Dharmavidya

Utrecht Weekend Retreat

This weekend past I was the guest teacher at Zentrum in Utrecht. We had a very stimulating time with a some strong dialogue between periods of zazen. What does it mean to be dogmatic? Does rejecting one dogma just throw one into another one? What is the shadow side of the teachings that we commonly encounter about awareness, non-duality, illumination and so on? Is Buddhism really the end of suffering? What sort of end? How is Buddhism different in the West and in the Far East? Why? Does Buddhism provide metaphysical comfort? I was pleased to find that this was a group enthusiastic to take on some of the difficult questions and to reflect constructively. I was also very comfortably hosted by wonderfully hospitable people. Many new friends. 

Creating a space in Milan

We had a retreat-workshop this weekend in Milan in Italy. It was a treat for me to meet old friends and many new ones. The theme was based on my book Love and Its Disappointment. In this workshop the meditative and the therapeutic came together in a particularly seamless way which, I think, many participants found particularly useful. We are all learning and progressing along the path toward greater freedom, each in our own way, each with our own history and obstacles, yet we can help one another by creating the kind of space/circle/mandala in which it is possible for the deeper feeling to surface and tell us about itself. To those who were there and will appreciate the in-joke, I'll say, be nice to the dog.

After the workshop a group of us went to dinner and then wandered through the streets of the city enjoying the warm evening after several days of cold wet weather.

Just completed a super weekend on Zen Therapy in Pais Vasco

Last weekend we had a workshop in Galicia and this weekend in Pais Vasco. This has been a super start to the Zen Therapy programme in Spain. In one case we looked at the element of space and in the other time with small enthusiastic groups of students. This weekend especially benefitted from a residential setting in a beautiful area which added to the intensity of the event. Buddhist psychology is such a deep and fascinating subject one could continue finding new angles indefinitely.

Enjoying working with groups in Israel

I'm currently in Israel giving seminars to audiences consisting mostly of psychotherapists who have an interest in Buddhism. We did a seminar on Suffering and another on Happiness and today we looked at Zen Therapy. I find this kind of exposure very helpful as lively discussions ensue. Some have the view that Buddhism is quietistic and the whole point is to calm down so that one can cope with life's obstacles more easily. Others think Buddhism is a matter of applying techniques for the treatment of stress and suffering. None of this is entirely wrong, but it is not the whole story. This week we have been mostly looking at the question of truth and the living of an authentic life. Currently there is a vogue for mindfulness as a "treatment" to reduce stress. Mindfulness based stress reduction does work, but I imagine that stress reduction was not actually something that the Buddha was interested in. He was interested in people making a break-through to the truth of their lives in this world and to achieve such a break-through often involves an increase rather than a reduction in stress. People don't generally change much until there is a crisis of some kind. Buddha was interested in helping to bring about the confrontation with reality that might free a person from the stories that they have bought into about themselves. At the workshops we have had enthusiastic groups asking intelligent questions and case studies that have helped to bring out important nuances of method and philosophy. A good experience. 

Does Buddhism Have to Be Scientific?

Donald Lopez has an interesting article in the current issue of Tricycle magazine in which he asks the question, "why should Buddhism be consistent with science?" He outlines the history of how European colonialism brought Christianity to Asia and was assisted in persuading Asians by its alliance with science, Christianity and science being two fruits of European culture. Buddhists resisted this pressure and advanced the idea that Buddhism was more consistent with science than Christianity and therefore a more fitting religion for the modern age. Having won this argument, however, we now find that Buddhism is being more than somewhat remodelled in the image of science. Meditation and especially mindfulness are being presented as quasi-medical treatments for stress reduction, for instance, whereas, as Lopez points out, stress-reduction was no part of the original objective of these techniques. Indeed, Lopez goes as far as to say that meditation was originally in tended to effect a stress increment. It's original intention was, he says, to make one anxious, indeed desperate, to leave samsara, not to make one more at ease living within it.

This is an interesting argument. I agree with Lopez that science should not be the measuring stick of religion. Making it so is essentially a misunderstanding about the nature of science. Science is not a system to tell you how to run your life or what your aims should be. It may be able to help you get there once you have decided where you are going, but science is not about values, it is about the nature of the situation. It would be just a scientific or unscientific to increase stress as to reduce it. Science's job, in that regard, is to elucidate the matter and process of stress. It is then for us to decide whether we want less or more of it. Similarly, science can investigate meditation and find out what it is and how it functions, but that does not, in itself, tell us whether we want to do it or not nor why we might want to.

What has happened is that a quasi-religion that we might call scientism has arisen based partly on a misunderstanding of the nature of science, partly on the prestige that science has achieved and partly upon using the scientific method as a metaphor for processes in other areas of life. Some of the misunderstanding is in thinking that what is sometimes called scientific management is science, whereas it is actually the use of science in management. If we want to manage stress, to take the case in point, we can use some knowledge that science provides. This would be true whether we thought stress to be good and useful or destructive or useless. The fact that management can use science does not make the goals of management scientific. 

