|
Gabriel
Lafitte: Our speakers include the Venerable Wendy
Finster, who is one of the founders of Tibetan Buddhist practice
and the monastic lineage in Australia. Malcolm Walley, from
Northampton, England, has run workshops for over twenty years
and presented conference papers and articles on the application
of Buddhist psychology to the helping professions and contemporary
psychology. He is a founder of the Buddhism and Psychiatry
Group as well as a Buddhist practitioner. Guy Claxton is someone
of extraordinary depth and range and a very dynamic presenter.
Kathleen Gregory is part of our community here in Melbourne.
She has worked for many years as a counsellor and has a philosophical
interest in the practical uses and applications of Buddhism.
Geoff Dawson, a regular presenter here, has not only absorbed
all the theories, but to some extent has thrown away the books.
He can encounter people in difficulty, distress and emergency
situations, simply as they are, rather than according to formulas.
And, the Venerable Ivan Milton (Thupten Lekshe), who has trained
under Lama Choedak in Canberra, has a background as a clinical
and counselling psychologist and twenty years experience as
a therapist.
Venerable
Wendy Finster: Both psychology and Buddhism have a
common purpose: to minimise suffering and misery, and to maximise
happiness. However, there are great differences in how they
hypothesise the source of suffering and, as a consequence,
the methods that they use to alleviate it.
I wondered
what we mean when we use the word 'insight,' because it is
one of those terms that is very difficult to give a very strong
cognitive definition to. It is one of those ephemeral things,
like intuition. We can say it is a 'greater awareness,' an
'understanding' or a 'knowledge.' I regard it as a type of
'penetrating conviction,' which holds a strength and depth
that is beyond knowledge as we commonly use it in our daily
or psychological language.
Insight into the mind and emotions varies, in terms of psychology.
At one end of the scale, insight is the essential goal of
the therapeutic process or intervention, while at the other
end of the scale, it is actually irrelevant in producing effective
and productive change in somebody's experience. It varies
also with the type of person that we might be working with
and the degree of their unwellness.
In terms
of Buddhism, there are different levels of practice, insight
and practitioner. This makes it very hard to clearly identify
what any one person may understand or be insightful of in
terms of his or her emotions and mind. In general, a Buddhist
would be differentiating between the nature of mind and the
functioning of mind and mental events; differentiating between
mental consciousness and sense consciousness and identifying
the mental factors of cognitions and emotions and so forth.
This would be regarded as the psychology of Buddhism.
One interesting
way to look at mind is to view it from the point of whether
it is an entity or a process. I used to think that mind was
a substantial type of entity. In actual fact, it is better
characterised as a continuum of energy, rather than as some
kind of substantive entity. One of the traditional examples
of this is the sea. The waves on the surface of the sea are
made of the same substance as the sea itself, but they function
in a different manner to the way the depth of the ocean water
functions; one is in movement, the other is quite still. The
waves rise out of the ocean and sink back into it, but they
have the same substance, the same relative nature. In terms
of mind and mental events, this is quite a nice analogy, because
mental events arise from, and dissolve back into, mind, without
ever having a different nature.
In terms
of the methods that Buddhism and psychotherapy use to achieve
insight, psychology emphasises the influence of the therapist,
the language, the style and the theoretical framework as well
as the degree of disturbance or illness in the person. There
can also be quite a degree of emphasis in developing an awareness
of an observer. Even if somebody has a psychosis, one can
still help him or her to identify the observer that is aware
of the problem, which can actually be quite productive. From
a Buddhist point of view, there is no absolute craziness;
there is only relative craziness. It is a matter of how we
approach somebody who has a psychotic illness. In Buddhism,
there is a shift from a focus on this life to future lives;
in other words, there is the view that takes in a continuum
of being. This gives the patient the potential to transform
problems and unwanted experiences into useful experiences,
as well as a type of acceptance.
Buddhist
practice itself is based on what I would call a 'healthy sense
of self' rather than a fragmented one. I would not be teaching
meditation to somebody with a fragmented sense of self. There
are two main types of meditation, which most of you will be
familiar with. One is used for stabilising a restless mind
and producing a sense of tranquillity, while the other is
used for gaining insight into the nature of mind and reality.
