Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy

his or her ongoing individuation, unfolding of self. In such a scenario, the therapist
or teacher is sitting with the learner in a way that the learner knows she is cared for
—that someone has her best interest in mind—that someone has her
personal-psychological-spiritual transformation in mind, although not pushing for
this either. The therapist/ teacher will primarily (and simply) be with the student—
in the moment. In the case of psychoanalysis, the analysand is held by the parent
substitute in the form of the therapist, and in Zen, by the master and by the sangha
(the meditative community).
Thus, it is the establishment of this essential, foundational base—solidified through
a good-enough relationship and enhanced through therapy and/or a sitting practice
—that promotes the ability to be alone, and further contributes to the individual’s
ability to experience nothingness, emptiness (Van Dusen 1998), and the loss of self
so often addressed in Buddhist writings. Perhaps it is the sense of ‘at-one-ness’
experienced from the personal history of being held (by mother/father, therapist,
teacher/master, and sangha) that will also enable the individual to have both the
courage and the ability to better conceptualize and experience sunyata—the
fundamental Buddhist doctrine of emptiness. Furthermore, I submit that the sense
of at-one-ment—achieved through being held in this psycho-spiritual relational
dynamic—will insure that the student will not become lost in some ill-conceived
notion of emptiness, nor ‘tormented [as is the “uninstructed worldling”^3 ] when
something permanent within oneself is not found’ (Abe 1998:184), nor lost in the
ceaseless emptying movement of Sunyata (Abe 1990:28), but will instead, in the
words of Suzuki, enable this ‘vast emptiness [to be] traversed’ (Suzuki 1964:44).
In short, I believe we have found that the ‘journey of 1000 miles’ begins with
neutrality.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank John J.McKenna, Loren H.Miller, Alan N.West, and Polly
Young-Eisendrath for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of
this manuscript.

Notes

1 For a further elaboration on hermeneutics, see Miller 1996. In this essay, I discuss the

hermeneutic interpretation of text from the perspective of Gadamer, Dilthey, and others.

2 Kawai (1996) in his Fay Lecture Series discusses, in this context, the unique problem

that arises in the Japanese culture with respect to the lack of separation of subject and

object (self and other). Both the Japanese language and culture, according to Kawai,

tend to keep the distinction between subject and object rather vague. Thus, on one

hand, both parties are better prepared to move into (and experience) the two-person

relational field, e.g. ‘oneness [is] at the base of all togetherness’ (p. 121); both parties

are...‘floating in the evolving relationship’ (p. 122). On the other hand, a complete

merging of self and other (re: Dogen’s warning) frequently becomes a matter of concern.

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