Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology

Pages:83-87
Ashima Soni (Department of Psychology, Panjab University, Chandigarh)

Clinical psychology has focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disease, and only recently has scientific attention turned to understanding and cultivating positive mental health. The Buddhist traditiQn, on the other hand, has focused for over 2,500 years on cultivating exceptional states of mental well-being as well as identifying and treating psychological problems. This theoretical paper attempts to draw on centuries of Buddhist experiential and theoretical inquiry as well as current western experimental research to highlight specific themes that are particularly relevant to exploring the nature of mental health. Specifically, the nature of mental well-being and attainment of well-being through the cultivation of four types of mental balance: conative, attentional, cognitive, and affective will be discussed.