Maitriyana Spirituality: the Postpsychoanalytical Revolution

Maitriyana Spirituality: the Postpsychoanalytical Revolution

The Buddhist Psychoanalysis inhabits an Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) composed of various contemporary strategies that integrate the Reconciling Spirituality of Maitriyana. Certainly, the Purpose (Dharma) of Buddhist Psychoanalysis is moving towards the Awakening (Bodhi) of the apprentice, by converting him into a spiritual master. But this analytical purpose has a radical scope when it is established its relationship with existential and libertarian practices which also transform the mind and produce a new subjectivity. Thus, both Existentialism and Socialism passionately contribute with Maitriyana in the critical construction of a Postpsychoanalysis, trying to configure a radical metapsychology with a spiritual support in its sublime production. Therefore, through the practice of analytical meditation the subject is explicitly or implicitly positioned into a political counter current to the prevailing norms of the social Discourse. The Buddhist Psychoanalysis then plays a role as a critical reference in psychological, philosophical and political constructions.

The rubric of the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) is immediately felt in the postpsychoanalytical position of construction of Maitriyana, whose enemy is the egoic, metaphysical and deterministic essentialism. Therefore, the postpsychoanalytical movement of Buddhist Psychoanalysis builds a new and revolutionary subjective experience that reinvents the apprentice’s mind and transforms his linking network previously determined by historical and strategic mechanisms of social Power. In this way, the analytical contemplative practice is a Counterpower that is a producing instance of the sublimated subjectivity. Since the Maitriyana shows there is no human essence but only Empty Dynamic Ground, they are constructed mystical devices that meet what is seemingly divided, by stimulating the peak knowledge (satori) repressed by the social Power which is producer of ordinary subjectivity. This implies that Buddhist Psychoanalysis reorients the subjectivity towards the higher and amplified state of consciousness (H-ASC) of Sublimation (Nirodh) or Cure (Nirvana). Thus it is emerged a new and unexpected form of mind which finally is de-identified from the appropriations that Power performs. Therefore, the practice of analytical meditation gradually causes and prepares the field for the sudden emergence of a free and enlightened subjectivity against the normative codes of the capitalist empire.

Undoubtedly, there are many aspects in which the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama preceded Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, as the examination carried out on the subject of the unconscious, the ethical transformation of the apprentice, the incompleteness and impossibility of Absolute Knowledge, the mode of the illusory function of Ego, the critique of the biological evolutionary development of the human being, the conception of emptiness as the only natural, the presence of madness in the ordinary mind, the Sublimation (Nirodh) of the libidinal, the dis-foundation of yearning for completeness, and the radical distinction from the analytical with respect to psychotherapeutic strengthening of the Ego. These sequences are metapsychological itineraries of the Maitriyana Path beyond the clinical and oppressive domain of psychology and psychiatry. When making the decision to respect the readings of Freud, Lacan and Foucault, the sense of Buddhist Psychoanalysis remains as a rumble that must be heard, by shaking the world by demonstrating that the subject is empty, split off and interexisting, not having an absolute origin (Atman) but an incessantly dynamic function. By posing an empty and interexisting subjectivity, the Maitriyana recognizes the True Self as an Empty Dynamic Ground, because the apprentice is approached to the experience of the Real as unsatisfactory, impermanent and insubstantial, this traumatic and anguishing experience being the ceaseless and perennial possibility of decision and transformation of the subject. In short, when the Buddhist Psychoanalysis accepts Freud and Lacan, the analytics of existence of Heidegger, the Existential Psychoanalysis from Sartre and the aesthetics of existence of Foucault are also incorporated within the articulation of Maitriyana, creating a metapsychological technique of wide possibilities, a metaphilosophical art of life and a metapolitical escape facing the structural alienation of the social system.

