Buddhism and the Struggling Student

Writer(s): 
David Allaway

 

Neuro Linguistic Programming has existed for about 24 years, Buddhism for about 2,300 years, and struggling students have existed ever since we left the swamp. As I studied Buddhism and NLP, I was surprised to discover just how similar they are. Principally they are both working in the same direction, that is, to help individuals move from an unsatisfactory state to a more satisfactory state. Buddhists call this move enlightenment, practitioners and benefactors of NLP may simply call their move contentment. The struggling student sits firmly in the unsatisfactory state. With such a student in mind I offer this brief comparison of Buddhism and NLP in the hope that it may prove useful in enabling the struggling student to achieve enlightenment or contentment.

The Mind

The human mind exists as the result of our interaction between the world around us and our nervous systems. The peripheral, autonomic, and central nervous systems work together to produce thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings are called our conscious mind, and the conscious mind is limited in its capacity to hold 7+/-2 pieces of information at any one moment (Miller, l956) (just remember the confusion of having two people talking to you at the same time). The rest of our present and past existence occurs, or is stored, in our unconscious mind. The conscious mind then is fluid and ever-changing, constantly interpreting new input or retrieving old input, relegating less important information to the unconscious. One of the fundamental principles of Buddhism is that there is no self or single identifiable part that can be called "mind" or "spirit" or "I." This is, I believe, the Buddhist equivalent of the absence of a consciousness "thing," that is, our mind exists only as an ever-changing flow of consciousness.
Both NLP and Buddhism have identified systematic ways in which we use our minds. Consequently they both have developed techniques for accessing and developing our minds for the purpose of moving to a more desirable state. NLP teaches us how to interpret our conscious thoughts through internal representational systems. Put simply, this means that we think in pictures, sounds, and feelings. In fact, humans do this all of the time, though rarely do we consciously analyze these representations. By becoming aware of our internal representations and by learning to alter them (e.g., make the nice pictures brighter and the bad pictures darker), we are able to alter the way in which we see, hear, and feel our present and past experiences, thereby allowing us to move to a more desirable state.

The Buddha Gotama discovered this over 2,000 years ago, and subsequent developments have produced techniques for accessing specific parts of our representational systems. In the first sermon after his enlightenment, the Buddha spoke of the Four Noble Truths: 1) all life is suffering, 2) there are identifiable causes of suffering, 3) suffering can cease, and 4) there is a method for the cessation of suffering. NLP recognizes that many people are unhappy some of the time and some people are unhappy much of the time, and that there are reasons for this. NLP also recognizes that this is not the way things need to be, and that there are specific, learnable skills that can facilitate change.

Buddhists have developed methods for focusing or concentrating on each of the internal representational systems. For focusing on the visual mind they have created mandalas, complex pictures depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha or of Boddhisattvas, upon which the observer concentrates. For the audial realm there are mantras, phrases to be repeated in specific tonalities. And for the feeling or kinesthetic realm there are mudras, specific and often complex hand or body postures that focus the attention. These foci allow the practitioner to access certain states of mind and to work towards creating a more satisfactory existence.

The NLP technique of anchoring fulfills the same function as mandalas, mantras, and mudras, although with more specific applications. For example, to anchor a state of confidence, a person can recall a time when he or she was confident -- remembering, in as much detail as possible what was seen, heard, and felt at that time. When all of the internal representations are recalled, for that time, the person can anchor that state to a color, a word, or a touch which is not part of his or her "normal" behavior. When the person feels the need to be more confident he or she can drop the anchor (e.g., touch the place or say the word) and the subconscious automatically reinstates the anchored state of confidence.

If we look at our struggling student, he or she may be using the classroom (visual), the teacher's words and tonality (audial), and the holding of a pen (kinesthetic) to access an unsatisfactory state.

In NLP, when we overlap one or more of our internal representations (for example, auditory and kinesthetic), we create a powerful experience. Listening to our favorite music can produce a physical feeling. This is called a synesthesia. After studying the use of NLP in the treatment of clinically diagnosed illnesses, Robert Dilts (l992) suggests that synesthesia, at the extreme, can be likened to a spiritual experience and that

"language . . . as a point of convergence for neural activity [or synesthesia, can] create a special state . . . that makes it possible to perceive deep principles within a larger system" (p. 35 ).

Buddhist enlightenment, I suggest, is extreme synesthesia.

 

Our struggling student is often stuck with negative internal representations which combine to produce a negative synesthesia. In the saddest case, death is sought as the only way to change states. Both Buddhism and NLP work on changing states and maintaining resourceful states.

In struggling students, the observable results of a positive change of state are often called changes in attitude. A changed attitude is the external manifestation in behaviors that the student automatically displays in response to a satisfactory synesthesia of new internal representations brought about by the use of NLP strategies.

A person in search of enlightenment can become a monk and enter a monastery where constant reminders of, or anchors to desired states exist: mandalas, mantras, and mudras. These things exist outside the monastery too, but they are not associatively anchored to enlightened states. NLP allows the individual to create his or her own anchors, specific to his or her own experiences. For the struggling student the anchors are often the classroom, the teacher's tonality, and the pen. A person in search of contentment can quickly learn NLP strategies and techniques to create new and desirable states, and will realize that these states can be controlled and enjoyed.

It is my belief that teachers and all educationalists, who tend to be motivated by a desire to "do good," owe it to their students, and themselves, to become as flexible as their environments allow in order to enable students who do not "fit the mold" to transform negative representations of reality into new and exciting opportunities. A teacher with NLP training has a greater ability to do this, and thereby can help previously "struggling" students to "succeed," to be content, or to achieve enlightenment.

References

  • Miller, G. A. (1956). The magic number seven plus or minus two. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
  • Dilts, R. (1994). The Cognitive patterns of Jesus of Nazareth. Capitola, CA: Meta Publications.