Now I'm going to assume that you're all psychotherapists. If you're not, you'll have to imagine you might be. And I'm also going to assume that you're all interested in meditation and mindfulness practices. even if you are not a regular meditator. And I'm going to assume that we're going to be here today and tomorrow and beyond that I'm not going to assume anything. Now I felt comfortable meditating with you just now. In seminars, public seminars, I often don't because there's some people who

[01:01]

aren't comfortable with, aren't used to sitting, and then I feel uncomfortable myself, sort of forcing them to sit. So I don't have any... I mean, I'm willing to do this any way that makes sense or that we want or you want to do. But I don't think, unless you want to, we need to start with half an hour of meditation or whatever. I almost wore my wedding ring. You don't understand why I say that, but... Because the custom is, if you're teaching, practicing or meditating or in a practice center, you don't have any jewelry or...

[02:20]

when you're not married, you're zero. So I thought, should I wear my wedding ring and come as a social person who needs psychotherapy? And then I thought, should I wear my ring as a social person who comes to you and needs psychotherapy? A Zen non-entity. So I'm leaving it up to us, you know, what you want to do. And maybe at the break we don't have to look in such straight lines. We could make a little more room for people to sit in the room. So you want to maybe change?

[03:44]

Yeah, at the break, maybe. And this was suggested by Norbert and Angela and I guess some other people here in Kassel. And the idea was to, as I understand it, was to focus on the relationship between therapy and Zen practice and psychotherapy and Zen practice. Yeah, and it interests me to do this, so, you know, agreed to it even though I'm in the process now, especially next year, of cutting back on my schedule a lot.

[04:51]

And it's a major issue in the West today. What's the relationship between Buddhism and psychotherapy and meditation and psychotherapy? And there's some similarities between, and obvious relationships between the two. And... Many Zen, many current Western Buddhist teachers really combined

[06:04]

psychology and psychotherapy and Zen practice. It's a natural thing to do, but I actually think it's wrong. Es ist eine natürliche Sache, das zu tun, aber ich glaube, dass es falsch ist. I mean, how can I say it's wrong, but anyway I think it's wrong. Hier kann ich sagen, dass es falsch ist, aber ich finde, es ist falsch. Wrong because it's actually quite a lot more interesting to see their differences than to see the similarities. Denn ich glaube, es ist viel interessanter, And I want to be able to recommend to a practitioner that he or she do psychotherapy. and say that's something different to do than Zen practice. As I said in the seminar I just finished in Hannover last night, yesterday afternoon. Zen is not in the

[07:16]

a religion in the sense that it thinks it's the truth. It thinks it's true, or assumes it's true, but it doesn't assume it's the truth. Yeah, so many things are true. And if it's not the truth, then it's only one way to look at, understand our human life. And it's a particular way then to shape our human life. Okay. Now, you can look at Zen as a kind of bucket full of possibilities. Yeah, and you can take this one out or that one out and try it out.

[09:00]

But if you look at Zen as a whole, it's a way to shape our mind and body and activity. And it's not the only way to shape. There's other choices you can make. So that the decision to practice or to make practice part of psychotherapy is also a decision, I would like to shape my life or the client's life in this particular way. And another way is to just take, for example, mindfulness practices out of the Zen bucket. And use them to some extent the way Zen uses it, but to use it any way you like.

[10:07]

Mindfulness in general is not a Zen practice. A very specific kind of Buddhist mindfulness is Zen practice. Just being alert and attentive, yeah, that's Just nice to do that, but that doesn't mean you're practicing Zen. So I think it's perfectly fine to, and why shouldn't, if I was a psychotherapist, I would adopt what was useful from wherever I found it. But in addition, it's probably, even if that's what you do, it's probably useful to understand the difference between the general application of some kind of practice and the traditional or specific application of a practice.

[11:43]

Now, I once helped organize the ITA meeting in Japan many years ago. And I met the two pioneer Jungian analysts in Japan. Yeah, very nice guys. I liked them. They were fun to talk with. One of them showed me a great secret restaurant. Since it's characteristic of the difference in the culture, I'll tell you about the restaurant. And since the cultural differences are very big, I'll tell you something about the restaurant.

[13:10]

You walked down a side street in Kyoto. in a rather downtown area, down a little side street. And then you passed a long wall, a pretty high wall you couldn't see over, which is common in Japan. And then there was a little door About this high. No marking, just a door in the wall. And you opened it and you went in and there was a big garden. And the whole restaurant faced the garden. It was quite big. I mean, maybe 100 people could be in it. And you had to walk past the window. It was quite a distance, like over those trees, but everyone could see who was coming.

