교육-Study on the Complementary Relationship between Vipa

[연화덕/부루나(칠4)]

Table of Contents

I. Introduction................................................................................................1

 1. Purpose of the Study..........................................................................1

 2. Scope and Methodology......................................................................2

II. Development of Buddhist Meditation in America........................5

 1. Early Perceptions..................................................................................5

 2. Contact with Psychoanalytic Circles..............................................8

  1) Japanese Zen........................................................................................8

  2) Emergence of Vipassan ................................................................12 

III. Relevance of Psychotherapy for Western Meditators.............19

 1. Psychological Problems Encountered in Vipassan .................19

  1) Paralysis..............................................................................................19

  2) Extreme States..................................................................................25

 2. Paradigm Shift of Vipassan ..........................................................29

  1) Prerequisite of Healthy Ego.........................................................29

  2) Cultural Factors................................................................................36

IV. Relevance of Buddhist Meditation for Psychotherapy............42

 1. Limitations of Psychotherapeutic Techniques............................42

  1) Remembering and Repeating........................................................43

  2) Working Through............................................................................46

 2. Vipassan 's Contributions to Psychotherapy.............................49

  1) Therapist.............................................................................................49

  2) Patient..................................................................................................52

V. Conclusion..............................................................................................57

Bibliography.................................................................................................59

초록.................................................................................................................66

I. Introduction

1. Purpose of the Study

  Buddhism has shown in the course of history that it can harmonize with the environment and culture it is transmitted to. For example, when the Buddha's teachings were brought over to China from India by the monk Bodhidharma in the latter half of the 6th century A.D., they blended with the Taoist culture to produce the hybrid Buddhist practice known as Ch'an. Likewise, when Buddhism was brought to Tibet by the Indian monk Padmasambhava in the late 8th century A.D., it combined with the native Bon religion to form a highly esoteric form of Buddhist practice known as Tantric Buddhism.

  Over the last century or so, however, Buddhism has left its millennia-old perch in the East to go to the West, namely the continents of Europe and North America, where it has consequently been poked at, prodded and investigated. In the beginning, Westerners found the Eastern practice to be strange and full of mysterious elements, a practice that was not to be taken seriously. But over the next few decades, thanks to the efforts of Asian and Western Buddhists alike, its teachings were demystified and, as a result, have garnered more interest from the public.

  Increasingly, individuals from various corners of Western society (including scholars, health professionals and writers) are embracing Buddhism, giving rise to many different interpretations, debates and adaptations of the practice ― all of which are essentially attempts by Westerners to better understand Buddhism.

  As it did in China and Tibet, Buddhism is currently undergoing a process of assimilation in the West ― although, when we consider the claim by many scholars that it takes 300 years for Buddhism to completely adapt to a culture,¹⁾ the process is still far from complete.

  The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the pronounced psychological problems that have arisen when Westerners have carried out Buddhist practice and, as such, the need for complementary techniques.

2. Scope and Methodology

  Buddhism has permeated many levels and regions of Western society, be they practical or academic, America or Europe. First, this study will examine strictly the practices of Buddhism. (Thus, many prominent American-Buddhist scholars who have shed light on Buddhism academically have been omitted from this paper.) Also, though the West has received many forms of Buddhist practice, including Zen, Tibetan, and Korean Seon, this study will focus on the traditional Southeast Asian Buddhist practice of vipassan , the reason for which will be shown below.

  The study will further narrow its focus to the transmission of vipassan  to America, where the practice has faced psycho-cultural barriers and is currently undergoing a dynamic change. The group in American society that has been best able to identify these problems and, in recent years, offer solutions to them, has been the psychotherapeutic community. It should be noted that, over the years, psychotherapists have shown a marked interest in vipassan  meditation, probably more so than Zen or any other form of Buddhist practice.

  Vipassan  practitioner and contemporary American-psychiatrist Mark Epstein is one of the leading figures among those who have attempted to find solutions to these psycho-cultural problems. (Epstein's peers include the likes of Jack Kornfield, Ken Wilber and Jack Engler.) The paper, therefore, will mainly discuss the unique therapeutic methodology of Epstein, who, in his book Thoughts Without a Thinker, ultimately attempts to show that the Buddhist practice of vipassan  and Freudian-based psychotherapy can be complementary in American culture.

  In the first section of the study, the history of Buddhist practice in America and its fateful meeting with the world of psychoanalysis is briefly discussed.

  In the second section, recurring psychological problems among American psychoanalysts and many other Western meditators while performing Buddhist meditation are first examined, in the context of case histories. The resulting paradigm shift in the American psychoanalytic community concerning meditation and the potential contribution of psychotherapy in overcoming these Western problems are then discussed.

  In the third section, Mark Epstein's claim that psychotherapy itself is faced with limits and, conversely, how vipassan  meditation can help psychotherapy overcome them is examined in depth.  

  In conclusion, examples of how psychotherapeutic techniques are now being used by Buddhist circles in America to help them better deal with their Western students are given, and finally the relevance of such an integration between the two fields for Korea is discussed.

II. Development of Buddhist Meditation in America

1. Early Perceptions

  Eastern philosophy was introduced to America in the 19th century by two groups: the Theosophical Society²⁾ and the Transcendentalist³⁾ writers of American literature, the most prominent of whom were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. The Transcendentalist writers were highly influenced by books on Indian thought, which were brought over from Asia by merchants and Christian missionaries at the time, and which were later translated into English by scholars.

  Many American Christian missionaries who traveled to and returned from the East in the 19th century portrayed Buddhism as a heathen religion with a myriad of gods and strange rituals, and Western scholars who were translating Buddhist texts at the time began making assumptions about certain core Buddhist concepts. For example, they claimed that the Buddha's First Noble Truth of dukkha meant that life is suffering and "nirvana," the ultimate goal of Buddhism, meant total annihilation of the individual.⁴⁾ All of this served to give Americans the impression of Buddhism as a gloomy and pessimistic religion, prompting one Unitarian minister to say, "God is nothing, man is nothing, life is nothing, eternity is nothing. Hence the profound sadness of Buddhism."⁵⁾ This was so far removed from America's established, Christianity-rooted values that "Shocked Western Christians were left to puzzle over the question of how half the world's people could have been converted to such a life-denying faith."⁶⁾

  In the early 1900s, however, Buddhism began drawing the attention of the psychology communities in Europe and America, as recent findings in the latter coincided with fundamental Buddhist tenets: "Recent developments in that field (psychology) seemed to point to a processive, dynamic, nonsubstantialist notion of the self, and so a number of advocates came to view Buddhist psychology as more scientific than its substantialist Christian counterpart."⁷⁾   

  Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, often referred to as the forefather of modern-day psychology, also took an interest in Eastern thought as many of his colleagues and followers, including Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, were well versed in Eastern mysticism and attempted to explain its ideas through the lens of psychoanalysis.

  Freud described the "oceanic feeling" as the prototypical mystical experience: a sense of limitless and unbounded oneness with the universe that seeks to reinstate "limitless narcissism" and  resurrect "the child's feeling of helplessness."⁸⁾ This became the generally accepted perception of Buddhist meditation in psychology circles for years to come.

2. Contact with Psychoanalytic Circles

 1) Japanese Zen

  In 1893, a Rinzai Japanese monk named Saku Soyen introduced Americans to Japanese Zen at Chicago's World Congress of Religions, an event which would essentially represent the first concrete exposure of Buddhism to the West. Among Soyen's disciples was a lay student named Daisetz Tataro Suzuki, who later came to America at the behest of his teacher and who became one of the most influential Buddhist figures in the history of American Buddhism.

  Suzuki arrived in America in 1897 and, with a background in English, worked for the next 11 years as a translator of Buddhist books at a publishing company. In the 1950s he was invited to lecture at Columbia University in New York, and he went on to teach Buddhism there for six years, during which time he helped popularize the koan method of Zen practice. Suzuki's English abilities, scholarly style, and knowledge of Western thought and literature eventually attracted many people, notably writers and psychiatrists.

  Young poets and bohemians who were devotees of the Beat movement⁹⁾ were especially drawn to Suzuki's lectures. Americans at the time were undergoing a cultural upheaval and spiritual crisis: Not only had they become disillusioned with traditional religions and philosophies as the scientific community assailed the legitimacy of Protestantism, their lives were undergoing radical change with the rapid progress of industrialization and urbanization. This ultimately bred a culture centered on radical individualism and materialism. The cultural upheaval was compounded by the fact that immigration to the United States was at an all-time high. Looking to escape the chaos, "the Beats were drawn to the ecstatic descriptions of Zen satori (enlightenment experience), which seemed to them a kind of ultimate high."¹⁰⁾

  The 1960s and 1970s saw psychedelic drug use at its highest, especially among the hippie community. Researchers found that LSD produced a profound alteration of consciousness,¹¹⁾ which many came to associate with the satori experience. Thus, looking for a different kind of high, hippies began taking up Zen meditation.  

  Suzuki's lectures also caught the attention of the psychology community, which invited Suzuki to a workshop for psychoanalysts in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1957. The workshop, entitled "Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis," represented the first-ever organized and comprehensive meeting between the two fields, and brought together more than 50 analysts from around the world. German psychiatrist Erich Fromm, one of the participants, had said that psychoanalysts found Suzuki's lectures very "stimulating" because he addressed psychological issues in detail, such as the unconscious and the self.¹²⁾ Fromm and fellow psychoanalyst Richard De Martino, who also attended the workshop, then collaborated with Suzuki to turn his talks in Mexico into a book called Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, which was eventually published in 1960. The book became a springboard for an intense dialogue between the two fields for years to come.

