Zen and Psychotherapy

Some Thoughts On Our Waking-Dream State

2010-07-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I bought a copy of "The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud" (Random House, 1938) in a used book store for $5.95. As I am often inclined to do, I set it aside and ignored it until recently, when my unconscious mysteriously propelled me toward the bookshelf where it had patiently been waiting for me. I dusted off the book and then opened it randomly to exactly the place that my thoughts had recently been occupying: "The Method of Dream Interpretation."

In this piece Freud outlines his views on the state of mind one must have in order to gain an understanding of the content of their dreams:

"For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated attention it is advantageous that the patient should take up a restful position and close his eyes; he must be explicitly instructed to renounce all criticism of the thought-formations which he may perceive. He must also be told that the success of the psychoanalysis depends upon his communicating everything that passes through his mind, and that he must not allow himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must preserve an absolute impartiality in respect to his ideas; for if he is unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsessional idea, or the like, it will be because he permits himself to be critical of them."

What caught my eye, of course, was the fact that Freud's observations do not differ at all from the instructions you will get if you walk into our zendo for the first time to sit in meditation: "Do not judge your thoughts as "good" or "bad," instead, just let them pass through your consciousness, unobstructed."

Freud, as far as I know, never sat zazen. I don't care. He had caught on to something that looks and sounds very much like the age-old practice of mindfulness that has been assiduously passed down through the ages and which we continue to study and utilize today. Thus, as far as I'm concerned, his work and his writings put him in the same lineage as our Zen forefathers: Master Rinzai, Master Dogen, Master Hakuin, and Master Sigmund.

M.I.A.

2010-05-31T17:22:00.000-07:00

Lately I've come to deeply appreciate the beauty of people leaving and returning to our practice at the zendo. Sometimes people come and go on a regular basis. Sometimes they leave for years and then find their way back. And sometimes, of course, they never return.

What is this about? I know that in my case it took me approximately 15 years to find my way back. I started at the Long Beach Zen Center in 1985, left for Japan in 1987, and didn't reconnect with Sensei Bob McNeil until 2001. I will never forget rounding the corner of Sensei's old driveway and telling myself, "Aah, I am home again. Time to sit!"

Freedom means putting to rest the notion that it is always "good to stay and bad to leave" or vice versa. Only our discriminating consciousness tells us this is so. In actuality, our coming and going is of no more or less significance than our next inhalation and exhalation. As simple as in, out, in, out. Who knows if the next breath will come? In the meantime, stop the mental masturbation and just sit.

A Therapist's Life

2009-04-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel
downtrodden
and start to
wonder
Who do I think
I am?
I'm no one's
savior
I'm not a
saint
I just do what
I can for others
then I
go home
Still, I want
more
I get lost in
the fog of
other peoples'
problems
I stay there
for awhile with
them
no better
no worse
just sharing
some of life's
ferocious
ups and
downs
Sometimes we
cry
sometimes we
celebrate
It's a special
kind of
intimacy
a special
kind of love
This is what
I do
and this is what
it's like
to be a
therapist

Truth Test

2009-04-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

The true zen way
in Japan
is not to
tell you shit
You find out
everything
on your own
You are
not coddled
or babied
Why are
you here?
What do you
hope to achieve?
How badly do
you want to
learn?
Of course
no one but you
can answer these
questions

My first night
at a temple
in Tokyo
they threw down
a musty
old mattress
for me to
sleep on
It was full
of dust and
bugs
They were
testing
me

I awoke in
the middle of
the night
choking and
sputtering
I went to
my dorm neighbor
Help me
I can't breath
He had no idea
what I was
trying to
tell him
and probably thought
I was
insane
I went back to
my room thinking
It will be
much easier
just to
die

At breakfast
the next morning
I was hungry
and loaded my
bowls with rice
and vegetables
When I looked up
everyone had
finished
They got up
to leave and
left me sitting
in the dark
with my bowl
and chopsticks
in the air
learning important
lessons
of humility
and restraint

Pick Up Lines

2009-04-15T20:15:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I feel
that this is
the end
Sometimes I feel
we won't be
meeting here again
We will
just drift
slowly away
to some unknown place
where there be
nary a billboard
a flower
or a
vase

But I don't
pause, worry
or think
this place
could be worse
for the universe
contains all:
the living
the dead
even the rhymes of
this verse

I'm not being morbid
It's not a
big deal
It's just what
I'm thinking
It's just what
I feel
Now I'll
move on
move on with
my day
treasuring the wisdom
I pick up
along the
way

Old Man

2009-04-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

I will never forget
this old man
I once met
He gave me new life
and encouraged me to try
for in my head
I was not well
At twenty-two
I already felt quite
old myself

He was smart, strong
and full of energy
He wore the dignified
robes of a zen priest
With just this word
and that word
he'd help me greatly
I did not understand
my own father
but somehow
at first glance
I knew this man
very well

He taught me
the practical ways
of meditation
Straight back most important!
he'd roar
Good advice
for I was
mentally weak
and had no spine
at the time

Young, dumb and blind
I'd show up
everywhere high
but I felt no need
to do that with
this man
My father tied me
to a tree so
I'd learn!
he'd often tell me
I learned so much
myself
from this kind
old man

Then one day
he was gone
but I want his spirit
to live on and on
I try my best
to compassionately follow
advice sometimes
difficult to swallow
Keep your back straight!
Don't dare be late!

These are the things
I remember
about a kind
old man
who wouldn't
send me away
when everyone
else did

Letting Go of Your Inner CNN

2007-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

I had a moment of insight recently while watching CNN. The news, like a river, moves incredibly swiftly. On and on it goes, from one story to the next. We are absorbed for a moment by the latest school shooting, terrorist bombing, or political scandal, and then the story begins to move down the river and around the bend, so quickly that we lose sight of it and forget about it. Occasionally a commentator will ruminate on the ruthless nature of "the news cycle." I say let them go, just like your thoughts. Let them pass through your consciousness, unobstructed.

So I've Read...

2007-09-27T21:47:00.000-07:00

Flipping randomly through Peter Matthiessen's classic zen journal "Nine-Headed Dragon River," I came upon this passage:

"Under the lid of a golden box containing the Buddha's ashes is the inscription Atha dipa, Ana sarana, Anana sarana: You are the light, You are the refuge. There is no place to take refuge but yourself."

What in the world is all the clamoring about? Someone left the gate wide open, and a thief has entered the garden. Shall we chase him out, or let him stay awhile?

Happy sitting...

Uncomfortably Numb

2007-09-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

"The Bridge" is a recent documentary about people who have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The visuals are dramatic, thought-provoking and graphic, and instantly created a storm of controversy upon release. The film crew spent months with their cameras trained on the bridge, waiting patiently day after day for people to jump. With the bridge being the most popular spot in the world for suicide jumpers, they knew they wouldn't have to wait long. In 2004 twenty four people died in this manner. One young man in the documentary miraculously survived, and a few jumpers were caught on film being saved by passersby or law enforcement.

As a therapist, I am intimately familiar with suicide. I am trained to inquire up front about suicidal thoughts and plans, and to monitor continuously for signs that might indicate the potential for a suicide attempt. From what I know and have seen, hindsight usually provides multiple clues, signs and reasons for someone wanting to end their life. My guess is that there are very few people who just suddenly wake up one day and say, "this is it, I'm done, goodbye." Usually a suicidal person is chronically depressed, psychotic, abusing a substance, or suffering from a major physical illness or the loss of a loved one.

From a Buddhist perspective, suicide makes perfect sense. It is not a mystery. It stems from compulsive desire, which is the root cause of suffering. We all suffer from it. Desire is like the arcade game "whack-a-mole:" you can never get all of them, and they just keep popping up. After awhile the futility just drains you, so you give up.

