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The Humanistic Psychologist

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A BuddhistLacanian Perspective on Lack

Ronald E. Purser
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San Francisco State University Version of record first published: 25 Oct 2011.

To cite this article: Ronald E. Purser (2011): A BuddhistLacanian Perspective on Lack, The Humanistic Psychologist, 39:4, 289-304 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873267.2011.618061

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The Humanistic Psychologist, 39: 289304, 2011 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0887-3267 print/1547-3333 online DOI: 10.1080/08873267.2011.618061

ARTICLES

A BuddhistLacanian Perspective on Lack

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Ronald E. Purser
San Francisco State University
The historical and contemporary dialogue between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is examined to advance theories of self-representation. This theoretical foundation provides for a reinterpretation of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as it applies to the unconscious lack that haunts human subjectivity. The inevitable failure to construct an enduring and permanent sense of self is linked to a chronic feeling of lack and cultural malaise. Drawing upon the work of Buddhist philosopher David Loy, the article proposes that this feeling of lack is symptomatic of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of no-self, or egolessness. Both the Buddhist tradition and Lacanian methods rely on unconventional and indirect methods for circumventing the will of the ego. Such unconventional methods are employed to decenter our familiar and common modes of representational discourse in order to deconstruct the ego.

The burgeoning dialogue among psychoanalysts and Buddhist teachers over the last 50 years has explored a wide range of insights about human development, conceptions of ego and identity, and their implications for health and freedom from suffering (Bobrow, 2003, 2009; Engler, 1998; Epstein, 1995, 1998, 2007; Fromm, Suzuki, & De Martino, 1960; Molino, 1998a; Rubin, 1998; Safran, 2003; Suler, 1993). The strong links and sustained mutual curiosity between these two traditions can be understood in that both have (a) a shared concern with mental and emotional suffering, (b) developed sophisticated theories of mind and its dysfunctions, (c) devised unique methods for intensive experiential investigation of the mind, and (d) focused on treatments and practices to achieve a greater degree of well-being and freedom. Although there are many similarities and significant common ground between psychoanalysis and Buddhism, these two traditions diverge in terms of their basic conceptions of self-representation. Moreover, the psychoanalytic tradition has historically been wary and suspicious of religion, determined to

I thank Dr. Raul Moncayo for taking the time to provide helpful insights into understanding the intersection of Lacan and Zen Buddhism. Correspondence should be addressed to Ronald E. Purser, Department of Management, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. E-mail: rpurser@sfsu.edu

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establish its claim as a scientific method. Buddhism has been viewed as a religion, but upon closer inspection it is essentially a pragmatic philosophy and experiential method for attaining enlightenment or liberation from human suffering. Indeed, some Westerners have described Buddhism as a psychological religion, for its entire philosophy and the medical system that adjoins it, is based on the analysis of mind (Clifford, 1984, p. 215). Fromm argued that psychoanalysis was a response to the Western spiritual crisis, and that even Freuds vision of his own system was not limited to merely a therapy for mentally ill patients, but was deeply concerned with human salvation. According to Fromm et al. (1960), many of Freuds ideas were deeply resonant with Buddhism, particularly the principle that knowledge leads to transformation, that theory and practice must not be separated, that in the every act of knowing oneself, one transforms oneself (p. 82). Psychoanalysis has excelled at mapping out the early stages of identity formation, or what I refer to in this article as self-representation. Buddhist traditions, on the other hand, have focused attention on deconstructing or decentering the consolidation of self-representation from the egocentrism of early development to gain insight into no-self nature of identity (Engler, 1998). A central tenet of Buddhist teachings is anatman, or no-self, which informs the Buddhist path of meditative insight. Buddhist meditation is a somatic and mental practice aimed at liberating the misperception that the self is an enduring, abiding, independent entity. In this respect, psychoanalysis and Buddhist traditions are situated theories and practices that are focusing on different stages of human development. Another key difference between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is in their understanding of the unconscious. Freud considered the unconscious as the repository of repressed desires, urges, and instincts. Classical psychoanalysis undertakes an archeological dig into the hidden recesses of the unconscious to bring to conscious awareness libidinal forces and other latent content that has been repressed. The Buddhist perspective recognizes that habitual patterns of thinking and behavior can be traced to latent mental and emotional content, but it also views the deeper layers of consciousness as a potential source for awakening from ignorance. Given the growing convergence and ongoing dialogue between these two seemingly different traditions, this article examines how the Buddhist perspective on the self calls into question fundamental assumptions upon which identity is constructed. This critique will build upon the Lacanian view that the conscious ego is driven to compensate for an unconscious lack (Driver, 2009b). However, as I explain later, the Buddhist perspective developed here views lack as symptomatic of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of no-self, or egolessness.

