ABSTRACT
The notions of meaning, purpose, or intentionality are mostly associated with a psychology of consciousness, and with personal and/or spiritual development rather than psychoanalysis. In daily life or meditation, people experience their mind and its contents, from the point of view of their ego or personality. Most practitioners bring their ego into the practice of meditation as the manure and fertiliser that will facilitate a transformation within their own being. For Jacques Lacan, both love and the subject constitute a relationship between signifiers: the lover and the beloved. Within Zen, this phenomenon is known as the Zen illness or sickness wherein practitioners are practising meditation with what is called a gaining idea aimed at advancing self-centred purposes or a personal enlightenment. In Zen, the desire to awaken is associated with a wisdom-seeking mind. In psychoanalysis, personal self-knowledge seems to be produced in an opposite direction to scientific knowledge.
