boars and fury

fridayreads:

Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (Mark Epstein) ⇒

Very different to the first time I read it, several years ago.  Still mid-book at the moment, so things might change.

This was the book - or at least, I’d thought it was - which introduced me to Buddhist conceptions of mind, and exactly what anatta (no-self) means. The whole, coherent complex of no-self, dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness), attachment, and non-duality latched at once to the base of my mind, and bloomed inexorably.

There are definitely examples of these, which might’ve helped illuminate the concepts so that they could grow so readily when I read this, but I’m finding it certainly not a primer for that. It’s based, as the title says, in psychotherapy, applying Buddhist thought to that.

This means: lots of Freud. Lots of case studies. Lots of orthodoxie cachée: automatic deference to psychotherapeutic theory feels to me to be pervasive.  And I find that troubling, given the problematic power structure inherent in that tradition.

There’s a lot of subtlety, though. I can feel that while my political hackles are raising at yet another story of insight through ten years of psychoanalysis, each of these stories does still bring a good bundle of practical Buddhist and psychological tools and knowledge, for the reader to work on themselves, if they so choose.

In that respect, the book feels like a work in progress. Which, actually, is very Buddhist in spirit, fundamentally.  It’s a good thing to chew on.

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide. (a fair, loose translation of the Kalamasutta, apt as anything here)

__________

edit, June 2011: I’ve just run into a note of my initial impressions, from 2005: ‘full of third-hand insights repackaged with fattening narrative’. Curious!