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HISTORICAL INTERFACES OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND BUDDHISM It is well known that Freud maintained a hermeneutic of suspicion toward religion (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 30). For Freud, religion was an illusion that substituted a dependence on a deity for the original dependence on a benevolent or punitive father. Such dependence, Freud theorized, kept humanity bound to an infantile state. Interestingly enough, both Freudian psychoanalysis and Buddhism share an affinity in that they both do not submit to a belief in a deity. With its many aphorismssuch as If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!Zen Buddhism, in particular, is known for its iconoclastic, antiauthoritarian, and irreverent attitude toward even its own pundits, or to any displays of scholastic knowledge that are not grounded in direct, embodied

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experience. Similarly, both traditions rely on a guide who has studied and trained in their respective methods. Although Freud had no contact with Buddhism and limited knowledge of its meditative practices, he displayed great interest in trying to understand the psychodynamics of the mystical experience (Jones, 1957). Shortly after his publication of The Future of an Illusion, Freud began a 13 year correspondence with the French poet Romain Rolland, who was a devotee of Hindu gurus of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, and who had described his mystical experiences to Freud in great detail (Freud, 1930). Based on Rollands accounts of his mystical experiences, Freud offered his explanations in Civilization and Its Discontent. According to Freud, the oceanic feeling present in mystical experience are regressive attempts at recovering the bliss of primary narcissism, the unambivalent union of infant and mother at the breast (Epstein, 2007, p. 164). Following Freuds lead, the traditional analytic view has subscribed to the notion that mysticism and meditative experiences are attempts at fusion or merger of ego and ego ideal. However, this reductive and pathologized interpretation of meditative experience as a narcissistic yearning for the lost perfection the infantile state is only descriptive of more Hindu-oriented concentration practices (and preliminary Buddhist stages of meditation). Meditative practices based on the path of concentration fixate and narrow attention on a single object to develop stability, quiescence, and one-pointedness (Epstein, 2007). Such practices are conducive to feelings of oneness, bliss, and absorption or trance states. In the Buddhist tradition, concentration practices are preliminary to the path of insight, or meditative practices based on developing mindfulness. Thus, concentration and mindfulness are two distinct attentional strategies (Goleman, 1977). Until recently, the psychoanalytic community has not undertaken a serious investigation of meditative states that take into account the insight-oriented and mindfulness practices that are unique to Buddhism (Rosenbaum, 2009). It took several decades before Western translations of Buddhist texts made it into the psychoanalytic community. C.G. Jung was deeply interested in and sympathetic to Buddhist doctrine, yet also wary of its dangers of being transplanted into the Western cultural context. Jung published numerous psychological commentaries on Buddhist texts (Jung, 1958), including an introduction to the German translation of D.T. Suzukis Introduction to Zen Buddhism. As Jung (1978) notes, It was neither the history of religion nor the study of philosophy that first drew me to the world of Buddhist thought, but my professional interest as a doctor (p. 5). And he goes to state, In our sphere of culture the suffering of the sick can derive considerable benefit from . . . the Buddhist mentality, however strange it may appear (p. 5). With the exception of Carl Jung and a few others, it wasnt until 1957 that perhaps the first organized dialogue between these two traditions occurred. D.T. Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist master and scholar, was the guest of honor at a groundbreaking workshop on Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, convened in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Nearly 50 psychoanalysts attended, including such notable figures as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Ira Progoff, which resulted in a collection of essays and seminal publication (Fromm et al., 1960). Both Fromm and Horney were intrigued by the potential of radical personality change that Zen Buddhism offered, especially because its principles could not be accounted for within the traditional paradigm of Freudian psychoanalysis. Particularly for Fromm, Zen Buddhism offered an alternative for moving psychoanalysis away from its focus on illness and pathology to a new focus on well-being, or what he called humanistic psychoanalysis. In contrast to the Freudian patient who was concerned with the removal of specific neurotic and hysterical symptoms, the complaints of Fromms clientele were much more vague in naturedepression, insomnia, unhappy

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marriages, dissatisfaction of their work, and similar troubles. Fromm argued that this cultural malaise was only the conscious or surface symptoms whose roots could be traced to a much deeper causesalienation from oneself, and fear of life and death. As Fromm et al. (1960) note, For those who suffer from alienation, cure does not consist in the absence of symptoms, but in the presence of well-being (p. 86). A humanistic psychoanalysis needed to transcend the limits of the Freudian system with its orthodoxy based on libido theory and awareness of the hidden Oedipal situation. The analytic goal of making the unconscious conscious, of replacing the Id by Ego as a therapeutic means to cure a particular symptom, did not address the pervasive culture malaise and challenge of overcoming alienation and the subject-object split in perceiving the world (Fromm et al., 1960). For Fromm, the full recovery of unconsciousness by consciousness required a much more radical approach than the psychoanalytic orthodoxy of the Freudian paradigm. Noting the relevance and utility of Zen Buddhism to psychoanalysis, Fromm et al. (1960) state:

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The knowledge of Zen . . . can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, and what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split. In its very radicalism with respect to intellectualization, authority and the delusion of the ego, in its emphasis on the aim of well-being, Zen thought will deepen and widen the horizon of the psychoanalyst and help him arrive at a more radical concept of the grasp of reality as the ultimate aim of full, conscious awareness. (p. 140)

