Zen and the Art of Therapy

I was recently asked by a friend who works in the field of Mental Hygiene (a strange phrase, don't you think?) how I would apply the Zen concept of "skilled love" to her practice.

I assumed my teachers would suggest that I should answer the question as honestly as possible--i.e., with: "I don't know."

However, when I asked Sensei for help in addressing this, he insisted that I struggle towards an answer.

Right. So here goes:

The principle of "skilled love" is closely related to the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. However, the tough-mindedness which attracted me to Zen in the first place sees non-attachment as impossible without an understanding of compassion.

Compassion is this, simply:

You are not your ego.

You are not your thoughts.

You are not the sum of your memories.

Neither is anyone else.

However, Zen cannot tell you what you are (and, no, I'm not going to say we're Nothing or neti-neti, because I don't have a black belt in that type of thinking yet).

Before I understood this, I was lost in thought. Since I fully identified with my thoughts, I was attached to each. As a result, depression, anxiety, and suffering were inevitable.

Here's what changed: as (perhaps) opposed to New Age-thinking, which advocates increasing love of the self, I chose to turn my love of "me" off. That's very tough. It's unbelievably shattering to REALLY grasp that all my problems are self-generated. That I was making the self up--out of memory. Not here, not now.

Nevertheless, here's the bottom line: it's been a very long time since I've been emotionally overwhelmed and it's extremely unlikely that I will be again--in fact, it's technically impossible--if there continues to be centered observation of the ego, as opposed to living inside of ego. But I know as surely as I'm going to die, that if I were to take an extended trip back to a lack of mental discipline, relapse into the usual would be unavoidable.

So, one needs skills of mind.

And at the top of the list is the need for "skilled love." In fact, this love is so tough-minded, it initially doesn't feel like love.

Why?

Because it isn't love. Not in the usual sense. But after practice, it's much more fun.

The most accessible example of this might be: drumming.

Here are the phases of drumming, as I understand them:

1) Drum is tuned. Focus is on the instrument, but attention is still not fully present.

2) Tuning up and finding the rhythm. I dare any drummer, no matter how experienced, to attempt drumming and thinking at the same time while they're warming up.

3) Skilled love. Drumming is a little mechanical without dedication. So you let go.

Letting go actually means letting go. Muscular tension, then, is redundant, unnecessary to playing. But so is attachment to the music. In the skilled love phase, you could stop just as surely as you could continue. The choice is your own. Karma.

Here's where something weird happens. Right about then, when skill on the drum mixes with devotion and choice--thought returns. In fact, you can carry on a perfectly coherent (actually, amazing) conversation while your hands are doing the walking.

This experience is duplicated in the practice of yoga and martial arts. Our teachers refuse to engage us in talk until we're immersed in the zone. Then the conversation flows.

Do enough of this, repeat, and something shifts.

So, how does this apply to the therapeutic session?

I think "the zone" can be accomplished in Western therapy if we wouldn't overburden it with all the expectations it currently has to bear.

Right about now, therapy is trying to compensate for an increasing lack of meaningful companionship. The therapist is paid to stand in as confidant.

I think it's great that this service is available. The only problem I can see is that the analysand can spend the entire therapy session getting warmed up.

Since the client "needs to talk," and that's probably a good thing, this implies a Zen-like responsibility for the therapist.

I would say it can work something like this: skilled love never, ever means "working on someone else." The most emotionally moving gift, I believe, that you can give someone, is to work on (getting off) your self in their presence. By doing this, something dramatic can happen in the room. We change and we don't know why--but we certainly don't feel controlled--in the company of someone who is always centering themselves.

How does that make you feel?

P.S.No jokes about "work on (getting off) your self in their presence," please. Too easy.

Pure Theatre Geekery: "'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett"

"'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett"



Very reminiscent of Ohio Impromptu. You can watch it here as performed by Jeremy Irons and... Jeremy Irons.

Elsewhere. It's better.

Another traumatic day in economics. 

Consider: on 9/11 while our attention was focused elsewhere, the birds sang in Central Park.

Taxi To The Dark Side... and back again.

Change is said to come from within. But without outside help it's almost impossible. 

But even with help, change tends to tango, lockstep, with one of the roughest depressions a person can go through; namely, dislocation of identity. Add geographical relocation to the mix and many international travelers, including this one, get messed up by an inevitability: that unfortunately and naturally, pain is to be expected when shifting gears to a radically different position of being in the world.

