: The
Proceedings of the First World Congress
of Logotherapy
(1980) (Berkeley, California: Institute of
Logotherapy
Press, 1982), pp. 301-09
63) Frankl, Man's Search
for Meaning, p. 164.
64) Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 172.
65)
Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p.201
P.484
If successful this technique elicits detachment or a
distancing
from one's obscuring self-involvement. Thus, the
distraught
patient is stimulated by the shocking
counter-question of
the logotherapist to provide a multitude
of reasons as to why he or
she should not commit suicide,
whereas previously they were
passively waiting to be provided
with that meaning.
Correspondingly, in Zen the apparent
request for a logical
response to the counter-logical koan
question belies the true
intent of drawing upon the student's
trans-rational resources, rooted
in Original Nature. In both
Logotherapy and Zen, humor is
reognized as an effective
expression of paradoxical intention.
Frankl's own experiences
in the death camps of World War II
Frankl confirmed that
"humor, more than anything else in the
human makeup, can
afford an aloofiness and an ability to rise
above any
situation, even if only for a few seconds."(66)
Given
sufficient prior cultivation, satori may indeed be attained
satori
may indeed be attained within these few seconds.
An interesting
integration of Frankl's technique of paradoxical
intention is found
in the story of Ch'an master Hsien-yai's
successful intervention
(by non-intervention) in a marital
conflict. While traveling the
Master encountered a couple
engaged in a violent quarrel,
hurling threats and
counter-threats at each other. Rather than
trying to reason
them out of their anger or address them directly,
the Master
called on passers-by to come and see the excitement,
luring
them with the prospect of an imminent homicide. When someone
in
the crowd objected to such behavior on the part of a monk
the
Master replied that this was quite consistent with his
calling,
since it represented a good opportunity to earn some
money by
performing funeral services. As the argument between
the Master and
the irate spectator escalated, the couple was
distracted/dereflected
from their own hyperreflective state.
This humor-induced
detachment paved the way to a final
resolution of both the
quarrel and their dysfunctional mode
of interaction.
The
final stage in the therapeutic process is in Logotherapy
self-transcendence
66)
Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p.68.
P.485
dence and in Zen enlightenment. Here Frankl has made a
valuable
contribution to psychotherapy by pointing beyond
both Freud's
self-involved Ego/Id/Super-Ego construction and
Maslow's culminating
point in self-actualization, Ego-centrism
is at last
decentralized, edging close upon Buddhism's
anaatta insight.
Frankl even flirts with non-duality by
insisting that our own
happiness is only possible when we are
willing to forego it for the
sake of something or someone
outside ourselves. He employs the
analogy of the boomerang,
which, like happiness, returns to us
only when it has first
been thrown away. Taken a step further,
this leads to a
recognition of the artificiality of ego-boundaries,
such that
self and others are not separated. However,
Frankl's
Western-trained sensibilities seem to prevent him from
taking
this final step into the nirvaanic Void.
As illustrated
through these paralleling processes, the
role of the logotherapist
is far closer to that of a Zen
Master than to a Freudian
psychoanalyst. The latter functions
as a mediator, an object of
transference, who all too often
induces a state of utter dependency
in the patient. There is
in Freud's therapy a presupposed ideal
of how the psychic
elements of Ego, Id, and Super-Ego are to be
integrated, set
limitations for handling repressed instincts,
definite
expectations as to the value of sublimation.
This
authoritarian stance is largely absent in logotherapeutic
theory,
and even moreso in Zen, both of which emphasize
self-reliance.
Both also share a common optimism about the
patient's ability to
reveal pre-existing values, either in
the form of meaning or the
Original Nature.
Finally, Frankl's approach is future-oriented,
is focussed
on a goal to be accomplished or meaning to be realized.
The
past is not allowed to be used as an excuse for shirking
present
responsibilities. As Frankl tells a patient: What
counts is not
what lurks in the depths but what waits in the
future, waits to be
actualized by you." (67) Like the Buddha,
Frankl counsels against
speculating on
67) Viktor E. Frankl, "Fragments from the
Logotherapeutic
Treatment of Four Cases" in Modern
Psychotherapeutic
Practice, A. Burton ed. (Pale Alto, California:
Science
and Behavior Books, 1965), pp. 365-67.
