Psychology of Buddhism. Monograph

existence of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the Eightfold path leading to the cessation of suffering).

Even if the practitioner has made the first step on his way to liberation and accepted the four-component formula, the importance of the Four Noble Truths cannot be fully realized due to the limited character of human consciousness. The next seven steps are essential for bringing the right view to perfection.

If it was possible to master the Four Noble Truths completely right at the first step, the seven others would have been unnecessary.

The Eightfold Path is based on the three fundamental principles: Wisdom (prajnya), Morality (shila), and Concentration (samadhi). Right View and Right Intention form the basis of Wisdom. Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood represent the principle of Morality, or Ethics (shila). Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration correspond to the principle of Concentration (samadhi).

The three fundamental principles complement each other: wisdom, morality and concentration are the only way to bringing consciousness and the process of mastering the truth to perfection.

Wisdom implies a sincere desire for the truth, an unbiased acceptance of the laws of life; it corresponds to the Right View, the first step on the path to liberation, for without wisdom, morality and concentration are of no value. Morality is the right view brought into practice; it manifests itself in speech, actions, conduct and the way of life. Consistency between understanding and actions, words and deeds is the peak of inner truthfulness and the true meaning of morality. Right concentration (samadhi) is impossible without morality (shila), as it cannot be attained without inner consistency, calm and harmony.

2.5.6. The Trinity of Dharma (The Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha)

In the previous chapters we got acquainted with Buddha’s teaching (the Dharma). We learnt that the Noble Eightfold Path is the path of Buddha. To comprehend the dharma is to realize that there is a continuous process of rebirth, controlled by the law of karma, and that Buddha, his teaching (the dharma) and Buddhist community (sangha) is the only refuge

for people in this life. Only strict observance of the ethical conduct rules formulated by

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Buddha, together with conscious movement forward along the Path may lead to the cessation of suffering.

The Trimurti (trinity) is, in a sense, an extension of the real path (sadhana) to nirvana.

The Three Refugees (“triratna” – “the three treasures” in Sanskrit) is not just a symbol of Buddhist faith, it represents the possibility of realization of the Path. Seeing the Buddha as a teacher, the Dharma as a law, the sangha as a community of like-minded people, ensures the survival of Buddhist philosophy.

The word “dharma” literally means “something that holds or supports” (from the root “dhar” – to hold); it is usually translated as “a law”, and interpreted as “a universal law of existence”. The Trimurti of Dharma in Buddhism is a universal law of Buddhist existence.

It means that Buddhism does not exist outside of the trinity; it is essential for fulfilling the moral duty, responsibilities and steps on the Path of piety.

The Buddha is the first element of the trinity; he performs the most important function – he is a model, an example, an ideal of a spiritual practitioner. He is a perfectly Enlightened, omniscient being, who has attained the summit of spiritual life – bodhi and nirvana. The figure of the Buddha embodies the possibility of final liberation (moksha) and achievement of the highest spiritual goals in any culture.

The Buddha sets the goal of awakening, which has no equal in strength and power, freedom and brightness in any other spiritual culture (Taoism, Christianity, Islam, etc.), or in any other cultural context of existence.

He demonstrates the achievement of the highest level of integrity, harmony, liberation and bliss, a level that is not accessible to either Gods, or saints of other religious systems.

In addition to setting the goal, he describes the way to achieve it, the Noble Eightfold Path. His personality, ethics and behavior, his speech and states of consciousness are exemplary. Not only he provides an excellent model of the goal, but embodies the ideal of path, means, strategies, ways and methods of its achievement. This is what makes him the highest authority, representing the summit of human development and self-realization.

That is why Buddha’s Dharma as a teaching has become the highest truth,

embodying the ideas of right behavior. Without his authority and model-like personality the

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Dharma would have been just empty words. Owing to the idealness of Buddha Shakyamuni, the Dharma is the Law, the semantic core of the Universe, determining the processes inside and outside of human lives, with the help of which we are able to understand the laws of life and society, interdependence and interconnection of all things.

The Dharma as a law and moral imperative gives bhikkhus, living according to its laws, a possibility to attain nirvana (liberation), and provides lay Buddhists with a moral doctrine describing rights and responsibilities of every person, opening up an opportunity to accumulate karmic merit.

The third element of the trinity is the sangha, a social community of Buddhists. Undoubtedly, without the Sangha neither the Buddha, nor the Dharma have any sense (forgive me, faithful Buddhists). The Buddha and the Dharma are dead without living social communities, which fill the former with meaning and dignity, and the latter with content and understanding.