I can only imagine how difficult it is has been for everyone who has helped me through life to balance judicious intervention and skilled restraint. In Japan and Buddhism generaly, they call that role: "Bodhisattva" (lit. Compassionate Warrior). 

I am glad that the use of the word "warrior," in this context, has no New Age connotations in tow (Bodhisattva, is a sanskrit word [बोधिसत्त्व] in use since at least the 5th Century B.C.E.)... in fact, my teachers in Zen--they who almost never reveal frustration--do become testy when a student begins to fetishize "the warrior". Their concern is that New Age-y thinking is selfish. In overemphasizing the self, New Age doesn't actualize personal growth. Instead, my teachers suggest that focus on the other is really the only way to achieve sustainable happiness.

Love (esp. skilled love) IS the answer. And skilled love absolutely requires expression outside the ego's limits. Before, that was just words. Now, it's just evident.

In this vein, I want to share a kind of "truth" which I've begun to learn at a core level:

What is happening is just what is happening.

Shakespeare/Hamlet said: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." And the frustrating simplicity of the statement belies how a person really doesn't need a whole lot more self-knowledge than this. However, beginning that kind of ego-mastery of no judgement (not ethical relativism), is probably only possible though radical rethinking. And the rethinking often means confronting your most sacred values--whatever they may be.

I'll give a personal example: last night I saw "Taxi to the Dark Side". If you haven't seen it, I do recommend it as the direction seems very tough-minded and organized. Nevertheless, because of its unflinching stare at torture, it's likely to cause your mind and heart to hurt. Sometimes, it (actually, not "it;" rather: me) brought me to sorrow and shame.

But, then, as I was watching the interviews with the convicted American soldiers, I became aware of a fatal relationship implicit in how I saw them. Specifically, I was apprehending the soldiers as my soldiers, my representatives. I was so ego-attached to an idea of who they were and the fear that they might be my echo, that I almost failed to actually look at the screen and see them. 

So I looked.

The truth is, when you actually see a person, you realize that you have no idea--or, at least, I didn't--who they really are. The soldiers were irreducibly complicated and singular. I had no reliable framework in which I could successfully judge them. 

This isn't a mental leap, it's a gut reaction, thank goodness. 

And I was even able to forgive them. They didn't need my forgiveness--but I did. The forgiveness process is almost indescribable... when it works, it works--in this way, I learn from their actions and the learning isn't driven by shame. 

Wow. Personal responsibility need not be instructed and learned by way of guilt? Who knew?

OK, so how does this translate into skilled love? One of my sparring partners is an Israeli soldier with whom it has been difficult for me to practice good Aikido. Why? I think I hate her guts. For the following reason: she's a member of the infamous Israeli border police, a group tasked with patrolling the "security fence" and maintaining the Palestinian checkpoints. As an organization, let's just say they aren't renowned for being compassionate warriors.

But, really, how the hell do I know?

In fact, for all I know, this woman might be amazingly thoughtful at her job--and even if she isn't, it doesn't matter.

In the dojo, she's just there, then. Real and standing.

For some reason, this actually occurred to me in the moment as I was opposing her on the mat. We practiced very good Aikido today. She even saved me from a nasty potential fall which probably would have dislocated my shoulder. Thanks, therefore, is due to the interviews with the Abu Ghraib soldiers. 

Look closer.

Change is impossible without help from an other. 

I didn't get it. 

Now... it's working out.

"More Life"

To quote Kushner's "Angels in America": More life.

I'm on my way to the synagogue right now so I must be brief but I wanted to wish you a new year of profound happiness--even if you do not formally observe this day as a new year's beginning.

I was just thinking how lucky I am to be able to celebrate two new years (today and Jan. 1st) in every year... so too, I thought it would be neat to share the idea of beginning again whenever you wish to do so.

The more I study Aikido and Zen, the more a stream of clarity regarding beginnings becomes evident: that beginnings are far more preferable than is mastery. A beginning's purity and enthusiasm are difficult to retain. I find that in endless practice situations in the dojo, I am most happy when I forget the clock and fall into a new technique as just that: new. Without (ideally) the terror of "the blank page" staring up at me.

And, so, I think writing and falling (we spend most of our training time learning how to fall) are honeymooning love interests beginning again and again...

Again, more renaissance, and, again, love and, again, more life.