Enlightenment Therapy

Chip Brown of The New York Times has written a feature story on a Zen monk's encounter with psychoanalysis. The article is very compelling in its portrait of a wounded man seeking redemption.


Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/magazine/26zen-t.html

As a practitioner, I have some disagreements with the portrayal of Zen in this piece. Zen comes off as a philosophy which is opposed to self-analysis. How strange. In Zen we rigorously study the self in order to forget the self. We do not forget the self as some kind of escape. That would be psychological repression which is in no way consonant with Buddhadharma.

On the other hand, I think that too much authority is granted by the author to the interpretive strategies of psychoanalysis. Chip Brown's writing seems a little seduced by Dr. Jeffrey Rubin's [the analyst] admittedly dazzling acumen. But Dr. Rubin's insights may not be necessarily so... The interpersonal subjectivity between analyst and patient can be of great help or it may muddy the true nature of things because people's opinions (read: ego) are competing for acceptance.

In the end, the clarifying factor is meditation. This (perhaps unfortunately) can only be done for oneself. After the therapy session's conclusion we must be our own therapists.

Nevertheless, the article can really raise awareness of how difficult the private lives of Zen practitioners may indeed be. Too often I project that the roshis I know are living free from suffering. It's a silly idea, really. They're perfectly human. But when you see them in the robes, comporting themselves with heartbracing dignity and stillness, the mind makes assumptions.

Awake people are awake, that is all.

So, much love and thanks go out to Chip Brown, Dr. Jeffrey Rubin and Prof. Louis Mitsunen Nordstrom for their intervention.