Buddhism, Meditation and Modern Psychotherapy

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Buddhism, Meditation and Modern Psychotherapy
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Dr. Parker Wilson parkerwilson01_at_yahoo.com 626
392 4444
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• Beck, Richard (1998). Cognitive-behavioral
  therapy in the treatment of anger a
  meta-analysis. Cognitive Therapy Research,
  22(1), 63-74.
• Batchelor, S.R. (1997). Buddhism without beliefs
  a contemporary guide to awakening. New York
  Riverhead.

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• Annas, Julia (1987). Aristotles metaphysics. In
  J.L. Ackrill (Ed.) A new aristotle reader (pp.
  127-178). Princeton Princeton University Press.

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Psychotherapy and Religion

• What is the purpose of psychotherapy?
• Freud and tolerating the intolerable
• What is the purpose of religion?

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The Buddha

• Siddhartha Gautama
• Born to royalty
• Trained as a warrior and athlete
• Plowing festival compassion, natural Samadhi
  and first jhana (meditative absorption)
• Marriage at sixteen and then fatherhood in his
  late twenties
• Life of hedonism
• Venturing outside the palace
• The four sights aging, sickness, death and a
  sadhu
• At twenty-nine he renounces his lay life of
  luxury and takes a vow to end the suffering of
  all sentient beings (Bodhisattva)
• Asceticism and extremism
• The middle way
• Complete enlightenment (union of wisdom and
  compassion) at thirty-five

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The Buddha (cont)

• First turning of the wheel of Dharma
• The development of the Sangha
• The Three Jewels
• Buddha, his Aunt, ordination and feminism
• Buddha teaches for forty-five years and dies at
  the age of eighty

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The Buddha (cont)

• Four Noble Truths
• The Truth of the Existence of Suffering
• Three Types
• Universal Suffering
• The Truth of the Cause of Suffering
• Three Poisons
• The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
• The end of suffering is a possibility
• The Path to the Cessation of Suffering
• Noble eight fold path

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1st Noble Truth

• The Truth of Suffering
• Three Basic Types of Suffering
• Gross suffering
• My head aches!
• My feelings are hurt!
• Ive been shot!
• The suffering of change
• Eating, drinking, sex pleasure becomes pain
• What we want we chase, once caught we cease to
  want it and quickly become dissatisfied
• The myth of desire (You are my everything)
• Pervasive suffering
• Having a mind under the influence of ignorance,
  attachment and anger
• Having a human body
• Having a human life

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1st Noble Truth (cont)

• The Truth of Suffering
• Eight forms of universal suffering
• Birth
• Aging
• Sickness
• Death
• Being met with unfortunate circumstances beyond
  our control
• Being separated from people, places, and things
  that we desire
• Impermanence
• Karma

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2nd Noble Truth

• The Truth of the Cause of Suffering
• The Three Poisons
• Ignorance
• Attachment
• Anger

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Western Perspective Eternalism
• Aristotle / Descartes / Newton
• I is eternal / permanent
• I is independent
• I is inherent
• God (the creator) exists
• The soul

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Western Perspective
• Descartes Cognito ergo sum
• Freud Where the id was, there the ego shall be
• Strong ego is affirmed as necessary for success
  in work, love and play
• The ego is strengthened in therapy and low
  self-esteem is corrected
• Fixed, continuous duality of observer and object
• From the Buddhist perspective, western
  psychotherapy often seeks to reinforce and deepen
  the fundamental illusion of self (which is the
  root cause of our suffering as human beings). It
  is tantamount to treating a wound by rubbing dirt
  and filth into it
• Question Do physicians heal the body? Do
  psychologists heal the psyche?

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Eastern Perspective
• Hinduism
• I is impermanent
• I is interdependent
• I is inherent
• God (the creator) exists
• The soul or permanent self (atman)

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Eastern Perspective
• Hinduism
• Realization that self is a worldly construct
• Attempts to actualize (through spiritual
  practice) the true or real self
• Union of true self and God (Brahma)

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Eastern Perspective
• Buddhism
• I is impermanent
• I is interdependent
• I is not inherent
• No God (the creator)
• No soul / no self (anatman or annata)

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Poison 1 Ignorance of Self

• Eastern Perspective
• Buddhism
• The self (or ego) is a fundamental
  misapprehension that should be deconstructed on
  the most subtle and profound levels
• Self (or ego) is formed as one attempts to avoid
  the experience of suffering and craves and grasps
  at the experience of pleasure
• Self (or ego) should be deconstructed to reveal
  the truth of no self (anatman or anatta),
  compassion and emptiness
• Through Shamatha and Vipassana the illusion of
  self (or ego) begins to dissipate as the
  meditator realizes the interconnectedness and
  impermanence of many life experiences and mental
  phenomena
• Meditative Exercise (Impermanence of self)

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Poison 2 and 3 Attachment and Anger

• Ignorance, attachment and anger
• In Buddhist psychology the trio of
  misapprehension/ignorance, attachment/craving and
  anger/hatred are linked in a causal chain.
• Anger ultimately arises from attachment to the
  people, places, and things of our lives.
  Attachment is a superimposition of exaggerated
  good (or bad) qualities onto people, places and
  things that do not inherently possess such
  qualities (Dalai Lama, 1997 Chodron, 2001a
  Chodron, 2001b)
• New car
• New job
• New mate, etc

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Buddhism Three Poisons

• The joy and satisfaction of attachment are
  transitory and are impossible to sustain
• Freuds Pleasure Principle
• Inevitably stemming from attachment to
  pleasurable stimuli, then, is a sense of
  dissatisfaction and frustration
• New car is relabeled old car
• New job is relabeled the grind
• New mate is relabeled the ball and chain

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Buddhism Three Poisons

• Buddhist Understanding of Anger (cont)
• Existential frustration then becomes the fertile
  ground for the cultivation of anger (Dalai Lama,
  1997).
• Old car gets a flat and is relabeled piece of
  crap. Perhaps we curse at and kick the car.
• The grind is forced to freeze raises in our
  salary and is relabeled a prison. Perhaps we
  feel entitled and justified in committing a
  hostile act like stealing office supplies.
• The ball and chain is irritable one day and is
  relabeled the bitch or the inconsiderate
  asshole. Perhaps a heated and destructive
  argument later takes place. Perhaps this argument
  (and several more like it) is then used to
  justify an infidelity.

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Buddhism Three Poisons

• Buddhist Understanding of Attachment

Satisfaction

Attached
Insightful
More balanced
Attached
-
-
Dissatisfaction
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2nd Noble Truth (cont)

• The three poisons lead to negative Karma
• Karma the idea that all actions of body, speech
  and mind have spiritual consequences they leave
  imprints
• Old Testament to lust in ones heart for another
  mans wife is to have committed adultery
• Karma is the ultimate spiritual responsibility
• Causes and conditions
• Karma can be manifested or purified
• Reincarnation
• No God / no judgment
• No permanent hell
• No savior

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3rd Noble Truth

• The Buddha proved that the cessation of
  existential suffering (gross, change and
  pervasive) is a possibility
• The Buddha taught that this is a possibility for
  all sentient beings
• We must extinguish the three poisons from our
  mind streams and then our negative karma must be
  manifested or purified
• How do we do all this????

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4th Noble Truth

• The eight fold path to the cessation of
  suffering
• Right view
• Right intention
• Right speech
• Right action
• Right livelihood
• Right effort
• Right mindfulness
• Right concentration

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4th Noble Truth

• The eight fold path to the cessation of
  suffering
• Two paths for the development of wisdom
• Right view (to become deeply and profoundly aware
  of the four noble truths interdependence and
  emptiness)
• Right intention (to become deeply committed to an
  ethical life such that every action of body,
  speech and mind is motivated by insight, kindness
  and compassion)

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4th Noble Truth

• The eight fold path to the cessation of
  suffering
• Three paths for the development of ethics
• Right speech (abstain from false speech,
  slanderous speech, malicious speech, harsh speech
  and idle chatter).
• Right action (abstain from killing, lying,
  stealing, sexual misconduct and intoxicants)
• Right livelihood (any occupation that violates
  right speech and right action should be avoided,
  i.e., weapons and slave dealing, prostitution,
  butchery, etc)

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4th Noble Truth

• The eight fold path to the cessation of
  suffering
• Three paths for mental development
• Right effort (this is mental energy to be
  aggressive and angry takes effort and similarly
  to be compassionate and kind takes effort)
• Right mindfulness (here the mind is anchored in
  clear perceptions without being carried away by
  dualistic concepts like judgment and opinion
  e.g., the table)
• Right concentration (this is a single point of
  focus, the ability to focus the mind in its
  entirety on a single object of meditation and
  thereby create and sustain penetrative insight
  and realization this path is specifically
  associated with the practice of meditation)

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Emptiness

• Emptiness is THE foundational Buddhist
  psychological concept
• All things exist interdependently (not
  independently)
• All things exist in a context (not as stand alone
  objects)
• All things exist temporarily (not permanently or
  eternally)
• Ex. The train and the tea
• Ex. A coffee table
• Three Nature Theory
• Imputed
• Dependent
• Consummate
• The first two actually construct reality. Ex.
  Halle Berry
• The last is the empty nature of all phenomena and
  objects
• All things exist as a result of what we have
  thought -Buddha

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Emptiness of Self

• ...meditation on emptiness begins with gaining a
  sense of the inherent existence of which
  phenomena are empty, for without understanding
  what is negated, you cannot understand its
  absence, emptiness...Through carefully watching
  how you conceive your self, or I, to be
  inherently established, you will determine that
  the I appears to be self-instituting without
  depending on the collection of the mental and
  physical aggregates, which are its basis of
  designation, or without depending on any of them
  individually, even though the I appears with
  those aggregates. Proper identification of this
  appearance is the first essential toward
  realizing selflessness--ascertaining the object
  of negation.
• --from Yoga Tantra Paths to Magical Feats by
  H.H. the Dalai Lama

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Emptiness of Self

• The self postulated by the extremists, When you
  thoroughly analyze it with reasoning, Within all
  the aggregates of body and mind, Nowhere can
  you find a locus for this. Nagarjuna (2nd
  Century), A Commentary on the Awakening Mind
• No known neural correlates for self
• No known neural correlates for consciousness
• Underlying all mental affliction is our belief in
  our identity our permanent, eternal,
  independent selfhood. To release our grasp on
  this belief is to move towards mental health,
  peace and happiness.
• Complete enlightenment is the union of method
  (compassion) and wisdom (emptiness)

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Ethics

• Why are ethics necessary for mankind
• What is the relationship between civilization and
  ethics?
• What is the primary ethic of both medicine and
  psychology?
• Why are ethics necessary for psychotherapy?
• What is the relationship between successful
  psychotherapy and solid professional ethics?

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Ethics

• Religious Ethics
• Judeo-Christian Tradition
• Seven Deadly Sins
• Envy
• Gluttony
• Greed
• Lust
• Pride
• Sloth
• Wrath

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Ethics

• Religious Ethics
• Christian Tradition
• Sermon on the mount
• Eye for an eye leads to turn the other cheek
• Righteous injury leads to love your enemy
• Absolute generosity is proclaimed (give to all
  who ask and give more than they asked for)
• In later teachings Christ equates the internal
  experience (thoughts, feelings, fantasies, etc)
  of killing and lust to the actual physical acts
  of murder and adultery
• In essence, Christ encourages mankind to work
  with the seven deadly sins.
• Christ directs mankind to psychologically and
  spiritually recognize our own mental habits and
  to produce change from the inside out, for how
  else will one become able to love an enemy?
• It is no longer enough to be angry but not sin
  (old testament), now man must begin to train his
  own mind and heart he must begin to reshape his
  basic relationship with sin.
• How one works with sin, though, is left rather
  vague (faith, prayer, etc)

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Ethics

• Religious Ethics
• Buddhism
• Five Poisons
• Envy
• Pride
• Wrath
• Attachment
• Ignorance

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Ethics

• Religious Ethics Common Ground
• Now the teaching of Christ and Buddha have
  overlap. From Robert Thurmans book Anger (2005)
• Once you realize the absolute loss pertaining to
  killing or even angrily thinking to do it, you
  reverse your worldly values. You realize that
  tolerance, meekness, and gentleness are a supreme
  evolutionary advantage, breaking the vicious
  cycle of mutual domination, developing a virtuous
  cycle of increasing vulnerability and tolerance
  You begin to live more and more in the Kingdom
  of God, the domain of absolute strength,
  imperturbability, where nothing can harm you
  because of your ultimate flexibility beyond life
  and death, bliss beyond pain and pleasure. This
  is the domain wherein you can love not only your
  friends but also your enemies, wanting them all
  to be as happy as you, at the extreme end of the
  virtuous circle of mutual surrender beyond not
  only the hells of fire but also the temporary
  heavens of superficial pleasure, in the supreme
  bliss of freedom beyond all dualities such as
  self and other. (pg. 39)

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Ethics

• Buddhisms Ten Destructive Behaviors
• 1. Taking life 2. Taking what has not
  been given 3. Inappropriate sexual activity
  4. Lying 5. Speaking divisively 6.
  Using harsh language 7. Speaking idle words
  8. Thinking covetous thought 9. Thinking
  thoughts of malice10. Distorted, antagonistic
  thinking

Body
Speech
Mind
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Ethics

• Religious Ethics All Major World Religions
  Agree
• Killing
• Stealing
• Lying
• Sexual misconduct
• Intoxicants

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Ethics

• The Eight Mundane Concerns
• Most humans spend their lives chasing the left
  and avoiding the right
• Praise / Blame
• Gain / Loss
• Approval / Disapproval
• Pleasurable stimuli / Unpleasant stimuli

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The Six Realms of Existence

• The Hell Realm (sociopaths, AIDS babies)
• The Hungry Ghost Realm (alcoholics, junkies,
  anorexics)
• The Animal Realm (Psychopaths, gang bangers)
• The Human Realm
• The Demi-God Realm (B-List celebrities, wealthy
  hedonists, millionaires)
• The God Realm (A List celebrities, billionaires)

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Mindfulness

• Samadhi is also termed as a single point of
  focus but is generalized within Buddhism and
  Hinduism
• Shamatha is called mindfulness, calm abiding, and
  single point of focus
• The relationship of attention and insight both
  meditatively and psychotherapeutically
• Shamatha is spoken of as the foundation for
  meditative realizations in the Pali Cannon, the
  Lam Rim and the Bodhicharyavattara

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Mindfulness

• Shamatha (also known as calm abiding and single
  point of focus)
• Settling the Body in its natural state
• Object of meditation Tactile sensations of the
  body
• Settling the Speech in its natural state
• Object of meditation Abdominal sensations of
  respiration
• Object of meditation Sensations of respiration
  at the apertures of the nostrils
• Settling the Mind in its natural state
• Object of meditation The space of the mind
  itself

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Mindfulness

• Shamatha
• Settling the Body in Its Natural State
• Session time find a balance
• Correct posture
• Laxity and Excitation
• Three deep breaths
• Mind / Body relaxation
• Begin with body scan identify tension and
  create relaxation
• Bring your awareness (consciousness / attention)
  to the tactile sensations of the body as a whole
• Become disinterested in sight, auditory, taste,
  smell and mind stimuli (mental phenomena)
  select the tactile sensations of the body as a
  whole only
• Allow your breathing to settle into its natural
  rhythm
• When you become distracted or lost in thought,
  recognize your distraction (observe it)
• Bring your mind back to the object of meditation
• Goat herder and his flock
• 25 attention to my voice / 75 attention to the
  object of meditation

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What Is Mind?
Start Session 2

• Traditional Greek Senses
• Sight, Sound, Taste, Touch and Smell
• Traditional Buddhist Senses
• Sight, Sound, Taste, Touch, Smell and MIND
• What is Mind? Mind, in a gross yet practical
  sense, is that which experiences mental phenomena
• What would be left if you were suspended in a
  sensory deprivation tank? That is mind.

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What Is Mind?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understandings
  of Emotion
• Socrates
• Plato v. Aristotle
• Aristotle and Logic explaining ambivalence
• Aristotle and anger
• Seneca
• Early Christian church and emotion as the Beast
  Within (e.g., 7 deadly sins are all emotions)
• Descartes and Reason v. Emotion
• Emotion as irrationality

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What Is Mind?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understanding
  (cont)
• The creation of a taboo of subjectivity
• Because Aristotelian empiricism (as a mode of
  inquiry) is limited in its ability to explore and
  understand first-person phenomena (which is often
  also paradoxical by nature) many scientists
  mistakenly conclude that these phenomena simply
  can not be understood at all (Batchelor, 1997
  Wallace, 2000 Wallace, 2003 Ekman et al, 2005).

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What Is Mind?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understanding
  (cont)
• Scientific materialism the tendency to reify
  science as the only valid mode of inquiry for
  obtaining information about reality.
• Exemplifying Scientific Materialism, Alfred Ayer
  in his 1936 treatise Language, Truth and Logic
• We conclude, therefore, that the argument from
  religious experience is altogether fallacious.
  The fact that people have religious experiences
  is interesting from the psychological point of
  view, but it does not in any way imply that there
  is such a thing as religious knowledge, any more
  than our having moral experiences implies that
  there is such a thing as moral knowledge. The
  theist, like the moralist, may believe that his
  experiences are cognitive experiences, but,
  unless he can formulate his "knowledge" in
  propositions that are empirically verifiable, we
  may be sure that he is deceiving himself.

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What Is Mind?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understanding
  (cont)
• It follows that these philosophers who fill their
  books with assertions that they intuitively
  "know" this or that moral or religious "truth"
  are merely providing material for the
  psycho-analyst. For no act of intuition can be
  said to reveal a truth about any matter of fact
  unless it issues in verifiable propositions. And
  all such propositions are to be incorporated in
  the system of empirical propositions which
  constitutes science. (pp119-120).
• In one page Ayer dismisses 5,000 years of
  spiritual, philosophical and religious insight.
• This attitude set the stage for psychology (as a
  fledgling field) to dismiss introspection as a
  valid mode of inquiry and to embrace scientific
  materialism at first in the form of behaviorism
  and now in the form of empiricism

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What Is Emotion?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understanding
  (cont)
• The death of introspection around the turn of the
  20th century
• James and Freud v. Skinner
• As Plutchik (2000) states in Emotions in the
  Practice of Psychotherapy
• Behaviorists held the view that the only truly
  reliable objective information obtainable about
  living creatures was information about their
  behavior (and preferably simple behavior). This
  attitude lead to a preoccupation with conditioned
  responses emotions, on the other hand, were
  considered to be inner states that could not be
  reliably observed and were therefore outside the
  realm of scientific psychology. (p 40)

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What Is Emotion?

• Greek and European Philosophical Understanding
  (cont)
• Aristotelian Logic the laws of identity,
  contradiction and excluded middle
• A is A (identity), that A is not non-A
  (contradiction) and that A is not A and non-A
  (excluded middle)
• Obviously this logic can not apply to many mental
  phenomena (thought, emotion, judgment, opinion,
  memory, fantasy, impulse)

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Blind Spot in Scientific Materialism

• No definition of consciousness
• No objective, 3rd person means of detecting and
  measuring consciousness
• No identified neural correlates for consciousness
• No identified causes (both necessary and
  sufficient) for consciousness
• No understanding of the relationship between
  consciousness and mental phenomena
• No understanding of how the brain creates and
  manipulates mental phenomena
• William James and Wilhelm Wundt tried to remedy
  this over a century ago

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What Is Mind?

• Modern Psychological Understanding
• Is it possible to understand mental phenomena
  from the inside out? The contemplative traditions
  of the world say that it is possible
• The modern, scientific endeavor is to understand
  mental phenomena from the outside in (PET, CAT,
  MRI. Etc)
• Modern science / empiricism is not qualified to
  define, explain or predict mental phenomena
• If three core tenets of any science are
  systematization, quantification and
  reproducibility then on some level could
  meditation (the methods of working with mental
  phenomena) be considered a valid science of the
  mind?

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What Is Emotion?

• Five Core Psychological Perspectives
• The evolutionary tradition Charles Darwin
• The Psycho-physiological tradition William James
  and the behavior/body before mind argument.
• The Neurological tradition Cannons sham rage
  in the hypothalamus of cats.
• The Psychodynamic tradition id, repression and
  subconscious.
• The Cognitive tradition emotions and our
  reactions to them become habituated

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What Is Emotion?

• Evolutionary Psychology
• The evolutionary tradition The ability of an
  animal to use expressive behavior to communicate
  information (danger, safety, etc) greatly adds to
  the survivability of that animal and is therefore
  adaptive (Darwin, 1872/1965) .
• In a unique and forward looking leap, Darwin
  recognized that the process of evolution applies
  not only to an animals genetic and physiological
  structures but also to the animals emotional and
  behavioral expressions (Darwin, 1872/1965).
• The ability of an animal to use expressive
  behavior to communicate information (danger,
  safety, etc) greatly adds to the survivability of
  that animal and is therefore adaptive.
• Darwin felt similarly about emotional expression
  and furthermore concluded that most emotional
  expression is innate and therefore unlearned
  (Darwin, 1872/1965).
• Darwins work expanded the study of emotion from
  the study of subjective feelings to the study of
  behavior within a biological, evolutionary
  context. It became scientifically legitimate to
  ask the question, In what way does a particular
  emotion or behavior pattern function in aiding
  survival?