Those two different or separate types of practice gradually
become combined into the one meditation session. The aim of
Buddhism is liberation or enlightenment; the transformation
of the self into Buddha (or the four Buddha-bodies), using
wisdom and compassion. The aim of psychology, in my view,
is probably the attaining of a balance of optimal mind and
body functioning. Having one's values and actions 'in sync'
and accepting responsibility for one's own choices and experiences.
This all leads to the development of an inner locus of control
as the initiator of experience and basically gives a sense
of empowerment to one's journey in life.
Malcolm
Walley: My own experience in the 1970s was of a lot
of pioneering work in new forms of psychotherapy. I personally
experienced gestalt therapy and bioenergetics. After I got
my Ph.D in psychology, I realised that I knew nothing at all
about human nature, so I went on a quest of self-discovery
as part of the 'hippy human potential movement.' I went to
London during that time and met gestalt therapists from America
and bioenergetic therapists and did a lot of work on that,
and started to discover a few things about human nature. There
were three major things that really struck me during this
time.
The first
one came from gestalt therapy, with its emphasis on the 'here
and now.' It really struck me just how much our past experience
can shape our capacity to be fully present. This introduced
me to the possibility of relying on intuition and spontaneity
in therapeutic work and the counselling relationship. Trusting
oneself to make the right intervention or the right comment,
struck me as little short of magical. In some ways, I have
been trying to understand that process or experience ever
since. I was really bowled over by the fact that there is
a way of knowing that is not immediately cognitive. It is
not immediately thoughtful, but is very, very accurate and
uncannily appropriate to what is going on in a situation.
That was a big experience for me.
The second
thing that I learnt was that psychotherapy was not all about
the head. In psychotherapeutic terms, the worst thing that
you could say about people is that they are 'in their head.'
The great emphasis and reverence that was given to feelings,
spontaneity and natural physical responsiveness really opened
up the idea of the 'heart.' There was this 'centre' within
a person, which also came as a complete mystery to me after
my training in clinical psychology, where I spent most of
my time tracking mice.
The third
thing came from the bioenergetics work, which showed to me
how mind and body are totally inter-related. One could never
speak about how mind and body are actually co-terminous in
conventional, academic, psychological terms; perhaps it is
the same even now. The amazing experience, from my point of
view, is how imagery and awareness can be located within any
part of the body in bioenergetics. This whole notion of embodiment
and the mind-body relationship was very, very powerful for
me.
It was
after this chain of experiences - in the sense of becoming
slightly more aware of what might be going on in the world
- that I was introduced to Buddhism. As I got more and more
into Buddhism - I am continually amazed at how slow and how
dull-witted I am - I began to discover that most of the interesting
stuff that was going on was happening outside of the brain!
For me the heart is increasingly where everything is. Therefore,
in answer to what insight into understanding the nature of
mind is, I would say that it is something that goes through
the heart, and its quality, for me, is love.
Love is
absolutely central to the whole thing. The boundlessness of
love and the amazingness of love and the dimension of knowing
- that there is a knowing perspective to these experiences
- goes way beyond anything which can be within the individual
person. Buddhism has opened up this appreciation of the boundlessness
of knowingness and the boundlessness of love. These are two
sides to the mind. The whole process is heart-centred and
has got nothing to do with 'me' at all. It has got nothing
to do, whatsoever. In fact, the more I keep out of it, the
more happily it seems to function.
Guy
Claxton: I want to talk about two different ways that
one might understand what it means to gain insight into your
own mind. The first is that it is something like 'mind looking
into mind.' In English, we generally use the word 'mind' in
three different senses: the first sense is 'what we care about'
- what we mind about. The second sense is 'mind as conscious
experience,' because to bear something in mind is to be conscious
of it. The third sense is when we use the word 'mind' to point
to 'the organ of intelligence within us.' I use the word 'intelligence'
broadly, not just in terms of IQ but what it is that gives
us intelligence.
One of
the ways that could help us understand insight into one's
own mind, is 'mind' in the sense of consciousness turning
round and looking at the organ of our intelligence. The image
is a bit like a watchmaker peering intently through the glass
case of a clock and examining the mechanisms. Insight, in
terms of that image, is the watchmaker noticing something
significant that she had not noticed before. Meditation then,
is finding and polishing that glass window through which one
turns round and looks at the organ of one's own intelligence.
