Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. What will we do with the received material

In a brief overview of Freud's psychoanalysis and its development within the framework of humanistic psychoanalysis, I touched on the problem of human existence and the importance of the existential question. At the same time, the well-being of a person was viewed as overcoming alienation and isolation by him, while the peculiarity psychoanalytic approach consists in penetrating into the human unconscious. In addition, I talked about the nature of the unconscious and the conscious and about the meaning that psychoanalysis puts in the concepts of "know" and "be aware." Finally, I spoke about the importance of the role of the analyst in psychoanalysis.

One might suppose that a systematic description of Zen Buddhism will become the primary condition for its comparison with the psychoanalytic method, but I will touch only those aspects of it that have direct points of contact with psychoanalysis.

Zen's main goal is to attain enlightenment, or satori. A person can never fully understand Zen if he has not experienced this experience. Since I myself have not experienced satori, I am not able to talk about Zen at the level that is implied by the fullness of this experience, but I can only talk about it in the most general terms. At the same time, since satori "is an art and a way of enlightenment almost incomprehensible to the European consciousness," I will not consider Zen from the standpoint of CG Jung. At least Zen is no more difficult for a European than Heraclitus, Meister Eckhart, or Heidegger. The tremendous effort required to achieve satori is the main obstacle to understanding Zen. Most people are incapable of making such an effort, so even in Japan satori is very rare. However, despite the fact that I am not able to speak competently about Zen, I have a rough idea of ​​it, which became possible thanks to reading the books of Dr. Suzuki, attending several of his lectures and generally getting acquainted with Zen Buddhism from all sources available to me. I suppose I can make a preliminary comparison between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis.

What is the main purpose of Zen? Suzuki says in this regard the following: “Zen by its nature is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence, it indicates the path leading from slavery to freedom ... We can say that Zen releases the natural energy inherent in us, which in ordinary life suppressed and distorted to such an extent that it is not able to be realized in an adequate way ... Therefore, the goal of Zen is to prevent a person from losing their mind and becoming ugly. By freedom of a person, I mean the possibility of realizing all the creative and noble motives inherent in his heart. Usually we are blind in our ignorance that we are endowed with all the necessary qualities that can make us happy and teach us to love. "

I would like to draw your attention to some important aspects of Zen that follow from this definition: Zen is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence; it is the path leading from slavery to freedom; Zen releases the natural energy of a person; he protects a person from insanity and self-mutilation; he encourages a person to realize his abilities to love and be happy.

The main goal of Zen is to experience enlightenment - satori. This process is detailed in the works of Dr. Suzuki. Here I would like to dwell on some aspects of this issue that are especially important for a Western person, and first of all for a psychologist. Satori is not inherently a mental abnormality. It is not characterized by a loss of sense of reality, as it happens in a trance state. At the same time, satori does not represent the narcissistic state of mind that is a characteristic manifestation of some religious teachings. "If you like, this is an absolutely normal state of mind ..." According to Yoshu, "Zen is your everyday thinking." "Which way the door opens depends on the location of its hinges." The experience of satori is especially affected by the state of enlightenment. “The whole process of our thinking will proceed in a completely different way, which will allow us to experience greater satisfaction, greater peace, greater joy than it was before. The very atmosphere of existence will undergo changes. Zen also has anti-aging properties. The spring flower will become even more beautiful, and the mountain waterfall will become cool and clean. "

As is clear from the above passage from Dr. Suzuki's work, satori is the true embodiment of human well-being. Using psychological terminology, enlightenment can be defined, in my opinion, as a fully conscious and understood state of an individual, his entire orientation towards reality, both internal and external. This state is recognized not by the human brain or any other part of his organism, but by the individual himself in his entirety. It is perceived by him not as something mediated by his thinking, but as an absolute reality: a flower, a dog, another person. Upon awakening, a person becomes open and responsive to the world around him. This becomes possible due to the fact that he ceases to consider himself as a thing. Enlightenment implies the "complete awakening" of the whole person, its movement in the direction of reality.

It is necessary to clearly understand that neither a trance in which a person is convinced that he is awake while he is fast asleep, nor any destruction of a person's personality has anything to do with the state of enlightenment. Apparently, for a representative of the Western school of psychology, satori will look like a subjective state, as a kind of trance state independently caused by a person; For all his sympathy for Zen Buddhism, even Dr. Jung did not escape such a delusion: “Since the imagination itself is a mental phenomenon, it makes no difference whether we define enlightenment as“ genuine ”or“ imaginary ". Be that as it may, a person, being "enlightened", believes that he is such, regardless of whether it corresponds to reality, or he only declares it ... Even if he was insincere in his words, his lies would be spiritualized. " Of course, such a statement is only a fragment of Jung's general relativistic concept that defines his understanding of the "authenticity" of religious experience. For my part, under no circumstances can I regard a lie as something "spiritual"; for me it is nothing but a lie. In any case, Zen Buddhists are not adherents of this Jungian concept, which has some merit. On the contrary, it is extremely important for them to distinguish between the actual and, therefore, the true change in the human worldview as a result of a genuine experience of satori from an imaginary experience, caused, perhaps, by psychopathological factors, in which the one who comprehends Zen assumes that he has achieved satori, while his teacher is convinced of the opposite. Seeing that the Zen student does not substitute imaginary enlightenment for true enlightenment is one of the main tasks of a mentor.

In terms of psychology, we can say that full awakening is the achievement of a "productive orientation", which implies a creative and active, like Spinoza's, perception of the world, and not a passive, consumer, accumulative and shareholder attitude towards it. An internal conflict that conditions the alienation of one's own "I" from the "not-I" is resolved when a person reaches a state of creative productivity. Any object under consideration no longer exists in isolation from a person. The rose seen by him represents the object of his thought precisely as a rose, and not in the sense that, speaking about the fact that he sees it, he only asserts that this object is identical for him with the definition of a rose. A person who is in a state of full productivity becomes at the same time and extremely objective: his greed or fear no longer distorts the objects he sees, that is, he sees them as they really are, and not as they are. he would like to see them. Such a perception excludes the possibility of parataxic distortions occurring. The human "I" is activated, there is a fusion of subjective and objective perception. The active process of experiencing occurs in the person himself, while the object remains unchanged. The human "I" animates the object, and is itself animated by means of it. Only someone who does not realize how mental or parataxic his vision of the world is, can consider satori as a kind of mystical act. A person who has realized this comes to another awareness, which can be defined as absolutely real. To understand what is at stake, just a fleeting experience of this sensation is enough. A boy learning to play the piano cannot compete in skill with the great maestro. However, the maestro's play is not fraught with anything supernatural, representing a combination of the same elementary skills that the boy learns; the only difference is that these skills are honed by the maestro to perfection.

Two Zen Buddhist parables clearly show how important an undistorted and unintelligent perception of reality is to the Zen concept. One of them tells of a conversation between a mentor and a monk:

“- Are you trying to establish yourself in the truth?
- Yes.
- How do you educate yourself?
- I eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm tired.
“But everyone does that. It turns out that they educate themselves the same way as you?
- No.
- Why?
- Because while eating, they are not busy eating, but allow themselves to be distracted by extraneous things; when they sleep, they do not sleep at all, but see a thousand and one dreams. This is how they differ from me. "

There is probably no need to comment on this parable in any way. Overwhelmed by greed, fear and self-doubt, an ordinary person, far from always realizing this himself, constantly lives in a world of illusions. The world around him in his eyes acquires properties that exist only in his imagination. This state of affairs was just as relevant for the era to which the parable cited belongs, as for our days: today, almost everyone only believes that he sees, tastes, or feels something, rather than actually experiencing such experiences.

The author of another equally revealing statement was a Zen teacher: “Before I started studying Zen, rivers were rivers for me, and mountains were mountains. After I got my first knowledge of Zen, rivers were no longer rivers and mountains were no longer mountains. Now, when I have comprehended the teaching, the rivers again became rivers for me, and the mountains - mountains ”. And in this case, we become witnesses to the fact that reality begins to be perceived in a new way. As a rule, a person is mistaken, taking the shadows of things for their true essence, as is the case in Plato's cave. Realizing that he was wrong, he has so far only the knowledge that the shadows of things are not their essence. Leaving the cave and emerging from the darkness into the light, he wakes up and sees now not shadows, but true essence of things. Being in darkness, he is not able to comprehend the light. The New Testament (John 1, 5) says: "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." But as soon as he leaves the darkness, the difference between the world of shadows, in which he lived before, and reality is immediately revealed to him.

Comprehension of human nature is one of the primary tasks of Zen, which guides a person towards self-knowledge. However, we are not talking here about the category of "scientific" knowledge inherent in modern psychology, not about the knowledge of a cognizing intellectual person who considers himself as an object. In Zen, however, this knowledge is unintellectual and non-mediated; it is a deep experience in which the knower and the knowable become one. Suzuki formulated this idea as follows: "The main task of Zen is the most natural and direct penetration into the deepest aspects of human existence."

The intellect is incapable of giving an exhaustive answer to an existential question. Achievement of enlightenment becomes possible under the condition of the refusal of the individual from many of the delusions that hinder the true vision of the world, generated by his mind. Zen requires complete freedom of the mind. Even one thought becomes an obstacle and a trap on the way to the true freedom of the soul. " It follows from this that the concept of sympathy, or empathy, postulated by Western psychology, is unacceptable according to Zen Buddhist teachings. “The concept of empathy, or empathy, is the intellectual embodiment of primary experience. If we talk about the experience itself, then it does not allow any separation. At the same time, in its striving to comprehend the experience, to subject it to logical analysis, which provides for discrimination, or dichotomy, the mind thereby harms itself and destroys the experience. At the same time, the true sense of identity disappears, which allows the intellect to carry out its inherent destruction of reality. The phenomenon of sympathy, or empathy, which is the result of the process of intellectualization, may be more characteristic of a philosopher who is incapable of experiencing genuine experience. "

However, the spontaneity of experience can be limited not only by the intellect as such, but also by any idea or individual. In this regard, Zen “does not attach much importance to the sacred sutras, as well as their interpretation by sages and scholars. Individual experience is in conflict with the opinion of authority and objective definitions. " Within the framework of Zen, a person should be free even from God, from Buddha, which was expressed in the Zen dictum: “Having uttered the word“ Buddha ”, wash your lips”.

Development logical thinking it is not the task of Zen, which distinguishes it from the Western tradition. Zen "presents a person with a dilemma that he must be able to resolve at a higher level of thinking than that which is logic."

As a consequence, the concept of a mentor in Zen Buddhism does not correspond to its Western counterpart. In Zen understanding, the benefit that a mentor brings to a disciple is simply that the latter exists in principle; in general, for Zen, a mentor is such only to the extent that he is able to exercise control over his own mental activity. “What to do - until the student is ready to comprehend something, he cannot help him in any way. The highest reality is comprehended only independently ”.

The modern Western reader, accustomed to choosing between resigned submission to the authority that suppresses him and limiting his freedom, and the complete denial of it, turns out to be puzzled by the attitude of a Zen mentor to a student. Within the framework of Zen, we are talking about a different, "reasonable authority". The disciple does everything only of his own free will, without experiencing any compulsion from the mentor. The mentor does not require anything from him. The student is guided by his own desire to learn from his mentor, because he wants to receive from him knowledge that he does not yet have. The teacher “does not need to explain anything with words, for him there is no concept of sacred teaching. Before anything is affirmed or denied, everything is weighed. There is no need to be silent, or to gossip. " A Zen mentor completely excludes any imposition of his authority on the student, and at the same time persistently strives to win his true authority based on real experience.

It must be borne in mind that the true attainment of enlightenment is inextricably linked to the transformation of the human character; one who is not aware of this will not be able to understand Zen at all. This is the manifestation of the Buddhist origin of Zen, since salvation within the framework of Buddhism implies the need to change the human character. A person must free himself from the passion of possession, must tame his greed, pride and arrogance. He should relate to the past with gratitude, be a worker in the present and look into the future with a sense of responsibility. Living according to the principles of Zen means "treating yourself and the world around you with gratitude and reverence." For Zen, this attitude in life, which is the basis of the "hidden virtue", is very characteristic. Its meaning is that a person should not waste the forces given by nature in vain, but live a full life both in an ordinary, down-to-earth sense, and in a moral sense.

Zen sets before a person the goal of freeing from slavery and gaining freedom, achieving "absolute invulnerability and courage" in the ethical sense. Zen is based on a person's character, not on his intellect. Consequently, the main life postulate for him is human will. "

What will we do with the received material:

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The other day I read an article of the same name by Erich Fromm.

For me, with equal respect and interest in the attempts of both the East and the West to explore and transform human suffering, this was a welcome find.

Actually, Fromm in this article examines the goals of psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism and comes to the conclusion that they are globally the same, but the methods of achieving these goals are different.

To be completely honest, from the point of view comparative analysis, the value of the article is not great for me. Fromm himself admits that he is not familiar with the state of enlightenment or satori, so he can only talk about it "from the words of Dr. Suzuki." In general, "Izya sang".

However, in this article, he perfectly reveals the essence of psychoanalytic therapy. Simple enough. And on the case. Therefore, I recommend it to everyone interested.

The article is quite lengthy. For myself, I have kept some quotes, especially those that coincide with my understanding of the nature of suffering, as well as the goals and essence of the psychoanalytic process and method.

I share this summary with you.

“For a child who lives solely by his desires, reality is what he wants to see, but not what really exists... In case of non-fulfillment of his desire, the child becomes enraged, seeking through the father and mother to change the world around him so that his desire is realized. Upon reaching maturity, a normally developing child comes to an awareness of reality and accepts its rules of the game, abandoning this narcissistic message. The neurotic, however, still proceeds from his ideas based on narcissism, still being in the conviction that the world should obey only his desires. Faced with the opposite, he either unsuccessfully tries to force reality to submit to his will, or experiences a feeling of his own helplessness. If for a mature person freedom means awareness of reality, acceptance of its immutable laws and life in accordance with them, comprehension and comprehension of the surrounding world, awareness of one's own place in it through reason and feelings, then for neurotic freedom, whether he realizes it or not, is just the idea of ​​his own narcissistic omnipotence.”

“Throughout a long evolution, starting with cannibalism, man has chosen one of the existing options from the mass of various answers to an existential question, without knowing it. A man of the West, as a rule, believes that in his soul he is fully consistent with the principles of Christian or Jewish morality, or is an adherent of enlightened atheism. In fact, if it were possible to analyze a person with the help of some kind of "psychic X-ray", it would become obvious that in our society there are very few true Christians, Judaists, Buddhists, adherents of Tao, and a huge number of cannibalists, totemists and various idolaters. "

“If the regressive aspirations of an individual come into conflict with his consciousness or with the interests of society and his own secret“ religion ”cannot be shared with others, it turns into a neurosis.

Knowing the personal answer of a particular patient or any person in general to the existential question that life poses before him - in other words, his own cult that he serves, we can understand him. It makes no sense to "treat" such a patient before we know his secret cult, his fundamental answer to life, for many so-called "psychological problems" are in fact echoes of this very "answer."

“Well-being is to be understood as reaching full maturity by the human mind. We are talking here about maturity, not only in terms of the ability to think critically, but also such awareness of reality, in which, in the words of Heidegger, a person acquires the ability to "allow things to be" what they really are. A person can achieve well-being only to the extent that he is open to the world around him, is able to react to it (“awakened” and “empty” in Zen Buddhist understanding). ”

“In the end, well-being is about taming your ego and redefining your priorities in life. A person must give up money-grubbing, from the pursuit of his own integrity and exaltation. The meaning of life should not be the eternal thirst for possession, accumulation, profit and consumption, but the joy of being itself, the awareness of one's own uniqueness in this world. "

“As I have already noted, being itself poses a question for man. This question is generated by a contradiction inherent in man: belonging to nature, on the one hand, and being outside of it, due to the awareness of one's own being, on the other. A person is "religious" if he approaches this fundamental question not formally, but seeks to answer it with his whole life. Likewise, any system is a "religion" if it tries to give its own answer to this question and forces people to do so. Accordingly, every culture and every person who does not seek an answer to an existential question is non-religious in nature - the best example of which is the man of the 20th century. Preoccupied with thoughts about material wealth, prestige, power, career, modern man tries to get away from the answer to this question, trying to forget about the very fact of his existence, and therefore about the fact of the existence of his “I”. A person who does not have an answer of his own is incapable of development, in his life and death becoming like one of the millions of things he has produced. It doesn't matter how deep his religious convictions are, how often he thinks about God or attends church. Such a person, instead of believing in God, only thinks about him. "

“Judeo-Christian and Zen-Buddhist thinking is brought together by the idea of ​​the refusal of the individual from the egoistic desire for coercion, domination and suppression of the inner and outer world. Instead, a person should become open, receptive, awake, able to respond to challenges from the outside world. Zen calls this state "to be empty", and this term does not have a negative connotation, but, on the contrary, characterizes the individual open to perception of the external world. In the Christian religion, this same idea is expressed in terms of self-denial and submission to the will of divine providence. At first glance, the differences in Christian and Buddhist postulates are not so significant and the difference exists only at the level of formulations. In fact, Christian ideas, as a rule, are interpreted in such a way that a person completely entrusts his fate to the great and almighty Father, who protects and takes care of him, while all independence is lost. Naturally, in this case, the person becomes meek and humble, but in no way open and capable of reacting. A genuine rejection of selfish aspirations as following the will of the Lord takes on real meaning if the concept of God is absent as such. Just forgetting about God, a person, paradoxically, sincerely follows his will. To be "empty" in the terminology of Zen Buddhism really means subduing one's will, but at the same time excludes the possibility of returning to slavish trust in the support of the Father. "

“Today, man seeks to define the world in terms of the things he possesses, rather than in terms of existence. Just like we have a car, a house or a child, we have an anxiety problem, we have insomnia, we have depression, we have a psychoanalyst. Similarly, we have the unconscious. "

“However, it is also obvious that in reality human consciousness is largely a chain of delusions and false messages, which is caused mostly by the influence of society, and not by the inability of the individual to discern the truth. It follows from this that human consciousness in itself cannot be of value. The evolution of mankind testifies to the fact that, with the exception of a number of primitive societies, society is built on the principle of management and exploitation of the majority of its members by an insignificant minority. The majority is governed by the use of force, but this factor alone is not enough. The consciousness of the majority should be filled mainly with fictions and delusions, as a result of which it voluntarily agrees to obey the minority. Nevertheless, the false nature of a person's ideas about himself, other individuals, society, etc. depends not only on these circumstances. The substitution of general human postulates by the interests of society, taking place in any society, is due to an attempt (and, as a rule, achievement) to preserve the structure acquired by this society in the process of evolution. At the same time, the arising contradiction gives rise to an internal conflict in such a society: the discrepancies between the interests of a person and society are hidden at the social level under the cover of all kinds of fictions and false messages. "

“Thus, we can conclude that the conscious and unconscious are socially conditioned by their nature. A person is able to be aware only of those feelings and thoughts that have passed through a triple filter: a special one, that is, language, a filter of logic and a filter of prohibitions of a social nature. At the level of the unconscious, all the motives that have not passed through this filter remain. Focusing on the social essence of the unconscious, we must make two clarifications. The first is to state the obvious fact that in any family, in addition to the prohibitions of society, there are their own varieties of these prohibitions. As a result, all the impulses that arise in the child and are forbidden in this family will be suppressed by him for fear of losing the love of his parents. On the other hand, adults who are more honest with themselves and less inclined to "repression" will try to reduce the number of these prohibitions for their children. "

“But what, then, is the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious? For a more accurate answer to this question, it is necessary to formulate it somewhat differently. One should speak not about "conscious" and "unconscious", but about the degree of awareness-consciousness and unconsciousness - unconsciousness. In this case, we can formulate our question in a different way: what happens when a person realizes what he was not aware of before? The answer in general terms will be as follows: this process brings a person closer step by step to an understanding of the false, illusory essence of consciousness, which he used to regard as "normal". Realizing the hitherto unconscious, a person expands the area of ​​his consciousness, thereby comprehending reality, that is, approaching the truth on an intellectual and emotional level. Expansion of consciousness is like awakening, removing the veil from the eyes, leaving the cave, illumination of darkness with light.