P.486
the causes for one's condition, and instead encourages the
patient
to simply get on with their life task. Just so,
Hui-neng
exhorts us to non-attachment by declaring "let the
past be
dead".(68)
Love, Work, and Suffering; Wisdom, Compassion, and Practice
Comparisons also exist with regard to the three sources
of meaning
recognized by Frankl. The experiential values
reflected in it
may be correlated with wisdom (prajna), the
creative values of
work with compassion (karuna), and the
attitudinal values of
suffering with practice. These pairings
also serve to disclose
the limitations inherent in the
logotherapeutic methodology,
revealing its groping toward the
insights that reach their full
realization only in Zen.
Frankl sees these as three equally
accessible avenues to
meaning, three interchangeable routes to
satisfying the will
to meaning. Nonetheless, suffering is said
to hold the
promise of meaning only when it concerns an
"inescapable,
unavoidable situation", as "a last chance to
actualize the
highest value, to fulfill the deepest
meaning".(69) In
Buddhism, however, the first Noble Truth
recognizes that
suffering (dukkha) in its myriad forms pervades
the life
experience. Accordingly, a a vehicle to meaning, it does
not
represent a "last chance", but rather is an integral part of
all
meaning. Suffering as dukkha is indeed the one and only
means to
meaning. Furthermore, the division of experiential,
creative, and
attitudinal values is merely provisional, for
in essence they are
inseparable.
Frankl characterizes love as something to be
experienced
or "taken" from the world, from which one might assume it
has
more in common with the emotion of compassion than wisdom.
However,
the Buddhist practitioner does not merely experience
the world
through love, but actively seeks to transform that
world. Wisdom,
then, seems a more appropriate parallel here,
in the sense of its
being an existential acquisition by means
of lived experience. The
limitation in Frankl's conception,
from the Buddhist standpoint, is
seen in his description of
experiential values as being
"realized by the passive
receiving of the
68)
Hui-neng, p 391.
69) Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 178.
P.487
world (nature, art) into the ego".(70) This quotation reveals
that
the self/other distinction, the illusion of ego/aatman,
is itself
the limiting factor here. The redeeming aspect
is that love also
is said to open the lover to as broader and
deeper vision of the
cosmos, which in turn may serve as the
occasion for removing that
selfsame dualistic delusion.
Work, like compassion, constitutes a
creative expression,
what we "give" to the world, thus a
natural progression
beyond the acquiring of insight. Buddhist
love, unlike its
more mundane human expression, fits this description
by being
rooted in meditational practice. It is
a
microcosmic-macrocosmic merging or dissolution of the
ego-self,
(71) a mystical love made possible by detachment
from the
samsaric realm, while simultaneously rendering
service to those
who remain deluded by Samsaara. On this
point the Buddhist
approach comes into conflict with Frankl's
emphasis on the
indispensibility, irreplaceability,
uniquenmess, and singulaiity
of the individual as an active
agent.(72) Such assumptions are
indicative of being enmeshed
in the "demon net" of the would-be
Bodhisattva or "warrior
for enlightenment".(73)
A liability
of both experiential and creative values in
Frankl's approach is that
he often discusses them in terms of
"the optimism of the past"--a
perspective that envisions the
past as a permanent storehouse of
values. This contradicts
Hui-neng's directive to "let the past be
dead". Only the
attitudinal values of suffering, practice (dhyana
leading to
samadhi), is present and future-oriented. Suffering
also
offers the most promise here as a catalyst for what I refer
to
as "serendipitous enlightenment", that is, a crisis
situation
that has the effect of allowing an individual to
achieve
insight into reality through a critical
reconsideration
of their past value system. Such an
experience thrusts the
person
70) Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul:
From Psychotherapy
to Logotherapy, Richard and Clara Winston
trans. (New York:
Vantage Books, 1973), p. 105.
71) For an
elaboration of the intricacies of Buddhist love-in
the forms of
mettaa, karunaa, muditaa, and upekkhaa -- see
Yoshinori, pp.
42-47.
72) Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul, p. 35.
73)
Pai-CVhang, p. 35.
P.488
headlong into the Existential Vacuum. and may even induce the
symptomatology
of existential neurosis. Numerous cases are to
be found both
within and beyond the logotherapeutic
literature. All share
a common core experience -- an
accidentally provoked crisis
that serves to expose the
superficiality of previously
held goals, thereby
precipitating a confrontation with one's
life task from the
vantage point of a new, broader perspective.