There are a number of problems with that, however.
First,
there is a kind of deeply embedded set of dualisms in that
way of looking at it. 'Who is looking at what?' 'Which bit
of mind is looking at what bit of mind?' 'Are they different?'
'How do we unpick that puzzle?' There is something very fundamental
that Buddhism deals with, which is simply not addressed, not
treated, in that way of looking at things. Second, we know
that the mind is not like that. The notion of introspection
is much more problematic than this simple model would have
us believe. The idea that it is possible to get a clear view
of the actual process of our own mind as it is happening,
is very problematic within psychology, just as it is within
Buddhism. Third, we know that conscious awareness, the organ
of 'seeing,' is not that reliable. It is often wrong. We know
that today's revelation often turns out to be tomorrow's half-truth
or even misconception.
We also
know just how bloody useless insight can be. This is something
that interests me very much in the context both of Buddhism
and psychotherapy. We know how easy it is to kind of accumulate
a precious, little treasure-chest of insights, which are busy
going stale after we have plucked them. We can sometimes be
encouraged by Buddhist teachers or by psychotherapists to
almost become obsessive about harvesting these little moments
of apparent clarity. However, it should be the moment of having
the insight that is precious. Insights are like fish - they
keep about as well!
In one
sense, the idea of gaining insight can even make your life
worse. You can be so busy having insights and harvesting them,
that you strain the gravy down the sink and put the lumps
on the potatoes. You are not actually aware of what is going
on because you are thinking, 'Now that was very interesting.
I wonder what that was all about.' You can be so busy being
insightful that you forget to live at the same time.
The other
way of gaining insight is through what I understand vipashyana
to mean, which is 'seeing more clearly and functioning more
freely.' This is a not shift in the content of mind. The important
thing here is not what has bubbled up into the arena of consciousness,
it is that something significant has shifted in the organ
of intelligence. Something has changed below the surface,
which makes the living of life more skilful and perception
more accurate. Something has been adjusted or rectified behind
the scenes, which creates a different sense of functioning.
What we might think of as an insight may give us a little
indication that that organ is functioning somewhat better
in that moment. But, by the time you have had the insight,
the moment is already gone. The machine, the organism - the
godhead, the buddha-nature, the prajna or whatever it may
be behind the scenes - has already moved on. That little symptom,
that little blip, may be kind of interesting and useful, but
perhaps one should not pay it too much attention.
Kathleen
Gregory: I wanted to approach this question in terms
of 'similarities and differences' in both a psychotherapeutic
sense and a Buddhist sense. What resonates most for me is
being able to realise the sense of the social context. Coming
from a background of social action and social development
into the work of psychotherapy, I turned to narrative therapy.
I saw that as a way of bringing the social context back into
the privacy of the psychotherapeutic encounter. As a way to
understand the intra-psychic pain and suffering that we experience,
in terms of the social dimensions, the cultural, social, familial
and gendered narratives that impact on our understandings
and experiences of ourselves, and the ways that we, in turn,
may affect those.
Buddhism
also emphasises the contextual inter-relationship dimension
of mind and the world; for we are always in a context. Whether
it is social, political, economic, environmental, there is
always relationship; there is always a context. It affects
us and we affect it. Buddhism goes even further in relation
to the mind, because it challenges us to look at the mind
in relationship to the context of reality. 'What is the nature
of reality?' 'What is the nature of mind?' These questions
create a huge difference - in terms of the intention, method
and outcome - in the relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy.
In all
my years of study and work in the field of psychology, I have
never really thought that people were talking about mind.
We talk about thinking and the contents of thought; we talk
about where those thoughts have come from; how they have come
to develop in relation to beliefs, etcetera. However, it has
always seemed to be very much about the content and the development
of one's own individual thinking. It never gave me much understanding
about how or why or where these thoughts have come from in
my own mind.
This is
what has excited and challenged me in relation to Buddhism.
Buddhism has looked and investigated closely the nature of
the mind. 'What are its functions?' 'What are the structures?'
'What are the processes of the mind itself?' We might say
that Freud came close to this, to some degree, in looking
at id, ego and superego. This is what Buddhism really offers
us and challenges us to consider. More importantly, Buddhism
also offers a method. It offers a meditative practice in which
we can gain some understanding and eventually, some insight
or wisdom, which means bringing together our understanding
with our experience.