Originally, Sangha (Sanskrit “assembly, association”) is a community of mendicant bhikkhus, or Buddhist monks, who are equal and have no property. A bhikkhu (or Bhiksu in Sanskrit) is an ascetic monk, who lives on alms. Nowadays it has a broader meaning: a bhikkhu is a Buddhist and a member of the Sangha.

In the broadest sense of the word, the Sangha is the Buddhist community as a whole, in other words, all people who worship the Buddha and study the Dharma all over the world. We cannot call it a brotherhood, as there are women among its members. Thus, we deal with the “fourfold sangha”, consisting of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen. Lay male followers and lay female followers are called upasakas and upasikas, accordingly (Sanskrit

“nearby, together” and “follower, disciple”). They are Buddhist followers, adhering to “the five percepts”.

In a narrower sense, the Sangha is a group of people, who have attained a certain degree of enlightenment. It is a social community of Dharma bearers, keeping Buddhist knowledge, following the path of the Buddha, achieving enlightenment and becoming arhats from generation to generation. This model exists in other religious traditions, where there is the “Father-founder” and a group of enlightened men, proving the correctness of spiritual teaching and spiritual path.

Thus, the Sangha has three social layers:

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-the enlightened Arhats

-Bhikkhus

-Upasakas

They are extremely different in terms of their spiritual achievements and way of life. At the same time, they are equal and interdependent.

Enlightened arhats cannot do without bhikkhus, who can appreciate their achievement at its true value and ensure their physical survival and social support.

The Sangha, consisting of bhikkhus, cannot do without lay followers. Buddhist monks “do not sow and do not plow”, and, honestly speaking, are fully dependent on how ordinary people treat them: lay people produce material wealth, without which even the most spiritual bhikkhu cannot survive.

If the Sangha wants to exist, it must establish strong connections with the public. The emergence of the upasaka social stratum is due to this dependence. It is evident

that monks have never spread their internal teaching (the Dharma for the Arhats and bhikkhus) among ordinary people. They explained to common people, that their Gods are also stuck in the “wheel of life” and subject to suffering, while the Buddha, having attained nirvana and comprehended the truth, is higher than Gods.

For ordinary people, right action does not mean worshipping the Buddha or the Gods; it consists in daily observance of the five percepts: not to kill living beings, not to lie, not to steal, not to commit adultery and not to consume alcoholic beverages. People can improve their karma by everyday accumulation of spiritual merit. The main spiritual value is attached to thoughts and actions performed for the benefit of the Sangha.

Good deeds include a variety of spiritual and physical acts, ranging from construction of Buddhist stupas and monasteries or performing rituals to a simple repetition of the “three treasures” formula (I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha) or mantra “Om mani padme hum”, which contributes to accumulation of good merit.

It is for the congregation that the stories about Buddha’s previous lives were written

(“The Jataka Tales”). These are moralizing tales with a code of ethics for all occasions, designated for busy householders.

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The Sangha has lost its original meaning in many ways; nowadays it is a spiritual and social organization, which sets up the spectacular, public side of Buddhism with huge temples, gold, silver and stone statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas and marble stupas, decorated with precious stones.

All kinds of religious rituals, ceremonies, spectacular performances, holiday fairs are organized in Buddhist monasteries. They have become not only communities’ social life centers, satisfying spiritual needs of population, as well as educational centers, but they also perform system-forming functions, regulating psychological, economical, social, legal, family, and other community relationships.

Buddhist Sangha’s political interaction with the social system is brilliant, as it has never been in conflict with the principles of statehood. Its strategy has proved to be highly adaptive to the system of social organization.

It is manifested in several fundamental ideas:

1.Every person deserves the position he holds in society. It depends directly on his past and present deeds.

2.Power and wealth are indicative of karmic merit, accumulated in “previous lives”.

Material and social success is the result of good deeds. All powerful people have an absolute right to it. This idea was developed later in the Buddhist concept of the ideal ruler, Chakravartin.

3. In the strict conditions of caste isolationism Buddhism gave the vaishyas and the shudras (the lowest and most numerous Varnas, or Buddhist social classes) hope to be reborn in better conditions, if they have observed social and ethical conduct norms or entered the Sangha.

Thus, we have described the Trimurti of Dharma in a very broad sense:

-As a refuge – the unity of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

-As a social unity – the Buddha, Arhats, bhikkhus and upasakas.

-As a spiritual trinity of Buddha’s teaching – esoteric, monastic and secular, interpreting one and the same doctrine in three languages, different in terms of their accessibility and difficulty.

