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Buddhist Influences
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Training courses at the Karuna Institute have been strongly influenced by Buddhist principles. Its founders are Maura and Franklyn Sills. In the 1970's, Maura was a nun, and Franklyn a monk, in the Buddhist Theravadin forest tradition of upper Burma. They studied under the guiding influence of the Most Venerable Taungpulu Sayadaw. The Sayadaw taught deeply transformative awareness based meditation processes. Through his teaching, it was directly experienced that awareness is inherently transformative and healing. The ability to rest fully in present time, within a deepening field of awareness, was the focus of basic meditation practice. Gradually, the practitioner may have a direct experience that awareness is at the root of his or her human condition and is by its nature whole. Awareness is sensed as a ground state which is luminous and complete within itself. It permeates and supports everything. The Tibetans call this Rigpa, the inherent ground of pristine awareness. From this state, even deeper truths concerning the emptiness and openness at the heart of the human condition
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may unfold. Within this context, it may be sensed that, at the heart of our conditions, we are already free and whole. This truth has been called our Buddha Nature, Big Mind and Brilliant Sanity in various Buddhist traditions.
People generally come into therapy because they are suffering in some way. Suffering is relational in nature. It has relational origins. Our self-nature, and the suffering it organises around, arises within fields of relationship. Whether this entails our relationship to early caretakers, to traumatic experiences or to a basic misperception of our human condition, it has relational roots. The healing process is likewise relational in nature. The relationship between therapist and client becomes the field within which enquiry, healing and insight may arise. Suffering has deep roots. Within a wide context, its origins are found within the dynamic tension generated by the relationship between emptiness and form. We seem to be a separate self, a discrete form, yet this form is intrinsically empty of any abiding reality. It arises and passes, and holds only a relative, conditioned reality. A tension is generated, we seem to have a self, yet we are not the self. We struggle to stabilise a process
which is totally open and inherently unstable. Within a Buddhist understanding, everything arises and passes, is insubstantial and impermanent. The self is devoid of an abiding nature. It too is impermanent. We generate self-constructs and self-forms in order to feel a stability and centered-ness in our lives. Yet this misses the point. Our intrinsic openness is obscured by the self-forms we generate. We cling to the forms of our life, yet miss its essence.
One basic thing which can be explored within this context, is the "how" of our self-process. How do I internalise, maintain and become my defensive strategies and personality processes? How do I generate and hold onto suffering? What are the roots of my self-constructs and how do I operate? How do I hold myself together? How do I do myself? This is not an intellectual exercise. Within a therapy context it can focus on a body based awareness and the present felt sense of experience. The client may discover that the embodied nature of the self can be witnessed. A relationship to their own arising process can begin to be generated. Within a therapy context, this enquiry can be used as a vehicle to help the client open to a wider sense of life process. The process nature of the self may be sensed. A major breakthrough for some clients can be a shift from "I am a self", to "there is a self", as a felt experience. Likewise, on a felt level, a simple shift from "I am angry", to "there is anger",
can be life changing. The self and its constructs may be sensed to be a process, rather than a thing. With this realisation, space naturally arises. It may be directly perceived that our true nature is more open and whole then we may have ever imagined. Both therapist and client may discover that awareness is intrinsic within each moment of consciousness and is an expression of being, rather than of the self-processes we
have become.
Thus it is through a deepening awareness of our human condition that its nature is understood and penetrated. Within the midst of the conditions present, an inherent emptiness and openness may be sensed. This intrinsic health, or openness, is usually obscured by the day to day movement of our conditioned self. The inherent spaciousness and openness of being becomes a guiding light within meditation practice. It is through the spaciousness intrinsic within our human condition, that suffering may be relinquished. This has important implications for therapy. The heart of the therapeutic process is not to rework or change our self nature, but to penetrate it and appreciate our inherent freedom. The focus of the work then becomes a non-judgemental and non-directed enquiry into the present arising of our self-sense and of our conditioned reality. Our suffering is seen within a wider spiritual context of the inherent freedom and openness of our human condition. This is, in turn, held
within a wider understanding of our self-process. Within a Buddhist understanding, it is seen that we are not really separate from each other. Consciousness is wider than the confines of our brain function and bodies. All phenomenon mutually arise and are totally interdependent. Thus my state of consciousness, and my state of mind and body, is not separate from yours. In the words of the Buddhist Master, the Venerable Thich Nhat Han, we interbe.
Again, this has vast consequences for the therapeutic relationship. Therapy work is seen to be based on a relational field within which the state of consciousness of both therapist and client are not separate. They interbe. Both therapist and client are thus on a mutual journey of exploration in which their processes are interdependent. This goes beyond the usual concepts of transference and projection, and extends into a mutually arising field of consciousness. The therapist learns to read the information which is communicated within this wider field and to respond appropriately. The work is not about interpreting or directing session work, but is about deeply listening and responding to an enquiry into the conditions which arise, and which are communicated within the present moment of time. Therapy work becomes a joint practice which engages both therapist and client in a mutual enquiry into the nature of their human condition. Within the heart of the most painful and
confusing conditions, even within the midst of deep pain and suffering, it may be perceived that we are intrinsically free. This freedom is never lost, only obscured by the very conditions and self-constructs we have become. The task is not to change these constructs, but to penetrate and perceive their nature.
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