While Logotherapy does not advocate that the individual
actively
seek such crises (which, according to Frankl, would
amount to
masochism), it does propose a structure within
which they can
be made meaningful when unavoidable.
Buddhistically speaking
one may say that suffering in general
-- the samsaric cycle of
dukkha -- is unavoidable, and hence
every experience is
potentially enlightenmental. But
Buddhism, and Zen in particular,
goes even further to propose
a plan of action or practice under
these circumstances, as
contained in Buddhist Dharma. What in
Frankl's scheme
represents a negative happenstance that is
therapeutically
transformed, in Zen becomes the ground of the human
condition
(as well as the non-human), and the focal point of
Buddhist
"therapy". The Zen Buddhist thus does not
masochistically
pursue suffering, but does undertake to deal with the
fact of
its existence.
If successful, self-transcendence
follows from working
through the process from hyperreflection to
dereflection and
detachment. One example concerns a young man from
Texas who
aspired to every boy's dream -- the life of a cowboy.
His
goal was within his reach when in his late teens a tragic
accident
left him a quadriplegic. Obviously, he could not be
a wheelchair
cowboy. After considerable soul-searching and
inspiration
derived from Logotherapy his serendipitous
enlightenment led to a
personal transformation. He concluded
that rather than being worst
off after the accident he was in
fact blessed, for it forced him to
reconsider his options in
life. He decided to continue his
education, which otherwise
would have ended after high school, in
pursuit of a degree in
psychology, toward the end of counseling
those who has
undergone similar life-shattering and
potentially
life-transforming experiences. Here he found the
meaning of
his tragedy, making it an opportunity for
self-transformation
and
P.489
enlightenment.
As testimony to Frankl's insights about the
pervasiveness
of the Existential Vacuum in contemportary society,
we may
cite the trend toward crisis-inducing organizations. These may
take
the form of intensive group therapy sessions, isolation
tanks, or
wilderness survival courses. Such programs as
"Outward Bound"
are particularly designed to provide
rehabilitation and
therapy to juvenile delinquents. The
intent is to instill a
realization of inner resources as a
means to building
self-confidence and bolstering self-esteem,
such that the
individual becomes a productive member of
society. Herein lies
the problem, for even if they are
successful, such
experiences serve only to bolster the
(illusory) ego-self
and reinforce samsaaric fixation.
Moreover, the
artificiality of these self-induced and
other-directed crisis
situations differs greatly from Zen's
recognition of the existing
life crisis of Samsaara. What is
lacking in the Western
models is a firmly grounded
philosophical basis and discipline,
a set of guidelines for
venturing into the very depths of the
samsaaric Void.
Extending Buddhism's broadened view of suffering
as pervasive
of life experience, we can take a fresh look at Frankl's
most
influential and widely-known work, Man's Search for Meaning.
Originally
entitled A Psychologist Experiences the Death
Camp, the text is
divided into two parts: the first details
Frankl's experiences as a
prisoner in the Nazi concentration
camps, while the second
outlines his logotherapeutic
principles. It is perhaps not
inappropriate to see the
concentration camp as a metaphor for
samsaaric existence in
general.
The condition holds either
directly (in the case of the
inmates) or indirectly (as in case of
their overseers, who
envision themselves as inflicting,
rather than being
subjected to, suffering). The three stages
experienced by the
prisoner in Frankl's account then are applicable
to the broad
spectrum of humanity. The first of these stages--the
delusion
of reprieve--aptly characterizes the state of those who
look
to some divine force to provide salvation from the human
condition,
usually in the form of a paradisiacal afterlife.
Western science
has discredited this hope, as reflected in
Freudian psychotherapy.
Hence, there is a
P.490
move toward the second stage of Adjustment, the most
complicated
as well as the most long lasting phase. For the
camp inmate this
stage requires a gradual acceptance of the
abnormal as normal,
including emotional hibernation,
desensitization, and overall
apathy. The concerns of life
take on a primal immediacy,
eliciting the very instincts
Freud deems to be the source of
human energies. The only
remaining course, as Freud counsels,
is resignation to
irrevocable, natural necessity. Only Zen
ventures beyond, to
offer the prospect of liberation, in the sense of
escape from
Samsaara and realization of the co-existing nirvaanic
state.
