Jung, Shadow, The Buddha and Coaching...
Ram Ramalingam
CEO, Global Skills Park | CTO | IIT & IIM | Org Transformation | Digital strategy | Product Engineering & Agility | Web3 & Blockchain & Fintech | Data science & AI | Education & Social impact | Vipassana
I am loving the learning moments that seem to come by the dozen with being a coach. I would like to share and hear your comments on one such occasion. Found this extremely intriguing as it seemed to expose a gap in western and eastern mindsets, even amongst expert coaches. I think This should make us ponder and learn more from our differences -
One of my experienced colleagues who specializes in leadership and personal coaching, and whom I encourage to criticize me often knowing the amount of learning I get, recently pointed to a supposed cultural idiosyncracy of mine. That when am responding to criticism or explaining myself, I tend to speak in second or third person, ".. when the client seems to be off track one should occasionally assert and reframe...". He immediately referred me to the Jungian shadow concept and that I might be projecting my feelings and not facing them. I thought hard about it when he mentioned that. And I nodded in (half-hearted) agreement. Having seen the shadow being projected so by others all my life, this made perfect logical sense. Somehow I wasn't fully convinced.
I was recently reading a book on the life of Buddha, by Thich Nhat Hanh. A lovely treatise on psychology, if you ask me. There I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Buddha, in later years, referred to his judegements and feelings in third person. Something like, "Yes, Tathagatha likes his new name" or "Tathagatha feels good about this forest" etc.. (not exact words). This made me wonder, if all forms of depersonalization was repression. After some soul searching, I recollected many of the instances where I had de-personalized, had no uncomfortable associations for me. I truly could talk about these feelings in a neutral fashion without any anxiety. Perhaps the buddhist ideal of non-self? No, am not recommending we become super-consciousness like The buddha. I not anywhere close. But perhaps we ought to be more conscious of the lacuna in western psychological thought.
VP - Head of IT for Operations, Innovation & Digital Transformation
7 年I see above emotional intelligence technique is very effective while drafting goals & receiving feedback
Enterprise Agile Transformation Consultant, Team & Leadership Coach | Organizational Change & Innovation | 23+ Years IT Experience | Coaching, Training, & Delivery
7 年I feel there may be value somewhere in what your colleague averred. Gautama Buddha's inclination to refer himself in the third person in all probability the same as medieval princes's reference to themselves in the third person. This is because the reasons as to why are different. In similar vein, when we do - could be different too. It is like the three Guna's - Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas: Oftentimes Sattva and Tamas look and feel the same way. But they are inherently different.
Engineering Leader - Digital & AI/ML Products
7 年Well written post, Ram. I believe the lacuna in western psychological thought is touched upon by Jung himself: "I am now going to say something which may offend my Indian friends, but actually no offence is intended. I have, so it seems to me, observed the peculiar fact that an Indian, in as much as he is really Indian, does not think, at least not what we call "think". He rather perceives the thought. He resembles the primitive in this respect. I do not say that he is primitive, but that the process of his thinking reminds me of the primitive way of thought production. The primitive's reasoning is mainly an unconscious function, and he perceives its results. We should expect such a peculiarity in any civilization which has enjoyed an almost unbroken continuity from primitive times." - excerpt from his book "Psychology and the East"
DATA | CLOUD | DIGITAL | START-UP FOUNDER | GCC LEADER
7 年Very interesting point of view Ram. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a east-west cultural diversity leadership training, where I came across some stereotypes and judgemental explanation of cultural differences. I think we need to accept and explain the differences than being judgemental.