Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

17

COMING HOME

The difference it makes

Enko Else Heynekamp

Introduction

This chapter deals with extensive Zen training and the impact it can have on the
practice of psychotherapy. My starting-point was the feeling I had that such training
made me work with clients differently than before and the wish to get a better
understanding of the way in which these differences manifested themselves. Briefly
I can say that Buddhism involves insights, exercises, and rules of life, which can be
important for psychotherapists and which can complete, complement, or correct the
theory and practice of Western psychotherapy.
The title of this chapter, ‘Coming home: the difference it makes,’ refers to a
common way of pointing to the spiritual path. It is depicted as an inner journey, as
coming home to oneself, in order to return to the world afterwards, when one has
been changed, to a world that is then perceived differently. One can make this journey
on a large scale by actually retiring to a monastery for a longer or shorter period, or
on a smaller scale by drawing one’s attention back within oneself and following one’s
breath a few times.
First I’ll say something about my background. Next, using vignettes from
psychotherapeutic practice, I’ll try to clarify the influence that my training in
Buddhist meditation and insights has had on this work. Finally, I will offer a short
description of Buddhist ethical guidelines.

Training and experience

When I was ordained as a Zen Buddhist nun in 1995, sold my house, and resigned
from my job, I had already been working as a psychotherapist for twenty years, more
or less full-time. I treated my first few clients during my graduate internship in
psychology, where I learned both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and behavior
therapy. Afterwards I became a psychoanalyst and I did a three-year course in
body-oriented psychotherapy as well.
I started with Zen in the early 1970s, but after three years this faded into the
background. It was not until 1990 that I started Zen again, quite serious by this time.
I have been training in India, the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands with