The path to enlightenment of sacred married home life: Grihasthya dharma as a guiding ideal for the transpersonal marriage therapist
Stuart Sovatsky
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies September 1, 2019 DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2019.38.1.236 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism Meditation |
| Keywords | Transpersonal psychology Spirituality Enlightenment Gratitude Aesthetics Psychoanalysis Psychotherapist Epistemology Theology |
| Key points | Argues that transpersonal psychology's over-application of monastic Indian teachings to non-monastic lives has created a false dichotomy between engaged and un-engaged spiritual paths, and proposes a householder-based developmental path emphasizing ego-development within marriage and family. |
Abstract
This paper attempts to correct the unwitting reliance of much transpersonal psychology upon Indian texts that were indigenously specific to sannyasins (nonhouseholder, monastics). This includes teachings from advaita vedanta, yoga, and many Buddhist schools on releasement from desire, the diminishing role of the ego, guardedness toward “the mellow-drama” of “worldly” life (as Ram Dass famously cast relational involvements). Some forty years of the unwitting over-application of such teachings to modern non-monastic lives has helped create an artificial split in transpersonal and East-West spirituality teachings involving “engaged/ embodied” and implied “un-engaged/un-embodied” spiritual paths. This article describes the value system and lifelong spiritual developmental path of the married householder (grihasthyin), where healthy ambition and egoic traits such as loyalty and lifelong commitment are emphasized en route to a balanced “ego-dissolution” and “ego-development” within the crucible of lifelong marriage, daily family life, and conscious aging. Thus, “spiritual bypass” issues are highly age-specific. Suggestions for a grihasthya-based marriage therapy are also described, drawing from forty-four years of clinical practice, as well as from the two-thousand-yearold Greco-Judeo-Christian soteriological (spiritually-healing) psychology based in admiration, gratitude, longing, apology, and forgiveness.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |