0.13 Yoga and buddhism as personality development paths  (Page 16/29)

Buddhism is as old as the Yoga of Patanjali, perhaps even older, and like Yoga had a profound influence on some well-known personality theorists (such as Rogers and Fromm). Since Yoga is usually thought of as a form of exercise in America, because of the popularity of Hatha Yoga, when people think of meditation they often think first of Buddhism. Zen Buddhism emphasizes meditation, and Zen has been the most popular and best-known form of Buddhism in America, largely due to the arrival of D. T. Suzuki in 1897.

There are two major schools of Buddhism in the world today. The Theravada tradition is most popular in southeast Asia. It emphasizes self-discipline and seeking nirvana. The Mahayana tradition is most popular in China, Tibet, Korea, and Japan. The Mahayana tradition emphasizes compassion, and is the school within which Zen developed. Tibetan Buddhism, which also developed within the Mahayana tradition, enjoys something of a celebrity status due to the renown of the Dalai Lama, who is recognized as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.

In many ways one can find connections between Buddhism and psychology today. As an interesting example, the well-known author and spiritual leader Jack Kornfield became a Thai Buddhist monk before returning to the United States and becoming a clinical psychologist. Many of the books comparing Eastern philosophy to Western psychology have focused on Zen Buddhism. Zen emphasizes meditation, which in one form or another has become a common element of many types of psychotherapy, particularly in humanistic and cognitive approaches. Since Buddhism shares the same tradition as Yoga, it would make no sense to say that Buddhism has influenced psychology more than Yoga. They are fundamentally the same, and their influence continues to grow.

The four noble truths of human life

Following his enlightenment, the Buddha began to teach what he had realized. In his first lesson, he described the Four Noble Truths: 1) suffering is an unavoidable reality in human life; 2) the source of suffering is craving or desire, and the bad karma it creates; 3) the craving that leads to suffering can be destroyed; 4) the Middle Way is the path to eliminate craving and suffering (Suzuki, 1960; World’s Great Religions, 1957; Wilkins, 1967). People often ask why there is so much suffering in the world. When this question is asked, there is usually an unspoken desire to remove this suffering from the world. The Buddha, however, taught us that we cannot escape from reality. Who has never been sick? Who never dies? Who can live without desiring something? The problem is that when our cravings are satisfied, we typically find that we want something else, or something more, we never seem to be really satisfied. And so this cycle of craving, temporary satisfaction, craving again, and so on, continues throughout our life, unless we consciously do something to break the pattern. The Buddha taught us how to do that: by following the Middle Way.