Although the foreground focus of this book is the relationship between Zen Buddhism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, its content matter will be examined and elucidated against the background of the relationship between modernity and postmodernity and within the larger context of the psychology of religion and the similarities and differences among various psychoanalytic schools. The dialogue between psychoanalysis and Buddhism has become quite popular within English-American culture. Over the last ten years several books have been published that explore the relationship between the two traditions. The author believes that the Lacanian framework offers a fresh perspective from which to consider the internal relations between psychoanalysis and Buddhism. This book clarifies and reframes some of the misunderstandings between psychoanalysis and Buddhism, and between Eastern and Western cultures. "Challenging and stimulating, opens fresh channels of experience as it clears old battlefields. One of the best books on the dialogue between Buddhism and psychoanalysis that I’ve read. The main interlocutors are Mahayana Buddhism’s 'no self' and Lacan’s 'empty subject', with intriguing insights on every page. Mesmerizing and enlightening."
- Michael Eigen, author, Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis
Table of Contents: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION 1) The cultural context: contemporary psychoanalysis and postmodern spirituality
2) Psychoanalysis as a secular and non-theistic study of the mind
3) Meditation as thinking and non-thinking in Lacan and Zen
4) True subject is no-ego
5) Turning words and images of the unseen: symbolic uses of the Imaginary and the Real in Lacan, Zen, and Jewish Kabbalah
6) The Tetragramaton, the Borromean knot, the four worlds, and the Tetralemma
7) Mindfulness of breathing and psychoanalysis
8) Consciousness, awareness, the unconscious, and the three dimensions of experience
9) Zen practice and the practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis REFERENCES
INDEX | 
