Table Of ContentTHE PSYCHOLOGY
OF BUDDHISM
IN CONFLICT
STUDIES
Padmasiri de Silva
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
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To Venerable Sayadaw U. Panditha
Venerable Nyanaponika Mahathero
Venerable Ananda Maitriya Mahathero
P
RefAce
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
PREFAC E 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. The Banyan tree represents the use of carbon-based fuels, whose
emission of carbon dioxide is invisible … small quantities apparently harm-
less, but such unrestricted use of fossils menaces civilization that depends
on them. There is a dilemma here: placing restrictions on carbon dioxide
means limiting productivity, and limiting productivity would usher in lay-
offs and possible recession. If nothing is done, the environment suffers. If
people decide on mining, whether of coal or gold, in spite of its impact on
the environment, there is an impending impact on health, like the dilemma,
possibility of lung diseases with gold mining in Thailand or coal mining in
Australia. These dilemmas have social, political and human impacts on
well-being.
PunisHment tHeoRies
The conflicting alternative theories of punishment of retribution, deter-
rence, restoration and effective mediation need to be implemented by a
more sophisticated dialectical methodology.
PREFAC E xi
We argued in this essay that an interdisciplinary account of self-identity is
necessary to scholars of punishment, as those who punish and those who are
punished need to be understood as situated, embodied and relational…..To
do this, we suggested that scholars of punishment observe how it is experi-
enced, need to develop a dialectical methodology that engages and moves
beyond problematic dichotomies and disciplinary limitations.9
To transform the criminal is as important as caring for the victim and
social consciousness. How to mediate these conflicts calls for creative
thinking, without upsetting the balance.
Retribution is associated with a sense of revenge, deterrence neglects
the subject of punishment on behalf of those who are to be saved and how
can restoration save both the subject of punishment and the victim at the
same time. A pair of scales used for weighing things is emblematic of the
notion of balance in justice, but to generate balance involves a dialectical
process going through avenues of justice.
These conflicts emerge with a strong political flavour and when the
impact heightens various forms of compromise are sought. The disciplines
of environmental ethics and bioethics also examine such conflicts and
dilemmas and offer exercises to train the minds of students and those who
wish to take to environmental counselling. A recent Q and A seminar
organised by the ABC television programme spent a whole session on the
conflicting issues pertaining to framing a humane policy for the intake of
refugees to Australia and the surrounding region, and this was a graphic
demonstration of the unending dialectical conflicts, where every solution
created fresh conflicts. The chapter on multiculturalism in the present
work is also relevant to the issue of refugees. Scholars working in the social
sciences need to generate a new methodology integrating what I call ‘the
dialectical imagination’ which is the corrective to ‘one track’ minds. This
is what the politicians lack. I have not mentioned the controversies over
euthanasia and abortion where different ethical compromises are offered,
which are somewhat different from the dialectical conflicts discussed in
this study. Dialectical conflicts often emerge as the Buddha clarified, due
to the different paths that human desires and craving manifest, where
some ambivalence and ignorance of the roots of the problem dominate.
The new features that did not exist in the past are the far-reaching and
complex socio-economic changes which are taking place in the contempo-
rary world.
