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Artwork by Ven. Tsapel
With the launch of the new, redesigned Mandala today, we are happy to share the most recent Dharma Realities column by Ven. Chönyi Taylor, who has been contributing to Mandala‘s online edition since 2010.
Positive psychology is about dreams. Our New Millennium version is a dream of unending health, vitality and, hopefully, lots of money. Our New Millennium dreams may be different in content from other times, but not intention: we want to be happy.
There is a long history to positive psychology, dating at least back to the Greek philosophers. Epicurus had the idea that our life should be happy, tranquil, peaceful and free from fear. We should not experience pain and we should be able to manage our own lives within the company of friends. This has been updated by Martin Seligman in his description of positive psychology:
“The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.”
Positive thinking as an antidote to unhappiness and dissatisfaction is not new. In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. Back then, being happy meant being born into a white, middle-class, nuclear family. It was the start of a massive rise in advertising on the heels of radio, TV and films. Happiness was also defined by possessions: a car, refrigerator, washing machine and vacuum cleaner, things that became essential household items. It was an unrealistic dream. It was a 1950s version of positive psychology. You can make it work, and if you don’t, then you are a failure.
The storybook characters Jane and Dick taught me to read, and for my four-year-old self, they were the example of what children and family should be, of what my family should be. The stereotype, of course, was rarely realized. My mother tried her best to live it out, but we kids and my father’s health, constantly undermined her efforts. The stereotype was a 1950s version of what positive psychology would generate. Unfortunately, our family did not meet the criteria. My mother was a fan of Norman Vincent Peale. She was not often happy.
Trends in psychology come and go. We have had post-Freudian psychology, existential psychology, humanistic psychology, gestalt, being-psychology, transpersonal psychology, hypnosis and mindfulness in the last 50 years. Each of them promised the good life. The latest one is positive psychology.
The Buddhist version of the good life is quite different. The path to happiness is realized through the four noble truths. Suffering is not denied, it is recognized as an integral part of our ordinary lives (the first truth). Suffering arises from ignorance, grasping, clinging as described the twelve links of cyclic existence, all of which generate a mind habituated to these thoughts (karma and the second noble truth). Yes, there is an end to our suffering (the third noble truth), but it requires a lot of hard work (the fourth noble truth) and the development of the six perfections: generosity, patience, courage (enthusiasm), concentration (deep meditation) and enough wisdom to really understand how we misinterpret reality.
There is no mention of “signature strengths” or “power.” Instead, we have the six perfections of the bodhisattva. Knowledge has a much deeper meaning than Seligman’s concept of intellectual advances, since it includes the profound wisdom realizing emptiness. And “goodness” is no vague concept, but anything which does not harm others.
Kopan Monastery monks help distribute drinking water, Kathmandu, Nepal, April 2015. Photo via Facbook, Kopan Monastery School.
A positive life is represented here by the Kopan monks helping out after the Nepal earthquake. They do not seem to be concerned about signature strengths, or about power or goodness. They are not blissed out or self-centred; they are not striving for “the happy life.”
The good life can be painful.
Ven. Chönyi Taylor is a registered Foundational Buddhism FPMT teacher and an elder for the Discovering Buddhism at Home Course. She is the author of Enough! A Buddhist Approach to Working with Addictive Patterns (Snow Lion, 2010) and has been published in Mandala, Buddhadharma, Dharma Vision and Sangha Magazine. She is a founding member and member of the training committee of the Australian Association of Buddhist Counsellors and Psychotherapists and an Honorary Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychiatry at Sydney University.