Buddhism

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing the overlaps between Buddhism and psychodynamic therapy, citing the views of the Buddha and Sigmund Freud. Today we are wrapping up the series with some final comments comparing psychoanalysis and the therapeutic use of mindfulness meditation.

Their shared goal of alleviating mental suffering renders Buddhism and psychotherapy undeniably entwined. Last week we started to unpack the first two of Buddhism’s foundational Four Noble Truths, which examine the nature and cause of suffering, or dukkha. The first is simply that suffering exists; the second, that the human tendency to crave is what causes it.

Western society increasingly sees human suffering as grossly abnormal and typically generated from outside sources; it is a state to be eliminated as soon as possible. We vigorously seek external remedies, such as medications, a variety of addictions, and transient external pleasures over and above insight and understanding as cures for our unhappiness. These solutions to suffering are short lived, but we return time and time again to such supposed sources of happiness, as if they could possibly provide us with a stable state of well-being.

In his story “The Three Hermits,” Tolstoy tells of an archbishop, sailing among remote islands to spread the Gospel, who comes upon an island inhabited solely by a trio of hermits who have never known other society, much less the word of God. He teaches these men to recite the Lord’s Prayer and sets sail, quite pleased with himself at the great gift he has just bestowed. Soon after, he observes a glow on the horizon in the direction from whence he’d come, drawing steadily nearer to his ship. It is the three hermits, walking on water.