The apprentice of Buddhist Psychoanalysis is trained in the conditions of self configuration and self awakening which can be achieved through the vital intermediation of the spiritual master. In the analytical contemplation it must be overcome any structure, by giving rise to a subject whose only form is emptiness as multiform and plural experience that does not find other limit more than the paradoxical dialectical logic. In a sense, it can be affirmed that in the Maitriyana this constitutes the evanescence of the delirium of word and intellectualism. In accordance with Foucault, the Buddhist Psychoanalysis eradicates the illusion of egoic experience, by creating the project or Path in order that the apprentice can reconcile himself, acquiring then an awakened subjectivity and consciously chosen. This post Kantian position of the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) conceives as the only universal law to that which is chosen by the very subject after he has learned from the obstacles of life, which are the best instructors of transformation. When extracting meaning and teaching from the impasses of existence, the apprentice can open up to a relentless form of transformation whose social formula is counter power, transgression, political resistance and choice of oneself. These values give rise to the counterculture of the postpsychoanalytical revolution, which by means of proliferation of Spiritual Love enforces a Counter discourse facing the prevailing materialism.

If the Pathway of Maitriyana is consecrated to the exigency of learning to be free and not give in on others the own choice, this practical and transintelectual Path is seriously dedicated to use the terms of Freud and Lacan to bring them back to the experience of Awakening (Bodhi) which is inherent in the Buddhist Psychoanalysis. In the Maitriyana there is a spiritual alliance with Freud, Lacan and Foucault, by differentiating Buddhist Psychoanalysis from psychological and psychiatric science to which it is trying to overcome. Here, the cornerstone is not the strengthening of Ego, but the project of dissolution of Ego, by building a kind of evanescent subject (nirvanasattva). Therefore, the analytical meditation is a practice of the self-care which routes the apprentice’s knowledge towards the Truth, transforming the mind by sublimatorily addressing the pulsional exigencies of unconscious jouissance. This position of Maitriyana sublimates pleasure and Desire, causing an explosion to talk of Love again, which is the transhistorical aspect of human life that enables all the stories.

In accordance with Lacan, in the empty ontology of the spiritual master, dissatisfaction (sexuality), impermanence (mortality) and insubstantiality (language) give name to the very expulsion or transhistorical impossibility of existence. In this sense, the impossibility of completeness makes the social relationships – such as family and juridical norms – are not more than veils before said transhistorical impossibility, trying to control and produce subjective representations through the prevailing social Discourse. However, this false sense of Beingness is overcome by the emerging identity of Cure (Nirvana), which does not ignore the Real that is the impossibility of completeness and its necessary response in frustration (dukkha).

From the teaching of Buddhist Psychoanalysis it is crossed the essentialism-nihilism dualism, by uncovering the determining factor in building the postpsychoanalytical revolution. Thus, in accordance with Lacan, in the teaching of the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) there is a gradual dismounting of neurocentrism which thinks the neurotic structure as the culmination or centre of the sense of consciousness. In the same direction, the spiritual master claims that the Awakening (Bodhi) is the sublimatory structure or last place from where they are better understood all the other psychic practices understood as deviations or fixations in the spiritual development. Actually, the Maitriyana clarifies that attachment to an unconscious masochistic jouissance is not resolved with the establishment of an alleged evolutionary development of Ego or maturation of personality, even existing attachment in the instance of crossing-reconstruction of phantom (maya), because basically Detachment is not non-attachment. At this point, perversion, psychosis, neurosis and even Sublimation (Nirodh) are all different responses to the impossibility of completeness or Emptiness-in-Being, constituting the symptomatic response of existence before the Purpose (Dharma) of Desire. However, there is a clear stratification and hierarchization between each structural psychical practice.

