I feel compelled to defend Prof. Hayes and Ms. Traister from the many letters essentially saying Hayes stole from Buddhism (or elsewhere).

I'm not sure if it is possible to have a philosophy that is entirely original. About a week ago I read a twenty-year-old book by Alexander Lowen called Fear of Life. In it, he argues (among other things) that failure is inevitable, and that we should not be afraid to fail, but should focus our attention on being, rather than on trying to achieve success. The book was thought-provoking, but not brilliant, and inspired me to return to some of the similar ideas espoused in the Buddhist texts on my bookshelves. It was only a small leap from Lowen's being to Buddhist mindfulness.

This morning I listened to a radio program (the NPR KQED show Forum) on the book Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett. Dennett also wrote a book called Consciousness Explained a few years back, and someone called in to ask why he hadn't acknowledged in his book that his ideas were basically Buddhist.

And now I see the letters responding to this article.

The point of philosophy, psychology, and the like, is not to be original. If the point were to be original we should all just stop now. The point, it seems to me, is to make (mental) connections, explore ideas, provoke. If Hayes was inspired by Buddhist philosophy, and wants to acknowledge that, so be it. But we can't expect every writer to acknowledge every inspiration, or dismiss every writer or scholar whose ideas resemble ideas we have encountered elsewhere.

OK, so maybe his ideas come out of various other traditions, especially Buddhism. But no one seems to be thinking about the fact that not everyone responds to Buddhism (as many might reject it as silly hippie shit) and that mainstream Americans in 2006 perhaps need to hear ths message in this way: in the form of the science of psychology and in self-help books based on this psychology.

Looking over my bookshelf...Pema Chodron, Lama Surya Das, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, and, oh yeah, the Buddha himself, all expressed a very similar message. And maybe Mr. (Dr.?) Hayes acknowledges this in his book, or in other articles, but the fact that it sounds like many of his ideas are coming straight out of the Buddhist traditions should have been acknowledged in this article.