  The workshop was also significant in that it revealed to the psychological community some of its long-harbored misconceptions of Buddhist practice, the seeds of which were planted by the early Christian missionaries and Freud. As Fromm pointed out, "Satori is not an abnormal state of mind; it is not a trance in which reality disappears. It is not a narcissistic state of mind, as can be seen in some religious manifestations. 'If anything, it is a perfectly normal state of mind ...'"¹³⁾

  It should be noted, however, that, while Suzuki alluded to psychological theories and made use of the discipline's terminology in his lectures, he was also a strong critic of Western psychology, especially its analytical approach: "Finally, as a matter of fact, there is no beyond, no underneath,  no upon in our consciousness. The mind is one indivisible whole and cannot be torn into pieces. When the koan breaks down, all hindrances to the ultimate truth, we all realize that there are no such things as hidden recesses of mind, or even the truth of Zen appearing all the time so mysterious."

  Carl Jung was one of the more prominent psychoanalysts to embrace Buddhism, albeit with some reservations.¹⁴⁾ When the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thotrol)¹⁵⁾ was translated into English and published in 1927 in England, Jung read it studiously: "For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodal has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights."¹⁶⁾ In a later edition of the book, Jung wrote a "Psychological Commentary." The book's appeal was its psychological nature as it stressed the importance of seeing all appearances and visions, good or bad, as simply the reflections of consciousness.

  Also, Jung felt that both Zen and psychotherapy had the common goal of reclaiming aspects of the psyche that had become unconscious and the Zen master and psychoanalyst played a similar role in helping the student/patient achieve this. His interest led him to write the foreword to Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1964). In it he wrote: "All the same, the psychotherapist who is seriously concerned with the question of the aim of his therapy cannot remain unmoved when he sees the end towards which this Eastern method of psychic "healing" -- i.e., "making whole" -- is striving."¹⁷⁾ 

 2) Emergence of Vipassan

  In the 1970s, Buddhist traditions other than Zen began coming to the fore in America. They included Korean Seon (禪) and the Tibetan, Chinese, and Vietnamese varieties, but especially well received was the Theravadin tradition of Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand and Burma. This tradition practiced vipassan ,¹⁸⁾ or insight,¹⁹⁾ meditation, the original form of practice the Buddha taught.

  Unlike in the other Buddhist traditions, however, American laity (as opposed to Asian masters) were the ones playing crucial roles in establishing vipassan  practice in the United States. Among these American pioneers were Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, both of whom traveled to Southeast Asia in the 1960s to receive training in vipassan  meditation. Kornfield had originally gone to Thailand in 1967 as part of the Peace Corps, and there he had met Achaan Chah, a monk who lived in the forest. The American went on to train for several years as a bhikku under Achaan Chah, spending 20 hours a day in sitting and walking meditation, and he returned to America in 1972 as a bhikku. However, finding it difficult to maintain the monastic lifestyle in such an industrialized country, he eventually disrobed. Afterward, Kornfield turned to the more mundane healing tradition of Western psychology, eventually earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

  Kornfield met Goldstein upon returning to America, and the two, along with a woman named Sharon Salzberg, founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts. But Kornfield later left the IMS and helped found the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in San Francisco.

  At his new center, Kornfield incorporated humanistic psychotherapeutic techniques²⁰⁾ into his meditation practices, for realized from his own experiences that many years of meditation had not helped him with human relationships.

  Vipassan  practice was quickly embraced by American psychologists. Its appeal was that it did not encompass a suppression of thoughts, as in koan practice, but the acceptance of them. The foundation of vipassan  practice, the state of bare attention,²¹⁾ reflected this. This acceptance of thoughts, according to some psychoanalysts, leads to a descendence of consciousness, which allows access to the unconscious or for unconscious material to surface; thus "there is some reason to think that meditation might be compatible with psychodynamically oriented psychotherapies focusing on uncovering and working through unconscious material."²²⁾

  This also made vipassan  meditation quite practical, since it could be performed at any time of the day, even during work, and in all situations, whether one was lying down, sitting, standing or walking. As the Thai monk and scholar Nyanaponika Thera said, vipassan  meditation takes everyday problems as its meditative material.²³⁾ Another appealing factor for psychologists was that vipassan  practice did not put weight on religious or supernatural aspects such as rebirth and the different realms of existence, as was the case in its counterpart Tibetan tradition. Referring to these aspects, Joseph Goldstein said, "If you do not find it credible, no matter: you do not have to accept any of the Buddhist cosmology in order to attain full liberation."²⁴⁾ 

  This approach of vipassan  practice, according to psychologist Padmal Silva, is itself scientific, as it focuses on observable and therefore empirical phenomena: "It offers clearly testable hypotheses and therefore can be brought within the realm of scientific inquiry."²⁵⁾

  One student of both Goldstein and Kornfield was contemporary American psychiatrist Mark Epstein, whose practice has been highly influenced by both Freudian psychoanalysis and vipassan  meditation. Epstein learned and practiced vipassan  meditation in India and Southeast Asia, including several weeks in silent retreat, amid his years in Harvard Medical School. As with Kornfield, one of Epstein's teachers in Asia was Achaan Chah.

  Epstein refuted Freud's description of Eastern meditation as comprising only the "oceanic feeling" and as one in which the meditator's feelings are denied. Epstein claimed that Buddhist meditation is also very investigative and analytical, which is in line with the psychodynamic approach. Reaching a similar conclusion to Erich Fromm, Epstein said, "Far from being a mystical retreat from the complexities of mental and emotional experience, the Buddhist approach requires that all of the psyche be subject to meditative awareness. It is here that the overlap with what has come to be called psychotherapy is most obvious. Meditation is not world denying; the slowing down that it requires is in service of closer examination of the day-to-day mind. This examination is, by definition, psychological."²⁶⁾

III. Relevance of Psychotherapy for Western Meditators

1. Psychological Problems Encountered in Vipassan  

 1) Paralysis

  As Jack Kornfield and Mark Epstein gained more experience in practicing vipassan  meditation, they came across recurrent problems in their practices and in those of other practitioners and patients.

  Even after years of intensive meditation training in Thailand as a bhikku, Kornfield found that the urban lifestyle brought out certain inner conflicts he was unaware of:

Alas, when I returned to the U.S. as a monk, all of that fell apart ... I disrobed, enrolled in graduate school, got a job driving a taxi, and worked nights at a mental hospital in Boston. I also became involved in an intimate relationship. Although I had arrived back from the monastery clear, spacious and high, in short order I discovered, through my relationship, in the communal household where I lived, and in my graduate work, that my dedication had helped me very little with my human relationships. I was still emotionally immature, acting out the same painful patterns of blame and fear, acceptance and rejection that I had before my Buddhist training ... I had used the strength of my meditation to suppress painful feelings, all too often I didn't even recognize that I was angry, sad, grieving, or frustrated until a long time later.²⁷⁾ 

Kornfield claimed that even deep meditation did not open him up to his emotional problems. He recalled that some of the Western practitioners and teachers that he had trained with in Asia and America suffered from similar problems:

Among the several dozen Western monks (and lots of Asian meditators) I met during my time in Asia, with a few notable exceptions, most were not helped by meditation in big areas of their lives. Many were deeply wounded, neurotic, frightened, grieving and often used spiritual practice to hide and avoid problematic parts of themselves ... When I returned to the West to study clinical psychology and then began to teach meditation, I observed a similar phenomenon. At least half the students who came to three-month retreats couldn't do the simple "bare attention" practices because they were holding a great deal of unresolved grief, fear, woundedness, and unfinished business from the past ... I also had an opportunity to observe the most successful group of meditators ― including experienced students of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism ― who had developed strong samadhi and deep insight into impermanence and selflessness. Even after many intensive retreats, most of the meditators continued to experience great difficulties and significant areas of attachment and unconsciousness in their lives, including fear, difficulty with work, relationship wounds, and closed hearts. They kept asking how to live the Dharma and kept returning to meditation retreats looking for help and healing. But the sitting practice itself, with its emphasis on concentration and detachment, often provided a way to hide, a way to actually separate the mind from difficult areas of heart and body.²⁸⁾ 

He continued: "These problems exist for most vipassan  teachers as well. Many of us have led very unintegrated lives, and even after deep practice and initial 'enlightenment experiences,' our sitting practice has left major areas of our beings unconscious, fearful, or disconnected. Many American vipassan  teachers are now, or have recently been, in psychotherapy in order to deal with these issues."²⁹⁾ 

  In Mark Epstein's case, continuous bouts of anxiety in relation to his wife alerted him to the fact that, even after years of vipassan  practice, meditation did not solve his emotional issues:

In my own case, one of my most recurrent feelings during intensive meditation retreats was what felt like a deep well of longing for what I could only conceptualize as true love. Since these retreats involved weeks of silent and steady mindful awareness of thoughts, feelings, physical actions, sensations, memories, plans, and so on, there was ample time for the superficial chattering of my thinking mind to quiet down and for the development of some of the qualities of calm and clarity that are traditionally associated with the meditative state. Yet, even in the midst of such comparatively spacious states of mind, I would often be aware of what felt like a deeper yearning ...