And as human beings, it seems that we are hardwired to seek out contact and connections with people. Maybe that's why it feels so embarassing and shameful to be the person at the party wandering around with no one to talk to. What reason is there to live for a person whose whole life is like that, who no longer feels, or never felt to begin with, any connection to the world?

Our perceived separateness from the world can cut like a knife. It can push people over the edge, literally. The Buddha realized that our discriminating consciousness that separates "you" from "I" and "us" from "them" is the core mechanism behind all suffering. I myself have at times in my life keenly felt this tremendous sense of isolation, of a-part-ness. Zazen has been provided to us as the inner work that we do in order to recognize how empty that separateness is. Without it, I very well might have gone over the edge long ago.

All Zen Roads Lead to Hiroshima

2007-08-08T00:18:00.000-07:00

In 1988 I visited the city of Hiroshima. I vividly remember feeling physically ill for no apparent reason going in to the city, and I only began to feel better as I left. I'm not a superstitious person by nature, but Hiroshima really is a city of lost souls, you can feel it. During the five and a half years that I lived in Tokyo, another Japanese city with many annihilated souls wandering about, I would also walk the quiet neighborhoods at night and feel their restless presence. Sound crazy?

A recent HBO documentary about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "White Light/Black Rain," talks about the lives of the survivors. It shocked me to learn that the Japanese government has only recently begun to pay medical expenses to victims. There is a group of survivors that has to come to California for treatment. In the words of one survivor, "the Japanese government is just waiting for us to die." In the film survivors also spoke out about their shame and guilt of having lived through the bombings while friends and family died, the stigma of disfigurement and the horrified looks they get when they go out in public.

In the film the American pilots who dropped the bombs were also interviewed. Most expressed no outward regret, that they were only "doing their jobs."

In the Buddhist view, what matters least of all is who dropped the bombs. The essential question really has to do with the nature of desire and suffering, which form the root of all destructive acts and which lie far beyond the phenomenal realms of politics, governments and war. When I look at the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I try not to see just Japanese people, but human beings caught up in the endless turning of samsara, the wheel of suffering.

So when bombs rain down out of a clear blue summer sky, what then? What do we do with our experience? Hopefully, into the void of death and destruction created by the bombs, steps freedom. For if we really examine our fear, hatred and revulsion, so harmfully directed at ourselves and at others, then we will realize that the longer we gaze at it, the smaller and smaller it becomes until it returns to its essential nature, which is emptiness. It is no different from a flower that blooms and then dies, or a city that is born and destroyed. Our realization begins only when we look inward, not outward.

I have no idea about the fate of future generations. If the current political climate is any indicator, hope is a dangerous thing. I just know that when each living being finds inner freedom, then we will have nothing to fear. Nuclear bombs, and the people who have their finger on the trigger, cannot stand up to our indestructible Buddha nature.

"Environmentally Friendly Therapy"

2007-08-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

I've never heard this term used before, but I thought of it while watching a videotape of a therapy session between a therapist, the late Insoo Kim Berg, and a high school student from Texas. During the session, both the therapist and the patient were highly attuned to each other, so much so that after watching the tape one of my classmates expressed disbelief that the entire session was not somehow staged by two actors. What fascinated me was that not a word, not a gesture, not a single moment of the session was wasted. At bare bones it was really just two people talking, listening and relating to each other on a very deep level. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be so attuned to our lovers, our friends, our parents or our coworkers? The good news is that it is possible, and we don't have to be in therapy for it to happen. Turn off the cellphone, stop thinking about what you're going to have for dinner, and just be present.

Living with "The Big C's"

2007-07-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

In the cancer universe of patients and their families, friends and doctors, "The Big C" is a commonly used and fitting reference. Cancer is big. Cancer is everywhere. Cancer is the unwanted visitor, the renter that won't leave, the stranger that takes over your life. If life is a poker game, cancer holds all the cards. Cancer is never far from our minds. We might even begin to think that at the slightest lump or hacking cough, "this is it, it's all over with." Simply put, cancer freaks people out.

I know this from personal experience. I get freaked out because my father, brother and uncles all died of cancer. My mother is a cancer survivor. Cancer brings out the best and the worst in us. It can turn family and friends against each other just as easily as it can bring them together. Cancer can turn a positive, happy person into a cynical, depressed, angry wreck. I know this. I was that happy positive person who is now a cynical, depressed angry wreck. I'm not always this way, but in the darkest of times I have had my moments.

In Buddhism, we also have something called "the Big C." It is Compassion. In our practice, compassion is the foundation and the starting point. In my mind it very simply comes down to this: because we are granted just one more breath, one more moment, one more day, we share our gratitude by being compassionate to everything and everyone in our lives. It sounds so simple, and yet it is so easy to lose our focus on just breathing and being, breathing and being.

While there is no cure for "the Big C," cancer, awareness of the other "Big C," compassion, in the sense of understanding the impermanence of life, the coming and going of illness and suffering, the rise and fall of joy and happiness, can be incredibly helpful when dealing with any life-threatening illness. In my life, this is all a work in progress. I'm still learning to forgive myself for not doing more to help my father and my brother.

Nevermind!

2007-07-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

As scary as the notion is of someone born in1990 not knowing who the Beatles were, even scarier is the notion of that same person being born too late to know who Nirvana was. It means a) we're getting old quick, and b) time is flying by like a cool summer breeze.

Keeping this in mind, consider for a moment the rise and fall of Buddhism in all its religious/spiritual/philosophical manifestations. How many times do you think Buddhism has gone in and out of fashion over the last 2500 years? Countless kings and emperors have latched onto it, thinking that it would somehow be the salvation of all salvations, only to see it dropped for the "next big thing." And yet here we are, 2500 years later, still forming sanghas, practicing the dharma and talking about Buddhism.

No one knows if Buddhism will survive for future generations. But maybe one reason it has survived this long is, unlike a beautiful Beatles ballad or Nirvana song, we ourselves are writing the song, arranging the chords and coming up with the lyrics. It's a naturalistic symphony, totally our own, that we create each time we sit in zazen. Always new, always unique.

Leaving Home with Every Breath

2007-07-18T00:31:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the feeling of leaving home for the first time? Some experience it when leaving home to go to college. Wow! Freedom! Others leave when they meet someone and get married. I'm outta here, baby! Buh bye!

When I was eighteen or twenty, I was extremely restless. I couldn't wait to leave home and see the world for myself. Of course, cold hard reality soon slapped me in the face. At one point I got a job as a waiter at a sushi bar in Hollywood. One night I was carrying a cold glass of wine to a customer, a woman wearing a backless dress. I was standing behind her with the glass on a tray when she suddenly leaned back, sending the wine straight down her back. The manager wanted to kill me because the woman and her party ate for free, and boy did they party at my expense! I guess I wasn't cut out to wait tables. Come to think of it, I scurried home more than a few times when I was young.

I guess the moral of this story is, we can leave home with every breath, and we don't need a car, a train or a plane. Every breath creates a new, totally unique neural pathway in our brain. Meditation or zazen helps to increase our awareness of this gift. A million journeys, a million oportunities to reinvent our relationship with the world. Imagine that! There is really nothing static about our lives. Our liberation is so close at hand, yet we often fail to recognize what is right in front of us.

This reminds me of a zen master, whose name I can't recall. Whenever he left the temple, and people would ask him where he was going, he'd say, "I'm going on a journey." On the last day of his life, he walked out of the temple. People asked him where he was going. He said, "I'm going on a journey." At that moment, he died, standing up.