Fromms long-time association with Buddhism led him to postulate that psychoanalysis needed a trans-therapeutic function that would go beyond the restricted understanding of bringing to conscious awareness repressed libidinal forces, and reducing the individuals extra suffering to the more socially acceptable level of suffering, or normalcy (Fromm, 2005, p. 64). With the exception of a small psychoanalytic community of underground of Buddhaphiles, interest in Buddhism among the existentialist brand of psychoanalysts in the 1960s was followed by a long hiatus (Safran, 2003). Recently, however, there has been a marked resurgence of interest in Buddhism in the psychoanalytic community, evidenced by numerous conferences, dialogues, and publications (Aaronson, 2004; Brazier, 1995; Brown & Engler, 1986: Claxton, 1986; Eigen, 1996; Epstein, 1995, 1998, 2007; Finn & Gartner, 1992; Fleischman, 1998; Magid, 2008; Molino, 1998a; Moncayo, 2003; Rubin, 1998; Safran, 2003; Suler, 1993; Unno, 2006; Watson, 1998). This burgeoning interest parallels the exponential growth both in translations of Buddhist texts and publications by Western Buddhist teachers, and in the fact that significant numbers of Westerners have adopted Buddhism as a spiritual path. THE BUDDHIST DECONSTRUCTION OF SELF AND IDENTITY The goal of the Buddhist path is to transform the mind to be free of self-generated suffering. Different schools of Buddhism take different paths, but all are founded on facilitating and embodying insight into the empty nature of the self, which is fundamentally void of any independent existence, essence, or enduring substance. Such insights are usually developed through intensive meditation practices and study in conjunction with a teacher or guide trained in the tradition. The goal of insight meditation is not intellectual understanding, an exceptional altered

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state, a rare peak experience, or a fleeting epiphanybut a permanent and irreversible reorganization of self-structure (Engler, 2003, p. 65). Jack Engler describes this as a fundamental shift in the locus of subjectivity from representations of self to awareness (nirvikalpa) itself. Psychoanalysts are particularly interested in what Buddhism has to offer in understanding how illusory representations of the self are constructed and deconstructed. As Aaronson (1998) points out, the Buddhist critique is aimed at deconstructing the belief in an ontological self. The self that is the target of Buddhist analysis is not the psychologically differentiated self of psychoanalytic theory, nor the Western conception of the self as a highly autonomous individual (Engler, 2003, p. 50). Rather, the Buddhist doctrine of anatman, or no-self, maintains that the feeling or belief in an independent, substantial, and enduring sense of self is a misperception. This mistaken case of identity, what Stolorow and Atwood (1992) refers to as the myth of the isolated mind, is at the root of self-generated suffering. This myth perpetuates an alienation from nature, from social life, and from subjectivity itself. The cumulative product of the isolated mind perspective is both self-centeredness and egocentricity (Magid, 2003). The Buddhist path goes against the grain of what appears self-evident in everyday experience. Our conventional way of representing self is deeply embedded in both our language and psyche. As Engler (2003, p. 88) notes, it is the tendency to regard every object of experience or perception as a separate entity or thing having its own separate concrete existence and identity and only secondarily related to other things. Insight or mindfulness meditation is a technique for observing moment-to-moment elements of experiencea form of analytic inquiry to determine whether such a self as it is ordinarily represented in human experience can actually be found. Mindfulness meditation develops and refines the ability to discriminate and observe the successive arising and dissolution of the contents of the mind. In Buddhist terminology, each constituent of experience can be categorized as belonging to one of the five skandhas, often translated as heaps or aggregatesform, feeling, perceptions, mental formations (including cognitions and emotions), and consciousness. Self-representations are built up and sustained through constellations of perceptions and images, constituted by the skandhas. However, the skandhas are not things either, but perceptual-cognitive-affective eventsconstantly changing configurationsthat appear to the untrained observer to be continuous and substantial. Through sustained analysis and concentration, Buddhist insight meditation allows the practitioner to observe directly how experience of a self that appears as a substantial, enduring, and independent entity is rapidly constructed moment-by-moment, with no sense of permanence or ground. Meditative inquiry enhances the powers of observation and the ability to see clearly that experience is fleeting, arising and passing away, an endless fluctuation without continuity. The realization of selflessness occurs through direct and repeated disciplined observation aims at trying to find a solid I or self in or behind the stream of experience. Describing the advanced stages of insight (vipassana) practice, Engler (2003) states:
I can observe how individual, discrete moments of consciousness and their objects arise and pass away together, are constructed and deconstructed moment by moment without remainderwithout any subject or self, even an observing self, existing apart from the process, enduring behind it, or carrying it forward to the next moment. (p. 75)

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Buddhist insight into the illusory ontology of the self (Hanley, 1984, p. 255) may come gradually or suddenly (in Zen, kensho or satori). In either case, such insight entails seeing clearly

