Windhorse Zen Community

An Overview – this material is copywrited, please do not reproduce.
Printable Version

“If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you.
If you do not bring forth that which is within you, it will destroy you.”
The Gnostic Gospels

A Zen Master once said, “Dharma practice is like the ocean; the farther out you go, the deeper it becomes.”  Deeper levels of practice offer the hope of more than simply calming our seemingly endless internal chatter, and helping us become more ‘mindful’ in each moment.  Intensive forms of practice also open us to a level of non-dual awareness, one that transcends the conceptually-grounded understanding we so naturally take for granted — and in doing so reveal new possibilities of freedom. But those who are drawn to these deeper waters may find themselves confronted by painful and disturbing mindstates.  The Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross somewhat poetically referred to this part of the journey as passing through “the Dark Night of the Soul,” but surely, finding our way through these realms is never easy.

Further, as Western Buddhist practice has unfolded from its Asian roots, we’ve seen new and powerful influences come into play.  More than a few practitioners are grappling with difficulties and challenges seemingly unique to this post-Freudian culture and psyche.  Clearly, as our ‘normal’ levels of awareness begin to dissolve, old feelings and memories can re-connect us to other times.  And as the more subtle, pre-conscious leanings of the mind come into operation, all kinds of unexpected (and unwanted) states can be revealed.  Intensified forms of practice tend to accelerate and magnify this whole process so that along with the ‘friendlier’ kinds of experiences, we may also find ourselves feeling exposed and isolated, lost in helplessness, or drowning in negative and self-critical states.  Still more threatening can be the hurtful and destructive feelings that can sometimes break through the surface.

Almost reflexively we turn from these kinds of disturbing mental and emotional phenomena, or cover them over with something more ‘acceptable.’ One of the real dangers of spiritual practice is how easily, and unwittingly, it can be used ‘in the service of repression’ – even though part of us knows that the more we try to push unacceptable things away the more powerful they become.  By learning to work with difficult opening experiences directly, however, their resolution can lead to rich and meaningful change. As one person wrote after going through some intensive therapy:

“How are you?  I am well, very well!  (some words of thanks, and then)  I have never been more at peace with my life.  I feel so grounded and satisfied with life around me.  I never knew that trees whispering in the wind could bring me joy, yet they do.  Every so often reality sneaks up on me and I am in awe of life…   Forgive me if I am a little sappy, I just have so much to be thankful for.”

These words were written by someone who had grown up with the painful complications that can arise in an alcoholic family.  She came to therapy when a crisis — one of many she had taken a hand in creating, was threatening to destroy her personal and professional life.  The changes she went through came about not only because some disastrous unconscious forces were finally dealt with, but also because of the re-emergence of her original life-affirming spirituality. 

A turning point in our lives often comes when we are able to see our part in the re-creation of certain difficulties.  Not surprisingly, the same kinds of self-sabotage can be at work in practice — and they are almost always fueled by repression.  We may even find that, paradoxically, the very efforts we’re making that lead to an initial sense of openness and connection can also be activating unconscious dynamics relating to self-isolation and failure.  Some of these dynamics work in ways that cut us off us from our true aspiration, while others work to undermine our strongest efforts.  If we aren’t aware of what’s going on, practice can suddenly grind to a halt, or in superficial ways circle back on itself over and over again. I find it painful and disturbing to think of how many people may have walked away from practice, blaming themselves and feeling like failures, because they had no clear sense of what was happening, or how to proceed.

My experience as a Zen teacher and a therapist has been that at least for some Westerners, traditional forms of practice don’t deal effectively with these disruptive unconscious forces.  People can have awakening experiences, even deep ones, and still gain little insight into these hidden realms of their psyche.  Dharma practice is about birth and death, not working through old, unresolved feelings. However, if we attempt to by-pass these issues they can haunt us – creating problems for ourselves and others at many different points along the Way. 

