What do you think?
Rate this book
The Sanity We Are Born With: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology
More and more mental health professionals are discovering the rich tradition of Buddhist psychology and integrating its insights into their work with clients. Buddhist tradition teaches that all of us are born with what Chögyam Trungpa terms "basic sanity," or inherent goodness, health, and clear perception. Helping ourselves and others to connect with this intrinsic ground of sanity and health is the subject of this collection of teachings, which the author gave to Western psychologists, psychotherapists, and students of Buddhist meditation over a number of years.
The Sanity We Are Born With describes how anyone can strengthen their mental health, and it also addresses the specific problems and needs of people in profound psychological distress. Additionally, the author speaks to the concerns of psychotherapists and any health care professionals who work with their patients' states of mind. The collection includes teachings on:
• Buddhist concepts of mind, ego, and intelligence, and how these ideas can be employed in working on oneself and with others
• meditation as a way of training the mind and cultivating mindfulness
• nurturing our intrinsic health and basic sanity
• guidance for psychotherapists and health professionals
The Sanity We Are Born With describes how anyone can strengthen their mental health, and it also addresses the specific problems and needs of people in profound psychological distress. Additionally, the author speaks to the concerns of psychotherapists and any health care professionals who work with their patients' states of mind. The collection includes teachings on:
• Buddhist concepts of mind, ego, and intelligence, and how these ideas can be employed in working on oneself and with others
• meditation as a way of training the mind and cultivating mindfulness
• nurturing our intrinsic health and basic sanity
• guidance for psychotherapists and health professionals
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2005
80 people are currently reading
709 people want to read
About the author
Chögyam Trungpa
166 books814 followersVidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Tibetan: ཆོས་ རྒྱམ་ དྲུང་པ་ Wylie: Chos rgyam Drung pa; also known as Dorje Dradul of Mukpo, Surmang Trungpa, after his monastery, or Chökyi Gyatso, of which Chögyam is an abbreviation) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, and artist. He was the 11th descendent in the line of Trungpa tulkus of the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism. He was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools, and was an adherent of the rimay or "non-sectarian" movement within Tibetan Buddhism, which aspired to bring together and make available all the valuable teachings of the different schools, free of sectarian rivalry.
Trungpa was a significant figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method, a presentation of the Buddhadharma largely devoid of ethnic trappings. In 1963, he moved to England to study comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts at Oxford University. During this time, he also studied Japanese flower arranging and received an instructors degree from the Sogetsu school of ikebana. In 1967, he moved to Scotland, where he founded the Samye Ling meditation centre.
Shortly thereafter, a variety of experiences—including a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body—led him to give up his monastic vows and work as a lay teacher. In 1969, he published Meditation in Action , the first of fourteen books on the spiritual path published during his lifetime. The following year he married Diana Pybus and moved to the United States, where he established his first North American meditation centre, Tail of the Tiger (now known as Karmê-Chöling) in Barnet, Vermont.
In 1986, he moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, where hundreds of his students had settled. That Autumn, after years of heavy alcohol use, he had a cardiac arrest, and he died of heart failure the following Spring. His legacy is carried on by his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, under the banner of Shambhala International and the Nalanda Translation Committee.
Trungpa was a significant figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method, a presentation of the Buddhadharma largely devoid of ethnic trappings. In 1963, he moved to England to study comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts at Oxford University. During this time, he also studied Japanese flower arranging and received an instructors degree from the Sogetsu school of ikebana. In 1967, he moved to Scotland, where he founded the Samye Ling meditation centre.
Shortly thereafter, a variety of experiences—including a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body—led him to give up his monastic vows and work as a lay teacher. In 1969, he published Meditation in Action , the first of fourteen books on the spiritual path published during his lifetime. The following year he married Diana Pybus and moved to the United States, where he established his first North American meditation centre, Tail of the Tiger (now known as Karmê-Chöling) in Barnet, Vermont.
