This paper interprets the four noble truths, an essential doctrine of Buddhism, in terms of counselling and psychotherapy and presents specific a case of psychotherapy. Significantly, this paper interpreted literary documents in light of psychotherapy and suggested a specific case associated with the four noble truths. The discussion is summarized as follows: First, the author understood the stage of suffering(苦) by classifying into aspects of body, personal relationship, psychology and existence and applied it to central symptoms of a counselee in terms of counselling and psychotherapy. A case is concerned with illusion of thrown objects. This illusion prevents a normal life of a counselee or sleep and gives him or her suffering of fear or terror all the time. Second, the author defined accumulation of suffering(集), which is also a definition valid in psychotherapeutic counselling as follows: thirst for something(tanha) is divided into sensuous form, thirst for being, eagerness to become something, and thirst for non-being, eagerness to remove concerns and fear. Illusion of thrown objects presented as a case results from experiences that a client did not feel himself or herself adequately safe but rather attacked continuously ever since young. Third, elimination of suffering(滅) is the stage where symptoms of suffering disappears and spiritual experience is possible. While the literary focuses on spiritual experience, counselling and psychotherapy is more interested in having a client remove psychological suffering and adapt to reality. In a case, the author helped a client go through overcoming illusion of thrown things with the use of psychodrama and image-based meditation. Fourth, it is the stage of the noble path that leads away from suffering(道). This stage is usually referred to as the eight fold noble path. However, the eight fold noble path is used as a way of experiencing its elimination in the stage of elimination of suffering(滅) and the fourth stage of the noble path is defined as a process of exploring new behavior of a client and helping him or her practice it in day-to-day life. Thus, a case in this stage includes practicing how to buy things on the part of a client who could not go out before and practicing how to talk with family members about his or her suffering. As discussed above, the four noble truths refer to a process of practicing meditation and at the same time are considered to provide a frame of very effective interpretation even as a process of counselling or psychotherapy. Tasks to be further discussed are summarized as follows: First, there is need that traditional literary interpretation about the four noble truths should be researched in a more elaborate way. This does not merely the literature of early Buddhism alone. Second, as the four noble truths are applied to reality, it is inevitable that changes take place in its content and that its interpretation can differ according to objects to be researched. Thus, it is a task to come at any time how to integrate views of Buddhist psychology and those of western psychology. Third, in Buddhist study where literary interpretation constructs the mainstream of research methodology, it will be a critical task to perform qualitative research by collecting, analyzing and interpreting materials in the field. The author anticipates that qualitative case study based on values of humanities will be positioned as a new direction of Buddhist study rather than experimental research based on positivism of natural sciences,
한국어
본 논문은 불교의 핵심된 가르침인 사성제를 상담 및 심리치료에서 어떻게 활용되는지를 구체적인 사례를 통해서 조명하려고 했다. 방법적으로는 사회 과학적인 통계적 양적인 접근법보다는 구체적인 사례연구의 질적 연구방법을 선택한다. 이것은 영적인 명상수행을 계량화하는 연구방법보다는 오히려 질적 접근이 보다 유용한 방법이라고 판단한 때문이다. 이런 작업을 수행하기 위해서 먼저 고집멸도에 대한 한역 아함경과 빨리어 경전의 간단하게 비교하고, 이것들에 대한 심리학적인 이해로서 선행연구들을 검토하고, 그런 다음에 고집멸도 사성제에 대한 필자의 심리학적인 이해를 시도한다. 이런 문헌적 혹은 이론적인 이해를 바탕으로 분열증환자에 대한 심리치료적인 과정을 고집멸도로서 제시하고자 한다.
한국선학회는 한국선의 정체성을 포함해 한국선 전반에 대한 연구, 선학의 기초 이론에 대한 정리, 간화선 및 위빠사나와 여타 명상법 등 수행방법에 대한 고찰, 심리학이나 문학 등 유관학문과의 연계 연구, 정치·경제·사회·문화·환경·교육 등 현대사회의 여러 문제점들에 대한 禪的 해법의 모색, 이들을 종합한 선의 생활화, 나아가 한국선의 세계화를 위한 방안 등을 연구한다.
이를 위해 선을 전문으로 하는 전공자만이 아니라 선에 관심이 있는 모든 분들께 문호를 완전 개방하여 보다 많은 분들이 참여할 수 있도록 하며, 다양한 전공자들과의 조우와 협력을 통해 21세기 새로운 시대에 선을 통한 새로운 정신문화를 열어 가도록 한다.