Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

230 Kathleen H. Dockett and Doris North-Schulte
Nichiren Daishonin, 1981, p. 103). He continues to tell his listeners that his
physical existence in the world, as well as that of all other Buddhas in the past
and for those to come in the future, is for the sole purpose of helping human
beings to understand their true identity, which is the same as his (i.e., a potential
for Buddhahood). By declaring the equality of all human life, he tells us that, just
as his true self is eternal, so is every individual’s life. The first of the five incorrect
views about life is “belief that the perceivable self, which is only a temporary
aggregation of elements determined by cause and effect, is a true, persistent
entity” (Mizuno, 1987, p. 118). Change is a part of nature. Everyone and everything
changes. Change is a part of the eternity of life (Ohnishi, 1993).
Buddhism rejects the concept of an eternal soul. Buddhism views a soul as
a temporary ego-identity that would become extinct at death (Dhammananda,
1987); however, the concept of eternal life, which first is mentioned in the Lotus
Sutra, Chapter 16, is neither created nor dies.
The Buddha teaches that what we call ego, self, soul, personality, etc., are merely
conventional terms that do not refer to any real, independent entity.... To children,
a rainbow is something vivid and real; but the grown ups know that it is merely
an illusion caused by certain rays of light and drops of water. The light is only
a series of waves or undulations that have no more reality than the rainbow itself.
(Dhammananda, 1987, p. 115)
Within the framework of the principle of the eternity of life, the awareness
and acceptance of the self and others throughout time and space is a pillar of
Mahayana Buddhist practice. Buddhism tells us that the eternity of life, no matter,
how we might want to reject it, is within us. We are not new in this universe.
To deny the concept of eternity of life, not only denies the past, but also denies
the future (Ohnishi, 1993) and creates a world of delusion.
When one thinks about Buddhism and the concept of the eternity of life, one
thinks about the word “reincarnation.” This word, says Richard Causton (1995),
congers up a caricature of what the eternity of life really means in Buddhist
philosophy. The eternity of life
is also not to be confused with the Christian concept of an individual’s soul living
eternally after death in either Heaven or Hell; rather, the Buddhist concept of the
eternity of life places the life of the individual in the context of the universe as
a whole, asserting that since the entire universe exists in one form or another
throughout eternity, so must all the living things contained within it exist eternally
in one form or another. (Causton, 1995, p. 137)
It is necessary in talking about the eternity of life, to also talk about death.
Life and death are two sides of the same coin and the consistency of life and death
can be compared to waking time and sleeping time. Buddhism believes that one
can go to bed (die) a Bosnian and wake up (be reborn) a Serb, thus recreating the
historical cycle of violence unless one becomes aware or “Awakened” to his or