Perhaps it is this experience that Zen Buddhists define as 'enlightenment.'

“In reality, the discovery of the unconscious is an emotional experience, and not an act of intellectual cognition, which is difficult, if not impossible, to express in words. At the same time, the process of discovering the unconscious does not at all exclude preliminary deliberation and reflection. However, the immediate discovery itself is always spontaneous and unexpected, integral in nature, for a person experiences it with his whole being: his eyes seem to open, he himself and the whole world appear before him in a new light, he looks at everything in a new way. If before experiencing this experience, he felt anxiety, then after it, on the contrary, he gains confidence in his abilities. The discovery of the unconscious can be characterized as a chain of growing deeply felt experiences that go beyond theoretical and intellectual knowledge. "

“First, let's summarize what has been said about psychoanalysis. Its purpose is to transform the unconscious into the conscious. It should be borne in mind that the conscious and unconscious are functions, and not the content of the mental process. More precisely: we can only talk about one degree or another of repression, about a state when a person is aware of only those experiences that have managed to pass through the filter of language, logic and other criteria conditioned by the realities of a particular society. The most secret depths of his nature open before a person, and therefore, his human essence, freed from distortions at all levels of the filter. If a person completely overcomes repression, he thereby resolves the conflict between his consciousness and the unconscious. At the same time, overcoming self-alienation and isolation from the surrounding world in all its manifestations, he is able to experience an immediate experience. "

“On the other hand, the consciousness of a repressed person is false in nature. This is reflected in his experience of the world around him: instead of a really existing object, he sees only his image generated by his own illusions and ideas. This distorted idea of ​​something, this veil covering his gaze is precisely the primary source of his anxiety and suffering. As a result, an individual in a state of repression experiences what is happening in his head instead of experiencing real people and objects. Being confident that he is in contact with the real world, in fact, he is dealing only with words.

Overcoming repression and alienation from oneself and, as a consequence, from another individual means awareness of the unconscious, that is, awakening, parting with illusions, delusions and false ideas and an adequate perception of reality. Awareness of the previously unconscious makes an inner revolution in a person. The basis of creative intellectual thinking and direct intuitive perception of reality is precisely the true awakening of a person. An individual in a state of alienation when real world is perceived by him only at the level of thinking, it turns out to be able to lie; being awakened and, therefore, focused on the direct perception of reality, a person is not able to tell a lie: the power of his experience destroys a lie. Finally, the translation of the unconscious into the conscious means for a person to live guided by the truth. By being open to reality, he ceases to be alienated from it; without opposing her and at the same time not trying to impose anything on her, he reacts to reality in an adequate way. ”

“But the goal of psychoanalysis is precisely to achieve insight, which occurs not on an intellectual level, but as a result of cognition. As I have already noted, being aware of your breathing does not mean thinking about your breathing, and being aware of the movement of your hand does not mean thinking about it. On the contrary, if I think about my breathing or the movement of my hand, I am thus no longer aware of them. This statement is also true in relation to my awareness of a flower or a person, the experience of joy, love, or a state of peace. The peculiarity of true insight within psychoanalysis is that it defies description. Nevertheless, many weak psychoanalytic theories try to formulate their understanding of insight, which has nothing to do with direct experience, resorting to heaps of theoretical concepts. The patient under psychoanalysis cannot be made to experience true insight or to plan for it; it always arises suddenly. Using a Japanese metaphor, we can say that insight is not born in a person's brain, but in his stomach. Trying to put it into verbal form, we realize that we are not able to do it. Nevertheless, it is quite real, and the person who survived it becomes completely different. "

“… The most that a person who has not come to a creative state - the culmination of satori - is capable of, is to replace his innate predisposition to depression with routine, idolatry, desire for destruction, money-grubbing, pride, etc.

If any of these compensatory mechanisms cease to function, there is a threat to health. But it is enough for a person to change his attitude to the world, gaining, through the resolution of internal conflict and overcoming alienation, the ability to be responsive, to perceive reality directly and creatively in order to get rid of a possible disease. If psychoanalysis can help a person in this, it will help him to find true mental health. Otherwise, it will only become the basis for improving compensation mechanisms. In other words, a person can be "cured" of a symptom, while it is impossible to "cure" him of a neurotic character. By treating the patient as an inanimate object, the analyst is unable to heal him, for a person is neither a thing nor a "medical history." Being connected with the patient in a situation of mutual understanding and unity with him, the analyst can only contribute to his awakening. "

“However, in my understanding, even if a person will never reach satori, any of his experiences, which are at least to some extent a step in this direction, are already valuable in themselves. Once Dr. Suzuki illustrated this aspect: if, while in a completely dark room, you light one candle, then the darkness disappears and becomes brighter. If you add ten, one hundred or a thousand candles to it, then each time the room will become brighter and brighter. However, the fundamental change was made by the first candle, which destroyed the darkness.

What happens when the analytic process is carried out? A person who ascribed to himself such qualities as modesty, courage and love, for the first time in his life, feels pride, cowardice and hatred within himself. This insight can cause pain, but it opens his eyes, which makes him able not to endow others with the qualities that he seeks to suppress in himself. Then he continues on his way, feeling at first as an infant, child, adult, criminal, madman, saint, artist, man or woman; he penetrates deeper and deeper into his own human principle, into the universal essence; he has to suppress less and less experiences in himself, he is liberated, needing the transference and cerebration to a lesser and lesser extent. Then, for the first time, the experience of how he sees a light or a rolling ball, or hears music, penetrating it, becomes available to him. Little by little, he realizes the falsity of the idea of ​​the independence of his own "I", which he previously regarded as a kind of object that requires protection, care and salvation; this becomes possible due to the fact that he begins to feel his unity with other individuals. He will understand that it is useless to look for the answer to the main question asked by life in possession, while one should become himself and be himself. By their nature, these experiences are always spontaneous and unexpected; they have no intellectual content. However, having experienced them, a person feels with a force unknown to him hitherto a feeling of liberation, his own strength and peace. "

Hello dear friends.

Each of you has probably heard the word "Zen", even if it is far from Buddhism. This term is ambiguous, has a direct relationship to Eastern culture and religion, although in itself it does not imply either belief in the existence of God, or his denial.

Buddhist philosophy may seem strange and even paradoxical to a European person. Zen is just as unusual in this respect. But upon closer examination, it is quite consistent with the general religious tradition. Below we will try to figure out what Zen means?

State and religion

There are two main meanings of the term Zen - a spiritual state (as well as the exercises performed to achieve it) and a religious trend. The latter is largely based on practice and refers to Buddhism, although it was formed on the territory of present-day China at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries under the influence of the then popular Taoism - a mystical-philosophical doctrine.

How state

The origin of the concept of "Zen" is still debated. This word is not found in traditional Buddhist texts, as it is of Japanese origin and is translated as "contemplation", "meditation". However, the Hindus had a certain analogue, sounding in Sanskrit as "dhyana" (immersion) - the doctrine of enlightenment. But this philosophy received the greatest theoretical and practical development in the Far East - in China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan.

It should be immediately determined that in the sense of the philosophical state or the general Buddhist concept, the words "Zen", "Dhyana", "Chan" (in China), "Thien" (in Vietnam), "Sleep" (in Korea) are identical. Also, they all have similarities with the concept of "Tao".

In the narrowest sense of the term, all this is a state of enlightenment, an understanding of the basis of the world order. According to Buddhist practice and philosophy, everyone can do this, thereby becoming a bodhisattva or guru.

To find the key to understanding the world, you don't even have to strive for it. It is enough to master the state of “Just Like” in practice. After all, what stronger man seeks to comprehend Tao, the faster he moves away from it.

Like philosophy

In a more general philosophical understanding, Zen is a teaching that has nothing to do with religion:

• it does not seek the meaning of life;
• does not deal with issues of world order;
• the existence of God does not prove, but does not disprove either.

The essence of philosophy is simple and is formulated by several theoretical principles:

• Everyone is subject to suffering and lust.
• They are the result of certain events and actions.
• Suffering and longing can be overcome.
• Detachment from extremes makes a person free and happy.

Thus, "Zen" is a practical way of detachment from the existing world and immersion in oneself. After all, a particle of the awakened Buddha is present inside every living being. This means that any person, with proper patience and diligence, can achieve enlightenment and understand the true nature of the mind, and with it the essence of this world.

The essence of the philosophical concept of the term is well revealed by the psychoanalyst E. Fromm:

“Zen is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence; it is the path leading from slavery to freedom; Zen releases the natural energy of a person; he protects a person from insanity and self-mutilation; he encourages a person to realize his abilities to love and be happy ".

Practice

In a practical sense, Zen is meditation, immersion in a special state of contemplation. For this, a variety of tools can be used - everything is determined by the practice of each individual person, therefore, rather non-standard ways of achieving enlightenment are often used. These can be sharp shouts of the teacher, his laughter or blows with a stick, martial arts and physical labor.

According to Zen teaching, the best practice is monotonous work, which should be done not for the sake of achieving some final result, but for the sake of the work itself.

A vivid example of this approach is given in one of the legends about the famous Zen master, who defined washing dishes in ordinary life as the desire to make it clean, and the same action in the philosophical sense - as self-sufficient, suggesting that students wash dishes only for the sake of the action itself.

Another important philosophical practice is the koan. This is the name of a logical exercise for solving a paradoxical or absurd problem. It cannot be comprehended by an “ordinary” (unawakened) mind, but having spent enough time contemplating it, one can once catch a feeling of understanding, that is, reach the desired state instantly, at one moment, most often unexpectedly - without any background to this.

For example, one of the classic koans is the search for “clap with one hand,” that is, “soundless sound”.

As a religious movement

As a direction of Buddhism, Zen teaching took shape in China and spread widely to neighboring countries. But it is precisely the term in relation to the religious movement that is used only in Japan and (oddly enough) in Europe. This philosophy is not theistic or atheistic, and therefore adapts well to any other religions.

In China, it mixed with Taoism, in Japan - “lay down” on Syntaism, in Korea and Vietnam it absorbed local shamanistic beliefs, and in the West it is actively intertwined with Christian traditions.

The peculiarity of any religious Zen direction is the non-recognition of the possibility of transferring knowledge in writing. Only a guru, enlightened or awakened, can teach to understand the world. And he is able to do it in a variety of ways - up to blows with a stick. Also, in the religious understanding, there is no clear definition of the concept itself.

Zen is all that is around. This is any action that a knowledgeable person takes in relation to an unknowing person in order to teach the latter, push him to understanding, stimulate his body and mind.

Difference from other directions of Buddhism

An important part of Zen philosophy is the impossibility of expressing truth in the form of a text, therefore, there are no sacred books during the flow, and the transmission of teachings is carried out directly from teacher to student - from heart to heart.

Moreover, from the point of view of this religious trend, books do not play any significant role in a person's life at all. Teachers often burned scriptures in order to show students the futility of this way of knowing and push them to enlightenment.

From all this follows four basic principles of Zen Buddhism:

• Knowledge and wisdom can only be transmitted directly through communication - from a knowledgeable person to an unknowing person, but striving to learn the essence of reason and things.
• Zen is great knowledge, which is the reason for the existence of the heavens, the earth of the universe and the world as a whole.
• There are many ways to find Tao, but the goal is not enlightenment itself, but the path to it.
• The awakened Buddha is hidden in every person, and therefore anyone can learn Zen by persistently and a lot of practice.

This direction has significant differences with traditional Buddhism and in practical aspects, for example, meditation. The Zen school sees it not as a way to stop thinking and purify consciousness, but as a method of contact with existing reality.

In general, this direction is considered the most "practical" and down-to-earth of all Buddhist schools. It does not recognize logic as an instrument of cognition, opposing experience and sudden enlightenment to it, and regards action as the primary way of gaining spiritual experience.

In addition, the need for a meditative detachment from the world is denied here. On the contrary, one must come to peace (that is, "contemplation") here and now, having become a Buddha in one's body, and not after a series of rebirths.

Conclusion

Dear readers, we hope that from the article you could at least in general terms understand what Zen is. . The main feature of this trend is that it is impossible to explain and convey it in words, and therefore all of the above is just pathetic attempts to get closer to understanding. But if you walk long and hard on the path of Tao, then one day you can achieve enlightenment.

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Introduction.

1. What is Zen? His ideological principles.

2. The influence of Zen Buddhism on Japanese culture.

3. Zen Buddhism in our time.

Conclusion.

List of used sources and literature.

Introduction

Relevance of the topic: Zen Buddhism in recent years has attracted a keen interest in both America and Europe. He received such distribution mainly due to the works of D. T. Suzuki and A. W. Watts.

The chronological framework covers the period from about the 9th century to the present day, but the immediacy of Zen has given rise to the widespread belief that this teaching comes from sources that existed before the Buddha.

The aim of the study is to consider the basic ideological principles of Zen Buddhism, characterize its influence on the Japanese national culture, which is characterized by deep symbolism, and also consider the significance of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism for the European culture of the twentieth century.

a) define what Zen Buddhism is and consider its ideological principles;

b) consider its influence on Japanese culture;

c) consider Zen Buddhism in our time.

The main sources for studying this topic are:

DT Suzuki wrote: “Zen is mystical - and it cannot be otherwise, since Zen is the basis of Eastern culture. It is this mysticism that often prevents the West from measuring the depth of the Eastern mind, due to the fact that by its nature mysticism denies logical analysis, and logic is the main feature of the Western mind. The Eastern mind is synthetic, it does not attach too much importance to non-existent details, but rather seeks to intuitively comprehend the whole.

Zen is the systematization or, rather, the crystallization of all philosophy, religion and the very life of the Far East, and especially Japan. "

Zen Buddhism is a way of life and outlook on life that cannot be reduced to any formal category of modern Western thought. This is not religion or philosophy, not psychology or science. This is an example of what is called the "path of liberation" in India and China, and in this sense Zen Buddhism is related to Taoism, Vedanta and yoga. It can be described only indirectly, indicating what it is not, just as a sculptor reveals an image by removing excess layers of marble.

Historically, Zen is the result of the development of two ancient cultures: China and India, although in essence it is more Chinese than Indian in character. After the end of the persecution of Buddhism in 848. Zen remained for some time in China not only the predominant form of Buddhism, but also the most powerful spiritual force influencing the development of Chinese culture. This influence was strongest during the reign of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), at which time Zen monasteries became the main centers of Chinese scholarship. Secular scholars, Taoists, and Confucians studied in them for a long time, and Zen monks, in turn, got acquainted with Chinese classical culture. Since writing and poetry were one of the main occupations of Chinese scholars, and Chinese painting is very close to calligraphy, the specialties of a scientist, artist and poet were not too differentiated. And the Chinese noble scholar was not a professional, and the monk, in accordance with the spirit of Zen, did not limit his range of interests to purely "religious" issues. The result was a remarkable cross-fertilization of philosophical, scientific and artistic pursuits, in which the dominant note was the Zen and Taoist sense of "naturalness." Since the 12th century, Zen has taken deep roots in Japan and has received a truly creative development there. As a product of these great cultures, as a unique and highly instructive example of the Eastern "path of liberation", Zen is Asia's most valuable gift to the world.

Since the time of Bodhidharma, who came to China from the west, that is, from North India, undergoing a calm and systematic development for more than two centuries, Zen Buddhism has firmly established itself in the land of Confucianism and Taoism in the form of a teaching that claims to:

A special revelation without the mediation of St. Scriptures;

Independence from words and letters;

Direct contact with the spiritual essence of a person;

Comprehension of the innermost nature of man and the achievement of Buddha's perfection.

Zen was described as follows: "A special teaching without sacred texts, without words and letters, which teaches about the essence of the human mind, penetrating directly into its nature, and leads to enlightenment."