 At one point, after about a week at one of my early retreats, out of this spaciousness of mind came a sudden memory of the bodily sensations I had recurrently had as a child alone in the night. My body began to shake uncontrollably on my meditation cushion for the next twenty minutes or so, an experience that eventually gave way to what can only be described as great peace, light, and love. My meditation teachers seemed non-plussed by my experience, but I took it as a sign of the importance of this particular meditation practice for me. Yet my sense of longing, while temporarily abated, did not disappear. In fact, I spent a good portion of my next several retreats trying to recapture that very experience -- a notoriously foolhardy endeavor when it comes to meditation, but one that is very common among Western meditators who begin their practice with an inner sense of emptiness or alienation.³⁰⁾

Here, Epstein says that if the meditator attempts to solve such problems through fantasy, catharsis, or rumination, it will only prolong a state of paralysis in one's practice. He continued:

Many years later, when I was actually fortunate enough to marry the woman I loved, I found that even this real and palpable love, which I had longed for and had thought out of my reach, did not take away the depth of my longing. In fact, it seemed to bring it out even more. I began having trouble sleeping, found myself becoming insatiably demanding of my new wife's attention, had difficulty with even the most trivial separations from her, and, when I did sleep, was plagued with nightmares of my teeth crushing against themselves ... I was unable to receive the very love that I craved because of the depth of my unfulfilled longing. Needless to say, it was time for (more) psychotherapy. I could, of course, use my meditative skills to calm myself when pressed, but the strength of my identification with the feelings of unassailable isolation were so strong as to require the more specific attentions of a psychotherapist. Meditation had made me exquisitely aware of my predicament and had helped me recover the early feelings surrounding it, but I was still unable to act in a way that was not completely determined by my past experiences.³¹⁾

  Epstein also treated many American meditators who, despite having practiced for years, were still bothered by a deep sense of yearning and were prone to repeating self-destructive behavior. Epstein cites the study of experienced meditators by psychologists Daniel Brown and Jack Engler, who made the surprising discovery that meditators were just as anxious as everyone else: "There was no lessening of internal conflict, but only a 'marked non-defensiveness in experiencing such conflicts' among their subjects."³²⁾ The implications of these findings, he claimed, are profound because they showed that meditation, by itself, is not particularly effective at solving people's emotional problems: "It can prepare the ground, so to speak, by making the person more accepting and less defensive, but without a therapist's intervention, there is a very real danger of paralysis."³³⁾

 2) Extreme States

  A study by clinical psychologist Lois Vanderkooi showed that subjects were capable of falling into unstable, or extreme, states of mind, especially after intensive meditation practice or retreats. The following is an example involving a woman named "Ada," a woman who practiced, among others, vipassan  meditation:

Ada grew up in "workaholic" home with parents too busy and striving to pay attention to a little girl. As an infant, she was left to cry for hours, and she remembers three times of terror as a young child when she did not know where she was while in a familiar place. As a teenager, she experienced ecstasy while intensely writing poetry, which she felt was an avenue to a different type of consciousness.

  Ada's involvement in meditation began in 1967 with TM (Transcendental Meditation), which helped calm her after her breakup with the "love of her life," Paul. Nine months later she entered a year-and-a-half practice of Vedanta, a form of Hindu mysticism, which involved meditating on a spiritual passage. Ada "upped the ante" after reading books by Watts (The Way of Zen) and Kapleau (The Three Pillars of Zen) which describe Zen enlightenment experiences. She began practicing in earnest after meeting a Japanese Zen master in 1970. Paul, also excited about Zen, came back into her life, and they sat and studied regularly with a group. It was a "high" time.

  Ada was attracted to the "intensity, high drama, and do or die effort" of Rinzai Zen. It felt good to "bust her butt" and survive the pain of extended sitting. She does not remember which practice her teacher taught, but knows that she pushed herself to the limit. She took his words "just sit" to heart after seeking his help regarding a career in opera and a failed relationship with Paul. Thinking that her problems would be solved if she became enlightened, she meditated as much as possible. She attended at least one extended retreat a month with various teachers. When not in retreat, she sat for at least four hours a day and otherwise tried to remain in the moment. She felt peaceful and loving, more like herself than ever before ... Yet, she still was unsure about her career.

  Conversations with others seemed trivial, and she cut off relationships and discontinued therapy. In retrospect, she thinks that her practice was an evasion of painful feelings, which would make themselves known at some point.

  After six months of such practice, Ada attended a ten-day Theravada retreat involving concentration and mindfulness practices done alone in one's room. The teacher checked on each person daily and gave group talks. Ada had intense maky ³⁴⁾ during retreat: crackling electricity traveled up and down her spine, and she felt profoundly relaxed as she recalled early memories of sounds and sights. Near the end of the retreat, she woke to an "absolute state" that she believed was kensho.³⁵⁾ First came cosmic pulsation with things flowing towards a single point and erupting back through it. Then appeared a sheet-like image with elements of reality floating. As she looked at them, she realized that they were her and that there was nothing in the universe except her. Rather than joy, she felt extreme fear and loneliness. The next morning, when she yearned for affirmation and advice, her teacher responded, "Now you now that you're afraid of being alone."

  After her retreat and during the month prior to her "breakdown," Ada had another unbearable experience of loneliness. She also took LSD for the third time in her life and had a "terrifying trip" that involved disintegrating into bones ... Then something "snapped," and she felt tremendous grief, then rage and terror. Only months later did she connect this experience to her grief about losing Paul.

  ... She did not know how to transition back into the world of ordinary experience. She met with a Zen teacher who was also a psychoanalyst, but was not able to heed her advice because she (Ada) was too "freaked out" and emotionally disconnected. This teacher affirmed her kensho and "ripe" concentration practice, but advised that she needed more balancework, singing, and a light meditation practice.

  Twenty years later and after even more therapy, Ada still struggles. She believes that she has a borderline personality disorder and agrees with Engler's idea that you cannot go beyond yourself until you have a self.³⁶⁾ She does not meditate much for fear of what might come up but has worked with a Theravada-Zen teacher who meditated with her, demystified "enlightenment," and gave her feedback about her meditation ... Ada says that when she first practiced, teachers were not psychologically sophisticated enough to ask about students' lives or to process emotional issues. She believes that she could have benefited from a moderate, gentle practice and advice to work, sing, and learn to relate better. "I needed someone to investigate my big hurry and terrible race toward enlightenment, and to say that I was running from something."³⁷⁾

2. Paradigm Shift Concerning Vipassan

 1) Prerequisite of Healthy Ego

  As such problems in vipassan  meditation became more and more evident, it seemed to Western psychoanalysts that vipassan  practice was not effective in overcoming inner emotional conflicts, as it failed to bring out deeply unconscious material. Vipassan , they said, does not account for the possibility of certain mental contents being so entrenched in the mind (unconscious) that to pry them out requires more than a continuous monitoring of thoughts and feelings. In the case of Westerners, their emotional problems can be buried so deep, and for such a long time, that vipassan  meditation alone sometimes is not able to "dig" them out.

  The premise of vipassan  meditation is that the more mental contents the meditator can recover, watch and let go of, the more he develops spiritually.³⁸⁾ But, as the above cases have shown, if certain contents do not come up in the first place, then one's practice risks stagnating or being corrupted by these unsolved issues, which can ultimately lead to unstable mental states. Even consistent practice could not lure these hidden contents to surface. Kornfield believed that various compartments of our minds and bodies are only semi-permeable to awareness: "Awareness of certain aspects does not automatically carry over to the other aspect, especially when our fear and woundedness are deep."³⁹⁾ Both Kornfield and Epstein determined that the reason their and many of their patients' behavior in real life did not improve, even after years of vipassan  practice, was because they still hadn't worked out a lot of pain and had kept specific emotional issues unconscious.

  Without this insight into one's hidden motivations and deep yearnings, the meditator is prone to use meditation to continuously avoid facing his core issues, a process which leads not only to a state of paralysis in one's practice but also unstable mental states. Westerners were especially prone to using meditation to avoid facing personal issues, considering their long history of associating Buddhist practice with mystical and transcendent experiences and an escape from reality. The early interest taken by the Western psychological community in Buddhist meditation also gave the impression to the Western public that meditation was a form of therapy. Kornfield said, "Since beginning to teach, I've seen how many other students misunderstand spiritual practice, how many have hoped to use it to escape from their lives, how many have used its ideals and language as a way to avoid the pains and difficulties of human existence as I tried to do, how many have entered temples, churches, and monasteries looking for the special effects."⁴⁰⁾ Jack Engler noted that many Western students of meditation have problems with a sense of identity and self-esteem, and they have a tendency to use meditation as a shortcut solution to such problems. For example, they may equate the Buddhist doctrines of anatta, or "no-self," and sunyata with their feelings of inner emptiness, which they then use to rationalize or justify not having to work through such problems. As well, many Westerners practice Buddhist meditation desperately seeking to become enlightened, in order to feel superior to others. Engler claims that such individuals are not psychologically grounded enough to practice meditation.⁴¹⁾ 

  In Vanderkooi's case study, Ada first took up meditation in an emotionally fragile state (after having broken up with her boyfriend). She became overly enamored of the concept of enlightenment, thinking that it would magically excuse her from having to face her true emotional problems, and she tried desperately to attain this, ultimately engendering an unbalanced state of mind. Ada did have glimpses into her emotional problems along the way, but they frightened her, which made her practice meditation even harder.⁴²⁾ As Epstein said, Westerner's psychic pain revealed in the form of a strong longing is often so central and deeply personal that he can never let go of the wish that the meditation itself would magically heal him, which then can suffuse and corrupt one's entire meditative experience. Psychologist Arthur Deikman concurred, saying that, "unless individuals can satisfy their needs for work, intimacy, and social acceptance ― emotional needs ―  they are likely to have a hard time progressing in their meditation practice, for they will be unconsciously seeking to meet those needs through an activity that has another goal."⁴³⁾ 

  All of this led psychoanalysts to view the Buddhist practice anew. That is, as a prerequisite, vipassan  practice requires a healthy, or "whole" ego ― one that has integrated unconscious and unwanted aspects of the self. Kornfield's integration of humanistic psychotherapeutic techniques was for this reason: "When we have not completed the basic developmental tasks of our emotional lives or are still quite unconscious in relation to our parents and families, we will find that we are unable to deepen in our spiritual practice. Without dealing with these issues, we will not be able to concentrate during meditation, or we will find ourselves unable to bring what we have learned in meditation into our interaction with others.'"⁴⁴⁾ Kornfield claimed that therapy could be an effective means to resolve these issues.  

