A Survey on the Psychological Process of Personality Transformation

Buddhism as a mind based religion provides its deep teachings and good understanding of human nature and its personality to mankind. This is tied to its soteriology. The aim of Buddhism is to get rid of dukkha from samsara which called personality transformation in Buddhism. Here transformation should be understood as a total change from one’s base nature to the purified nature of mind; in other words from the conventional self (puthujjana) to the beyond conventional (ariya-puggala) self in Buddhism. Hence psychology is taken here as the mental development of a person (puthujjana) to his or her ultimate transformation into an ariya. Gotrabhū is a very important term in Buddhism especially in Abhidhamma which is not greatly touched by scholars yet. It is also established a bridge between early Buddhist discourse to later Buddhist interpretations especially Abhidhamma. Gotrabhū also combined the two methods of meditational goals samatha and vipassanā even though practitioners still hold different views based on their practical traditions. Thus it works as a vital force for transforming personality from mundane to supra mundane level to attain highest fruit in Buddhism.