The Buddhist Path as Therapy

Amber Larson and Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Thanissaro, "Healing Power of the Precepts" (Noble Strategy); Mary Loftus (Psychology Today, Sept. 5, 2013); Sunny

Fairness or martyrdom? When virtue becomes a vice (Jeff Riedel/psychologytoday.com)

.

Virtue becomes a vice? (PT)

The Buddha was a kind of doctor [referred to in some sutras as a "master physician"], treating the spiritual ills of living beings [human and devas, also referred to as "the teacher of gods and humans].

The path of practice he taught was like a course of therapy for suffering (disappointed) hearts and minds. This way of understanding the Buddha and his teachings or Dharma dates back to the earliest texts, and yet it is also very current.

Buddhist meditation practice is often advertised as a form of healing, and quite a few psychotherapists now recommend that their patients try (mindfulness based) meditation as part of their treatment.

 

After several years of teaching and practicing meditation as "therapy," however, many of us have found that meditation on its own is not enough.

Psycho Mike (Suicidal T.)

In my own experience as a Western monk and abbot of Wat Forest Monastery in California (Thai Theravada), I have found that Western meditators tend to be afflicted more with a certain grimness and lack of self-esteem than any Asians I have ever taught.

Our psyches are so wounded by modern civilization that we tend to lack the resilience and persistence needed before concentration (serenity) and insight practices can be genuinely therapeutic.

 

Other teachers have noted this problem as well and, as a result, many of them have decided that the Buddhist path is insufficient for our particular needs. To make up for this insufficiency they have experimented with ways of supplementing meditation practice, combining it with such things as myth, poetry, psychotherapy, social activism, sweat lodges, mourning rituals, and even drumming.

The Buddha's full course

The problem, though, may not be that there is anything lacking in the Buddhist path, but that we simply haven't been following the Buddha's full course of therapy.

 

The Buddha's path consists not only of mindfulness, concentration, and insight practices, but also of virtue (sila), beginning with the Five Precepts. In fact, the precepts constitute the first and most basic step on the Buddhist path.
 

Balance? (Jeff Riedel/PT)

There is a tendency in the West to dismiss the Five Precepts as Sunday-school rules bound to old cultural norms that no longer apply to our modern society. But this misses the role the Buddha intended for them: They are part of a course of therapy for wounded minds/hearts. In particular, they are aimed at curing two ailments that underlie low self-esteem, regret and denial.

 

When our actions do not measure up to certain standards of behavior, we either regret the actions or, worse, engage in one of two kinds of denial -- either denying that our actions did in fact happen or denying that the standards of measurement are actually valid. These reactions are like wounds in the mind... More

(Sunny and the Sunliners) Self-esteem low? Depressed after a bad relationship? "It's Okay," says Sunny. "Ha, ha, ha/ It's all right/ I've been hurt before/ It's all right/ You don't love me anymore/ Maybe someday/ I'll find a way without you/ Ha, ha, ha/ Who am I kidding?/ It's okay/ Baby, I can see/ It's okay/ But, but would it make you happy?/ Maybe someday/ I'll find a way without you./Ha, ha, ha/ Someday, it won't be long/ You're gonna find yourself all alone/ It's okay/ Baby, I can say see/ It's okay/ I will set you free..."

Yoga, Meditation in Action: Seane Corn (video)

Yogi Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Krista Tippett, Trent Gilliss (onbeing.org)

 

American Yogini Seane Corn

Yoga has infiltrated law schools and strip malls, churches and hospitals. This 5,000-year-old spiritual technology is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives.
 

Midwesterner Seane Corn ("Off the Mat Into the World") takes us inside the practicalities and power of yoga [mainly those limbs of an ancient eightfold practice focusing on physical postures and breath regulation]. Corn describes how it helps her face the darkness in herself and the world and how she’s come to see yoga as a form of body prayer. More

• Listen to the radio show/podcast
• When Yoga Gets Really Real  When I moved to Jerusalem two years ago, I thought for sure that I would continue my yoga practice, especially after having yoga present in my life in so many ways for so many years. And I thought that I would even find others in this holy city to practice with. A sangha (spiritual community), a space, a teacher...