The most significant figure in Zen history is Eno, who is traditionally called the Sixth Zen Patriarch in China. He actually created Zen Buddhism, unlike other Buddhist sects that existed in China at that time. The following quatrain reflects his standard of true expression of faith in Zen:

There is no tree of wisdom (Bodhi),

And there is no mirror surface;

From the very beginning there is nothing

So what can be covered with dust?

The Zen custom of self-knowledge through meditation to realize the true nature of man, with its disregard for formalism, with its demand for self-discipline and simplicity of life, ultimately won the support of the nobility and ruling circles of Japan and the deep respect of all layers of the philosophical life of the East.

Most of the difficulties and hoaxes that Zen students in the West face are due to their ignorance of the Chinese way of thinking, which is significantly different from ours. That is why, if we want to critically consider our own ideas, it is of particular interest to us. The difficulty here is not so much to master some new ideas that differ from ours, as, for example, how the philosophy of Kant differs from the philosophy of Descartes or the views of Calvinists from the views of Catholics. The challenge is to capture and appreciate the difference in the basic premises of thought and in the very method of thinking. Since this is what is often ignored, our interpretation of Chinese philosophy is for the most part a projection of purely European ideas, clothed in the clothes of Chinese terminology. This is the inevitable vice of studying the philosophy of Asia within the framework of the Western school, with the help of words, and nothing more. In reality, the word becomes a means of communication only when the interlocutors rely on similar experiences.

The reason Zen and Taoism are at first glance a mystery to the European mind is that our understanding of human cognition is so limited. We consider knowledge only what the Taoist would call conditional, conventional knowledge: we do not feel that we know something until we can define it in words or in some other traditional sign system, for example, in mathematical or musical symbols. Such knowledge is called conventional, conditional, because it is the subject of a social agreement (convention), an agreement on the means of communication. Just as people who speak the same language have a tacit agreement about which word denotes which object, in the same way, members of any society and any culture are united by bonds of communication based on various kinds of agreements regarding the classification and evaluation of objects and actions.

The spirit of Zen began to mean not only understanding the world, but also dedication to art and work, richness of content, openness to intuition, expression of innate beauty, the elusive charm of imperfection. Zen has many meanings, but none of them are fully defined. If they were defined, it would not be Zen.

Introduction

The pursuit of human well-being through the study of his nature - this common feature inherent in both Zen - Buddhism and psychoanalysis - is most often mentioned when comparing these systems, reflecting the characteristics of Western and Eastern mentality. Zen - Buddhism combines the Indian irrational principle with Chinese concreteness and realism. Psychoanalysis, based on Western humanism and rationalism, on the one hand, and the romantic search for mysterious forces that are not subject to rational comprehension, characteristic of the 19th century, on the other, is a phenomenon exclusively of the Western world. We can say that this scientific - therapeutic method of studying man is the fruit of Greek wisdom and Jewish ethics.

The study of human nature in theory and the reincarnation of man in practice is perhaps one of the few features that unite psychoanalysis and Zen - Buddhism. There are obviously more differences. First, psychoanalysis is a scientific method that has nothing to do with religion. Zen from the standpoint of Western culture with its theory and method of "enlightenment" of a person looks like a religious, or mystical, teaching. Psychoanalysis is a therapy for mental illness, and Zen is the path to soul salvation. So, comparing psychoanalysis and Zen - Buddhism, do we not come to the conclusion that basically they have nothing in common, but, on the contrary, are fundamentally different from each other?

Despite this, Zen Buddhism is attracting more and more interest from psychoanalysts. What caused this interest, and what makes sense? The purpose of this article is to answer these questions. Of course, the fundamental description of Zen - Buddhist thinking will not be presented here - my knowledge and experience is not enough for this. At the same time, in this article I am not trying to give a complete picture of psychoanalysis. However, in the first part of my work, I will dwell in more detail on those aspects of psychoanalysis that I have called "humanistic psychoanalysis" and which are one of the sequels of Freud's psychoanalysis. Thus, I will try to explain why the encounter with Zen - Buddhism has become so important both for me and, in my opinion, for everyone who deals with psychoanalysis.

Spiritual crisis and the meaning of psychoanalysis

Studying the issue of interest to us, first of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the spiritual crisis of modern Western man and psychoanalysis as one of the tools for overcoming this crisis. Most people belonging to Western culture, to one degree or another, are affected by the crisis, without fully realizing it. Nevertheless, experts are quite unanimous both in recognizing the existence of the present crisis and in defining its essence. This phenomenon is defined by the concepts of "ill health" ("malaise"), "boredom" ("ennui"), "disease of the century" (maladie du siucle). We are talking about apathy, human automaticity, self-alienation, loss of connection with other individuals and nature. Rationalism was placed at the forefront by man until it acquired highly irrational features. The era of Descartes marked the beginning of a clear separation of thinking and feeling: thinking is rational, while feeling itself is irrational. The embodiment of intelligence alone, the human personality is called upon to exercise control over nature. The raison d'être is the production of an ever-increasing number of material values. In this case, a person himself turns into a thing, and possession - into the meaning of life. "To have" is now more important than "to be." While human perfection was the raison d'être in Greek and Jewish ideology, the foundations of which are characteristic of Western civilization, modern man considers the goal of his life to improve the technology of production of things.

Realizing his inability to resolve the contradiction between thinking and feeling, the person of the Western world is seized with anxiety, he is depressed and in despair. If in words he calls wealth, originality and enterprise as life values, then in reality he has no real purpose in life. When asked about the purpose of existence and the meaning of the difficulties he experiences in life, the Western person will not be able to give an intelligible answer. Among the most probable answers is life for the sake of the family, for the sake of pleasure, for the sake of earning money ... In reality, no one sees the real meaning of his life. Danger and loneliness are what a person seeks to avoid a priori.

Nowadays, a person's belonging to the church is becoming more and more important in some respects, religious books are becoming bestsellers, more and more people are turning to God. However, this apparent religiosity is actually determined not by spiritual, but purely materialistic and non-religious aspects. This phenomenon can be seen as the ideological reaction of man to the tendency characteristic of the 19th century, which was expressed by Nietzsche: "God is dead", caused by conformism and the desire for security. There is no need to talk about true religiosity here.

The rejection of theistic postulates in the 19th century was largely progressive. The concept of objectivity has become defining:

The earth is no longer the center of the universe, and man is no longer the "crown of creation." Freud, exploring the hidden motives of human behavior through the prism of new life realities, came to the conclusion that the all-consuming faith in God was based on the helplessness of man, his insecurity. At the same time, a person relied on the support of his father and mother, who were embodied by him in the divine image. According to Freud, a person is able to save himself only himself, while the instructions of great teachers and the participation of loved ones can only support him, help him accept the challenge of fate in order to gain strength to deal with life's adversities.

A person no longer sees God in the image of a father and thus loses parental support in his person. At the same time, the truths of the postulates of all great religions cease to exist for him. We are talking about a person's overcoming of selfish limitations, striving for love, objectivity, humility and respect for life - and this in itself can be considered as a goal and as a result of a person's realization of the potential inherent in him, which is the goal of both the great Westerns and the great Eastern religions. Note that in the East there was no concept of a transcendental father - Savior, which is characteristic of monotheistic religions. Rationality and realism were inherent in Taoism and Buddhism more than in the religions of the West. In the East, a person voluntarily, without coercion, joins the “awakened ones”, for every person is potentially capable of awakening and enlightenment. That is why Eastern religious thinking, embodied in Taoism, Buddhism and Zen - Buddhism as their synthesis, is of such great importance for Western culture today. Thanks to Zen Buddhism, a person is able to find an answer to the question about the meaning of his existence, and this answer, at its core, does not enter into fundamental contradictions both with traditional Judeo-Christian ideas, on the one hand, and with such values ​​of modern man as rationality, realism and independence. Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, Eastern religious ideas turn out to be, in comparison with Western ones, closer in spirit to Western rational thinking.

Values ​​and objectives of Freud's psychoanalytic concept

Psychoanalysis is a typical manifestation of the spiritual crisis of Western man and at the same time shows the possibility of getting out of this crisis. Modern trends in psychoanalysis - "humanistic" and "existential" - serve as a vivid example of this. However, before proceeding to consider my "humanistic" concept, I would like to emphasize that the system developed by Freud himself is not limited, despite widespread belief, to the framework of the concepts of "disease" and "treatment". It is primarily a concept of human salvation, not the treatment of mentally ill people. A superficial approach gives the impression that Freud simply invented new way treatment of mental illness and that this was precisely the main subject of his research, eventually becoming the work of the scientist's entire life. Nevertheless, upon closer examination, it turns out that medical approaches to the treatment of neuroses hide a completely different idea, which Freud himself rarely formulated explicitly, and perhaps was not always aware of it. What is this idea? What is the concept of Freud's "psychoanalytic movement" and what was the starting point of this movement?

We can say that Freud's words: "Where it was, I must become" - give us the clearest answer to this question. Freud set the task of subordinating irrational and unconscious passions to reason. According to him, a person, in accordance with his capabilities, must free himself from the yoke of the unconscious. In order to subjugate the raging internal unconscious forces to his will and further exercise control over them, he must first of all realize the very fact of their existence. The main postulate of Freud, which he was always guided by, was the optimal knowledge of truth, and therefore, knowledge of reality. This idea was traditionally characteristic of rationalism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and puritanical ethics. However, Freud was the first (or, in any case, he believed so), who not only proclaimed the idea of ​​self-control as a goal, as did Western religion and philosophy, but, on the basis of the study of the unconscious on a scientific basis, was able to propose a way to realize this goal.

With his teachings, Freud marked the flourishing of rationalism in the West. Nevertheless, with his genius, he managed not only to overcome the false and superficial optimism of rationalism, but also to combine the latter with the romantic concept that opposed it in the 19th century. A deep personal interest in the study of the irrational and sensual aspects of the human person allowed Freud to carry out this synthesis.

Freud was largely interested in the philosophical and ethical aspects of the problem of personality. In his Lectures on an Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Freud mentions the profound personality changes that various mystical practices are attempting, and continues with this: “We nevertheless recognize that the therapeutic efforts of psychoanalysis have chosen a similar point of application. After all, their goal is to strengthen the “I”, to make it more independent from the “super-I”, to expand the field of perception and rebuild its organization so that it can master new parts of the It. Where It was, there must be I. This is about the same cultural work as the draining of the Zeyder - See. According to Freud, "the liberation of a person from neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and abnormalities of character" is the main task of psychoanalytic therapy. The role of the analyst, according to Freud, is not limited to the fact that the doctor "treats" his patient: "An analyst who seeks to be a model for his patient in a given analytical situation and play the role of his mentor should have a certain superiority over the latter." Freud further writes: “We must remember that the relationship between analyst and patient must be based on love of truth, which means recognition of reality. In this case, any falsity and deception become impossible. "

Freud's concept of psychoanalysis has other characteristic features that do not fit into the framework of the concepts of illness and treatment. For people who have an idea of ​​Eastern thinking, and first of all about Zen - Buddhism, it will become obvious that the features that I will talk about in a certain way overlap with them. First, Freud's principle, according to which knowledge transforms a person, deserves mention. Theory and practice are inseparable: knowing himself, a person is transformed every time. Needless to say, to what extent such a thought is alien to the principles of scientific psychology both in Freud's time and today. According to these generally accepted concepts, knowledge always lies in the field of theory and is not capable of transforming the knower.

There is one more feature that brings Freud's approach closer to Eastern thought, and first of all to Zen - Buddhism. Freud never put conscious thinking at the forefront, critically assessing the capabilities of modern man. But the main in the mental process taking place in a person, he considered the strongest sources of hitherto unknown unconscious and irrational forces, in comparison with which conscious thinking is practically insignificant, incomparable in significance. By developing the method of free association, Freud tried to break through the veil of conscious thinking and reveal the true nature of man. The principle of free associations was intended to become an alternative to logical, conscious and formal thinking, to open new sources in a person that originate in the unconscious. Despite all the critical attacks that Freud's concept of the unconscious was subjected to, it is absolutely indisputable that Freud, with his principle of free association as an alternative to logical thinking, significantly changed the conventional rationalistic way of thinking in the West, approaching in his research to Eastern thought, where similar ideas were developed in much more.

Finally, let us note another aspect that distinguishes Freud's method: while conducting his analysis, Freud could work with a person for a year, two, three, four, five, or even more years, which caused harsh criticism from his opponents. There is no need to speculate about whether the analysis needed more efficiency. I just want to draw your attention to the fact that Freud had the courage to admit the possibility of working with one patient for several years, helping him to understand himself. From the standpoint of the usefulness and social significance of the changes taking place in a person, we can say that such an approach did not make much sense and that such a lengthy analysis did not justify the time spent. Freud's method makes sense only on condition of rejection of modern categories of value, traditional ideas about the relationship between goals and expenditures and recognition of the uniqueness of human life, with which no thing can be compared in its significance. Guided by the idea that liberation, happiness, enlightenment of a person (no matter what we call it) is the primary task, we will come to the conclusion that no time and money costs will be comparable with its solution. Freud's foresight, the radical nature of his methodology, expressed primarily in the duration of contact with one person, were an approach that basically opposes the limited thinking of the Western world.

Despite the above facts, it cannot be argued that Eastern thought in general, and Zen - Buddhism in particular, served as a support for Freud in the development of his method. The features we are considering for the most part have an implicit rather than explicit origin, that is, they are, obviously, unconscious rather than conscious. Freud himself was largely a product of Western civilization, mainly Western thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, it is difficult to suppose that even having deep knowledge in Zen - Buddhism as one of the expressions of Eastern thought, he would be based on them in creating his system. A person, in Freud's view, was endowed with basically the same characteristics as those of economists and philosophers of the 19th century: a natural tendency to compete, alienation, a desire to contact with other individuals solely in order to satisfy their own economic needs and instincts. Freud viewed man as a libido-driven machine that exists according to the law of minimizing libido arousal. Freud's man is selfish by nature; with the people around him, he is connected only by a mutual desire to satisfy the needs dictated by instincts. Freud defines pleasure not as a feeling of happiness, but as a release of tension. With all this, a person, in his view, is experiencing a conflict between reason and feelings, he is not integral in nature, but is the embodiment of intelligence in the spirit of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Love for one's neighbor contradicts reality, mystical experience marks a return to primary narcissism. Taking into account these unconditional differences from the principles of Zen Buddhism, I try, nevertheless, to demonstrate that Freud's system has features that contributed to the development of psychoanalysis as a whole and, as a result, bring it closer to Zen Buddhism. These features do not fit into the framework of the usual ideas about disease and treatment and the traditional interpretation of consciousness from the standpoint of rationalism.

But, before starting to compare this "humanistic" psychoanalysis and Zen - Buddhism, I want to draw your attention to one fact that is of paramount importance for understanding the evolution of psychoanalysis. These days, there have been significant changes in the type of patients who come to see a psychoanalyst and the problems they share with him.

People who visited a psychiatrist at the beginning of the century complained mainly of certain symptoms, such as hand paralysis, excessive hand washing syndrome or obsessive thoughts. In a word, they were sick in the traditional sense of the word, since there was a specific circumstance that prevented their normal life. Since the obvious reason for their suffering was specific symptoms, the process of treating such patients was precisely to get rid of them. These people wanted to suffer and be unhappy no more than an ordinary person in society.

These days, such patients still come to see a psychoanalyst. For them, psychoanalysis still serves as a therapy that helps them get rid of certain symptoms and returns them the opportunity to be full members of society. At one time, the psychoanalyst in most cases had to deal with just such patients, but today they are in the minority. At the same time, it is difficult to argue that their absolute number has decreased, at the same time, a huge number of "patients" of a new type appeared, who in the conventional sense cannot be called sick, but who became victims of "maladie du siucle" (disease of the century - French) , depression and apathy - everything that was considered at the beginning of the article. Coming to an appointment with a psychoanalyst, these patients cannot formulate and clearly define true reason their suffering, talking about depression, insomnia, unhappy marriage, dissatisfaction with their work, and many other things. As a rule, they are convinced that the root of their illness lies in some specific symptom and getting rid of this symptom would bring them recovery. These people fail to realize that their condition is not actually caused by depression, insomnia, or problems in the service. All these complaints are in fact only an outer shell that allows a person in conditions modern world to declare a problem that has much deeper roots than those that could have a particular disease. The misfortune of modern man lies in his alienation from himself and from his own kind, from nature. A person realizes that his life is wasted and that he will die without having lived his life for real. He lives in abundance, but lacks the joy of life.

How can psychoanalysis help maladie du siucle patients? In this case, it is not (and cannot be) a "treatment" that relieves a person of symptoms and returns him to normal life. The cure of a person suffering from alienation is not about getting rid of the symptoms of the disease, but about spiritual healing and gaining well-being.

Unfortunately, when we talk about spiritual healing, we find it difficult to define it concretely. In terms of the Freudian system, we would have to consider well-being through the prism of libido theory, that is, define well-being as the possibility of normal implementation of sexual functions and recognition of the hidden Oedipus complex. However, in my opinion, such an interpretation only to a small extent answers the question of human well-being. Trying to define the concept of human spiritual healing, we will inevitably cross the boundaries of the Freudian system. At the same time, we will be forced to delve into a priori incapable of being exhaustive consideration of the very basis of "humanistic" psychoanalysis, namely: the concept of human existence. Only in this way will the juxtaposition of psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism receive a real basis.

Human well-being through the prism of his mental evolution

Well-being can be defined as the existence of a person in accordance with his nature. Starting from this general formulation, we ask ourselves the question: what is human existence in modern conditions of existence and how are these conditions themselves characterized?

