The Buddha

Biography

Siddhartha Gautama, historical founder of Buddhism, born into a royal family in what is now Nepal. Left home at 29 to understand suffering, achieved awakening after years of ascetic practice and meditation, spent the remaining 45 years teaching. His psychological sophistication (particularly the analysis of craving, aversion, and delusion as mechanisms of suffering) preceded Western psychology by two millennia. The tradition that followed developed detailed phenomenological maps of consciousness that rival anything in Western philosophy.

Key Ideas

The Four Noble Truths: suffering exists; it has a cause; it can end; there is a path.Impermanence (anicca): clinging to permanence causes suffering.Non-self (anattā): there is no fixed, unchanging self.Mindfulness (sati): non-judgmental awareness of present experience.

Clinical Relevance

Buddhism's Four Noble Truths constitute a clinical framework: suffering exists, it has identifiable causes (craving and attachment), cessation is possible, and there is a systematic path to that cessation. The concept of anattā (no-self) creates productive tension with Western therapeutic goals of 'building a stronger self.' Mindfulness-based interventions (MBSR, MBCT, DBT's mindfulness module) draw directly from Buddhist practice, though often stripped of ethical and relational context. The clinical paradox: clients may need a stable self before they can examine its constructed nature. Bowlby's secure attachment and the Buddha's non-attachment may not contradict: you need a self consolidated enough to investigate its own impermanence without disintegrating.

Linked Modalities

Key Works

Connections

Attributed quotations

The line printed under the dates at the top of this page, and where it comes from.

Sources