Exploring Mysteries, Encouraging a Love Affair with Life Parker Palmer pays homage with words of wisdom on "the savage and beautiful country that lies in between."

  

Living with Yoga: rehabilitation

Molested at 6-years-old, Corn made a gift of that experience -- not in spite of it -- by transforming the shame and darkness. She works with child prostitutes and sex trafficking here in the U.S. and in Buddhist countries like Cambodia. She went through a period of drug abuse, sex abuse, and other efforts to numb out and check out. But when she faced and actually dealt with and transformed the shadow, she was able to venture on the road to becoming whole.

  

VIDEO: Body Prayer
Trent Gilliss (onbeing.orgj)

For Seane Corn, yoga is much more than a practice in flexibility. It’s a way of applying spiritual lessons to real-world problems and personal issues. One way she channels her energy and love is through a practice she calls “body prayer,” as she shares in this video from Yoga from the Heart.

She shared this perspective about “body prayer” in the show, “Yoga, Meditation in Action”:
 

“I trust that if I do my yoga practice, I’m going to get stronger and more flexible. If I stay in alignment, if I don’t push, if I don’t force, then my body will organically open in time.

“I know that if I breathe deeply, I’ll oxygenate my body. It has an influence on my nervous system. These things are fixed and I know to be true.

“But I also recognize that it’s a mystical practice, and you can use your body as an expression of your devotion. So the way that you place your hands, the ways that you step a foot forward or back, everything is done as an offering. I offer the movements to someone I love or to the healing of the planet.

 

Hope I can do yoga like Seane during this war

“And so if I’m moving from a state of love and my heart is open to that connection between myself and another person or myself and the universe, it becomes an active form of prayer, of meditation, of grace.

“And when you’re offering your practice as a gift, as I was in that particular DVD, as I do often, I was offering to my dad who’s very ill. And so when I have an intention behind what I’m doing, then it becomes so fluid. Because if I fall out of a pose I’m not going to swear, I’m not going to get disappointed or frustrated. 

Titling a Show on Seane Corn’s Yoga

“I’m going to realize that this is my offering, and I don’t want to offer that energy to my father. I only want to offer him my love. And so I let my body reflect that. And when you link the body with the breath, when my focus is solely on getting the pose to embrace the breath that I’m actualizing, then the practice, it’s almost in slow motion.

“It has a sense of effortlessness. When people can connect to that, it takes the pressure off of trying to do it perfectly. It just becomes a real expression of their own heart.

“Sometimes it’s graceful and elegant, other times it’s kind of funky and abstract, but it’s authentic to who the person is. It’s their own poetry.” More

Learn a New Word; Parker Palmer Reminds Us That Work Doesn't Define You; Yoga Mom and Child; The Ethics of Lockpicking?

This week inspired a lesson from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poetic reflection on being more than doing from Parker Palmer, a precious moment that will make you smile, and a peculiar story about a lockpicker that will make you think.

The Truth About Religion (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; the Right Reverend Alan Watts (alanwatts.org)

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, which truth is the truest of all?"

The Episcopalian minister turned Zen Buddhist priest Alan Watts blows the lid on the real meaning of religion as it is practiced in the West and East. It is staggering what we have come to in the West looking to the insights of the East for guidance. Watts originally delivered this two part talk under the name "Democracy in the Kingdom." Part 2 will be played on the first Sunday in July at 8:00 am. This one was aired on June 29, 2014 at 8:00 am. AUDIO: PLAY

Buddhism for drug, alcohol recovery (BLVD)

Seth Auberon and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; BLVDcenters.com; AgainstTheStream.org

"I'm not an alcoholic. I'm a DRUNK. Alcoholics go to meetings."

New Refuge Recovery book

BLVD Treatment Centers now offers a "Refuge Recovery" Treatment Program at its outpatient centers in Los Angeles, California.

It was designed by Buddhist author Noah Levine (Dharma Punx Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Center), son of Stephen Levine and student of renowned Theravada teacher Jack Kornfield.