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that our ordinary experience of self is basically a fiction and illusory in naturea conceptual designation or imputationwhich we normally represent and mistakenly take to be real. Even Freud recognized that the ego (das ich) can impute to itself its own independent existence and treat itself as an object (see Sterba, 1934). Buddhist practices weaken attachment and identifications to such false self-representations, revealing the self as being empty of any self-nature, essentially exposing the groundlessness of identity. Far from being a mystical experience, or a regressive return to primary narcissism by basking in oceanic feelings of oneness, recognition of no-self is often profoundly disturbing, evoking feelings of terror, anxiety, and fear (Epstein, 2007, p. 30). This is why preliminary concentration practices are used to develop a strong somatic foundation of stability to counterbalance the effects of these destabilizing insights. In contrast, psychoanalysts have warned that such pursuits could lead to a catastrophe (Bion, 1963), triggering psychic fragmentation or disintegration, or even touch what Eigen (1989) describes as the psychotic core (p. 1) within each individual. It is important to point out that insight into the empty nature of the self does not eliminate the selfbut only reveals that it never existed in the first place. As Gyatso (1984) clarifies, Selflessness is not a case of something that existed in the past becoming non-existent; rather, this sort of self is something that never did exist. What is needed is to identify as non-existent something that always was non-existent (p. 40). The psychoanalytic community is only now learning through dialogue with Buddhists how the dissolution of self-representations can be liberating, rather than destabilizing and pathological. Many strands of psychoanalytic theory use the term self interchangeably with the concept of self-representation (Rubin, 2003). However, self-representations are mental constructs, impressions, and images of the self. Thus, the target of Buddhist analysis is specifically on the experience of I, or the sense of self that feels itself to be permanent, unitary, and under its own power. In other words, the I is a self-representation as agent, as an image, abstraction, or simulacrum (Epstein, 2007, p. 47)conceiving of itself as existing under its own power, and as concerned with it maintaining its ongoing survival (Gyatso, 1984). The process of constructing and identifying with self-imageswhich is what self-representations are made ofis usually an unobservable and unconscious process. Indeed, I agree with Almass (1996), that this deep structure of identityor the sense of selfexperiences itself from within the self-representation. The true self of Buddhist awakening is, as Magid (2003) points out, more of a recognition of an absence rather than a presence of something (p. 270). Western psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, particularly Kohuts (1971) school of Self Psychology and its offshoots, do not question the ontological status of the self. A common misconception of selflessness is that it is equated with the loss of personhood or the denigration of psychological functions (Aaronson, 2004). For example, many New Age spiritual movements that have been influenced by Eastern traditions often resort to such exhortations that a person has to get rid of, or lose, their ego. Buddhism, however, does not negate mental functioning, denigrate the ego, nor eradicate functional life-skills. These simplistic interpretations of Buddhist teachings are committing the extreme error of nihilism. What is lost is the erroneous conception of an inherently existing ontological self. Buddhist practice does not resort to repression, denial, or fantasy; all that is lost is a misconception. Thus, the object of negation in Buddhist meditation is not the psychological self, but the illusory nature, and seemingly real sense of a metaphysical self. In other words, the psychological self does not disappear with a realization of selflessness; a person still uses the word I, still has a name and a unique historical identitybut the person is no longer fixed or overinvested in representations, self-images, habitual reactions, or a sense of metaphysical

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substantiality (Aaronson, 2004). In fact, there is nothing problematic in having a unique identity, so long we realize that there is no one whos having an identity (Fenner, 2009, p. 63). The fruition of seeing the emptiness of self-nature or shunyatawhat Buddhists have often referred to as the unborn, uncreated, or unconditionedis seeing and acting unselfconsciously. This act of seeing is not a philosophical exercise, but an insight that is embodied in lived experience and wholeheartedly expressed in daily affairs. This mode of being could be characterized as being unmanaged, in the sense that thinking, feeling, perceiving, and acting can all happen without an agent or self that needs to defend and maintain its position as the doer (Finngarette, 1958). The dissolution of an internal manager or controller actually is conducive to, as Engler (2003) points out, to everything happening much more efficiently and without anxiety and conflict (p. 64), freed of the burden of representing self and constructing experience based on false images. For Buddhists, the existence of a metaphysical self is deeply problematic. Although many psychoanalysts and psychologists may admit that their notions of identity are mental or subjective constructs on a theoretical level, more often than not, these are conflated or viewed as synonymous with the existence of an ontological identity. Similarly, object relations, ego psychology, and self psychology schools of psychoanalytic thought privilege the importance of developing an integrated, coherent, and unitary ego=self-identity. For example, Winnicott (1965) subscribed strongly to the view that there was a true self. And although the self psychology of Heinz Kohut (1971) also considers the self as an abstraction, Kohut still adheres to an essentialist view in his insistence that at the core of the individual is a nuclear self (p. 126). From the Buddhist perspective, the end to all self-generated suffering, the dissolution of egocentricity, is through insight into no-self nature. Insight into no-self nature leads to the cessation of clinging to false images of self-representation. Mindfulness, or insight meditation, differs from psychoanalytic methods which focus almost exclusively on interpreting the contents of thoughts, associations, dreams, fantasies, and slips of tongue. Instead, Buddhist meditative training sharpens the powers of concentration and observation in order to clearly attend to how such contents are constructed and deconstructedhow they arise and pass awayin moment-tomoment experience (Fleischman, 1998). This is a direct seeing into the transitoriness and emptiness of such constructions, and the ultimate futility of the identity-building enterprise, that allows for a way of knowing to emerge that is at home in groundlessness.