This is what happened with one Zen practitioner, a woman working with another teacher, who found herself becoming more and more depressed during and after each sesshin.  Hoping and believing that sitting itself would take care of these practice-based experiences she continued, but after working in this way for seven years there was no improvement. As she told me:

“The darkness and gloom and depression (kept growing) bigger and bigger and (lasting) longer and longer… until that last sesshin that prompted me to come here (to therapy).  It was so bad… I had given up hope of even trying to get rid of it.  I thought, ‘let me just survive this sesshin’”

Our work started readily enough with the difficulties that she experienced during practice, but as we went deeper immense blocks began to arise.  It soon became clear that there were other forces at work, hidden beneath a more civilized veneer.  As we continued, and the resistances were stripped away, layer upon layer of highly charged feelings began to break through. The work was difficult, but after finishing therapy she told me in a follow-up session we had a year-and-a-half later:

“Well, my sesshins and sitting in general wound up being… (a pause, with tears welling up). and this is something that really… . I just treasure it so because my sittings became joyous after that.  And we’re not just talking about sesshins.  I will sit on a deck, which is where I sit looking out on a lake, and I will have little balls of happiness just bursting around me.” 

She also told me about a number of other changes that had happened, including how her work situation had improved, and how her relationships had become much closer, and then said:

“Before we did this, I never recalled my dreams, or very rarely, and it was really hard, and if I did, there was always some disturbing element to it.  As a kid, I always used to fly in my dreams, and then I lost that as I grew older.  It became harder and harder to fly.  I had a lot of chase dreams, and when I was a kid I could fly away.  When I got older, I couldn’t fly away, so I stopped remembering most of my dreams. Right after, shortly after the experience with you, and up to now, where it’s so vivid I remember everything in great detail, in vivid color, and I fly.
 I tell you, (laughs) I love going to sleep. I love dreaming.  I’ve been in outer space.  I’ve flown on Mars…  it’s joyous, I do aerial ballets in these things, I mean I am swirling around, all sorts of wonderful things, seeing everything from a bird’s eye view, and there’s no body.  There’s just an awareness flying. There’s no concern.  Even as a kid I had to flap my arms to fly (laughs) but I’m not aware of a body, I’m just flying”. 

Both people quoted above experienced a wide range of feelings during therapy, often feelings that had been squelched for many years.  Without question, though, the most significant changes they went through had to do with initial experiences of anger that opened into profound experiences of long-buried rage. This rage, in running its course, then called forth many more complex layers of feelings.  Though grief often comes up as part of an opening process in therapy, for most of us it is the complex layers of anger we most heavily guard against.  And though grief itself may be intensely painful, unconscious anger — and the guilt and grief connected to it — is threatening on a whole other level.  Naturally a part of us wants to avoid the whole thing. As the second person put it, referring to her sesshin experience:

“I wasn’t sure what I was doing at that point.  I felt utterly hopeless at being able to tackle this feeling of depression which as I think was just a result of pushing back anger…

And then, talking about her initial experience of therapy:

 “I didn’t want to be looking at this anger; I didn’t want to be (experiencing) this anger.  I wanted to get away…  But right from the beginning there was an accompanying feeling of ‘there’s something happening here’. I’m not stupid; I knew something was happening… and that this was going to turn into something that would be valuable for me.” 

Unfortunately in many Buddhist circles there’s the strong underlying message that compassion is a sign of spirituality, but that anger is an expression of ego — one that inevitably leads to suffering.  During my early years of training I believed much the same thing.  Over the years, however, I’ve come to see how complex our conscious and unconscious feelings can be. I’ve also come to understand that nurturing a simplistic view of anger is not only inaccurate, but that it reinforces the long-standing forces of repression. 

