Venerable Dr Mettanando, Bhikku of Wat Rajaorasaram, Bangkok, was ordained as a Buddhist monk on April 8, 1982 at Wat Paknam Bhasecharoen. He is a member of the Ethics Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, and teaches Buddhist philosophy at Assumption University and Mahachulalongkorn Monastic University,Bangkok. He was the Initiator and Project Manager of the computerization of the Buddhist Pali Canon and production of the Pali CD-ROM for the Dhammakaya Foundation between 1982 – 1994. A popular speaker on Bangkok TV, he has written over 100 short TV programs for the promotion of social ethics. Venerable Mettanando has a number of academic qualifications ; B.Sc and M.D. from Chulalongkorn University, B.A and M.A. from Oxford University. , Th.M. from Harvard University, and Ph.D. from Hamburg University, Germany.

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Before I start I’d like to lead a very short prayer for all the sentient beings, from the compassion of Bodhisattvas and all the Buddhas. Let the compassion and the merit of this talk and the merit linked to this talk be spread and benefit all sentient beings. Thank you very much.

I have to say that my talk is a little superficial and I try by all means to touch on all the elements that basically Buddhist need to know about Psychology. But I prepared this lecture in a very short period of time because the invitation to come to Malaysia was of short notice, and I planned to do some other things and then to also to come here as a kind of external, as a sideway. And before I start my talk haven’t you any questions in your mind about why Buddhist monks have to shave their head? So after the talk I hope you’ll have the answer, okay?

There are five spiritual questions that we all ask ourselves now and then:

· The first is Who Am I?
· What is this World?
· What is the Meaning of my Life?
· And What will happen to me after I die?
· And when something bad happen to us, we will always question Why this bad thing happened to Me or to my Loved Ones?

These are five basic questions that all religions address. Now what happened to Buddhism is that Buddhism also deal with these five questions in one other way. Before going to the context of Buddhist psychology I would like to address some common nature of all religions. Religion provide two things. The first one is model-of and the second one is model-for. The model-of is the what is reality. It gives you the answer what is real. Mono-of reality. And model-for is what is the duty or goal of Man’s life? What are we supposed to do. So these are common things – model-of and model-for. All religions provide these. Now Indian religions have special characteristics. When we talk about Indian religions we mean religions which were born in India – Brahminism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and other parts of Indian religion. There are common things also in Indian religion. First, the landscape of wisdom, second the landscape of love, and lastly the landscape of power. These were three dimensions or three areas which exist in all Indian religion in the past until now. Buddhism has no exemption from this. Now when we talk about Psychology, the word psychology is a new term, belong to modern scientific community concerning the study of the mind and the nature of the mind. Some people in later times try to explain it in terms of behavior because mind is a little too abstract for us to understand. And then in traditional society there is no such a thing as Psychology – it’s a mixture. In Buddhism also it is a mixture between morality, precept and practices and melt into one single Path. What is outstanding in Buddhism is its Tipitaka, the Canon of Buddhism is full of specific terms in psychology. You name it – mind, mental mechanism, different layers, different functions of feelings and what is inside the mind and it exist in more than other religious texts of the world. Much more than any other religion of the past. It is very rich. And some people take Buddhism as a religion of psycho-therapy. It help you to assist, to relief people from pain and suffering of life. So in one way the Buddha addressed himself that he acts as a doctor and the dharma is the medicine for healing. Now, I hope to bring this image, there is a painting of a Thai artist who is very well known in Thailand describing the scene of the birth of the Buddha. Now when the Buddha was born it is believed that he took seven steps. He descent from the womb of his Mother with two feet descending down - in medical term we call double foot link and that is the most difficult position for a baby to be delivered. He descend down without any pain and there are two streams from Heaven, one is hot stream and the other is cold stream and this’s what cleans all the dirt from the womb and the Brahma fetch him first, handling and passed him to deity and then from deity to human beings and as soon as he touch the ground the baby took seven steps. And each step has sprung lotus flowers and the Buddha stood firm as a young man on his seventh step on the lotus and declare “ I am the most excellent person in the world. This is my last rebirth.” He declared himself that way. Now before the Buddha there were six gurus. How we interpret this?