JAQUES LACAN AND BUDDHISM Jaques Lacan was deeply interested in Buddhism, making two trips to Japan to learn more about Zen. In fact, in his first published Seminar I, Lacan opens with his identification with Zen and its use of shock tactics as a way of instilling students to seek their own answers (Lacan, 1977b; McLellan, 2008). Lacan is also notorious for challenging the 50-minute hour with his introduction of the short session, which some speculate that he adapted from his study of the iconoclastic Zen dialogues between teacher and student. Clearly, Lacan was well aware of Zen tactics of teaching through denial, the use of paradoxical dialogue via koans, and its use of nonsensical responses to counter the rationality of the ego. Lacan states in one of his seminars, What is best in Buddhism, is Zen; it consists to that, my little friend, to answer you back with a bark (possible translation of katsu). It is what is the best for people when they want naturally to get out of this infernal affair, like Freud says (Miller, 1998, p. 115). Thus, it appears likely that

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Zen Buddhism may have offered Lacan alternative ways of theorizing the relationships between desire, the unconscious, knowledge, and subjectivity (Samuels, 2002). Although there are significant similarities between the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan and Buddhist doctrine, there are also clear points of departure.Given the limitations of space, I attend to only a few salient points of intersection. The Buddhist insight that the self is lacking any inherent or substantial nature (explained earlier), resonates with Lacans view of the ego as an imaginary construction (Moncayo, 1998a). However, the Buddhist critique of self lacks a psycho-historical retracing of ego identifications and early object relations. Lacanian analysis focuses deeply on uncovering the dynamics of psycho-historical development, but still does not affirm the existence of any substantial ego. For Lacan, the ego is the seat of resistance, which put him directly at odds with American ego-psychology. Lacans (1977a) theory is a remapping of Freuds Oedipal process from a symbolic and linguistic perspective, an area which Buddhism is silent on. According to Lacan, the Imaginary register of experience is tied to the development of a fabricated image of a substantial ego. This occurs in what he refers to as the mirror stage, when, between six and eighteen months, the infant sees a coherent and unitary body-image in a mirror as the object of the mothers desire. Because this self-image is imaginary, the genesis of the ideal-ego is also characterized simultaneously as a me connaissance. In this prelinguistic, pre-Oedipal domain, the subject is already alienated. In short, Lacan offers a penetrating critique of the imaginary homogeneity of the ego, showing how self-images of mastery, autonomy, omnipotence are fabrications woven of fantasies. Although offering different systematized theories, Buddhism and Lacan converge on the observation that in becoming aware of being aware, the ego simultaneously posits itself as the object of its own knowing (Molino, 1998a, p. 292). Constituting itself as the one who knows, the ego is considered a delusion in Buddhism, and a move in a fictive direction for Lacan. Both Lacan and Buddhism confront the fact that the human condition is an endless encounter with lack. The first noble truth of the Buddha is that, Life is suffering. Moreover, Buddhist doctrine identifies sentient beings as caught in the realm of samsara, which is recognizable by the three marks of existence, namely, dukkha (suffering or dissatisfaction), anatman (no-self), and annica (conditioned states, or impermanence). Similarly, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory characterizes the symbolic order as marked by lack, due to the loss of the Real, which is beyond language. The imaginary ego is alienated by the loss of the Real, and that such loss cannot be regained from within the linguistic confines of the symbolic order. In addition, Buddhism and Lacanian theory both postulate that human consciousness is divided or split, and that this condition is structural, rather than personal in nature (Lacan, 1977b). Buddhism identifies this split as a basic duality between subject and object, which is the byproduct of ignorance (avidya). In Lacanian theory, there is an inherent structural division between the self and the unconscious and such a division will inevitably produce disruptions and failure of desires. Lacanian theory and Buddhist doctrine also converge on the enslaving role of desire. The second noble truth of the Buddha is that cause of suffering is desire, or more accurately, craving (tr s a) and its concomitant clinging (upadana). Desire for conditioned things cannot be fully n satiated or satisfied, due to their impermanent nature. Clinging to conditioned things which are of an impermanent nature also implies an inevitable loss or lack. Moreover, desire and clinging to the idea of a self is a delusion, because there is no abiding self or identity. For Lacan, desire is a fundamental lack, a hole in being (Sarup, 1992, p. 13). Desire is always expressive

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of a lack because it is tied to the limitations of language, since we can never fully express what it is that we really want (Fink, 1995). This keeps the subject locked into a perpetual movement of seeking the lost object, but with an impossibility of ever achieving lasting fulfillment (Sarup, 1992). Lacanian desire is linked with fantasies of being filled by the Other that are impossible to fulfill, expressed in his famous aphorism I always find my desire outside of me because what I desire is always something that I lack, that is other to me (Lacan, 1988b).

