INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE GREAT EASTERN SUN: AN EXAMINATION OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF USE AND THE SHAMBHALA BUDDHIST TEACHINGS An Integrative Paper Submitted By Lisa Havelin To Adler Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Adlerian Counseling and Psychotherapy This integrative paper has been accepted for the faculty of Adler Graduate School by: Herb Laube, Chair Dan Zenga, Reader INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM Abstract The First Noble Truth is that the suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death is unavoidable. Suffering includes both physical and psychological pain. The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler and the Shambhala Buddhist Teachings cultivated in the west by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche are similar in that they aspire to alleviate suffering, and that fundamentally they seek to improve the situations of humankind. This paper examines the beliefs and practices that form the foundation of both Individual Psychology and the Tibetan Buddhist Teachings, and compares and contrasts them with one another. ii INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 1 Acknowledgements I offer my deepest gratitude to my grandmother, Edith Rodenkirchen (1916-2004) who was the embodiment of social interest and Buddha activity, to my greatest friend (a cat), Ms. Moppet (1968-1991) who was the embodiment of compassion and the gentle warrior in the face of suffering, old age, sickness and death, and to the venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Alfred Adler for their work in providing living teachings to help people and all sentient beings be liberated from suffering. Thank also to my husband Michael Havelin and my mother Karen Phelps for providing the space, opportunity and friendship needed to do the work required for this course of study, and to Herb Laube and Dan Zenga for their skillful counsel, humor, insight, support and encouragement with manifesting my interests and ideas in the form of this paper. And finally to my sweet friends Mary Ludington, Lisa Ringer, Kim Smisek and Winnifred & Ida Havelin for being so nice to me and keeping me on track. INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 2 CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................1 Alfred Adler and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche ...................................................................3 The Practices: Meditation and Encouragement ...................................................................7 Social Interest and Creating Enlightened Society ..............................................................12 Anything Can Also Be Different and Nowness .................................................................27 Explanation of Appendix ...................................................................................................29 References ..........................................................................................................................30 Appendix: The Effects of Meditation on Anxiety Related Disorders …………...………33 INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 3 Alfred Adler and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche Alfred Adler was born in Vienna, Austria on February 7, 1870. When Adler was about five years old he became deathly ill with pneumonia, from which, doctors thought he might not survive. It was out of that physical and emotional suffering that Adler made the decision to become a physician so that he might help others recover from disease. In 1895 he received his Medical Doctor Degree from the University of Vienna. As a medical doctor Adler was curious about the root causes of illnesses. He had a tendency to look to people’s behavior to find answers as to the causes of individuals’ symptoms. In 1898, Adler wrote his first book, which looked at the health conditions of tailors; in it he describes what would later become one of the main theories of Individual Psychology. Holism refers to the importance, in Adler’s view, of looking at a person as a whole, rather than the sum of individual parts. His practice was to see a person as possessing and interacting with many different kinds of influences and energies which all worked together as a whole. This was in conflict with the more Freudian interpretation of people as a summation of parts related only to instincts, drives, and other psychological manifestations. Adler was also interested in his patients with physical handicaps and studied both their organic and psychological reactions to them. In 1907 Adler published his book, which was about organ inferiority and how people compensate both positively and negatively for those inferiorities. In 1912 Adler published his book, The Neurotic Constitution, in which he described the main concepts, which would come to be known and comprise his psychological system titled, “Individual Psychology”. The term individual psychology refers to the practice of interpreting a person as indivisible or overall make-up. INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 4 Alfred Adler went on to found clinics designed to provide psychological services to children and families first in Vienna and then later in other countries. Adler lectured and practiced widely throughout his career and beginning in 1932 held the first chair of Visiting Professor of Medical Psychology at Long Island College of Medicine. He died on May 28, 1937 in Aberdeen, Scotland after delivering a series of lectures. The Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was born in the province of Kham in eastern Tibet in 1939. When he was thirteen months old, he was recognized as a major tulku, or incarnate teacher. According to Tibetan tradition, an enlightened teacher is capable of reincarnating in human form over a succession of generations in order to continue to help other sentient beings. In this way, particular lineages of teaching are formed, in some cases extending over many centuries. Chogyam Trungpa was the eleventh in the teaching lineage known as the Trungpa Tulkus. Chogyam Trungpa was enthroned as supreme abbot of Surmang Monastery and governor of Surmang District. At the age of eight, he received ordination as a novice monk and engaged in intensive study and practice of the traditional monastic disciplines. His primary teachers were Jamgon Kongtrul of Sechen and Khenpo Gangshar—leading teachers in the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages. In 1958, at the age of eighteen, Trungpa Rinpoche completed his studies, receiving the degrees of Kyorpon (doctor of divinity) and Khenpo (master of studies). He also received full monastic ordination. In 1959 Chogyam Trungpa escaped Chinese occupied Tibet through the Himalayas on foot and by horseback to India. While in India Chogyam Trungpa was appointed to serve as spiritual advisor to the Young Lamas Home School in Delhi, India until 1963. Chogyam Trungpa then received a Spaulding sponsorship to attend Oxford University where he studied comparative religion, philosophy, history, and fine arts. While in England he began to instruct INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 5 Western students in the dharma, and in 1967 founded the Samye Ling Meditation Center in Dumfrieshire, Scotland. During this period he published his first two books: Born in Tibet (1966) and Meditation in Action (1969). In 1968 Chogyam Trungpa traveled to Bhutan where he entered into extensive solitary retreat practice. At this time he created the Sadhana of Mahamudra, which is a text, and practice, which guided his teaching in the west. It documents the spiritual degeneration of modern times and provides the antidote. Soon after returning to England he became a layperson, putting aside his monastic robes he moved to North America. He believed that in order for the dharma to take root in the West it needed to be taught free from cultural trappings and religious fascination. During the 1970’s Rinpoche drew many students who were seriously interested in the Buddhist teachings and the practice of meditation. He was critical of the materialistic approach to spirituality that was prevalent at the time. In the early to mid 1970’s he published Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, and The Myth of Freedom. Chogyam Trungpa was fluent in the English language and so was one of the first Tibetan Buddhist Teachers who could speak to Western students directly without an interpreter. He traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe and gave thousands of talks and hundreds of seminars. He established major land centers dedicated to the practice and study of Buddhism in Vermont, Colorado, Nova Scotia and in 1974 founded the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), which became the first and only accredited Buddhist-inspired University in North America. In addition to his teachings in the Buddhist tradition, Rinpoche also placed great emphasis on the Shambhala teachings, which stress the importance of meditation in action or training oneself to approach obstacles or challenges in everyday life with the courageous attitude of a warrior, without anger. His book, Shambhala Sacred Path of the Warrior, discusses these INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM 6 teachings. He founded Shambhala International, which now comprises hundreds of Shambhala Centers worldwide. The Shambhala Center of Minneapolis and is the first City Center to have built its own building designed specifically as a meditation center.