An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology

180 Pages·2000·44.343 MB·English

by  Padmasiri de Silva (auth.)

An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology
An Introduction to
Buddhist Psychology
Padmasiri de Silva
Foreword by John Hick
Third Edition
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York
ROWMAN & LITTLEAELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rowmanliulefield.com
Copyright© 2000 by M.W. Padmasiri de Silva 1979, 1991,2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-0-333-77910-1 ISBN 978-0-230-38955-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230389557
@"'The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48- 1992.
TO THOSE WHO LIKE
'the simple things in life'
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Contents
FOREWORD BY JOHN HICK 1x
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION x1
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xm
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
XIV
1 BASIC FEATURES OF BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY 1
2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COGNITION 21
3 MOTIVATION AND EMOTIONS 35
4 PERSONALITY 80
5 BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY AND THE WEST:
AN ENCOUNTER BETWEEN THERAPEUTIC
SYSTEMS 99
6 HEALTH AND SICKNESS IN BUDDHIST
PERSPECTIVE 123
7 MIND-BODY RELATIONSHIP AND BUDDHIST
CONTEXTUALISM 142
NOTES 153
BIBLIOGRAPHY 163
INDEX 165
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Foreword
Buddhism is the most psychologically interested of the great world
religions. For when, some twenty-five centuries ago, Gotama the
Buddha experienced the ultimate liberation which is nirvana and
became one of mankind's supreme teachers, he did not point
upwards or outwards to God or gods but inwards to the intricate
dynamics ofo ur mental and spiritual life. For Buddhism 'the proper
study of mankind is man': it is through coming to realise what we are
and- equally importantly- what we are not, that we may eventu
ally attain to that which the east calls liberation and the west
salvation. Through its founder's teaching, treasured and amplified
by generations of his followers, Buddhism has developed the
extraordinarily astute and penetrating analysis of human nature
and the human condition on which its guidance towards liberation
is based. Its central no-soul (aTUltta) doctrine, according to which a
human self is not an enduring psychic entity or substance but a
karmic process, a patterned flow of change through time, remains
one of the great options for thought, and one which we dare not
write off. Again, we cannot ignore the Buddhist account of the
'grasping' or incessant desiring which keeps the individual karmic
process going, not only through a lifetime but, according to the
Buddha's teaching, through a long succession oflives. In addition to
this, the Buddhist tradition has important things to say about the
ways in which we perceive our world; about our emotional and
volitional life; about our sexuality, our social nature, and our
aggressiveness; about the thin fac;:ade of the surface personality;
and about the very important ethical implications of this Buddhist
understanding of man.
These topics are of course discussed - some more extensively than
others- in the literature on Buddhism. But it is surprising that there
has been no book in English covering the field of Buddhist
psychology as such since the early work of Mrs C. A. F. Rhys
Davids, Buddhist Psychology (London, 1914). There is thus a gap in
the available literature at this point, a gap which Dr de Silva has
IX
Foreword
X
filled in the present book.This will not be the last word on Buddhist
psychology; but it opens the subject up again, and in doing so it
provides a much-needed point of entry for the student ofB uddhism.
Dr Padmasiri de Silva is the Head of the Department of
Philosophy at the Peredeniya campus, near Kandy, of the Uni
versity ofSri Lanka (Ceylon). He is himself a Buddhist, thoroughly
versed in the Pali literature, as well as having studied the various
western schools of psychology. He is the au thor ofa study of Buddhist
and Freudian Psychology (Colombo, 1973), and of Tangles and Webs:
Comparative studies in Existentialism, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism
(Kandy, 1974). He stands within the Theravada tradition, which
claims to represent original Buddhism in its distinction from the
Mahayana movement which started to develop at about the
beginning of the Christian era and which elevated the figure of the
Buddha himself from a great human teacher to the level of cosmic
saviour. Dr de Silva bases his discussion on the Pali scriptures of the
Theravada tradition rather than the Sanscrit literature of the
Mahayana; and so we find in his pages, for example, the word
nibbana, which is the Pali equivalent of the (to most of us in the west)
more familiar Sanscrit term nirvana.
Dr de Silva's book will be a valuable resource for the comparative
study of religion, and in particular the study of Buddhism, in both
west and east.
jOHN HICK