The human being itself asks questions. The birth of a person into the world and his departure from this world do not occur at his will. An animal, unlike a person, instinctively adapts to the surrounding world and completely merges with nature. For a person deprived of this opportunity, life cannot be lived by itself. He must live it. Man belongs to nature, and at the same time, realizing himself as an individual, he goes beyond its limits. This awareness creates in him a sense of absolute loneliness, alienation and helplessness. At every moment of his existence, with all his being, mind and body, in thoughts and dreams, while sleeping and eating, crying and laughing, he is forced to answer the question asked by life. What is this question? It can be formulated as follows: how to get rid of suffering, alienation, overcome the remorse resulting from this alienation, and how to find harmony in relations with oneself, with one's own kind and nature? The person answers this question in one way or another. Even being insane, hiding in an imaginary reality from alienation, he thereby gives an answer to it.

If this question is always one, then there can be several answers to it, in any case there are two main ones. One of them solves the problem of alienation and finding harmony by returning to the integrity inherent in a person in the "preconscious" period of his life. The second answer provides for a “full-fledged birth” of a person. In this case, the individual must rise above his own egocentrism by gaining the ability to love, to achieve new harmony with the world around him through the deepening of self-awareness and evolution of reason.

When we talk about birth, we usually mean the physiological process that takes place nine months after conception. However, the existence of a child during the first week after birth is in many ways reminiscent not of the life of an adult, but of being in a mother's womb. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about the uniqueness of the act of birth when the umbilical cord is cut. At the same time, the child begins to breathe on his own, and from now on, any activity will free him more and more from his initial dependence.

By nature, birth is a process, not a one-time event. The meaning of life is “full birth”. However, the human tragedy lies precisely in the fact that most of us die without being “born” for real. Life implies birth every minute, while death is the cessation of this birth. The human body, if viewed from the point of view of the cellular system, is in the process of continuous birth. Psychologically, however, a person, as a rule, stops at a certain stage in his birth. There are people who can be called "stillborn". They live only on a physiological level, in a mental sense, being insane or practically insane, they want to return to the situation of intrauterine life into darkness, into death. There are also many who continue to live, but, being unable to completely break the umbilical cord, throughout their lives remain inseparably attached to their mother and father, family, race, state, social status, money, gods, etc. These people will never be able to “be born for real”, because they cannot get rid of their addiction.

The regressive attempts undertaken to achieve a blissful state of pre-birth can be of different properties, they are united only by an unsuccessful final result, which does not bring a person anything but torment. If a person once lost the divine, pre-human fusion with nature, he will never find a way back - two angels with fiery swords in their hands will block his way. He will be able to return only by dying, or by losing his mind, for it is impossible to do this during his lifetime or in his sane mind.

The search for regressive unity can be carried out in several pathological and irrational ways. A person can be haunted by the thought of returning to the mother's womb or to the earth, that is, the idea of ​​death.

The result of these desires will be suicide or insanity, if a person does not know how to cope with them. To a lesser extent, destructive and irrational can be considered the desire to remain dependent on maternal care or the power of the father throughout his life.

These aspirations characterize two different types of people. The first is a person who remains forever tied to the mother's breast. In life, he appears as a helpless sucker, for whom the highest joy is to be loved, protected, taken care of, and admired. Moving away from his mother causes him extreme discomfort. The second type includes people who throughout their lives remain under the authority of their father. They themselves can show enough initiative, but only if there is a person above them who serves as an indisputable authority for them and regulates all their life activities. On a different plane lies the destructive striving for all-destruction as a means of overcoming alienation. A person possessed by such an idea can look at the world around him as food and strive to absorb everything that surrounds him, or he wants to destroy everything around him, sparing only himself. Another attempt to overcome the crisis of existence is the erection of an indestructible bastion around one's own “I”, thus assimilated to something inanimate; in the possession of material values, power, the prestige of a position in society, his intellect, such a person finds life support.

Losing unconscious unity with nature, a person gradually overcomes his narcissism. A newly born child does not know about the world around him, for him the reality is only himself and the mother's breast, with which he continues to be a single whole. For him, there is still no division into subject and object. After a while, the child begins to differentiate according to the "subject - object" scheme, but only at the level of "I - not me" differentiation. As for the emotional level, if a person has a chance to get rid of the narcissistic idea of ​​his own omniscience and omnipotence, then this can only become possible when he reaches full maturity.

For neurotics, such a narcissistic representation is typical to the same extent as for children, but unlike them, it usually exists on a conscious level. For a child who lives exclusively by his desires, reality is what he wants to see, but not what really exists. In case of non-fulfillment of his desire, the child becomes enraged, seeking through the father and mother to change the world around him so that his desire is realized. Upon reaching maturity, a normally developing child comes to an awareness of reality and accepts its rules of the game, abandoning this narcissistic message. The neurotic, on the other hand, proceeds from his ideas based on narcissism, still being in the conviction that the world should obey only his desires. Faced with the opposite, he either unsuccessfully tries to force reality to submit to his will, or experiences a feeling of his own helplessness. If for a mature person freedom means awareness of reality, acceptance of its immutable laws and life in accordance with them, comprehension and understanding of the surrounding world, awareness of one's own place in it through reason and feelings, then for a neurotic freedom, whether he realizes it or not, is only the idea of ​​one's own narcissistic omnipotence.

Such differences imply different types of thinking and, as a result, different models existence as a variant of the answer that a person gives to the questions posed by life. All religions in existence give the same answers. Over the course of a long evolution, starting with cannibalism, man has chosen one of the existing options from the mass of various answers to an existential question, without knowing it. A man of the West, as a rule, believes that in his soul he is fully consistent with the principles of Christian or Jewish morality, or is an adherent of enlightened atheism. In fact, if it were possible to analyze a person with the help of some kind of "psychic X-ray", it would become obvious that in our society there are very few true Christians, Judaists, Buddhists, adherents of Tao, and a huge number of cannibalists, totemists and various idolaters. Every religion is essentially an ordered and detailed answer of humanity to the question posed by life. At the same time, for a person, even the most primitive religion becomes a comfortable and cozy refuge where one could communicate with like-minded people. If the regressive aspirations of an individual come into conflict with his consciousness or with the interests of society and his own secret "religion" cannot be shared with others, it turns into a neurosis.

Knowing the personal answer of a particular patient or any person in general to the existential question that life poses before him - in other words, his own cult that he serves, we can understand him. It makes no sense to "cure" such a patient before we know his secret cult, his fundamental answer to life, for many so-called "psychological problems" are in fact echoes of this very "answer."

Based on what has been said, we are faced with the need to define the concept of well-being.

Well-being should be understood as the achievement of full maturity by the human mind. We are talking here about maturity not only in terms of the ability to think critically, but also such an awareness of reality in which, in Heidegger's words, a person acquires the ability to “allow things to be” what they really are. A person can achieve well-being only to the extent that he is open to the world around him, is able to react to it (“awakened” and “empty” in Zen - Buddhist understanding). Well-being is characterized by the emotional saturation of a person's life in his relationship to other individuals and nature, in his ability to overcome alienation and feel unity with the world around him, on the one hand, and awareness of his own separate and indivisible “I” on the other. This well-being implies the full birth of a person, the realization of the potential inherent in him, that is, his awakening, getting rid of averaging, gaining the ability to experience a full range of feelings - from violent joy to deep sadness. At the same time, a person must be able to create, react to the world around him, respond both to himself and to everything that surrounds him; to appear as a whole person who really exists in the world of animate and inanimate objects. Giving a true answer to the world, man - the creator at the same time is able to really perceive this world. In a creative relation to the world, a person should consider it as a product of his own perception. As a result, this world ceases to be something alien and distant for him and becomes his own. In the end, well-being is about taming your ego and redefining your priorities in life. A person must give up money-grubbing, from the pursuit of his own integrity and exaltation. The meaning of life should not be the eternal thirst for possession, accumulation, profit and consumption, but the joy of being itself, the awareness of one's own uniqueness in this world.

With the above, I made an attempt to correlate the development of human individuality with the history of religion. Due to the fact that this article is devoted to the comparison of psychoanalysis and Zen - Buddhism, it seems to me necessary to consider the evolution of religion at least in some psychological aspects.

As I have already noted, being itself poses a question for a person. This question is generated by a contradiction inherent in man: belonging to nature, on the one hand, and being outside of it, due to the awareness of one's own being, on the other. A person is "religious" if he approaches this fundamental question not formally, but seeks to answer it with his whole life. Likewise, any system is a "religion" if it tries to give its own answer to this question and forces people to do so. Accordingly, every culture and every person who does not seek an answer to an existential question is non-religious in nature - the best example of which is the man of the 20th century. Preoccupied with thoughts about material wealth, prestige, power, career, modern man tries to get away from the answer to this question, trying to forget about the very fact of his existence, and therefore about the fact of the existence of his “I”. A person who does not have an answer of his own is incapable of development, in his life and death becoming like one of the millions of things he has produced. It doesn't matter how deep his religious convictions are, how often he thinks about God or attends church. Such a person, instead of believing in God, only thinks about him. However, religions in their answers to an existential question may be fundamentally different from each other, and it would be a mistake to generalize them in this aspect. Existing religions in all their diversity provide two fundamentally opposite answers to this fundamental question. We have already touched on these answers, talking about individual individuals.

The first answer is to restore unity with nature through assimilation to animals, abandoning reason, returning to a primitive way of life deprived of consciousness. This idea can take on very different incarnations. As one of the extremes, one can cite the example of the German underground "bear-slash" societies. A new recruit initiated into this organization must become like a bear and "change his human appearance in a fit of aggression and unbridled rage, becoming like a raging beast." (Drawing a parallel between the "bear-bombs" and Hitler's "brown shirts", it is easy to understand that the idea of ​​man's return to primitive unity with nature is cultivated not only at the level of primitive societies. and officials - were just people irreligious, cruel and thirsty for power, then the leaders of it Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were by and large the same primitive "bear-slaves", whose religious idea consisted of the same "sacred" rage and passion for destruction. "XX century brought back to life the myth of" ritual murder "attributed by them to Jews. A subconscious desire for destruction found expression in ritual killings. By performing" ritual murders "of Jews, then foreigners, finally the Germans themselves, right down to their own families and themselves, they thus realized their destructive aspirations.)

The desire for a primitive unity with nature can take on a lot of other, not so archaic religious incarnations. This idea can be traced in the religions of the tribes, where there is an identification with a totem animal, where there is a cult of a tree, a lake, a cave, etc.

This is also manifested in orgiastic cults, which seek to suppress reason and moral attitudes in a person. Everything that brings a person closer to a primitive closeness to nature is sacred to such religions. The one who is closest to the set goal, such as a shaman, will be a “saint”. All religions belong to the opposite camp, where the answer to the existential question is the idea of ​​the evolution of the human mind, the upbringing of the ability to love in a person, and, as a result, the acquisition of harmony with nature and other individuals. And although in some relatively primitive societies such ideas were traced only partially, there is no doubt that the period from about 2000 BC to about 2000 BC was a kind of Rubicon of mankind. NS. and before the birth of Christ. This time period was marked by global changes in man, expressed in the emergence of such religions as Taoism and Buddhism in the Far East, the religious revolutions of Akhenaten in Egypt, the birth of the Zoroastrian religion in Persia, the religion of Moses in Palestine, and Quetzalcoatl in Mexico.

These religions are brought together by the idea of ​​unity - no longer in a regressive meaning, achieved by erasing individuality and returning to a paradise harmony devoid of consciousness. Unity is now viewed on a new plane; a person can come to it only by overcoming alienation, isolation of himself from the world around him and thereby realizing a true birth. The human mind must reach full development, after which the individual will have access to an active, intuitive penetration into the real world, which is an indispensable condition for achieving such a unity. The aspiration of these religions is directed not to the past, but to the future, and their goal is determined by the concepts of "Tao", "nirvana", "enlightenment", "good", God. Sociocultural differences between the countries of origin of these religions determined the choice of one or another symbol. The imperious image of a majestic monarch or tribal leader was a characteristic symbol in Western society. However, already in the Old Testament era, such an image begins to undergo changes. The almighty arbiter of destinies is now bound to their subjects by agreements containing certain promises. For example, the achievement of harmony with nature by man in the time determined by the messiah is the goal of prophecy; Christianity is characterized by the representation of God in human form. In widespread Western religions, the anthropomorphic authoritarian constituents practically do not undergo any changes. An example of their almost complete absence is the philosophy of Maimonides, or mysticism.

Judeo - Christian and Zen - Buddhist thinking are brought together by the idea of ​​the individual's refusal from the egoistic desire to coerce, command and suppress the inner and outer world. Instead, a person should become open, receptive, awake, able to respond to challenges from the outside world. Zen calls this state "to be empty", and this term does not have a negative connotation, but, on the contrary, characterizes the individual open to perception of the external world. In the Christian religion, this same idea is expressed in terms of self-denial and submission to the will of divine providence. At first glance, the differences in Christian and Buddhist postulates are not so significant and the difference exists only at the level of formulations. In fact, Christian ideas, as a rule, are interpreted in such a way that a person completely entrusts his fate to the great and almighty Father, who protects and takes care of him, while all independence is lost. Naturally, in this case, the person becomes meek and humble, but in no way open and capable of reacting. A genuine rejection of selfish aspirations as following the will of the Lord takes on real meaning if the concept of God is absent as such. Just forgetting about God, a person, paradoxically, sincerely follows his will. To be "empty" in the terminology of Zen - Buddhism really means pacification of one's will, but at the same time excludes the possibility of returning to slavish hope for the support of the Father.

The essence of the conscious. Crowding out and overcoming crowding out

In the first part, I attempted to characterize humanistic psychoanalysis by describing those human postulates and aspects of being that serve as its starting point. The above comparison indicates that these postulates are characteristic of psychoanalysis to the same extent as other humanistic systems. Now, in order to understand how psychoanalysis seeks to solve the problem posed to it, it becomes necessary to consider the specific method to which it resorts.

The main distinguishing feature of psychoanalysis is, undoubtedly, in its desire to make the unconscious conscious, that is, to use Freud's terminology, to translate "it" into "I". This scheme, with its outward simplicity, needs explanation. First of all, we are faced with several questions at once: what is the unconscious? How does the unconscious become conscious, and if possible, what is the use?

It should be clarified that the terms "conscious" and "unconscious" can have different meanings. In one case, they characterize the subjective state of a person; this meaning of terms is called functional. Conscious is an individual who is aware of this or that mental process taking place in him, that is, he is aware of his feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc. On the contrary, unconscious in this sense is a state in which a person is not aware of in any mental processes taking place in him, including sensory ones. An individual who is aware of this or that feeling is conscious in relation to this feeling. If the individual is not aware of any feeling, he is an unconscious person in relation to him. It should be borne in mind that the term "unconscious" defines only the unconsciousness of any feelings, desires, fears, etc., and not at all their absence.

The terms "conscious" and "unconscious" have, in addition to the functional, one more meaning. In this case, we are talking about the principle of a certain placement of the conscious and unconscious in the human psyche and their semantic content. In this interpretation, "conscious" and "unconscious" are two different parts of the individual's personality, each of which has its own special content. According to Freud, the unconscious is the repository of everything irrational. For his part, Jung considers the unconscious as the deepest storehouse of wisdom, and assigns the conscious the role of the repository of human intelligence. The unconscious absorbs everything that is unable to fit into the higher levels of the human psyche. This can be compared to the basement of a house, where things are sent that have no place on the residential floors. The "basement", in Freud's understanding, contains human vices, but for Jung it is primarily a storehouse of human wisdom.

The use of the term "unconscious" in a narrow sense is unfortunate, as noted, in particular, by GS Sullivan. As a result, this leads to an insufficiently complete understanding of mental phenomena. For my part, I would like to note that the emerging tendency to abandon the functional concept in favor of the substantive one illustrates a general pattern characteristic of the modern Western world. Today, man seeks to define the world in terms of the things he possesses, rather than in terms of existence. Just like we have a car, a house or a child, we have an anxiety problem, we have insomnia, we have depression, we have a psychoanalyst. Similarly, we have the unconscious. Many people now use the term "subconscious" instead of "unconscious", and this is no coincidence. This seems to be due to the fact that the word "subconscious" is more applicable to a substantive concept. Indeed, we can say "I am aware of something," while it is impossible to say "I am subconscious".

Finally, the term "conscious" has another, sometimes confusing, meaning. If consciousness is identified with the reflective intellect, then the unconscious is identified with non-reflective experience. If we proceed from the fact that the meaning of the terms "conscious" and "unconscious" in this context is easily understood and there is no confusion with their other two meanings, then their use is quite acceptable. However, in my opinion, the use of these terms is not always successful. Of course, intellectual reflection is always conscious, but not everything conscious is intellectual reflection. Looking at a person, I am aware of all the shades of feelings that I experience in relation to him, but this awareness will be identical to intellectual reflection only if I separate myself from him by means of subjective - object distance. In the same way, this statement is true if I am aware of my breath, and again this is not at all the same as thinking about my breath: I will cease to be aware of it from the moment I start thinking about it. This provision is equally true for any action that characterizes my attitude to the world around me. Further, this aspect will be covered in more detail.

And now let's try to understand what does not allow our experiences to pass into the category of conscious ones, in other words, to become the substance that we call conscious. In this case, we will define the conscious and unconscious not as some specific "parts" of the individual's personality, filled with special content, but as a state of awareness and unawareness.

First of all, it is necessary to clarify: consciousness is a priori of greater value than the unconscious, if we consider these categories from the standpoint of psychoanalysis. If this were not so, psychoanalysis would not have set itself the task of expanding the area of ​​human consciousness. However, it is also obvious that in reality human consciousness is largely a chain of delusions and false messages, which is caused mostly by the influence of society, and not by the inability of the individual to discern the truth. It follows from this that human consciousness in itself cannot be of value. The evolution of mankind testifies to the fact that, with the exception of a number of primitive societies, society is built on the principle of management and exploitation of the majority of its members by an insignificant minority. The majority is governed by the use of force, but this factor alone is not enough. The consciousness of the majority should be filled mainly with fictions and delusions, as a result of which it voluntarily agrees to obey the minority. Nevertheless, the false nature of a person's ideas about himself, other individuals, society, etc. depends not only on these circumstances. The substitution of general human postulates by the interests of society, taking place in any society, is due to an attempt (and, as a rule, achievement) to preserve the structure acquired by this society in the process of evolution. At the same time, the arising contradiction gives rise to an internal conflict in such a society: the discrepancies between the interests of a person and society are hidden at the social level under the cover of all kinds of fictions and false messages.

