Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

260 David W. Chappell
an enduring social movement that became the only major cultural tradition that
permeated all of Asia. The inner dialogue that is mindfulness training involved
stopping or calming (samatha) our normal thought responses and seeing (vipassana)
the various factors in our consciousness and world that could awaken our
capacity to develop clearer understanding and non-addictive responses. It is the
thesis of this article that this same mindfulness process also functions socially by
taking regular and frequent “time outs” from daily pressures for mindful dialogue
to discover the diversity, common ground, and variety of inteipretations and
responses in any social nexus we find ourselves. The patterns of this social mindfulness
work, and its presence in earlier forms of Buddhism, will now be sketched.
Traditional Buddhist Social Principles
In ancient India, the Buddha discovered that individual human happiness
and misery were determined not primarily by physical abundance, but by inner
mindfulness. Buddhist practice focuses on the mind, on mindfulness training, on
noticing the different parts within ourselves and their interactions which include
cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns. A single soul does not exist, said the
Buddha, since each person is the integration of a multitude of factors. Freedom
and peace come when we recognize the many voices within us, and discover their
willingness to try new tunes, to forge new harmonies, or to wait their turn. The
inner dialogue that constitutes mindfulness work was a new discovery by the
Buddha that paralleled the discovery in other cultures by Socrates, Confucius,
and Second Isaiah that the good life was more dependent on inner attitudes and
awareness than the product of external events.
Buddhism began in history when the Buddha taught both personal and group
practices to a community of followers. While right mindfulness and wisdom
could be cultivated in private, social checks and balances occurred twice a month
on the new moon and the full moon days when his disciples gathered to recite the
social rules of practice (uposatha). If problems arose concerning practice, the disciples
were to resolve them by unanimous agreement. This pattern of regular and
frequent meetings to monitor moral actions, and the process of resolving problems
by discussion and consensus, was the Buddhist social model of dialogue and
accountability in its earliest days.
Moral Principles
While dhyana and prajna (meditation and wisdom), or samatha and vipassana
(calming and insight), are two legs of the Buddhist chair, it cannot stand
without social action. Traditional Buddhist morality (sila) was codified in the
vinaya scriptures and included several hundred prohibitions, but four applied to