The Strength of Our Mothers

2007-07-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

A significant number of the patients that I've seen in therapy have "mother" issues. In other words, mothers are either a primary source of support for the patient or a primary source of misery and pathology. Sometimes they are both, and the ambivalence of feelings toward the mother is a great source of anxiety and depression. I've found that patients usually bring up the subject fairly quickly on their own, and most appear to be greatly relieved to get it off their chest by talking about it. It's absolutely a difficult and sensitive issue.

I would say that personally I have a very complicated relationship with my mother. To say that we didn't get along when I was younger would be a great understatement. We often would argue bitterly and then not speak to each other for days at a time or longer while my father desperately tried to mediate. I now realize that I had no idea who my mother was at that time or what she was going through, and no one to guide me in finding ways to communicate with her. Like ships without paddles, we simply drifted apart for years.

My mother today, in stark contrast to her younger days, is an absolute gentle soul and a survivor. She's battled cancer and won, lost her husband and youngest son, and still carries on like a trooper. As for myself, I often struggle with not being able to address the things that happened between us so long ago. It's almost as if all those things never occurred. I hunger for some kind of resolution. I could bring it up, but what would be the point now? There are many things that I would like to say to my mother, but very few that I can actually say. I am often envious when I hear people openly and easily tell their mother, "I love you." It is so hard for me to do that, even though I feel it in my heart.

So when a patient tells me about their difficulties communicating with their mother, I can truly say, "I understand, let's talk about it."

The War in Our Heads and Hearts

2007-07-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

I've hesitated to discuss the Iraq war very much on this blog, preferring mainly to stay on the stated topics of zen and psychotherapy. My first teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, once scornfully told me that "politics is for children." Thus, despite the fact that my major in college was political science, and that politics in general greatly interests me, my first inclination was to avoid the subject of war all together.

I now think I was wrong about this. No matter what one's personal feelings are about the war, there is something very important going on here that goes far beyond "stay the course" or "bring the troops home."

War in fact figures very prominently in the development of Buddhism. Ashoka, the great Indian emperor warrior, converted to Buddhism after walking through a burnt-out battlefield littered with the mutilated corpses of thousands of his enemies. This was the great War of Kalinga, in which at least 100,000 of Ashoka's enemies were killed. As he walked through the devastation and saw the results of his actions, he famously repeated to himself over and over, "what have I done?" To atone for his actions Ashoka vowed to promulgate Buddhism all over the world, and he did.

Today, we have Iraq. No one knows exactly how many Iraqis have been killed in the current conflict. Some say over 500,000. Thousands of American soldiers have died, tens of thousands wounded physically and psychologically. Undoubtedly, we will be paying the price for this war in a multitude of ways for generations to come.

So where is the outrage? Despite sixty to seventy percent of the American public being opposed to the war, where are the protests? My guess is that a lot of it has been internalized. We watch the latest casualty figures on TV, then we move on to mowing the lawn, watching baseball or updating our blogs. For the most part, we don't appear to feel personally affected. Many people, including myself, feel utterly powerless to stop the war. Even the most outspoken public critic of the war, Cindy Sheehan, recently gave up and went home, citing the tremendous personal toll the process had taken on her and her family.

I may be wrong, but I haven't seen or heard a lot of protest from prominent Buddhist leaders either. Where is the Dalai Lama? Where is Thich Nhat Hanh? Both of these men are political war refugees with deep and personal insight into the consequences of military conflict and political repression. And yet, I don't see them walking the protest line holding signs or engaging in hunger strikes. Why? Interesting, don't you think?

This is the lesson, I believe, that is unfolding in front of our eyes and that we must learn from seeing and feeling this war: Buddhism is all about self-responsibility and self-awareness of the suffering that we both experience ourselves and that we cause in others. The Iraq war should be no different. Our soldiers are not children or robots. They can and must speak and think for themselves. Likewise, George Bush is not a child, he can and must decide for himself what does or does not need to be done. No amount of protest, apparently, will change his mind. In the end, George Bush needs to somehow walk that battlefield that is now littered with the corpses of his enemies and our own soldiers. If he feels compelled to atone, he will atone. No one else can or should do it for him. And so the world waits.

Compassion is Immeasurable

2007-07-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

I was amazed to learn from Sensei McNeil this afternoon that there has been only one Sunday in nine years that no one has shown up for zazen. Nine years! All the more reason to ponder: what in the world is this thing we call buddha nature? It can't be created, and it can't be destroyed. Sadness and happiness, birth and death float by, just like clouds, on and on and on. I don't have any more words today.

Shhh!

2007-07-06T01:27:00.000-07:00

In stark contrast to the virtual explosion of western-based psychotherapies in endless varieties and permutations, there are a few Japanese therapies that operate more along the lines of what one might consider to be "meditative" or "contemplative."

Morita therapy, named after a Japanese philosopher-psychiatrist who lived in the early 1900s, is one of those. Typical Morita therapy patients suffer from difficulties with interpersonal relationships, such as shyness and feelings of inferiority. Those undergoing inpatient treatment are assigned one week of bedrest. During this time they are not allowed to converse or engage in any type of extracurricular activity such as smoking, reading, writing, etc. They eat three meals a day, but are only allowed to wash their face once a day and to bathe once a week.

Maybe you can imagine what this first week is like. Typically patients sleep and doze for the first day or two as their bodies adjust to their stark surroundings. Starting at around day three or four patients become increasingly wakeful and anxious to engage in any type of activity. They are instructed to let their feelngs pass and not to be bothered by them. Memories, dreams and reveries are treated in a similar way. By the end of the week, the patient has in a quite natural way been motivated to engage with life again, as if reborn. Some patients report peak experiences or catharsis of some sort that occurs when thoughts, memories and emotions are dealt with without distraction and are allowed to run their full course as the struggle with them naturally subsides.

Sound like zazen? To me it sounds very much like a week-long meditation "sesshin," without the ever-present group and without the pressure to achieve some type of breakthrough at all costs.

More to come. Next time I'll talk about Naikan therapy. Thanks to Dr. Gonsalves for the books.

Gone

2007-07-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

We had thought
that we...this...
would endure.

But look...
snow, gone.
rain, gone.
sanity, gone.

Nothing left
but the moment.
Beautiful, solitary, free.

(Happy Independence Day)

The Upload to Nowhere

2007-07-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been analyzing my impatience. I get short-tempered on the road, in the grocery store, with my girlfriend. I really want to do something about it, so I ponder, try to think it out. What I came up with is this: I'm beginning to think it has at least a little something to do with this computer that I'm using right now. Like everyone else, I used to have a dial-up modem, which was great for meditation. I could click to start uploading a song, go do thirty minutes of zazen, check the mail, take a shower, whatever, come back, and still be waiting. Now, I have DSL and don't have to wait for a damn thing. In fact, any minor glitches are cause for serious bouts of impatience and anger. How DARE you not come up. I've clicked on you TWICE.

This is not only my problem, it's society's problem. We're in too much of a damn hurry. We've no time to stop and smell the roses. Everything has to be now, now, now. So, since I'm currently immersed in research for my dissertation, I figure I could next tackle a study that focuses on impatience and the use of the Internet. I'm sure there is a link there, and the findings would be interesting, but I'm not sure I could do it. Why? It would take too long!

"What's perfect about life? Its imperfections."

Wishing you peace and a smile.

Being Honest is No Picnic

2007-06-28T02:05:00.000-07:00

It pains me to say this, but lately I've been going through a difficult stretch. The job that I loved so much, working with schizophrenics and others with severe mental illnesses, has suddenly disappeared. I really miss doing therapy with them. For me, it's a difficult job but a very honest way to make a living. You can't fake your way through it, and the only way it works is if you absolutely love what you do and the people that you meet.