 

BLVD will be offering an insurance-reimbursed program in San Francisco and New York next, dedicated to mindfulness and the "Refuge Recovery" path.

Ongoing meetings are open to anyone interested in Recovery and Buddhism. Now termed "Refuge Recovery" (an unfortunate name based on the common mistranslation of sarana, which means guidance, as "refuge"), this approach to recovery from pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, and alcohol is a community (sangha) of people using Buddhist practices like

• mindfulness (sati, MBSR, MBCT)
• clear comprehension (sampajañña)
• compassion (karuṇā)
• forgiveness (khanti)
• generosity (unselfishness, dāna)

to heal the pain and suffering that addiction has caused in our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

 

Noah Levine, punk, author, Buddhist teacher

The path of practice Against the Stream follows is termed by Noah Levine the "Four Truths of Refuge Recovery."
 
It is a Buddhist-oriented path to recovery from addictions. It has proven successful with addicts (to legal and illegal substances) and alcoholics who have committed to the Buddhist path of meditation, generosity, kindness (metta), and renunciation (inner letting go).

This is an approach to recovery that understands: “All beings have the power and potential to free themselves from suffering.” Practitioners feel confident in the power of the Buddha’s teachings -- if applied in daily life -- to relieve suffering and disappointment of all kinds, including the suffering of addiction.

Meetings are appropriate for anyone in or interested in recovery. No meditation experience is necessary. By voluntary donation only. No preregistration. Just drop in.

• Buddhist addiction recovery center opens
• Noah Levine's dad is a Buddhist teacher

Aum & Garden's Body, Mind, Spirit Expo

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; AumAndGarden.com; KPFK.org

Aum & Garden is a retail gathering place in Sherman Oaks, California that celebrates life by offering a variety of products and services for inner and outer sanctuaries. 

Statues for the garden, candles for the home, books for the soul, A&G has much to add beauty to life. Meeting home and garden needs, classes, workshops, and media events in the Valley are all part of a mission to bring the world more peace, joy, and beauty. More

• Aum & Garden, 13363 Ventura Blvd.
• Sherman Oaks, CA 91423, (818) 788-3400

Spiritual is Ordinary (football)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Buddhist meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein (Spirit Rock), It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness

(MT) FOX NFL Sunday, Part D'oh -- the historic intersection between The Simpsons and FOX NFL

Sylvia Boorstein (OB)

A few years ago I was teaching in another city, and the person who was to be my host telephoned me in advance to see if I had any special food requirements. I appreciated his concern and explained my eating preferences. I also mentioned that I don't normally eat much for breakfast but that I do like coffee in the morning.

He replied, in a very surprised voice, "You drink coffee?" I realized I had just made a heretical confession. I needed to do some fast mind scrambling to find a graceful way to explain to my host (without losing my spiritual stature) that I do, indeed, drink coffee.

"You drink coffee?" (funny-pics.co)

There are some peculiar notions about what constitutes "being spiritual." I have a cartoon on the wall of my office that shows two people having dinner in a restaurant. One of them is saying to the other, "It's such a relief to meet someone who isn't on a spiritual question." I agree. There is an enormous possibility of getting sidetracked into self-conscious holiness, of putting energy into acting the part of a "spiritual person."

Outside of the US, football doesn't matter. But futbol (soccer) means the world.
 

Ball games keep us fit for war (theworld.org)

A dear friend of mine, as he has become more and more established as a meditation teacher, has become less and less hesitant about telling people he loves football games. He even admits he gets very excited about the games, cheering at his television set as if he were sitting in the stadium.
 

No dispassionate attitude of "May the best man win" for him! I know he has a wonderful level of understanding, and he behaves like a regular person in a regular world. Being a meditator and developing equanimity do not mean becoming weird.

I think I chose the title for this book long before the book itself was written. Indeed, I was motivated to write largely because I wanted to tell people that spiritual living does not need to be a big deal. More

• It's Easier Than You Think (SylviaBoorstein.com)
• Quotes: It's Easier Than You Think (Goodreads.com)

(Smithsonian) Video games can become an obsessive distraction.