In what Frankl refers to as a "rehumanization" process, we
can
conceive of the liberated inmate's re-establishment of
contact
with Original Nature, which has been thwarted and
obscured by
samsaaric submergence.
Thus, we see in Logotherapy a much more
successful attempt
to deal with the human condition than Freudian
theory -- much
more optimistic about the inherent powers of human
nature.
Nonetheless, in lacking the structural basis for the
enlightenment
process, for cultivation prior to
enlightenment, and its
dependence on the unreliability of
"serendipitous
enlightenment", it continues to lag behind
Zen. Unaware of the
universality of suffering, it therefore
relegates the approach
needed for nirvanic liberation to
extraordinary circumstances.
Death
as the Sine Qua Non of Meaning
The final topic to be
considered in the light of Logotherapy
is that of death and its
relationship to life. As seen above,
Freud ultimately was moved to
posit a Death Instinct in order
to bring some semblance of
rationality to this universal
human phenomenon. Death proved
no less troublesome for
Frankl, and in fact constitutes the
beginning point of his
therapeutic search. He recounts his own
precocious encounter
with the mortality at age four.(74) This
catalyst launched
his lifelong search for meaning. Given the fact
of death, he
queried, how could life hold any meaning? His
answer was
phrased in terms of the meaning of death itself, or,
more
precisely, the fact that death imparts meaning to life. Thus,
in
the context of Logotherapy, death becomes not a necessary
74)
See Stephen Kalmar, "A Brief History of Logotherapy"
in Analecta
Frankliana p. XVI.
P.491
evil of Nature to which we must resign ourselves, but a
guarantor
of the meaning life, and hence a focal point of
discussion.
How does Frankl accomplish this transformation of death?
He begins
by delving the etymology of the word "finite", a
word of usually
negative connotations. Western culture has
evidenced an
overwhelming preference for the infinitem, the
eternal, qualities
associated with divinity. Frankl argues
for an attitudinal change
in terms of our sense of the word,
which thereby entails a
change in our attitude toward
death.(75) The word finite, says
Frankl, has a dual meaning,
derived from the Latin "finis", which
signifies both a limit,
a boundary, or ending point and a goal. If
we conceive of
death in the former sense, as a limitation, as
is usually
done, then it becomes a barrier for us, something
that
represents the termination of life. If, however, we explore
the
possibilities inherent in the second meaning of a goal,
death
becomes integrated as an intrinsic part of the entire
life
process; it is the finish line toward which we are
continually
striving, the time limit that puts all that
precedes it into
proper perspective.
Frankl then asks us to consider the
consequences of having
no such final goal. Without the incentive
(creative tension)
evoked by impending death, our lives would be
characterized
by interminable postponement, under the
assumption of
immortality. There would be no need to compete or
even pursue
any project now, or to strive after professional or
personal
goals immediately, since we would literally have all the
time
in the world to fulfill any and all of them. As a
consequence,
we would most likely accomplish very little and
so suffer the
overwhelming effects of Existential Vacuum for
eternity.(76)
Aldous Huxley offers a fictional account of just such a
terrifying
immortality in his novel After Many a Summer Dies
the Swan. In the
story an incredibly wealthy man devotes his
entire fortune to
finding the secret to life extension, only
to learn that there are
inevitable negative accompaniments to
75) Frankl devotes
an entire section of his text, The Doctor
and the Soul: From
Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, to "On
the Meaning of Death" (New
York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 63-92.
76) See Frankl,"On the Meaning of
Death", The Doctor and the
Soul, pp. 63-92.
P.492
this goal. In living far beyond the human norm, he becomes
sunk
in a Freudian-esque oblivion of primal drives. Death
under such
circumstances emerges not only as meaningful, but
moreover as a
welcome relief.
III. The Zen Transcendence
Turning now to Zen proper, we see that the dualism of life
and
death has been left behind, as mere relics of the now
transcended
Samsaara. Hence the therapeutic goal differs
enormously from the
Freudian resignation to death. The means
to this goal, while
related to logotherapeutic methods, far
exceed the scope of the
latter. Rather than teaching one to
cope with samsaaric
existence--however that may be conceived
-- Zen radicalizes our very
being. The Zen practitioner is
not content with an occasional
glimmer of serendipitous
enlightenment, but actively engages in Zen
practice to evoke
that experience. Most fundamentally, the
difference can be
traced to Zen's profound grasp of the mechanism
underlying
Samsaara (conditioned genesis), along with practical
methods
of escaping its grasp (meditation, etc.). Zen transforms our
way
of seeing the world by pulling aside the veil of
illusion.