Effectively, the Buddhist Psychoanalysis does not intend to promote the multiplication of subjective structures, but rather to propose the ethical Cure (Nirvana) as a psychic structure superior to the mastery of neurosis of the regular subject. This is not only a revolution in the field of psychology and philosophy, but it is also intended to introduce and deploy a policy of resistance against the dominant power that – according thinkers like Riviere, Lacan and Foucault – builds the mind by means of linkages of language. The formula of this contemplative analytical dilemma is: subjection versus subjectivity, or attachment versus liberation. Therefore, the Awakening (Bodhi) develops a response of subversion and resistance, resignifying jouissance through the Sublimation (Nirodh) in order to take it away from the unconscious masochism. Although the individual can be considered as a product of the Discourse of Power, in order to appeal to the political resistance and spiritual Cure (Nirvana) it is needed to uncover the rest inassimilable and impossible-to-find by the ties of language, which is an original decision not produced by Power. This is the Empty Being or True Self that emerges as a process of incessant transformation and invention of subjectivity that is new, sublime and always subversive and de-instituting. By liberating himself from attachment and repetition (karma), the apprentice can resignify his existence in the world by choosing what he wants.

The sublimated subjectivity of the Awakening (Bodhi) is an unceasing renewal of the identity and lifestyle, because it absolutely is about the spiritual learning as a putting into practice of the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha), in which the sublimated subject or Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) accepts Emptiness or the existential castration, by inviting humanity to be saved from the capitalist Apocalypse through the encounter with a self-constructed subjectivity. Thus, just like Foucault, the spiritual master is the knight of autonomy, but he is also the knight of the Sense of the Real, knowing courageously that the ethical emancipation or Liberation is beyond the circular motion (samsara) of the capitalist Discourse. Such historical transformation of human being comes from the emergence of a new identity based on spiritual ideals, as pacifism, social justice, wisdom and compassion, by satisfying the needs of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity of all humanity. Guided by the post-utopian vision of Maitriyana, this historical transformation is the recreation of Desire but without phantasmatic (maya) foundation, which means the event of the pure Purpose (Dharma) of Being: Love. Only in this sublimated Desire,  which is friendship with the Non-Everything, it is found the Counterpower capable of upsetting the scaffolding of the capitalist civilization, since by making emerge the Real the Buddhist Psychoanalysis is positioned as a resistance field or spiritual Counter discourse against the oppressive strategies of the mundane Power.

From the Gautama-Lacan articulation, some basic postulates of the psychological and philosophical tradition are shocked. Thus the Maitriyana poses the conditions of crossing of the apprentice’s phantom (maya), by transforming metapsychological discipline so that it recognizes the therapeutic consequences of spiritual discovery made by Siddhartha Gautama 2600 years before Freud. Evidently, analysts like Lacan and Fromm had a pleasing position towards Buddhist Spirituality, both having the strong will to show the closeness of their knowledge with the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha). Although Sigmund Freud has shown incomprehension towards the traditions of East, it is inevitably to perceive the profound proximity of his essential theories and practices with those of Siddhartha Gautama. Therefore, the thought and praxis of the Buddhist Psychoanalysis is a tributary of the spiritual movement of Gautama but it is also tributary of the experience of Freud. However, the homage paid by the Gautama-Lacan articulation involves a beyond Freud. This position of the Maitriyana tradition means to convene the being-in-the-staying, acknowledging the influence that generates Spirituality as a horizon both of thought and of the contemporary age. Consequently, the teaching of the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) shows that the paradoxical dialectical synthesis of the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha), which is of a metapsychological, metaphilosophical and metapolitical nature, is about a Postpsychoanalytical Discourse that ceaselessly calls for the Cure (Nirvana) of the inner world and the new reencounter or Awakening (Bodhi) of the True Being of the Way.

In this sense, the term Postpsychoanalysis or Buddhist Psychoanalysis designates this attitude always present in the teaching of the spiritual master which consists of going beyond psychology, philosophy, politics, medicine, science and religion, by receiving the Integrative and Reconciling Spirituality in the trace of the prefix post. This attitude does not only spiritually validate analysts like Freud and Lacan, but it also converts Gautama into the first psychoanalyst of the world. In this way, the Maitriyana confirms that what has been taught by Freud and Lacan it can only be perfectly found within Buddhist Spirituality and not within the boundaries of clinical psychology. Thus it is arisen a postpsychoanalytical current totally differentiated from vices of the past such as metaphysics, nihilism, academicism and materialism that control the phantom (maya) of the Ego. This allows re-founding the subjectivity on the structure of Sublimation (Nirodh) and the Cure (Nirvana), trespassing the limits of the Ego in order to experience a new mode of complex thought.