Scientific method relies heavily on measurement and reproducibility of effects. This has led some people to the false conclusion that unmeasurable or non-reproducible phenomena do not and cannot exist. Science cannot, however, validate this conclusion. It is not possible to prove scientifically that an unmeasurable phenomenon does not exist nor that an unrepeatable event has not occurred and certainly not that one cannot occur in the future. Science has its province and within it it has had many successes, but that does not justify its extension by analogy.

Moving on from these points about science, what about Buddhism? Lopez clearly hold to what I would call the extinctionist interpretation of Buddhism. I do not share this perspective. I belong to the liberationist persuasion. As between these two positions, I do not think there is any way to settle the matter ultimately. Shakyamuni is not here to ask and many texts are open to either interpretation. A lot depends upon how you interpret a number of key terms. 

In my experience, meditation does reduce stress, as a matter of fact, and I do not think that this fact is either anti-Buddhist or pro-science or vice versa. I do think that Buddhism is about living more fully in this and all worlds and that references to leaving samsara refer to living differently, not to ceasing to live. Samsara is the style of life in which one goes round and round in fruitless circles. The purpose of awakening and enlightenment is to free us from such compulsive self-defeat and faith in Buddhism is essentially openness to the help that one can receive from those who have so been freed.

From this position, I do not have any problem with Buddhists asserting that Buddhism is not in conflict with science, but I do share Lopez' concern that Buddhism is being changed by those who actually are not really Buddhist (either extinctionist or liberationist) but are actually believers in scientism which is a rather shallow creed that is not likely to survive current fashion. 

A philosophical weekend in Brittany

We had a relaxed seminar at Zentre La Pompe in Brittany discussing everything from Hegel to Zen, walking round the lake, and eating wonderful food. I made a good friend in the ginger and white cat who always had the most profound comments.

 

We held a Zen Therapy course in the Basque mountains

Amidst wonderful scenery we studied safe space as a key element in the creation of conditions for constructive personality change, spiritual growth and the development of therapeutic skills.  

Workshop at Tsukiji: thoughts on Mindfulness

9th September: Tsukiji is the biggest Jodoshin temple in Tokyo. I stayed there a week and did some writing. This was quite emotional as the last time I was there was my visit immediately after the triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear) last year. At that time I was also writing, working on the draft of my autobiography which I think I might now be somewhere near finishing.

The workshop attracted many people who are interested in Focussing and we had some interesting discussions. They were a great group to work with and this was a pretty vibrant workshop, not least because, in the initial sharing, people divulged some quite personal matters so we were in deep right from the start.

There is currently a good deal of interest in the therapy world in "mindfulness" and we reflected on the relationship between focussing and mindfulness. It could be argued that focussing is actually closer to the original Buddhist meaning of mindfulness as it is not a "treatment" so much as a "method of inquiry". This distinction became quite clear to me and is of some significance. Buddhist methods are not really intended to be procedures that ensure that a person arrive at a particular state (more relaxed, say). They are ways to inquire into the truth of one's life. Ultimately, the truth will set us free, but along the way we might experience all manner of different states. States are not the goal - truth is the goal, and a life in which truth is paramount - that is the path of liberation (rather than the path of health, say).

In the workshop we used a good deal of pandramatics which went very well with the exploration of personal stories and life options.

 

I gave a Lecture at Jodo-Shu Research Institute

Sept 3rd: It was very good to be back at JSRI. It being a research institute one has an audience in which the great majority of people are PhDs, each expert in an area of Buddhist studies. This is a wonderful place to air ideas and get into meaningful discussion.

I met the vice-president of the institute Tatsuo Imaoka, Shoji Yoshiaki who comes from Sendai, the town most hit by the tsunami last year, ....... who worked on the translation of Never Die Alone into Japanese, as well as old friends Jonathan Watts, Ryojun Sato and Yoshiharu Tomatsu.

They particularly wanted me to talk about counselling the dying and their relatives and to comment on their "Ending Note" project which is a scheme to encourage people to write a short document that is a combination of will, "living will", and last testament. This project is a very interesting idea and a way of involving priests in end of life care as well as of helping individuals to approach death in a more conscious and considered manner for the benefit of themselves and their families.

Thank you Jodoshin Betsuin temple where I spoke on Friday

This is the temple which kindly invited me to give a workshop and talk on Buddhist psychology as a therapy for everybody. It was one of those encounters where I was extending my own thinking on the topic and this worked very well for some members of the audience while being more controversial for others - all giving me ideas toward a new book that I hope to get started on this winter extending the theory of the Zen Therapy approach. This temple is pretty close to the centre of the area that was destroyed in the world war by the atomic bomb.