Thoughts Without a Thinker

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 08:29
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    • book by Mark Epstein, basically a join between Buddhism and psychotherapy.
    • The mind that does not understand is the Buddha: there is no other.
      • D T Suzuki
    • Freud didn't get Buddhism, dismissed mediation as infantile "oceanic" feeling. But in fact both are dealing with the fundamentals of mind and have both points of similarity and also complement each other in interesting ways.
    • According to Buddhism, it is our fear of experiencing ourselves directly that creates suffering. That has always seemed very much in keeping with Freud's views: "the patient must find the courage to direct his attention to the phenomena of his illness..." (p17)
    • Wilhelm Reich demonstrated that personality is built up around points of self-estrangement; the paradox is that what we take to be real, our selves, is constructed out of a reaction against that which we do not wish to acknowledge. (p19)
    • One of the contributions of the Buddhist approach is its ability to teach a method of relating to one's own rage that is the psychic equivalent of Winnicott's "holding". (p25)
    • Re Hungry Ghosts:
    • this desperate longing for inexhaustible abundance is very common in the Western psyche, where it masqurades under the heading "low self-esteem"...the extent of inner feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness in the Western psyche has seemd all but unbelievable to teachers raised in the East... (p 30)