- seCtIon sIx: seLF AnD otHeR
movements, clothes, adornments, and colours. These elaborate techniques can
be very powerful for inducing ASCs and training concentration and attention, but
they do not necessarily appeal to philosophers and scientists seeking to under-
stand the mind.
Then there is the vexed question of reincarnation. This is prominent in Tibetan
Buddhism, which was grafted onto existing folk beliefs in reincarnation, but less
so in Zen, which developed in China and Japan. The popular conception of a
personal reincarnation in which some lasting essence passes through many lives
seems to make no sense to the Western scientific mind. Indeed, it makes little
sense within the context of the Buddha’s teaching of the impermanence and
emptiness of self, for what is there to be reincarnated?
Zen has a tradition of avoiding most of this and going straight to the point. ‘Zen
is the apotheosis of Buddhism’, says Christmas Humphreys, the founder of the
Buddhist Society in Britain.
This direct assault upon the citadel of Truth, without reliance upon
concepts (of God or soul or salvation), or the use of scripture, ritual or
vow, is unique. [. . .] In Zen the familiar props of religion are cast away. An
image may be used for devotional purposes, but if the room is cold it may
be flung into the fire.
(1951, p. 179–180)
The real task in hand is that ‘the mind may be freed’.
This comment raises the question of how the objectives of science and Buddhism
compare. Freeing the mind could be understood as an ambition compatible with
science and philosophy: a free mind can find out truth for the sake of truth. But
Buddhism is usually thought of as trying to find out the truth in order to transform
oneself, to become free from suffering, and even to save all sentient beings from
suffering. In this sense, Buddhism may be closer to psychotherapy than to science.TRANSFORMATION AND THERAPY
In a story from Tibetan Buddhism, a poor, low-caste woodcutter called Shalipa lived
near the charnel ground where corpses were thrown to rot. Shalipa was so terrified
of the corpses and the wolves howling at night that he couldn’t eat or sleep. One
evening, a wandering yogin came by asking for food and Shalipa begged him for a
spell to stop the howling. The yogin laughed, ‘What good will it do you to destroy
the howling of the wolves when you don’t know what hearing or any other sense
is. If you will follow my instructions, I will teach you to destroy all fear.’ So Shalipa
moved inside the charnel ground and began to meditate upon all sound as the
same as the howling of wolves. Gradually he came to understand the nature of
sound and of all reality. After nine years he lost all fear, attained great realisation,
and became a teacher himself, wearing a wolf skin around his shoulders.
Shalipa is just like us, says American psychologist Eleanor Rosch (1997), even
though he lived so long ago and so far away. There he is, shivering in his hut with
all his social, psychological, medical, and spiritual problems. This is the common
state and is why our modern psychology is based on such a dualistic and alienated
view of the human condition. In Buddhism this deluded state is called samsara,‘The object [of attention]
determines whether a
meditation practice is
religious, therapeutic, or
something else’
(Mikulas, 2007, p. 24)