This paper was submitted as part of the Buddhist Psychology Distance Learning. It is interesting in offering, among other things, an illustration of Anthony's client work using an other-centred approach.
Non-Self in Psychological Approaches
Anthony Richard
I would like to begin this discussion with a simple tale.
There was a water carrier in India who each day would carry on each of his shoulders a big pot of water and take it to his Master. Everyday he made this journey dropping off the water for his teacher. One day the pot which sat on his left shoulder turned to him with a sad look and said "I’m so ashamed. Every day you have carried us upon your shoulders to the Master and due to a hole I have on my underside I can barely supply half a cup of water. The water carrier looked at him with compassion and said " My dear pot, I have always known your weakness and have taken it into consideration. Have you not been aware of the beautiful fresh flowers on the Masters table everyday? I myself planted seeds on the left side of the walk and each day you have been watering these flowers and now the Master has a daily supply of fresh flowers ".
I would like to explore how the above story can be used to illustrate the difference between a non-self approach to therapy and one that seeks to build self.
Most of us our like this pot. A lot of western approaches may look at how the hole can be fixed. Seeing a person as less than whole, the approach may one of exploring the nature of the hole itself rather than accepting transforming and working with what is already there. Robert Assaglioli the founder of psychosynthesis differed from some of his contemporaries in that he became interested in what it was that made a person healthy. In other words if you want to have people of good mental health than studying healthy people with good mental well being and founding out what they have in common is probably a good place to start. If you study neurosis than what are you likely to find?
The Buddha tells us that suffering is noble. It is a reality of life and we cannot escape from it. He goes on to say that when we are faced with the reality of life it awakens vast amounts of energy in us. This he says is also noble. This energy when it is contained and redirected can make our lives full of purpose and meaning.
The major scientific breakthroughs of electromagnetism and radioactive decay heralded major changes in our capacity to harness the forces of nature and use the power within it for our own means. The splitting of the atom and the onset of the nuclear age has put vast amounts of energy at man disposal. If use well this energy has the capacity to help us explore regions of the universe previously beyond our reach . Used in a bad way could lead to mass destruction and the end of our planet. Sciences field of research however has been mainly with the physical world. With human beings there are also huge forces of creative energy. One of the aims of Buddhism is to unlock this creative energy.
As I write this article I become aware of my own holes. I become aware of those places where I feel stuck. The creative flow isn’t always there. When its not there I experience a tension. That tension comes with a story. Its not as story I haven’t heard before. As I identify with the story and the reasons why I cannot write anymore. All of this is part of the self structure. What is required to go beyond this? The more I struggle the more tense I become and the closer I get to finding some distraction. . I think about a client I have been working with for the past few months.
In our last session she spoke for 45 minutes going over the "same old ground" about how he daughter and husband have caused her to be the way she is. I recognise it as a familiar story that she has told many times. In the last 5 minutes she begins to talk about her art and moments of inspiration. I ask her to recount these details. As she does, the whole energy in the room changes. From being quite sterile she comes alive in a way I had not previously seen her, her whole demeanour changed to one of wonder as she recalls these moments of inspiration where she had the experience of losing herself.
That night I found myself wondering about the session. How would it have been if I had asked about her art earlier and spent more time focussing on this. Like the client much of my focus in the session had been exploring the self material. Trying to make sense of the holes where much of her vitality and energy seems to be entangled in. My client has much anger and resentment towards her family." Feelings always arise in relation to something... they are not an expression of a persons separation from the world, but of their participation in it. To work with feeling generally implies keeping attention upon whatever it is that gives rise to them, otherwise vitality is lost. According to the Buddhist psychology "all phenomena depend upon conditions and the condition for a feeling is generally a perception"(Brazier,D Zen therapy) p104.
The client has had her attention more intensely focussed on these family members over the course of our sessions. As a result she has more expressive of her anger and resentment. She doesn’t see the people involved clearly. This becomes clear when I ask her to describe them. What I get is a collection of judgments and evaluations of them which say more about what is going on in her head then about them. I explore these judgments and perceptions through role reversals. As she begins to see the object of her perceptions through new eyes than much of the energy which has become invested and caught up in maintaining these views becomes available to her. There is a change in her.
As I began to write about this client I also began to feel a new surge of creativity and a loosening of the blockages that were creating a tension in me. As this energy gets freed from its entanglement in maintaining self structure it brings about a responsibility with it. ie what do i now do with it. Now the pen is flowing more freely I become aware of a number of directions that this article could now go. I now have choices to make. As mankind gains access to greater forces of nature the responsibility becomes greater.
How do we work with a client as some of the self structures break down and become more available to them, especially in cases where the breaking down is sudden?
If all self is ultimately unreal and contains that which is real than the breaking down of self would be highly desirable. However when this is sudden it can leave a person in quite a vulnerable space as their world views begin to crumble. As therapists we could make the mistake on thinking we know how this breaking down should happen as if somehow it can be controlled. As a culture we are uncomfortable with such releases of energy as it manifest in a person. We are quick to label such persons as mad. Robert Assaglioli saw in his clients who were suffering from such breakdowns a person who appeared to be more in touch with reality and began to view a lot of depression as a prelude to an inner awakening. "The chaos that takes place in your neurosis is the only home ground that you can build the mandala of awakening on."( Chogyam Trungpa)
If we are to work with clients in a non-self approach then being open and accepting as these releases as part of a natural process is important. A therapist who denies the transpersonal in himself or is unreceptive to it may hinder the possibility for his client to open up into areas of creativity and self expression limiting him to endless explorations into the deluded contents of the self structure.
At the other end of the spectrum a therapist who puts all his value on the absolute values and denies the relative aspects of a person can create troubles.
"Since we live on two levels as human beings, we can never reduce reality to a single dimension. We are not just this relative body-mind organism; we are also absolute
being/awareness/presence, which is much larger than our bodily form or personal history. But we are also not just this larger, formless absolute; we are also incarnate as this particular individual. If we identify totally with form— our body-mind/ personality— our life will remain confined to known, familiar structures. But if we try to live only as pure emptiness, or absolute being, we may have a hard time fully engaging with our humanity. At the level of absolute truth, the personal self is not ultimately real; at the relative level, it must be respected. If we use the truth of no-self to avoid ever having to make personal statements such as, "I want to know you better" to someone we love, this would be a perversion. (John Welwood http://www.johnwelwood.com/articles/Embodying.pdf).
I began this article with the story of the hole in the pot. I fell upon a hole of my own whilst writing and discovered that the only way around it is through it.." We become free of what we’re stuck in only through meeting and experiencing it directly."( Swami Prajnanpad)
Another quote with a similar feeling comes from Swami Rudrananda (known as Rudy, a German teacher who was a student of the Indian saint Swami Nityananda), further describes how to work with neurosis in this way:
"Don’t look for perfection in me. I want to acknowledge my own imperfection, I want to understand that that is part of the endlessness of my growth. It’s absolutely useless at this stage in your life, with all of the shit piled up in your closet, to walk around and try to kid yourself about your perfection. Out of the raw material you break down you grow and absorb the energy. You work yourself from inside out, tearing out, destroying, and finding a sense of nothingness. That nothingness allows God to come in. But this somethingness— ego and prejudices and limitations— is your raw material. If you process and refine it all, you can open consciously" quoted by John Welwood http://www.johnwelwood.com/articles/Embodying