In 1986, he moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, where hundreds of his students had settled. That Autumn, after years of heavy alcohol use, he had a cardiac arrest, and he died of heart failure the following Spring. His legacy is carried on by his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, under the banner of Shambhala International and the Nalanda Translation Committee.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 24, 2011
Trungpa beats the pants off of Chodron any day of the week in terms of readability and a dramatic decrease in eye rolling. That said, he makes some pretty outrageous claims in this book that are not just sort of absurd, but dangerous. The worst ones being that all disease is summoned and created by the person that contracts the disease and that meditation could cure all disease. Of course this is not backed up by any data or empirical evidence (an easy one would be that no Tibetan monks have ever contracted a disease of any kind). Another kind of nasty claim is that the only reason people with diseases want to get better is so that they can avoid living their lives again. These kinds of unsubstantiated scientific claims really discredit the otherwise delightful and and insightful nature of the book. As history has shown that Trungpa was a much better spiritual leader than doctor (see fantastic failure of the the Maitri Healing Community), he would have been better off sticking to what he knows best: booze and Buddhism.
May 11, 2013
Brilliant Tibetan Buddhist take on how neurosis forms, among other useful insights! There are intersections with Western psychology, in fact the whole book is a dialogue between Chogyam Trungpa - a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and teacher who formed and led a movement - Shambhala - in North America and worldwide, and people trained in the Western psychological tradition.
I agree with an earlier comment that meditation is no cure for say psychosis, but that meditation is an aid to help achieve mental balance is indisputable. I think Trungpa is entrenched in his tradition and that is in fact a strength of the book. It can help one understand this very different point of view, given that he knows it best. It's an age-old theory on how the mind works and falters, but only one among many.
Since this perspective recommends a giving up of the "sense of self" - personality as a distinct, separate entity in the world, the idea is quite radical and not practicable by all. Perhaps it makes most sense to those who train in meditation techniques from a very early age and imbibe related philosophies.
I think both Western psychology and Tibetan Buddhism have much to offer to help understand the human mind and psyche. I've found it useful to hold all these ideas in my little brain! (I did do a Bachelors in Psychology and took refuge in Buddhism 12 years ago.) I have found meditation and Buddhism extremely useful in dealing with life issues.
I agree with an earlier comment that meditation is no cure for say psychosis, but that meditation is an aid to help achieve mental balance is indisputable. I think Trungpa is entrenched in his tradition and that is in fact a strength of the book. It can help one understand this very different point of view, given that he knows it best. It's an age-old theory on how the mind works and falters, but only one among many.
Since this perspective recommends a giving up of the "sense of self" - personality as a distinct, separate entity in the world, the idea is quite radical and not practicable by all. Perhaps it makes most sense to those who train in meditation techniques from a very early age and imbibe related philosophies.
I think both Western psychology and Tibetan Buddhism have much to offer to help understand the human mind and psyche. I've found it useful to hold all these ideas in my little brain! (I did do a Bachelors in Psychology and took refuge in Buddhism 12 years ago.) I have found meditation and Buddhism extremely useful in dealing with life issues.
November 15, 2017
เล่มนี้เหมือนเป็นไกด์ไลน์สำหรับสายปฏิบัติเลย เราเลยรู้สึกว่ามันห่างจากเราพอสมควร เราชอบไอเดียหลายอย่าง แต่ไม่ได้รู้สึกสนุกหรือตื่นเต้นเหมือนตอนอ่านเล่มๆ อื่น ของคนอื่นที่เคยอ่านก่อนหน้านี้
April 8, 2014
Disorganized and unclear, this series of lectures and essays makes it particularly difficult to take "Buddhist" psychology seriously. The Tibetan Buddhist emphasis meshes with outdated psychological theories that may have been exciting and relevant in the 1970s but are now too close to New Age wishful thinking. A genuine Buddhist practice and understanding of Buddhist philosophy could very well inform approaches to psychological health - current work on neuroscience, meditation, and health outcomes is doing this - but this book is not a great place to start investigating such a possibility.
September 27, 2018
I'm a fan of Trungpa and I never thought I would score one of his book so low. Obviously, I'm not the targer public for this book.
March 1, 2014
This book was helpful in illucidating the importance of awareness. Openness for confusion, not knowing and fundamental fear. Being humble in recognizing that people have the similar experiences of birth, aging, illness and death.
Trungpa also speaks about creating one's own illnesses, a typical posture for treating a specific neurosis, etc. As far as I know, this is unscientific and i.m.o. the book could have done without these parts. The specific translation I read (Dutch), could have used some finetuning as well.
Trungpa also speaks about creating one's own illnesses, a typical posture for treating a specific neurosis, etc. As far as I know, this is unscientific and i.m.o. the book could have done without these parts. The specific translation I read (Dutch), could have used some finetuning as well.
