1. Unlike todays culture, all philosophy does according to Marinoff, is provide self-reflection to situations. Its helps you see where your thoughts were silly and why you may of thought of it, such as a woman who chooses not to date because she’s afraid she’ll get her heart broken like last time. In today’s culture of psychology, it’s a simple cut and dry process that is highly flawed. If they diagnose you with something, they then provide medication for those who don’t need it. After a while that medication causes side effects and you’re taking medication to balance out those and so forth. Being a psychology major, I have seen how much children these days are given medication and it’s sad.
For example, my best friend Ryan was “diagnosed” with depression and partial insanity. He was given medication that made him feel horrible. Nevertheless he took the medication because his mother was sure it was going to help. He took it because he loved her. Three weeks later, he gets in a car crash because the medication made him drowsy. This small example isn’t a special case. It happens every day in the western culture.
Marinoff makes these claims like I’ve made throughout his book, and shows how truly psychological and psychiatric treatment are flawed. He tries to bridge the gap of psychological treatment to philosophical counseling so he can offer an alternative substitute for another. Maybe even claiming that philosophy should take psychology’s place in the treatment of “sane” individuals. Marinoff even writes about lots of experiences he has had with his clients and shows how philosophical counseling has helped them. For another example, he speaks of a women and her spouse having a difficult situation. The women feels left out seeing mothers with their children. She’s middle aged and everyone has been asking about when her and her spouse are going to start. She has tried talking to him about it but he claims that he does not want children at this point in time. After a while this gets to her. She considers leaving him even after such a long period of time together and even “forgetting” taking her birth control. during a session with Marinoff he asks her why she feels this way, how she would feel if she was in the husband’s shoes. After much self-reflection and counseling, she realized that she let the jealously that she had of others consume her instead of shrugging it off. She let the curiosity of people asking about children bug her instead of mentioning that her and her spouse can simply go at their own pace. She let her anger trigger the consideration of leaving him for this reason, and even let corruption trigger the plot of “forgetting her birth control”. At the very beginning of the session she was on a high horse telling Marinoff her husband just won’t grow up, and perhaps never will be a father. However after words she realized that it was her errors that were the problem. She thought life had to be like a cookie cutter and be the exact same like the others. A psychologist or psychiatrist would have seen this scenario much differently and maybe provided medication or pointed the finger towards the husband. Philosophical counseling helped her self-reflect and provide further peace in her relationship.
2.Marinoff and Thich Nhat Hahn are in the same boat, but with different posts. Marinoff, growing up in the western culture, take an approach of solving conflicts that are already present. Growing up in the western culture myself, I have come to the conclusions that conflicts are best solved later on and not during the heat of the moment where everyone is spamming words to see whose louder. Thich, on the other hand practices takes an approach to mindfulness and having the ability to solve conflicts on the spot when they happen through awareness.
Marinoffs “Philosophical counseling” is to provide assistance to those that have found a problem within their life style, being internally or externally. He rarely ever speaks of solving the situation on the spot because of course he wants the counseling to be needed. People would never need counseling if they could learn of mindfulness such as how Thich writes about. Take for example, how Thich write about his fellow monk whom had live in a temple close to a war zone. The monk feared the thought of either side firing mortars at their temple. Before I mention what this monk did to provide such causality, think about what someone of the western culture would have done. Most likely nothing because they’re already clouded with the thoughts of fear and anger that it blocks them from action. This monk traveled to both sides of the war and asked the leader politely and calmly to not fire at the temple and how much it means to them. Both sides were so moved that they never fired towards the temple for the rest of the conflict of the two countries. This shows that even with mindfulness one can alter wars. Think of the possibilities if everyone thought this way!
Im not out to make Marinoff look bad because the guy also has a great deal of wisdom of helping others who cannot come to the high potential of mindfulness that Thich has come to. After all, the western culture is far more different than the eastern so think patterns aren’t the same. The west have a tendency to let emotions and illogical thought to consume them, triggering mindless actions that could further worsen the problems. This is where people like Marinoff come in, to help those who haven’t practice mindfulness. Just like how when a client of his told him that he have no meaning or purpose in his life. Marinoff goes out of his way to actually let his client knows the difference between a meaning and a purpose. He uses a restaurant menu as an example. What’s the purpose of the menu? To provide options of food to eat. What’s the meaning? To show you what each food item is and how much it cost. We often get these two words confuse and think that we “can eat the menu”. The same principles apply to life. Marinoff uses scenarios like this so others can think in ways they haven’t thought before. Thich provides self-help, while Marinoff provides therapeutic help.
3. Thich unique way of understanding the world is letting go of your own views and knowledge in order to traced as opposed to the self vs. not self which applies the thought of the world revolving around just you. Instead Thich takes the approach of simply letting go of all emotion and thought to have a clear understanding. Let’s face it; there are times when our thoughts get the best of us. A Zen master such as Thich would never have this problem because he’s always aware and mindful. Unlike lots of people who try to know what they do not know, Thich would probably provide the best possible answer “I don’t know” instead of those who constantly try to answer it while ripping their hair out. On page 56 he speaks about how love is our only weapon and how the world is full of discrimination and violence. He says if we let negative energies such as these take over our seeds of anger we can never cultivate freedom.
Heres a scenario from Thich via pages 56 and 57 in his book. An American soldier riding on a military truck spat on brother Nhat Tri. Nhat walks up to Thich and speaks of his humiliation. Thich claims that the solider had probably heard lots of propaganda that Buddhist nuns were communists in disguise. Therefore the soldier showed the example of self and not self and revealed his hatred by spitting on him. “He was a victim of misperception and ignorance.” Thich then replied to most likely one of my favorite quotes in this book, “Brother, you should not hate him. If you hate him, it means you have not yet understood.”