So I'm now jobless, and complicating matters is the fact that I haven't finished my dissertation and cannot sit for the licensing exam until I do so and graduate. I estimate this to be six months away. At this moment I'm very much in between worlds.

So every night I stay up very late, work on my dissertation, watch TV, strum the guitar, and generally loaf and mope around all day. I've been calling around looking for another internship, but nothing has offered itself as of yet. Every day is a battle for my self-esteem. Watching Oprah every day can do that to you.

Somewhere in all of this uncertainty, I believe, is a big lesson that will only gradually reveal itself to me. The impermanence of it all is very obvious. Somehow, I got caught up in the notion that things were good, and would continue to be good indefinitely. WRONG. Damn, I shoulda known. That, and the irony of a very educated person facing the possibility of going to work on the night shift in order to pay the bills is a bit stunning. Never thought it would happen to me. I guess there are a million ways to learn, and sitting in a classroom taking notes is only one of those ways. Another hard lesson in life. But aren't all the important ones hard? Otherwise, what would be the point?

I will keep you posted. In the meantime, back to the cushion.

Question Marks, Part II

2007-06-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

What is suffering?

Does suffering have a face and a name?

What did suffering look like before it was born into the world?

Why did the Buddha suffer for us?

Do I need to be saved from my suffering?

Do you need to be saved from your suffering?

Why do I suffer when you suffer?

Why do you suffer when I suffer?

What is ignorance?

Why can ignorance not be kept at bay with walls, fences, borders, books, declarations, barbed wire, passports, oceans, guns, IEDs, armies, governments, senate votes, castles, kingdoms, universities, mosques, churches, temples and death?

Does ignorance have a beginning, a middle, or an end?

Why does my ignorance become your ignorance?

Why does your ignorance lead to my ignorance?

What is war?

Is war the biggest delusion of all, or the biggest opportunity for spiritual salvation?

Why does your war become my war?

Why does my war inevitably lead to your war?

Why do you have to shoot me before I can shoot you?

Why don't we just shoot each other at the same time and get it over with?

Saluting Mr. Wrigley

2007-06-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

Sitting zazen this morning, I thought about the psychology of repetition that was really pioneered by American entrepeneurs. I'm talking about the people who invented and/or pioneered the marketing of chewing gum, potato chips, popcorn, cigarettes, fast food. My god, what geniuses! They tapped into this physical and psychological process of repetition that is so comforting, so easy, so accessible, so empty. These people definitely deserved to be billionaires!

But could it be that this culture of empty repetition is really killing us? I wonder less about this, and more about my own habit of repetition called "zazen." How different? Every moment of sitting is unique, ever-changing, like chewing on a piece of gum and getting a different taste from every bite. Sometimes you bite into something sour, sometimes something really sweet. But ultimately, the end result is the same. When the bag of chips is empty, and when the sitting is done, we don't cry, it's just time to move on!

Question Marks

2007-06-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

Will this truck crush me?

Can music cure cancer?

Will my anger destroy me?

How deep is love?

What color is love?

Does love look like the ocean?

Is this light going to turn red on me?

Why do I have this feeling that someone sits in a building and changes the light when he sees me coming?

When did I get my last ticket?

Will I make it home tonight?

What if I didn't make it home tonight?

Who would miss me if I didn't make it home tonight?

Does death stand on a streetcorner?

If death stood on a streetcorner, would he wear a hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses?

Can astronauts do zazen?

Do dogs pray?

Is my dog getting old?

How hot will it be this summer?

How many calories are in a bottle of water?

Does paint kill brain cells?

Why did high school suck?

Did the Indians live in Orange County?

What would happen if I smoked a joint right now?

Why do I miss Bob?

Do I need to cut the grass?

What would happen if I threw my cell phone in the trash?

What would happen if I threw my cell phone out the window and onto the freeway?

Is hatred red or black?

Is the sound of a cello the voice of God?

Why can't I sing?

What am I doing on the fourth of July?

Should I sell my house?

Are DJs attractive or ugly?

How much do I love my mother?

Did my waiter wash his hands?

What time is it in Ethiopia right now?

If I went to Ethiopia right now, could I sit under a tree with a lion?

Who invented chopsticks?

When is enough enough?

Did I get brain damage when I was a kid?

What is Paris Hilton doing at this moment?

Does Paris Hilton believe in God?

Has Paris Hilton ever met a zen teacher?

Does Paris Hilton read books?

Should I try to visit Paris Hilton in jail?

Who invented the television?

How hot is the pavement right now?

If I got into an accident right now, would I be able to lay on the hot pavement, or would I have to stand up?

Could I stand in between the lanes of the freeway and not get hit?

Should I volunteer to pick up trash on the side of the freeway?

Do paramedics go to college?

Is my fourth grade teacher still alive?

Why did I have a crush on my fourth grade teacher?

When I die, should I request that my ashes be scattered in Hawaii?

What is my girlfriend doing right now?

Who's singing this song?

Why do female singers make me want to cry?

Should I get my car washed on Monday?

Why didn't I study piano when I was a kid?

Why do I love the sound of drums?

Is my hair too long?

Who manufactured my iPod?

Is the person who made my iPod married?

Will the person who made my iPod get cancer?

Is the person who made my iPod standing up right now?

Does the person who made my iPod live in a house?

Why do I think that the person who made my iPod lives in a grass shack, is wearing a hat right now, and is looking out the window?

Who's singing this song?

Why do I love this song?

Is there a heaven?

Do they have mandolins in heaven?

Why do I feel sad right now?

Should I go to film school?

Am I too old for film school?

Am I getting old?

What was the sunset like in England today?

Why do I want to visit Piccadilly Circus?

What is the Queen doing right now?

Does the Queen sleep with her hat on?

If I went to Harrod's would I meet someone who looks exactly like Sid Vicious?

If I went to Harrod's, would they say hello to me?

Is Margaret Thatcher still alive?

Did Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher get it on after drinking tea?

Did Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher share a quiet moment, sitting in an English garden?

Was Ronald Reagan happy in his last moment?

Is Ronald Reagan happy right now?

Where is Ronald Reagan right now?

How many hours have I been doing this?

Can I keep doing this forever?

Did I check the mail today?

Will someone get mad at me if I keep doing this until tomorrow?

Why am I doing this?

What was that noise?

Should I go to zazen tomorrow?

What would life be like if I couldn't type?

What would life be like if I had no hands?

When are they going to invent something that allows you to type with your eyes instead of your hands?

Who's in charge of keeping the letters straight when you type something on the computer?

Should I stop now?

Should I drink some coffee right now?

Will I feel less tired if I drink some coffee right now?

Is it wrong if I drink some coffee right now?

Did I just lose my work?

What would happen if I lost my work?

Should I publish this entry now?

Am I full of shit?

Do people like me?

Am I weird?

Is there an appropriate way to end this thing?

Am I trying to be clever?

What is the point of this?

What got me started on this?

Do schizophrenics do things like this?

Am I okay as I am?

Is life grand?

Why can't I stop this and go upstairs and take a nap?

If I stop now, am I giving up?

What's on TV right now?

The Lost Art of Flipping Burgers

2007-06-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

This particular post probably has little or nothing to do with zen or psychotherapy, and more to do with a case of writers' block. That, and sometimes you just recall stuff about your life at odd times.

So the other night I was remembering that I got my first job at sixteen working the grill at Burger King. In those days there was no shame attached to flipping burgers, it was just something a lot of average kids did to make some extra spending money.