A BUDDHIST REINTERPRETATION OF LACK Lacans work theorized how identity is illusory, as it is constructed from an imaginary order. In this section, I build upon much of Lacanian theorizing, which argues that identity discourse is also an attempt to deal with unconscious lack. However, rather than accepting lack as a perpetual struggle and a stopping point for inquirywhat Lacan referred to as jouissanceBuddhism views lack as a symptom of a more fundamental and primary repression: a fear of noself, emptinessthe fear that the core of who we are is not real, but groundless (Loy, 2000). In response, Buddhism offers an alternative to continuously circling around our fundamental lack (Lacans jouissance and Buddhisms samsara, often translated as the wheel of suffering or a wheel off kilter). Rather than avoiding and repressing our fear of groundlessnessthe therapeutic solution of Buddhist practice is to become nothing. Paradoxically, by fully embracing the fundamental lack, that is, by becoming completely groundless in body and mind, abiding in no-mind and in nothing, we become grounded in the totality of all things. As Loy (2000) aptly points out, This reveals that from the very beginning there has never been any lack, because there has never been any self-existing self apart from the world (p. 53). In articulating a Buddhist perspective on lack, I turn to the major theoretical works of Buddhist scholar and Zen teacher, David Loy (1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2008). The pragmatic emphasis within Buddhism is to put an end to dukkha, or suffering, which encompasses the basic anxiety and dissatisfaction that is pervasive in human and social experience. Although there is a wide range of conditions and forms of suffering (physical, emotional, and mental), there is also an ongoing sense of dukkha that is derived from a basic awareness of impermanence (Loy, 2003). In addition, another form of dukkha, which is not usually consciously apparent, arises from a repression of an unconscious fear that our sense of subjectivity does not correspond to any real ontological self, and that deep down there is a suspicion that I am not real (Loy, 2003, p. 22). This latter type of dukkha, essentially a repression of anatman (no-self), underlies the desire and compulsion we have in trying to make ourselves realcontinuous attempts to objectify, secure, and ground our fragile sense of selfin other words, to become self-existing. Lacan (1977a) also called into question the homogeneity of Cartesian subject. Through his analytic techniques, Lacan deconstructed the Cartesian subject, by reconstituting the classic I think, therefore I am as an expression of the ego, which he reformulated as I think where I am not. As Moncayo (2003) points out, such a formulation is equivalent to Epsteins (1995) thoughts without a thinker (p. 41). Loy reinterprets the Freudian Oedipal process by arguing that our primary repression is not libidinous-sexual urges, nor the fear of death (the position existentialists take), but of anatman no-selfthe fear of emptiness, or egolessness. Drawing from the existentialist works of Norman O. Brown, Ernest Becker, and Ludwig Binswanger, Loy explains that the Oedipal

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complex is tied to a realization that the child is separate in consciousness from the mother, which generates an attempt to become ones own father. Essentially, a desire to become ones own origin amounts to what Brown (1961) renamed as the Oedipal project. For existentialists like Brown and Becker, the Oedipal project was linked to a primary repressiona denial of deathwhich was compensating for by engaging in symbolic immortality projects. Beckers (1973) thesis on the repression and denial of death is extended to the Buddhist lack of self, the repression of the groundlessness of the sense of self right now. Psychoanalysis tends to focus on the past, on early object relations, and developmental fixations and the working through of repressed memories and conditioning. In contrast, Loys thesis is concerned with a universal conditioning that is the result of a deeply rooted me connaisance: a delusive sense of self that takes itself as separate, independent, and permanent entity. Commenting on his reinterpretation, Loy (2003) states:

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In this way Buddhism shifts our focus from the terror of death (our primary repression, according to Becker) to the anguish of a groundlessness experienced here and now. The problem is not so much that we will die, but that we do not feel real now. . . . In Escape From Evil Becker argues that society is a collective immortality project. Can it also be understood as a collective reality project, a group effort to ground ourselves? (p. 22)

Of course, without a mindfulness practice to heighten the groundlessness of the self, most people do not suffer consciously from derealization. Rather, a culturally accepted symptomology appears as various modes of overcompensationan obsessive pursuit of fame, power, wealth, or youth; compulsive additive behaviors; and other attempts at perpetually reconstructing our habitual ways of perceiving and acting. In Lacanian terms, there is a clinging to the ideal ego as a means of defending against an absence or lack. In this respect, dukkha is not only personal, but also collectivea form of culturally conditioned sufferingwhich is the basis for egocentric organizing. The problem with the Oedipal project, as Loy points out, is that it never succeeds. All attempts at objectification of the self are ultimately doomed to failure. All reality projects, which are symbolic ways we try to make ourselves real in the world, are compulsive substitutes and displacements that can never fulfill our desires. For Lacan, human action is defined by lack in the symbolic order, with its function to convey laws, values, myths, and the rules of language. As Moncayo (2003) notes, The core of being and of the subject is this lack of being as well as desire to recoup the loss under language via unconscious phantasy (p. 376). In this respect, discourse and actions aimed at objectification will ensnare us in a Lacanian struggle with lack, with no way out, except to romanticize it as a creative pathology (Driver, 2009b)akin to the metaphor of the tragic and struggling artist. For Loy, however, the origin of lack is due to a primary repression that nature of the self is fragile mental construction and is not real. The miscognition, or Buddhist me connaissance, is that we falsely experience our own perceived groundlessness as a lack (Watson, 1998). Loy (2000) cogently explains his thesis:
The consequence is that the sense-of-self always has, as its inescapable shadow, a sense-of-lack, which it always tries to escape. It is here that the theory of repression becomes so valuable, for Freuds concept of the return of the repressedthat what-has-been-repressed returns to consciousness distorted into a symptomshows us how to link this fundamental yet hopeless situation with

