Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Description: Tangles and Webs, by Buddhist scholar in the Theravāda tradition Padmasiri De Silva, uses existential philosophy and the psychoanalytic tradition to interpret and understand Buddhist teachings. The author upon draws on Freud, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Satre and others with the idea that existentialism is more a "tone of voice" than a systemized intellectual ideology. De Silva particularly focuses on the Buddhist concept of suffering (dukkha). Tying together Buddhist and existential ideas is the concept of the "human tangle," an idea elaborated on in one Buddhist text: "Tangles within, tangles without, entangled is the race of sentient beings." The author weaves this theme to the broader existential views on anxiety and alienation. The book ends with a postscript on therapy which looks at existential approaches to the treatment of psychopathology as found in existential psychology and phenomenology-based psychiatry. (Zach Rowinski 2005-01-06)

Table of Contents: Foreward / Ninian Smart -- Foreward -- The philosophy of existentialism -- The critique of pleasure in Soren Kierkegaard and early Buddhism -- The tragic sense of life -- The 'riddle' of anxiety and the enmeshed ego -- The web of self-isolation -- Postscript on therapy