For some reason, I fell in love with the job. There was just something about the repetitiveness of the process that appealed to me. No thoughts, no feelings, no memories, just a continuous flip, flip, flip. I caught on so quickly that after working the grill for only a week, they offered me a part-time management position. Unfortunately, my family decided to move away at that point, and I had to turn down the offer.

I picked up where I left off at the Burger King in my new city. By this time I had refined my burger flipping prowess to a new level. I had to in order to keep up with what the fast food business calls "rushes." Typically lunch rushes would start at 11:30, but they could be incredibly unpredictable. One minute you could be looking at an empty lobby, turn away for a minute, and then out of nowhere be looking at a huge crowd of hungry people. When that happened, I'd shift into gear. As orders came over the loudspeaker, my hands would fly to the warmer, I'd grab a couple of burgers and go to work. I could put pickles, ketchup and mustard on a regular burger, wrap it, and jam it into the microwave in around five seconds. Then I'd rip it out and slide it down the chute to be bagged by the cashier. Bigger burgers took a little longer because they required lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, onions, ketchup and pickles. Probably around eight to ten seconds for one of those. If we were shorthanded in the kitchen I'd also be cooking french fries and making chicken or fish filet sandwiches. I didn't waste a second in that kitchen. Just kicked ass from start to finish.

There might be one or two people in the world who still remember how fast I worked in that kitchen. Other than that, it's just a memory. I also remember falling in love, hanging out with everyone in the parking lot on slow summer nights, being silly and listening to rock and roll on the radio. Such a long time ago! Life just flies by. Where have the years gone?

Suffering from the Heart

2007-05-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

People sometimes ask me why psychologists charge so much money. I tell them, "I'll tell you when I get there!" But seriously, it is something I think about all the time.

Being a therapist or a psychologist is more difficult than being a firefighter in the following way: firefighters usually know where the fire is, so they can focus all their resources on what's burning. Now imagine trying to fight a fire, but you don't know where it is, how big it is, or how it started. You don't know how many people it involves, or what kind of resources you will need to put it out.

We're talking about mental fires here, and it's the psychologist's job to walk in there and figure out what's going on. It's hot as hell in there, and you have to be very careful. Sometimes, or a lot of times, you make a wrong turn and get your fingers or your hair singed, so you step back and reevaluate. Sometimes you have no choice but to run into the building and burn up with your patient, because that's what they need you to do, and that's what you get paid for. If you're not willing to do that, you're probably in the wrong profession. It's a hard road.

Dealing with suffering on a daily basis can be lonely. No, not can be, it is. I've walked into many burning buildings. There are a lot of scars inside of me that you can't see. I get angry, sad and depressed, but I'm learning that trying to be macho in this job can get you killed. And truthfully, at the risk of sounding like a heretic, I'm not really sure how much meditation helps. I'm sure that it does help, but you've got to do other things as well, like exercise, see your own therapist, etc. You have to be able to laugh at yourself, look in the mirror and say, "what a fool I am."

In the end, there is no cure. And that leads back to some deeper existential questions, but I'm too tired for that now.

Gassho

No Direction Home

2007-05-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

I never once thought of this old song, "Like a Rolling Stone," as a zen koan. When I was young, I just knew that it galvanized all the anger and frustration that flew out of my body like sparks. I directed this song at parents, teachers, bosses, the government, at no one even in particular. For someone perpetually pissed off and confused, the song screamed like a siren to the center of the brain. "How does it feel? To be without a home? Like a complete unknown. With no direction home. Like a rolling stone..." Take that, you bastards.

But somehow, I don't know when or why, I came to the realization that Dylan is not singing to war mongering politicians or soulless and corrupt corporate executives. No, he's screaming the question at me. He's singing to me and nobody but me. How does it feel to be alone in this world? How does it feel to know I will leave this world without a trace, with no essential proof that I was even here? No fixed abode, no permanent existence, just wonderfully lost, floating and free. Like a rolling stone...

Why are we here? Who are we? Where are we going? Zazen is all about personal liberation, and so is Mr. Dylan. I still wonder at how I came to finally realize that there is no one to be angry at.

Rude Awakenings

2007-05-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

I try to relate to my patients that trauma has meaning and serves a purpose. If we are paying attention, it can redirect us when we stray from our individual priorities in life.

In 1997 I was living at a zen temple in Los Angeles. I had graduated from college the previous year, and was desperately struggling to find some career direction. I was also struggling to understand the divisions and conflicts in my family relationships that had never been dealt with. I would say that I was at a crossroads. And my rigorous daily sitting was not helping me.

One morning I left the temple at 4:30 to go to work. As I approached my car in the early morning darkness, I had an inkling that something was not right. When I got into my car and reached to close the door, a form materialized out of the darkness. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was being carjacked. The carjacker pulled a knife out of his back pocket and held it to my throat. Time froze. We looked at each other. He told me, "I don't want to hurt you." He demanded my wallet and stripped my watch and pager. Then he grabbed me by the lapels, dragged me out of my car and threw me down on the street. When the police arrived, one of them matter of factly told me, "don't expect your car back, just be happy you're alive."

Less than a week later, I had packed my belongings and was ready to leave the temple. I was partly motivated by fear, and partly motivated by a feeling that it was time to set things right in my life. I sat down with my mother to talk about my early struggles with anger and depression. I looked at my future, and decided I wanted to work with people as a psychologist. And I looked at my zen practice and knew it was time to reevaluate.

It wasn't until 2001 that I began sitting zazen again on a regular basis. I reconnected with Sensei Bob McNeil, a disciple of my first teacher, Matsuoka Roshi. Bob works with a small community of lay practitioners and has taught me a lot about not leaving your "zen" behind in the zendo. He is a living reminder that Zen is our life, not something that we pick up along the way.

I'm still learning from trauma. Last year my brother passed away. He suffered greatly. Thank you, my brother, for life lessons in courage and compassion. And if the person who carjacked me is still out there, thank you, too. I don't hate you. In fact, I bow to you. I guess that's the lesson.

No Instructions Necessary

2007-05-04T00:46:00.000-07:00

I guess I was born a closet drama-king, destined to follow my own path no matter what. On the first day of kindergarten I didn't feel like hanging out with the other kids, so I just left the classroom. I took a walk down to the corner market, bought some candy, and sat on the curb to watch the cars go by. Eventually, the school called my mom to pick me up. It was definitely not a prolific start to my academic career.

Years later, as my 25th birthday approached, I decided that that would be the perfect day for me to take off for Japan. I had no goals, no job lined up, no friends there, only some vague notion of holing up in a zen temple somewhere. After a week of staying in a youth hostel, I set out to find a temple listed in a guide book as pretty "foreigner friendly." Just finding the temple was hard enough. The Japanese system of addresses makes absolutely no sense to anyone, even the Japanese themselves. I circled the neighborhood on foot, dragging my suitcase behind, for what seemed like hours. Most people either stared blankly or walked quickly away when I asked for directions in my broken Japanese. I guess it didn't help either that I was wearing typical California surfer boy clothes in a country where no one surfs. I must have looked very strange.

They were polite enough at the temple. They took out a mattress for me that probably hadn't been used in several years and plopped it on the tatami floor. Too tired to care, I dropped onto it and passed out. I awoke later, in the middle of the night, my lungs on fire with dust-fueled asthmatic spasms. I got up and went to the next room to see if someone had any medication. The poor guy I woke up spoke not a word of English. I still remember the look on his face and his palms held up quizzically in the air. I could tell he really wanted to help me, but in the end I gave up and decided it would be easier and take less time to go back to my room and die.

