Abstract
African-American same-sex loving women in the Insight Meditation tradition are experiencing Remarkable Relational Resilience through mindfulness, regular meditation, meditation retreats, sangha leadership, and understanding no self as interdependence, yet some of these women may seek out pastoral or spiritual or Buddhist counseling from a Buddhist teacher, pastoral or spiritual counselor, psychotherapist or a Buddhist teacher who is also a counselor or psychotherapist. The counselor should consider 12 points in counseling these women including: not totalizing, sequence of identity formation, joining through conscientization, practicing compassion, validation, cultivating “beginner’s mind,” cultivating unconditional love, assessing self-love, finding supportive communities, adopting a womanist attitude or posture, asking about challenges, and forming multiple conjoining identities.
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- 1.
Marshall, 155.
- 2.
Jean Baker Miller, et al., Therapists’ Authenticity, the Complexity of Connection: Writings from the Stone Center’s Jean Baker Miller Training Institute (New York: The Guilford Press, 2004), 65.
- 3.
Ibid., 79.
- 4.
Miller, et al., 80.
- 5.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, “Identity Development in African-American Christian Lesbians and Culturally—Appropriate Treatment Considerations,” final paper for Developing Intercultural Competency in Pastoral Counseling, Columbia Theological Seminary, 2013. This list of considerations is adapted from that paper.
- 6.
As a Buddhist practitioner, I dedicate my practice and work to understanding suffering and the way through suffering. This understanding comes from meditation practice, reading Buddhist scriptures (The Pali Canon), and from sangha (Buddhist church). It is said that there are three jewels in Buddhism : the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha . Through the Buddha we learn about privilege, delusion, anxiety , renunciation, wisdom and teaching/learning. Through the dharma we learn how to observe phenomena, determine truths, and experiment with healing. The dharma jewel is like strengthening one’s phenomenological muscles of ascertaining reality. Through the sangha we learn how to be in spiritual community.
- 7.
Tonglen meditation is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of visualizing one who is suffering, breathing in as you image how they suffer, and breathing out as you envision how you might help that person suffer less. Tonglen is a practice in leaning toward others rather than away from others.
- 8.
American Psychiatric Association, DSM V, 325.
- 9.
“Shosin, Access to Insight” (accessed January, 13, 2016), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin.
- 10.
Robert T. Carter, The Influence of Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1995), 51.
- 11.
Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Relational and Theological Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 244. I agree with pastoral psychotherapist Cooper-White. By learning to love unconditionally that love should not be sentimental or the attachment to a pattern of nice behavior but nonpossessive and compassionate.
- 12.
Ibid., 254.
- 13.
Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, 130.
- 14.
Kornf ield, 209.
- 15.
Ibid., 220.
- 16.
Gr iffin, 21.
- 17.
Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural passages are from the Thompson Chain-Reference Study Bible, New King James Version, compiled and edited by Frank Charles Thompson, published by B.B. Kirkbridge Bible Co., Inc., Indianapolis, IN.
- 18.
Pamela Yetunde, The Healing of Sodom and Gomorrah: A Path to Compassion and Liberation for All (Atlanta, GA: Marabella Press, 2010).
- 19.
Chiara Manodori, “This Powerful Opening of the Heart,” Journal of Homosexuality 36, no. 2 (1998): 54.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Thera and Bodhi, 198.
- 22.
Bodhi, Abhidhammattha Sangaha, 269.
- 23.
“Buddhism and the God-Idea, Access to Insight,” http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/godidea.html (accessed January, 13, 2016).
- 24.
Fairbairn, “Endopsychic Structure Considered in Terms of Object-Relationships,” 87.
- 25.
Ibid.
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Yetunde, P.A. (2018). Conclusions and Counseling Recommendations. In: Object Relations, Buddhism, and Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94454-8_8
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