The Tree of Enlightenment

If things are handled in the right way, through a conscious
and deliberate adjustment of the mind, phenomena can be used
for one’s progress along the path. A knife, for instance, is neither
true nor false, yet someone who grasps it by the blade is surely in
error. When we relate to phenomena in terms of craving, ill-will,
and ignorance, this results in suffering. When we take them otherwise,
this results in happiness.
To summarize, we can use terms like ‘philosophy’ and ‘psychology’
in relation to the Buddhist tradition as long as we
remember that we are interested in philosophy not as it concerns
essences and absolute categories but as a description of
phenomena, and that we are interested in psychology insofar
as it concerns psychotherapy. ese qualities of the philosophy
and psychology of the Abhidharma are unique in the history of
human thought. Nowhere else, in the ancient or modern world,
in Asia or the West, has such a phenomenology and psychotherapy
evolved.
What is unique about Buddhist phenomenology and psychotherapy
is its rejection of the idea of a permanent self and its
affirmation of the possibility of liberation. In all other systems,
even those of western philosophical phenomenology and psychotherapy,
we find an inability to reject the idea of a permanent
self – the very rejection so characteristic of the teaching of the
Buddha and of the Abhidharma. And nowhere within modern
psychology do we find that possibility of ultimate and absolute
freedom so central to the teachings of Buddhism.
323