Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

198 Leonard A. Jason and John Moritsugu
might see much of the work of external oriented, change-agents as being somewhat
superficial, for to bring about surface change would not change the fundamental
reasons for the sufferings of the masses.
In contrast to this approach, the Mahayana school is more active in their
efforts to bring change into the external world. An example of the approach is Zen
Buddhism. Members of the Zen school focus on practicing zazen, a form of meditation
where the conscious mind is quieted and the unconscious is liberated. The
mind returns to the ultimate reality of the void or emptiness that contains all
(Owens, 1992). Those within the Mahayana school of Buddhism believe that our
task in life is not to only achieve individual liberation but to help others achieve
this state. When we discuss in this chapter the possible integration of community
psychology and Buddhist philosophy, we will be referring to the Mahayana
school of Buddhism.
Buddhist practice has most often focused on individual efforts at change.
As Dockett (1999a) has stated, in the United States Buddhism has more often
been used as a form of personal psychotherapy or quest for self-enlightenment
rather than a vehicle for social change. However, it is clear that those from
the Mahayana school have at times embraced more community and large-scale
efforts at change, and examples of such programs will be discussed in later
sections. A powerful synthesis might be possible by focusing on Buddhist values
that underlie individual transformations and community psychology theory that
provides a conceptual context and rationale for these changes.
The Field of Community Psychology
The field of community psychology emerged in the late 1960s. It represented
an effort by some psychologists to become more active in helping to
solve some of the social and community problems that confronted our country
during that turbulent period (Duffy & Wong, 1996). This field has always been
directed more toward external change than inner transformation, so the principles
of Buddhism have rarely been considered by those espousing this community
perspective.
Among the members of this field, there is much controversy about how to
actually bring about community change. Cook and Shadish (1986) have suggested
that there are three ways of implementing social change. They claim that
the most successful model involves making incremental modifications in existing
social problems. Advocates of this approach feel that few policies are approved if
they call for more than marginal changes in the status quo. A bolder approach is
the use of demonstration programs to test the efficacy of a planned innovation;
however, detractors of this model claim that many successful demonstration programs
have never been widely replicated. On the other end of the spectrum lie the