Critique of Pragmatic Dharma #1

I recently listened to a two-part conversation on the engaging Imperfect Buddha podcast with Daniel Ingram. The conversation, which was at times interesting and at others disappointing, provoked me to write a few reflections on the Pragmatic Dharma movement, a loosely knit collection of meditation teachers and practitioners that has emerged in recent years, perhaps beginning with Ingram’s book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. My engagement with the movement has been twofold: (1) I read the book a number of years ago and have engaged with its practices and (2) as a practicing psychoanalyst, I have worked with several patients who are deeply engaged in meditation practice and have been able to observe the benefits they have derived from that engagement as well as the ways in which it has been problematic for them.

I begin with two questions about Pragmatic Dharma (henceforth, PD) as presented in Ingram’s book: (1) what is its underlying theory of mind and (2) what is its theory of transformation? The practice presented by PD, derived from Mahasi-style meditation, involves directing attention to ‘sensate experience’ as it emerges form the ‘six sense doors’ (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and consciousness) in ‘moment-to-moment experience.’ The emphasis on moment-to-moment experience, which can be traced to the notion of ‘momentary consciousness’ elaborated in the Abdhidharma literature, seems to suggest that experience emerges through the six sense doors in each moment, vanishes completely, and then re-emerges in the next moment.

My argument is that while this is certainly an interesting, even at times fruitful way of engaging with experience, it is a profoundly impoverished view of the mind. (I am certainly aware that there is extensive philosophical engagement with the concerns I am raising throughout the vast collection of Buddhist literature. It’s simply beyond my expertise to mobilize that literature in this critique.) This impoverishment stems from the fact that this model of the mind privileges conscious experience while failing to acknowledge that the mind also has a latent (or depth, or unconscious) aspect. Memory, a faculty of the mind, would seem to require that something persists between mind moments, though that something persists as a latent structure of the mind. Similarly, one of the primary functions of the mind is to make meaning of experience.

Meaning is the recognition of a pattern, a linking of disparate elements. For this to happen, we must engage the faculty of memory. Much of the meaning that we make involves recognizing patterns that emerge over time – not in a single mind moment but, rather, over spans of time that vary in length. Let me give an example. I’m with a friend and sensations emerge in my experience that I recognize to be ‘generosity.’ Warmth emerges in the area of my heart and thoughts about how I might behave for his benefit emerge in my moment-to-moment experience. Let’s, for a moment, adopt another way of looking at this scenario. I know from my personal history that I tend to feel generous as a way to avoid the guilt and shame that accompany focusing on my own interests. I know this because I have been able to observe that pattern over time; linking together numerous examples of thought, feeling, and behavior allows me to understand that my current feeling of generosity is an attempt to avoid focusing on my own projects and ambitions.

This, in my opinion, speaks to the problem of spiritual bypassing and boundary violation that are so rampant in meditation communities. Many have spoken to the fact that spiritual teachers are subject to idealization by students, lose access to accountability structures, etc. Another factor, less recognized, is that meditation as traditionally conceived undercuts the process of psychological self-understanding (i.e., recognizing the meaning of our thoughts and feelings, how they link up with our personal histories, and how they drive patterns of emotion and behavior that recur over time).

I have seen this in process take place in many patients who have engaged extensively with meditation and also in my own engagement with these practices. Recurrent training to attend to the sensate experience moment-by-moment can undermine the capacity to make meaning of experience. (The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion described this as an ‘attack on linking’, that is, on the meaning-making function of the mind.) When I ask these patients how they are feeling, or what they are thinking, or what’s on their mind, they tend to answer in terms of their sensate experience, which makes it difficult for them to engage in a transformative process of psychological self-understanding.

In my next post, I’ll look at the theory of transformation implicit in PD.