Bashō’s Therapy for Narcissus: Nature as Intimate Other and Transpersonal Self

Abstract

The mythical Narcissus alienated himself not only from other people but from the nonhuman beings and presences of the natural world. Gazing into a beautiful pond he saw merely his personal reflection and absolutely nothing of nature. A similar dissociation haunts our existence today, impoverishing both humankind and the rest of nature. The Zen poet Matsuo Bashō’s also had a famous encounter with an old pond, but in a radically different way. Guided by Bashō’s poetry together with the existential and transpersonal streams of Buddhist psychology, the present work explores how we may welcome nature as an intimate other and as our transpersonal self. Bashō’s therapy for Narcissus—and for us—illuminates the “normal” narcissism of our conventional ego-centered stance and fosters a nondual, participatory, eco-centered approach, one that is mutually enhancing for all participants in the shared earth community, human and otherwise.