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the symbolic ways we try to overcome our sense of lack by making ourselves real in the world. We experience this deep sense of lack as the feeling that there is something wrong with me. (p. 12)

It is important to point out that the ego cannot escape or absolve itself of its own lack, because the ego is a mirror image of lackor to put it another way, the self is dukkha (Loy, 2008). Self-identity is inherently haunted by a sense of insecurity and lack, with a gnawing feeling and core assessment that something is missing. These experiences are palpably real as they are supported by complex identity discourses, or stories, that validate this core assessment of lack. Such narratives serve to bind identity, establishing a self-referencing system of meaning that render our assessments true and factual to us (Fenner, 2007). For example, the feeling of lack for academics could manifest as gnawing sense that one is not recognized enough among their scholarly peers, that one needs to publish and read more, pursue more grants, apply for endowed chair positions, go to more conferences, and so on. Such reality projects are ultimately unsuccessful because they amount, in Lacanian terms, as imaginary projects of being or becoming something. As Loy (2002) points out, No object can ever satisfy if it is not really an object that we want (p. 5). From a Lacanian framework, this is so because reality projects are based on fantasies of the ego-ideal; unconscious attempts to resolve lack by seeking it in the other. And according to Moncayo (2001), ego-ideals are still ways to attempt to suture rather than open up the emptiness at the core of being (p. 12). However, Buddhist lack, as Loy has described, has a different etiology from that of Lacans. For Lacanians, such as Driver (2005, 2009a, 2009b) and her colleagues (Arnaud, 2003; Harding, 2007), lack is unresolvable and something for which there is no cure. Such a tragic conclusion is due to Lacans view that the origin of lack is the result of an unconscious trauma and loss of the undifferentiated primal subject prior to language. Lacan does acknowledge, however, a register of experience beyond languageand beyond dualistic concepts such as absence and presence. The subject desires the One of the Real, but the symbolic order and imaginary register are structurally incapable of accessing the Real to the subject. The Real for Lacan is a plenum, in which there is no lack-the Real is absolutely without fissure (Sarup, 1992, p. 97). Within the Lacanian framework, the subject is caught in the exhilarating, tragic, and unending dance of Desire and jouissance, forever in pursuit of petit object a, Lacans little-other-objects (Molino, 1998b, p. 299). Interestingly, Lacan actually opposed jouissance to desire. In his earlier works, Lacan compared jouissance to mystical and religious experiences (Homer, 2004). What desire actually seeks is the unconscious feeling-tone of jouissance, which is the consistent underlying sense that there is always something more available. We are driven by the insatiability of our desires, and continually disappointed, but we sense that there is some underlying potential, that there is something more than the ephemeral desires of our ego-self. As Homer (2004) puts it, We do not know what it is but assume that it must be there because we are constantly dissatisfied (p. 90). Lacan also linked jouissance with the production of symptomalogy and with a paradoxical situation where patients appear to enjoy their own illness or symptoms. Driver (2009b) suggests that embracing the repeated failures of imaginary identity discourse can allows us to reflect on how powerful we are as subjects of the unconscious. According to Driver (2009b), because there is no escape from the lack inherent in the symbolic order, the best we can hope for is a bitter sweet type of enjoyment, or jouissance, which at least allows us to catch a glimpse of the creative powers of the unconscious. Based on Drivers reading of Lacan,

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liberation resembles a form of ego surrender or resignation that requires a coming to terms with the limits of desire and lack, which, in her estimation, provides opportunities for the experience of creative and liberating struggles with lack (Driver 2009b, p. 65). However, such a formulation assumes the ego is capable of such voluntaristic renunciation. For Buddhism, implied in its third noble truth is that the struggle with lack, itself, can be liberated because it is symptomatic of a primary repression of our groundlessness. In this respect, we can never secure a sense of self or identity, because the very nature of the self does not existit is fundamentally insecure, and that insecurity is experienced as a lack. The Buddhist me connaissance (avijja, translated as ignorance, delusion, confusion, misperception) is that we falsely experience our inherent groundlessness as lack, and then attempt to flee from it by trying to objectify ourselves in various sorts of reality projects. Buddhist diagnosis shows how investments in self-identity is a case of misperception, resulting in delusion and confusion, leading to a desire to cling to phenomena that are in reality impermanent (annica) and insubstantial (anatman) (Soeng, 2004). Pointing out this fundamental error, Watson (1998) notes, For Buddhism this sense of lack or deficiency arises directly from misperception, and is an unreal lack, a lack of something which never existed and never will exist, a permanent autonomous self (p. 230). In a Derridean sense, we are clinging to a myth. From this perspective, lack becomes an invitation for opening up to the groundlessness at our core, a potential source of creativity. Paradoxically, by embracing groundlessness, rather than fleeing from it, we develop a fluid capacity to be or not be anything. In some respects, the fluidity of emptiness resonates with the approach of D. W. Winnicott, a British child psychoanalyst, whose concept of going on being and his notion of unintegration described a healthy state in which there is an uninterrupted flow of the child, a freedom from a fixed identity (Craig, 2008; Epstein, 2008; Winnicott, 1965). Buddhist practice and Lacanian psychoanalysis both concede that the ego is seat of resistance and any reliance on conventional thought and empty speech only keeps us circling endlessly within the labyrinth of our imaginary and symbolic constructions. In this respect, both traditions rely on unconventional and indirect methods for circumventing the will of the ego. Buddhist methods include primarily meditation, but also discursive practices such as the nondual deconstructive logic found in Madyamaka; debating the enigmatic, absurd, and paradoxical koans in Rinzai Zen; to visceral shock tactics (Taylor, 2009). What these unconventional methods have in common is that they are employed as a means to decenter our familiar and common modes of representational discourse, effecting a deconstruction and deflation of ego. Raul Moncayo (2003), who is a Lacanian analyst and scholar, as well as a Zen Buddhist practitioner, concurs as he states:
Both could be said to converge in the Zen formula that true self is no-self or the Lacanianinformed formula that true subject is no ego. Both formulas illustrate the realization that the true subject requires death or deconstruction of imaginary ego-identifications and representations. It is the experience of no-self, of the subject as metaphor, emptiness, and quiescent energy, that grounds and constitutes what has been called the analytic attitude, the therapeutic stance, or what Lacan calls the subjective position of the analyst. As such, the subjective position of the analyst, as representing no-self, the power of metaphor, and bound energy, points in the direction of the evocation of a different state of mind than that associated with ordinary ego-experience. (p. 349)