Science DOESN'T want to take God away

Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly;  Marcelo Gleiser (13.7 Cosmos & Culture, NPR.org)

 
Can science inspire the same level of passion as religion?
I was once invited to give a live interview on a radio station in Brasília, the capital of Brazil.

The interview took place at rush hour in the city's very busy bus terminal, where poor workers come in from rural areas to perform all sorts of jobs in town, from cleaning the streets to working in factories and private homes.
 

The experience would mark me for the rest of my life and set a new professional goal that I had not anticipated early in my career: to bring science to the largest number of people possible.

• Buddhism and the God-idea

(Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)

The interviewer asked me questions about the scientific take on the end of the world, inspired by a book I had just published called The Prophet and the Astronomer: Apocalyptic Science and the End of the World.

 

There are many ways in which science can address this question. We can see, from the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan, that the forces of nature are beyond our control, even if we pride ourselves on "taming" the world around us.

 

But the focus of my book was on cataclysmic celestial events and how they have inspired both religious narratives and scientific research, past and present. In particular, note the many instances that stars and fire and brimstone fall from the sky in the Bible, both in the Old (e.g., Book of Daniel, Sodom and Gomorrah) and the New Testament (e.g., Apocalypse of John), or how the Celts believed that the skies would fall on their heads to mark the end of a time cycle.

 

God's handiwork? The devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan (fastcompany.com)

  

A priest of the new religion

Back to the interview, I mentioned how the collision with a six-mile-wide asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula of modern-day Mexico had [allegedly] triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

I made a point of explaining how that event changed the history of life on Earth, freeing the small mammals of the time from predator pressure and culminating with the evolution of humans. My point was that there is no need for divine intervention to explain these very essential episodes in our planetary and collective history.

 

It was then that the hand went up. A small man with torn clothes and grease stains on his face asked: "So the doctor wants to take even God away from us?"

 

I froze. The despair in that man's voice was apparent. He felt betrayed. His faith was the only thing he held on to, the only thing that gave him strength to come back to that bus station every day to work for a humiliatingly low minimum wage.

 

Jesus and Vishnu on a cloud ("Family Guy")

If I took God away and put in its place the rational argumentation of science, with its empirical validation, what would that even mean to this man? How would it help him go on with his life? How could science teach him to cope with life in a world without the magic of supernatural belief?

 

I realized then how far scientists are from the needs of most people; how far removed our discourse is from those who do not already seek science for answers, as surely most of you reading this essay already do. And I realized that, in order to reach a larger audience, to bring the wonders of science to a much larger slice of the population, we must... More

Is Eckhart Tolle Buddhist? (video)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; video (Learning the Secret)

Be here now, sati-sampajjana (P-A)

Sitting on a park bench, not listening to Jethro Tull but talking with Eckhart Tolle (pronounced eK-heart TOLL-lay), after his own independent "awakening" to the power of NOW. There is this moment, the present moment, and it is always only this moment. So live now. The mind will complicate things. Pain will encourage suffering, but suffering is optional and mind-made. How can we live in the now?

Presence -- even if being only in the company of someone speaking from presence (mindfulness, presence of mind, alert, constantly aware that it is only the now, what the Buddha referred to as sati-sampajjanna or "mindfulness and clear comprehension) -- keeps us powerful and in the now.

Tolle seems to have realized, at least intellectually, that there is no self, no permanent "I" to identify with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and so on. If he has had this realization to the profound level of a stream enterer, one who has entered upon the first stage of what the historical Buddha described as "enlightenment" (bodhi), glimpsing nirvana, certain to make an end of rebirth and all suffering within seven lives, that is doubtful or at least unclear. He does not make that claim. But his realization, however it happened and however he phrases it (since, by his own admission, Tolle is only ever saying the same thing, making the same point in a hundred different ways. See Even the Sun Will Die, a Sounds True double CD interview with Tami Simon), puts him in line with Buddhism. See Minute 28:55, where Tolle begins to talk about the Buddha and the conception of "emptiness" or "spaciousness" (shunyata), what he claims Jesus called "the fullness of life." And he often speaks highly of the Buddha and Buddha's teachings (Dharma).

