I have never been a fan of psychologizing Buddhism; turning it into an outpatient clinic for those especially affected by the Jekyll and Hyde evils of modernity which, on the one hand, proclaims itself to be humanistic while, on the other, builds nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of global murder on a scale never thought possible. Buddhism has more to offer than being an outpatient clinic. In fact, to psychologize Buddhism is nothing less than destroying it, destroying, that is, its full potential. Echoing this, I came across this observation by authors Makransky and Jackson.
“One could criticize such comparisons by arguing that, in contrast to Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the Western psychologizing of Buddhism may secularize it so much that it loses its soteriological thrust, to end up, say, promoting techniques aimed at nothing "higher" than reducing day-to-day anxiety” (Buddhist Theology, p. 156).
Indeed, this seems to have already happened. Having been psychologized to some extent, Buddhism is being used mainly for “reducing day-to-day anxiety”, as it were, dealing with the superstructure while ignoring the substructure. But the substructure is where lays the problem, especially with regard to the modern soul’s attachment to materialism of which it sees no reason to let go.
The arguments for materialism are all too convincing for the untrained mind. Such a mind believes that there are no nonmaterial, increate states of being such as nirvana. Such a belief seems even reluctant to give up the belief that all things can be reduced to a chunk of indescribable matter (which is at the heart of the Big Bang theory). What, of course, is really being said is immaterial qualia phenomena such as purpose, awareness, intention, goals, meaning, beauty, compassion, and even color, do not exist since they are not chunks of matter.
Because the substructure of modernity is based on materialism in which science is the guardian and gatekeeper, Buddhism is only permitted to go so far. No Dharma centers of which I am aware dig into the Lankavatara Sutra or the Avatamsaka Sutra or any complex Sutra or Pali Sutta for that matter—they might lose half their membership. And with the exception of some orders of Tibetan Buddhism, modern Buddhists never mention the luminous Mind or the same, the clear light Mind. And now we see that Buddhism is supposed to sacrifice its spiritual understanding of reality on the great altar of scientism when, in fact, much of science is fictional: a lot of may-bes, might-bes and could-bes but nothing ever definitive. Ironically, science is drifting to the world of qualia in the example of cosmology, a lot of which rests upon mathematics which is immaterial and a qualia phenomenon.
Whether or not modern Buddhism can resist materialism and with it resist being completely psychologized, remains to be seen. In the meantime, Buddhist practitioners will continue to use Buddhism to help them in the quest to find limited happiness in materialistic samsara.
Comments