The lotus flowers which emerged from the ground, the lotus symbolize teaching, religion. The Buddha steps over six lotus flowers – that means he passed through all the teachings of six other gurus before him. And he stood firm on the seventh and declare his teaching on his seventh. The seventh lotus is his own religion where he deliver to the people, his excellent message. Now the six gurus – they are Maskarin Gosala, Ajita Kesakambalin, Sanjaya Belattha-putta, Purane Kasyapa, Kakuda Katiyayana and Nigantha Nataputta.All of these six, only one that we know very well. How they believe the last person they declare as Miganthe-Nataputte, his name commonly known in India and world religion is Mahavira, - the founder of Jainism. These are six gurus, their teaching symbolized in six lotus seeds where the Buddha stepped over. Now I’d like to say what are they. Maskarin Gosala used to be atheistic, a believer in God. He believed that the world is created and guided by the will of God alone. In theology we have a term for that – it’s called determism. One cannot change the course of life or the world, everything has been predestined. Many Indians, many Hindus still believe in this. And still in theological religion many people still follow what Maskarin Gosala believes. Ajita Kesakambalin – he’s a materialistic, he believe in no good or evil, he doesn’t believe in the afterlife and he doesn’t believe there’s any ground to develop into a virtuous life – so materialism is not new. Sanjaya Belattha-putta – he’s agnostic, a skeptic, probably some personality like Socrates who love to question people, challenge people and his basic notion is like: belief in afterlife , moral responsibility could not be rationally demonstrated or verified, you see. So Indian also had Socrates. There are two great monks, were known later as Sariputta and Mongalana were once disciples of Sanjaya Belattha-putta. So they were well trained to be skeptical, agnostic. When I was studying at Oxford I talked to many Christian friends who study theology and they called me agnostic, always, because I always questioned about the nature of God, whether God exist and how you prove. And Sariputta and Mongalana were converted to Buddhism later, probably agnostism and Buddhism were not very much far away from each other. Purane Kasyapa – he believe in natural determinism. He doesn’t believe in personal existence of God, he believe that nature is a form of determination , we’re here because of natural cause so no natural distinction between good and bad.. Kakuda Katiyayana– he always, he love to categorize things, maybe in this day we call him physicist and he say many things that cannot be explained he categorized. And last person is Nigantha Nataputta. He is relativist, he believe that life or jiva is everywhere. Karma cannot be undone, it is cause, it is a cause of samsara, cause of rebirth, His religion is known today as Jainism, you see?

So there are many things that Buddhism and Jainism share in common but a lot of argument. Jainism also produce a lot of sound arguments questioning about reality, about morality, what is good and what is bad. Now when it comes to Buddhism, look at the model of reality that’s offered in Buddhism. In Buddhism the cosmos, universe is Godless, uncreated, timeless and infinite. Animals and that include human beings, are trapped in what you call samsara. The word samsara mean migrating together. It’s a huge round of migration, started from Sanskrit word - to wander, wandering about together. It’s a perpetual cycle of rebirths and re-death. And in Buddhist cosmology things are not permanent, also including Buddhism. Finally Buddhism will disappear from the earth, from the world. Earth is not the only planet inhabited by man - this is accepted in all schools of Buddhism . In Pure land Buddhism for instance Pure land is on the west of the Earth created by Amitabha Buddha. Now Buddha, the rise of the Buddha is a natural manifestation, a rediscovery. The Buddha was a rediscoverer of Buddhism. He wasn’t the first one to found the Dharma. The Dharma exist for a very long time and it was forgotten and he rediscovered it and all the Buddhas of the past, of the future teach the same kind of teaching and this is a part of cosmic manifestation.

In summary, in a nutshell all things of Buddha teaching can be summarized. It boils down to dukkha and its solution. The dukkha on one hand and its solution on the other. But what is dukkha. Buddhists use the term dukkha as a cliché in Buddhism for a very long time and when English people study Buddhism they don’t know what word to translate and some of them translate it as suffering, pain, dissatisfaction. But understanding of dukkha is very important. Dukkha come from the word in Pakrit language, originally it was used among craftsmen who work with carts and tools. It describe a situation when two objects which are supposed to fit in with each other fail to do so. The object fail to fit in. The situation is called dukkha. In English idiom, there is a saying - to put a square peg into a round hole or to put a round peg into a square hole - either of them a dukkha. And that is very basic one. So how do you translate the situation. Dukkha can be a cause of dissatisfaction but also can be a cause of creation. Like take for example, when Isaac Newton try to find the nature of gravity, he saw an apple fell to the ground, some people say it fell on his head and then he has an idea. He breached the gap of dukkha. When Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity how did he do that? He observed the situation which original Theory of Physics could not explain. He think, he calculate and finally he breached the gap, the breach was done. All creativity of the world is a result of dukkha too. So when you overcome dukkha you make a creation, you make new things. So dukkha is nothing bad.

