Look into the MirrorWhat Jung, Freud, and Adler Left Us

The "self-affirmation vs. self-criticism" tension we have examined across four episodes is not, in fact, a subject limited to Western psychology. Some 2,500 years ago in India, the Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama) confronted the same problem and offered his own answer. It is the Middle Way (Madhyamā Pratipad) — the path that departs from two extremes. This essay begins with the Buddha's own story of awakening, traces Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy, the logic of dependent origination and emptiness, and finally connects to modern mindfulness and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) — to show what Eastern philosophy brings to the contemporary debate on self-esteem.

01The Buddha's Awakening — The Moment He Stepped Away from Six Years of Asceticism

Born around the 5th century BCE in Lumbini (in what is now Nepal), the Shakya prince Siddhārtha Gautama left home at the age of 29. The path he chose for the next six years was that of severe asceticism (tapas). The religious culture of India at the time widely held that tormenting the body to its limits would lead to spiritual liberation. One grain of rice per day, fasting until his flesh stuck to his bones, holding his breath, sitting in the sun for hours — he exhausted every form of austerity.

And still he did not reach awakening. Eventually, by the banks of the Nairañjanā river, he accepted a bowl of milk-rice from a village girl named Sujātā and slowly ate it. The five disciples who had practiced asceticism with him left in disappointment, saying "Siddhārtha has fallen from the path." But it was here that he made a decisive turn.

"Monks, there are two extremes that one who has gone forth should not approach. One is the pursuit of pleasure in sensual desires — base, vulgar, worldly, ignoble, and unprofitable. The other is the pursuit of self-mortification — painful, ignoble, and unprofitable. The Tathāgata has awakened to the Middle Way (Madhyamā Pratipad) that departs from both these extremes." — Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dharma, c. 5th century BCE)

Translated into the modern frame, this is the declaration that "neither excessive self-criticism (asceticism) nor easy self-affirmation (hedonism) is a viable path." What the Buddha offered was not a compromise between the two extremes (their midpoint), but a path located outside (transcending) both extremes.

02The Two Extremes — Asceticism (Self-Criticism) and Hedonism (Self-Affirmation)

Re-placing the two extremes the Buddha avoided into the modern self-esteem debate makes the structure visible.

What both extremes share is treating "the self" as fixed. Asceticism reifies the "bad self" and punishes it. Hedonism reifies the "wonderful self" and affirms it. Both stand on the premise that "an unchanging self exists."

The Buddha's Middle Way calls this very premise into question. Does a "self that should be affirmed" or a "self that should be criticized" really exist as something fixed? If not, then affirmation and criticism are like swinging a sword into thin air. — This leads to the next point: Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy.

03The Eightfold Path — The Concrete Content of the Middle Way

The Middle Way is not an abstract principle. The Buddha presented it concretely as the Noble Eightfold Path (Ariya Aṭṭhaṅgika Magga) — eight forms of right conduct:

What is striking is that no item in the Eightfold Path says "affirm yourself" or "criticize yourself." Instead, "awareness (sati)," "concentration (samādhi)," "right view (diṭṭhi)" — observation instead of evaluation, understanding instead of judgment — sit at the center. This is the direct source text of modern mindfulness meditation.

04Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka School — The "Self" Itself Is Empty

The philosophical systematization of the Buddha's teaching was carried out by the South Indian monk Nāgārjuna (c. 2nd-3rd century CE). His main work, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā ("Root Verses on the Middle Way"), is regarded as the foundational text of Mahayana Buddhism and has deeply influenced all later Buddhist thought — Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Tendai, and others.

Nāgārjuna's central proposition is emptiness (śūnyatā): "All entities lack inherent essence (svabhāva, independent intrinsic nature)." This is not nihilism but relationalism. Everything exists only in relation to other things. "I," too — family, society, culture, body, memory — appears as a phenomenon within this web of relations. No independent "I" exists outside the web.

"That which is dependent origination, we call emptiness. It is a designation (prajñapti), which is precisely the Middle Way." — Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24:18 (2nd-3rd century CE)

The impact of this proposition on the self-esteem debate is decisive. The judgments "I am valuable" and "I am worthless" both assume a "fixed self." But according to Nāgārjuna, that premise itself is wrong. "I" is not a fixed substance but a phenomenon that arises from relations, moment by moment. So affirmation and criticism have no fixed object — the very act of evaluation is committing a category error.