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What Is Emotion?

• The Psycho-physiological Tradition
• The psychophysiological tradition is most
  identified with the work of the Harvard
  psychologist-philosopher William James.
• Twelve years after Darwin published his work on
  emotion, James (1884) published an article that
  founded a second theory of emotion, one primarily
  concerned with the sequence of events in
  emotional experience.
• James asked the question which comes first,
  emotion or behavior? In essence, does the fact
  that we run away from a predator cause the
  emotional experience of fear or does the
  emotional experience of fear cause the behavior
  of running away from the predator?
• James himself came down firmly on the side of
  behavior before emotion. As James (1890) stated,
  common sense says we lose our fortune, are sorry
  and weep My hypothesis is that we feel sorry
  because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid
  because we tremble. (p. 1066). In an attempt to
  prove or disprove James hypothesis, a tremendous
  amount of research has been conducted over the
  last century. While inconclusive about James
  hypothesis, this research, has produced
  significant advances in our understanding of
  autonomic physiology, arousal, lie detection and
  other areas (Plutchik, 2000).

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What Is Emotion?

• The Neurological Tradition
• Walter Cannon, another Harvard professor,
  conducted medical research on domestic cats and
  discovered that the hypothalamus was the
  neurological seat of emotion
• A few years after James death, Cannon (1929)
  removed certain parts of the brain in cats and
  discovered that he could create a sham rage
  that would last between two and three hours.
• In essence, Cannon discovered that there are
  neural correlates for emotion.
• Based on these results, Cannon directly
  challenged James strict hypothesis of behavior
  before emotion.
• His work also inspired related research that set
  the basis for advanced neurological research
  along with the psychopharmacological treatment of
  mental disorders (Plutchik, 2000).

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What Is Emotion?

• The Psychodynamic Tradition
• Working on the condition called hysteria, Freud
  and Breuer (1895/1936) published Studies on
  Hysteria, which described a new theory about the
  genesis of psychiatric illness.
• Within this larger topic, the book also set the
  stage for a new theory of emotion (Plutchik,
  2000).
• Although Freud initially utilized hypnosis as a
  treatment method he later developed free
  association as the primary means by which
  patients would make conscious repressed memories
  and emotions.
• The point of therapy was thereby transformed from
  abreaction to a process where unconscious
  motivations were brought into conscious awareness
  and replaced with volitional judgments (very
  Buddhist ? ).
• Over the course of decades Freud developed a
  complex theory of neuroses that had within it (as
  an implicit part) a theory of emotion.
• This implicit theory proposed an extremely
  complex interaction of drives, developmental
  stages, conflicts and personality developments.
• Even today, an agreed upon theory of emotion does
  not exist in the various branches of
  psychoanalysis.

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What Is Emotion?

• Cognitive Psychology
• The cognitive tradition The work of Fritz Heider
  (1958) is the historical foundation of the fifth
  main tradition cognitive psychology.
• Cognitive psychology was the first to markedly
  point out the contextual reality of our emotional
  worlds.
• Heider talked of our casual attributions, our
  sense of what ought to be, and our personal
  goals (that we superimpose onto the world) as
  being some of the forces that create our
  emotions.
• Heider also connected the dots between thoughts
  and emotions saying that our affect often creates
  thought and then that a thought often creates an
  affect.
• In this way Heider saw that the emotional life of
  man was foundationally self-created from ones
  own perspectives, attitudes, beliefs and
  perceptions, emotions
• Our reactions to these mental phenomena become
  habituated (i.e., we develop emotional habits)

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What Is Anger?

• As Paul Ekman (2003) said in his book Emotions
  Revealed The word anger covers many different
  related experiences. There is a range of angry
  feelings, from slight annoyance to rage. There
  are not just differences in the strength of angry
  feeling, but also differences in the type of
  anger felt. Indignation is self-righteous anger
  sulking is a passive anger exasperation refers
  to having ones patience tried excessively
  resentment is another member of the anger family
  of emotions but holding a grudge, a long standing
  resentment, is different It is not that you are
  continuously angry, but whenever you think about
  or see this person, anger reemerges Hatred is
  enduring, intense dislike. We are not angry
  continuously towards the hated person, but
  encountering that person or hearing about him or
  her may easily awaken angry feelings. We are
  likely to feel disgust or contempt towards the
  hated person It is hard to classify hatred and
  enduring resentment. They are not emotions, for
  they last too long. They are not moods for the
  same reason, and also because we know why we hate
  or resent someone while we typically dont know
  why we are having a mood. (pp. 112-113).