But in all of them Buddha represents the integrating factor, the source of the Truth,

the Path, and the Fruits of the Path.

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2.5.7. Personality and Psyche in Buddhism

Materialist psychology defines personality as a set of social relations. Such definition is not the pioneering idea of the classics of dialectical materialism. Its major conceptual and psychotechnical principles were developed in classical Buddhism. It was Buddha Shakyamuni who realized that personality was a set of relations and unrolled, changed and transformed it, keeping this fact in mind. The Buddhist concept of Upadana shows how personality is being scanned through relations; any attitude reflects the state, structure and dynamics of personality. Any external act reveals the inner structure of personality: attitude to oneself, to one’s body, to other people, to what is going on around...

This is the most optimistic point of view on the concept of Ego in Buddhist psychology.

But if we take a closer look at the most important propositions of Buddhist psychology, that are lying at the basis of personality theory, this certainty will be lost.

In previous chapters we discussed that Buddhism is based on the principle of personality, which is inseparable from the outside world, and on the principle of the absence of opposition between subject and object, spirit and matter. Personality does not exist as a separate and autonomous body; the individual and the cosmic, the psychological and the ontological are integrated; they form a single whole.

The creative principle, the ultimate cause of existence is attributed to the human mental activity. It determines the development and decay of the universe. It is seen as a willful decision of “Self”, which is understood as a kind of spiritual, mental, emotional and bodily integrity.

Being the central concept of modern psychology, in Buddhism personality is considered to be an illusion of dimmed consciousness, which is entertained by those who are full of ignorance (avidya).

At first, living beings, wandering in samsara, come up with the idea of the real

“Self”. Then, consequently, they imagine that there is a real “Mine”. Therefore, they are trapped in samsara, like a bucket hanging from a rope, dangling helplessly in the well, rising and then falling again. As you can see, it has little in common with modern psychological

ideas.

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In Buddhism, personality is defined as a set of dharmas, which have certain causes and change constantly.

According to the law of impermanence (anitya or anicca), neither human nor any other living being can have selfhood (annata). Encouraged by traditions, the intuitive belief in a certain substance, called “soul” (atma), which continues to exist in spite of the changes happening in the physical body, seems absurd. It is manifested in the principle of Anatman, denying the existence of eternal and substantive individual soul.

Personal integrity, which manifests itself in numerous reincarnations or simply in different developmental stages – childhood, adolescence and old age, is not connected with the integrity of some constant substance, which is called psyche in European cultural tradition. Buddhism does not recognize the existence of “Self” (atman) and soul (jiva). At the same time, it does not deny the integrity of the stream of successive states, which forms human life. It can be called Personality. The stream of states is continuous, every state depends on the previous conditions and, in its turn, determines the future states. Personal integrity is based on the principle of causation, covering all developmental stages. Personality is a fully determinate process, the actual state of which is manifestation of past, present and future.

In Buddhism, integrity is explained with the use of the metaphor of a lamp, burning all night long. Its flame depends on current conditions, but it is different from itself in other moments, which are determined by other conditions. Thus, we see a continuous succession of different flames. Just as one flame can light another one, distinct from it, but connected by causality, so the final stage of one life can cause the beginning of the next one. That is why new birth is not a transmigration of soul, but a birth of the next life as a consequence of the previous one.

In Buddhism, people do not have soul. It is caused by simple non-linear system determinism, which means that the present state of personality and consciousness inherits its features from the previous state; the past exists in the present, and the present fully determines the future (71).

Preaching the principle of Anatman, Buddha tirelessly urged his students to discard misconceptions about themselves, to get rid of the illusions about their “Self”, caused by the

ignorance of their own nature. The feeling of “Self” and the attachment to “Self”, arising

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from it, is the source of all other attachments, passions and instincts, sucking living beings down in the bog of samsara.

The concept of egocentrism, understood as love for one’s soul and desire to make it happy through salvation, does not exist in the Buddhist model. According to the legend,

Buddha compared one’s love for the soul with love for the most beautiful girl in the country, whom, however, nobody had ever known; or with construction of stairs leading to the palace which nobody had ever seen.

Thus, personality in Buddhism is just a name for a set of different integrities: the integrity of material body (kaya), the integrity of non-material mind (manas or chitta) and the integrity of formless consciousness (vijayana).