Buddhist Psychoanalysis is a Postpsychoanalysis rewritten from the point of view of Analytical Spirituality of the Gautama-Lacan articulation, simultaneously clearing the fundamental conditions of its interconnection with respect to Existentialism and Socialism. Thus, the analytical meditation does not only fade the neurotic misery (dukkha) of the subject, but it also leads him to a poetic and subversive reflection facing death and totalitarianism. If the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) necessarily places the advent of Being in the Reconciliation (Maitri) with the ontological features of dissatisfaction, impermanence and insubstantiality of the Real, then they are met the conditions in order that the search for the Self is transited in a logic of Non-Everything. In this way, the Maitriyana is a radical disjunction in the history of humanity: or the Spiritual Discourse or the totalitarian self-destruction. This does not necessarily mean that the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse  (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) wishes to embody a mass movement, but rather the capitalist civilization will extinguish life on Earth (Gaia) in case of the disappearance or indifference towards such Spiritual Discourse.

The Buddhist Psychoanalysis places Gautama in the teaching of Lacan, by indicating a theory of the sublimated subjectivity whose avatar is the reconciled being (maitrisattva) that uncovers the Repressed Self. In this contemplative analytical side it also enters into resonance with Heidegger, by revealing the lack-in-Being or existential castration as the most proper and authentic. Thus the Maitriyana comprises the Unconscious Being within the existentialist logic. Indeed, the teaching of the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva), by not lacking the paradoxes of poetic language, enables abandoning the false ontic project of the Ego to move to the Purpose (Dharma) of Being and Nothingness (Sunyata) which is the acceptance of dissatisfaction, impermanence and insubstantiality. This is the establishment of a sublimatory relation with the unconscious jouissance, being the evanescence of the state of inauthenticity of Ego. This state of existential resolution is made possible by the analytical meditation whose ultimate horizon always entails the historical decision of transforming the entire community (Sangha) through the Awakening (Bodhi) of the apprentice. The route that goes from the domain of the Ego to this existential resolution can be understood by the itinerary alienation-separation-reconciliation, by sublimating the subject’s relationship with his unconscious jouissance. Consequently, what essentially orients the Analytical Existential Libertarian Discourse (Buddha-Dharma-Sangha) of the Reconciliatory Spirituality are the values of psychological Liberty, philosophical equality and political fraternity, by proposing the missing page in the history of the evolution of consciousness, of ideas and of society. Therefore, the Buddhist Psychoanalysis has the Purpose (Dharma) of vanishing the usual order of the internal-external world, by introducing a discontinuity in the status quo by means of the ethical sense of silence or well-saying.

However, the Maitriyana is not dedicated to a work of intellectual and academic erudition that merely shows the Buddhist influences on various Western thinkers, but rather it is about transmitting a more wise and compassionate saying. This is the fundamental concept that clearly shows the Buddhist Psychoanalysis, recovering the sacred through the poetical speaking of the spiritual master and his original paradoxical dialectical logic. This metapsychological and metaphilosophical approach to the topology of Being reveals him as an ontological openness (sunyata) which is repressed by the language of the ordinary mind, but it is timely de-repressed in the experience of the analytical existential Cure (Nirvana). Therefore, the Maitriyana accesses a saying that does not come from metaphysical essentialism or from a nihilistic nullity, but rather it comes from the Empty Dynamic Ground, by approximating thought to the poetic dimension of Being. In accordance with Heidegger, the Free and Enlightened Being (Arhat-Bodhisattva) mystically embeds the silence in the word till the point of sublimating the pulsional jouissance and recovering femininity. Such analytical existential interpretation proposes the thought to be liberated from both metaphysics and nihilism is a new starting point for the mind, by developing the peak knowledge (Satori) as a rediscovery of the original and artistic space-time of the True Self.