Buddhist Psychology: Langri Thangpa's Mind Training

In 2002 I was first introduced to Buddhist Psychology. At the time, the practice and study was little known in colleges, and usually only within the Jungian tradition, or through Erich Fromm, D.T. Suzuki, and Richard De Martino's groundbreaking, 1970 text, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. Undergraduate courses on the subject were not common, and the idea of the Eastern scientific method was not well received by the positivist social science model. The area of study had only a handful of texts and small pockets of practitioners in the West.

Today the scene is different. Partly due to popularization by thinkers including Alan Watts, the Dalai Lama, and numerous scholars of psychotherapy and Buddhism; lectures, seminars, courses, and graduate programs of study are not uncommon. Most recently have been books by Mark Epstein, Jeremy Safran, and Dan Arnold. Courses have been appearing not only in graduate programs of study (Naropa University), but also in undergraduate course offerings in psychology (UC Berkeley).

When I first studied Buddhist psychology, while at The New School, I found the teachings to be life-enriching, transformational, and understandable. It wasn't long before I was introducing students to the concepts of Buddhist psychology. Those students have asked me to replicate some of those lectures, and I get a steady flow of E-mails from those who are inquiring on to which books, lectures, and thinkers to consult. To this end, I have decided to post some of the teachings here.

One of the classic teachings in Buddhist psychology comes from Langri Thangpa, an 11th Century Tibetan Buddhist. Written in eight verses, the poem offers guidance in "training the mind". We might understand these as lessons in how to deal with the difficult situations of life, in a productive and self-enhancing way. Popularized by the Dalai Lama in his Central Park Lecture of 1999, the eight verses offer a paradoxical approach to dealing with difficulties with others and with ourselves. First I will present the text in its entirety, and then I will offer my own experience of each verse.

Eight Verses for Training the Mind 

by Langri Thangpa

• With a determination to accomplish 
the highest welfare for all sentient beings
 who surpass even a wish-granting jewel
I will learn to hold them supremely dear.
• Whenever I associate with others I will learn 
to think of myself as the lowest among all
 And respectfully hold others to be supreme 
from the very depths of my heart.
• In all actions I will learn to search into my mind 
and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises
endangering myself and others
 will firmly face and avert it.
• I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature 
and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering 
as if I had found a precious 
treasure very difficult to find.
• When others out of jealousy treat me badly 
with abuse, slander, and so on, 
I will learn to take on all loss,
 and offer victory to them.

• When one whom I have benefited with great hope 
unreasonably hurts me very badly, 
I will learn to view that person 
as an excellent spiritual guide.
• In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
 all help and happiness directly and indirectly
 and respectfully take upon myself
 all harm and suffering of my mothers.
• I will learn to keep all these practices 
undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions
 and by understanding all phenomena as like illusions 
be released from the bondage of attachment.

Mind training, in Buddhism, is a practical guide for interpersonal communication and an opportunity for self exploration. Each of the eight "teachings" is a method for transforming negative transactions into positive exchanges, and recognizing defensiveness as the chance for growth and a better understanding of self.

In the Buddhist tradition, it is taught that defensiveness is an opportunity for learning about oneself. What this means is that, when we become defensive, in reaction to another person's comment, it is usually because that comment is bringing to our attention something that we do not want to believe to be true about ourselves. In fact, it is not unlike being introduced to something in ourselves that disturbs us when we realize that others can "see through" the mask, armor, or façade that we have put on. The principle rests on the belief that we only become emotionally defensive when we are not secure with the accusation of the suggestion, albeit at an unconscious level. Some students find this to be a difficult concept to grasp, or accept, but, when one does come to accept this as fundamental, a world of self-discovery becomes available.

• With a determination to accomplish 
the highest welfare for all sentient beings
 who surpass even a wish-granting jewel 
I will learn to hold them supremely dear.

This lesson, the simplest to understand, might be the most difficult to achieve. It is a commitment to hold people to be the most precious of all things, more valuable than any fortune or jewel.

• Whenever I associate with others I will learn 
to think of myself as the lowest among all
 and respectfully hold others to be supreme 
from the very depths of my heart.

This, a very challenging instruction, is not to diminish one's own self-value to others in a narcissistic masochism, but rather, to make everyone we meet feel special, important, and like a gift. This often means acknowledging and praising them, rather than proving one's own importance.

• In all actions I will learn to search into my mind 
and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises
endangering myself and others
 will firmly face and avert it.

This lesson works well for depression, anger, desire, and revenge. It tells us to remain attentive to our emotions, and to become aware, and reverse these negative feelings, as soon as they begin in us. If they are left to form they will become too strong to control. This lesson teaches us to monitor our feelings and the importance of timely reversal of negative feelings.