He may only have come to a Vedantic conception of reality, the "Timeless or Eternal Truth" (Sanatan Dharma, as Hinduism refers to itself). The Buddha was aware of this perspective, which lives on very strongly in many Mahayana Buddhist conceptions. But the historical Buddha went beyond, to talk about things never heard by the Brahmin priests and ancient Vedic "seers" (rishis) thought to have composed the very ancient Vedas ("Knowledge Books" of the Indus Valley Civilization preserved as India's sacred texts). The Buddha rejected the authority of the Vedas and became not a teacher aligned with the Brahmins, but a Shraman (shramana movement) teacher, the iconoclastic tradition of "wandering ascetics" rejecting the Vedas and independent of Brahmin temple priests, engaged in ritual and memorizing Vedic verses).

The Power of (the bench) Now

Under a tree: girlfriend, Eckhart, and filmmaker

Eckhart Tolle's profound yet simple teachings have already helped countless people throughout the world find inner peace and greater fulfillment in life.

At the core of his teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that he sees as the next step in human evolution that leaves behind suffering (i.e., mentally-produced pain).

 

An essential aspect of this awakening consists in transcending our ego-based state of consciousness. This is a prerequisite not only for personal happiness but also for the ending of collective violence on the planet.

Eckhart Tolle is a much sought-after public speaker who teaches and travels extensively. Many of his talks, weekend intensives, and retreats are published as CDs and DVDs. Most of the teachings are given in English, but occasionally he also gives teaches in German and Spanish. 

He is a pioneer in using technology to disseminate his teachings. At EckhartTolleTV.com, he gives monthly talks, live meditations, and answers questions from viewers. In addition to The Power of Now and A New Earth, he has written a book designed for meditative (contemplative) reading entitled Stillness Speaks. And a book consisting of selections from The Power of Now is also available, entitled Practicing the Power of Now.

• There is a lot of money to be made selling what we have difficulty finding as simple as we are told it is. Billionaire media mogul Oprah (oprah.com) pushes and capitalizes on Tolle, too: "I keep Eckhart's book at my bedside. I think it's essential spiritual teaching. It's one of the most valuable books I've ever read."

Final commentary

Many ask, "How can I achieve what you have clearly achieved?" To that Tolle has no answer, except to say that he sees it happening more and more, presumably spontaneously and only to a select few. This leaves us to wonder if he thinks no one can hasten the unfoldment, make faster progress, advance the process along, blossom more quickly the way the Buddha taught followers to blossom.

 

Eckhart Tolle may be a Buddhist at heart, or very close to liberating-insight, but he is not one publicly so. He speaks highly of the Buddha and speaks highly of the Dalai Lama (Minute 44:00), as if the Dalai Lama were an example of enlightenment, which the Dalai Lama very clearly says he is not. And given the way Tolle defines "self" (Minute 1:55) -- whether as presence, a watcher, the wider space in which things happen, the spaciousness in which experience unfolds, or as consciousness itself -- these are all very Hindu/Eastern philosophical conclusions that fall short of what a "stream enterer" realizes in order to make the breakthrough into what the historical Buddha defined as just the first stage of "enlightenment." As Mahayana-Buddhist as all his beautiful teachings may sound at times, it is not in line with the core Mahayana teaching of the Heart Sutra, namely that what is taken as "self" is actually devoid of self, is empty (shunyata). This is the epitome of the perfection of wisdom that liberates Kwan Yin/Avalokitateshvara, the protagonist in the great sutra and climactic mantra known in Sanskrit as the Prajna Paramita.

 

Hinduism points and says, "Thou art that." It is the twin teaching along with, "Thou art not that." Yet, constantly seeking identification with anything, the realization never dawns (on the Five Aggregates) that things arise dependently originated, not from an eternal "self" or "ego," not from an independent doer, watcher, or experiencer behind the experience. Without this monumental realization, one clings to one or more of the Five Aggregates of Clinging and calls it "self." Ego is bound in ignorance (avidya), bound by the Wheel of Rebirth and Suffering (samsara); ego is not released (moksha) by the ultimate (nirvana).