Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy?

[Nak Khid]

Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy?

The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice isn’t about achieving mental health.

By C. W. Huntington, Jr.
Spring 2018
Tricycle: The Buddhist Review,

(excepts)

https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhism-and-psychotherapy/

Some 30 years ago Jack Engler published an influential study based on his experience as both a Buddhist meditation teacher and a clinical psychologist. He had discovered over the years that many people who come to Buddhism are looking for the kind of help they ought properly to seek in psychotherapy. “With the ‘triumph of the therapeutic’ in Western culture,” he wrote, there is a tendency in mindfulness meditation to “analyze mental content instead of simply observing it.”

In more recent years this conflation between Buddhist practice and psychotherapy has only deepened. Books tracing associations between the two traditions have proliferated, and the use of mindfulness meditation in a therapeutic setting has become commonplace. Indeed, pristine, unassailable mental health is often assumed to be the ultimate goal of all study and practice of the dharma.

The problem, however, is that it isn’t. And when, as it happens, an accomplished Buddhist meditator struggles with severe depression or anxiety—symptoms of a clinically diagnosed psychological disorder—it can be especially difficult for students to understand. Writing after the death of the Canadian Buddhist teacher Michael Stone, who had struggled with bipolar disorder, the Scottish Zen monk Dogo Barry Graham reflected on would-be students who were disappointed to hear that what treats his own mental health issues is not meditation, but Prozac. “Some were upset when I told them to see a doctor before they attempted meditation practice,” he wrote on his blog.

The practice of psychotherapy is, accordingly, dedicated to a method of healing that leaves the conventional structure of self-as-agent intact as the focal point of attention, whereas Buddhist spiritual practice engages in a sustained, methodical dismantling of our customary preoccupation with self-centered experience....

At the time of Engler’s study 30 years ago, those undertaking Buddhist practice to solve psychotherapeutic issues—and, according to him, there were many such people—often suffered from various clinical disorders characteristic of an ego that had been traumatized and arrested in the course of its development. They were frequently searching for a way to avoid the developmental tasks essential to the formation of a functioning ego; Buddhism was particularly attractive to them because of its core teaching of no-self, mistakenly perceived as a “shortcut solution to the developmental tasks appropriate and necessary to their stage of the life cycle.” However, what they found in Buddhist practice was, ironically, nothing but an endless hall of mirrors reflecting their own fears and desires....

As practiced in the traditional Buddhist context, mindfulness is not a powerful, spiritualized form of psychotherapy, a device for fine-tuning the ego—much less a strategy for achieving “complete and invulnerable self-sufficiency.” Although in an abridged form it can be legitimately harnessed to the business of healing the self of a range of mental and emotional disorders, as an essential component in the Buddhist path to nibbana, mindfulness is not about becoming a happier, better person. It’s not about “happiness” at all—at least not if “happiness” is understood as the fulfillment of desire. Mindfulness is, rather, about wisdom rooted in insight, renunciation, and unqualified self-surrender.

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Established in 1990 as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization, The Tricycle Foundation is dedicated to making Buddhist teachings and practices broadly available. In 1991 the Foundation launched Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first magazine intended to present Buddhist perspectives to a Western readership.

 

 

[mandyjw]

You should pursue both. You can't analyze what you haven't observed. Observation changes your analysis. Analysis changes your observations. Buddhism doesn't have to look like Buddhism and therapy doesn't have to look like therapy. 

[Nak Khid]

[mandyjw]

That's a really important warning, that should probably also include the numbers for some resources including suicide prevention hotlines, in my opinion. 

Therapy isn't just for people who are in a really bad place, it should be for anyone who is suffering at all. People have misunderstood ideas and prejudices about therapy just like they do psychedelics or drugs in general. The consciousness and intentions of the user and the quality of the tool come together to determine the results. 

[Angelite]

What is a buddhist practice? 

It is simply a way of life. Actual buddhism is easy for the mind, heart, body & soul. It is meant to be natural to your true nature. 

It is when you take parts & pieces of it for your own benefit and not following it as a whole that you ruined a pure teaching. 

Buddhist monks are few. Every other buddhist are like every other humans. 

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Angelite

[Martin123]

@Nak Khid That's hilarious. I'm actually writing an essay for my university course. The essay question is as follows:

The development of mindfulness must be understood in conjunction with the development of wisdom, compassion and ethics. How do these Buddhist principles relate to how mindfulness is practiced in 20th century Western society?

So it's the opposite view of what you are suggesting, looking at mindfulness as it is practiced in the west and realizing its reductionistic view where mindfulness has been stripped of all the Buddhist goodies of spiritual alignment of the qualities of wisdom and virtue, and suggesting the dangers in that.
One of such dangers is that people will prescribe mindfulness in situations where there are much more important steps to take, that require discernment, wisdom and ethics. Such as prescribing mindfulness to corporate employees as a stress-reduction exercise, whilst they are being overworked and treated in unethical ways in an environment that is motivated by greed.