In so doing it reveals our Original Nature and
exposes the
delusive fallacy of self-development and progress
beyond an assumedly
defective point of origin.
The crucial difference between Zen
and Western psychotherapy
in terms of attitudes towards death may
be expressed as a
difference in eschatology. The term itself,
derived from the
Greek "eschatos", denotes what is "further" or
"ultimate".
Invariably it has been used with reference to death as
the
assumed ultimate for human beings. Despite their
disagreements
on the details, this interpretation seems valid
for both Freud and
Frankl. Freud resignedly perceives death
as a matter of natural
necessity, while Frankl rationalizes
its necessity in terms of
imparting meaning to the finitude
of life.
In Buddhism there
is no eschatology, strictly speaking.
(77) To imagine an ul-
77)
Thus, Yoshinori observes "viewed in its authentic sense,
the
dharma of the Buddha is eternal and there should be
no such thing
as an eschatology in Buddhism"; p. 60.
P. 493
timate
timate beyond the eternal present, an end point in
a
progression to perfection, is contrary to Buddhist thought.
Both
progress and death alike belong to the samsaaric realm.
Enlightenment
itself involves the "Great Death" of the
psyche, an
experience far surpassing mere physical death in
significance and
profundity. Zen offers detachment from life
as well as death,
without denial or redefinition. Every
moment is
simultaneously samsaaric and nirvaanic,
simultaeously life
and death -- and neither life nor death,
in terms of the Original
Nature. Zen's attraction for the
Japanese samurai stems from this
same insight, as expressed
in the following verse:
Some think that striking is to strike:
But striking is
not to strike, nor is killing to kill,
He who strikes and he
who is struck--
They are both no more than a dream that has no
reality.
(78)
The death scenes of great Buddhist figures bear out this
death-preparedness.
Sakyamuni Buddha, for example, passed
from physical realm with an
exhortation to his disciples to
apply themselves to their
enlightenment. Prior his death
Hui-neng observed: "It is only
natural, death is the
inevitable outcome of birth. Even the
Buddhas as they appear
in the world must manifest an earthly death
before they enter
Parinirvana. There will be no exception with me;
my physical
body must be laid down somewhere. Fallen leaves go
78)
Quoted by Daisetz T. Suzuki in Zen and Japanese Culture
(New
York: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 123,
Yamamoto
Tsunetomo (Jocho) echoes this same sentiment: "I
have
discovered that the Way of the samurai is
death....In
order to be a perfect samurai, it is
necessary to
prepare oneself for death morning and
evening, day in and
day out...One begins each day in
quiet meditation,
imagining one's final hour and the
various ways of
dying....When a warrior is constantly
prepared for death, he
has mastered the Way of the
samurai".
Quoted by
Stephen Addiss and G. Cameron Hurst III in
Samurai Painters
(Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.,
1983), p. 45.
P. 494
back to the place where the root is."(79) Numerous death
scenes
of Ch'an Masters demonstrate their ability to maintain
equanimity
in their final moments.(80) Master Nan-ch'uan
P'u-yiian even
manages to insert a humorous note when he
tells an inquisitive
disciple that after he dies he intends
to go "down the hill to be a
water buffalo".(81)
There is in Zen no sense of tragic loss, no
need to vanquish
the "enemy" of death. Conflict and duality are
let behind,
and a new attitude ensues:
In life one is not stayed by life; in death, one is not
obstructed by death. Though within the clusters [skandhas]
Of
matter, sensation, perception, coordination, and
consciousness,
it is as if a door had opened, and one is
not obstructed by
these five clusters. One is free to go
or to stay, going out or
entering in without difficulty.
(82)
79)
Hui-neng, p. 443.
80) See Philip Kapleau ed., "Dying: Of the Masters"
in The
Wheel of Death: A Collection of Writings from Zen
Buddhist
and Other Sources on Death-Rebirth-Dying (New York:
Harper
& Row, Publishers, 1974), pp. 63-75.
81) Original
Ch'an Teaching of Buddhism: Selected from The
Transmission of the
Lamp, Chang Chung-yuan trans. (New
York: Pantheon Books), p.
163.
82) Pai-Chang, p. 32