05Dependent Origination — The Self Exists Only Within the Web of Relations

Supporting Nāgārjuna's logic is dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) — the Buddha's fundamental teaching that "because this is, that is; when this arises, that arises."

Consider a specific person: "material reviewer A." What constitutes A?

• Body: DNA inherited from parents, assemblies of food, constantly turning-over cells
• Knowledge: school education, workplace training, conversations with seniors, books read
• Judgment patterns: past successes and failures, evaluations from various managers, organizational culture
• Emotions: this morning's events, quality of sleep, hunger, state of relationships
• Role: the title "material reviewer" itself is only constituted by the pharmaceutical industry, the Pharmaceutical Act, and organizational structure

Remove any of these elements and "material reviewer A" transforms. That is, A appears, moment by moment, as a composite (sankhata) of all these elements. No fixed "core of A" can be found anywhere.

At this point, the question "is A a good reviewer or a bad reviewer?" is wrong at the category level. Because it tries to attach a fixed attribute, "good/bad," to a phenomenon that appears moment by moment. Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Zen monk) expressed this in the English coinage interbeing.

"To be is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing." — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, 1998

06Connection to Modern Psychology — Mindfulness and ACT

The Buddha's Middle Way and Nāgārjuna's philosophy of emptiness had direct influence on late-20th-century clinical psychology. The representative examples are Jon Kabat-Zinn's MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and Steven C. Hayes's ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).

① MBSR — "Observation" Transcends "Evaluation"

Kabat-Zinn (University of Massachusetts Medical School) developed the MBSR program in 1979 for chronic pain patients — a redesign of Buddhist mindfulness (sati) as a medical program with the religious framing removed. At its core: "non-judgmental awareness." Rather than evaluating pain as a "bad sensation," observe it simply as "a sensation."

Moved into the self-esteem context: when the thought "I am bad" arises, do not treat it as fact; simply observe that "the thought 'I am bad' is arising." Dissolve the identification between thought and self. This is essentially the same stance as Brown's "Naming" from Vol. 2.

② ACT — Treating the "I" as Observer, Not as Story

ACT, developed by Hayes and colleagues since the 1980s, presents a three-layer model of the self — Self as Content / Process / Context:

ACT trains the patient to make these three layers conscious and to stand in Context (Self as Observer), distancing the self from Content (Self as Story). "I am bad" (Content) → "right now, the thought 'I am bad' is arising in me" (Context) — this shift in perspective alleviates suffering.

07Practice in Pharma & Material Review

Translating the Middle Way into the daily reality of material review. When the fact "that judgment was a mistake" arises:

Ascetic Response (to avoid)

"I am a bad reviewer. I should push myself harder." — Reifying the self as a fixed "bad existence" and punishing it. This is the confluence of Vol. 2's shame and Vol. 3's pathological self-criticism.

Hedonic Response (to avoid)

"It's OK to make mistakes; just be yourself." — Reifying the self as a fixed "OK existence" and affirming it easily. The three misunderstandings from Vol. 4.

Middle Way Response (to aim for)

"Right now, the thought 'I am bad' is arising in me. This thought is produced by a combination of [the event], my fatigue state, and my interpretation of the manager's expression. Let me distinguish thought from reality. Three concrete improvements are possible." — Do not evaluate the self in a fixed way; observe it as phenomenon. After observing, connect to concrete action.

The Middle Way that the Buddha presented 2,500 years ago is one of the oldest — and one of the deepest — responses to the modern self-esteem debate. The very binary "should I affirm or criticize the self?" presupposes a fixed "self" in the Western mode of questioning, and the Buddha questioned that very premise.

Nāgārjuna's emptiness, dependent origination, the Eightfold Path — these can look like abstract metaphysics, but through Kabat-Zinn's MBSR, Hayes's ACT, and the recent mindfulness research, they have been reformulated as concrete trainable techniques inside contemporary clinical psychology and neuroscience. The Middle Way is not affirmation, not criticism, but observation. Observe first; then connect to the next concrete action — that is the central message of this essay.

Vol. 6 will examine Adler's "Separation of Tasks" — detaching the self from others' evaluations — tracing how a 20th-century Austrian psychiatrist raised, in a different cultural context, a comparable question.