Back in the 1990s, I edited a book called Beyond Carl Rogers. Carl Rogers was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century and I had met him on a number of occasions. His ideas, his principles, his enthusiasm had been quite an influence upon me, my thinking, my work, my life.
Rogers had the idea that, if a certain climate of psychological conditions was provided, there would necessarily follow constructive personality growth. These conditions included accurate empathy, unconditional positive regard, and a kind of authenticity that he called congruence.
In the book Beyond Carl Rogers, which was a kind of tribute, because Rogers had a very scientific way of thinking of things and he always hoped that his work would be a springboard which other people would go beyond, in the book I brought together the writings of a dozen or so excellent practitioners and theorists, who had all, like myself, been influenced by Rogers’ work.
I have one chapter in the book myself. My chapter was called: The necessary condition is love. The point was, firstly, that unconditional positive regard, accurate empathy: these are kind of technical psychological jargon words basically for love. The important thing in life is love.
However, there was a twist to the way I presented this, and that twist has been part of my thinking ever since and was further developed in a later book called Love and its Disappointment. The twist is this: According to Roger’s theory, if you’re in receipt of these conditions, if you’re in receipt of love, there will necessarily be constructive personality growth. But what I suggested was that it’s not so much being in receipt of love as being able to love and having our love received. That is the crucial thing.
Basically, my theory was: People are born to love. We come into this world of conditions. We have a built-in propensity to love, to embrace, to reach out to, to engage with the other people in this world and not just the people – the plants, the animals, the cosmos, everything.
We are beings built on love, and we want to love, it’s built in that we want to love. But, of course, this love runs up against conditions. It runs up against the difficulties of this material world. It runs up against what Buddhists call conditionality; and this running-up against it is frustrating, is difficult, is thwarting, and so very often love winds us up with disappointment. We try to love others, but they seem not to receive our love; and, of course, this is partly just a matter of style. They don’t receive our love in the way that we’re expecting. Perhaps they receive it in some other way, but we don’t recognize it. Anyway, it’s frustrating.
So, this theory that we are born to love and that our life in this conditioned world is one which delivers difficulties in this task of living out the intention to love, is one that I have carried with me for many years.
In the practice of Pureland Buddhism we express our love and our love is never disappointed when it is directed towards Amida. Amida is the Buddha of All-Acceptance. He receives our love without putting any barriers in the way. This is the basic mechanism of the nembutsu. In the nembutsu I cry out to Amida with all my love and that love is received.
Thank you very much
Namo Amida Bu
Dharmavidya
David
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