2008 Ohio Psychologist - Ohio Psychological Association

An Ohio Psychologist in India and Nepal
At the doctoral
clinical psychology
program where I
teach, our mission is
to focus clinicians on
understanding and
contributing to social
justice issues. Fouad,
Gerstein, and Toporek
(2006) describe social
justice as follows:
“Related to the legal
notion of equity for all
within the law, social
justice also connotes
that the distribution
of advantages be fair
and equitable to all
individuals, regardless of race, gender, ability status, sexual
orientation, physical makeup, or religious creed.” (p. 1)
In January and February of 2008, I journeyed through India
and Nepal. This six-week trip truly changed my perspective
on the world and my place in it. My eyes were opened to a
completely new definition of social justice.
My trip began in New Delhi where I presented at the World
Congress on Psychology and Spirituality. Representatives
from over 40 countries participated in the conference. My
presentation, “Psychological Obstacles on the Spiritual Path,”
was well received. I also was invited to participate in the
creation of a consortium of researchers for the empirical
investigation of meditation techniques and chaired a
panel that included a speaker named D.R. Kaarthikeyan.
Kaarthikeyan is rather famous in India, as he is the president
By: Richard Sears, PsyD, MBA, ABPP
of a number of magazines and other companies, the former
director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, and the
person who solved the Indira Gandhi murder case.
Interestingly, most Indian psychologists boycotted the
conference. They felt that they should only be pursuing hard,
empirically-based data, and any questions about spirituality
(broadly defined as finding meaning in one’s life) was not
worth investigating.
I took a day to visit the city of Agra, which contains the
Red Fort and the Taj Mahal. It was amazing to learn of the
unequal distribution of power in history. Despite the poverty
of the general population, the rulers created architecture
on a colossal scale, often made of marble, sometimes with
gemstones embedded in the walls.
I then traveled to Bodhgaya, a city in the state of Bihar,
the poorest state in India. Bodhgaya is the city where the
historical Buddha (which means “the awakened one”) sat in
meditation and achieved
his breakthroughs. The city
was an amazing contrast
of spiritual richness and
abject poverty. It was
most difficult to see the
children, who somehow
found happiness in their
play, even when they were
barely clothed and covered
in dirt.
I later met my martial arts teacher and a psychology
colleague, Dr. Brian Denton, in Kathmandu, Nepal. From
there, we traveled to a teaching monastery in Pokhara, a city
THE OHIO PSYCHOLOGIST AUGUST 2008 12