Mark Epstein, MD, is an American author and psychiatrist who integrates Buddhism with Western psychotherapy. A meditation and yoga practitioner, he has written numerous books about ego, trauma, sexuality, and finding wholeness.
CLEAR ALL
You first develop your ego when you are two or three years old. It creeps into existence the moment you realize that you are not empty—you are a self, and everyone else has a self in them. As you grow up, it latches onto positive and negative feedback and uses them to build the story of who you are.
The line between psychology and spirituality has blurred, as clinicians, their patients, and religious seekers explore new perspectives on the self.
As a psychiatrist to people with spiritual aspirations, I am witness to some of the ways in which spirituality and sexuality interact, not always to either of their benefits.
We are what we think, having become what we thought.
This week on The Road Home Podcast, Ethan shares a conversation with Dr. Mark Epstein about the intersection of Western psychotherapy and Buddhist psychology.
For decades, Western psychology has promised fulfillment through building and strengthening the ego. We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way.
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Psychology and Buddhism: what they share, how they differ, and do we need both?
Intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick . . . is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.
A Buddhist practitioner finds that the best way to begin yoga is with a beginner’s mind.
“Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy both hold out hope for a more flexible ego, one that does not pit the individual against everyone else in a futile attempt to gain total surety.”
Photo Credit: Lars Niki / Stringer / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images
We are what we think, having become what we thought.