Just opening up various levels of either grief or anger, and leaving the guilt and other related feelings untouched, can lead to greater disruption in a person’s life. The resolution of core issues depends not only on allowing the hidden depths of these feelings into consciousness, but on working through all the layers of genuine feeling that inevitably follow. Clarifying the defensive structures, which are the actual processes we use to avoid, deny, and repress our emotional life, can be enormously helpful; uprooting the core issues is what leads to lasting change.  Of course, working on deeper levels calls for special training, and must be done with great care.

Fortunately there are relatively new and powerful ways of working with the unconscious – both with its strengths as well as with its more punitive side. The two people quoted above went through a type of therapy based on the work of Dr. Habib Davanloo, a psychiatrist living and teaching in Montreal.  Over the past 30 or 40 years he has developed a system of psychotherapy known as Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, or ISTDP, which is an experientially-based therapy specifically designed to “unlock” areas of the unconscious sealed over by repression. Many people have found that it fits seamlessly with their Zen practice, even though it deals with areas all-to-often side-stepped in Dharma work. 

All our feelings, particularly compassion and anger (which, in truth, are often unconsciously linked), can become doorways to deeper practice and greater freedom. And this is where Dr. Davanloo’s work shines.  ISTDP helps us to take down the walls that have internally closed us off from our feelings, and at the same time isolated us from others.  It helps to reveal and uproot the defensive structures that obstruct and disrupt our essential freedom.  It helps us to re-discover for ourselves what it means to experience feelings directly, and with our whole being.  It clarifies the difference between indulging in what we commonly (mis)understand to be grief or anger, and directly experiencing them. Genuine grief does not lead us into helplessness or isolation, nor does it last ‘forever.’ True anger has nothing to do with screaming or slamming doors, punching walls, or bursting into tears. It’s not about getting an upset stomach, grinding one’s teeth, or running away.  It’s not about cold or frozen states, or getting depressed.  Nor is it about smashing a pillow or exploding into crude or cruel speech.

When we authentically experience any strong feeling, it surges through us.  We know exactly what we’re feeling, and who it relates to — no questions asked. Grief surges through us in waves, while true anger is experienced as a clear, direct state filled with great presence and power. These are primarily internal experiences, freed from anxiety and tension.  They come with a firm sense of control and focus even as intense grief or rage unfolds.  When we freely experience anger, this experience itself opens a doorway to many other feelings, including forgiveness, repentance, and love.  Once we directly experience these feelings, we’re free to communicate them, to act on them, or to simply be with them.  Again, these are dynamic internal experiences.  They do not depend on venting or cursing, or slipping into weepy, self-pitying or self-deprecating mindstates.

This kind of work is certainly not for everyone.  Not everyone needs it, and not everyone is suited to it.  ISTDP certainly won’t resolve all the obstructive mindstates that arise in practice (of which there can be many), and going through this therapy doesn’t guarantee any particular type of experience.  At the same time, because ISTDP resolves unconscious issues, it can, and has, made a real difference in many people’s practice – particularly in areas related to intimacy and empowerment.  The second client mentioned above sent me this account after returning from a backpacking retreat:

It was still dark when I awoke, but a hint of dawn was just visible in the eastern sky.  I sat and clutched my sleeping bag about my chin.  It was then that I noticed ‘Hank’ beside me, propped on his elbows as he looked out into the predawn sky. There, straight ahead and centered over the lake was a dazzling diamond, hanging in solitary brilliance and reflecting its shiny twin on the calm lake waters. Venus was rising.
Time stopped.  Something shifted.  The moment hung suspendedand a sublime calm enfolded me.  The boundaries blurred and I was scarcely aware of any distinction between outside and inside.  Wispy thoughts fluttered at the edges of my consciousness and I sensed a sureness, a bone-deep knowledge that this moment, this very moment, was an echo of what Shakyamuni Buddha experienced when he gazed at Venus on that December morning…

The Dharma is many things, but above all, it is a teaching and practice dedicated to helping us realize the essential non-dual nature of existence — and it would be a mistake to confuse ‘unlockings’ with awakening experiences.  With a genuine kensho or satori experience, the sense of a fixed and separate self falls away — the deeper the awakening, the more vivid and alive is this all-embracing Wholeness.  Though there are clearly instances where ISTDP-based unlockings have facilitated awakening experiences, no one actually going through this work would ever confuse the two.