So, we are forced to admit that human consciousness by its nature does not reflect reality, but, on the contrary, is illusory and full of delusions. It follows from this that consciousness acquires meaning only if the hidden, for the time being unconscious reality ceases to be hidden and thus becomes conscious. Next, we will turn to this issue again. Now I just want to note that our consciousness in terms of content is largely "false", and this is caused precisely by the influence of society, which implants delusions and false ideas.

The influence of society, however, is not limited only to the implantation of fictions and false ideas in the human mind. Its role lies in the fact that it does not allow us to realize reality. Now we come directly to the problem of repression and the formation of the unconscious.

The animal is capable of being aware of the objects around it; speaking in the language of R. M. Becky, his consciousness can be defined as "simple". Man, in his ability to be aware of himself as an object of his experiences, has self-awareness, which distinguishes him from the "simple consciousness" of an animal. However, awareness in a person can occur in different ways, which is apparently caused by a very high degree of complexity of this process. This or that experience is capable of passing into the category of conscious ones only if it is expressed in categories accessible to conscious thinking. Concepts such as "time" and "space" are universal in nature, which ensures their common perception for all people. Such a category as "causality" is available for many, but not for all types of conscious thinking. Some categories exist only within a particular culture. In any case, the experience can be realized only if it is possible to identify, compare and define within the categories of a particular conceptual system. This system is by its nature a product of social evolution. The system of categories that determines the principles of awareness is developed in every society thanks to life experience and one way or another of definition, feeling and understanding. Such a system plays the role of a kind of filter: it is the reality of this or that society. Only after passing through this filter can the experience become conscious. In this case, we are faced with the need to consider the principle of operation of this "social filter" in order to understand how it can pass through itself some experiences on the way to their awareness and delay others.

First of all, you need to remember that not all experiences are easily realized. The most easily realized are physical experiences, such as pain, as well as such as sexual attraction, hunger, etc. Undoubtedly, those experiences that are vital - either for a specific individual or for a group of individuals - easily pass into the category of conscious ones. Experiences that are more sophisticated and complex in nature can be easily recognized in some cultures and not recognized in others. For example, the reverent contemplation in the early morning of a rosebud with a drop of dew, while the sun has not yet risen, the air is cool and the singing of birds is heard, is easily recognized by the Japanese. For a Western person, however, such an experience is likely to remain unconscious, since in his eyes it is not “important” or “eventful” enough. The role played by certain refined emotional experiences in the culture of a particular country determines the ease of their conscious perception. Very often in one language there may be no words that define an emotional experience, while in another there may be many. For example, in English, the whole gamut of emotions from erotic feelings to brotherly and motherly love is expressed by the word "love". If any emotional experiences do not find expression in different words of a particular language, they actually remain unconscious; the converse is also true. In general, it can be argued that those experiences for which there is no corresponding word in the given language are rarely conscious.

However, the filtering properties of the language are manifested not only in this. The variety of words used to denote a particular experience is only one aspect of the manifestation of interlanguage differences. Languages ​​differ from each other at syntactic, grammatical and semantic levels. In any language, an attitude towards the life of the people speaking it is manifested. Language is a kind of cast of a certain way of experiencing being. Here are some examples. In some languages, the verb form "it is raining" can have radical differences in semantics, depending on the context: whether I am talking about rain due to the fact that I got into the rain and got wet; either I watch it raining from the hut, or I heard from someone that it is coming. This example clearly demonstrates that focusing on the circumstances of experiencing a particular phenomenon has a significant impact on how these phenomena are experienced. (For example, for our modern culture, the source of knowledge of any fact is not of fundamental importance: be it a direct or indirect experience or communication of other people. Only the purely intellectual aspect of knowledge is important.)

Or another example. In Hebrew, the specificity of verbs (perfect - imperfect) is more important than temporary differences (past, present, future), which are of secondary importance. For Latin, both categories (both time and type) are equally important, while English emphasizes the timing of the action. Obviously, such differences in the way verbs are conjugated are a reflection of differences in the experience of events.

Differences in the use of verbs and nouns in different languages ​​or even among different people speaking the same language is another manifestation of this phenomenon. A noun refers to a subject, while a verb refers to an action. Since more and more people in our time think in terms of the possession of things, and not existence or action, this is reflected in their speech: they use nouns more readily than verbs. How a person experiences, which of the experiences he is aware of - all this conveys the language at the level of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and the structure of the language as a whole.

The logic governing human thinking within the framework of a particular culture is the second level of the filter that allows for awareness of experiences. In this case, the difference between Aristotelian and paradoxical logic is a good example.

Aristotelian logic is based on three laws: the law of identity says that A is A; the law of contradiction - A is not not A; the law of the excluded third - A is either B or not B. According to Aristotle, "... at the same time it is impossible to be and not to be ... this is the most reliable of all principles."

However, there is another logic that, in contrast to Aristotle's, can be called paradoxical. In this case, the idea is expressed that A and not A are not mutually exclusive objects as predicates of X. Paradoxical logic prevailed in Chinese and Indian thought, the philosophy of Heraclitus. It was later developed by Hegel and Marx under the name of dialectics. The concept of paradoxical logic was expressed quite clearly by Lao - tzu: "Truthful words remind of their opposite" and, besides, Chuang - tzu: "This is this. Not this - also this. "

For a man of the West, it seems an unusually difficult, and possibly impossible task to realize experiences that contradict Aristotelian logic and, as a result, are meaningless from its point of view, because the truth of the latter within the framework of Western civilization is not questioned a priori. Freud's concept of ambivalence is a good example of this. Freud believed that a person is capable of experiencing feelings of love and hate at the same time towards another individual. From the standpoint of Aristotelian logic, such an experience is meaningless, while according to paradoxical logic it is quite “logical”. As a consequence, most people have little or no ability to be aware of ambivalent emotions. Such people, being aware of their love for any subject, cannot realize their hatred for him, since the awareness of two opposite feelings towards the same person at the same time would be devoid of any meaning for them.

Human experience is a third level of filter that has nothing to do with language and logic. Every society imposes a ban on certain thoughts and feelings, that is, on what is not only impossible to "do", but what is forbidden even to "think." Suppose that in some warlike tribe, robbing and killing all belonging to other tribes, there will be those who one day feel in themselves aversion to robbery and murder. But since such a feeling is incompatible with the lifestyle of the tribe to which he belongs, it is difficult to imagine that such a warrior would be able to understand him; otherwise, he would risk being completely isolated and persecuted by his fellow tribesmen. Therefore, in such a situation, the individual would rather have a psychosomatic symptom, expressed in vomiting, than awareness of such a feeling. Conversely, if a member of a peace-loving tribe of farmers felt the urge to rob and kill representatives of other tribes, there would be a reverse reaction. As in the first case, he would most likely suppress this feeling in himself and would not allow himself to realize it. In doing so, he could develop another symptom in the form of intense fear.

Another example. Probably, in large cities it often happens that sellers deal with poor customers who do not have enough money to buy, say, the cheapest clothes. It can be assumed that in such a situation, one of the sellers will experience a natural human desire to yield a suit to a poor buyer for a price that is affordable to him. However, I suppose that very few of them will admit the realization of such a feeling, and the majority will suppress it in themselves. Some of these sellers may turn aggressively against the buyer, trying to disguise their unconscious impulse with such an attitude, which can cause a dream at night.

Based on the idea that a person will not allow himself to realize desires forbidden by society, we ask ourselves two questions. First, why are certain motives unacceptable in a given society? Secondly, what caused such a great fear in a person before realizing such a forbidden urge?

To answer the first question, it is necessary to consider the concept of "social character". One of the conditions for survival for any society is the formation of such a type of character so that members of the society feel the desire to do what they have to do. In other words, the fulfillment of a social function should be viewed by members of society not as a duty, but as a natural desire to act in a certain direction. In the event of a deviation from this scheme, society would be in danger, because many of its members would cease to act in the right way, and the social character would lose predictability and stability. Thus, in every society there are prohibitions, the violation of which leads to ostracism. At the same time, it is obvious that in different societies the imposition of this or that type of social character, as well as the observance of prohibitions in order to protect the integrity of society, occurs with varying degrees of cruelty.

The answer to the second question lies in elucidating the nature of such a great fear of the individual before possible ostracism, forcing him to prevent the penetration of taboo urges into consciousness. A person must somehow realize his place among other individuals in order to avoid madness. The inability to relate to others leads to a loss of reason. If death is the main source of fear in an animal, then loneliness is the most terrible for a person. According to Freud, it is the fear of complete loneliness that hinders the awareness of forbidden feelings and thoughts to a greater extent than the fear of castration.

Thus, we can conclude that the conscious and unconscious are socially conditioned by their nature. A person is able to be aware only of those feelings and thoughts that have passed through a triple filter: a special one, that is, language, a filter of logic and a filter of prohibitions of a social nature. At the level of the unconscious, all the motives that have not passed through this filter remain. Focusing on the social essence of the unconscious, we must make two clarifications. The first is to state the obvious fact that in any family, in addition to the prohibitions of society, there are their own varieties of these prohibitions. As a result, all the impulses that arise in the child and are forbidden in this family will be suppressed by him for fear of losing the love of his parents. On the other hand, adults who are more honest with themselves and less inclined to "repression" will try to reduce the number of these prohibitions for their children. The second clarification affects a more complex phenomenon, the nature of which lies in the fact that a person does not want to be aware of not only socially taboo motives, but also all experiences that contradict the very foundations of existence, the principles of "humanistic consciousness" and the desire for improvement inherent in a person.

These or those regressive impulses, like the desire to return to the state of intrauterine life, the desire for death, the absorption of loved ones in order to get closer to them, etc., in any case are incompatible with the fundamental principles of human nature and its evolution, regardless of whether they enter whether they are in conflict with social character or not. The stage of evolution occupied by the child justifies his desire to be cared for, which is normal at his age. Such aspirations of an adult speak of his illness. Such a person is aware of the contradiction between what he is and what he should be, because his aspirations are conditioned not only by the past, but also by the goals characteristic of him as an integral personality. When we say “should”, we do not mean any moral obligations, but the immanent desire for evolution inherent in his chromosomes, similar to the information “given” in them about his physical constitution, eye color, etc.

The individual is afraid of thoughts about the forbidden, fearing to lose touch with society and be completely isolated. At the same time, he is dominated by the fear of alienation from the human principle located in the depths of his consciousness, that is, he is afraid of dehumanization. However, in a society that preaches inhuman norms of behavior, this fear, as history shows, pales before the fear of being ostracized. The contradiction between the fear of isolation from society and the loss of one's own humanity loses its relevance as society itself becomes more human. And on the contrary, this internal conflict will be the deeper, the greater the gap between the universal human goals and the goals of a given society. Probably, it is not worth mentioning that the ease with which an individual is able to survive alienation from society directly depends on his intellectual and moral development, on how important human values ​​are for him. Overcoming the pressure of society, becoming a cosmopolitan citizen of the world, a person acquires the ability to live in accordance with his moral principles. Thoughts and motives that are incompatible with the norms of a particular society are not recognized by an individual if he is forced to suppress them in himself. So, we can conclude that the content of the unconscious and conscious, considered formally, outside the personal aspects, the influence of the family and the moral attitudes of the individual, depends on the social structure and patterns of thoughts and emotions generated by a particular society. If we talk about the content of the unconscious, then no generalizations are permissible here. However, it can be argued that in any case it will be a reflection of the human personality with all its light and dark sides, the basis of those various answers that a given individual is able to give to an existential question. If an individual belongs to a society dominated by the destructive idea of ​​assimilating a person to an animal, it is obvious that all other thoughts and impulses will be suppressed by him, while this regressive desire will be dominant and conscious. And on the contrary, in a society preaching humanistic principles, the dark, animal motives will not become conscious principles of life. However, no matter what culture this or that individual belongs to, he is potentially a primitive man, a predatory beast, and a cannibal, but at the same time he has both intelligence and feelings of love and justice. In this case, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious cannot be characterized as something positive or negative, rational or irrational, because, carrying in itself all human principles, it is simultaneously both. We can say that the unconscious embraces the whole person, with the exception of that part of it, which was formed under the influence of society. Conscious is a reflection of the social aspect of the personality; it is the product of actual prohibitions that have developed in a specific historical period in which an individual was born. The unconscious embodies the universal human being that belongs to the cosmos. Being the repository of all human principles, it personifies in it a plant, an animal, its entire spirit. It contains in itself his past - from the birth of human civilization, and his future - until the day when a person, having realized his full potential, will naturally merge with nature.

Defining the conscious and the unconscious in this way, it is necessary to understand what we mean by the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious and overcoming repression. Freud proceeded from the fact that the unconscious is a repository of repressed instinctive urges. At the same time, the process of transformation of the unconscious into a conscious by its nature is very limited, because such instinctive urges are unacceptable within the framework of a civilized society. Studying such instinctive urges as the tendency to incest, the fear of castration, the attitude to the penis as an object of envy, he believed that their awareness was repressed by man as he evolved. Freud assumed that the powerful human self is capable of transforming repressed desire, if it can be realized. Freud's idea of ​​the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious ("It" into the "I") acquires a deeper and more complete meaning if we consider the unconscious not in such a narrow aspect as Freud did, but as we did above. The transformation of the unconscious into a conscious one transforms the idea of ​​the universal nature of man into the idea of ​​genuine experience of this universality, which is the realization of a humanistic task.

Freud understood that the process of repression comes up against the personal perception of reality by a specific individual and that the result of overcoming repression is a rethinking of reality itself by this individual. In Freud's terminology, the distorting nature of unconscious urges is called transference. (G.S. Sullivan described the same phenomenon as "parataxic distortion.")

Freud identified a feature of human perception by showing how the patient perceives the analyst. He realized that for the patient the analyst is not what he really is, but is a projection of his own thoughts, desires and fears, which took shape in childhood as a result of communication with people who played an important role for him. By contacting his own unconscious, the patient can correct his distorted perception. As a result, he is able to see in the true light not only the personality of the analyst, but also his parents. So, Freud realized that a person distortedly perceives reality. While we think we are seeing a real image, it turns out that, without realizing it, we are only seeing a picture of our own ideas. However, in addition to the distorting transference effect, Freud discovered many other features of the distortion of perception caused by repression. Unconscious impulses unknown to a person govern his behavior, but at the same time contradict his consciousness, which embodies the requirements of society. This conflict gives rise to the effect of projection: not realizing in himself his own unconscious motives, a person can project them onto another individual and thereby be aware of them in him with disgust. On the other hand, not understanding the true origin of his motives, a person will try to find a rational explanation for them. Freud described such a deliberate false justification of unconscious motives as rationalization. It should be noted that most of what a person is aware of is delusion, whether we are confronted with transference, projection, or rationalization, while the reality is the unconscious he represses.

Keeping in mind our broader interpretation of the sources of the origin of the unconscious, we can talk about a new approach in the interpretation of the conscious unconscious. To begin with, the average individual, while confident that he is awake, is in fact half asleep. With the words "half-sleep" I want to express the idea that the connection of this person with reality is far from complete, because most of the reality in his mind, be it his inner world or the external environment, is the fruit of fictions generated by his mind. Reality is realized by him only to the extent that it is necessary for his life as a member of society. In general, a person is aware of reality to the extent that it is necessary to ensure his survival. On the contrary, a person ceases to be aware of external reality during sleep, although this awareness is easily restored if necessary. If a person is insane, then even in case of extreme necessity he is not able to fully comprehend the external reality. Consciousness of the average individual mostly consists of fictions and delusions, being "false" in nature, while the reality is precisely what the person is not aware of. Thus, a person is conscious of his illusions and can become conscious of the reality behind these illusions.

As we have already noted, human consciousness in essence is the embodiment of not so many patterns of experience imposed by society, while all the rest of the wealth and variety of manifestations of an integral personality lies in the unconscious. At the same time, the process of repression leads to the fact that the human “I”, considered as a person conditioned by the realities of a particular society, is separated from the “I”, which is the embodiment of an integral personality. A person finds himself in alienation from himself, and to the same extent everything becomes alien to him. Experiencing only an insignificant part of the reality hidden in him and other individuals, a person becomes an inferior cripple, torn off from a huge layer of human emotions.

So far, we have considered repression only from the point of view of its distorting function. Another aspect of it is expressed not in the distortion, but in the transformation into something unreal of certain human experiences.

This is done in the process of cerebration, that is, human brain activity. For example, a person thinks that he sees some objects, but in reality he sees only some of their symbols. Or he assumes that he feels something, but in fact these feelings are only thought by him. The personality of a person, completely determined by her brain activity, turns out to be alienated, because, as in Plato's allegory, he takes for reality only the shadows she sees. The cerebral process is in direct connection with the polysemy of language. A person who defines an experience with a word is immediately alienated from the latter, since the word replaces this experience. In general, the experience can remain full only until the moment of linguistic expression. In modern culture, in comparison with other periods of history, a similar process of cerebration has received, apparently, the most widespread and is distinguished by the greatest intensity. Words are increasingly replacing real experiences, which is primarily due to the ever-increasing gravitation towards intellectual knowledge as the basis of scientific and technological progress and, as a consequence, towards literacy and education. However, the person we are talking about is not aware of this. In reality, a person has only memory and thinking, he is devoid of experiences, although he believes that he sees or feels something. While a person thinks he is grasping reality, in reality it is grasped by his mental self. A person considers the experience as his own, while in general he himself, his eyes, his mind, his heart, his womb actually do not take part in it, without comprehending anything.