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A Buddhist-inspired Lacanian therapeutic stance is in the direction toward this extralinguistic level of experience, the unknown Real of the unconscious which, according to Moncayo (1998b)

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signifies an ontology of a nondual being-non-being (p. 185). The unconscious is a structure with neither an outside nor an inside (Sarup, 1992, p. 113), which explains why Lacan resorted to representing it using the image of a Mo bius strip, especially as a visual means to conceptualize the return of the repressed.1 For Lacan, the language of the unconscious, as expressed in the form of symptoms, is a way that the It (Das Ding) speaks (Moncayo, 2008). As previously pointed out, the Buddhist perspective described how our repressed sense of no-self and groundlessness also returns to consciousness as a symptom as a feeling of lack. CONCLUSION Loys (2003) study of lack describes how our primary repression is not death anxiety, which Becker and other existentialists have proposed, but the hidden anguish that within the core of our being we are essentially groundless, and that fear is not in the future, but right now. From what I have suggested so far, the Buddhist reinterpretation of lack, as Loy so eloquently points out, argues that identity is inherently an ungroundable construct, and at this juncture joins forces with Lacan: We can never resolve our own sense of lack by trying to become real within the symbolic order. Because we have continuously struggled with lackwhether in a dysfunctional or so-called creative mannerwe have immunized ourselves against an inquiry into the ontological status of the self and identity. The liberation from our struggle with lack is synonymous with becoming that which we fear most: dwelling in the Real of no-thing-ness, groundlessness, egolessnessthat which can never be objectified or symbolized, but can be realized and expressed. Here we see that the Buddhist Real, shunyata, is a dynamic function of emptying everything, including itself, and should be understood as a verb, not some static state of vacuity (Abe, 1995). And because shunyata cannot be represented or thought about conceptually, it requires an experiential radical deconstruction of all views, carried to the point where there is no longer any desire to cling to or reconstruct representations of what is or what is not. In the open space of no-thing-ness, there is a freedom from having to be something or somebody, and no sense of lack. This is not a meaningless, nihilistic nothingness, but a no-thing-ness, that is, an opening or hole in being that goes beyond the dualism of existence versus nonexistence. It is the register of the Buddhist Real, or shunyata, where emptiness is form, and form is emptiness (Streng, 1967). Not a nihilistic emptiness, but a dynamic unknowing knowing of all constructs that appear as being independent, self-existing, or permanent. Not a mere void, but a radical fullness and nonconceptual openness, in which mutual relativity and dramatic interdependency is realized. In the end there is not nothingness, but compassion, wisdom, and social virtuosity. REFERENCES
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1 Soto Zen master Dogen (2004) distinguishes between thinking (shiryo), not thinking (fushiryo), and nonthinking (hishiryo). Nonthinking is no mind (mu shin). Nonthinking is not, not thinking. Dogen describes zazen as Thinking of not thinking. When asked how to do this, he writes, By non-thinking.

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AUTHOR NOTE
Ronald E. Purser is Professor of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University and past division chair of the Organization Development and Change division of the Academy of Management. He is co-author and co-editor of five books, including The Search Conference (Jossey-Bass, 1996), Social Creativity, Volumes 1 & 2 (Hampton Press, 1999), The Self-Managing Organization (The Free Press, 1998), and 24=7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society (Stanford University Press, 2007). His past work has focused on temporality in organizations, social creativity, organizations and the natural environmental, sociotechnical systems redesign of knowledge work, organizational learning, and democratic self-management. He has published in such outlets as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Journal of Managerial Psychology, and Journal of Humanistic Psychology. He is a long-time student of Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, and is currently a Zen student under the instruction of Albert Low of the Montreal Zen Center.

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