the entirety of the natural world, including the ultimate awakening of trees and
grasses. Even the teaching of a universal Buddha nature does not assert, however, that
awakening can be attained in any particular lifetime.
The Buddhist tradition can itself be understood to suggest that while the dharma
is universal, it may not be equally accessible by all, nor should it be made equally
accessible to all. There are no panaceas, and the judgment of a wise physician is needed
for the prescription of appropriate remedies. What is medicine for one person may
be poison for another. Speaking of esoteric Buddhist practice, Tajima has said that
It works like medicine, extracting beneficial remedies from the most violent
poisons. Just as it is dangerous to give a sharp sword to a small child as a
plaything, giving esoteric teachings to those who cannot comprehend will lead
them into error, and ultimately injure them. All forms of esotericism condemn
individual study by non-initiates and insist on the importance of oral
transmission from master to disciple.
(Tajima 1959:10; my translation)Another instance of this understanding is found in Buddhaghosa’s masterpiece, The
Path of Purification. In the section on meditation (samadhi) he describes at great
length a system for assigning meditation subjects to different practitioners and guiding
them in their practice (Buddhaghosa 1975: 104–368). This system can be understood
as a diagnostic-prescriptive system employing psychological categories (Payne
2000:2). It is based on diagnosing which of the three poisons—greed, hatred, and
delusion—is predominant in the personality of a practitioner. With this knowledge,
the meditation teacher can then prescribe one of the forty different meditation
subjects described by Buddhaghosa which will be appropriate for that particular
practitioner. Understanding Buddhist teachings and practices as psychotherapeutic
requires understanding the Buddhist system within which these exist, not removing
them from the contexts within which they originated. Otherwise it is like removing
a statue from an altar inside a temple, and placing it on display in a museum or selling
it as an exotic piece of artwork.
In addition to interpretations of Buddhism as psychotherapeutic, comparisons
between Buddhist conceptions of the mind and psychological theories have been
made. Making such comparisons not only necessitates sensitivity to cultural, social,
and historical location, but also requires some sense of why the comparison is being
made. It is not enough to simply identify similarities and differences. The question
also has to be asked, What do the similarities and differences mean? For example,
what does it mean that depth psychology and Buddhist thought both have an idea
of the unconscious? The foundational consciousness (ƗlayavijñƗna) the Yogacara
school of Indian Buddhism appears to be very similar to the unconscious. While the
Yogacara school developed in medieval Indian Mahayana Buddhism, it influenced
both Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism very deeply. Existing
Buddhist conceptions of the working of the mind as a structured and structuring
sequence of moments of conscious awareness (dharmas) found in what is known as
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