October 6, 2024
I’m glad I picked this book back up after sitting in my shelf for the past 2 years or so. Some of the reviews of this work state that it’s organized in a confusing manner, but I found it very straightforward. What people might be referring to is how is it inherently difficult to describe abstract, introspective processes while taking care not to box ourselves into more concepts and confusion.
The book is divided into three sections: Meditation, Mind, and Psychology. Readers should keep in mind that much of this book is transcribed lectures/Q&A’s, so it was never necessarily meant to be perfectly cohesive. Nonetheless, many of the ideas overlap in each chapter due to the substance of what CTR is dealing with: describing the basic ground of existence, what the title references to as “sanity”, and meditation’s role in connecting us back with it. In the vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the basic ground is also basic goodness, but he cautions against taking this in a moral sense. The basic ground is good because it just is—it is just being, pure and simple. This is how sanity is defined.
On the flip side, insanity is defined as the tendency to hurt oneself or others. Everyone possesses this innate basic ground of sane being before the five skandhas develop to form our basic confusion. (*the five skandhas are form, feeling, perception-impulse, intellect, and consciousness). I appreciate how the mahamudra teaching lays out that ignorance is not a Bad thing per se. Rather, the existence of ignorance is also what contains the possibility for nirvana/enlightenment; without ignorance, there would be no nirvana, so they’re relative to each other on a spectrum, so to speak. Not knowing much about the Buddhist tradition before reading this book, I found the five skandhas to be clarifying and compelling in the sense that they don’t strike me as dogmatic, metaphysical ideas—they can be interpreted to refer to a very primordial, centuries long process of how human evolution has occurred to create the ego, which is ultimately a hallucination.
Historically, “insanity” has been wielded as a weapon to advance the carceral state and strip people of their autonomy. A revolutionary response to that has been for victims of the violent psychiatric state to reclaim insanity and madness as positive and central to their identity. I think this book deals with something outside of that movement. CTR is not trying to argue that sanity = rational/good and insanity = irrational/bad. Actually, his criticisms of western psychiatry were probably very progressive for his time, in how they bring a much, much more compassionate approach to people dealing with mental health struggles. Rather than seeing patients as broken and needing to be fixed, he argues for them to be understood as innately sane and valuable, and the therapist’s job is merely to be a conduit for reconnecting to that basic, inherent goodness and maitri (*maitri: a gentleness and kindness towards oneself, which extends to include a non-aggression to the rest of the world).
Of course, there were some claims that didn’t age well, which is why I leave 4 stars. The main one being a section arguing that illnesses—physical and mental—begin spiritually, or at least psychologically. There’s a lot to be said for psychosomatics. Unfortunately, his framing in this particular instance comes off as saying that people with cancer have manifested their illness through bad psychological states, which is (to me) obviously wrong. There were occasionally threads of individualism that I disagreed with as well, suggesting that people who don’t get better do so because they don’t want to, or some similar “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” mentalities. In addition, I was skeptical of the techniques they described in the Psychology section for the praxis of the Maitri center (which other reviews tell me was a failure). It seems that the idea behind Maitri Space Therapy was to position people’s bodies in certain postures based on their neurosis style, derived from the 5 buddha families (patterns of confused conditioning). Despite this being unsuccessful and pseudo-scientific, I wouldn’t throw the baby away with the bath water and condemn this entire book.
Ultimately, my favorite part of reading this book was the little gems found sprinkled throughout. For instance, it talks about true creation being something we simply do for the sake of doing. In the act of doing, possibilities open themselves up to us. We don’t necessarily plan or grasp for these possibilities, and neither can we predict them. Alternatively, ego’s approach to creation is one that ambitiously sets up goalposts and targets, then suffers once we do or don’t achieve them. Another gem was his insistence that meditation is not therapy. He grounds therapy as being in the hopes of changing, while meditation is something you simply do. We do not carry any concepts of grasping to fix, or aiming to achieve into meditation. Things may happen as a result of a meditation practice, but we can’t predict how, or where, it becomes us. This is helpful for me in the sense that western psychology and culture in general has appropriated so many aspects of Buddhism without putting them in their proper cultural context. His explanation of the difference between the two helps counter this tendency.
Long story longer, this is a book I’ll revisit over the years, and I would recommend reading it if catches your eye.