Now we talked about Macrocosm and now Body and Mind, another term is Microcosm. In Buddhism the mind and body are inter-dependent on each other, both are always changing but one cannot exist without the other. The Mind has four modes of function and there is no other intrinsic elements or permanent self or soul behind the interdependence of the elements or the mechanism. But beings - man and animal - cling to the five psycho-physical constituents which know and identify as “ self “. The five psycho-physical constituents in Pali we call Pancakanda. Some people translate as five aggregates which are namely : Physicality – Rupa; Sensation or feeling – Vedana; Memory or perception – Sanna; Volition formation – Sankhara; and lastly Consciousness or cognition – Vinanna. Five elements that build up a basic unit will reveal that this is our “self “. In general Buddhist concept is that there are three universal characteristics which dominate or generalize Buddhist precept of reality. Human life is always short and precious. Buddha always encourage people to make the most out of their life and out of their time, not to waste time, even a second is important for our striving for good or for liberation. Also duality undergird most Buddhist interpretation of reality. In Buddhism there is a balance - between emotional and intellectual ; strength of the mind balanced with power and virtue; work and faith - hardly exist in other religion. And also every one in the world, all of us here is mentally ill – the good news – save only the Arahants. So you can claim by the Lands of the Buddha we have mental sickness.

I would like to speak on Balance of the Mind. In Buddhism – Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrana are alike - there is balance of the mind with emotional and intellectual, intellectual strength of the mind. For example , compassion and wisdom, you see? Other main virtues exist in all schools of Buddhism alike And also we see manifestation in Mahayana Buddhism, Manjushri is the Lord of Wisdom, Bodhisattwa of Great Wisdom , Arbitrator, the Lord of Compassion.. If you see, in Therevada Buddhism you see Sariputta, he’s a Lord also, he acts on Wisdom. Mongalana, Mongalana has a very gentle compassionate personality. He always rush to help people, outgoing you see? Even though people may say Mahayana and Therevada so far apart from each other but in terms of balance, Mahayana and Therevada share the same foundation of balance of emotion and intellectual. Also power and virtue. Anyone who comes to be important guys - be a Buddha. Buddhas must be good and also powerful. We cannot think of a Buddha who has power without virtue or virtue without power. A Bodhisattva cannot be a Buddha because he only has power to destroy things or no virtue Bodhisattva at all - they don’t exist. This is another balance. And also work and faith. If you want to win nirvana, if you want to be liberated in Therevada Buddhism you have to work, it will not come to you as grace. You have to strive, work your way towards liberation. Your life is not determined to win unless you work and when you do so you have to do with faith – work and faith altogether come along.

Now I’ll explain briefly about physicality. This is basic Buddhist meditation - when monks got together and recite early morning one part of the contemplation is about the composition of the body. And the head, body, nails, teeth , skin, muscles, sinew, bone and bone marrow, et cetera this is a part of earth element. Water elements are blood, urine, pus, et cetera. Wind elements are movement, metabolic movement of the bowel, whether it is blowing up or blowing down as in intestinal wind. Fire element digestive heat, body heat. And space element, ethereal element that fill up the space in the body. The nature of the body, the nature of feeling in Vedana in Buddhism Feeling is the result of contact between sensed objects and the senses. This is different, have to say for modern psychology. The model of contact in psychology, in modern psychology – this is the light, for example we have an eye contact when light travel to the retina of our eyeballs and the nerve impulse go to the area 17,18,19 at the orbital area of the brain. Then we have perception. Indian model of perception is different from modern ones. They believe that our eyes have the light, eyes are organ of light produced . They shine the light and touch like a hand and grasp the object and the image of the object brought back to the eye. The Buddha is referred to as Eye of the World because he give light to the world not because he observed the world - so the model of contact is different. There are three types of feelings – sukkha, dukkha. Like what I’ve said before, if the feeling fit in with expectation then it’s called sukkha. If it doesn’t fit in , it’s dukkha. And the last one is - cannot be identified whether it belong to any of them. Memory – sanna – memory is always impermanent, so you may forget whatever I said tonight. And the image of memory is a mirage- it’s never still. And also bias - we remember what we want to remember, what boost up our ego and pride, what make us feel good. And also we have reversed bias – we remember bad things, especially when other people did it to us. And also memory is reservoir of food for consciousness. In the model of the five aggregates they subsist on each other, the consciousness also has another part – the unconsciousness motivation. In our nature there’s a drive or craving – kamatanha, bhavatanha and vibhavatanha. Deep inside - anusaya. They are more subtle potentiality, an intentional – it can be provoked by any contact with the outside world. I will go to that later. And lastly the nature of consciousness – vinnana. In its own pure and true nature vinnana is bright and shining and happy.

