Social and Behavioral Sciences | Open Access Articles

Transpersonal psychology has at times employed Buddhist terminology in ways that do not

reflect distinctions that underlie these tightly defined terms. From a Buddhist perspective,

attempts to equate Buddhist terms with language from other traditions are misdirected, and

produce results that no longer represent Buddhism. For example, it is an error to translate

certain Buddhist terms as referring to a shared universal consciousness; Buddhism explicitly

rejects this idea. Nor is it appropriate to assume that the generic, cross-traditional altered

state of nondual awareness postulated in some transpersonally-related circles is in any way

related to nirvana or other advanced states described …

Nonduality is at the core of both transpersonal psychology and ecopsychology and provides a

means of finding common ground between these approaches. However, misunderstandings

and the lack of an adequate conceptual language for nonduality have limited the value

of this concept for ecopsychology. Nonduality is presented as a range of experiences and

stages of development in which particulars are perceived and understood as part of an allencompassing

totality. Specifically, nonduality is understood in terms of a self-identity

in which separating boundaries no longer isolate one from other expressions of Being. A

description of nondual dimensions of Being based on the …

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