The book is divided into three sections: Meditation, Mind, and Psychology. Readers should keep in mind that much of this book is transcribed lectures/Q&A’s, so it was never necessarily meant to be perfectly cohesive. Nonetheless, many of the ideas overlap in each chapter due to the substance of what CTR is dealing with: describing the basic ground of existence, what the title references to as “sanity”, and meditation’s role in connecting us back with it. In the vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the basic ground is also basic goodness, but he cautions against taking this in a moral sense. The basic ground is good because it just is—it is just being, pure and simple. This is how sanity is defined.
On the flip side, insanity is defined as the tendency to hurt oneself or others. Everyone possesses this innate basic ground of sane being before the five skandhas develop to form our basic confusion. (*the five skandhas are form, feeling, perception-impulse, intellect, and consciousness). I appreciate how the mahamudra teaching lays out that ignorance is not a Bad thing per se. Rather, the existence of ignorance is also what contains the possibility for nirvana/enlightenment; without ignorance, there would be no nirvana, so they’re relative to each other on a spectrum, so to speak. Not knowing much about the Buddhist tradition before reading this book, I found the five skandhas to be clarifying and compelling in the sense that they don’t strike me as dogmatic, metaphysical ideas—they can be interpreted to refer to a very primordial, centuries long process of how human evolution has occurred to create the ego, which is ultimately a hallucination.
Historically, “insanity” has been wielded as a weapon to advance the carceral state and strip people of their autonomy. A revolutionary response to that has been for victims of the violent psychiatric state to reclaim insanity and madness as positive and central to their identity. I think this book deals with something outside of that movement. CTR is not trying to argue that sanity = rational/good and insanity = irrational/bad. Actually, his criticisms of western psychiatry were probably very progressive for his time, in how they bring a much, much more compassionate approach to people dealing with mental health struggles. Rather than seeing patients as broken and needing to be fixed, he argues for them to be understood as innately sane and valuable, and the therapist’s job is merely to be a conduit for reconnecting to that basic, inherent goodness and maitri (*maitri: a gentleness and kindness towards oneself, which extends to include a non-aggression to the rest of the world).
Of course, there were some claims that didn’t age well, which is why I leave 4 stars. The main one being a section arguing that illnesses—physical and mental—begin spiritually, or at least psychologically. There’s a lot to be said for psychosomatics. Unfortunately, his framing in this particular instance comes off as saying that people with cancer have manifested their illness through bad psychological states, which is (to me) obviously wrong. There were occasionally threads of individualism that I disagreed with as well, suggesting that people who don’t get better do so because they don’t want to, or some similar “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” mentalities. In addition, I was skeptical of the techniques they described in the Psychology section for the praxis of the Maitri center (which other reviews tell me was a failure). It seems that the idea behind Maitri Space Therapy was to position people’s bodies in certain postures based on their neurosis style, derived from the 5 buddha families (patterns of confused conditioning). Despite this being unsuccessful and pseudo-scientific, I wouldn’t throw the baby away with the bath water and condemn this entire book.
Ultimately, my favorite part of reading this book was the little gems found sprinkled throughout. For instance, it talks about true creation being something we simply do for the sake of doing. In the act of doing, possibilities open themselves up to us. We don’t necessarily plan or grasp for these possibilities, and neither can we predict them. Alternatively, ego’s approach to creation is one that ambitiously sets up goalposts and targets, then suffers once we do or don’t achieve them. Another gem was his insistence that meditation is not therapy. He grounds therapy as being in the hopes of changing, while meditation is something you simply do. We do not carry any concepts of grasping to fix, or aiming to achieve into meditation. Things may happen as a result of a meditation practice, but we can’t predict how, or where, it becomes us. This is helpful for me in the sense that western psychology and culture in general has appropriated so many aspects of Buddhism without putting them in their proper cultural context. His explanation of the difference between the two helps counter this tendency.
Long story longer, this is a book I’ll revisit over the years, and I would recommend reading it if catches your eye.
August 3, 2018
The book turned out to be more interesting than I first thought. Buddhist psychology is logical. Makes you think deeper and is not a trend. We all need to understand ourselves better.
August 23, 2022
I admit to skim reading this after thinking this is where mindfulness psychology originated. The author was extremely controversial which is truly what resulted in my skim reading. Any religious leader can be prone to abusing power, but this really was quite disturbing. It's time for me to move on to another book.