But what, in this case, is the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious? For a more accurate answer to this question, it is necessary to formulate it somewhat differently. We should not talk about "conscious" and "unconscious", but about the degree of awareness - consciousness and unconsciousness - unconsciousness. In this case, we can formulate our question in a different way: what happens when a person realizes what he was not aware of before? In general terms, the answer will be as follows: this process, step by step, brings a person closer to understanding the false, illusory essence of consciousness, which he is used to considering as "normal". Realizing the hitherto unconscious, a person expands the area of ​​his consciousness, thereby comprehending reality, that is, approaching the truth on an intellectual and emotional level. Expansion of consciousness is like awakening, removing the veil from the eyes, leaving the cave, illumination of darkness with light.

Perhaps it is this Zen experience that Buddhists define as "enlightenment."

Later we will return to this question, now I would like to dwell in more detail on an aspect that is of exceptional importance for psychoanalysis. We are talking about the essence of intuition, insight and knowledge, that is, about what determines the possibility of transformation of the unconscious into the conscious. There is no doubt that Freud, in the early years of his psychiatric career, agreed with the statement prevailing in science about the exclusively intellectual and theoretical nature of knowledge. He believed that in order to heal the patient, it would be enough to explain to him the origin of certain symptoms of his disease and the results of the study of his unconscious. He suggested that the patient's acquisition of this intellectual knowledge could have a healing effect on him. However, Freud, together with other analysts, soon came to the conclusion about the validity of Spinoza's statement about the emotional essence of intellectual knowledge. It became clear that intellectual knowledge by itself is not capable of producing any changes. Its effect can be manifested only in the fact that, with the intellectual comprehension of his unconscious motives, a person will be able to better control them, but such a task belongs more to the field of traditional ethics than psychoanalysis. In this state of affairs, the patient is not able to touch his unconscious, does not experience this deep and vast reality within himself. He only ponders it, as he considers himself as an object of his research, being a distant scientific observer. In reality, the discovery of the unconscious is an emotional experience, and not an act of intellectual cognition, which is difficult, if not impossible, to express in words. At the same time, the process of discovering the unconscious does not at all exclude preliminary deliberation and reflection. However, the immediate discovery itself is always spontaneous and unexpected, integral in nature, for a person experiences it with his whole being: his eyes seem to open, he himself and the whole world appear before him in a new light, he looks at everything in a new way. If before experiencing this experience, he felt anxiety, then after it, on the contrary, he gains confidence in his abilities. The discovery of the unconscious can be characterized as a chain of growing deeply felt experiences that go beyond theoretical and intellectual knowledge.

This method is characterized by the fact that it overcomes the Western rationalistic concept of cognition: a person ceases to be only an observer of himself as an object of research, and experience is the basis of the knowledge he receives. The concept of knowledge based on experience (an exception for the Western tradition) can be traced in Spinoza, who defined intuition as the highest form of knowledge, in Fichte with his intellectual intuition, and in Bergson with his creative consciousness. Such qualities of intuition overcome the subjective - object differentiation of the cognition process. (The meaning of such experiences within the framework of Zen Buddhism will be discussed later.)

In our brief overview of the essential elements of psychoanalysis, there is another aspect that needs to be touched upon. It is about the role of the psychoanalyst. Initially, it was similar to the role of any doctor. However, some time later the situation changed radically. Freud came to the conclusion that before the analyst subjects his patient to analysis, he himself must become the subject of such research, get rid of his own delusions, neurotic manifestations, etc. Such a need looks untenable if viewed from the standpoint of Freud himself. Let us turn to the thoughts of Freud, cited above, that the analyst should be, first of all, a “model”, a “teacher”, that the relationship between analyst and patient should be based on “love of truth”, excluding any “falsehood and deception”. In this case, Freud came to the realization that the role of the psychoanalyst does not fit into the framework of the role assigned to the ordinary doctor. However, the idea that the analyst is an outside observer, and the patient is the object of his research, remains fundamental for him.

In the course of the evolution of psychoanalysis, the concept of an outside observer has undergone changes, and this happened in two different aspects. In the last years of his life, Ferenczi came to the conclusion that the analyst should not limit himself to mere observation and interpretation of the patient's behavior. In his opinion, the patient, like a child, longs for love, and the analyst should be able to love him with a great love, which he has never known before. By love, Ferenczi did not mean an erotic feeling, it was rather a parental type of love and care. GS Sullivan came to the same conclusion, but from a different angle. In an effort to refute the prevailing concept of the analyst's detachment, he expressed the idea that the analyst should treat the patient from the position of not a distant observer, but an observer participating. In my opinion, Sullivan was not so far from the truth, and the role of the analyst could be better defined not so much as a “participating observer,” as much as an observing participant. However, the very word "participant", implying being outside, is not entirely appropriate here, since the cognition of a person requires to become himself, to penetrate inside him. The analyst is able to understand the patient only to the extent that he himself is able to experience his experiences. Otherwise, the analyst will have only intellectual knowledge about him, being unaware of what he is actually experiencing. As a consequence, such an analyst will never be able to suggest to his patient that he shares and understands his experience. The ability to get closer, akin to the patient, fully imbued and filled with him, the ability to live his life, to be open and disposed to him is one of the fundamental conditions for understanding and treatment with the help of psychoanalysis. The analyst, on the one hand, must be able to turn into his patient, on the other, to remain himself; he must forget that he is a doctor, but at the same time, he must be aware of this. He will be able to give his patient a meaningful "conclusion" only if he takes this paradox for granted, for it will be the fruit of his own experience... While the analyst analyzes the patient, the opposite process takes place: the patient analyzes the analyst. This is due to the fact that the analyst, unwittingly, manifests his own unconscious in contact with the patient's unconscious. It follows from this that the analyst not only heals his patient, but he himself “heals” with his help; not only does the analyst understand the patient, but eventually the patient comes to understand the analyst. This leads to the achievement of solidarity and unity between them.

Such an attitude towards the patient should be realistic and devoid of any sentimentality. The analyst, like anyone else, is unable to "save" another person. He can never do for his patient what he can only do for himself. He can only be an advisor, be like a midwife, show the way, help remove obstacles and sometimes directly help him. With all his behavior, and not just in words, he must bring this to the consciousness of his patient. Also, the analyst is obliged to emphasize that the real situation of their communication is limited and differs in this from communication between two ordinary people and that he is clearly aware of this. Their interaction is limited by time and space, since the analyst has his own life and, in addition, he has a number of patients. However, there are no restrictions on the meeting between patient and analyst. During an analytic session, for the patient, as well as for the analyst, there is nothing more important in the world than their conversation. In interacting with the patient, the analyst is not really limited to the formal role of the doctor. For his patient, he becomes a teacher, an example, maybe even a master. However, this is achievable only on condition that the analyst overcomes his own alienation, achieves complete freedom and awareness of himself, otherwise he will not be the analyst in his own eyes. For the analyst, the process of didactic analysis is not the end, but the starting point of continuous introspection, which means gradual awakening.

Zen principles - Buddhism

In a brief overview of Freud's psychoanalysis and its development within the framework of humanistic psychoanalysis, I touched on the problem of human existence and the importance of the existential question. At the same time, the well-being of a person was viewed as overcoming alienation and isolation by him, while the peculiarity of the psychoanalytic approach is to penetrate into the human unconscious. In addition, I talked about the nature of the unconscious and the conscious and about the meaning that psychoanalysis puts in the concepts of "know" and "be aware." Finally, I spoke about the importance of the role of the analyst in psychoanalysis.

One might suppose that a systematic description of Zen Buddhism will become the primary condition for its comparison with the psychoanalytic method, but I will touch only those aspects of it that have direct points of contact with psychoanalysis.

Zen's main goal is to attain enlightenment, or satori. A person can never fully understand Zen if he has not experienced this experience. Since I myself have not experienced satori, I am not able to talk about Zen at the level that is implied by the fullness of this experience, but I can only talk about it in the most general terms. At the same time, since satori "is an art and a way of enlightenment almost incomprehensible to the European consciousness," I will not consider Zen from the standpoint of CG Jung. At least Zen is no more difficult for a European than Heraclitus, Meister Eckhart, or Heidegger. The tremendous effort required to achieve satori is the main obstacle to understanding Zen. Most people are incapable of making such an effort, so even in Japan satori is very rare. However, despite the fact that I am not able to speak competently about Zen, I have a rough idea of ​​it, which became possible thanks to reading the books of Dr. Suzuki, attending several of his lectures and, in general, getting acquainted with Zen - Buddhism from all sources available to me. I suppose I can make a preliminary comparison between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis.

What is the main purpose of Zen? Suzuki says in this regard the following: “Zen by its nature is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence, it indicates the path leading from slavery to freedom ... is distorted to such an extent that it is not able to realize itself in an adequate way ... Therefore, the aim of Zen is not to allow a person to lose their mind and become ugly. By freedom of a person, I mean the possibility of realizing all the creative and noble motives inherent in his heart. Usually we are blind in our ignorance that we are endowed with all the necessary qualities that can make us happy and teach us to love. "

I would like to draw your attention to some important aspects of Zen that follow from this definition: Zen is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence; it is the path leading from slavery to freedom; Zen releases the natural energy of a person; he protects a person from insanity and self-mutilation; he encourages a person to realize his abilities to love and be happy.

The main goal of Zen is to experience enlightenment - satori. This process is detailed in the works of Dr. Suzuki. Here I would like to dwell on some aspects of this issue that are especially important for a Western person, and first of all for a psychologist. Satori is not inherently a mental abnormality. It is not characterized by a loss of sense of reality, as it happens in a trance state. At the same time, satori does not represent the narcissistic state of mind that is a characteristic manifestation of some religious teachings. "If you like, this is an absolutely normal state of mind ..." According to Yoshu, "Zen is your everyday thinking." "Which way the door opens depends on the location of its hinges." The experience of satori is especially affected by the state of enlightenment. “The whole process of our thinking will proceed in a completely different way, which will allow us to experience greater satisfaction, greater peace, greater joy than it was before. The very atmosphere of existence will undergo changes. Zen also has anti-aging properties. The spring flower will become even more beautiful, and the mountain waterfall will become cool and clean. "

As is clear from the above passage from Dr. Suzuki's work, satori is the true embodiment of human well-being. Using psychological terminology, enlightenment can be defined, in my opinion, as a fully conscious and understood state of an individual, his entire orientation towards reality, both internal and external. This state is recognized not by the human brain or any other part of his organism, but by the individual himself in his entirety. It is perceived by him not as something mediated by his thinking, but as an absolute reality: a flower, a dog, another person. Upon awakening, a person becomes open and responsive to the world around him. This becomes possible due to the fact that he ceases to consider himself as a thing. Enlightenment implies the "complete awakening" of the whole person, its movement in the direction of reality.

It is necessary to clearly understand that neither a trance in which a person is convinced that he is awake while he is fast asleep, nor any destruction of a person's personality has anything to do with the state of enlightenment. Apparently, for a representative of the Western school of psychology, satori will look like a subjective state, as a kind of trance state independently caused by a person; For all his sympathy for Zen Buddhism, even Dr. Jung did not escape such a delusion: “Since the imagination itself is a mental phenomenon, it does not matter at all whether we define enlightenment as“ genuine ”or“ imaginary ". Be that as it may, a person, being "enlightened", believes that he is, regardless of whether it corresponds to reality, or he only declares it ... Even if he was insincere in his words, his lie would be spiritualized. " Of course, such a statement is only a fragment of Jung's general relativistic concept that defines his understanding of the "authenticity" of religious experience. For my part, under no circumstances can I regard a lie as something "spiritual"; for me it is nothing but a lie. In any case, Zen Buddhists do not adhere to this Jungian concept, which has some merit. On the contrary, it is extremely important for them to distinguish between the actual and, therefore, the true change in the human worldview as a result of a genuine experience of satori from an imaginary experience, caused, perhaps, by psychopathological factors, in which the one who comprehends Zen assumes that he has achieved satori, while his teacher is convinced of the opposite. Seeing that the Zen student does not substitute imaginary enlightenment for true enlightenment is one of the main tasks of a mentor.

In terms of psychology, we can say that full awakening is the achievement of a "productive orientation", which implies a creative and active, like Spinoza's, perception of the world, and not a passive, consumer, accumulative and shareholder attitude towards it. An internal conflict that causes the alienation of one's own “I” from “not-I” is resolved when a person reaches a state of creative productivity. Any object under consideration no longer exists in isolation from a person. The rose seen by him represents the object of his thought precisely as a rose, and not in the sense that, speaking about the fact that he sees it, he only asserts that this object is identical for him with the definition of a rose. A person who is in a state of full productivity becomes at the same time and extremely objective: his greed or fear no longer distorts the objects he sees, that is, he sees them as they really are, and not as they are. he would like to see them. Such a perception excludes the possibility of parataxic distortions occurring. The human "I" is activated, there is a fusion of subjective and objective perception. The active process of experiencing occurs in the person himself, while the object remains unchanged. The human "I" animates the object, and is itself animated by means of it. Only someone who does not realize how mental or parataxic his vision of the world is, can consider satori as a kind of mystical act. A person who has realized this comes to another awareness, which can be defined as absolutely real. To understand what is at stake, just a fleeting experience of this sensation is enough. A boy learning to play the piano cannot compete in skill with the great maestro. However, the maestro's play is not fraught with anything supernatural, representing a combination of the same elementary skills that the boy learns; the only difference is that these skills are honed by the maestro to perfection.

Two Zen Buddhist parables clearly show how important an undistorted and unintelligent perception of reality is for the Zen concept. One of them tells of a conversation between a mentor and a monk:

“- Are you trying to establish yourself in the truth?

How do you educate yourself?

I eat when I'm hungry and sleep when I'm tired.

But everyone does this. It turns out that they educate themselves the same way as you?

Because while eating, they are not busy eating, but allow themselves to be distracted by extraneous things; when they sleep, they do not sleep at all, but see a thousand and one dreams. This is how they differ from me. "

There is probably no need to comment on this parable in any way. Overwhelmed by greed, fear and self-doubt, an ordinary person, far from always realizing this himself, constantly lives in a world of illusions. The world around him in his eyes acquires properties that exist only in his imagination. This state of affairs was just as relevant for the era to which the parable cited belongs, as for our days: today, almost everyone only believes that he sees, tastes, or feels something, rather than actually experiencing such experiences.

The author of another equally revealing statement was a Zen teacher: “Before I started studying Zen, rivers were rivers for me, and mountains were mountains. After I got my first knowledge of Zen, rivers were no longer rivers and mountains were no longer mountains. Now, when I have comprehended the teaching, the rivers again became rivers for me, and the mountains - mountains ”. And in this case, we become witnesses to the fact that reality begins to be perceived in a new way. As a rule, a person is mistaken, taking the shadows of things for their true essence, as is the case in Plato's cave. Realizing that he was wrong, he has so far only the knowledge that the shadows of things are not their essence. Leaving the cave and emerging from the darkness into the light, he awakens and now sees not the shadows, but the true essence of things. Being in darkness, he is not able to comprehend the light. The New Testament (John 1, 5) says: "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." But as soon as he leaves the darkness, the difference between the world of shadows, in which he lived before, and reality is immediately revealed to him.

Comprehension of human nature is one of the primary tasks of Zen, which guides a person towards self-knowledge. However, we are not talking here about the category of "scientific" knowledge inherent in modern psychology, not about the knowledge of a cognizing intellectual person who considers himself as an object. In Zen, however, this knowledge is unintellectual and non-mediated; it is a deep experience in which the knower and the knowable become one. Suzuki formulated this idea as follows: "The main task of Zen is the most natural and direct penetration into the deepest aspects of human existence."

The intellect is incapable of giving an exhaustive answer to an existential question. Achievement of enlightenment becomes possible under the condition of the refusal of the individual from many of the delusions that hinder the true vision of the world, generated by his mind. Zen requires complete freedom of the mind. Even one thought becomes an obstacle and a trap on the way to the true freedom of the soul. " It follows from this that the concept of sympathy, or empathy, postulated by Western psychology, is unacceptable according to Zen Buddhist teachings. “The concept of empathy, or empathy, is the intellectual embodiment of primary experience. If we talk about the experience itself, then it does not allow any separation. At the same time, in its striving to comprehend the experience, to subject it to logical analysis, which provides for discrimination, or dichotomy, the mind thereby harms itself and destroys the experience. At the same time, the true sense of identity disappears, which allows the intellect to carry out its inherent destruction of reality. The phenomenon of sympathy, or empathy, which is the result of the process of intellectualization, may be more characteristic of a philosopher who is incapable of experiencing genuine experience. "

However, the spontaneity of experience can be limited not only by the intellect as such, but also by any idea or individual. In this regard, Zen “does not attach much importance to the sacred sutras, as well as their interpretation by sages and scholars. Individual experience is in conflict with the opinion of authority and objective definitions. " Within the framework of Zen, a person should be free even from God, from Buddha, which was expressed in the Zen dictum: “Having uttered the word“ Buddha ”, wash your lips”.

The development of logical thinking is not the task of Zen, which distinguishes it from the Western tradition. Zen "presents a person with a dilemma that he must be able to resolve at a higher level of thinking than that which is logic."

As a consequence, the concept of a mentor in Zen - Buddhism does not correspond to its Western counterpart. In the Zen understanding, the benefit brought to a student by a mentor consists only in the fact that the latter exists in principle: in general, for Zen, a mentor is such only to the extent that he is able to exercise control over his own mental activity. “What to do - until the student is ready to comprehend something, he cannot help him in any way. The highest reality is comprehended only independently ”.

The modern Western reader, accustomed to choosing between resigned submission to the authority that suppresses him and limiting his freedom, and the complete denial of it, turns out to be puzzled by the attitude of a Zen mentor to a student. Within the framework of Zen, we are talking about a different, "reasonable authority". The disciple does everything only of his own free will, without experiencing any compulsion from the mentor. The mentor does not require anything from him. The student is guided by his own desire to learn from his mentor, because he wants to receive from him knowledge that he does not yet have. The teacher “does not need to explain anything with words, for him there is no concept of sacred teaching. Before anything is affirmed or denied, everything is weighed. There is no need to be silent, or to gossip. " A Zen mentor completely excludes any imposition of his authority on the student, and at the same time persistently strives to win his true authority based on real experience.

