Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

again. ‘I can’t help you,’ I say. She keeps quiet for a moment, then

continues: ‘I’m quite well.’ She has a new lover, is very happy and isn’t

drinking more than two glasses of wine a day. It appears to be a new

experience for her not to get a good scolding, she’s beaming. We find

something with which I can help her for the few remaining sessions: she

wants to learn to be more assertive towards her ex-husband.

Of course I couldn’t foresee the striking break which took place in this session.
Suddenly she changed from a complaining, helpless victim of the circumstances into
a shining beautiful woman in love. What was happening exactly at that moment?
What was it that gave us the space for this surprising change of atmosphere? I want
to approach this question by considering the state of concentration of the therapist,
which is called ‘free floating attention’ in psychoanalysis. This is somewhat similar
to the mindful awareness training in Zen meditation.

Meditative attention

Meditation is one of the aspects of the Buddhist way, besides insight, or wisdom, and
ethical guidelines. There are different forms of meditative practice, but I’ll talk about
mindful awareness in particular.

Mindful awareness

This is the awareness of whatever happens within and around us. In Zen it involves
following the breath, experiencing body posture and movement, registering feelings
and thoughts. Handling one’s teacup carefully or noticing that someone getting off
a train needs help, are forms of mindful awareness too. It’s striking that being present
mindfully, without judging, without focusing on a specific object, either focusing on
oneself or something neutral, is not being taught in psychotherapy education as a
skill, as far as I know. Apparently, therapists are assumed to be able to do this already,
without training, even in such a complicated situation as a relationship with a fellow
human being. Why not first practice it somewhat? Since this mindful awareness may
be the most important instrument of the psychotherapist, I want to pay special
attention to it. How can we train it and can we find out more about it?

Exercise

By studying how mindful awareness is developed, we might get a clearer picture of
what is meant by this concept. When one is starting to learn meditation, watching
or counting the breath is one of the first few exercises. In this exercise we continue
following the breath scrupulously and we count each time, we breath out, up to ten
and then we start again with one. As soon as we notice that our mind is occupied
with something else, we resume counting our breath. An untrained mind is unable

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