Promptly at four a.m., I was awakened by what sounded like a lunatic running through the temple hallways, ringing a large bell and shouting a wake-up call. Half asleep, I stumbled through the pitch-dark hallway (no lights allowed on) and found my way downstairs to the courtyard. Apparently, it was time for "morning calisthenics." Okay, this was new and interesting...

After exercises we filed into the dojo for zazen. No problem there. I had a nice long sit. Then we were assigned cleaning duties. Someone handed me a towel to clean the polished wooden floor with. I bent to the task, starting at a far corner of the very large room. A monk took the towel from me and simply said, "no." He got down on his hands and knees, towel held in front of him, lifted his butt in the air and ran from one end of the room to the other as if on rails. Now I was learning...

Now it was time for breakfast. After all the morning activity, I was starved. As servings were passed around, I let my hunger get the best of me and took large portions. After only about two minutes, I noticed that everyone else was already finishing their meal and preparing to collect their bowls up. The head priest banged his mallet on an oak stump and everyone bowed and filed out. They turned out the light, leaving me all alone in the dark to contemplate the comings and goings of a confused young mind.

Living and learning by your own wits is not the easy way to go, but in the zen life, it's the only way.

When Anger Calls...

2007-04-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting experience the other day. For whatever reason, I had an unusually intensive morning meditation, one of those days when you just feel totally there. I then got dressed and headed out the door. The first thing that happened was someone made an illegal u-turn in front of me while I was trying to get on the freeway. I blasted my horn at him to make sure he knew what a bad person he was. I immediately felt awful and confused. Where in the world did that come from? A little further down the road, a pretty typical freeway near-miss set me off again. What?

What I'm getting at is pretty significant. Eastern-based meditative practices can have unintended consequences in the context of our Western society. We're not sitting up in a monastery somewhere cut off from the world. Dogen and Hakuin-zenji did not have to deal with traffic on the 405. And zazen is not a cure-all to make us some perfect person that never gets angry. In fact, as my experience demonstrates, zazen removes some of those barriers that prevent us from experiencing our true feelings. A good thing or a bad thing? I guess it depends on how you deal with it. But the intensity of my anger really surprised me.

I'm not a zen scholar, but I'd venture to say that Zen Buddhism as a philosophy and a practice is really still new to us here in the West. Psychologists are just now beginning to understand how the Western mind manifests an Eastern practice. In "Promises and Perils of the Spiritual Path," Engler points out 9 or 10 ways in which meditation serves as a defense mechanism rather than a path to self-awareness. These include a quest for perfection and invulnerability, avoidance of feelings, and avoidance of responsibility and accountability. It's not my fault I got angry, it's because some idiot cut me off on the freeway.

Anger is an issue with me. Let me quote Engler: "Even advanced Western students find that periods of powerful practice and deep insight will often be followed by periods in which they reencounter painful patterns, fears, and conflicts." Looking back, I'm sure I've used my practice at times to unconsciously avoid dealing with my deep-seated issues, issues that a therapist might better be able to work with.

A final story: years ago, I had a friend who was experiencing some rather severe psychological symptoms of distress. Fine, I thought, let me help him by introducing him to zazen. After all, zazen can cure anything. It didn't take long to find out that that was exactly the wrong thing to do. The silence frightened him and made him even more anxious. So much for good intentions. Zazen is not a game.

The Impermanence of a Championship Ring

2007-04-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

I've been a Laker fan for many, many years, my whole life in fact. In the early 70s, my father took me to the "Fabulous Forum" to celebrate thirty three consecutive victories, a record that still stands today. In our family, as they say, we bleed purple and gold, the team colors. On the night my father died, he was watching a Laker game. When my brother was in the hospital suffering from cancer, I called him with the news that Kobe Bryant had scored 80 points in a single game. It cheered him up immensely.

So of course it makes me very sad to see the current state of the Laker franchise. These are definitely not the glory days of West and Chamberlain, Magic and Kareem, Kobe and Shaq. Will they ever come again? Nobody knows. This is impermanence in action. Nothing stays the same, there are no guarantees, and it's never going to be exactly the way it was "back then," in life or in basketball.

In my mind, for example, it's a complete and fortunate blessing that our zen practice has survived intact to this day, for us to benefit and learn from, to pass on. How many dark periods of history has Zen Buddhism passed through to reach this point? It's really an incredible thing if you think about it, and we are quite lucky, to say the least.

So when the Lakers' glory days come back around, I hope to be there. But one never knows.

Reflections on a Tragedy

2007-04-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

It seems like from the beginning, Seung Cho never had a chance. His family, relatives and classmates all describe his inability to relate and communicate that began basically from the time he was born. There are a lot of things we don't know about Seung and his mental/physical history that apparently caused him to brutally kill so many people. He appeared to be quite delusional, and may possibly have suffered from Asberger's Disorder, which is marked by severe impairments in social interaction manifest by a failure to develop peer relationships and an inability to share and interact with others. Nonverbal behaviors, such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures, are typically also impaired. By most accounts, those appear to have been some of his symptoms.

We can only speculate. In the end, we just don't know. All we know is that Seung Cho became hell-bent on destroying everything in his path. What possibly could have helped this young man? More psychological help? Some form of meditation or other spiritual practice? I've asked myself this, and of course no answers have appeared. It is entirely possible that nothing would have or could have stopped him.

Perhaps then, we should turn the tables and ask, how about our own meditation or spiritual practice? What is it good for? Why do we do it? And who do we do it for? Maybe that is what we should be questioning. Because ultimately, his failings are our failings. His suffering is our suffering. There is no "Seung Cho" apart from ourselves. Somehow I feel there will be no understanding until we realize this.

So Why Pretend?

2007-04-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Life is lonely...
Why pretend?

Hearts are broken...
Why pretend?

Friends move on...
So why pretend?

Thoughts collide...
Why pretend?

Mind dissolves...
Why pretend?

Body bends...
So why pretend?!

April Afternoon

2007-04-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

Looking out at the garden,
the garden wall moves not.
Mind dips up and down,
back and forth,
following the zig and zag
of the drunken happy butterfly.

"Homeless Kodo"

2007-04-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

Kodo Sawaki (1880-1965) was a renowned Japanese zen master probably best known for his exposition of the Soto practice of "shikan taza," or "just sitting" zen. In his youth he was passed from relative to relative after his parents died, was beaten at times and lived among pimps and prostitutes. His own stepmother was a prostitute who seems to have died in a fit of hysteria. Sawaki was severely wounded in the Russo-Japanese war when a bullet passed through his neck and mouth and took off part of his tongue. His incredible life story is told in Arthur Braverman's "Living and Dying in Zazen."

Doing zazen calmly in the dojo,
putting aside all negative thoughts.
Obtaining nothing but a mind without desire...
this joy is beyond paradise!

(from "The Notebook of Kodo Sawaki")

This is the heart of "no gain zen" that is shikan taza. Sawaki himself felt that the practice of "just sitting" was profound enough to be a religion in and of itself.

"I don't want to die like this"

2007-03-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Whenever a patient tells me this, I usually have to lower my head and pretend that I'm jotting something down in my notes. They have unintentionally sent a spear into my heart, and I don't want them to see me cry. I'm instantly and deeply struck by the fact that this person sitting in front of me, and that person, and my family, my friends, me, all of us, will soon enough be moving on, part of the great constant flow of humanity and existence that is at once both beautiful and terrifying.

Such profound honesty can only come from someone who has suffered greatly. According to Buddhist beliefs, suffering is the root of our existence. Suffering, in my own experience, is the root and the commonality of psychotherapy and zen practice. Somehow, our relationship with the world, our reason for being, has become obscured, and we instinctively search for answers. It's pretty safe to say that anyone who comes either to therapy or to some type of formal zen practice is seeking a way to relieve some kind of inner anxiety, quite often about death. When I came to zen practice so many years ago, I'm not sure if I was thinking about death. I just knew that I was suffering. A lot. Therapists and zen teachers can help us with this. We just have to find our way to them.

