CEUs: 2

Instructor: Sensei Mui

Humans are masters of self-deception. We fool ourselves into believing things that are false and refuse to believe things that are true. We lie to ourselves about trivial details, our aspirational goals, motivations, social ideals, our most important life choices, e.g., choice of romantic partners, and our career choices.

We lie to ourselves because we do not have the psychological strength to admit the truth to ourselves and others, and deal with the consequences that will follow. Understanding our self-deception is the most effective way of living a fulfilling life because when we admit who we really are we have the opportunity to change.

Our self-deception began in infancy when we first observed and made conclusions about our environment and ourselves. These conclusions, which affect our identity as adults, are called “karma” in Buddhism. To avoid pain, the illusion of an imaginary self-identity is created through self-deceptive habits like projection, blame, self- justification, polarized thinking, emotional reasoning, overgeneralization and other self-defense mechanisms designed exclusively to maintain illusory personal truths.

In Buddhist psychology this process is called “wrong view” and is the basis of the Four Noble Truths. Wrong View creates Samsāra, “the Great Wandering,” through the cycles of existence we call “Life”. Sensei Mui will explore the process in this talk.

About the Instructor
Sensei Mui has been a meditator for 51 years and has taught meditation for 48 of them. He was ordained a Theravada monk in Thailand in 1971 and in multiple Mahayana traditions, including Sōto Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Esoteric Tendai and Pure Land Buddhism, since then. He was awarded a Doctor of Buddhist Studies (DBS) degree with a psychology specialty and PhD in literature and languages with a specialty in psycholinguistics. He is currently a teacher with Hongaku Jōdo, an organization of Buddhist teachers and clergy in the Western tradition. He also works as a Buddhist counselor and therapist utilizing cognitive and meditative therapies. Sensei Mui’s style is to clearly present the teachings found in the early Buddhist scriptures and the writings of the Mahayana traditions, thus making even the deepest concepts accessible to people in the 21st century.