Why are we unhappy? We are unhappy because we are clouded by mental defilement. Defilement is a kind of dirt – there are three forms of them: lobha, dosa and moha.- greed, hatred and delusion. Now the images of the mind in Buddhism, the Buddha spoke about it in many forms. First it’s a stream. Consciousness is like a stream. It flow it has a deeper layer of mental dynamic current. Or it’s like a monkey – it’s active, arbitrary, wild, take one idea at a time before passing to the other. Or it’s a burning fire or lamp – subsisting on material fuel of the mind. Or it’s a fish thrown out of water – agitating, restless, untrained. Or it’s an arrow – need to be fixed carefully. Or a house – a house that is well thatched or poorly thatched. Now in the deepest drive of our own existence there are three cravings : sensual, craving for sensual pleasure ( kamatanha) ; craving for becoming (bhavatanha) ; craving for transformation, avoidance and finally annihilation ( vibhavatanha). The craving is all deepest in our instinct. Its image is architect in the internal drive that motivate the mind. And also the second image is called Mara or Death and sometimes personified as God of Death. Another intellectual side of Tanha is Avijja. Avijja is intellectual dimension of tanha. It cloud the thinking. I’d like to compare with one of the greatest psychoanalyst – Sigmund Freud. Freud’s concept, he said “ In a man there’s always three instincts – libido ( sexual desire) ; ego-instinct and death-instinct. Who copied? Whether Freud copied from Buddha? I don’t know. From the instinct it branch out into greed, hatred and delusion and the opposite is non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. Now when we say greed,and hatred and delusion it means the instinct has become a motivation. If it remains there it remains an instinct. But once it create an action that is called greed, hatred and delusion. How the self formed? Assuming one is the “five aggregates” or psycho-physical constituents lead to formation of “I”, Me or Mine. There is a word in Sanskrit – ahamkara. Aham means “I” confirm with latin word called “Ego” – the ego maker or “I” maker. Mamamkara. Mamam is a Sanskrit word for “Mine” – Mine maker. This is Me and this is Mine. So our thoughts today are not much different from that of yesterday because we cling to the thought process – the shadow, the impression of thought that we have from yesterday. And the multi layers of mental defilement with the formation of Me and Mine. There are different layers of false ego called sakkaya-ditthi. Sakkaya-ditthi means the erroneous personal beliefs - sakkaya means “attached to the body”. The view, the erroneous view that’s attached to the body have twenty forms. I’m not going to the name of each of them but I’ll summarize. From one to five the ego we will identify with the Person, the aggregate. From six to seven the ego is contained within, you feel that within you there is a self.

