Zen in Love

An erotic element is, however, definitely present in Hakuin's Zen art. Certain of his monumental ichi calligraphies have the appearance of huge phalluses, and there is a sketch of a pillar phallus, a common sight in rural Japan, with this inscription: "Even when the wind blows this doesn't move!".

Hakuin did many paintings of bonseki, a miniature landscape in a tray. The painting served as both a clever satire on misbehaving monks and as a love charm. Ostensibly, the inscription on the painting says,

Mr. Bon,

Are you going to worship

At Ishiyama Temple?

"Bon", however, is a homonym for "monk" in Japanese; near Ishiyama Temple there was a famous red-light district that was really the main attraction. Thus the inscription also means:

Mr. Monk,

Are you going to Ishiyama Temple

To get laid?

(Από το βιβλίο "Lust for Enlightenment, Buddhism and Sex" του John Stevens)

Towards a Transpersonal Psychology

"Thus for example, psychoanalysis does not entertain the possibility of transcendent states of consciousness and hence has tended to interpret these from its own perspective as being pathological ego regressions of near psychotic proportions. Thus, mystical experiences have been interpreted as ' neurotic regressions to union with the breast', ecstatic states viewed as 'narcissistic neurosis,' and enlightenment dismissed as regression to intrauterine stages.

Transpersonal psychology emerged in the sixties in response to a concern that the previous major models, the first three forces of Western psychology - behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic psychology - had been limited in their recognition of the upper reaches of psychological development.

As Gordon Allport noted, ' We have on the psychology of liberation-nothing.'

Toward the end of his life, Abraham Maslow, one of the major pioneers in humanistic psychology, called attention to possibilities beyond self-actualization in which the individual transcended the customary limits of identity and experience. In 1968 he concluded that, " I consider Humanistic, Third Force Psychology, to be transitional, a preparation for a still 'higher' Fourth Psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, self actualization and the like."

(Από το βιβλίο των Roger N. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. και Frances Vaughan, Ph.D., "Beyond Ego, Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology")