A patient once commented, "illness and death are rude". We often react to physical illness, death and death anxiety (physical or existential) as intrusions, as if they were alien presences and avoidable. How does this influence clinical or spiritual process when the therapist or teacher, the client of practitioner, becomes ill?

The koan of physical illness is a spontaneous co-creation emerging in the intimacy of the relational matrix. As a tool of transformative inquiry, the koan invites us to explore the nature of embodiment and varieties of co-emergent subjectivities in interpersonal life. How do we relate to pain, constriction, loss of previous functioning, potential death, or to weakness in a figure we depend upon? When we sit with another, where is suffering located? This inquiry opens a multiplicity of perspectives and new possibilities of being, and invites mutual discovery and mutual awakening.

We will reflect on the profound embedded nature of physicality and relationship, share stories, and explore methods for mutual awakening from the perspectives and interplay of Buddhist training and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

In this small group we will explore points of interface and divergence between the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and constructs such as mentalization, reflective functioning, and "moments of meeting" emerging from the work of developmental researchers and psychoanalysts such as Peter Fonagy, Jon Allen, and Daniel Stern. On the one hand, mindfulness practice, classically a solitary endeavor can play a unique role in promoting a quality of freshness, clarity and nonjudgmental acceptance to experience. On the other, psychotherapy has much to offer in enlivening interpersonal reflection. In this group we will use both discussion and experiential work to explore the way in which an integration between these two traditions can further facilitate the development of self-awareness, and the capacity for and interpersonal subjectivity.

There may be no more abstract notion in Buddhism than that of "emptiness". As a goal it is particularly troublesome to Westerners for whom the notion of "emptiness" refers to a void that is a vacant hole when applied psychologically, connotes purposelessness, worthlessness, lack, and emotional desolation. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition however, the realization of emptiness is the supreme fulfillment of the Buddha's message. The Heart Sutra, beloved and chanted in virtually all Buddhist traditions, contains the core teachings on emptiness and it has inspired practitioners for centuries. However, no directions are given for how we might embody these instructions into our everyday life. This workshop will focus on the Buddhist meaning of emptiness and how this abstract idea can be embodied in our everyday life. Our dialog, held from a Zen and a Jungian perspective, will illustrate how such embodiment can pragmatically alter the underlying assumptions and expectations regarding our relationship to ourselves and to others, bringing liberation and transformation.

Karma is a topic of great fascination for Westerners. It's easy to understand a law of cause and effect that says: actions have consequences for character and destiny. However, the idea that one can be born with bad karma sometimes causes confusion about free will and determinism.

There is no exact equivalent to karma in psychoanalysis. A well-known psychotherapy teacher used to say: "You really should choose your parents carefully!" For non-Buddhists, this is only wishful thinking.

Psychoanalysts do, however, talk about "psychological legacy" and there is increasing interest in the idea of "trans-generational transmission of trauma." For example, if your parents or grand-parents were in some way brutalized during their lifetime, that violence will affect your psyche even if - or especially if - they don't talk to you about it. Like karma, this concept can also be confused with absence of volition. If you inherit a tendency to be victimized - or to victimize others - that in itself isn't your fault, but it doesn't excuse bad behavior.

Psychoanalysis tries to help patients understand their legacies and gain compassion for themselves, but not to stay stuck in the past.

Perhaps we can say that in both Buddhism and psychoanalysis it is important to balance responsible agency with the recognition of limits. That is, we create our lives, but not from scratch.

Description coming soon.

Buddhism and psychoanalysis both recognize the importance of understanding dreaming in personal and spiritual growth. But, like sleeping, dreaming is usually looked upon as an individual phenomenon. Sleeping and dreaming are seen as experiences of the individual that offer only indirect reflections about the other. The notion of "sleeping together" is largely sexualized, distracting us from examining the night side of relationships, while the idea of "dreaming together" is rarely addressed. Informed by Buddhist, depth psychological and sleep science, this discussion will address the question, if life is but a dream, can we dream together?

This workshop will summarize the particular ways that Buddhist wisdom can provide essential resources and techniques for psychotherapists. However, some cautions will be presented to help maintain the integrity of each perspective. In the same vein, understanding the Western psychological approach is useful to Buddhist teachers, but they need to be clear about how their role differs from that of a therapist. Specific techniques will be discussed and there will be time to discuss cases and examples of how to apply these principles.