[14:13]

And unless you were known, you weren't welcome. Yeah. So you really had to know this place and be known before you could have a comfortable meal there. They wouldn't exactly physically throw you out, but the service was unbearably slow. So you had to know the restaurant and be known in the restaurant to be able to comfortably take a meal with you. But if you came back fairly often and put up with the service and smiled a lot and they liked you, eventually it was okay. Anyway, these two guys were interesting and one of them had written a whole series of papers about Jungian psychology that he waited 20 years to publish because he thought there would be a hostile reaction to them in Japan.

[15:36]

These two men were very nice and one of them had a whole series of papers Now, even though I was like these two men and they were very intelligent and devoted to what they were doing. I don't really believe that Jungian psychology applies very well to Japanese people. They were assuming we human beings are all the same everywhere, and I don't think that's true. So without a kind of revolution in your views of the world, maybe Zen practice doesn't work very well for psychotherapy in the West.

[16:38]

Also, ohne eine revolutionäre Veränderung eurer Weltsicht, glaube ich nicht, dass Zen sehr gut in der Psychotherapie wirkt. So, but still, it's, yeah, 30, 40 years ago, when I got it, let's see, when was it, 63, four about. We sent out a brochure about founding a Zen monastery to 20,000 therapists in California. And We got virtually no responses. And the only responses we got were hostile.

[17:50]

Buddhism was seen as a threat and a mistake and all kinds of... Yeah, now, of course, the atmosphere and the feeling is very different. So this is, I think, an important moment in... and point up the script and trying to understand the relationship between psychotherapy, psychology and Buddhism. Okay, so in short I will say I don't think there is any Buddhist psychology. completely true, but that emphasis is far more important than saying there's a Buddhist psychology.

[19:04]

For one reason, there's no idea of psyche in Buddhism. So I think it's better to call Buddhism a mindology in contrast to psychology. Now, if you try to understand it as a mindology, I think, yeah, this will be more productive. Another difference is that Buddhism almost entirely deals with symptoms, not causes. The classic example is someone shot with an arrow and you Don't try to find out who shot it before you get the arrow out.

[20:21]

Und das klassische Beispiel ist, jemand ist von einem Pfeil getroffen worden und es wird nicht versucht herauszufinden, wer den Pfeil abgeschossen hat, bevor der Pfeil entfernt worden ist. So in practice we're always emphasizing get the arrow out, who cares who shot it. So in practice, the focus is on pulling out the arrow and it's not important who shot it. somebody shoots it over and over again, then you might have better go to a therapist. Find out who the causal archer is. And partly in relationship to the Hindu idea of Atman, some kind of permanent transcendent self,

[21:28]

but primarily for yogic reasons, the historical Buddha emphasized the body as self. So it's mindology, the body is the self. It's much more that emphasis. And you treat the work with the symptoms, not the causes, primarily. And in general... You treat the health, not the illness. As I said the other day, the typical, you go to a Japanese doctor and you get about 25 pills for the things that are good about you. to make them stronger, and they give you nothing for what the illness is.

[22:44]

Because the traditional idea is the body should heal itself. but the doctor can help the body heal itself. So in all of the remedies, which you could call also psychological remedies, there's still an attempt to strengthen the person in every way possible as the first approach.

[23:46]

In anticipation of coming here, I found, because it interests me, what can we do here? What will come from this meeting? I find it's influenced, to a significant degree, most of the seminars and teachings I've done in the last few months. This kind of seminar. This seminar, knowing what we might talk about, has influenced what I talked about in the last several months of seminars. That's your fault.

[24:48]

In preparation for this seminar... So I don't want to... I mean, I'm trying in this... little introduction here, to just bring up a few of the differences I see. You know, and we can talk about what Buddhism means by self, how Buddhism defines consciousness and so forth. But I'm going to leave where we go up to you. Yes, and I'll see if I can keep up. Catch up. So... Let's take a break, a stretch, and then afterwards, I don't know how long, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour?

[26:09]

I don't care. Half an hour then? Yeah. And then I'd like to have some discussion with you, questions from you, comments. Let's make a pause, and then I'd like to have, until about half past, then I'd like to have a... I mean, Norbert sent me a number of things you had discussed. Self-improvement versus nowhere to go, nothing to do, and various things. So I want to find out what we should do. Okay, thank you very much.

[26:52]

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