Although ISTDP is primarily a form of psychotherapy, it is not simply for people experiencing “mental problems.”  Integrated with Dharma training, it has helped people engaged in all levels of practice change their lives.  With an “unlocking” unconscious defensive structures lose their stranglehold, freeing us to directly experience our authentic feelings. By uprooting long-standing characterological defenses we can live and practice with greater freedom.  And when we break our identification with these crippling defensive structures our hearts naturally open to all that’s around.

Dharma practice has gone through countless changes over the centuries and many of the forms it has taken would certainly be unrecognizable to even Shakyamuni.  As he himself taught: “Do not be (mis)led by Holy Scriptures, or by mere logic or inference, or by appearances, or by the authority of religious teachers. But when you realize that something is unwholesome and bad for you, give it up.  And when you realize that something is wholesome and good for you, do it.” Applying this teaching on an intrapsychic level we could say that we are in the process of both exploring and refining ways of dealing with the disruptive side of the unconscious as it manifests itself in this culture, and of bringing forth it’s rich, life-affirming potential.

Buddhism has both informed and been transformed by each new culture it has entered, a process that doesn’t happen overnight.  As one visiting Japanese monk commented some years ago, “The first hundred years are always the hardest.” In coming to the West, Buddhism is attempting the biggest, most radical leap of all.  My hope is that our part will be to help bring clarity and light to this unfolding, to find ways of keeping this precious teaching and practice strong and vibrant without diluting its timeless essence.  The absolute value of our Dharma work is always and forever present, but we might also say that in a very real sense there has never been a time when the cultivation of strong practice, and with it strong and caring people, has ever been more essential.

Dharma Practice and the Unconscious
Part II — Personal Accounts

The first part of this article presented an overview of some of the complexities that can arise as the unconscious is mobilized through Dharma practice.  In hopes of offering a broader, and more personal, perspective on this subject, I’ve asked several Zen practitioners who have been through Davanloo’s ISTDP to write about some of their own insights and experiences.  Naturally some people are more eloquent, and some have histories or experiences or openings that are simply more dramatic.  Such accounts tend to be more readily included in a piece like this.  The people whose accounts have been given below were not all my clients, and all but one of them refers to experiences that took place within the past 15 years.  Needless to say, ways of integrating these ways of working are continually being refined. 

The truth is that much of the time the work is fairly simple and direct. Resistances are addressed, a layer of the unacceptable feelings comes to the surface, and there’s an opening through which a range and depth of previously repressed feelings reveals itself – grief, rage, guilt, and much more.  Being simple doesn’t mean easy. These repressive forces can be tenacious.  Most of us have spent a lifetime developing sophisticated ways of avoiding what seems so unacceptable, often at great personal cost.  However, with a through-going opening there comes an understanding and a freedom that continues to unfold and mature in a person’s life, and through their practice. Here are some of the responses that came back.

Personal Accounts:

- 1 -

I grew up in a four-generation family house where Catholicism was an ever-present reality.  From my earliest years I was surrounded by people who served others in the Church, and I was moved by the “mysterious” aspects of the faith such as praying to an invisible God. I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to this way of life, and so at 19, I became a missionary nun.  In the years that followed, I was stationed in places like Micronesia and Latin America. As the years went on, I found myself increasingly drawn to the contemplative traditions like those of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Much happened over these decades but the time came when I realized that even though I dearly loved working with people from other cultures, the lack of a deeply sustaining, transformative spiritual practice was taking its toll.  Also, subconscious matters which I had never worked on from my childhood were affecting me and needed attention.