• I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature 
and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering 
as if I had found a precious 
treasure very difficult to find.

This teaching, perhaps the most paradoxical of the eight, teaches us that those whom we find the most despicable; the thieves, liars, and predators, are the ones most in need of care, love, and our compassionate attention. The teaching encourages us not to despise these people, but to take pity on them and help them to govern themselves.

• When others out of jealousy treat me badly 
with abuse, slander, and so on, 
I will learn to take on all loss,
 and offer victory to them.


When someone treats you poorly out of jealousy, give them praise and the spotlight. They are fueled by a strong sense of inferiority that can only be conquered through others lifting them up, rather than beating them down.

• In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
 all help and happiness directly and indirectly
 and respectfully take upon myself
 all harm and suffering of my mothers.

The gist here is that by helping others, we make the world better for ourselves too. Rather than resenting our neighbor for not picking up the doggy-duty on the sidewalk, we help them by picking it up ourselves. In so doing, we make the world better for ourselves, others, and set an example for the person who left it.

• I will learn to keep all these practices 
undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions
 and by understanding all phenomena as like illusions 
be released from the bondage of attachment.

Finally, this is a commitment to remind ourselves, daily, of these eight laws of interaction with ourselves and others. An obligation to remain faithful to these teachings in order make our lives, and the lives of others, more bearable.

Wilhelm Reich in A Postcognitive Negation

Chapter 2

Reichian Character Analysis: The Characterological Approach

This is an excerpt from Giobbi's first book, A Postcognitive Negation, available at amazon.com, published by Atropos Press (2010).

The aim is to provide a framework for understanding the theoretical perspective and proposal of this dissertation: that rigid personality underlies the authoritarian character. The second, and central point of the dissertation is that character precedes all aspects of position including, philosophical, ideological, moral, and vocational choices of the individual. The relationship between the scientific “experimental” paradigm in American psychology can be understood as taking on the characteristic of the authoritarian personality (sadistic character) and has established a moral sado-masochistic relationship with non-experimental, scientific, schools of thought in psychology. In order to fully realize the proposed relationship one must understand the underpinning dynamic structures of the “sado-masochistic” or “authoritarian” character on which it is based. Foucault tells us “In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”

            We take a position that is not exclusively one of drives and defenses but of the mind as a whole. We are not as interested in mechanisms of defense as in the character of defensiveness. We have had little use for ideas about psychopathology or statistical abnormality. We largely view these as social constructs that have little relevance outside of a context as something called a “disease”. A characterological approach is one that views not “symptoms” or “pathologies” but ways of being that are structured within a context. There is necessarily an ethics involved when a social structure is considered. Lacan is clear on this “Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.” Character is not in isolation. Therefore we do not proclaim a morality-absent take on character. Morality is viewed as an intimate structure within the context of a privileging of components. In other words, without considering the moral structure of a weltanschauung one has little more than a disparate collection of meaningless (context absent) “symptoms”.

            In introducing the theoretical orientation which we are taking it is not an effort to engage in theoretical debate or even ask the reader to take on this theoretical orientation. It is presented as an effort to better help the reader in understanding the theoretical orientation from which we are writing. It is an effort to dis/orient the reader. For example, the obsessive-compulsive character style is much more conducive to the scientific weltanschauung, whereas the hysterical character style is much more complementary to an artistic weltanschauung –whatever that might mean. In the characterological approach, as laid down by Reich, one is not interested in pathologies or in viewing culture as a symptom. One is interested in characteristic ways of being that seem to be present in individuals. In this study of the relationships between schools of thought in American psychology we will be looking at the individual character of those schools of thought and how the dynamic between these groups fits into a larger structure. We propose this larger relational structure to be one of moral sadomasochistic exchange. Individually we will describe the moral sadistic and moral masochistic way of being. In order to clearly realize the style or way of being that is found in the scientific Weltanschauung or the artistic/theoretical weltanschauung we must not only examine what is said by each tribe, but how it is said. This level of analysis allows us to not only consider the manifest character of the message but the implicit character of the medium itself.

            The first encounter with ways of being is often found to be through the Rorschach test. Ways of thinking and perceiving are the primary material of such projective tests. Typically, the Rorschach will make apparent the underlying impetus on which the character structure is build regarding defense mechanisms and traits that come be what we call character. What is being proposed here is that far from science or theory as something that is done, it is something that is lived through a way of being that can be reflected in the character structures of the individuals that are drawn to them. In this way, science is not a method but a manifestation of a group’s way of being. The group attracts a specific character style –a particular psychological makeup. For example, a certain attention to detail, interest in the specific, and crush on the “real” is not simply an ideology but a character structure and approach to life that has been described by psychodynamic psychology –namely the obsessive-compulsive character style.