It must be borne in mind that the true attainment of enlightenment is inextricably linked to the transformation of the human character; one who is not aware of this will not be able to understand Zen at all. This is the manifestation of the Buddhist origin of Zen, since salvation within the framework of Buddhism implies the need to change the human character. A person must free himself from the passion of possession, must tame his greed, pride and arrogance. He should relate to the past with gratitude, be a worker in the present and look into the future with a sense of responsibility. Living according to the principles of Zen means "treating yourself and the world around you with gratitude and reverence." For Zen, this attitude in life, which is the basis of the "hidden virtue", is very characteristic. Its meaning is that a person should not waste the forces given by nature in vain, but live a full life both in an ordinary, down-to-earth sense, and in a moral sense.

Zen sets before a person the goal of freeing from slavery and gaining freedom, achieving "absolute invulnerability and courage" in the ethical sense. Zen is based on a person's character, not on his intellect. Consequently, the main life postulate for him is human will. "

Overcoming repression and enlightenment

Speaking of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Zen, what conclusion do we arrive at?

Probably, the fact that the incomparability of Zen - Buddhism and psychoanalysis is only the first deceptive impression could have puzzled the reader a lot. The similarity between them seems to be a phenomenon even more surprising.

First of all, let us repeat the definition of the goal of Zen given by Dr. Suzuki. “Zen by its nature is the art of immersion in the essence of human existence, it shows the path leading from slavery to freedom ...

We can say that Zen releases the natural energy inherent in us, which in ordinary life is suppressed and distorted to such an extent that it is not able to be realized in an adequate way ... Therefore, the goal of Zen is to prevent a person from losing their mind and becoming ugly. By freedom of a person, I mean the possibility of realizing all the creative and noble motives inherent in his heart. Usually we are blind in our ignorance that we are endowed with all the necessary qualities that can make us happy and teach us to love. "

Such a definition of the goal of Zen, without any reservations, can be considered as an interpretation of the postulates of psychoanalysis, for such tasks as self-penetration, liberation, finding happiness and love, the realization of energy and salvation from diseases and deformities are inherent in psychoanalysis to the same extent as Zen is in Buddhism. ...

The idea that enlightenment is an alternative to illness for a person may seem strange at first glance, but it is quite reasonable. Traditional psychiatry raises the question of why some people get sick. In my opinion, it would be more correct to ask why most people do not get sick. If we consider human existence in the conditions of current realities, remembering the alienation, loneliness, helplessness of the individual, it would be logical to assume that he will not be able to cope with such pressure and will simply be destroyed. In reality, most people manage to avoid this, but salvation is achieved at the cost of mutilating their own personality. People replace alienation with everyday routine, opportunism, the desire for power, prestige, money, service to one or another religious cult shared with other individuals, stoic self-torture or defiant narcissism. However, all this is able to maintain health in a person only for a certain time. Only a complete, constructive response to the world, approaching in its absolute to enlightenment, can become a real protection of a person from a possible disease. However, before proceeding to consider the most important aspects in the juxtaposition of psychoanalysis and Zen, I would like to dwell on some details that are of secondary importance.

First, it should be said about the ethical orientation common to psychoanalysis and Zen. Overcoming greed by a person, expressed in the desire for possession, fame or something similar (which is consonant with the concept of "hungry" in the New Testament) in accordance with the teachings of Zen, is a necessary condition for achieving the goal. This is precisely the goal in psychoanalysis. Freud, who developed the theory of the evolution of libido and designated its four levels (oral-receptive, oral-receptive, anal and genital), suggested that under normal conditions the human character, which is distinguished at first by such qualities as greed, cruelty and greed, is transformed ethically. Having made more emphasis on the value aspect of the issue under consideration and in accordance with the experience of Freud's clinical observations, I use my own terminology: the process of evolution is defined by me as a transition from a receptive orientation through an exploitative, accumulative and salesman's orientation to a productive one. However, in whatever terms this idea is expressed, this does not change the state of affairs: psychoanalysis considers greed, inherent in individuals who have failed to realize their active and productive inclinations, as a pathological phenomenon. At the same time, the fundamental task of psychoanalysis, like Zen, is to help a person overcome greed and learn love and compassion, in other words, to contribute to the ethical transformation of the individual. Man is not forced into a virtuous existence, he is not forbidden to live "in sin"; it is only assumed that the evolution of the individual's consciousness itself will rid him of forbidden impulses. However, no matter how dependent the state of enlightenment may be on the moral transformation of a person, it would be a deep delusion to believe that the tasks of Zen do not imply overcoming greed, narcissism, and narrow-mindedness, or that the acquisition of humility, love and mercy by a person is not a prerequisite for achieving satori. Likewise, it would be wrong to believe that a change in human character is not necessary for the realization of the tasks of psychoanalysis. Greed and self-admiration are alien to an individual who has reached a productive level; he gains humility. Having parted with his illusions, he sees himself as he really is. Despite the fact that the goals of psychoanalysis and Zen are not limited to an ethical framework, their achievement is impossible without moral changes in the personality.

The requirement to be independent of any authority is another aspect common to psychoanalysis and Zen. It was he who served as the main basis for Freud's criticism of religion. Religion, in his opinion, misleads a person by imposing on him the idea of ​​the good that comes from God as opposed to the true dependence on paternal care and punishment. According to Freud, belief in God is a manifestation of human infantilism. A person cannot become independent until he is fully mature. However, what would Freud's opinion of “religion” be, instructing a person to clear his mouth at the mention of the word “Buddha”? How would he react to a religion in which there is neither God, nor blind submission to any authority; religion, which sets before a person the goal of liberation from any kind of dependence and awakening activity in him; a religion that seeks to establish a person in the thought that only he himself should be responsible for his fate?

It may be suggested that such a denial of any authoritarian principle in Zen is in contradiction with the role assigned to the figure of the analyst in psychoanalysis. In this aspect, the deep similarity of approaches in Zen and psychoanalysis is again traced: in both cases, the patient, or student, receives knowledge from his mentor. But does the student (patient) become dependent on his leader and is everything that he tells him is true for him? Undoubtedly, in psychoanalysis, a similar phenomenon of addiction, interpreted as a transference, exists and is capable of significantly influencing the patient. However, psychoanalysis seeks to free the patient from such dependence on the analyst by identifying it and, if possible, eliminating it. The words of the mentor in Zen, as well as of the analyst in psychoanalysis, are significant for the student (patient), for within the framework of Zen the mentor has a priori greater knowledge than the student; the same state of affairs exists in psychoanalysis. As a result, the teacher's word is always convincing to the student. The mentor never imposes his opinion on the disciple; the student came to him of his own free will and can also freely leave. The mentor is ready to accept a disciple who voluntarily came to him, who wants to go through the difficult path to enlightenment under his guidance. But only such a student who is aware of the fact that no matter how the mentor seeks to help him, his fate is only in his own hands... No one can save a person's soul; only he himself can find salvation. A mentor can only take on the role of a midwife or guide in the mountains. As one Zen master said, “I really cannot tell you anything. If I tried to do this, you would laugh at me. Everything that I could tell you belongs only to me, and it could never be yours. "

Herrigel's book on the art of archery provides a vivid and visual analysis of the mentor's Zen approach. The Zen master is guided by the principle of establishing reasonable authority. He insists on his method of studying the art of archery, since he proceeds from the fact that he knows better than the student how it can be comprehended. At the same time, the mentor does not seek to impose his authority on the student, gain power over him or make him constantly dependent on himself. He only wished that the student would demonstrate to him from time to time his successes; when he himself becomes a mentor, he will seek his own method in teaching. The mentor loves his student with mature love, imbued with the spirit of real perception of reality. He tries to help him, at the same time fully realizing that on the way to achieving the goal, he is not able to do for the student what he should do himself. The mentor's love for the student is devoid of any sentimentality, it is based on a realistic attitude to human fate, on the realization that no one person is able to save another, but must do everything to help him save himself. Love, which denies such a statement and claims to "save" the soul of another, is in reality only a manifestation of arrogance and vanity.

In all likelihood, additional arguments will be superfluous for the psychoanalyst to convince him that everything said about the mentor within the framework of Zen applies equally (or in any case should apply) to him. According to Freud, the analyst in his relationship with the patient is, as it were, his mirror image; his attitude towards him must be devoid of any personal connotation. This, in his opinion, should ensure the independence of the patient from the analyst. However, analysts such as Ferenczi, Sullivan, myself and a number of others see collaboration between analyst and patient as a necessary condition for ensuring mutual understanding between them. We fully share the opinion that such cooperation excludes any sentimentality, distortion of reality and, most importantly, any, even the most cautious and mediated, intrusion of the analyst into the patient's life, even if this could contribute to his cure. The analyst is always ready to help the patient and always supports his desire to overcome the disease and change his life. However, he cannot be held responsible for his failure if the patient's resistance to life changes turns out to be insurmountable. The analyst's duty is to do everything in his power, not to spare his strength and knowledge for the patient to achieve the goal to which he aspires. This also shows the closeness of the positions of psychoanalysis and Zen.

In Zen Buddhism, there is a teaching principle for placing a student in a difficult situation, called a koan. As a kind of obstacle making it impossible to escape, the koan does not allow the student to resort to traditional thinking in order to solve the problem assigned to him. In order not to go down the wrong path, forcing the patient to listen to explanations and instructions and thereby only preventing him from making the transition from comprehension to genuine experience, the analyst does, or at least should do in some sense in the same way. Any rationalistic justification, that is, everything that the patient relies on in his illusions, the analyst must gradually eliminate. In the end, the patient will lose all his arguments, thereby breaking free from the captivity of delusions, which will allow him to realize what he was not aware of before. In other words, he will begin to experience reality. In this case, the moral support of the patient plays an important role, since the analyst often experiences anxiety, which could become an obstacle to achieving the goal. However, this support is limited only to the fact that the analyst is close to the patient, not trying to encourage him with words, so as not to prevent the patient from experiencing the experience available to him alone.

So, the comparison of Zen - Buddhism and psychoanalysis directly highlights some aspects of their similarity, identity. However, it can be recognized as valid if we find points of contact between the idea of ​​enlightenment, which is the main one in Zen, and the overcoming of repression, the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious, which are the basic principle of psychoanalysis.

Let us first summarize what has been said about psychoanalysis. Its purpose is to transform the unconscious into the conscious. It should be borne in mind that the conscious and unconscious are functions, and not the content of the mental process. More precisely: we can only talk about one degree or another of repression, about a state when a person is aware of only those experiences that have managed to pass through the filter of language, logic and other criteria conditioned by the realities of a particular society. The most secret depths of his nature open before a person, and therefore, his human essence, freed from distortions at all levels of the filter. If a person completely overcomes repression, he thereby resolves the conflict between his consciousness and the unconscious. At the same time, overcoming self-alienation and isolation from the surrounding world in all its manifestations, he is able to experience an unmediated experience. In addition, as already noted, the perception of the world depends on the degree of isolation of his unconscious from his conscious; in other words, to what extent his “I” as an integral personality is separated from his “I” as a social person. This manifests itself, on the one hand, in the form of parataxic distortions, or the effect of transference, when another individual is not seen as what he really is, but appears as an important person who had an influence on him in childhood. This happens due to the fact that he is able to perceive another individual not as an integral personality, but only through his “I” formed in childhood.

On the other hand, the consciousness of a repressed person is false in nature. This is reflected in his experience of the world around him: instead of a really existing object, he sees only his image generated by his own illusions and ideas. This distorted idea of ​​something, this veil covering his gaze is precisely the primary source of his anxiety and suffering. As a result, an individual in a state of repression experiences what is happening in his head instead of experiencing real people and objects. Being confident that he is in contact with the real world, in fact, he is dealing only with words. Phenomena such as parataxic distortion, false consciousness and cerebration are, apparently, albeit different, but nevertheless interconnected aspects of a person's loss of reality, when the human essence of the individual is separated from the social individual, and cannot be considered as independent varieties. loss of contact with the real world. Based on the assertion that an individual in a state of repression is alienated by nature, we simply view the same phenomenon from different points of view. The alienated person, directing his thoughts and feelings to this or that object, does not perceive himself as the subject of his experiences and is dependent on the object that conditions it.

The complete opposite of this alienated, distorted, paratactic, illusory, "mental" experience is a direct, integral perception of reality, characteristic of an infant and a child who did not have time to lose the ability to do it under the influence of upbringing. For a newborn, there is still no separation between "I" and "not-I". The process of this separation is gradual, and the child's ability to say "I" indicates its completion. Nevertheless, the child's perception of the world still remains sufficiently direct and undistorted. While playing with the ball, the child actually sees how the ball is rolling, he is completely absorbed in the experience of this sight. The adult also feels confident that he sees the ball rolling. Undoubtedly, this is so: he actually observes how one object, that is, the ball, rolls over another object - the floor. However, in reality, he only thinks that the ball is rolling on the floor, without seeing it. Saying that a ball is rolling, an adult basically only declares that, firstly, he knows that a round object is called a ball, and secondly, that round objects lying on a flat surface can roll when touched. At the same time, what he sees with his eyes only confirms him in his knowledge and allows him to feel comfortable.

A person is able to regain the ability to experience the direct, spontaneous perception of reality characteristic of a child, having reached the state of "non-repression". But such overcoming of repression, given the path traversed by a person in the evolution of the intellect and the process of alienation, implies the return of integrity to him on a new, higher level. Such integrity can only be acquired by first losing it.

This thought is vividly expressed in the Old Testament tradition of the Fall and the prophecy of the Messiah. According to the biblical tradition, a person, being in the Garden of Eden, is an integral substance. Being an inseparable part of nature, he is devoid of consciousness, for him there are no concepts of difference, choice, freedom, sin. Making his first choice, a person first shows disobedience and thus comes out of a state initially devoid of individuality; at the same time he takes the first step towards freedom. Having completed it, he gains consciousness: now he is aware of himself, realizes his isolation from Eve as a woman, from nature, from animals and the earth. A consequence of the awareness of this isolation is the appearance of shame in a person: the same shame that we experience to this day, feeling alienated from people close to us. Leaving paradise, he will thus mark the beginning of human history. The initial state of harmony is no longer available to him, but for him there is a new harmony to which he can strive, harmony, which is expressed in the improvement of his mind, consciousness, gaining the ability to love, so that, as the prophecy says, “... the earth is filled with the knowledge of God in the same way, like the ocean is filled with water. " The messianic concept predicts a transition from a harmony devoid of individuality and consciousness to a new harmony based on the triumph of an integral and perfect mind. Its achievement will become possible with the coming of the Messiah and will be marked by the elimination of the antagonism between man and nature, man and another man; the desert will become a blooming garden, a wolf and a lamb will peacefully coexist side by side, and swords will be hammered into plowshares. The advent of the era of the Messiah is, on the one hand, a heavenly time, and on the other, something opposite to it: a person who has left the world of childhood forever, reached the highest stage of his evolution and again becomes a child, which is expressed in the integrity of his nature and immediacy of perception.

A similar thought can be traced in the New Testament: “Truly I say to you: whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a child will not enter into it” (Luke 18:17). This maxim needs no explanation: through getting rid of alienation, people must again become children and learn to perceive the world creatively. However, turning into children, people nevertheless have already reached maturity and are not children. It is in this case that the experience mentioned in the New Testament becomes possible: “Now we see, as it were through a dim glass, fortuitously, then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know as I am known ”(Corinthians 13, 12).

Overcoming repression and alienation from oneself and, as a consequence, from another individual means awareness of the unconscious, that is, awakening, parting with illusions, delusions and false ideas and an adequate perception of reality. Awareness of the previously unconscious makes an inner revolution in a person. The basis of creative intellectual thinking and direct intuitive perception of reality is precisely the true awakening of a person. An individual in a state of alienation, when the real world is perceived by him only at the level of thinking, turns out to be able to lie; being awakened and, therefore, focused on the direct perception of reality, a person is not able to tell a lie: the power of his experience destroys a lie. Finally, the translation of the unconscious into the conscious means for a person to live guided by the truth. By being open to reality, he ceases to be alienated from it; not opposing her and at the same time not trying to impose anything on her, he reacts to reality in an adequate way.

The goal of Zen is direct and complete comprehension of the world. Now I will try to clarify the connection between the principles of psychoanalysis and Zen based on the reasoning of Dr. Suzuki.

First of all, I would like to draw your attention to one terminological aspect of the issue under consideration, which, in my opinion, impedes the implementation of our analysis. We are talking about the use of the terms "conscious" and "unconscious" instead of functional terms that serve to denote the extent to which the individual as an integral personality is aware of the experience of something. I have no doubt that by eliminating this terminological ambiguity, we will greatly facilitate our task of identifying the connection between the true meaning of transferring the unconscious into the conscious and the concept of achieving enlightenment. "The Zen method is to directly penetrate the object itself and see it from the inside as it really is." Such a direct comprehension of reality "can be defined as actively volitional, or creative." Further Suzuki calls this source of creativity "the unconscious in Zen", adding: "You need to be able to feel the unconscious, but not in the usual sense of the word, but, I would say, in its most primordial and fundamental meaning." In such an interpretation, the unconscious is considered as a certain area located both inside the personality and outside it. "The experience of the unconscious," says Suzuki, "is ... fundamental and primordial."

In terms, I would prefer to abandon the notion of "experiencing the unconscious." Instead, in my opinion, one should speak of the individual's awareness of the deep and immediate experiences he is experiencing, that is, of the weakening of such phenomena as parataxic distortion, image projection and cerebration, which becomes possible due to a decrease in the degree of repression. The Zen follower is defined by Suzuki as being "in direct union with the great unconscious." For my part, I would formulate it differently - as an awareness of the inner reality and the reality of the surrounding world in all their clarity and completeness.