Because of these issues I explored various forms of meditation, including Zen, and I asked for permission to get some therapy in order to address the depressed mind states I was experiencing. I was allowed to do therapy in Mexico City.  At this time, I also took up Zen practice. Three years later, after much soul-searching, I made the difficult decision to leave the order I had belonged to for 30 years and enter fully into Zen training.  So at the age of 49, I moved to upstate New York and entered into a full-time residential program at a Zen Center where I had previously spent a sabbatical year in training. 

Shortly after moving back there though, the place began to undergo great changes due to a major building project. For various reasons, it also seemed that the spirit of training had changed.

What I experienced was a vein of roughness in the treatment of staff members.  It also seemed that we were being encouraged to put feelings aside and focus entirely on the practice.  Even during sesshin, I felt the existence of certain “social classes” formed by those more privileged ones who had passed their initial koans and those who had not.

Though I had a hard time with all this, I tried to put my anger and frustration aside and hold my attention on my practice as best as I could at that time, when what I needed was to address my subconscious issues.

I should say that above all, I valued the opportunity to really concentrate on practice with the chance of having dokusan a couple times a week and being able to do several sesshins a year.  I continued to apply myself to practice and was sitting for about five hours every day. Staying with my practice continuously throughout all my activities eluded me though, and found I could only manage to do that in spurts. 

As time went on I began to run into a serious problem during the longer sesshin. Right about the middle of each one, I would get completely blocked and unable to regain my practice.  It was like torture because I so wanted to advance, but I didn’t know how to surmount this obstacle.  The teacher I had at that time seemed to dismiss these blocks, along with the great physical aches and pains I was experiencing, as being merely psychological.  Looking back on this, I can see how this response made me angry because it seemed that somehow I was being blamed for this situation. At the same time, I felt helplessness because I didn’t know what to do about it. I can also see that I was angry because practice itself was not leading to any clarity about all of this, and I wasn’t getting any help in addressing these difficulties in dokusan.

At one point, my teacher finally suggested that I try some therapy, and after some consideration, I decided to give it a try.  The therapy I had done in Mexico City had touched on difficult childhood experiences and issues that at the time related to some of the nuns in my community.  My therapist there was able to get at some of the subconscious material, but whenever anger, sadness, or grief arose, they were primarily discussed and analyzed. This work was somewhat helpful in that it produced a measure of intellectual clarity, but it didn’t lead to any significant long-term changes.

Because of this earlier experience with therapy my plan was to have a few sessions with this other kind of therapy to see if it could help me discover where the blocks in my practice were coming from. I soon realized that it was going to be a much more integral and thorough-going process.  It was evident that at least some of the feelings I was trying to hold back actually had to do with the teacher and training situation itself.  In some ways the training situation reminded me of the familiar and oppressive Catholic spirituality of the denial of oneself in the dualistic way of spirit over matter. 

This therapy helped me see that there was more going on than just that. I had been practicing intensely for several years and this work made it possible to access deeper levels of my psyche.  Along with this, the new kind of therapy I was doing opened me up to so much that had been buried years ago.  I began to see how much patterns from early childhood were at work, and how my resistance to getting in touch with so many unacceptable feelings, both from the present and from the past, were affecting my efforts to go deeper. 

Therapy was an extremely intense and difficult process. When very fierce anger or grief would begin to arise it was frightening.  Sometimes it seemed like they would swallow me up, or worse, that if I allowed myself to feel them that they would never go away. Even though there were times when I was strongly tempted to quit, I knew on some level that that would have been even more painful. I had been searching for something all my life, and believed this therapy could help clear the way.  As the work progressed I found it increasingly possible to experience a whole new range of feelings.  Somehow, along with these openings, I also found it possible to work more continuously throughout the day on practice.  This sustained way of working deepened and intensified my sitting practice, and this more concentrated involvement in zazen helped me stay more present and open to the therapy.   

