A Buddhist Perspective
of
Modern Psychotherapy & Evolution of Consciouness
Western interest in Buddhism has a history of a little more than three centuries. It is only quite recently, however, that the Western intellect has begun to dig deep into the profound teachings of the Buddha. Modern psychologists who have experimented with Buddhist meditation have begun to notice a close parallelism as well as a few discrepancies between modern psychological thinking and the teachings of the Buddha. This paper is the result of a long research to discover the relation between early Buddhism and modern psychotherapeutic theory and practice, with the hope that it might open vistas of knowledge that lay hidden under the ashes of by gone centuries. This study has also thrown some valuable insights into the mysteries of the human mind that have puzzled many a great scientist of the modern age. An important consequence of this research was the discovery of the intrinsic psychotherapeutic value of early Buddhism, as distinct from the many varieties of Buddhism available in the spiritual supermarket today.