I've learned that it's really a blessing when someone tells me, "I don't want to die like this." Starting from here, my patient and I can quietly explore our deepest fears and anxieties in a safe way, without fear of judgement. After all, it's not exactly dinner time conversation! And when we sit in zazen, we sit at the base of this mountain of doubt that is shaped like a huge question mark. At times the mountain threatens to collapse on us. We look up, and wonder what will happen to us.

Gassho

Dignity in Posture

2007-03-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

This might differ from what zen scholars say, but the word that most often comes to my mind when I sit zazen is "dignity." Sitting up straight and true really does something to one's attitude and frame of mind. It's a kind of regal posture without arrogance. I think that maybe this is what our parents were really trying to tell us when they said, "sit up straight!"

Along with disposition of breathing and mind, the posture that we assume in zazen, or sitting zen, is one of the pillars of our practice. Sitting on a cushion and forming a solid and stable three point posture with our legs and buttocks, we straighten our back, stretch our neck, and gaze downward at about a 45 degree angle. When we assume this position, we assume the very position of the Buddha when he achieved enlightenment under the bodhi tree.

Physically, it is very hard to knock someone over when they are sitting in this position. If someone were to place their foot in the middle of your back and pushed, you would bounce back almost automatically, as if attached to a spring. This is how our physical stability translates into greater mental stability, and vice versa. Internally, the zazen posture is a kind of measuring stick or signal: when we lose track of our posture, we should simply exhale and return again and again to our physical and mental position of stability. Awareness of posture and breathing is key to an awareness of mind. Sitting peacefully in the space between our thoughts is called enlightenment.

Rush Limbaugh and Me

2007-03-22T02:09:00.000-07:00

Politics can really knock you off your cushion if you let it! I realized this recently when the CD player in my car went haywire, forcing me to search the radio dial for entertainment during my long commute. As I punched around to different stations, what had started as a beautiful sunny day with endless possibilities turned progressively uglier. On one station the announcer and a caller were arguing about the Scooter Libby trial. I got disgusted, cursed at the radio and punched the button. On another station a reporter was describing a roadside bombing in Iraq that had left two American soldiers dead. I listened, fumed, got extremely depressed and flipped to another station. By this time I was giving dirty looks to cars that I thought were following me too closely, and mouthing obscenities to cars in front of me that I thought were moving too slow! By the time I got to my destination I was a wreck. Now, I have a nice classical station programmed to ease my commute. When I'm able to sit through a whole segment of talk radio with a smile on my face, knowing that the world will keep spinning regardless, and nothing, not even something as poisonous as politics, can destroy my radiant buddha nature, then I know the power of this thing we call "zen practice."

Back to Work

2007-03-19T01:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since my last post. So much has happened in a year's time. My brother passed away in February '06. The Buddha now watches over him. I've been away from the Sangha for quite a bit of this past year, trying to collect myself and move forward. I must properly thank Sensei Bob McNeil, Bryant, Miu, and all members at the Compassionate Heart Sangha for love and support. Sometimes you must leave the cushion to find the cushion. More posts are forthcoming, I swear.

A quick story about my brother. Kent taught taiko, Japanese drumming, for many years. His students were young boys and girls at the Orange County Buddhist Church. In the final week of his life, the group came to visit him at the hospital. The young students were watching my brother leave this world, literally, before their eyes. They cried many tears, but my brother pointed to his heart and said, "don't worry, I'll be right here." Understand that my brother was a man of few words, every one counted, none were wasted. So the next time someone you love leaves, point to your own heart and say, "don't worry, you'll be right here, always." And if somehow you can't say it, feel it.

Gassho for now...

"I got it all"

2006-01-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

It's late, hope you don't mind if I ramble on about this and that.

Funny how life can turn at the drop of a hat. There I was, dozing away the last days of the year with not a care in the world. Look out...BAM. My brother, who has been battling cancer for the past year, was suddenly readmitted to the hospital on the very first day of the new year and diagnosed with a large and active new tumor. So, these days I'm sleeping very little and trying to lend whatever support I can to his life and death struggle. There's nobody more courageous than my brother, and I believe that he'll win this fight.

So, it just happened that on one of those sleepless nights I turned on the TV and "Million Dollar Baby" was on. If you've seen the movie you'll probably recognize the title of this post. Maggie, the young fighter, has fractured her spinal cord in a championship bout and is hooked up to a respirator. She wants to die, and begs her manager to unhook her from the machine so she can go with dignity. She's won championships, been in magazines, been cheered by adoring fans all over the world, so what is there to be sorry for? She's still a young woman, dying, but she got it all. It's enough.

We can get it all. Not in decades, years or months. Right now, this moment. Look out the window at the miraculously luminous moon, I mean really feel it down to the very marrow of your bones. It's enough. It has to be. It couldn't be any less! Get it all.

Brother, you taught me this. Fight on...

Dad

2005-12-31T16:49:00.000-08:00

Therapists tend to look at too much sleep as a definite bad sign. To be sure, it can be a red flag for depression and other maladies. But someone recently threw this back at me when I inquired about his prodigious sleep habits. "Well, how about you," he said, "don't you like to sleep?" Of course, I had to admit that yes, I do love to sleep.

And I've been doing a lot of it lately. When the weather gets cold and the holidays allow for it, I sleep like a bandit. It gives me time to dream, to think, to reflect.

So I was just lying in bed, and the image of my father came up suddenly. He passed away 17 years ago, and I often reflect on the lessons that he taught me and that he is still teaching me to this day.

I was a wild child, the kid from hell. Early on my friends and I were into skateboarding and motocross biking. We'd build huge skate ramps and fly our bikes off of them. But that was just innocent fun. Later, I'd roam the streets finding things to drink and smoke, hanging out with some not-so-nice people. I was an angry person, and I made a lot of bad decisions. My dad sat quietly through all of it. Once I shrugged off a speeding ticket, until they hauled my butt into court. My dad and I drove out together, him not saying more than two words, but the non-verbal message was clear: you better start thinking about some of these things you're doing, because I won't always be around to help you. I know you can figure things out on your own. Get it together!

Therapists go into the therapy room with all of their life experiences firmly in tow. So when I work with patients, I often think about my father. He taught me that compassionate but tough-minded silence can be a great tool for growth. In therapy, it is an approach that lends a great deal of respect to the patient by acknowledging and encouraging right from the start that he or she has the inner capacity to figure things out on their own. (Sounds downright subversive, doesn't it? Not a hairs' breadth of difference between teacher and student!) The therapist's job is not to judge, and not to give advice, but to always be there for them through the initially frightening and uncertain steps to self-awareness and self-responsibility.

I just wish my father were still here so I could thank him for what he taught me.

Context

2005-12-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

I was doing my zazen (literally, "sitting zen") this morning (I usually try to do at least five to ten minutes every morning to set a tone for the day) when this word exploded in my mind like a grenade. What an incredibly important word! I have begun to realize that in my own life, zazen never truly made sense to me until I started to work with patients in therapy. Suddenly, all of the teachings on compassion and suffering had a context, a background on which to apply everything that I had learned and experienced over twenty years. And believe me, there is plenty of suffering going on to keep me busy for a long, long time.