There are many methods used by meditation teachers and therapists to facilitate inquiry into the individual's inner world. No method is entirely free from our conscious or unconscious assumptions and views, though some involve more interpretation and "directing" than others. Jason and Marjorie will focus on the views, perceptions, attitudes, and knowledge that we bring to the process of exploring subjective experience with another.

Drawing on Shinzen Young's Vipassana approach to working with feeling states and Carl Jung's model of psychological complexes, this group will address the relational suffering that arises from our emotional habits, especially those rigid and repetitive patterns that interfere with our seeing ourselves and others as we are. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions about meditation and psychotherapy, as well as your personal concerns.

Both psychoanalysis and Zen demand that the individual works with all internal states. Anxiety, which provides the fuel for psychic and spiritual growth is no exception, especially the deepest and most primary form: fundamental or basic anxiety, which comes with the realization of the transitory nature of human existence. Essentially we need to suffer or permit our experience, however, we tend to cling to or grasp after "preferred psychological states." In this workshop we will discuss the Buddhist concept of production the real and unreal aspects of being in relation to movements from conscious to unconscious and back again to demonstrate the distinction between destructive & creative anxiety as described in the Buddhist canon. From this perspective we will discuss the uses and misuses of psychotherapy and spiritual practices that contribute to resisting such experiences, for instance, with hasty prescriptions for meditation as a simple palliative. We will explore practical alternatives that integrate basic Buddhist and psychoanalytic principles that take into consideration dynamic unconscious processes, transference and countertransference dynamics, Buddha's "five causes of suffering" and Dogen's notion of "total exertion." Traditional Zen teaching stories and clinical vignettes will support and enrich the discussion.

What is the relationship between a healthy sense of self and a healthy ego structure and the realization of the inherent lack of a truly existent self? The Buddha taught the inherent emptiness of the self in order that we understand things as they actually are and be freed from suffering. For this realization to occur there needs to be sufficient health psychologically in order that the individual can endure the challenges on the path of liberation. From a psychological point of view the self as a focus of attention has both positive and negative features. A "too much with us" self leads to shame and narcissistic disorders. These will be the areas of discussion in this group.

Freud objected to the Biblical commandment to "Love your Neighbor as yourself" because he believed this form of altruism to be what we would call a dual form of love or a disguised form of egoism. The other or the object is being loved in the image of the small self or ego. From a Buddhist "no-self" perspective, love has no subject or object. Only non-dual or empty love has the potential for true manifestation.

Freud did not have a way of understanding a non-dual form of love based on no-self, Big mind, or on what is "Other" to the small self. The word love is often used to describe different forms of love: romantic/sexual, narcissistic, altruistic. All these forms of love are dual in that they are based on an ego/object distinction. Yet the dual subject/object or self/other relationship can also be experienced and understood in a non-dual way. Here the subject is loved but not as an object, and the object is loved but not as a substitute for the ego. Dual and non-dual love precisely describes a transferential and transformational process taking place in both the analyst/analysand and the teacher-student relationships.

In this small group we will explore the pathways of love through the no-self experience of the therapist/patient relationship. There will be both theoretical and experiential participation to help reveal love and true self in the moment of being/non-being even in the midst of suffering.

Given the unpredictability of circumstance most of us will experience varying degrees of trauma over the course of our lives. Some forms of trauma occur with sudden force and shatter our fundamental beliefs of the world as steady, predictable and reliable. Other forms, like cumulative trauma, transpire over time, and rob us of our natural vitality, confidence and sense of wholeness. Buddhism and contemporary psychology offer differing but complementary means by which we can come to understand trauma and heal its effects. In this discussion group we will explore both disciplines' contributions regarding the alleviation of this form of human suffering.

What can the contemplative traditions of Buddhism and the clinical traditions of psychoanalysis teach each other about the nature of silence? Is the silence of the meditator or the Dharma teacher the same as the silence of the analyst or the analysand? What do we mean when we say silence is deep or when it is an expression of intimacy? Or when it is a barrier that one or the other hides behind? Why are we sometimes afraid of silence - either within ourselves or between one another? How has silence been misused to avoid speaking unpleasant or even unbearable truths? What can only be expressed by silence? Why when asked to reveal the ultimate Truth of his teaching did the Buddha remain silent?