  Many contemporary psychologists are in agreement with Kornfield and Epstein. Among them, psychologist Douglas Burns says that subtle desires that lead to harmful behavior must first be rooted out:

One may fast for two weeks and yet never once look at the fact that the real reason for fasting is to feed one's ego ― to be better, more disciplined, more pious than one's fellow practitioners. Or one may work diligently attempting to win the approval, confidence, and affection of a stern and aloof teacher and never once realize that one is attempting to compensate for the frustration and lack of love from a stern and aloof parent. To really break through these "hang ups" one must focus attention, not on the sensation of breath at the nostrils (i.e. meditation), but instead focus on the agonizing feelings of inadequacy, mediocrity, loneliness, or rejection in one's heart.⁴⁵⁾

  Sylvia Boorstein claimed that realizing the Buddhist concept of "No-self" is a sequential development: "If a person is psychologically secure, they are able to shift from a personal focus to a universal focus. This is what I believe is meant in spiritual practice when people talk about 'losing one's ego.' I believe that if people have a level of personal maturity and ego integration, they can make the shift from 'life is happening to me' to 'life is happening.' It is a happy shift, a shift from an inside-out, 'me-focused' view to a cosmic or universal overview."⁴⁶⁾ Engler contended that vipassan  meditation creates an unstructured situation psychologically as its goal is to help the meditator realize the impermanence and therefore lack of a solid, fixed self. However, the goal in treatment of those with a lack of sense of self ― a condition which afflicts many Western meditators ― should be to build structure by integrating dissociated aspects of the self. Mere self-observation of contradictory ego states, as is done in vipassan  meditation, is not enough to integrate dissociated aspects of the self, Engler stated.⁴⁷⁾ 

  All of this led psychoanalysts to believe that meditation is a practice designed to transcend the self, which, they said, presupposes an ego that is well-integrated.  As Engler said in his now famous statement, "You have to be somebody before you can be nobody."⁴⁸⁾ Only then can one come to examine the more basic questions of the human condition that are taught in  vipassan  such as "Who am I?"

 2) Cultural Factors

  We have seen how vipassan  meditation is ineffective in rooting out unconscious material that is buried deep. It is at this point that psychoanalysts addressed the cultural differences between Asian countries and America. Strictly speaking, the vipassan  practice that was brought over to America had been developed and practiced for thousands of years in Southeast Asian countries such as India, Thailand and Burma, so it can be argued that Westerners were learning a form of Buddhist practice that was designed to specifically meet the needs of other people. Therefore, by understanding how the needs of Easterners differ from those of Westerners, we can see more clearly why the above problems arose among Westerners who practiced vipassan  meditation.

  Psychoanalysts such as Kornfield and Epstein have argued that Easterners, for a number of reasons, generally develop a more integrated character than Westerners. First, Eastern culture places emphasis on the group and harmony among its members over individual satisfaction, providing a large network of support and giving Easterners a strong sense of family, harmony, and cohesion. Asians grow up nourished both physically and spiritually as a result.⁴⁹⁾ This emphasis on sacrificing individual interests for harmony and the group also breeds an environment in which the person must learn to be open to his emotions and have the skills to accept and integrate them early on in life. Moreover, it must be remembered that the lifestyle in Southeast Asian countries in the 1970s, when vipassan  practice was first brought over to America, was predominantly rural and simple (and much of it still is), which was all the more conducive for breeding this sense of community and support. Epstein summed it up well when he said, "the Eastern self is enmeshed in a web of family, hierarchy, caste, or other group expectations ... This enmeshment, a common thread running through many generations, gives Easterners a strength that meditation traditionally builds on. The person's capacity for empathic awareness, relaxation of outer ego boundaries, emotional attunement and receptivity, and a sense of belonging is accepted as a given in the East."⁵⁰⁾ Vipassan  practice, Epstein said, uses this capacity as a starting point. However, due to the strain of enmeshment, spiritual practice is sometimes the only means of escape for the Easterner. Thus, meditation for the Easterner is "likely to bring memories of primitive longings for escape, which will be accompanied by all of the guilt and shame over violating family expectations."⁵¹⁾ What Easterners must confront, then, is the fear of his ultimate separateness.

  The Western psyche, however, is characterized by the exact opposite of an enmeshed self ― an estranged⁵²⁾ one ― as Westerners are forced to deal with this separateness at an early age. The United States' process of industrialization and modernization has had two major effects toward this end: One, it has produced many double-income families that have less time to invest in the family, which has contributed to the breakdown of both the extended and nuclear family;⁵³⁾ and two, it has developed a society that emphasizes individuality and autonomy over harmony and the group, and achievement over affection. As a result, Westerners generally grow up without a sense of belonging and with feelings of emptiness and unworthiness, which they learn to suppress early on. In adulthood, these feelings reappear in the form of low self-esteem.⁵⁴⁾ Kornfield made the following observation, speaking from first-hand experience as a teacher of vipassan  meditation in America:

Spiritual practice attracts a great many wounded people who are drawn to such practice for their own healing. Their numbers appear to be increasing. The spiritual impoverishment of modern culture and the number of children raised without nurturing and supportive family is growing. Divorce, alcoholism, traumatic or unfortunate circumstances, painful child-rearing practices, latchkey children, and child-rearing by day care and television all can produce people who lack an inner sense of security and well-being. These children grow up to have adult bodies but still feel like impoverished children. Many such "adult children" live in our society. Their pain is reinforced by the isolation and denial of feelings that is common in our culture.⁵⁵⁾

  Epstein went so far as to claim that the feelings of unworthiness deriving from inadequate childhood attention (which he called the "basic fault"⁵⁶⁾) are so preval‎ent that they have engendered a chronic spiritual hunger in Western culture. As an analogy, he likened Westerners to the hungry ghost realm⁵⁷⁾ of the six realms of sams ra in Buddhism, due to this combination of the basic fault and spiritual hunger.

  It can be said, then, that vipassan  meditation is designed to build upon the enmeshed self. This does not mean Westerners cannot practice vipassan  meditation, only that, just as Indian Buddhism underwent a metamorphosis when the Indian monk Bodhidharma brought the Buddha's teachings to Taoist China, giving birth to Ch'an, "Western" vipassan  practice likewise requires some adjustments and adaptations; it was only natural that a more complex society demanded supplementary techniques and methods. Epstein claimed that psychotherapy, with its methods geared toward emotional healing, could do for America what Taoism did for China: give Buddhist practice the language and tools necessary to assimilate into its new environment. As Epstein said, "Many Westerners require a combined approach of psychotherapy and meditation precisely because the hungry ghost realm is so strongly represented in their psyches. This is a phenomenon that is new to the recorded history of Buddhism: never before have there been so many Hungry Ghosts engaged in Buddhist practice. Their preval‎ence requires some modifications in technique that are best appropriated from the psychoanalytic tradition."⁵⁸⁾ 

  The practical strengths of psychotherapy was not entirely lost on the Buddhist world; Thai monk and scholar Nyanaponika Thera recognized the potential contributions of psychoanalysis to Buddhist meditation when he said, "The modern science of the mind may well supplement, in many practical and theoretical details, the mind-doctrine of the Buddha; it may translate the latter into the conceptual language of the modern age; it may facilitate its curative and theoretical application to the particular individual and social problems of our time."⁵⁹⁾

IV. Relevance of Buddhist Meditation for Psychotherapy

1. Limitations of Psychotherapeutic Techniques

  With the need for psychotherapy among Westerners engaged in Buddhist meditation becoming more apparent, many contemporary psychoanalysts have suggested a linear approach to Buddhist practice in the West: psychotherapy first ― to confront and alleviate the basic fault so that the Westerner does not use vipassan  meditation in a corruptive way and can progress along the meditative path ― before embarking on meditation. Psychologist Arthur Deikman said, "Here, psychotherapy can be considered complementary to spirituality because, by resolving psychodynamic conflicts that interfere with everyday functioning, it can decrease the pressure to use spiritual pursuits in the wrong way."⁶⁰⁾ According to Ken Wilber, the human life cycle works toward what he called a "unity consciousness" in several stages: prepersonal, personal, and transpersonal. Each stage has its problems that must be resolved before an individual can move successfully on to the next. At the prepersonal level, for example, when individuals may be suffering from hurt, despair, worthlessness and loss, therapies such as simple counselling and basic psychoanalysis may be useful. At the personal level, where individuals need direction and sense of meaning, Gestalt or existential therapies may prove to be appropriate. However, it is only when  the ego is strong and has established a strong sense of meaning that it is capable of dealing with the transpersonal, or beyond the self, processes that may be encountered in meditation such as vipassan .⁶¹⁾ 

  Epstein, however, called this view naive for its failure to recognize Buddhist meditation's possibilities in enhancing psychotherapy. He said that, while psychotherapy's methods are effective to some degree, they are faced with their own limits. Basing his practice on the Freudian psychotherapeutic model of "Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through," Epstein claims that vipassan  meditative techniques can be adapted to make psychotherapy successful.