Then Suzuki again resorts to functional terminology, saying that “in reality it (the unconscious), on the contrary, is something most intimate for us, and that is why it is so difficult to comprehend, just as the eye is not able to see itself ... As a consequence, in order for the unconscious to become conscious, a special training of consciousness is necessary. " In this case, Suzuki operates with concepts that fully correspond to the psychoanalytic concept: the task is to transform the unconscious into the conscious, for which the consciousness needs special training. But does this mean that the whole difference between psychoanalysis and Zen comes down only to their own, different approaches to training consciousness, while the goals that these two systems pursue are the same?

Before dwelling on this issue in more detail, it seems to me advisable to consider a few more aspects that require clarification.

In the reasoning of Dr. Suzuki, the idea of ​​opposition between knowledge and integrity is touched upon, that is, the same question to which I addressed when speaking of psychoanalytic concepts. The biblical concept of the Fall as a result of acquiring knowledge in Zen and in Buddhism in general corresponds to the concept of affective contamination, that is, contamination by passions (klesha) or the intervention of conscious thinking, subordinate to the intellect. The term "intelligence" raises a very important issue. Is the activity of the human intellect identical to the consciousness? If it is identical, then the transition of the unconscious to the conscious would be a process of intellectualization of the unconscious, which fundamentally contradicts the objectives of Zen. In this case, the goals of psychoanalysis and Zen would turn out to be diametrically opposed, for Zen would set the task of developing the activity of the intellect, while the goal of psychoanalysis is precisely the liberation of a person from his captivity.

It should be noted that initially Freud was a supporter of the concept of intelligence, considering it as the main goal of psychoanalysis. At the time, he believed that the analyst only needed to provide the necessary information to cure the patient.

While Freud himself never expressed his understanding of the difference between intelligence and spontaneous, holistic experience, many analysts today remain adherents of the concept of intelligence. But the goal of psychoanalysis is precisely to achieve insight that occurs not on an intellectual level, but as a result of cognition. As I have already noted, being aware of your breathing does not mean thinking about your breathing, and being aware of the movement of your hand does not mean thinking about it. On the contrary, if I think about my breathing or the movement of my hand, I am thus no longer aware of them. This statement is also true in relation to my awareness of a flower or a person, the experience of joy, love, or a state of peace. The peculiarity of true insight within psychoanalysis is that it defies description. Nevertheless, many weak psychoanalytic theories try to formulate their understanding of insight, which has nothing to do with direct experience, resorting to heaps of theoretical concepts. The patient under psychoanalysis cannot be made to experience true insight or to plan for it; it always arises suddenly. Using a Japanese metaphor, we can say that insight is not born in a person's brain, but in his stomach. Trying to put it into verbal form, we realize that we are not able to do it. Nevertheless, it is quite real, and the person who has experienced it becomes completely different. A child is able to directly comprehend the world around him until the moment when his consciousness, perception and sense of reality have not completed the process of evolution and have become some kind of substance separate from him. Moreover, “the unconscious is instinctive; it is limited by the instinct inherent in animals and children and is impossible in an adult. " In the course of evolution from the primitive unconscious to self-awareness, a person, due to subjective - object differentiation, the division of personality into universal and social, unconscious and consciousness, begins to experience the world as something alienated. The conflict between the unconscious and consciousness can be resolved to the extent that the latter is able to become open, to weaken the influence of the "triple filter" prevailing over it. The complete resolution of this conflict, which implies the rejection of intelligence and reflection, leads to the fact that a person can experience a direct, unmediated, conscious experience. This active, volitional, creative vision of reality, knowledge defined by Spinoza as intuition is the highest form of knowledge; knowledge based on the approach that, according to Suzuki, "is to directly penetrate into the object itself and see it from the inside as it really is." This direct, non-reflective perception of the world allows us to realize the inherent in each of us and forgotten ability to create, to be an “artist of life”. “Each of his (the artist's) actions embodies his originality, his creativity, his immediate individuality. He does not know conventions, conformism, forbidden motives ... He is not a slave to a petty and limited egocentric being. He was able to break out of this prison. "

A person who has reached "maturity", who has managed to cleanse himself of "pollution with affects" and get rid of the influence of the intellect, opens up "a free and spontaneous life, where he will not be constrained by such feelings as fear, anxiety, and a sense of danger." The liberation of a person mentioned by Suzuki, arising in a similar state, correlates with psychoanalytic concept genuine insight that is expected to produce the same effect.

Now we need to return to the question of terminology, on which I would not like to dwell too long, because its significance is not so great. As I have already noted, Suzuki is talking about the education of consciousness, but at the same time in another place he also mentions "the education of the unconscious, which embodies all the conscious experiences of a person from the first years of his life, which constitute his essence." Such coexistence of the expressions "educated consciousness" and "educated unconsciousness" may seem inappropriate to someone. However, it seems to me that in reality there is no contradiction here. To carry out the transformation of the unconscious into a conscious, to achieve a complete, unmediated experience, education is required in an equal measure of both the conscious and the unconscious. If the conscious needs to be freed from the conventions generated by the filter, then the unconscious needs to learn to control, calling it out of darkness and isolation. Of course, it must be admitted that we are talking about the education of the conscious and unconscious in a figurative sense. Conscious, as well as unconscious, do not exist as objects of education. The person himself needs education, who must clearly and consciously overcome repression, resorting to intellectual reflection only in case of real need, and learn to experience reality as fully as possible.

This unconscious is defined by Suzuki as cosmic. Of course, such an expression has the right to exist, given its clear definition by the author. However, it seems to me that the term "cosmic consciousness" is more appropriate, with which Becky defined the consciousness newly acquired by man. This term, in my opinion, looks preferable, since the unconscious loses its status if it becomes conscious to one degree or another (while it does not become reflective intelligence). Only to the extent that a person is not aware of reality, to the extent that he is alienated from his cosmic unconscious, is it for him. Everything in relation to which a person was unconscious disappears as he awakens and enters into contact with reality. It should also be noted that the term "conscious" we prefer "cosmic unconscious" in order to focus primarily on the function of awareness, rather than on its placement within the personality of the individual.

Where do we arrive at in our relationship between Zen and Buddhism and psychoanalysis?

The goal of Zen is to achieve enlightenment, that is, a state in which there is a direct, non-reflexive comprehension of reality, free from affective pollution and intellectualization. In this state, the relationship of the individual to the universe is embodied. A person, like a child, again comprehends the world directly, without connecting the intellect to this process. However, this is already happening at a qualitatively different level. The difference is that the shaping individuality of a person is based on the completed evolution of the mind and a developed sense of reality. If the child's experience, being immediate and integral by its nature, is not lost until the moment of implementation of the subject-object differentiation and the individual's feeling of his own alienation, then enlightenment is achieved by him after he experiences it.

According to Freud, the goal of psychoanalysis is to transform the unconscious into the conscious, or, in other words, so that the “I” can take the place of “it”. Postulating the task of understanding the unconscious, he determines the content of the latter according to the instinctive impulses of early childhood, which a person forgets at a more mature age. The purpose of the analysis is precisely to overcome the repression of such instinctive impulses, which subsequently, without connection with the theoretical premises of Freud, was reflected in the therapeutic practice of curing a certain symptom. The identification of the unconscious outside the specific situation of the occurrence of a symptom no longer seemed so important. However, the concepts of drives (thanatos and eros) developed in recent years, the deepening of understanding of the human "I" expanded the Freudian content of the unconscious. The area of ​​the unconscious, subject to transformation into the conscious, has largely expanded thanks to the development of non-Freudian schools. Particular credit for this belongs to Jung, as well as to Adler, Rank and other authors who have recently come to be called neo-Freudians. However, the scale of the sphere of the unconscious that requires identification, despite such a significant expansion, is still considered (with the exception of Jung) only as a therapeutic task of curing some symptom, some abnormality of a person's character. The area of ​​the unconscious does not cover the entire personality of the individual.

However, while adhering strictly to Freud's original idea of ​​transforming the unconscious into conscious, one should not be limited to an orientation towards the instincts and tasks of treating symptoms. The process of complete transformation of the unconscious into the conscious requires the study of the entire experience of a person and cannot be reduced to instincts or any other experiences. There is a need for a person to overcome alienation and subject-object differentiation in the perception of the surrounding world. In this case, the process of transformation of the unconscious comes down to overcoming affective pollution and cerebration, getting rid of repression, overcoming the internal division into a universal and social individual, eliminating the antagonism between the conscious and the unconscious. A person must become able to directly, without distortions caused by social reflection, experience reality, overcome egocentrism, get rid of the illusion of invulnerability and isolation of his “I”, striving for self-aggrandizement and self-preservation, like the Egyptian pharaohs, hoping to perpetuate themselves by turning into mummies. He who has realized the unconscious is open and responsive; he does not have, but exists.

There is no doubt that the idea of ​​a complete transformation of the unconscious into the conscious, in comparison with the general task of psychoanalysis, is much more radical. The reasons for this are not hard to understand. Most people in the Western world are not ready to go to such expenditure of effort, which requires the full identification of the unconscious. Such a radical goal can only be accepted by those who hold a certain philosophical position. It makes no sense to go into a detailed description of it. It is only worth noting that this position is not formulated in a negative aspect as ensuring the absence of illness, but in a positive one: achieving absolute harmony, directness and clarity of comprehending the world, i.e., well-being.

It is impossible to characterize this goal more precisely than Dr. Suzuki did, who defined it as the "art of living." This concept, like others like it, is due to the spiritual humanistic orientation of the teachings of the Buddha, the prophets, Jesus Christ, Meister Eckhart and such personalities as Blake, Walt Whitman, Becky. Considering the concept of "the art of living" outside this context, we deprive it of its specificity and identify it with what is commonly called "happiness" today. The humanistic orientation of these teachings presupposes the presence of basic ethical attitudes, including in Zen Buddhism. As Suzuki clearly showed, Zen sets before a person the task of suppressing the desire for money-grubbing, the thirst for fame or narcissism, in other words, to overcome any manifestations of greed. Zen implies the refusal of a person from narcissistic self-glorification and the illusory idea of ​​his own omnipotence; on the other hand, a person must get rid of the desire to obey the authority that solves the problems of his being for him. Of course, such a radical goal is not a guideline for a person who wants to get rid of his disease by revealing the unconscious.

However, it would be a misconception to believe that such a radical goal of overcoming repression is not in any way related to the therapeutic goal. Analyzing and changing the patient's character is necessary condition getting rid of existing symptoms and preventing the formation of new ones. It is also obvious that without a holistic modification of the personality (that is, a more radical goal), it is impossible to correct any feature of a neurotic character. Perhaps the fact that the goals set in the treatment of neurotic character are inherently insufficiently radical is the reason for the rather modest results of treatment (which was most clearly expressed by Freud in his work Analysis: Temporarily or Permanently?). Maybe a person's achievement of well-being, getting rid of anxiety and a sense of danger is feasible only when more global goals are set. It should be recognized that the solution of a limited therapeutic task is impossible until this task is considered as a broader, humanistic goal in nature. Although it is possible that the implementation of a local goal requires more limited and less laborious methods than the achievement of the goal of radical - "transformation", which justifies the significant investment of time and effort required for a long analysis. This assumption is confirmed by the expressed thought that the most that a person who has not come to a creative state - the culmination of satori - is capable of, is to replace his innate predisposition to depression with routine, idolatry, desire for destruction, acquisitiveness, pride, etc.

If any of these compensatory mechanisms cease to function, there is a threat to health. But it is enough for a person to change his attitude to the world, gaining, through the resolution of internal conflict and overcoming alienation, the ability to be responsive, to perceive reality directly and creatively in order to get rid of a possible disease. If psychoanalysis can help a person in this, it will help him to find true mental health. Otherwise, it will only become the basis for improving compensation mechanisms. In other words, a person can be "cured" of a symptom, while it is impossible to "cure" him of a neurotic character. By treating the patient as an inanimate object, the analyst is unable to heal him, for a person is neither a thing nor a "medical history." Being connected with the patient by a situation of mutual understanding and unity with him, the analyst can only contribute to his awakening.

But our reasoning cannot run into objections? Is it worth talking about such a radical task as the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious in a practical aspect, if, as I noted, its implementation is as difficult as achieving enlightenment? Is it not purely speculative to think that the hopes placed in psychoanalytic therapy can only be justified if a radical goal is achieved?

This objection would be appropriate if there were no other choice: either to achieve full enlightenment, or nothing. However, it is not. In Zen there are many stages of enlightenment, the highest and defining of which is satori. However, in my understanding, even if a person never reaches satori, any of his experiences, which are at least to some extent a step in this direction, are already valuable in themselves. Once Dr. Suzuki illustrated this aspect: if, while in a completely dark room, you light one candle, then the darkness disappears and becomes brighter. If you add ten, one hundred or a thousand candles to it, then each time the room will become brighter and brighter. However, the fundamental change was made by the first candle, which destroyed the darkness.

What happens when the analytic process is carried out? A person who ascribed to himself such qualities as modesty, courage and love, for the first time in his life, feels pride, cowardice and hatred within himself.

This insight can cause pain, but it opens his eyes, which makes him able not to endow others with the qualities that he seeks to suppress in himself. Then he continues on his way, feeling at first as an infant, child, adult, criminal, madman, saint, artist, man or woman; he penetrates deeper and deeper into his own human principle, into the universal essence; he has to suppress less and less experiences in himself, he is liberated, needing the transference and cerebration to a lesser and lesser extent. Then, for the first time, the experience of how he sees a light or a rolling ball, or hears music, penetrating it, becomes available to him. Little by little he realizes the falsity of the idea of ​​the independence of his own "I", which he previously regarded as a kind of object that requires protection, care and salvation; this becomes possible due to the fact that he begins to feel his unity with other individuals. He will understand that it is useless to look for the answer to the main question asked by life in possession, while one should become himself and be himself. By their nature, these experiences are always spontaneous and unexpected; they have no intellectual content. However, having experienced them, a person feels with a strength unknown to him hitherto a feeling of liberation, his own strength and peace.

Returning to the conversation about goals, I repeat that Freud's idea of ​​the transformation of the unconscious into the conscious, elevated to an absolute, becomes consonant with the concept of enlightenment. The discrepancies between psychoanalysis and Zen will become more evident if we consider the methods of achieving their goals. We can say that the Zen method boils down to the fact that the student gets rid of alienation in his perception of reality through the session, koans and the authority of the mentor. Of course, the mentioned method cannot be regarded only as a set of techniques; he is inextricably linked both with Buddhist philosophy and with the system of ethical values ​​expressed in the behavior of the mentor and felt in the very atmosphere of the monastery. It is also necessary to understand that Zen is not a “four hours a week” lesson, and a student who turns to Zen thus makes a responsible decision, which is the most important factor in his subsequent learning.

The method of psychoanalysis is fundamentally different from that adopted in Zen. It consists in the fact that the patient's attention is focused on his distorted perception, he is pushed to discover his own delusions, his experience is enriched by the discovery of the repressed; thus, his consciousness prepares to comprehend the unconscious. The analytical method is essentially an experimental - psychological one. Studying the mental evolution of a person from the first years of his life, the analyst tries to identify the experiences experienced by the patient in early childhood and thereby determine the causes of repression. A person parts with the delusions generated by his intellect that underlie his alienation. This becomes possible due to the gradual discovery of the illusory nature of his ideas about reality. At the same time, a person overcomes both alienation from himself and from what surrounds him. He makes contact with his inner peace, as a result of which it acquires a connection with the external world. False consciousness disappears, and with it the antagonism of the conscious and the unconscious. A new sense of reality appears, in which “mountains become mountains again”. There is no doubt that psychoanalysis is just a method, a preparation, but the same applies to the Zen method. Even this circumstance alone speaks in favor of the fact that the successful implementation of the task of psychoanalysis cannot be guaranteed. Deep and unknown to us, despite all our practical efforts, aspects of the human person can get in the way of the implementation of this task.

I suggested that the method of revealing the unconscious, brought to its logical conclusion, can bring a person closer to the state of enlightenment, expressed in the philosophical context of Zen in the most radical and realistic way. However, we will be able to judge the capabilities of this method only after receiving significant experience in its practical application. The idea that I have expressed is a hypothesis that requires testing, since it assumes only the very possibility of achieving the mentioned effect.

In any case, it is much more confident to say that the study of Zen and the interest shown in it can influence the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in an extremely fruitful and beneficial way that can clarify many of its aspects. In whatever way the Zen method differs from the psychoanalysis method, it is able to draw attention to the phenomenon of illumination and clarify the essence of this phenomenon; force us to rethink concepts such as vision, creativity, overcoming affective pollution and false messages generated by the intellect. Zen's characteristic radical views regarding the process of intellectualization, submission to authority, exaltation of one's own "I", as well as his persistent striving for harmony, can deepen and expand the psychoanalyst's horizons, pushing him towards the idea of ​​full and conscious comprehension of reality. The juxtaposition of Zen and psychoanalysis leads us to the idea that psychoanalysis can be of great importance to the student of Zen. In my opinion, psychoanalysis could help him not to be deceived about the falsity of enlightenment if it is based only on subjective sensations and is caused by some psychopathic or hysterical phenomena, or is in fact a self-initiated trance. Overcoming illusions for the Zen student is a prerequisite for achieving enlightenment and can be achieved through the clarity brought by the analytical approach.

However, no matter how great the significance of Zen for psychoanalysis, as a Western psychoanalyst, I am extremely grateful for this storehouse of Eastern wisdom, first of all, to Dr. Suzuki, who was able to express Zen in an accessible way for Western thinking and did not omit a single essential aspect of it. ; thanks to this, the Western man, with a certain diligence, is able to comprehend this teaching to the extent that it can in principle be available to him. Proceeding from the fact that "Buddha is in each of us", that man and his being are universal categories, while direct comprehension of reality, awakening and enlightenment are universal experiences, such an understanding of Zen by Western people is quite possible.