In other words, the western scientific community has taken mindfulness and objectified it into making it to a tool that serves as means to an end, such as to reduce stress, alleviate emotional difficulties etc. 
No such things exists in the original Buddhist connotations, mindfulness is a practice of a deeper philosophical way of life rooted in virtuous living and the attainment of ethics , compassion and wisdom.

The cultivation of wisdom, virtue and ethics can of course be a subject of a deep therapeutic relationship, but often gets overlooked or not understood properly, especially through the most common therapeutic approaches that are popular with the government as they are symptom oriented, not necessarily solution oriented (like cognitive behavioural therapy).

If there is deep emotional maturity to be cultivated in therapy, you also need very emotionally mature therapists, who can be quite rare. 
With such a therapist, even cognitive behavioural therapy can be useful as it will be used in a space that authentically cultivates compassion and love, instead of distract from it. The problem with this is that the therapeutic approach itself is very simple and can be used in ways that are superficial and very mind-oriented, deterring from deeper emotional cultivation. You can use certain therapeutic models to gaslight people into compliance and deter them from emotional vulnerability. 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Martin123

[Bill W]

@Martin123

13 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

The development of mindfulness must be understood in conjunction with the development of wisdom, compassion and ethics  (Why?)  How do these Buddhist principles relate to how mindfulness is practiced in 20th century Western society?

Interesting debate, but can I ask about the above? I've added the bold italic above into your quote

I was just wondering.... why does the development of mindfulness have to be understood in conjunction with the development of wisdom, compassion and ethics?

[Martin123]

@Bill W First of all, that's the essay question. It's not something I would say directly, even though I like that idea in a wider context.

The problem is that mindfulness has been taken by materialistically thinking community of academics, and objectified into an idea where it is still operating in a paradigm of reward and punishment, and means-to-an-end. It's like the ego takes mindfulness and starts telling others how great it is while making sure it isn't being transformed by it.
Wisdom, compassion and love are natural qualities that are evoked when one is on the path of surrender. If mindfulness is divorced from surrender, it's just another egoic pretense and ground for denial and avoidance.
 

[Bill W]

1 minute ago, Martin123 said:

@Bill W First of all, that's the essay question. It's not something I would say directly, even though I like that idea in a wider context.

The problem is that mindfulness has been taken by materialistically thinking community of academics, and objectified into an idea where it is still operating in a paradigm of reward and punishment, and means-to-an-end. It's like the ego takes mindfulness and starts telling others how great it is while making sure it isn't being transformed by it.
Wisdom, compassion and love are natural qualities that are evoked when one is on the path of surrender. If mindfulness is divorced from surrender, it's just another egoic pretense and ground for denial and avoidance.
 

Thanks for the reply. I don't dispute any of that.... but on the other side of the coin, we don't need to over complicate it. We can keep it simple still. I know you are not saying different and I am coming from a different angle, but mindfulness practice has great benefits for people who couldn't care less about some of the points you make above. I'm thinking of the simple practice of being mindful and calming monkey mind and introducing some discipline. There are mindfulness practice's going on that have nothing to do with Buddhism and don't claim to be related to Buddhism. 

I'm honestly not trying to attack your perspective. I know you are thinking bigger picture and it sounds like a really interesting essay. I'd like to even take on an essay like that myself. I'm sure you'll learn a lot researching it and writing it. 

 

[Martin123]

@Bill W Oh thanks Bill, it's already been written. It was quite fun. But if you ask me I don't really like talking about mindfulness. Talking and debating about mindfulness is much different from actually being mindful.

I am not here to debate anyone, and while it is undoubtedly true that a mindfulness that is divorced from the deeper truths of discernment and cultivation of emotional maturity (that is the actual path to the attainment of wisdom and virtue), I understand where you are coming from and value your opinion and all that you are sharing.

As to address your point about calming the monkey mind etc. All that is true (and I wouldn't say they have nothing to do with Buddhism, most mindfulness programs have been originally inspired by Buddhist ideas, mindfulness is not a western idea... that is the one thing I learned from the research), and there is nothing wrong with stress reduction, calming your mind, all that stuff, but at the end of the day, if we can't translate a peace of mind into greater emotional maturity on the level of an individual, and on the level of interpersonal maturity, we are missing out on the opportunity of the spiritual alignment that is here to be experienced by everyone equally (while not at the same time), and as a culture we would crash and burn and end ourselves in our own self-denial and perpetuation of abuse.

[Surfingthewave]

@Nak Khid Interesting debate. It depends on your own inner resilience, coping strategies and neurological balances /imbalances when it comes to mental health. Mindfulness can be used to help solve  some emotional difficulties however when it comes to chemical imbalances, in such forms of severe depression or anxiety, medication and or psychological therapies may be needed. I think professional assessment is often seen in a negative light when it actually can enhance or be enhanced by mindfulness. 

I can relate to the part about traumatised egos looking for a short cut solution in the form of enlightenment or searching for the "no self". You probably should work on the trauma before any seeking begins. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Surfingthewave