{"id":518,"date":"2009-03-31T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-31T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html"},"modified":"2009-03-31T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T10:00:00","slug":"the-couch-and-the-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html","title":{"rendered":"The Couch and the Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started reading this book, <em>The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism<\/em>, edited by Anthony Molino. It is a compilation of essays, the first of which is titled \u201cPsychology in Primitive Buddhism,\u201d by Joe Tom Sun, published in 1924. The essay is a paragraph by paragraph comparison of basic Buddhist concepts with basic Freudian thinking.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3835\" src=\"https:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg\" alt=\"couchandtree\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" \/><br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThis paragraph was particularly interesting to me:<br \/>\n&#8220;Profound insight into the psychology of the conscious mind was attained and later expounded in their [Buddhist] philosophy. Emotion, for example, was frankly stated to be due to ignorance. A casual glance at the underlying motive for the majority of emotional outbreaks will make it clear that these are due to the mechanism of displacement, a by-product of ignorance, lack of psychic insight. <strong>Furthermore, a morbid emotion is not cured by merely teaching a patient its etiology. Its cure is, however, brought about by analysis (vijja, wisdom) which is characterized by instruction and the deepest of meditation<\/strong> \u2013 that is, free association and being led gently backwards from the present effect to the past cause&#8221; (7).<br \/>\nStrange wording aside, I liked how Joe Tom Sun compared wisdom and analysis. It implies a deep understanding of one&#8217;s emotions and where they come from as being a key component of mindfulness. This is something that resonates with me. My &#8220;emotional outbreaks&#8221; are almost always due to my own lack of understanding about my reaction to an event or something someone says, and letting it spiral out without stopping to analyze it.<br \/>\nWhat do you guys think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started reading this book, The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, edited by Anthony Molino. It is a compilation of essays, the first of which is titled \u201cPsychology in Primitive Buddhism,\u201d by Joe Tom Sun, published in 1924. The essay is a paragraph by paragraph comparison of basic Buddhist concepts with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Couch and the Tree - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Couch and the Tree - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I started reading this book, The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, edited by Anthony Molino. It is a compilation of essays, the first of which is titled \u201cPsychology in Primitive Buddhism,\u201d by Joe Tom Sun, published in 1924. The essay is a paragraph by paragraph comparison of basic Buddhist concepts with&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-31T10:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emily Herzlin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Couch and the Tree - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Couch and the Tree - One City","og_description":"I started reading this book, The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, edited by Anthony Molino. It is a compilation of essays, the first of which is titled \u201cPsychology in Primitive Buddhism,\u201d by Joe Tom Sun, published in 1924. The essay is a paragraph by paragraph comparison of basic Buddhist concepts with&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-03-31T10:00:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg"}],"author":"Emily Herzlin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html","name":"The Couch and the Tree - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg","datePublished":"2009-03-31T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-31T10:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/60ceefaf4f60083515d6b0a03fd5e3ef"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/onecity.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/couchandtree.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/03\/the-couch-and-the-tree.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Couch and the Tree"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/60ceefaf4f60083515d6b0a03fd5e3ef","name":"Emily Herzlin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/233\/23312275747e2eadb402e574469b865cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/233\/23312275747e2eadb402e574469b865cx96.jpg","caption":"Emily Herzlin"},"description":"Emily Herzlin graduated New York University with a B.A. in Dramatic Literature and Creative Writing in 2008. She is a freelance writer for the Women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s International Perspective, and her writing has been published in Sentient City, the ID Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s online literary magazine. Emily is also a playwright and winner of the Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwrighting Competition for her one-act play \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Assemblage.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her writing is influenced by art, artists, psychology, and spirituality. She has run drama and arts workshops in schools in NYC and Long Island, and teaches children with autism. Emily is working on her M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts. Emily has been attending classes and workshops at the ID Project since 2005.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/eherzlin"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}