Theravāda Buddhist Psychology
The oldest surviving Buddhist analytical tradition, offering a comprehensive phenomenology of mind. Consciousness is understood as a rapidly arising and passing stream of momentary mind-states (cittas), each conditioned by mental factors (cetasikas). There is no permanent self (anattā) — what we call 'I' is a process, not an entity. Suffering (dukkha) arises from clinging to impermanent phenomena. Liberation comes through direct insight (vipassanā) into the three characteristics of existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anattā).
Core Propositions
Uncited. These state what the framework asserts. They are not findings Psychedex has verified, and no reference is attached to any of them.
Effects
Direct insight into anattā (non-self). The substance reveals what meditation also reveals: there was never a fixed self to dissolve. The 'dissolution' is the dropping of a misperception.
Experiential contact with dependent origination — the felt sense that all phenomena arise together, interdependently. Not 'I am everything' but 'there is no separate I.'
Contact with anicca (impermanence) — the perception that reality is 'unreal' reflects accurate seeing of phenomena as process rather than substance, but without grounding.
Partial anattā insight without equanimity. Depersonalization is seeing non-self but reacting to it with fear rather than liberation — the insight without the training to hold it.
Dukkha — anxiety is a form of suffering arising from clinging. The practice is not to suppress it but to observe it with equanimity, seeing its impermanent, non-self nature.
Substances
Psilocybin can produce states that parallel meditation insights (anattā, anicca), but without the ethical and concentrative training that makes those insights transformative. 'A glimpse, not the path.'
DMT breakthroughs map to jhānic absorption states and formless realm experiences described in the Abhidhamma, but arise without the sequential training that contextualizes them.
Some Thai forest monks have experimented with kratom; ayahuasca has no traditional Theravāda connection. However, modern practitioners increasingly seek Buddhist frameworks to integrate ayahuasca experiences.
Framework record
An interpretive framework: a lens for reading experience, not a measured record. Its claims are the framework’s own. No references are attached to this entry on Psychedex, and nothing on this page has been verified against a source here.
- references
- none on file
- epistemic status
- Established
- revision
- 1
- published
- not recorded
- content origin
- LLM generated
- psx id
- FRM-theravada
Origin
Rooted in the Pāli Canon (c. 3rd century BCE), systematized in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, and refined through the commentarial tradition, particularly Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga (5th century CE). The oldest continuous Buddhist practice lineage.
Key Figures
Key Texts
The framework’s own foundational literature, not sources cited for this entry.
Related Frameworks
Both describe consciousness as a process rather than an entity. Buddhist 'stream of cittas' parallels the entropic brain's 'dynamic neural states.' Both predict that disrupting habitual patterns produces insight.