58
Working with Emotion

• Western Perspective
• In the West, we tend to take an adversarial
  approach to our suffering (trying to destroy it,
  numb it out, deny it or fix it)
• In the West when we suffer, we think that means
  something is wrong, almost as if our life should
  not include suffering
• Freuds radical technique free association
• Learning to open, look, and analyze our mental
  experiences

59
Working with Emotion

• Western Perspective
• Rogerian unconditional positive regard
• teaching self compassion as a means of generating
  compassion for others
• Cognitive psychology and the union of perception
  and personal reality
• Buddhist psychology would agree
• Kohut and Self psychology
• Creating a better house
• Cognitive behavioral therapy as a way to make
  practical the salubrious effects of psychotherapy
• Criticisms of insight and supportive therapy
• CBTs limited efficacy with addiction, high risk
  youths and domestic violence
• CBT and anger management low efficacy

60
Working with Emotion

• Buddhist Perspective
• Ask ten psychologists what consciousness is and
  see what happens. Ask ten psychologists what
  emotion is and see what happens. Ask ten
  physicists what gravity is and see what happens.
• At present, there are over thirty different
  theories of emotion in the field of psychology
• Medical model and the pathology model and why
  these do not work well with the goal of
  understanding and working with mind
• Positive Psychology
• Good Lives model for sex offenders
• In Buddhist psychology suffering is to be
  expected, recognized, acknowledged, accepted,
  learned from and then transformed
• Sakya God myth of Buddhism
• Is anger a thing to be managed?
• You will not be punished for your anger, you
  will be punished by your anger. Shakymuni
  Buddha

61
Working with Emotion (cont)

• Buddhist Meditations presented in this class
• Shamatha (also known as calm abiding and single
  point of focus)
• Settling the Body in its natural state
• Settling the Speech in its natural state
• Settling the Mind in its natural state
• Shamatha without a Sign
• The Nature of Suffering
• Friend, Foe and Stranger
• Tong Len
• Loving Kindness and interdependence (Metta)

62
What Is Meditation?

• Meditation is slowing down
• Meditation is learning to stay
• Meditation is becoming educated about your
  hooks, your limits, and your exit doors.
• Shamatha cultivates three things relaxation of
  body and mind, mental stabilization
  (concentration), and mental vividness

63
What Are Your Limits and Hooks?
Getting cut off in traffic (we get hooked by our
anger)
Helplessness
We come home and our spouse is wrapped up in her
day and is insensitive to our feelings (we now
reach our limit)
We tell ourselves stories starring us as the
victim or unsung hero
We assign blame and become fundamental and
righteous
Emotional Overwhelm
Anger and victimhood doesnt feel good, we are
very uncomfortable, and now we look for an exit
door
64
What Are Your Exits Doors?
Exit Door 3
Feeling overwhelmed with anger, irritation,
frustration, anxiety, fear, sadness, mourning,
depression, grief, shock, etc
Materialism / We Crave and Seek (retail
therapy, buying bigger and better things,
splurging)
Exit Door 2
Anger / Aggression (we yell, condemn and put
others down, quietly intimidate, threaten,
passive-aggressive manipulation, assault, etc)
Exit Door 1
Numb Out (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, TV, Xbox,
etc)
65
Mind Training

• From the Buddhist perspective one must
  simultaneously
• Decrease the grip of the three poisons by
  meditating on their essential nature AND
• Meditate on the benefits of loving kindness and
  compassion thereby naturally increasing their
  presence in your mind
• In essence, Buddhist meditation seek to eliminate
  negative emotions while simultaneously replacing
  them with positive emotions

66
Seven Points of Mind Training

• From the Buddhist perspective one must
  simultaneously
• Decrease the grip of the three poisons by
  meditating on their essential nature AND
• Meditate on the benefits of loving kindness and
  compassion thereby naturally increasing their
  presence in your mind
• In essence, Buddhist meditation seek to eliminate
  negative emotions while simultaneously replacing
  them with positive emotions