A Psychological Approach to the Nature of Personality in the Light of Buddhism

Buddhism, as a philosophy, was originated and developed in the 6th century B.C. The Yogachara system of Buddhism was developed by Zuan Jang, the 7th Century Chinese scholar, who travelled to India between 629 and 645 and composed an extended commentary on Vasubandhu's (the Buddhist scholar) Thirty Verses. One major attraction of Buddhism to the contemporary world is its therapeutic value, which is derived from its penetrating insights into the human psyche and many of its practices. This led some modern psychologists as well as scholars of Buddhism with training in psychology to interpret Buddhism in the lens of modern psychology. In the words of Epstein, Buddhism is a form of depth psychology and “the Buddha may well have been the original psychoanalyst, or at least, the first to use the mode of analytic inquiry that Freud was later to codify and develop”. An attempt has been made in this paper to expound the concept of personality of in Buddhism in comparison to Freud and Jung.