Psychology & Buddhism.pdf

On the Path to Peace 285
I call upon psychologists throughout the world to dialogue, to exchange views and
actual positions, to learn the challenges facing our world, and in the process, to
create a new professional and global consciousness that can advance our field,
resolve problems, and restore dignity. It is within our capability to do so! It is our
responsibility to do so! (2000b, p.1)
Marsella views Buddhist psychology as a vehicle to inform and provide useful
pathways for theoretical and research-based practical approaches to enhancing
psychology’s actions on the world stage. We, the editors and authors of this
book, believe that Buddhism and psychology can forge a bond that can be mutually
enhancing for the benefit of our society. Buddhism’s rich, 3000-year history
has only begun to be analyzed from the perspective of psychology. There is yet
much to be learned. The practitioner, the scholar, the researcher, and the individual
desirous of knowledge and growth can use the theses and findings of these
chapters to further their thinking and their practice, and we hope improve their
participation in this grand drama that is our universal life. We sincerely hope that
as “engaged” individuals, we will also take full responsibility for creating the
lasting peace that can ensure our human as well as technological development,
long into the future, for ourselves and for humanity.
After centuries of divorce between the spiritual and the worldly life, the increasingly
desperate situation of a planet that human beings are rapidly destroying cries
out for a new kind of psychological integration, which has only rarely existed
before. Namely an integration between liberation – the capacity to step beyond the
individual psyche into the larger, non-personal space of pure awareness – and personal
transformation – the capacity to bring that larger awareness to bear on all
one’s conditioned psychological structures, so that they become fully metabolized,
freeing the energy and the intelligence frozen inside them, thereby fuelling the
development of a fuller, richer human presence that could fulfill the still unrealized
potential of life on this earth. (Wellwood, 2000, p. 141)
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