contemporary reader may understand karma as a kind
of memory—an inscription of a trace upon the self,
which, once recovered informs consciousness of a pre-
vious psychic event—but one needs to note the ethi-
cal and soteriological meanings that the Buddhist
discovers in such processes. One may imagine (by pro-
jecting on the Buddhist tradition a psychodynamic
schema) that the process by which awareness is fos-
tered and transformed to achieve awakening is some
sort of transformation of the repressed; but even grant-
ing this stretching of Buddhist doctrine, the most com-
mon Buddhist conceptions of what is “healthy”
(kus ́ala) about this process would not come close to
contemporary views of mental health as autonomy, ac-
ceptance, and enjoyment of human sexual desire, and
the like.
Furthermore, for most traditional Buddhist elites,
the traces left on consciousness by human action re-
main and develop as part of an inexorable law of moral
responsibility and retribution that is only transcended
by a path out of our imperfections, not by a simple ac-
ceptance of human shortcomings or a celebration of
the body and the emotions. Moreover, the final dis-
covery of the forgotten and the unraveling of its mean-
ing is reached through extrasensory perception, and
only by those who attain the yogic power of the re-
membrance of past lives (jati-smara). Most traditional
Buddhist philosophers, unlike Western empirical psy-
chologists, took it as a given that the extrasensory per-
ception of a yogi (yogipratyaksa) is a valid source of
empirical evidence—in fact, one that needs no cor-
roboration and is not open to falsification when the
cognizer is one of those deemed awakened.
Nonetheless, one could argue that it is precisely in
the soteriological and moral dimensions of Buddhist
psychology that one may find avenues of thought that
complement or challenge some contemporary views of
mental health. Of particular theoretical and historical
importance are those Buddhist theories dealing with
the techniques of meditation—arguably the most typ-
ically Buddhist “therapeutic” techniques and the place
where Buddhism as religion and ethical system can be
said to become a way of overcoming “dis-ease,” and
therefore, as perhaps a psychological cure or a therapy.
Theories of meditation often attest to the keen psy-
chological awareness of those who reflected on Bud-
dhist doctrine and practice. In their application, these
theories at times suggest the techniques of Western
psychosocial healing practices, despite an apparent dif-
ference in their presuppositions and goals.
Meditation, consciousness, and healing
Buddhist theories of meditation are concerned with
the transformation of rigid habits and turbulent states
of mind that may roughly correspond to contempo-
rary notions of maladaptive or dysfunctional behav-
iors; but the underlying theory and questions hiding
behind diverging ideas of dysfunction may be disparate
enough to make comparison difficult. The meditator
seeks to make the mind pliable, aspiring to achieve a
“tranquil flow of mind” (upeksa) that is effortless and
free from the extremes of mental turpitude and exci-
tation (layaand auddhatya). A mind that is in such a
state is no longer dominated by the mind’s usual ten-
dencies toward inertia (dausthulya) and unrest (kles ́a).
Nonetheless, although the goal is a state free of confu-
sion and anguish, freedom from distress and dyspho-
ria is not here a condition for increased autonomy and
adaptation in negotiating inner drives and outer social
reality, as it is generally understood in Western psy-
chologies, but a condition often described as desire-
less, free of conceptual constructs, and empty (the
three “doors to liberation,” vimoksamukha).
Defects of thought (dosa) are superseded by culti-
vating antidotes or opposite states (pratipaksa) that
lead to a removal of both the veils (of kles ́aand of the
object of knowledge), and hence lead to liberation. But
such antidotes are also substitute behaviors, that is,
they are virtues, and they transform the confused per-
son into the person of serene insight. But the state of
liberation, at least as understood by the major scholas-
tic systems, is not comparable to Western ideas of in-
dividual autonomy, adaptive acceptance of the body
and its drives, and resolution of intrapsychic and in-
terpersonal conflict. It is liberation from rebirth,
hence, from birth, aging, and death, as well as from de-
sire and suffering. Furthermore, in systems following
traditional Mahayana scholastic definitions, liberation
is accompanied by the omniscience and the miracu-
lous powers of a buddha, or at the very least the supe-
rior wisdom and wonder-working powers of the
BODHISATTVA.
In the classical Buddhist view of “mental health,”
most normal desires are seen as a sort of madness, and
as a “delusion” originating in a beginningless round of
past lives; full health is accomplished only when one
becomes a full buddha, or when it is approached grad-
ually as one matures in the bodhisattva’s spiritual ca-
reer. It is difficult to imagine how such a view of
“mental health” (perhaps, better: “absence of dis-ease”)
is commensurable with contemporary Western no-PSYCHOLOGY