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The Psychology of Buddhism in Conflict Studies

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The Psychology of Buddhism in Conflict Studies The Psychology of Buddhism in Conflict Studies Padmasiri de Silva The Psychology of Buddhism in Conflict Studies Padmasiri de Silva Faculty of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies Monash University Springvale, VIC, Australia ISBN 978-3-319-69028-5 ISBN 978-3-319-69029-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69029-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958957 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Venerable Sayadaw U. Panditha Venerable Nyanaponika Mahathero Venerable Ananda Maitriya Mahathero PrEFaCE A RaNDOM HarVEST I am not presenting anything like a ‘dialectical psychology’ as found in the West. The focus is on conflict studies and people entrapped in conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes and ambivalence and through them develop a meth- odology to unravel situations where one has to deal with dialectical oppo- sitions by integration, balance and new vistas of integration. A simple definition of the term ‘dialectical’ would be ‘mediating between conflict- ing positions’. The term ‘polarisation’ may be defined as forces in opposite directions, the positive pole having the power to attract and the negative pole the power to repel. There are many studies in the West focused on communication and management issues where the concept of the dialectic emerges, but my focus is more on the psychology of desire and life styles, while integrating these insights, as well as interpersonal conflicts and issues of human emotions and therapy—to present a review of the dialectical rhythms of life drawing resources from early Buddhism. The middle path that the Buddha introduced through the opposition of extreme sensuality and extreme asceticism is an intervention on oppos- ing life styles. Pleasure is varied and delightful (kāmā citrā madhurā) but generates suffering (dukkha). Not getting what you wish for is suffering (yam p’icchaṃ na labhati tam pi dukkhaṃ)1 but getting what you do not need is also suffering. The search for happiness is driven by powerful sys- tems of desire, which become attached to material possessions and social status.2 The gap between these desires and what the world offers is a con- stant source of suffering. At one end of this sequence is frustration and at vii viii PREFACE the other extreme is the boredom of the pure sensualist. The latter is entrapped by the fascination with sensuality and the former is unhappy due to the inability to satisfy desires. A point beyond these two dialectical edges is beautifully presented by William James: To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified. There is a strange lightness in the heart when one’s nothingness in a particular area is accepted in good faith. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young or slender… ‘Thank god’ we say these illusions are gone.3 This is one of the dialectical edges of life for which the Buddha offered a way out. In more recent and reflective management studies such as that of Bernard Mayer,4 it is emphasised that as the Buddha also said, conflicts emerge from the very nature of life, and rather than considering them as threats, we must perceive them as opportunities to grow and in the most humane way recognise the gift of conflict in our lives. Thus Buddhism explores the dialectical patterns in human conflicts at a different level as in some current management studies, and an interesting dialogue with management studies is the subject of Chap. 7. Dilemmas and paradoxes have been an interesting theme in some man- agement studies, where they have integrated the study of koans as found in Zen Buddhism.5 There has also been a fascinating study of conflict reso- lution independent of any dialectical frame by Bernard Mayer, Staying With Conflict (2009),6 but a more interesting study with a dialectical frame is his later book, Conflict Paradox (2015), where he presents seven paradoxes, as well as the notion that they are not ‘contradictions’ but ‘co-­ dependent realities’, which rings a close note with Buddhist realism. Mayer in his second book considers it necessary to confront conflict narratives that encourage an effective approach to conflict avoidance and thus work positively with disputes. Though I had originally planned to present a sort of dialogue between Buddhism and different facets of management studies in a separate chap- ter, I discovered that there was already an emerging dialogue between Buddhism and management studies in some of the chapters and decided to merely summarise a few management studies principles in Chap. 7. It should be emphasised that the Theravāda (early Buddhist) dialectical phi- losophy is philosophical as well as psychological, with a deep analysis of the PREFACE ix dialectical patterns in human desires. Recent developments in conflict studies have close and deep affinities to Buddhism as seen in this quote: Conflict flows from life…. Rather than seeing conflicts as a threat, we can understand it as providing opportunities to grow and increase our under- standing of ourselves, of others, of social structures. Conflicts in relation- ships at all levels are the ways of life which make us to stop, assess, and take notice. One way to truly know our humanness is to recognize the gift of conflict in our lives. Without it life would be monotonously flat topography of sameness and our relationships would be woefully superficial.7 Chapter 1 presents the Buddhist analysis of the dialectical rhythms of craving and desire. Chapter 2 presents the uses and limits of dialectical techniques as a philosophical/epistemological tool and presents Buddha’s pragmatism and experientialism. The ‘Random Harvest’, Chaps. 1 and 2, thus offer a broad introduction to the Buddhist psychological and philo- sophical dimensions of this study. The term ‘dialectic’ has been used with reference to the Buddha. Like Socrates, the Buddha used a system of cross-examining people regarding certain concepts which were faulty and he made them bring out inner contradictions. But I am not concerned with this context. The Buddha also used dialectical arguments to examine the beliefs of certain philoso- phers like materialists, sceptics and determinists and through them exposed their vacuity. He emphasised the point that he used the dialectical method of argument within the framework of debates but that it was not an instru- ment of liberation. Secondly, he was critical of a group of philosophers like the Mādhyamika philosophers who used this strategy as an ultimate instru- ment of liberation, and Chap. 2 is completely devoted to the use of dialec- tical methods in this context and their place in a scheme of ultimate liberation. TrapS, DILEMMaS aND DIaLECTICaL CONTraDICTIONS There are many dialectical traps that can bind us, illustrated by the exam- ple of a monkey and a banana. There is a banana inside an empty coconut shell with a very small opening—just sufficient space for the monkey to put his hand in but not enough room to take it out with the banana. The monkey suffers and eventually discovers that if he ‘lets go’ and takes his x PREFACE hand out, the suffering is gone. Pathways of human greed almost and often follow the same route. There is Sand Castle Theory, in which addicts, gamblers and even peo- ple in business cling to things, even on the strong possibility of the verge of imminent collapse. It is like a child’s sand castle—the beauty increases with one more layer… one more layer … and then the imminent collapse. Another theory is expressed as two horns of a dilemma, evident in the story of the Golden Goose from the Palāsa Jātaka. A bird that has eaten the fruit of a Banyan tree voids its excrement on the trunk of a Judas tree. A golden goose tells the tree deity, do not allow the Banyan tree to grow, as every tree on which a Banyan tree springs is destroyed by its growth. The Banyan tree wrapping round the Judas tree consumed its share of soil, water and nutrition. ‘As time went by, all happened as the golden goose had foretold. The Banyan tree sent down the roots which wrapped around the trunk of its host and consumed its share of soil, water and nutrients. The Banyan tree grew bigger and stronger, until it split the Judas tree, which toppled to its death, bringing the deity’s home down with it.’ This story, very eloquently portrayed by venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi,8 according to him, is a parable for the present-day crisis of global warming and typifies the dialectic in the conflicting zones of economics, ecology and human well-­ being.
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