The end of therapy coincided with the beginning of a new stage in my life, So many things had changed!  I was able to leave the “protective” structures I had lived in most of my life and move on to blend my love of working with children with the richness of engaged daily practice. I was able take another big step to be with another teacher and sangha.  Energies were released in therapy that inspired and sustained these changes, and my path has become a merging of practice and everything about my life.  In working through many complex issues, I’ve found a new sense of freedom and a new sense of owning my life and my practice. I can better sort through my own issues and can thus better recognize the ways I limit my own growth. Also, my practice no longer depends on anyone else’s approval or style, and this has been a particularly grounding experience. There is a joy and lightness now, even in the midst of the challenges of teaching ESL to children and young teenagers in the public school system.  This work can sometimes seem overwhelming, but I move along living it all in a new way, delighted that I don’t have to “go any place special” to deepen in this practice.

- 2 -

I had been meditating for nearly 25 years and had experienced many benefits, but I still had a recurring problem at retreats. Unfailingly, on the third day I would become depressed.  I had no sense of what it was about, or where it came from. It didn’t matter how energized or determined I was before the retreat started. Sometime during the third day I would descend into a heaviness of despair, loneliness, and a crushing ‘Trapped’ sensation. Sometimes I would be able to “get past” it, and sometimes it dragged on until the end of retreat, but I never understood its origin, and so it kept on repeating.

Within an hour after the end of the retreat the depression would lift. I tried every skillful means offered to me, to no avail. The probability of this depression occurring made me dread and sometimes avoid retreats. Finally I undertook some intensive psychotherapy with a therapist who utilized a direct, experiential focus. The moment-to-moment exploration of my emotional reactions was a good complement to my meditation practice. I quickly learned that I had been unwittingly using my meditation to avoid unpleasant emotions, or those which I had judged to be unacceptable or “not spiritual”! We worked together to observe and clarify the mechanisms I habitually used to guard against these difficult experiences in the present and past, then used this clarity to delve into the actual experiences themselves.

My treatment quickly zeroed on my feelings from a particularly difficult time in my life.  I had cognitive knowledge of the events, but was cut off from the actual feelings themselves.  When I was 2 years old my brother was born seriously ill and near death. He had required the constant attention of my mother, every waking moment for a year. My father was at work during the days and so my parents relied on my ability to take care of myself.  I remembered teaching myself to ride a tricycle, riding up and down our front walk all alone. I received high praise from both parents for being so “good,” not requiring attention or being any trouble.  On the surface, I was thrilled to have pleased my parents. But underneath, I was enraged at them both, as well as at by brother.

Through therapy, I finally got in touch with the unbelievable intensity of this rage. And almost immediately afterwards experienced the profound remorse for unknowingly holding such hurtful feelings towards the people I loved most of all. Along with these painful waves of feelings came the insight of how I had been turning this destructiveness against myself, sabotaging so many things in my life as some sort of self-inflicted punishment for these feelings.  

 I came to see how these depressive states were only one part of a larger pattern which included a lack of belief in myself, and a sense that I did not “deserve” to be happy. The “good girl” identity I had formed had created a falseness in my relationships and inhibited my true strengths and ability to pursue the things which were most important to me,  This very dynamic easily worked itself into all aspects of my life, including my spiritual practice.

In the midst of my therapy, I went to another retreat.  As usual, on the third day, my depression began.  This time, however, thanks to therapy, I sensed that unconscious feelings were arising, so I took some time during a break to go off by myself. The retreat was in a rural setting, so I found a couch on the porch of one of the cabins and simply opened up to the underlying feelings which the practice itself had brought so close to the surface.  From deep inside, the rage came. “I HATE being silent! I don’t WANT to sit still ! I hate being quiet and not disturbing others! I want to run and yell and get in the way! I want someone to look at me!” The anger, with its violent urges and accompanying remorse, continued into the next round of sitting. While I sat still and quiet on the outside, internally I was absorbed in the feelings and memories. As all this was happening, the connection gradually emerged: the setting of the retreat-silence, unobtrusive movement, eyes down, lack of social contact — had been triggering all these feelings from my early life, but it had all been buried deep in my unconscious. It was all so clear. Instead of dealing with my anger in a direct, experiential way, I wound up punishing myself, and using depression to sabotage my retreats.

