Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism

between an irrational authority which limits freedom and exploits its object

“Because when they eat, they do not eat, but are thinking of various other things, thereby allowing themselves to be disturbed; when they sleep they do not sleep, but dream of a thousand and one things. This is why they are not like myself.”

The essence of Zen is the acquisition of enlightenment (satori).

Psychoanalysis is as exquisitely Western as Zen is Eastern; it is the child of Western humanism and rationalism, and of the nineteenth-century romantic search for the dark forces which elude rationalism. Much further back, Greek wisdom and Hebrew ethics are the spiritual godfathers of this scientific-therapeutic approach to man.

We come, then, to the conclusion that consciousness and unconsciousness are socially conditioned. I am aware of all my feelings and thoughts which are permitted to penetrate the threefold filter of (socially conditioned) language, logic, and taboos (social character).

To follow God’s will in the sense of true surrender of egoism is best done if there is no concept of God. Paradoxically, I truly follow God’s will if I forget about God. Zen’s concept of emptiness implies the true meaning of giving up one’s will, yet without the danger of regressing to the idolatrous concept of a helping father.

The term intellection raises a very important problem: Is intellection the same as consciousness?

None of us can save anybody else’s soul. One can only save oneself. All the master can do is play the role of a midwife, of a guide in the mountains.

, of responsibility. To live in Zen “means to treat yourself and the world in the most appreciative and reverential frame of mind,” an attitude which is the basis of “