This hermeneutic dissertation explores numerous psychological issues related to compassion by bringing Western psychodynamic literature into dialogue with the Stages of the Path literature from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which has extensively studied the psychology of compassion for centuries. The dissertation is structured around three principle aspects of the Mahayana Buddhist path which were outlined by the great Tibetan teacher, Lama Tsong Khapa, as renunciation, the altruistic awakening mind (bodhicitta), and the wisdom arising from meditation on emptiness. Buddhist meditative methods are discussed from a developmental perspective; mediations on karma, the preciousness of human life, impermanence, suffering, and renunciation are analyzed as significant preliminaries to healthy, stable compassion. The relationships between compassion, empathy, love, and altruism are discussed, as is the role of compassion in psychological development and mental health. The relationship between the ego and the development of compassion is also addressed.
Psychological implications of two essential Tibetan meditative methods for generating compassion and altruism are also explored. The problem of narcissism in relation to compassion is explored, as are object relations issues related to the depressive position and to projective identification. How these Buddhist meditative methods evoke these deep psychodynamic issues in order to allow the practitioner gradually to bring about structural changes in psychic functioning is addressed.
The psychological effects of meditation on emptiness and the relationship between this kind of meditation and compassion are also discussed. Clinical and social applications of the insights regarding compassion and the methods for generating compassion are also explored, and areas for further research into this subject, which has previously received limited attention in Western psychological literature, are suggested.