February 17, 2020
Some good writing, but often repetitive and communicated in less relatable ways. It was a slog through some articles while others were more clear. More for the diehard Shambhala person.
August 11, 2024
Another wonderful book on Buddhist Psychology from the Tibetan Buddhist view. Full of questions and answers, this book is unique in dealing with the subject.
November 16, 2020
Trungpa was a con man who formed a cult, in some ways similar to Donald Trump. Contrary to the descriptions of his sexual relations with students provided by other reviewers, he was a predator who, for example, had his cult followers violently sexually assault poets W.S. Merwin and Dana Noane while he watched and taunted them with racist insults. Trungpa's Shambhala successors carried on his hateful legacy - one of them concealed his HIV infection and infected many students, at least one of whom died, and Trungpa's son has been accused of multiple accounts of rape. I attended a tradition Tibetan temple with my family for years and we were always treated with love consistent with the teachings of the buddha and when I asked about Shambhala, I was told that it had nothing to do with buddhism. I recommend reading Andrea Winn's Buddhist Project Sunshine.
July 20, 2015
some very good insights and awesome tidbits/quotes smattered throughout the book, but it's in-between some confusing rambligns with no structure. This is the first book I've read from CT and I think it was a poor choice to start with. Might revisit after a few other of his more mainstream books.
March 11, 2012
I'd read some of these essays before in other places, but it was good to refresh my memory and to see how many intersections there are between Buddhist philosophy and Western psychology.
March 31, 2017
Good Discussion of Buddhist Psychology, But Too Much Previously Published Material
This work is a posthumous publication taken from the collection of Trungpa Rinpoche's seminars. If I had not read Trungpa's works before, then I would give this five stars. However, while there is some new material on the intersection of Western Psychology and Buddhism, at least two thirds of the book has been previously published in other works, such as The Myth of Freedom.
Nonetheless, Trungpa's discussion of the five Skandhas and the different Buddhist families are very worthwhile. Likewise, is the compassionate wholistic approach to treating mental illness, which was far ahead of its time when Trungpa discussed the subject. Overall, I recommend this book, with the caveat to those readers who are very familiar with Trungpa's Rinpoche's writings.
This work is a posthumous publication taken from the collection of Trungpa Rinpoche's seminars. If I had not read Trungpa's works before, then I would give this five stars. However, while there is some new material on the intersection of Western Psychology and Buddhism, at least two thirds of the book has been previously published in other works, such as The Myth of Freedom.
Nonetheless, Trungpa's discussion of the five Skandhas and the different Buddhist families are very worthwhile. Likewise, is the compassionate wholistic approach to treating mental illness, which was far ahead of its time when Trungpa discussed the subject. Overall, I recommend this book, with the caveat to those readers who are very familiar with Trungpa's Rinpoche's writings.
Read
February 4, 2018More and more mental health professionals are discovering the rich tradition of Buddhist psychology and integrating its insights into their work with clients. Buddhist tradition teaches that all of us are born with what Chögyam Trungpa terms "basic sanity," or inherent goodness, health, and clear perception. Helping ourselves and others to connect with this intrinsic ground of sanity and health is the subject of this collection of teachings, which the author gave to Western psychologists, psychotherapists, and students of Buddhist meditation over a number of years.
The Sanity We Are Born With describes how anyone can strengthen their mental health, and it also addresses the specific problems and needs of people in profound psychological distress. Additionally, the author speaks to the concerns of psychotherapists and any health care professionals who work with their patients' states of mind. The collection includes teachings on:
• Buddhist concepts of mind, ego, and intelligence, and how these ideas can be employed in working on oneself and with others
• meditation as a way of training the mind and cultivating mindfulness
• nurturing our intrinsic health and basic sanity
• guidance for psychotherapists and health professionals
The Sanity We Are Born With describes how anyone can strengthen their mental health, and it also addresses the specific problems and needs of people in profound psychological distress. Additionally, the author speaks to the concerns of psychotherapists and any health care professionals who work with their patients' states of mind. The collection includes teachings on:
• Buddhist concepts of mind, ego, and intelligence, and how these ideas can be employed in working on oneself and with others
• meditation as a way of training the mind and cultivating mindfulness
• nurturing our intrinsic health and basic sanity
• guidance for psychotherapists and health professionals
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews