Moving even beyond the view of meditation and psychotherapy as complementing
one another is Miyuki’s approach which smoothly integrates the two into a
psychotherapeutic whole that makes no distinction between the personal and
universal. Miyuki’s case vignette concerns a middle-aged, male client from Japan,
who sought assistance with his depression. In addition to being culturally Japanese,
the client was also a Judo practitioner and, so, already familiar with some of the
teachings of Buddhism and receptive to Buddhist practice. The client claimed never
to dream, yet to his own surprise remembered a dream image and brought it to the
therapy (Miyuki 1977:156). Thus, the situation with this particular client allowed
Miyuki to combine seated meditation, dream analysis, free association, and
amplification of the cultural symbolism.
With this client, who did not remember dreams, it seems that the meditation was
essential to opening up a relation between the ego and the Self. Here there was no
distinction between personal and universal. The universal—suffering and its
resolution—are exactly the personal. They have no other existence. Having already
established meditation as part of the therapeutic process, Miyuki suggested to the
client to meditate on the dream image as one would a koan.
Psychologically speaking, by focussing on a koan one can create a vacuity in
the consciousness, thus the consciousness is wide open to the emergence of the
contents of the unconscious, and this results in the activation of what can be
called an altered state of consciousness.... Zen sitting can, therefore, be
understood as a form of the transcendent function as it facilitates the transition
from one psychological condition to another.
(Miyuki 1977:160–1)Miyuki’s psychological interpretation of koan practice is reminiscent of the idea that
one does not need to depend upon the traditions of koan practice codified in the
koan collections, and institutionalized in Zen monasteries. Rather, it is life itself that
presents each person with their own koan. However, according to Foulk, the ‘idea
that “anything can serve as a koan”...is a modern development; there is scarcely any
precedent for it in the classical literature of Ch’an, Sǂ n, and Zen’ (Foulk 2000:26).
Not only is Miyuki’s interpretation of the koan psychological, but it is also based on
the interpretation of koan practice promoted by Suzuki and his followers. Suzuki
represented Zen to the West in a version that was deeply imbued with Romanticism.
In this interpretation of koans they are paradoxes that force the mind beyond the
constraints of reason. Because Suzuki was so widely influential in molding the
Western conception of Zen, this interpretation of the koan is commonly accepted as
the only one. However, the image of Zen, and of koan practice, presented by Suzuki
and the other members of the Kyoto School, including Abe, must be understood
against the background of their own historical situation. Attempting to defend Zen
from attacks by the modernizing and Westernizing forces of Meiji Japan, they
constructed an interpretation of Zen that made it congruent with the then-modern
Western religious philosophies of James and Otto (Sharf 1993; 1994; 1995).
176 LOCATING BUDDHISM, LOCATING PSYCHOLOGY