Zen-ish Thoughts About Psychotherapy

Diet and medications are sometimes called the medicine of matter because they change the chemical matter we are working with. Physical therapy, Pilates, yoga, and so on are sometimes called the medicine of space, as they help us function in the three-dimensional world.

The primary elements of physics are matter, space, and time. Is there also a medicine of time? Some people use this expression as the category for psychotherapy. Therapy helps to free us from excessive, unhelpful influences from our past, and from forward-looking, unhelpful anxiety about our future, so we improve the way we move through time. Perhaps this is actually the most direct and least fanciful of these "medicine of" categories.

Like all forms of Buddhism, Zen is very interested in that ever changing moment of time we call now. We are advised again and again to "be here now", not living in or being badly influenced by the past, not dwelling in either wishes or concerns about future. As this is exactly the aim of psychotherapy, is Zen therapy? Is therapy Buddhist?

The second answer is very clear. Therapy is not Buddhist. Therapy did not historically arise within a Buddhist context. It does not embrace, nor is it even aware of the majority of Buddhist teachings. But the answer to the first question is more nuanced.

Zen skills, techniques, and interactions with a teacher are fantastic tools for the work one does to be oneself more fully, to evolve oneself, and to function in the world, both concurrently with or independently of therapy. Therapy relies on skills, techniques, and interactions with the therapist that are substantially different from Zen practices. That is, Zen is not therapy, but it is therapeutic.

Zen's emphasis on now is therapeutic. The emphasis Zen places on what is actually so, stripped of as much illusion, delusion, desire, pain, bias, and misperception as possible is therapeutic. Zen's calm and equanimity are therapeutic. The Zen distinction between one's circumstances and one's response to their circumstances, between what is happening and how one responds to what is happening is therapeutic. Recognition of the vast and easily missed interconnections among things, central in Zen, is enlightening in a way that allows one to avoid many wrong conclusions and needless stressors about self, others, and the world in general. That's therapeutic.

I am sure I cannot list all the ways in which a Zen perspective, or more generally a Buddhist perspective, is therapeutic in the deepest sense, and also a guide for healthy psychological tactics in the most pragmatic sense.

Our psycho-social complexity makes it very difficult to be a human. Since being a human is so difficult, and therapists and teachers are themselves humans, being exceptionally good in these roles is doubly (or perhaps triply) exceptional. If you are not getting a lot of value out of your interactions with a particular therapist or teacher, reflect first on how much you are letting them in, then on whether you need to better align on objectives and methods, then on whether or not you happen to be a good fit for each other, then on whether they are perhaps not that great at what you are paying them to do, at least not for your current needs.

Consider too that you don't have to agree with everything they say to benefit from time spent with them. You might even think they get everything wrong, and yet still find that what they say gets you thinking and feeling in a newly productive fashion. It actually doesn't matter if they are right (although that is very helpful). What they say is just a tool. What matters is what you do when that tool is in your hands. They are not there to fix you. You are. They are just contract employees meant to help you in one way or another. If they stimulate you to make progress, who cares if they happen to be right or not? Therapy, learning, and personal development are about you, not them.

Different in content and style, but mutually supportive, both Zen and psychotherapy are in the general domain of the "medicine of time". Each of them helps us to have a better now, after now, after now, … by defanging pain from the past and anxiety about the future, by increasing our accurate perception and clear thinking, by respecting our feelings without losing control to them, by seeing our own responsibility and response-ability.