ABSTRACT
What happens when a person’s gentleness confronts crude social values and norms? How can a more compatible social environment positively affect his or her mental life? Referring to Buddhist ethics and to some of the messages secular modern or postmodern society infuses into the gentle layers of the mind, this chapter discusses the social-cultural context as one factor that may either clash with or support gentleness. I discuss self-destructiveness as an expression of a gentle person’s effort to live in a world whose dictates rip sensitivity apart (Eigen, 2004), and I present the Buddha’s teachings, as they are applied in Vipassana meditation, as a way leading from the coarse to the subtle.
Given the current popularity of “mindfulness” in psychotherapy, I briefly mention some qualities of psychoanalytic listening: Freud’s free-floating attention, Bion’s F in O, reverie and container-contained model, Winnicott’s primary maternal preoccupation, and Ogden’s discussions on the unique ways of patient-analyst communication – and point out that not every state of attuned, open, non-selective attention is mindfulness in the Buddhist sense, nor it should be referred to as “meditation”. I consider the importance of the Buddha’s complete eightfold path, including its ethical aspect, and discuss non-violence as an inherent, indispensable feature of truth.
