Editor:
Mangala priya
Watsuthivararam,
Yannawa, Sathorn,
bangkok, 10120.
Thailand.
Philosophical
development which has taken place in western psychology took place long, long
ago in the Buddhist psychology of the Abhidhammas. It would also be shown that
both east and west have made a unique contribution to psychology and indeed to
science as a whole.
In both cases one can trace how
the soul becomes the mind, and the mind becomes experience and matter, and in
both cases one can see how the ego or self becomes the subject of much dispute.
In the pre-scientific Hindu
psychology the Brahmin or soul became the Atman or self and the Atman was seen
as an immaterial essence which underlay experience. Both prince Siddhartha and Wundt
discarded the soul and the soul like mind, and replaced it by experience and
matter. Skhandhas are clearly divided into rUpa which means matter and nAma which means experience. It is
always taken for granted in Buddhist writings that mind means experience.
Buddhism recognizes that there
experiential evidence for it; at a particular stage of meditation one may
develop it if one wishes, but it is not central or essential to Buddhist
psychology. Moreover, it is taken to be a function of the same material
mind-base which gives rise to all the other aspects of experience. Having made
immediate experience the subject matter of scientific psychology,
Generally speaking, the Buddhist
method of observation is meditation, which is superficially, rather similar to Wundt’s
method of introspection. Wundt’s introspection, however has proved to be
unsuitable for specific and controlled observation of experience and is no
longer used.