 1) Remembering and Repeating

  Freud believed that the key to curing an emotionally disturbed patient was to help him remember formative childhood experiences. To this end, while experimenting with his patients over the years, Freud developed a number of psychotherapeutic techniques.

  The first was "cathartic hypnosis," in which the therapist employs hypnosis to help the patient remember a traumatic event(s) that had become deeply embedded in the unconscious due to a long repression. But Freud later found that, not only were some patients incapable of summoning traumatic memories in hypnosis, releasing these memories gave them only temporary relief ― the patient has to fully face the repressed emotions while conscious for there to be a lasting therapeutic effect.

  Freud next turned to a method called free association, in which the therapist encourages the patient to continuously talk about whatever is on his mind, significant or trivial In this method, the patient's defense mechanisms, which had theretofore blocked a formative memory from surfacing, would be relaxed, and the repressed memory could gradually be recovered. Unlike hypnosis, the memory is recovered in bits and pieces over a long period.

  Freud then dramatically shifted the focus of his therapy from retrieving memories to the therapeutic encounter itself, for "he saw that the patient transferred onto the analyst his neurotic behavior patterns that were based on past experiences, that the patient now entertained toward the therapist the same feelings and conflicts he had had in his childhood toward some person of authority."⁶²⁾ In Freud's words, ""The patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out. He reproduces it not as a memory but as an action; he repeats it, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it."⁶³⁾ For example, says Epstein, "a patient whose father was relentlessly critical of her in her youth and who had been able to find no interpersonal satisfaction in her adult life might not know how critical she herself had become, but she might act it out in the relationship with the therapist."⁶⁴⁾ Thus, the patient in psychotherapy does not have to do anything extraordinary, nor is he put through any rigorous testing ― on the contrary, he is encouraged to just be himself and act naturally. Consistently allowing emotional material that had been repressed ― for they were much too painful to face ― to be discharged during therapy gradually helped the patient develop an ego strong enough to deal with them.

  According to Epstein, the therapist comes up against an obstacle at this point. In order to help the patient act naturally instead of resorting to his defense mechanisms, the therapist needs to apply non-partial attention: "The rule for the doctor may be expressed: 'He should withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend, and give himself over completely to his 'unconscious memory.'' Or, to put it purely in terms of technique: 'He should simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping anything in mind,'"⁶⁵⁾ Freud said. This kind of attention by the therapist is known as the analytic attitude or analytic neutrality. Epstein said, "It is a way of being, or perhaps a state of mind, that encourages the emergence of the transference."⁶⁶⁾Interestingly enough, this description of the ideal state of mind for the therapist is similar to the state of bare attention.

  But a long-time Achilles' heel of psychotherapy has been the inability of therapists to develop this level of present attention. While his theories were sound, Freud did not provide a detailed method through which the therapist could achieve this kind of state. As a result, many psychologists have complained that this analytic attitude is idealistic and too difficult to achieve.

 2) Working Through

  In the final stage of his model of psychotherapy, working through, Freud claimed that the patient must continuously and defiantly confront the emotional material engendering the repetitious behavior, for it does not necessarily go away once it is identified. Speaking from the therapist's point of view, Freud said, "One must allow the patient time to become more conversant with this resistance with which he has now become acquainted, to work through it, to overcome it, by continuing, in defiance of it, the analytic work according to the fundamental rule of analysis."⁶⁷⁾ This required not a change in the emotions themselves, but a development in the patient's ego, so that he could "hold" or be with these emotional scars once they are allowed to surface. But again, Freud failed to elaborate on how the patient could learn to be with these feelings, which are often unbearable to face.

  As well, once the patient learns to be with these emotional scars, he normally goes on to suffer from a sense of profound indignation since, as Epstein said, the patient comes to the realization that needs from the past were never and can never be met.⁶⁸⁾ This realization, he emphasized, is an experience common to "estranged" Westerners in psychotherapy. Epstein goes on to say that the sense of outrage and indignation is the result of narcissism, as it is a "vain expectation and selfish insistence that one's sense of hollowness should somehow be erased."⁶⁹⁾ Psychotherapists have struggled in dealing with this narcissistic problem, which is what stands between the patient and relief. As Epstein said, "Therapy all too often leaves people in possession of their pain, but without the tools to put it to any use. It can uncover the latent sense of "I," the seed of narcissism, without knowing how to make that discovery worthwhile. Despite therapy, one continues to feel stuck ― without a sense of hope or possibility. It was in such cases that Freud despaired of ever being able to terminate analysis."⁷⁰⁾ 

2. Vipassan 's Contribution to Psychotherapy

 1) Therapist

  The most important contribution of vipassan  meditation in the initial stages of psychotherapy pertains to the therapist. As stated above, the therapist is never taught how to foster the kind of environment that will allow the patient to act out the symptoms of the basic fault. Fostering this kind of an environment, says Epstein, requires silence ― not a void of thoughts and analysis, but a state of non-judgmental awareness, as is developed through the technique of bare attention: "It is through the therapist's silence, through his or her evocative presence, that this feeling can emerge in the here-and-now. The silence that I am referring to is not a dead silence, not a paralyzed one, but a silence teeming with possibility and texture."⁷¹⁾ This state of mind is extremely important, for it in turn, helps the patient quiet his discursive mind, and it is only when he falls silent that the patient is "often just about ready to enter some new and unexplored territory."⁷²⁾ This is when the patient's true feelings emerge, thus allowing him to experience his pain.

  The therapist, however, may harbor all kinds of thoughts, preconceptions and judgments about the patient, who is extremely sensitive to the therapist's reaction and attitude. If the therapist himself isn't "open," then certainly neither will his patient be: "The therapist's expectations and desires, however subtle, create a pressure against which the patient is compelled to react or with which the patient is compelled to comply."⁷³⁾ Epstein likened this to the effect of intrusive or ignoring parents on their children.

  The problem here is that the therapist holds on to his thoughts, thereby driving his thought process and, ultimately, steering the therapy in a subjective direction. This is where the technique of bare attention has much to offer: It teaches the therapist to let go of his thoughts by scanning them ― letting them come and watching them go. "When a therapist can sit with a patient without an agenda, without trying to force an experience, without thinking that she knows what is going to happen or who this person is, then the therapist is infusing the therapy with the lessons of meditation,"⁷⁴⁾ Epstein said. In other words, if the therapist can maintain this non-judgmental awareness through the continuous application of bare attention, the patient will feel the environment is "safe" enough to let his guard down and allow his deeply-rooted feelings to surface.  

  To illustrate this point, Epstein cites the case of one of his patients:

I was reminded of (the effects of silence) recently when sitting with a patient who had several years before, after an attack by a mugger, begun to remember sexual encounters with her father. As is common in such cases, this woman was filled with doubt about the truth of her own recollections, but she was gradually allowing herself to consider that they might, in fact, be true. She had had a dream the night before that her purse had been stolen and her wallet, with all of her identification, lost. She told me this at the beginning of the session, before she had really settled down, and she did not look at me much as she recounted the dream. This was not an unusual state for her at this time in her therapy; an affair with an abusive man had ended recently and she often appeared distraught and frightened during these days, like an animal suddenly trapped by a hunter.

 A long silence followed her report. Still uncomfortable, my patient also reported feeling suddenly very confused. I urged her not to discount this feeling of confusion but to stay with it, as she was clearly dissatisfied with the feeling and was treating it only as an obstacle to understanding the dream. It was confusion that had emerged out of the void of silence and with which she was still identified; the confusion was the unfinished material that the dream had brought into awareness.

 Her next memory was of coming downstairs to the family dinner table after a frightening encounter with her father and seeing him sitting there presiding over the meal. "Now who was she?" she remembered thinking about herself as she looked around at her parents and siblings, all acting so normal. This was the seed of her confusion. Unable to reconcile the two pictures of herself and her father, she had for years denied the truth of what had continued to unfold secretly between them. Her dream, beyond the obvious connotations of rape symbolized by the loss of her purse, brought out the more insidious consequences of that trauma ― the confusion that had plagued her and that she had been forced to act out in her repeated involvements with dishonest men, rather than experience consciously.

 I was responding meditatively when I permitted my patient's confusion. I did not know what it signified when I urged her to attend to it; I knew only that it could be treated not as an obstacle but as an interesting phenomenon in its own right. My own training in moment-to-moment awareness prepared me for this approach, and my ability to maintain my attentional stance permitted my patient to go more fully into her own experience.⁷⁵⁾

 2) Patient

  Like Nyanaponika Thera,⁷⁶⁾ Epstein claimed that concentration meditation, or samatha, can be particularly effective in learning to cope or be with destabilizing emotions. In order to accept these painful feelings as they are, instead of attempting to protect the ego by suppressing or avoiding these difficult emotions, the patient must hold them by concentrating on them, which will lead to a transformation in perception: "When the attention is trained on the emotion in question ― in particular, on the bodily experience of that emotion ― it gradually ceases to be experienced as a static and threatening entity and becomes, instead, a process that is defined by time as well as space."⁷⁷⁾ 

  Epstein once again cited a personal experience:

I remember once, not so many years ago, sitting in my therapist's office, telling him of an argument that I had had with someone close to me. I can no longer recall the details, but I had done something to get my friend upset with me, and she had become quite angry -- unjustifiably and disproportionately, in my view. I was still obviously angry, too, but I remember feeling upset and frustrated as I recounted the events to my therapist.

