Defining Self at the Contact Boundary

• Buddhism and Gestalt by Philip Brownell, 12/6/96
  • Buddhism and Gestalt, Gestalt and Buddism by J. Richard White, 12/14/96
    • Which Paradox Are We Talking About? by Stuart Stawman, 12/19/96
      
      

I am thankful for this clarifying that Stewart has done. Briefly, yes, the paradox I see is in the stretched out polarity you've indicated. However, in the process you brought up some things about defining the organism that I found interesting and relevant to the paradox.

To me, the organism, the self, is in constant definition as it meets the environment at the contact boundary. And it does that in response to its needs, no matter which cycle of need one is pinpointing, no matter which has become figural at any given moment. During one cycle of self-defining, a person may order a large steak, blood rare, but during another he or she may vomit with the thought of having eaten flesh. Different aspects of the self are defined in those actions, and they reflect a cognitive, axiomatic, affective schema of life, which is also in constant construction. I don't think it is an imagined polarity but a fundamental dichotomy that leads one to the conclusion that one best defines one's self in the negating of, the turning away from, what one finds most interesting, pressing, enjoyable, necessary, urgent, attractive, (etc), as opposed to finding fulfillment in the satisfying of these "needs".

In Gestalt the person becomes something in response, or in relationship, by turning toward the environment at the contact boundary. It would seem that in Buddhism, one becomes nothing by withdrawing from this contact. Perhaps that is the Buddhist answer to suffering; a nothing cannot suffer.

On the unity, the tao of being, in transcendence and imminence, it is a "mind-expanding thing" to contemplate the paradox. Sitting on the edge of a campfire in a group of people, when does being-with turn into being-apart? How can one being, in the case, for instance, of Yahweh, be both holy (in a class all His own and separate from people), and yet aware of and involved with His creation? Certainly everything is part of everything else in the sense that it all coexists in the same cosmology, but when we bring it down to earth and walk on top of it, some things support our weight and others do not. I would maintain that the both/and of transcendence and immanence does not negate the actual difference in each one. Therefore, there is real difference in the way Gestalt and Buddhism define the self and it centers, for one example, in their respective approaches to figure formation/need fulfillment.

Enough for now. I need to do something else.

Phil

• Contact Boundary/Consciousness by Ed Riemann LCSW, 2/10/97
  • Self-Becoming/Self-Being by Philip Brownell, 2/12/97
    • Truth/Non-Truth and Pathology by Ed Riemann, 2/26/97
• Re: Awareness of Self at the Contact Boundary by Bev Walker, 11/16/97