Some Thoughts On Ego Psychology And No-Self

I have a friend who is training to become a social worker. We're currently having a discussion about integrating spirituality and clinical work. I think of this as one of the last taboos, in a way. I guess there is much to say and none of it is all that helpful.

But I'll point at the moon.

On the one hand, there is clearly no conflict between mindfulness practice and cognitive restructuring techniques or stress reduction. Very few psychologists would object to integrating the techniques of basic meditation and awareness training.

I think the "problem" arises at a deeper level; namely, the ego. Contemporary Western clinical practices are dependent on the theoretical existence of this "thing" called the ego. The therapist approaches the client as a secular independent unit. The assumption is that the client's ego has basic reality testing, judgment, impulse control, defensive functions, and thought processes. Basically, the client has an identity. That identity is unique and irreducibly individual.

In many spiritual practices (certainly in Zen) one never has a true relationship with the ego because it's not really there! At the center of your being is nothing, an absence, a void. No self. This emptiness is infinite and transpersonal. Your potential--for happiness, among other things--is limitless because there is literally no duality between you and the universe. This is always and already so. Our task is to awaken to this.

Buddhism is uncompromising on this point. Any progress along the spiritual path ultimately has to deal with the question: "Who Am I?" If one meditates for long enough, invariably, everybody sees the same thing, basically: "I'm not there!" Ironically, when people "get it" they tend to become well adjusted and compassionate.

So integrating these two approaches to the self is a challenge as the therapist would have to reevaluate all their assumptions--starting with the idea that there are two independent people in a clinical setting. Maybe there aren't. What if the other person, quite literally, is you? This completely decenters the implied power relationship between therapist and client. In this way, there is only intimacy. What does this do to clinical etiquette and transference?

And then there's "ego identity." What to do with it? Strengthen it or collapse it? Acknowledge that it's a useful fiction when there's awareness? Or show how it's a delusion which stands in the client's way?

Obviously, the therapist can use a multi-modal approach which incorporates some techniques for mindfulness. But, in the end, if the jumping off point is still ego-based, I think it's difficult to work with the client beyond developing greater self-understanding and coping skills (which is no small thing!).

So an "egoless psychology" seems to be a final frontier of sorts. Many beautiful minds are exploring this now. Here are a few: Barry Magid, David Loy, Jack Kornfield, Ken Wilbur, Stanislav Grof, Daniel Goleman, and, of course, Thich Nhat Hahn.

Great Faith/Great Doubt and Nowhere to Stand

In mind training, koan-study is about contradiction, about cultivating a love for holding paradox. The little kensho pearls that get generated by the "bump-and-grind" of two opposing truth-like concepts are beautiful and helpful. But after some time, most everyone becomes a little malcontent with the wabi-sabi preciousness of koans. Like many things Japanese, there can be an over-valuing of the clever, the pretty, and the smug.

In general, students naturally and, I think, correctly want more. And here is where the great doubt of "nowhere to stand" usually gets introduced by the roshis.

I'll give an example. A few weeks ago, my teacher threw this curve at me:

Sensei said: "Is there a teaching no master ever taught before?"

I said something clever but sincere, like: "Yes, this morning I noticed that the zendo's bell needs to be fixed."

--OK, not bad. A little moment of counter-intuition contradiction. I was pleased for a second, then--

Sensei repeated: "Is there a teaching no master ever taught before?"

Me: "Um, I don't know?"

Sensei: "I'll give you a hint: there is doubt here."

Me: "What doubt?"

Sensei: "You should ask me if I, personally, believe my own question to be any good? Does my own koan help me or you at all? This is the practice."

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I find what he is saying to be very compelling. He seemed to be pointing away from the origami-esque self-canceling of koans.

In fact, there are a number of people whom I’ve met who refuse to participate in koans. One such woman said to me: "Koans are like giving out pictures of bread to stop hunger."

Ultimately, this is all very moving to me. I feel like this woman and my teacher are really practicing “great doubt,” even if they lose some of the ground of their tradition.

After all, this is a practice of flexibility. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha is not shy about describing "swans that take flight towards heaven" in divine terms. And like a divine swan alighted, in flight we have nowhere to stand.

Doubting Morgan Freeman

In most religions, the need for faith is often bandied about. In Zen, not so much. Often, my teachers discuss the need for "great doubt." It is said: "At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully." 

This is a very honest but torturous route. Doubt reveals that faith can be helpful or it can give us Santa Clause. However, that species of doubt is just the surface. The Zen masters want us to go on a real mind bender; to the kind of dark forests where all our ideas live. If we are already dwelling inside this forest then we are asked to sit. We sit to to observe these phenomena with the great doubt of a scientist. 

But this requires engaged teachers, learned skill, and found community.
 
With these, doubting may reveal that there are ultimately no differences, only different moments. In the end, we have all had each other's experiences. And the experience of doubt is closely related to heartbreak and compassion, in the fissure of which I may understand your karma in a very personal way because my moments are contiguous with yours. I may share a border with your experience of doubting. In this way, humility. Simplicity. Intimacy.

Recently, I've been thinking about the choice of existence as described in The Shawshank Redemption. For many people, this film was a teaching. For example, there is the famous moment when Red, the narrator as played by Morgan Freeman, says: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." Obviously, he is recommending that we get busy living.

But perhaps this is wrong?

I think we can all say that we have gotten busy and lived. In fact, in these times, we have "lived" faster and more intensely than most. And each time, as it happens, after we have gotten busy, there is a fall. So perhaps it's time that we got busy living and dying. Or, rather, being aware that our life is living us and not the other way around...

All things rise and pass away. We do not know this through faith. We know this through direct experience. And so we need great doubt. We need the direct experience of greatly doubting the permanence of things, not great faith in mantras for living an idea of life. In this way we may move away from the seductive naivety of The Shawshank Redemption, with it's title implying that there is something which needs redemption in the first place.

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." (-Rumi)