By the end of the round of sitting the waves of feeling had run their course, and I returned naturally to practice. What followed was the clearest, deepest, most spacious retreat experience of my life. I had finally let myself off the hook.  Gratefully, in subsequent retreats the depression never returned.

- 3 -

After several years of residential Zen training and intensive sesshin practice, I still hadn’t seen into Mu.  My practice was deepening, but during each sesshin I felt like I was hitting a road block. A giant sign would appear that read “Do Not Enter”.  My teacher at the time, ever patient, simply waited for me to leap beyond whatever barriers I was creating over and over again.  As time went on, I became aware of other practitioners who were in therapy and wondered if this might be the ticket.

Was this a way to go further with practice?  I was torn.  It seemed intriguing and mysterious, but everyone I talked with, including my Zen teacher, said that they didn’t think I needed therapy. Still, in spite of this, I found myself compelled me to look into it anyway.  It wasn’t until leaving residential Zen life that I finally gained the courage to try it for myself.  I must have met with a therapist 2 or 3 times, asking questions, testing the water, making sure it felt safe, before actually deciding to dive in.  

Right away, this intensive therapy appealed to me.  It wasn’t at all what I had imagined.  The work was demanding and challenging.  I felt like we were in an alliance and we were working together to get to the bottom of things.  As time went on I began to feel alive in away that I only felt after days of sesshin practice. It was so reminiscent of dokusan, with the therapist challenging my every assumption, highlighting and questioning all my defenses and drawing me forward into myself. 

As I look back on that time now, I see how it was the combination of sesshin practice and the therapy, like a one-two punch, that left me with no where to hide. Parts of me began to emerge that had been sealed over for so long.  My energy level increased as I saw how much my desire to separate from my feelings had kept me paralyzed and numbed out.  But my desire for freedom was stronger.  I will never forget the therapy session when for the first time I truly felt free enough to drop my resistance and finally open to my deep pain and anger and ultimately to my joy.  I felt for the first time. 

Soon after, in dokusan, Mu opened up so suddenly leaving me without a choice, there was no turning back, and the freedom that swept through that room enveloped everything and was breathtaking.  There was no tension, no anxiety and no roadblocks.  There never were in fact. 

For many years I really thought that Zen practice was enough for me, but it later became apparent that I needed to work in other ways as well.  Without sesshin practice, I don’t know that I would have ever have faced my self squarely, and without the help of therapy I don’t know that I would have gained the insight and courage to leap beyond myself and begin to experience what true freedom is all about. 

Conclusion:

Again, I’d like to emphasize that ways of incorporating a focused intrapsychic perspective with Dharma work is still in its initial stages.  I have tried to present a balanced view, and not create false hopes or expectations.  The first hand accounts given above have been solicited — they are by no means scientific or unbiased.  Obviously, not all practice issues are psychodynamic, and not all psychodynamic issues affect practice. I’ve also tried to make it clear that this work is not necessarily for everyone — like practice it is very powerful and should be used cautiously.

That being said, there are people whose lives and practices have been enriched.  There have been ‘unlockings’ that have taken place in the midst of practice, and with few exceptions people have found that dealing more directly with the unconscious has helped clarify and deepen their work on the mat.  There have been at least a few awakening experiences (kensho) unquestionably tied to unlockings that occurred within a therapeutic setting. 

In closing, I’d like to express my gratitude to so many who have contributed their own understandings to this multifaceted process, and for the openness and courage so many people have demonstrated in actually going through this work.