In the famous Buddhist philosophical literary piece “Milinda’s Questions” (Milinda panhya) the Buddhist monk Nagasena discusses this problem with the Indo-Greek king Milinda. The king argues that if Buddhist believe that there is no soul and that none of the psychophysical elements of man, as well as the integrity of these elements, is personality, then it turns out that this personality does not exist. Nagasena points to a chariot and asks the king, what a chariot is, whether the wheels are the chariot? Or, maybe the body is the chariot? Or, maybe shafts or some other details? The king gives a negative answer to all of these questions. Then Milinda asks the king, if all the details together are the chariot. Again, Milinda gives a negative answer. So Nagasena says that in that case it turns out that there is no chariot at all. The king argues that a chariot is just a name used to identify a set of details. So Nagasena says that personality is just a name, denoting an ordered unity of the five groups of experience, or skandhas (pancha skandha; the word “skandha” literally means “a lot”).

The sets form the individual stream of consciousness, which ignorant people falsely identify with non-existent substantial “Self”.

From the psychological point of view, personality can be regarded as a set of five types of skandhas (“The Five Aggregates”):

1)Form (rupa) - material objects; everything that has shape and can be perceived

by sense organs;

2)Feelings of pleasure, suffering and indifference – vedana;

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3)Perception, including understanding and awareness of differences (round-

square, black-white, etc.) – samjna;

4)Disposition and desire, evoked by previous experience; the group of motivating

factors, volition and determinations, creating karma – sankhara;

5)Consciousness – vijnana.

The list corresponds to the process of object perception: firstly, the object is perceived, then comes the feeling that accompanies perception, then a particular image of the object is formed and the object is categorized. Finally, a particular attitude is formed (attraction or disgust to the object of perception). Consciousness is present at all the stages of the process.

Thus, according to the Buddhist doctrine, personality does not possess the constant structural components, the definite qualities, which are usually ascribed to it by Western psychological science (such as character, temperament, intelligence, motivation, etc.). The five groups of skandhas exist in the individual stream of consciousness as momentary states, but they make people want to continue their existence and crave for rebirth in samsara. In this sense, personality is not real. It does not have anything constant. It does not exist at all.

It is due to their momentariness that the five skandhas cannot be called the “building blocks” of Ego. They are not substantial units. Only dharmas, the elements of skandhas, are real.

We have already analyzed the concept of the Dharma in the sense “Buddhist teaching”. Another meaning of “dharma” is “an element of skandha”, an indivisible element of our psychophysical experience, an elementary psychophysical state. From the psychosemantic point of view, it is a language unit used in the description of experience.

The concept of dharma is used to describe the elements of consciousness and experience as a whole. Personality, consciousness and experience cannot be singled out as separate categories, as the concept of “personality” also includes the object of perception.

The world, being the object of perception, is at the same time a part of person’s inner life, a part of a particular human personality. It is the content of consciousness.

In Buddhism, the objective world does not exist at all. The world is a unique stream experience. Thus, dharma is a holistic experience and an element of the language used to

describe consciousness and experience. It is the alphabet of the language of consciousness.

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There are three unconditioned dharmas (or absolute dharmas): “the space of consciousness”, “cessation through knowledge” and “cessation due to insufficient conditions”.

“Cessation” (nirodha) is an absolute, unconditioned dharma. It is inherent in individual psyche, but usually does not manifest itself. It takes considerable effort to reveal it. It would not be right to say that it is directly caused by the state of yogic concentration. Meditation only opens your eyes to the fact of its existence. It means that the individual mental space includes dharmas, which exist outside of the law of dependent origination, outside of the three marks of existence (dukkha, anatta and anicca). But they are hidden from the eyes of those who have not overcome ignorance.

It is called the Dharmakaya, the eternal awakened state, the true nature of consciousness of all living beings. It is the nature of our mind, the quality of knowledge and clarity, the buddhahood, the pure light of consciousness.

Thus, the Anatmavada doctrine denies the existence of permanent “Self”, or soul, and sees personality as a stream, or continuum (santana) of elementary mental states (dharmas).

2.5.8. Concept of Consciousness in Buddhism

According to Buddhist scriptures, the nature of consciousness is closely connected with perception (moreover, for the majority of Buddhist philosophical schools, consciousness and perception are synonyms).

According to the most common European point of view, consciousness is a single whole entity; it is filled with thoughts like a reservoir filled with water. Buddhist understanding of consciousness is quite different: thoughts, consciousness, mind, awareness, cognition and thinking are synonyms. In Buddhism, consciousness is usually defined as

“awareness”, or, more precisely, as “clarity and awareness”. Such definition and its interpretation is found in the works of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, the founding fathers of Buddhist logics. Every thought has the quality of clarity, which means that it is marked by the distinct presence of its object.

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