Wrap-Up: Buddhist Psychology

1. What we experience as our 'Self' is not a fixed entity, but a continuum of five components: body, feelings, thoughts, actions and consciousness. These five 'skandhas' incessantly rearrange and recombine, which means that there is no part of us that just stays the same forever. The body grows up and grows old. And if you believe that your mind is unchanging, you can make an experiment and try to concentrate on one thing only without allowing even a single other thought to enter consciousness. Check how many minutes you can keep this up. In all likelihood, it will be (milli)seconds rather than minutes. So, what we call 'Self' is a continuum of the above five components rather than a fixed entity. 

2. The reason why some things - like bad habits ;-) - seem to be permanent traits and are so hard to get rid of is that the continuum relies on cause and effect, and that it remembers what it experiences (in the form of 'seeds'). For example, a habit like smoking gives you a feeling of satisfaction or relaxation. And you remembering this constitutes the cause for a similar event to arise next time you feel stressed (i. e., you will smoke yet another cigarette). 'Fixed' conditions of the Self are actually not fixed; they are but a chain of momentary events which arise again and again because we keep re-creating the conditions necessary for them to do so. It follows that you do not 'have' OCD, but that you are experiencing a series of 'OCD moments'.

3. What we call 'reality' is not an objectively valid 'truth'. Instead, we create our own, subjective reality, at every moment. This is because cognitive processes are heavily influenced by our past experiences, i. e. the 'seeds'. As a result, we develop predispositions which make us see the world (and ourselves) in a certain light. This light might may be positive, or negative, or a mixture of both; but it is always just our individual way of seeing things, and nothing which is objectively 'true'.

4. It follows that our experience of 'reality' is impermanent and changeable just like everything else, which means that it is possible to work on and come out of a negative reality and create a more positive experience for ourselves.

5. The amount of 'kusala' vs. 'akusala' feelings plays an important role in changing our mode of experience. Kusala is everything which makes you feel calm and content. Akusala is everything which is distressing. According to Buddhism, kusala tends to create more kusala, while akusala leads to more akusala. Also, kusala is said to be stronger than akusala. By working on our kusala : akusala ratio, we can therefore actively influence if we live in a 'positive' or a 'negative' reality.