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Zen and Psychotherapy

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Part of the book series: Mindfulness in Behavioral Health ((MIBH))

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an unprecedented influence of Zen Buddhism in Western psychology and psychotherapy. On the surface, the two disciplines seem incompatible: Psychotherapy wants to develop the self, whereas Zen tries to get rid of the self. Many may wonder where Buddhism, a 2500-year-old Eastern religion, and psychotherapy, a Western invention of psychological treatment, converge and diverge? In this chapter, Peiwei Li, Ph.D. of Springfield College, and Daniel Rodriguez Ramirez, M.Ed of University of California Santa Cruz, aim to entertain this very question and provide a multilayered critical reflection and epistemological critique. We will first provide a brief historical sketch about the synergy between Zen and psychotherapy, which lead to a discussion on a few key concepts that draw resonance and dissonance between Zen and psychotherapy. We argue that although the two traditions grew out of drastically diverging historical roots and manifest in varying forms, they share underlying understanding and aims related to the nature of the self and the process of self-development toward liberation. Grounded in this overarching vision, we will feature specific examples of their cross-fertilization drawing from classical psychotherapy orientations as well as representatives of contemporary mindfulness-based psychotherapy movements. We also include a brief clinical case discussion to illustrate how a Zen-informed therapy process might unfold in practice. This chapter will be concluded with a critical examination of the larger sociocultural contexts and system imperatives that might have simultaneously given rise to the popularity of Zen in psychotherapy while subjected it to truncation and objectification.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all beings. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off. There is a trace of realization that cannot be grasped. We endlessly express this ungraspable trace of realization.

Dōgen Zenji, Genjokoan

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The equivalence of “Zen” in Chinese Buddhism is “Chan,” or “禅”. “Chan” and “Zen” are not identical due to the influence of indigenous culture, Taoism (China) and Shintoism (Japan), respectively.

  2. 2.

    Positivism is a form of empiricism, a tradition of philosophy that considers the highest or only form of knowledge is the description of sensory phenomenon. This type of knowledge is considered “positively” given assuming we do not speculate it as the ground for truth. Positivism also comes with a strong optimism that science can help to solve all problems (Hollis 1994).

  3. 3.

    The idea of the “Middle Way” originated from Shakyamuni Buddha and was further philosophized in a systematic way by an early Mahāyāna Buddhist master and philosopher named Nāgārjuna (ca 150–250 AD).

  4. 4.

    The term “dialectical” or “dialectics” originated in Hegel’s dialectical philosophy, in which truth is understood as an ongoing movement within and for itself. Each of those movements involves two opposing aspects, thesis and antithesis, which together transform themselves onto a new level through their movement against each other, and another movement is on the horizon. Each new movement thus also has the previous movement embedded. See Hegel (1977, 1991) for more explanation.

  5. 5.

    See Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak’s preface to Derrida’s Of Grammatology (1997) for the original explanation of this term. This application will appear in later sections of this chapter as well.

  6. 6.

    A continuous application of Derrida’s use of sous rapture to capture the dialectical thinking of Zen in our writing. In this example, “framework” itself would create a dualistic separation: inside and outside of a framework. By crossing it out, it suggests that this framework itself needs to be undermined and transcended, which is the essence of Zen. We will apply this linguistic strategy to undermine the dualistic nature of language itself throughout this chapter.

  7. 7.

    In Chinese “正法眼藏,” literally translated as “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye.” There are multiple versions of Shōbōgenzō, but four scholarly compilations are commonly considered: 60, 75, 12, or 28 books in chronological order (Bodiford 2012).

  8. 8.

    “Zazen” is the Japanese pronunciation of two Chinese characters, “打禅,” which is commonly referred to in Japanese as shikantaza and often translated as “just sitting.” During zazen, one simply maintains an upright posture, breathing deeply, and letting go any thoughts that come up, again and again (Uchiyama et al. 2004).

  9. 9.

    Continuous application of Jacques Derrida’s use of sous rature 9 (Derrida 1997).

  10. 10.

    The English word “mindfulness” can be traced back to the Pali term sati, the Sanskrit term smrti, the Tibetan term trenpa, and the Chinese term nian (Wynne 2007). The Sanskrit word satipaṭṭhāna combines sati (mindfulness) and upatthana (applications) to convey the practice of mindfulness. Chinese has an equivalent expression called nian chu (nian means being mindful and chu means being in the present) (Hanh 2006). As the combination of meditative absorption and the practice of mindfulness through meditation (in Sanskrit: vipassana), mindfulness also the seventh fold of the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to the development of wisdom (Rahula 1959).

  11. 11.

    Transference is defined as the transmission of a feeling about a particular context from an analysand to the therapist, but the analysand believes that the feeling originated with the therapist (Young-Eisendrath 2003).

  12. 12.

    Koans are usually parables and metaphors used by Zen masters to encourage students to seek insights and a deeper understanding of truth (Bodiford 2006; Young-Eisendrath and Muramoto 2003). For examples, see Cleary and Cleary (1977). Different Japanese Zen traditions have different emphases on koan practice. For example, it is widely practiced in the Rinzai tradition but not essential for the Soto Section.

  13. 13.

    Satori is commonly understood in Japanese culture as the equivalent of “enlightenment,” a moment of awakening to the true reality with full awareness and free from any attachment, or in other words a moment of nirvana. It is closely related to the experience of Kenshō; Ken means “seeing,” shō means “nature” or “essence” (Kapleau 1989). As discussed previously, many Zen teachers and practitioners such as Dōgen negate the idea of achieving satori as the essence of Zen (Uchiyama et al. 2004).

  14. 14.

    The caveat in this analogy is its inability to exceed the limitation to fully express inexpressible truth as expressed in Dōgen’s quote at the beginning of this chapter. But the holistic quality of a metaphor may help us to gain insight and understanding within this limitation. We cross out spiral in the text, another application of Derrida’s use of sous rapture, to contest the limitation of using a metaphor to convey something that is beyond the metaphor itself.

  15. 15.

    For examples for this line of research, see a wonderful ongoing aggregate of mindfulness research archived by American Mindfulness Research Association, retrievable via https://goamra.org/publications/mindfulness-research-monthly/.

  16. 16.

    This video can be retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc. The part that we address here occurs between 48:20 and 49:25 of the video.

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The authors greatly appreciate Meadow Didier for insightful discussions and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Li, P., Ramirez, D.R. (2017). Zen and Psychotherapy. In: Masuda, A., O'Donohue, W. (eds) Handbook of Zen, Mindfulness, and Behavioral Health. Mindfulness in Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54595-0_15

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