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Buddhism & Western Psychotherapy
by
Jacky Sach
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- Buddhism gets along well with Western science
- Buddhism & psychotherapy deal with suffering
- Buddhism and psychotherapy stress the moment
Buddhism gets along well with Western science, and particularly well with psychology and therapy. At heart both Buddhism and psychotherapy attempt to deal with the same issue: human suffering. Both promote the method of observing your own behavior. Both Buddhism and psychotherapy stress the moment: dealing with life right now, and living up to one’s full potential. Both practices take time to mature.
The work one does in Buddhism and the work one does in psychotherapy builds on itself, and patience is necessary if either is to be undertaken with any measure of success. In other words, one therapy session or one seated meditation session will not change much—unless of course a curiosity and faith are born that brings one back to the couch or the pillow.
In meditation practice one sits despite what is happening in life at that particular time and tries to watch the thoughts come and go, repeatedly letting them go until the mind becomes clear and empty. Learning to sit through the rise and fall of thoughts can bring about a profound realization. I am okay.
Despite the tendency to believe that obsessively thinking about something will actually change anything, the realization dawns that thinking doesn’t matter. Whether or not you obsess over the dent in your new car, the car will either be fixed or remain unfixed and the thinking will not change that. In psychology we bring our obsessive thinking (or other problems) into the presence of another, and are guided through the maze of our thoughts until awareness dawns.
With the increase in Buddhist practice in the West came a willingness on the part of psychotherapists to explore the possibilities of using Buddhist practices for therapy. Mark Epstein, author of Thoughts Without a Thinker, is a therapist who practices Buddhism himself. He tells a story about the great psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910), who thought that Buddhism would be a major influence on Western psychology.
James was lecturing at Harvard when he noticed a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in the lecture hall. “Take my chair,” he said to the monk. “You are better equipped to lecture on psychology than I.”
Epstein explains that meditation, often misunderstood to be a retreat from emotional and mental experiences, requires that we slow down so we can examine the day-to-day mind. And, he concludes, “This examination is, by definition, psychological.”
…from The Everything Buddhism Book.
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