I consider myself an accidental traveler in the field of couples and family therapy. Several years ago, I went to a panel talk one evening at the University of Oregon on Buddhism and Psychotherapy. Without it having been announced, almost all of the local sangha members showed up, scattered amongst a packed hall. At that time, although many people of practice regularly engaged therapists, there seemed to be some inhibition sharing this fact despite other intimate disclosures that are shared on a regular basis. That evening confirmed the need to make overt and examine this Western therapeutic process fueled by our impulse to understand this life and the nature of suffering in our own native language. I wanted to enter that conversation. The next morning I awoke and, despite having a long time thriving business partnership at the farm, received the distinct message, Go back to school. I know that voice well in my life – and though it causes temporary problems, has yet to lead me astray.
Several years before that (I laugh at this memory) I’d been struggling with what seemed like the failure of my Zen practice, despite my heart being filled with great faith and openings, to address the particulars of some emotional suffering. I felt like I could not talk to my teachers at the time about my interest in seeing a psychotherapist, as it was not uncommon to hear collective disdain towards therapy as self indulgent delusion. If only everyone would just sit zazen, they wouldn’t need therapy! Even my own teacher refers to therapy as “a neurotic solution to a neurotic problem,” and though I appreciate what he means, didn’t find it a fond endorsement. In some panic, I ended up cold calling a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist in San Francisco who’d written an article I admired titled “Coming to Life,” and am indebted to Joseph Bobrow to this day for indulging my nervous Zen student self seriously fearful that my intuition was evidence of deficiency of my faith. We talked for a long time in his office on Clement Street, but the only thing I remember is him saying to me most kindly that, at the time it may seem like you’re traveling away from practice, but in the long run, you will be a stronger practitioner. He didn’t steer me wrong.
Over the subsequent years of insightful personal work, I fell in love with Jungian psychology, an approach that beautifully articulates what we come to know intimately in Zen training over time. The Jungians connect the meaning of ritual and process of surrender to universal journeys of transformation and gives a place for the collective unconscious and shadow work sometimes lacking in Buddhist psychology. Having considered my training options the next morning after the Buddhism and Psychotherapy lecture, instead of a Jungian program, the family therapy training appeared to offer the straightest and most thoroughly well trained route to actual hands on clinical experience.
Ironically, the CFT field is about as far away from Jungian psychology as say, mechanical engineering. Jung is not even mentioned in the curriculum. However, while I did not fully know what I was getting in to at the time, I am now happy to consider that the family therapy field more closely aligns with Buddhist psychology than many other psychotherapeutic fields based on pathology. This is especially true when it extends the systems theory upon which it is based beyond the family or couple unit as we classically know it. I appreciate the sentiment of Mother Theresa who said, “The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.” That is the view from which real change will come – when “family” knows no bounds.
Though it has its dissonant edge with Eastern understanding of human suffering, the CFT field rescues psychotherapy from itself by opening the door to the awareness of interdependence and eschews the idea of pathology located within the individual. Against the tide of our obsession with “abnormality” and new mental “disorders,” it is a profession based on the inherent goodness and capacity of people rather than the eradication of their neurosis. It is also a profession that challenges the protective clinical expert position of the therapist and honors the simple beauty of warm, honest, compassionate human encounters.
When I consider what I am doing in the CFT field, I think of our Buddhist image of Indra’s Net, shining jewels at each juncture of overlapping twine, reflecting every other jewel in the net. This is an image of boundless awakened clear undivided mind. I think of the CFT field as studying the net itself in the world of particulars, the pulsing threads of connectedness between the jewels, the communication and complications, the breaks and frays as well as lifelines and powerful charges in which we awaken and invigorate one another. I imagine this net drenched in salt water from the deep – old and ancient and full of archetypal motions. The warmth of entangled human interaction doesn’t change the relationship of the jewels, yet we tend the net, strengthen the weak spots, and unfurl the twisted strained areas, so we can see the jewels again in their perfection, free and undisturbed.
The CFT craft which examines the subtleties of our human exchange has brought me a clearer understanding of where we sometimes go astray in practice. Watching the layers of social interaction elucidates my own many mistakes over the years and helps me to hold practice more loosely. It is easy with any new Buddhist training to think, “This is it!,” an example being our Zen mondo style of communication – a powerful transformative training – which can be seen as a training for moment to moment life, and yet when adopted as habit becomes inappropriate. Habitual blunt honesty becomes insensitivity, the impulse to challenge invites deflection and self protection, always searching for someone’s edge misses their strengths. Ultimately, this training in psychotherapy has brought me both a deeper respect for our Buddhist tradition and its much needed offering to our “neurotic” culture. It also offers a language to address the shadow created by any practice clung to too long. The dialogue between these fields brings life and freshness to this instinctual ancient impulse to awaken.
Palms together,
Seido
The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive – it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.
- Toni Packer
Resources on Buddhism and Psychotherapy
The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychotherapy by Jack Kornfield
Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue edited by Jeremy D. Safran
The Psychology of Awakening by Wellwood
Zen and the Heart of Psychotherapy by Robert Rosenbaum
