Western & Buddhist Models of Mental Health

A mental state deemed healthy by Western psychotherapeutic standards is likely to be regarded as pathological by Buddhists. The Western model for mental health is fairly simplistic. Psychotherapists attempt to decipher the contents of the patient's conscious mind and establish self-identity. Goleman (1991) cites Freud's assessment of the Western methodology: "Freud once said that the most we could hope for from psychoanalysis or psychotherapy was to replace neurotic conflict with everyday unhappiness" (p. 101). Buddhism reaches beyond this goal and focuses on empowering the individual to alter the process of his or her consciousness.

Despite its religious foundation, the non-secular community considers Buddhism a branch of psychology because Buddhists do not believe in God. Buddhists believe that humans are fundamentally good. The basic philosophy of Buddhism is that humans are already enlightened and possess the capacity to experience the Buddha within. Blockages to this experience of enlightenment are due to imprisonment by the emotions or "afflictive mental factors" (Goleman, 1991, p. 93).

In contrast, the concept of "original sin" permeates the doctrine of Western psychology to the same extent that it is the foundation of Western religion. The average Westerner is overburdened with basic feelings of guilt. This sense of guilt and impending punishment for inherent mistakes is transmitted from one generation to the next: "Whether or not such people actua

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ates to the law of karma which explains how one thing rises out of another: "Our relative situation is our own creation, the accumulated karmic patterns which determine our perceptions and responses" (Low, undated, p. 121). The twelve chains are ignorance, formation, consciousness, name and form, the six senses, contact, feeling, attachment, grasping, existence, birth, and old age and death. Ignorance, or delusion, sets the stage for all neurotic suffering: "Delusion keeps us from seeing things clearly. It is the fundamental root of suffering--the simple failure to see things without bias of any kind" (Goleman, 1991, p. 93). Buddhism teaches that it is possible to break the chain of causation and transform the negative mental states into positive ones. The three most important healthy mental factors are clarity, detachment, and loving kindness each of which is diametrically opposed to delusion, attachment, and hatred--the roots of mental suffering. Clarity is the antithesis of delusion and implies mental acuity. Detachment is the antidote for attachment--a detached person refrains from clinging and possessiveness. Loving kindness is the opposite of hatred and aversion. The existence of healthy mental factors and the

Category: Psychology - W