 "All I can do is love her more strongly at those times," I insisted somewhat plaintively, drawing on my years of meditation practice and the sincerity of my deeper feelings in the hope of freeing my mind from the anger that was brewing.

 "That will never work," he snapped, and it was like being hit with a Zen master's stick. My therapist would look at me somewhat quizzically at such times, as if amazed at my foolishness. "What's wrong with being angry?" he would often say.⁷⁸⁾

He later added: "when I was able to concentrate my awareness on the bodily feelings of being angry, rather than trying to ward off the dreaded "thing" by countering it with 'love,' I was able to recognize the inescapability of my response. I had been offended and had gotten angry, yet all was not lost. When I admitted it, I could then begin to relax."⁷⁹⁾

  Once the ego learns to be with his unwanted emotions, the sense of injured innocence predominates in the patient, according to Epstein. Vipassan  meditation holds the key to overcoming this problem because it can examine "who it is who feels it, and thereby appreciate what the Buddhist psychologies consider the relativity of the narcissistic emotions."⁸⁰⁾ That is, if the patient shifts the focus of his bare attention from feelings and thoughts to the observing self, the sense of "I" ― in this case, the self that is frustrated and angry at not being able to achieve reparation ― his "investment in outrage is gradually withdrawn and replaced by interest in exploring the nature of 'I.'"⁸¹⁾ This process takes the life out of the emotions as the feeling of 'I' is found to be so much less "substantial" than one had originally thought. Epstein notes that this shifting of the attention from the emotion to identification with the emotion, as is prescribed in vipassan  meditation, is what brings relief to the patient; and holds the key to solving the problem of narcissism that Freud failed to find.⁸²⁾

  Going back to his experience in therapy that was mentioned in the previous chapter, Epstein said:

One of my major discoveries in therapy was that I am made angry by the least interruption of intimate connection. Although I came to understand that this stemmed from a premature feeling of estrangement in my childhood, this knowledge alone gave me insight, but not relief. I remained hostage to my feelings each time a friend or loved one disappointed me. When I became able to use those disappointments to bring my own primitive sense of identification into focus, however, something began to shift. I found that I could not possibly remain so righteously indignant time and again. I was forced to relax my grip and question my conviction that an individual episode of withdrawal needed to be interpreted as abandonment. By tapping my own aggression and using it to redirect my awareness, I prevented myself from being held prisoner by my own instinctive reactions. The ability to make this transition from identification with the thinker to doubt over its reality is what permits an adequate working through of therapeutic discoveries.⁸³⁾ 

V. Conclusion

  As we have seen, the psychoanalytic community in the United States has played a significant role in the "Americanization" of Buddhist practice over the last 100 years or so since Buddhism's inception. First, it has brought to the American public's attention the psycho-cultural problems that arise for the Westerner in Buddhist meditation, specifically vipassan . This has led many prominent contemporary psychoanalysts to believe that Buddhist meditation presupposes an integrated and healthy ego, for without such a firm foundation, the meditator is prone to using meditation in a harmful way.

 With its primary focus on developing a strong and healthy ego, the same psychoanalysts have argued, psychotherapy naturally complements Buddhist meditation for the Westerner. But contemporary psychiatrist Mark Epstein, one of the leading figures in the United States in the integration of psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation, has countered that psychotherapy is faced with its own limitations, and, conversely, it can turn to meditation for help. In his book Thoughts Without a Thinker, Epstein shows how Buddhist meditative techniques can be utilized within the therapeutic environment to overcome some of psychotherapy's long-held weaknesses.  

  More and more Buddhist teachers and practitioners in America today have also come to recognize the potential benefits of psychotherapeutic techniques for meditation, especially in the modern world with its chaotic lifestyle and the unique psychological problems this has engendered. For example, recent studies have shown that Buddhist teachers in the United States are learning more about psychology, encouraging students to take up therapy if necessary, and paying more attention to the transference process during interviews.

  Psychotherapeutic techniques are just as relevant for Korean Buddhist practice today, as the country is currently undergoing a cultural upheaval similar to that of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The booming industrialization and internationalization process in Korea has given rise to a new generation of people with new sets of psychological problems, ones symptomatic of the urban lifestyle. If it is to maintain its vitality and millennia-long tradition, Korean Buddhism must learn to adapt its practices so that they are relevant for today's problems.

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Wilber, Ken & Engler, Jack & Brown, Daniel (eds.),                         Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional               and Contemplative Perspectives on                          Development (Boston: New Science Library,                 1986)

《Articles/Theses in Korean》

김용표, 「선불교에서 본 심층심리학의 자아실현론」, 『덕숭                선학』 제2집, 한국불교선학연구원, 2002

李光濬, 「禪과 相談에 關한 比較硏究」, 고려대학교 교육대                학원 석사논문, 1974

崔玄覺, 「깨달음에 대한 禪的 一考」, 『불교학보』 제 三十                六輯, 동국대학교 불교문화연구원, 1999

崔玄覺, 「禪修行의 意義와 公案」, 『불교학보』 제 三十八                輯, 동국대학교 불교문화연구원, 2001

《Articles in English》

Bogart, Greg, "Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Review of the                 Literature," The American Journal of                           Psychotherapy, Vol. XLV No. 3, 1991

Boorstein, Sylvia, "Spiritual Issues in Psychotherapy," Journal                  of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 26 No. 2,                    1994 

Burns, Douglas, "Buddhist Meditation and Depth Psychology,"                  The Wheel Publications, Vol. 5, 1973

Deikman, Arthur, "Spirituality Expands a Therapist's Horizons,"                 BuddhaZine (buddhanet.net)

Dubs, G., "Psychospiritual Development in Zen Buddhism: A                   Study of Resistance in Meditation," Journal of                  Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 19, 1987

Emavardhana, Tipawadee and Tori, Christopher D., "Changes in                 Self-concept, Ego Defense Mechanisms and                    Religiosity Following Seven-day Vipassan                      Meditation Retreats," The Journal for the                      Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 36 No. 2,                     1997

Huxter, Malcolm, "Present Centered Awareness: A Path to                     Psychological Freedom," Journal of                             Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 30, 1998

Kim, Yong-pyo, "A Theory of Common Psychic Archetype and                 Religious Education: C.G. Jung's Depth                         Hermeneutics of Religious Symbolism,"                         Korean Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 1,                 1995

Kornfield, Jack, "Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds                  to Heal," Yoga Journal, 88, 1989

Lamar, Linnea, "Zen and Popular Culture: An Interview with                   Zenshin Roshi," CyberSangha, Spring 1996

Padmal, Silva, "Buddhist Psychology: A Review of Theory and                 Practice," Current Psychology, Vol. 9 No. 3                    Fall, 1990

VanderKooi, Lois, "Buddhist Teachers' Experience with                        Extreme Mental States in Western Meditators,"                 Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol.                      29(1), 1997

《Dictionaries in Korean/English》

Statt, David A. 지음, 정태연 옮김, 『심리학 용어 사전』, 끌                리오 출판사, 1999

Chaplin, J.P., Dictionary of Psychology, Second Revised Ed.                    (New York: Laurel Book, 1985)

Soothill, William E. and Hodous, Lewis (comp.), A Dictionary                  of Chinese Buddhist Terms, 1994  

초록

Vipassan 와 심리치료의 보완적 관계에 관한 연구

 - Mark Epstein의 방법론을 중심으로 -

                           東國大學校 大學院 禪學科 글렌최 

  불교는 역사 과정에서 나타나듯 전파된 환경 또는 문화와 조화를 이루는 유연성을 지니고 있다. 예컨대 부처님의 가르침이 서기 6세기말에 보리달마로부터 전해졌을 때 도교의 토착문화에 흡수되어 찬 (Ch'an: 禪)이라는 새로운 불교 형태가 나타났다.  

  이처럼 불교가 8세기말 인도승인 파드마삼바바 (Padmasambhava)로부터 티베트에 전해졌을 때 민속 종교인 본 (Bon)과 합일하여 고도의 밀교적 불교전통인 탄뜨라 (Tantra)가 탄생했다. 그러나 지난 1세기에 걸쳐 불교는 동양을 떠나 서양, 즉 구라파와 북미 대륙으로 향하고 있다. 이에 따라 이를 받아들인 서양인들은 마치 하나의 마루타인 것처럼 불교를 면밀히 관찰하였다. 초기 서양인들은 이상하고 신비롭기만 한 동양수행법을 대수롭게 여기지 않았지만 이후 수 십년에 걸쳐 동양과 서양불교 신자들이 힘을 모아 불교 가르침의 신비적 요소를 제거하였고 그 결과 서구에서 불교는 대중들의 더 많은 관심을 얻었다.

  최근 학술계, 보건의료계, 문필가들을 비롯한 서구사회의 각계 각층에서 불교를 인정하고 있다. 이 과정에서 서양인들은 불교를 다양하게 해석, 논의하며 나름대로 응용하였다. 이것은 불교를 이해하고자 하는 서양인들의 노력의 결과라고 볼 수 있다.

 중국과 티베트에서 형성해 나간 것처럼 불교는 현재 서구에서 흡수되고 있는 과정에 놓여있다. 그러나 학자들은 흔히 불교가 한 문화에 완전히 토착하려면 300년이 걸린다는 말을 고려할 때 불교가 완전히 서구화 되려면 아직 멀었다. 현재는 서구인들이 불교를 실천하는데 여러 시행착오를 겪어가고 있는 시점이라고 볼 수 있다. 이리하여 이 연구의 목적은 서구인들이 불교수행법을 실천할 때에 생기는 심리적인 문제점들과 이를 보완하기 위한 수단을 제시하는데 있다.

