Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

Religion and Spirituality in Community Building 199
interventions that change basic social structures. Albee (1986) supports this model,
and believes that we will always have excessive amounts of psychopathology as
long as we have exploitation, imperialism, excessive concentration of economic
power, nationalism, institutions that perpetuate powerlessness, poverty, discrimination,
sexism, racism, and ageism. Each of these models deals with external
conditions, even though reduction in prejudice could be argued to represent an
internal state. The community psychology means to accomplish these objectives
has rarely been from a spiritual point of view. Even though the elimination of
deplorable environmental conditions are laudable goals, it is the thesis of this
chapter that only a transformation of our values such as by embracing Buddhist
principles will provide us the templates to successfully work on the forces that
cause unequal distribution of the world’s resources.
At a more theoretical perspective, most community psychologists subscribe to
either a Social Competence, Empowerment or Ecological model, and each will be
described below. Some theorists focus on a Social Competence model where the
goal is to prevent disorders and enhance competencies (Duffy & Wong, 1996).
Examples of such approaches include the drug abuse prevention programs that
focus on teaching skills to youngsters to resist being pressured into taking drugs.
The social competence approach, one that is endorsed by many community psychologists,
is limited by its ahistorical and philosophical tenets. For example, many
interventions within this model might help individuals develop skills and competencies
that allow them to gain more resources, become more independent and even
self-satisfied. However, there are dangers in an approach that does not have guiding
values, and behavior change in itself might reinforce tendencies to become less
interconnected with one’s family and community. Buddhist philosophy would perceive
such interventions as possibly having second order negative consequences.
While this model is the most-straight forward, at the same time, it misses many of
the richer theoretical ideas of the other models to be described below.
Another community psychology model involves Empowerment, and those
adopting this paradigm attempt to enhance justice and people’s sense of control
over their own destinies (Rappaport, 1981). Many community psychologists feel
more comfortable with this type of model, as it clearly is action oriented and often
goes beyond the individual-level of a Social Competence model. One difficulty for
practitioners of this Empowerment model involves figuring out how to decide
which groups to help empower. In many communities, there are opposing groups,
and each feels that their perspectives are correct, as is evidenced by the conflict
between the Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. It is sometimes unclear exactly how
to enhance justice in such situations, and clearly, Buddhist principles could be used
to suggest some possible ways of accomplishing this, and this will be elaborated in
more detail in a later section of this chapter (see also Chapter 10 in this volume).
Another paradigm that has captured the attention of many community
psychologists is the Ecological model (Kelly, 1985, 1987, 1990). Kelly’s goal has