Someone once said that your work is your zen. That being said, it is much more difficult to manifest the teachings while working in an office crunching numbers or shuffling paper. It took me almost twenty years to finally make the choice to go back to school in order to do the work that I love, psychology, with the people that need it most. After all, I'm getting older, and if I'm gonna talk the talk, I better walk the walk! Long ago I dreamed of becoming a full-fledged zen monk, and maybe working with patients is the next best thing, or at least a tentative step in the right direction.

In a future post I will talk about how the techniques of the zen "roshi" or master when working with students can remarkably resemble those of the psychotherapist.

"There is no such thing as trash"

2005-12-27T15:52:00.000-08:00

I've always loved this phrase. It comes from a Japanese zen master named Zuigan Roshi, who is using the phrase to address his novice student, Soko Morinaga. The student has come upon the Roshi sweeping up leaves in the temple garden, and he innocently asks the Roshi if he should gather up the pile and throw it in the trash. "Stupid fool," he barks, "don't you know that there is no such thing as trash?!" The Roshi goes on to separate the leaves from the pebbles and stones, storing the leaves for fire kindling and placing the pebbles and stones under the rain gutters. Then he takes the remaining clods of earth and moss and tamps them into the ground where holes and indentations lie. The huge pile of leaves, pebbles and dirt has now completely disappeared. "Do you see now?" the Roshi thunders, making sure the lesson is not forgotten. "In people and things, there is no such thing as trash."

There is no trash indeed, especially in people. In psychotherapy, the more you talk to patients, the more you realize the wisdom of this statement. Our lives are very much like that haphazard pile of leaves in the temple garden. Clues to an entire chain of critical events in someone's life can be found in a seemingly innocuous word or gesture. Our job as therapists is to gather the "leaves" of thoughts and feelings from the patient and to use them as a kind of fire kindling, and when we can, take some of the "moss" of life experience and fill in some holes that have appeared in the garden of the mind. Patients are patients because someone, somewhere, sometime, took those sacred thoughts and feelings and labeled them as trash. No such thing!

Content from:
"Novice to Master" by Soko Morinaga (2004)

Absolute faith

2005-12-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

This is it, the place where, as they say, "the rubber meets the road." In zazen, absolute faith is when the lower extremities meet the cushion at the end of a heartbreakingly bad day, when the sitter faces the wall in absolute stillness and solitude. There are no comforting words, no messages of hope to fall back on, just silence. This is the point where we begin again, over and over, day after day, with only the mystery of our buddha nature to guide us. It's not easy. The stillness frightens many off the cushion, and they go back to television, food, or whatever other comforting distraction is available. So it takes a certain kind of absolute faith to keep coming back to face that wall.

And lo and behold, I've been finding that it takes a kind of absolute faith to practice psychotherapy as well. It is incredibly difficult to sit with a patient and to have enough faith to know silently that things will be okay, despite evidence to the contrary. Or, conversely, that things aren't and never will be okay for that person. That takes faith too. The need to judge, to try to fix and to soothe with comforting words always wants to bubble up to the surface, even though doing so is not always the most helpful approach.

The other day, at the end of a session with a woman who has experienced unspeakable cruelty all her life, I said goodbye and was walking away. From behind me came a soft voice filled with sincerity. "l love you," she said. As I think about it now, my eyes fill with tears. Coming from someone who's heart has been repeatedly torn out and discarded like garbage, what better example is there of absolute faith? At night she faces that lonely wall and starts over, just like we do.

What do we do with evil?

2005-12-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

I was in a used bookstore this afternoon and came across a copy of "The Life of Milarepa." Milarepa was a Tibetan yogin and poet in the eleventh-century and is one of the most fascinating and seminal characters to be found in Tibetan Buddhism. The story goes that when Milarepa was seven his father became ill and left instructions with relatives to manage the young boy's sizable inheritance after he died. But the moment the father passed away, the relatives stole all the money and property, leaving Milarepa and his mother in absolute poverty. In order to exact revenge, Milarepa's mother sends him to powerful mystics in order to learn the ancient art of destructive spells. He learns well, and to begin the cycle of revenge he kills all the guests at the relatives' son's wedding. Then he destroys the crops of cruel and unsympathetic neighbors with devastating hailstorms.

Milarepa soon begins to regret all the destruction and sorrow that he has perpetuated. He seeks out a teacher to show him the way to atonement and enlightenment. He finds a teacher, Marpa, who knows that Milarepa has done such despicable deeds that his training must be equally arduous. Before he will accept Milarepa as a student, he sets up a series of tests that include building a huge tower by hand. When Milarepa sets the last stone, Marpa admonishes him for his lack of devotion and has him tear the tower down and start over!

Reading this story got me to thinking: none of this is new. Similar injustices happen to people every day, and revenge is meted out today in very un-mystical ways. How do we get rid of a tyrant in the 21st century? Kill 30,000 to 100,000 Iraqis (does the exact number really matter?). How much have we really learned since the eleventh century? What exactly do we do with evil? I'm convinced that evil is absolutely necessary in life. Without it, we would have no yardstick to measure our goodness and our capacity for compassion. As human beings have the capacity to kill 3,000 people in an absolutely evil terrorist act, we also have the capacity to commit compassionate acts that save equal numbers of people. The power lies within each one of us as human beings to make the right choices for ourselves. Without exception, we all have the capacity within us to be terrorists, and to be saints.

By the way, after Milarepa achieved enlightenment, he forgave his relatives.

Some reflections on Matsuoka Roshi

2005-12-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

By the time I stumbled upon the Zen Center of Long Beach in 1985, Matsuoka Roshi had already been in America for decades. Black and white photos hanging on the walls showed a young, compact and incredibly vital man practicing judo with some tough looking characters in Chicago in the 1950s. Tidbits of information passed along by him in conversation had him drinking with D.T. Suzuki at Columbia University in the same decade. And me? I was just a dumb kid off the street who was badly in need of some discipline. The first time I stepped into Matsuoka's zendo, I felt a strange mix of emotions. Here was a man who could clearly beat me into the ground if he wanted to. He was tough, uncompromising, and obviously someone you would not want to mess with. At the same time, there was something really genuine and compassionate about him. I had absolutely no self-esteem, but Matsuoka Roshi pumped me up in some unusual ways. When I headed off to Japan in 1987 with no plan other than to chase girls and get the hell out of Orange County, he told everyone that I had been invited to Japan by the Ministry of Education! Then, when he visited me in Tokyo a year or so later, he tried to convince every pretty waitress to give me their phone number because I was "young and lonely."

More importantly, he taught me how to sit zazen, which changed my life and continues to change my life every day in amazing ways. With misdirected anger blowing off of me in every direction, he taught me how to turn that energy around and focus it where it counts: in the pit of the stomach. It saved my life, just like hearing Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page for the first time did when I was fourteen. People like Matsuoka are hard to find. Sometimes they're around but we just refuse to see them. Hard to believe it's been twenty years!

For starters...

2005-12-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

Masao Abe, a prominent Zen Buddhist scholar from the "Kyoto School" in Japan, once made the following declaration about this thing we call "Zen:" "A normal education means to add on; a Zen education means to take away."

Similarly, in the field of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the patient is already burdened with a lifetime of notions, labels, opinions, diagnoses, etc., piled on by everyone from parents to teachers to well-intentioned therapists. So, the theory goes, why add on to the pile? Better to sit quietly, listen wholeheartedly and file away any pretensions associated with "saving" someone in distress. When the time is right, both the psychoanalytic patient and the zen student will begin to look within for the inner resources required to heal themselves.

Zen and psychotherapy represent Eastern and Western approaches to studying the mind and integrating the insights that we experience into our daily lives. I hope that this blog will help to generate discussion on the similarities and differences between the two.

Today's suggested reading:

"Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy"
Edited by Polly Young-Eisendrath and Shoji Muramoto