BI I would
like to begin by saying that there is a big difference between
intellectual insight and experiential insight. The intellectual
insight that might come from reading a book may give you a
direction in which to go, but my own personal experience is
that it is not very deep and it is not very lasting. When
experiential insight occurs, it is not so much about the gaining
of something - it is about the letting go of something. It
is letting things be and it is coming to a place of acceptance.
When experiential insight occurs - as compared to intellectual
insight - there is a softening; there is a dissolving of a
hindrance.
What Buddhism
and psychotherapy have in common is that they aim towards
experiential insight. Psychotherapy is not a philosophical
discussion. The differences lie in the fact that insight,
in the method of Buddhism, is the 'practice of presence,'
whereas in the method of psychotherapy that Guy was referring
to, it is the 'practice of reflection.' I would like to illustrate
this with a brief case study.
This study
is about a woman that I counselled who would self-harm. She
would punch herself until she was really black and blue, pinch
herself, burn herself and cut herself. She had grown up with
a very difficult mother, whom she experienced as being very
cold and critical and unforgiving of her. She had decided
never to be a mother like that to her own children and she
was not. She is a very warm loving person and has done a great
job of bringing up her own children. After a long time in
therapy, when a lot of trust and safety had been established,
I challenged her view of herself as a loving and warm person,
accusing her of being very angry. That got her to reflect
on what she actually said to herself prior to and during self-harming.
Instead of just being caught up in it, the reflective process
involves standing back and actually observing and noticing
it. She was stunned. That shock of recognition is not the
same as reading about having a critical voice inside. It is
the shock of personal recognition. When that occurs something
shifts in one's mind. It may not be a permanent shift, necessarily,
but it is a little shift that may occur.
It does
not lead to a gaining of something - it leads to a letting
go. That kind of therapeutic process - where we recognise
that we have split off things about ourselves that we do not
accept, and begin to accept those things, thereby gaining
a more inclusive sense of who we are - can become a platform
and a foundation for Buddhist practice.
Venerable
Ivan Milton: The way that I understand Buddhism and
psychology is a bit like two intersecting circles with psychology
on one side and Buddhism on the other. There is an area of
intersection and commonality between the two, but I think
that they have fundamentally different aims. You could summarise
that in the statement, 'You have to be a somebody before you
can be a nobody.'
My experience
as a psychotherapist over many years has been mainly working
with seriously disturbed people in the psychiatric system.
That statement becomes truer and truer to me as the years
go by and I get more deeply involved in Buddhist practice.
'Being a somebody' describes the psychotherapeutic aim and
endeavour, which is to create a stable, non-fragmented, healthy
sense of self. I think Buddhism assumes a healthy sense of
self and takes that as a given. That is where you begin. In
other words, you could say that Buddhism starts where therapy
ends. In my own personal life, I have experienced several
bouts of therapy as enormously helpful but, as a lifelong
path to alleviate the causes of suffering, it has proved totally
useless for me. Even though I may have become well-adjusted
and get more satisfaction out of life by having the things
that are the hallmarks of a good life, I am still unhappy.
I may have a beautiful car, lovely house, family, loving relationships
and the kind of wealth that people in other countries can
only dream of - I am still unhappy. Dissatisfaction (duhkha)
still prevails. Therapy does not help with that. It certainly
has not helped me in that sense.
However,
that is the beginning point for the Buddhist endeavour, because
the Buddhist endeavour assumes a healthy sense of self. Then
one's job is to slowly develop the skills and tools with which
to examine how we really believe ourselves to be. First, the
tools have got to be there and then you do the experiment
on yourself. We have the experimental protocols for that experiment
and anybody is welcome to try it. If you do try it the suggestion
is that there will be a certain result: freedom from suffering.
As everybody
has said, insight is incredibly overrated, especially in the
psychotherapeutic tradition. In fact, I would go as far as
to say that, in most of my work, it is actually the changes
that people make in their lives in various ways that lead
to insight. Realisations are different kinds of insight; they
are not dry like intellectual understandings, but are actually
transformative and life changing. Buddhism has a tradition
of how to develop those life-changing states of mind.
|