The one to five category – you are the ego. Category six to seven – ego is within you. Number eleven to fifteen – Ego is independent of them, it’s outside. And sixteen to twenty – ego belong to, you control that outside constituents. When these formation of defilements has potentiality within the consiousness it has these characteristics: sensual craving; anger; conceit; erroneous opinion and skepticism; craving for existence; and ignorance ( avijja ) the seven sides are inbuilt within our human consciousness. But when we talk about liberation the defilement within us in the world are called cankers – the cankers of sensual pleasure; the canker of becoming; the canker of false view and the canker of ignorance. These come from craving. This Wheel is very known in Buddhist world and it’s called independent origination of paticcasamuppada . It begins with ignorance and the other side of ignorance is craving. From craving it causes volition; from volition cause consciousness; consciousness – name and form; Name and form – six sense; From six sense causes contact; contact cause feeling; feeling causes craving; craving causes clinging; clinging causes becoming, and birth ,decay and death. Come back to Origin or Tanha or Avijja. This cycle is manifested into twelve steps. The Buddha is not the first one who mentioned about Samsara or Moksa Karma. The nature of karma is what goes round comes around – you’re responsible on the action. The word “ Karma” comes from, it’s Sanskrit – Palikamma I come or in Burmese “kand”. It means deed or action , can be physical action or mental action. It doesn’t mean normal action, it mean significant action, the action that comes. So in Buddhism – manokarma, - the mental action is the most important of the three kinds of actions and that is intention in deed is Karma. In Jainism physical action is the most important. When you cling to the self, when you perform habitual action you develop personality. There are six forms of personality. The personality which is dominated by greed, by hatred, by delusion, by faith, by worry and by intelligence. These are the six key personalities classified in Buddhist texts. Now how do Karma take action? Karma form within the Mind and carry to next life. In Brahmism what karma count is sacrificial karma – the karma of sacrifice. Verbal injunction - annihilism – any form of action but physical action takes priority. Now in Buddhism karma form can be classified as time of fruition, its function and its potentiality. The karma will give immediate retribution, the karma will give retribution in the next life or life after next or no retribution at all. This is category one. The karma which is birth giving, when a person is dying, the consciousness is emerge at the moment, last thought, will predestine the rebirth place and the karma which follow that is the karma that support it or supportive karma. The karma which stop that, which usually try to intervene is called obstructive karma. And the karma which terminate the person – killing karma., the terminator karma, kill the actor. Karma according to potentiality, heavy karma. Without priority there is no other karma heavier than heavy karma. It’s an immediate frution. Without heavy karma, the habit that one formed will fruit out. And without habitual karma the near death karma will fruit out. In Buddhism sin cannot be redeemed, what is done cannot be undone but merit cannot directly replace demerit. But demerit however can be diluted or balanced out by stopping evil action and commencing the good especially by the mind or meditation. Merit can be shared. Merit is not subjective and can be transferred to other people. Merit transfer is a part of daily Buddhist practice you find in all Buddhist denominations. By expressing empathy to others, appreciation of merit performed by others we also gain merit.

Belief in Karma is a part of Buddhist psychology. It enforce moral strength, it create fear against evil action, it’s an incentive for doing good action and it create acceptance for problems in life. Life for Buddhists is determined by Karma. Karma of intentioned Buddhistic life of beings and mind as a cita, creator and accumulator of karma. Karma produce affiliation with personality, people, situation and society. Suppose we love to drink. Drinkers love to make friends with drinkers. Gamblers love to make friends with gamblers. And then they find themselves in a good society, and they drink and gamble. So together this is the karma within the mind, its formed affiliation and show expectation and drive them towards that particular place, personality or time and then it rails its karma towards its expected destiny, gravitate the mind or the personality to its destiny. In other word the karma transform the character of the mind where it’s retained. As soon as life end the cumulate karma of the person cause the formation of new psycho-physical constituents attracted to its appropriate sphere of rebirth and that’s how rebirth mechanism is fulfilled.

So with regard to this we have five spiritual questions answered. Who am I? The answer is body of five aggregates, psycho-physical constituents. What is the world? The world in uncreated, timeless, there are many phases of rebirth - man , animal , sphere of hungry ghosts, heavens and all are impermanent. Meaning of life? The Buddha never tell this to anyone. The Buddha never say and I surmised that if you are in front of the Buddha and said “ what is the meaning of my life? – the Buddha will say “ you tell me!”. And what will happen to me after I die? It depends on your last thought. And why this bad thing happen to me or my loved ones? The answer is their karma - simple as that. In America they say “shit” happened. And then there are different religions give different answer to why “shit” happened to me. Muslims will say - this ‘shit’ come from Allah. Catholics will say – you deserve it. But what will Protestant say? They will say – why didn’t it happen to other people? Because Protestants believe that they are the selected group, grace of God, when bad thing happen why didn’t it happen to other people? America is a good country you see, a lot of Protestants. When bad thing happen they say why didn’t it happen to other country, to other people? So this is the nature of religion change into the mentality of people but what do the Hindus say?. They say – this ‘shit’ happened before. In Hindu stories they were always stories of bad things happening, and when bad thing happen there will be prediction, a guru appear and tell stories. Oh this happened long long time ago and it happened this way and it was solved this way, so this is the Hindu way of answering the question. So that was the answer. Well Buddhists will say – It’s your Karma. So any questions? And so I’ll be answering questions from the floor and when I teach in University, in class, I tell my students first time that they have all the right to interrupt my talk at any moment and also if any one of you has your own idea and I cannot argue against it you get an “A”