Parenting is challenging, demanding, and stressful, but if negotiated well, one of the most satisfying jobs of life. Good parenting combines the ability to be strong and effective in the parenting role while remaining sensitive and responsive to children’s needs and motivations. How do parents accomplish this? The parenting behavior of mothers with Buddhist training versus those from a psychoanalytic background may look the same, but there are distinct differences. Buddhist practice emphasizes the importance of direct observation of one’s personal experience, and through the inner discipline of remaining present in that experience, gain understanding and wisdom. A key concept for parents is the ability to foster an attitude of trust in the intrinsic goodness and autonomy of their child. A psychoanalytic perspective, on the other hand, focuses on the importance of recognizing the origins of one’s internal dynamics that determine our reactions to situations, people, and children. Awareness of these dynamics allows parents to increase their capacity to regulate emotional states that are considered key in strengthening the parent-child attachment. Discussion of parent-child interactions from a psychoanalytic perspective versus a way of being will be the focus of our conversation in this group. Parenting is challenging, demanding, and stressful, but if negotiated well, one of the most satisfying jobs of life. Good parenting combines the ability to be strong and effective in the parenting role while remaining sensitive and responsive to children’s needs and motivations. How do parents accomplish this? The parenting behavior of mothers with Buddhist training versus those from a psychoanalytic background may look the same, but there are distinct differences. Buddhist practice emphasizes the importance of direct observation of one’s personal experience, and through the inner discipline of remaining present in that experience, gain understanding and wisdom. A key concept for parents is the ability to foster an attitude of trust in the intrinsic goodness and autonomy of their child. A psychoanalytic perspective, on the other hand, focuses on the importance of recognizing the origins of one’s internal dynamics that determine our reactions to situations, people, and children. Awareness of these dynamics allows parents to increase their capacity to regulate emotional states that are considered key in strengthening the parent-child attachment. Discussion of parent-child interactions from a psychoanalytic perspective versus a way of being will be the focus of our conversation in this group.

Trauma and chronic stress can shock and dysregulate a person emotionally and physically, leading to flooding and numbness, flashbacks, anxiety disorders, addictions, sleep difficulties and disrupting fundamental beliefs about the world. The system of meditation developed in classical Yoga works at articulating methods that help reduce the impressions and influences from past experience and replace them with positive thoughts and strategies for constructive action. Our conversation will explore techniques from psychotherapy and Yoga meditation practices for addressing trauma and stress.

Wisdom often unwinds out of emotional experiences, and experiences of wisdom often fill one with emotion. Spiritual paths often seek wisdom, and psychotherapy often seeks emotional healing. One becomes the other and neither exists alone, both transmute us. When emotion and wisdom are intertwined and mutually reinforce each other, then what is the difference between psychotherapy and a spiritual path? Psychotherapy and spiritual paths utilize strong relationships (e.g., teacher and student, therapist and patient) to accomplish their goals. Seeing through to the content and the meaning and wisdom that grips us and changes in the energy transfer from one person to the other will be the subject of this discussion.

From the Buddhist point of view, the very notion that "self" truly exists is the main cause of our habitual unhappiness. In Western psychology, on the other hand, patients are often encouraged to discover who they "really are", as if a "true self" - the irreducible subject of experience and aim of development - were an unquestionable fact. Mediating these two approaches is the "constructivist" view, which sees our "self" as continuously produced through interpersonal relations, emotional patterns and constructive imagination. We will discuss both Buddhist and constructivist analyses of the origination of views of self and their transformation through meditation and therapeutic practice.

Description coming soon.

We will discuss how both Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy contribute to a kind of emerging maturity in its practitioners. In fact, it could be said that both disciplines help foster something akin to the early Greek ideal of what it means to be fully human. Both disciplines tend to contribute to the development of higher order thinking--especially postformal thinking. But, even more important, they help the practitioner analyze and come to terms with both complexity of thought and complexity of feeling, and eventually find ways to translate such awarenesses into action. In short, we would suggest that being fully human goes far beyond the typical limits of the personal. We'll look at being an "island"/"lamp"/"refuge" (same word: dipa) as an existential state based on the satipatthana sutta, and the Immeasurables as referents for mature thought and action. Some of Allport's early thinking about the mature state will be included.

Asking people to use their own language, metaphors and expressions, Walter and Linda will start the group discussion providing time for people to talk about their experience during meditation sittings. Allowing a dialogue to develop, Walter and Linda will facilitate by exploring with the person views, beliefs and attitudes about meditation and inner experience.

Description coming soon.

Description coming soon.