 이 연구의 범위와 방법론에 있어서는 다음과 같다. 불교는 실용적인 차원 및 학술적인 차원에서 미국, 유럽 등 서구사회의 모든 면과 지역에 스며들었다. 하지만 이 연구는 불교의 실용적인 측면만을 고찰, 학술적인 측면에 있어서 불교를 해명한, 수많은 뛰어난 미국계 불교학자들의 이야기는 생략하기로 한다.

 또한 서양에 젠 (Zen: 일본禪)  티베트  한국禪과 같은 많은 불교수행법이 전해졌으나 이 연구는 위파싸나 명상법 (vipassan  meditation), 즉 동남아의 주 수행방법에 중점을 두어 고찰한다. 이유는 다음과 같다.

 이 연구는 구체적으로 미국이라는 서구에 전해진 위파싸나 명상법에 초점을 두고 있고 미국에서도 불교는 많은 문제점과 변화를 겪어왔기 때문이다. 미국사회에서 나타난 이러한 문제점들을 밝히고 최근에 와서야 해결책을 제시하기 시작한 단체는 심리학계이다. 여기서 중요한 것은 심리학자들이 젠이나 어떤 불교 수행방법보다 위파싸나에 많은 관심을 쏟았다는 것이다.

  재크 콘필드 (Jack Kornfield)와 캔 윌버 (Ken Wilber)와 재크 앵글러 (Jack Engler) 등 심리적인 문제점에 대한 해결책을 모색한 심리학자 가운데 현대 미국정신과 의사인 마크 엡스타인 (Mark Epstein)은 하나의 선두자라고 볼 수 있다. 따라서 이 연구는 주로 엡스타인의 방법론에 대해 논할 것이다. 엡스타인은 서양인에 있어서 위파싸나 명상법과 심리치료가 서로 보완적인 관계를 지닌다고 주장한다.

 엡스타인의 저술인 Thoughts Without a Thinker를 바탕으로 한 이 연구는 위파싸나 명상법이 심리치료를 보완할 수 있는 방법에 대해 주로 논할 것이나 결어부분에서 심리치료의 방법이 서양인들의 위파싸나 명상법을 보완해 줄 수 있는 몇몇 사례를 제시한다.

 이리하여 본 연구의 Ⅱ장에서 필자는 미국심리학자들이 20세기 초에 대중의 많은 관심을 끈 일본禪보다 위파싸나 명상법에 대해 더 많은 관심을 보이게 된 과정을 살펴본다. 제 Ⅲ장에서는 미국에서 서양인들이 위파싸나를 수행했을 때 생긴 심리적 문제점과 이로 인하여 불교명상법에 대한 미국심리학자들의 인식전환에 대하여 논한다.

  엡스타인의 치료 방법론을 바탕으로 한 마지막 장에서는 위파싸나에 있어서 이러한 서양인들의 심리적 문제점들을 극복해줄 측면을 지닌 심리치료의 방법을 소개하는 동시에 심리치료의 한계성에 대해 또한 논한다. 그리고 반대로 위파싸나가 이러한 심리치료의 한계성을 극복해줄 측면을 지니고 있다는 것을 보여줌으로써 두 분야의 보완적 관계를 주장한다.

  오늘날 한국불교에 있어서도 심리치료의 기술적 접근은 미국에서만큼 중요하다고 볼 수 있다. 왜냐하면 현재 한국은 1950-60년대 미국에서 겪었던 산업화와 국제화의 붐에 따른 문화적 대변동을 보이기 때문이다. 폭발적인 산업화와 국제화 시대를 맞이하는 한국으로서는 새롭게 심리적 문제점을 갖고 있는 도시적 생활이 반영된 새 세대인을 야기시켰다. 한국불교가 생동력을 유지하기 위해서는 이 현대적인 문제점을 해결할 수 있는 수행법을 수용하고 적용해야만 한다.

---

1) Fields, Rick, Author's Note in How the Swans Came to the Lake, xiii

2) A movement that was founded in the late 19th century in New York by Madame Blavatsky, an ethnic Russian, and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. Madame Blavatsky expounded the teachings of occult masters that she believed were secretly guiding the future of the world. See, Coleman, James William, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, p. 56

3) The transcendentalist movement of American literature began in the first half of the 19th century in New England. Transcendentalist writers rejected many established orthodox Puritanistic values, such as the concept of the Trinity, and placed primary emphasis on the mystical basis of religion. Its roots were said to be in Western philosophy and Oriental mysticism. See, Day, Martin S., History of American Literature: From the Beginning to 1910, vol. 1, p. 93

4) Pali scholar Walpola Rahula vehemently denied this interpretation of dukkha as only meaning suffering and pain: "(Dukkha) also includes deeper ideas such as 'imperfection', 'impermanence', 'emptiness', 'insubstantiality'. It is difficult therefore to find one word to embrace the whole conception of the term dukkha ... " Rahula, Walpola, What the Buddha Taught, p. 17

5) Tweed, Thomas, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, p. 18

6) Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, p. 56

7) Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent, p. 104.

8) Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, p. 11.

First, it must be noted that Freud did not have access to a wide range of material on Eastern thought, which contributed to his misunderstanding. Second, one must understand Freud's theory of the psyche to understand why he interpreted mysticism in this way. Freud claimed that the psyche consisted of a tripartite of the unconscious (id), ego, and super-ego. The id, also known as the it, is unconscious impulses or instincts ― usually the libido or sexual energy. The ego is the entity that regulates and controls the instincts of the Id. The super-ego, which emerges from the ego, is the shining moral standard, telling the ego what is socially acceptable. The super-ego  is formed from demands made upon us by authority figures, such as one's parents. See, Freud, Sigmund, General Psychological Theory ― Papers on Metapsychology, pp. 186-88.

Hence, assuming that mysticism was about forgetting the self and obliterating one's emotions (id), Freud identified it with the infantile state before the ego is developed. Epstein symbolically described it thus: "the infant at the breast merged in a symbiotic and undifferentiated union, with no need for any troubling emotion." See, Epstein, Mark, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 95

9) A movement of young writers, artists, musicians, and bohemians that rejected conventional American culture during the 1950s. The central figures behind this movement were Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder. See, Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, pp. 61-2

10) Coleman, The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition, p. 62

11) Ibid., p. 65

12) Fromm, Eric, Suzuki, D.T. and De Martino, Richard, foreword to Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. Suzuki's interest in Western psychology early on was said to have been stimulated by the work of renowned American psychologist William James, whose description of the mystical experience in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience echoed Suzuki's explanation of satori. See, Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake, p. 205

13) Fromm, Suzuki, and De Martino, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, p. 115

14) While admitting that Eastern practices, in general, offered valuable insights, Jung did not think they were appropriate for the Westerner. See, for example, his foreword to Daisetz Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism, commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, and commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Richard Wilhem: In Memoriam and so on.

15) A core Tibetan Buddhist text that gives an in-depth explanation of the experiences a human being goes through at the moment of death and during the 49-day intermediate period before the soul enters another bodily form.

16) Jung, C.G., Psychological Commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, xxxvi  

17) Jung, C.G., "Foreword to Introduction to Zen Buddhism," in Self and Liberation: The Jung/Buddhism Dialogue, ed. Meckel, Daniel J. and Moore, Robert L., p. 25

18) Vipassan  practice entails two preliminary exercises: samatha and satipa h na. Samatha, or tranquility, is developed through concentration:

And what is Right Concentration? Herein a monk detached from sensual objects, detached from unsalutary things, enters into the first absorption, born of detachment, accompanied by thought-conception and discursive thought, and filled with rapture and joy. After the subsiding of thought-conception and discursive thought, and by gaining inner tranquility and oneness of mind, he enters into a state of free from thought-conception and discursive thought, the second absorption, which is born of Concentration and filled with rapture and joy. After the fading away of rapture, he dwells in equanimity, mindful, clearly aware; and he experiences in his person that feeling of which noble ones say 'Happy is the man of equanimity and mindfulness'; and thus he enters the third absorption. After the giving up of pleasure and pain, and through the disappearance of previous joy and grief, he enters into a state of beyond pleasure and pain, into the fourth absorption, which is purified by equanimity and mindfulness.

(Mah -Satipa h na-Sutta, trans. by Nyanaponika Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, pp. 130-31)

The whole purpose of this is simply to quiet mental processes so that the meditator is in a more receptive state to apply satipa h na meditation. Satipa h na practice consists of the contemplation of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness:

(i) contemplating the body (k y nupassan ) in the body, energetic ( t pi), clearly comprehending (sampaj no), mindful (satim ), giving up (temporarily) covetousness (abhijjh ) and grief (domanassa) in this world (loke=the five aggregates);

(ii) contemplating the feelings (vedan nupassan );

(iii) contemplating the states of mind (citt nupassan );

(iv) contemplating the dhammas (dhamm nupassan )

(Satipa h na Sutta, trans. Narada Maha Thera in The Buddha and His Teachings, p. 702)

Hence, the meditator starts with samatha practice to pacify the mind before gradually taking on more abstract and subtle objects; one goes from contemplating the body, to feelings, to mental states (mind), and to mental objects (thoughts and emotions). Once the meditator has reached a level where his mind is not disturbed by the senses, he finally inquires into the sense of "I." This last step is known as vipassan  meditation.

