THE SATIPATTANA SUTTA & PSYCHOTHERAPY :
In this post I like to discuss the Buddha's Satipattana
discourse (The Foundation of Mindfulness) and its relationship to Western
psychotherapy as a means for coping with the problem of mans' suffering in the
midst of his daily life.
The Satipattana Sutta was the most significant discourse
which the historical Buddha Gauthama delivered to his followers some 2500 years
ago. It deals with meditative techniques of body and mind awareness which
reveal the true nature of the body- mind organism, its relationship to its
environment and how it becomes involved with suffering on the physical and
mental levels, and how to eliminate this suffering.
The Buddha's Enlightenment was centered primarily on what he
called the Four Noble Truths: The Truth that suffering (mental and physical)
exists; How this suffering arises and continues; That there is or can be an end
to all this suffering; And the practice (the way to live, think and meditate)
which leads to the complete end of suffering. Most of the meditation techniques
which the Buddha taught in his day were directed at helping the individual
first of all, to see his problem face to face, see the causes of it and thereby
he would also see the way out of it.
The way in which the Buddha tackled this problem was through
developing a systematic method of examining and experiencing the body and mind
activities through directed and detached awareness. This is all detailed out in
his Maha Satipattana Sutta, the Great discourse of the Setting up of
mindfulness. Buddha teaches us in this discourse how to use our own body and
mind as, so to speak, our own test- tube or laboratory to discover exactly what
we are made of physically and mentally, what makes us tick, our relationship
with the environment, and how we create our own suffering or happiness in our
mind. Seeing the situation and problems face to face in one's own direct
confrontation with his mind has a much more effective and direct impact than
just having someone tell you about it, because this direct confrontation and
realization is gained from within and the person understands more clearly and
is motivated more effectively in transforming himself.
Buddha's deep wisdom penetrated to the very core of the mind
and experienced all the mental processes which gave rise to and created the
experience of the world around him. In this experience he saw that the physical
body is just an aggregation of material qualities and the mind is just an
aggregation of constantly changing sensations, perception, reactions and 'I' centered
consciousness which flows like a swift-moving river. He experienced that the
individual ego or the feeling of a separate 'I' inside somewhere was merely an elusive
notion deeply ingrained in the conditioned patterns of the sub-conscious mind
and that it has no concrete, independent or eternal Self-existence.
The Buddha further realized that it is through this basic
delusion of 'individual-self' that the alienation and separation from other
arises and from which attachment, greed, aversion, hatred and all the other
defilements of the mind arise. As this condition grows unchecked there arise
all of the other types of mental disturbances and imbalances such as psychosis,
schizophrenia, depression and many others which are so prevalent in society
today and which affect also the consciousness of society as a whole. The Buddha
saw all of this in perspective and therefore he wanted to devise some
systematic method of gradual self-discovery which would enable each person to
realize face-to- face, within the depths of his own being, how all of his
problem originate. To some extent this is what Western psychotherapy is trying
to do. The majority of the patients of psychotherapists suffer from psychic
disorientation of different sorts, ego alienation, sociological alienation and
so forth.
The psychotherapist usually deals with the patient on the
basis of being a separate organism who is out of line with the 'norm of
Society'. He tries to get to the source of the patient's problems by going back
in the patient's history and trying to find something which could serve as a
good guide to what has caused the patient's problems such as incidents in
childhood etc. The idea is to get the patient back into a so- called normal
state of mind, but usually it is still ego centered. The psychoanalyst tries to
eliminate the symptoms which the patient has and when the surface symptoms
disappear, then he is thought to be cured. This seems to be the main point or
difference in the way psychotherapy handles the situation and how the Buddha
sought to remedy the situation.
The analyst observes and tries to figure out the patient's
problem for him according to the symptoms which the patient is exhibiting, and
then gives him advice based on the relationship of his 'individual-Self' to his
environment. This type of therapy gets the person back into a healthier,
positive frame of mind about his life and society. But his method still does
not tackle the real gut of the problem and that is the ego itself and the way
it works itself back into similar problems or further complications. Although
the person may find functioning in family and society a smoother process, he
still may develop other mental problems such as attachment to things, anger, envy,
jealousy, conceit and so forth which stem from deeper reaches of the
subconscious.
The Buddha wanted to go to the very root of the whole
problem of existence and that was even to realize that the ego as a separate
entity was also a mental aberration. It is from this very root
delusion/illusion that all other mental conditions and limitations arise. In
this way the person no longer conceives himself as a separate individual
immersed in an objectified world for his self-centered gratification, but
rather he realizes that he is just part of a whole integrated, complex
manifestation of different forces. He sees the way in which these forces are
integrated and how they flow, their cause and effect relationship and thus he
is able to get into that harmonious flow. In this way the whole problem of
imbalance and suffering on all levels is gradually once and forever solved.
This
is, in brief, a look at the general scheme of the situation facing man in the
Buddhist conception of man's predicament. We see how the Buddha went about to
find the real end to the problem of suffering, by a system of self-discovery
and self-psychotherapy to go to the very root of the whole problem and to bring
about total reorientation and harmony in life, based on 'Reality'. We can also
see that the methods of psychotherapists are well and good insofar as they help
the individual regain standard reorientation and balance in regard to
functioning in society according to the established norm of that region. But
the Buddha went a little further to integrate man's consciousness into the flow
of reality, so that no possibility of further complications could arise. It is
with the guidance of the Satipattana Sutta and our own skillful awareness that
we can completely harmonize our mind with 'Reality' and transcend all
suffering.
May all beings be well & happy and attain the fruits of
Nibbana.
Suranda Weediyage
BA, Tripitakachariya, Dip in Pali/ Buddhism (Pali & Buddhist University of Sri Lanka), HNDBF,
surandalk@gmail.com
http://www.thebuddhadhamma.wordpress.com
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