WHAT IS THE BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY Khenpo Sarbajit Gongba

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BUDDHISM AND WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY
Assessment of Buddhism in terms of modern western psychology started when British Indologist Rhys Davids translated Abhidhamma Pitaka from Pali and Sanskrit texts in 1900. She published the book entitled it, “Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics”.[2] In 1914, she wrote another book “Buddhist psychology: An inquiry into the analysis and theory of mind”.[3]
The mid-twentieth century saw the collaborations between many psychoanalysts and Buddhist scholars as a meeting between “two of the most powerful forces” operating in the Western mind. A variety of renowned teachers, clinicians and writers in the west such as Carl Jung, Erich Fromm, Alan Watts, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg among others have attempted to bridge and integrate psychology and Buddhism, from time to time, in a manner that offers meaning, inspiration and healing to the common man's suffering.
Buddhism and Western Psychology overlap in theory and in practice. Over the last century, experts have written on many commonalities between Buddhism and the various branches of modern western psychology like phenomenological psychology, psychoanalytical psychotherapy, humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology and existential psychology.
Buddhism and phenomenological psychology
Any assessment of Buddhism in terms of psychology is necessarily a modern western invention. Western and Buddhist scholars have found in Buddhist teachings a detailed introspective phenomenological psychology. Rhys Davids in her book “Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics” wrote, “Buddhist philosophy is ethical first and last. Buddhism set itself to analyze and classify mental processes with remarkable insight and sagacity”.[2] Buddhism's psychological orientation is a theme Rhys Davids pursued for decades as evidenced by her other writings.[3,4]
Abhidhamma Pitaka articulates a philosophy, a psychology, and ethics as well; all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation. The primary concern of the Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), is to understand the nature of experience, and thus the reality on which it focuses is conscious reality. For this reason, the philosophical enterprise of the Abhidhamma shades off into a phenomenological psychology.[4]
Later on long-term efforts to integrate Abhidhammic psychology with Western empirical sciences have been carried out by other leaders such as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the 14th Dalai Lama.
In introduction to his 1975 book, Glimpses of the Abhidharma, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote: “Many modern psychologists have found that the discoveries and explanations of the abhidharma coincide with their own recent discoveries and new ideas; as though the abhidharma, which was taught 2,500 years ago, had been redeveloped in the modern idiom”.[5]
Every two years, since 1987, the Dalai Lama has convened “Mind and Life” gatherings of Buddhists and scientists.[6] Reflecting on one Mind and Life session in March 2000, psychologist Daniel Goleman, the author of the best-selling “Emotional Intelligence” and “Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama” noted; “since the time of Gautama Buddha in the 5 th century BC, an analysis of the mind and its workings has been central to the practices of his followers. This analysis was codified during the first millennium, after his death within the system called Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), which means ultimate doctrine”.[7]