19) Nyanaponika Thera was one of the first to translate vipassan  as "insight" meditation. He called it this for, through insight meditation, one gains a "direct and penetrative realization of the Three Characteristics of Existence, i.e. Impermanence, Suffering and Impersonality." Thera, Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 44

20) Humanistic psychology was developed by Abraham Maslow, a personality theorist, and Carl Rogers through his clinical experiences. This area of psychology focuses on the uniqueness of the individual, the validity of subjective experience, freedom of choice, and the tendency for each individual to strive to realize his potential. See, Chaplin, J.P., Dictionary of Psychology, Second Revised Edition, p. 214

21) Nyanaponika Thera describes the technique of bare attention thus: "Bare attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called 'bare,' because it attends just to the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind, which, for Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that sixfold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference, judgment or reflection." Thera, Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 30

22) Bogart, Greg, "Meditation and Psychotherapy: A Review of the Literature," originally published in The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 1991. Article retrieved from BuddhaZine (online journal) at BuddhaNet.net (http://www.buddhanet.net/medpsych.htm)  

23) Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 82

24) Goldstein, Joseph, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom, p. 128

25) Silva, Padmal, "Buddhist Psychology: A Review of Theory and Practice," originally published in Current Psychology, Vol. 9 No. 3, 1990. Article retrieved from http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/silva.htm

26) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 3

27) Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, p. 6

28) Kornfield, Jack, "Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal," from "Psychotherapy and Meditation" in Buddhazine (online magazine of BuddhaNet.net)

29) Ibid. Kornfield gives a more detailed account of such psychological problems arising in Western meditators in his book A Path With Heart. See especially Chapter 17, "Psychotherapy and Meditation," pp. 244-53

30) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, pp. 170-1

31) Ibid., pp. 171-2

32) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 135. For details of the study, see, Brown, Daniel and Engler, Jack, "The Stages of Mindfulness Meditation: a Validation Study," in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development.

33) Ibid. Epstein cites numerous other cases involving his patients, in which their meditation practice was plagued by similar yearnings, throughout the book. 

34) Maky  is a Japanese Buddhist term that refers to deceptive appearances and feelings, such as hallucinations and visions, that can arise in deep meditation. See, Kapleau, Roshi Philip, The Three Pillars of Zen, p. 41

35) 見性.

36) Jack Engler's theory will be dealt with in more detail in the next chapter.

37) Vanderkooi, Lois, "Buddhist Teachers' Experience with Extreme Mental States in Western Meditators," Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 29 (1), pp. 31-46. Vanderkooi cites two more cases of extreme mental states in Westerners during Buddhist meditation in his study. VanderKooi also notes that Asian Buddhist teachers are unfamiliar with dealing with students who showed extreme mental states such as psychosis, because traditionally, mentally disturbed people were restricted from entering practice.

38) On this point, Nyanaponika Thera says, "The objects of Right Mindfulness comprise the entire man and his whole field of experience ... Without such a foundation it may happen that from what is overlooked, underrated, neglected or ignored, strong antagonistic forces may grow, which may seriously damage, or even destroy, the results of long spiritual effort." Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 57

39) Kornfield, Jack, "Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal," Yoga Journal, 88, 1989, p. 46

40) Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, p. 6

41) Engler, Jack, "Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation," in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, ed. Wilber, Ken; Engler, Jack; Brown, Daniel, p. 30. This was a problem that also plagued Zen circles, as Zenshin Roshi, an American Zen master, said that meditation may be abused as a defense mechanism against psychological contents one does not wish to face: "Most meditations are directed towards enhancing one's life in some way, and there's nothing wrong with that. The premise of most of these pop meditations, however, is that one can develop some kind of psychological attitude that defends oneself against reality. In Zen Buddhism, meditation is not directed towards defending oneself against the stresses of reality but rather towards confronting reality as it is and becoming one with it. This requires a world view and a way of being in the world that reinforces it." Lamar, Linnea, "Zen and Popular Culture: An Interview with Zenshin Roshi," CyberSangha, Spring 1996 (http://www. worldtra

ns.org/CyberSangha/lamarsp96.htm). 

42) On this point, both Engler and Epstein pointed out that, during mindfulness of feelings, repressed memories and emotional conflicts may come into awareness, which can be dangerous for those who have repressed emotional problems of severe intensity. This is because such individuals cannot tolerate uncovering unconscious material and their resultant painful affects, causing debilitating and uncontrollable states. This could then further fragment an already vulnerable sense of self. See, Engler, Jack, "Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation," in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, ed. Wilber, Ken, Engler, Jack, Brown, Daniel, p. 36. Also, Epstein, Mark, Thoughts Without a Thinker, pp. 168-9

43) Deikman, Arthur, "Spirituality Expands a Therapist's Horizons," BuddhaZine (www.buddhanet.net). As further evidence to support this claim, Greg Dubs carried out a questionnaire and interviews with 30 long-term Zen meditators, which revealed that unresolved anger was the main reason behind their lack of progress in meditation. See, Dubs, G., "Psychospiritual Development in Zen Buddhism: A Study of Resistance in Meditation," Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 19, 1987, pp. 19-86

44) Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, p. 249

45) Burns, Douglas, Appendix to "Buddhist Meditation and Depth Psychology," The Wheel Publication No. 88/89, 1994. Retrieved from (http://www.buddhanet.net/depth.htm).

46) Boorstein, Sylvia, "Spiritual Issues in Psychotherapy," Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Vol. 26 No. 2, 1994

47) Engler, Jack, "Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation," in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, ed. Wilber, Ken; Engler, Jack; Brown, Daniel.

48) Engler, J., "Therapeutic Aims in Psychotherapy and Meditation," in Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, ed. Wilber, Ken; Engler, Jack; Brown, Daniel, p. 17. Here, Engler is referring to the Buddhist concept of "No-self," or anatta, when he says "nobody."

49) Kornfield, Jack, A Path With Heart, p. 217

50) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 176

51) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 178

52) This is the term Epstein used. See, Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 177

53) The lack of proper parenting has engendered feelings of animosity by Western children for their mothers. Epstein recounts a conversation he once had with Tibetan Buddhist master Sogyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and who had much experience teaching in the West, about the Tibetan technique of treating all beings as mothers in order to foster compassion: "Oh, no," he laughed, "not for Westerners. I always tell them like grandmother or grandfather." Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 176

54) The Dalai Lama, as Epstein recounts, was astonished to learn that so many Westerners were suffering from low self-esteem: "In Tibet, said Sogyal Rinpoche, a positive sense of self is assumed. It is inculcated early and supported through all of the interdependent relationships that are established by the web of family. If a person cannot maintain this positive feeling about himself, he says, he or she is considered a fool." Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 177

55) Kornfield, A Path With Heart, p. 203-204

56) Psychoanalyst Michael Balint describes the basic fault as the perception by the patient that a flaw lying within himself is inherent, rather than having derived from early childhood experiences:

The patient says that he feels there is a fault within him, a fault that must be put right. And it is felt to be a fault, not a complex, not a conflict, not a situation.... There is a feeling that the cause of this fault is that someone has either failed the patient or defaulted on him; and ... a great anxiety invariably surrounds this area, usually expressed as a desperate demand that this time the analyst should not ― in fact must not ― fail him. (Cited in Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 173)

57) Realm whose inhabitants are characterized by unfulfilled cravings and are insatiably demanding of impossible satisfactions:

If one blocks the goodwill of others and is miserly with one's own goods, one becomes a needle-mouth ghost,＊ who, despite having a large stomach, will always starve and suffer from thirst.  

若障人布施 於己物生  墮針口鬼中 腹大常飢渴

                     (大正新修大藏經, 第 17卷, 經集部 四, 726上)

＊Ghosts whose mouths are so small that they cannot satisfy their hunger or thirst. Soothill, William E. and Hodous, Lewis, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, p. 340

58) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 174

59) Nyanaponika Thera, Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 23

60) Deikman, Arthur J., "Spirituality Expands a Therapist's Horizons," BuddhaZine (BuddhaNet.net)

61) See, Wilber, Ken, The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development, p. 50, pp. 93-99

62) Alexander, Franz & French, Thomas M., Psychoanalytic Therapy: Principles and Application, p. 17

63) Freud, Sigmund, "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through," in Vol. 12 of Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey, p. 150

64) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 181

65) Freud, Sigmund, "Recommendations to Physicians

Practicing Psycho-Analysis, " in Vol. 12 of Standard Edition, pp. 111-12

66) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 182

67) Freud, Sigmund, "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through," in Vol. 12 of Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, p. 155

68) Tibetan Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman called this state "injured innocence," which is characterized by such questions as "How could she do this to me? I don't deserve to be treated that way." Cited in Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 211

69) Ibid.

70) Ibid., p. 218

71) Ibid., p. 187

72) Ibid.

73) Ibid., p. 190

74) Ibid., p. 187

75) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, pp. 190-1

76) Referring to difficult memories, Nyanaponika Thera said: "If there is any further interest in the object, or if its impact on the senses is sufficiently strong, closer attention will be directed towards details." Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, p. 25

77) Epstein, Thoughts Without a Thinker, p. 207

78) Ibid., p. 203

79) Ibid., p. 207

80) Ibid., p. 211

81) Ibid., p. 212

82) In contrast to Epstein, Franz Alexander believed that the only way the patient could "master" his conflicts was to be allowed to repeat his destructive behavior without being punished or censured. That way, the patient can learn to differentiate between the original childhood situation and his present status, and realize that his behavior was being unnecessarily controlled by this past event. This realization is known as the "corrective emotional experience," an experience that undoes the effect of the old. Alexander, Franz and Morton, Thomas, Psychoanalytic Therapy: Principles and Application, p. 22

83) Ibid., p. 217

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