Zen Therapy
Removing the Obstruction to Intimacy
***I was invited to speak at a mental health conference (5/7/25) about my psychotherapy practice. The title of the discussion was Zen Therapy: Removing the Obstruction to Intimacy. Below are a few of the PowerPoint slides juxtaposed with some writing I have done on the concept and thinking behind Zen Therapy.***
The therapist is not the controller or the ruler, but the attendant […] Attending means listening; it means sitting-with; it means learning-with; it means attuning-to; and it means subordinating to the leadership of the patient’s own healing power. 1
Robert Phillips, The Recovery of the True Self
NON-SEPARATION
The Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm posits that the universe is a machine of distinct and measurable parts. All physical matter is understood as separated and solid. This logic implies that each sentient being is an isolated unit. This is distinctly not-Zen. The ancient wisdom of eastern philosophy is now being confirmed by modern physics. There is no such thing as “space.” Everything is interdependently co-arising and impermanent. The idea of an internal “me” separate from “you” is a misunderstanding (delusion). We are all interconnected. The sense of separation is conceptual.
The psychiatrist and therapist Stanislav Grof (1985) noted how the use of specific breathing techniques or more profoundly, the administration of LSD facilitates a nonlinear reliving of the birth process. He challenged the notion that consciousness manifests and resides inside our skull (brain).
Experiences of this kind represent an insurmountable obstacle for Cartesian-Newtonian science, which sees matter as solid, boundaries and separateness as absolute properties of the universe, and time as linear and irreversible. 2
The concept of separation is Ego-based. Therefore, what we think of as inside and outside, self and other, profit and loss are based on a misunderstanding of “reality.” This error of the mind is based on the illusion of separation. Rene Descartes self-referential metaphysics, “I think therefore I am,” is at the heart of this understanding. In the book Zen Economics, Rob Urie deconstructs the Cartesian myth of individuality that ostensibly divides “man” from nature in the pursuit of acquisition:
The ‘timeless and universal’ truths of science are social truths, acts of social negotiation within historically and culturally locatable political economy. Rene Descartes could have stubbed his toe or eaten a sandwich to ‘prove’ his existence and kept the entire project to himself. 3
We are socialized to believe this sense of separation (dualism). For example, we faithfully assert that we “have” a body and “have” a mind. However, there is no demarcation between the supposed two “things.” The mind and body are a functional unity (psychosomatic). On a relative level there is mind and body. From an absolute perspective there is only the body-mind (unity). Body (soma) and mind (psyche) are not two not one (body-mind). This is the functional thinking of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, MD. To develop a new understanding requires thinking of two (contraction and expansion) as simultaneously identical and antithetical.
Reich applied functional thinking to discover, identify, and then measure a massless form of energy. He referred to this all-pervasive oceanic energy as “orgone.” This energy is closer to a field and is all pervasive. The Daoists call it qi, which is understood as a yin-yang system of feminine (supportive) and masculine (expansive) energy. The biological “core” of the human organism is a “sea of elixir qi” (Dantian) or energy center. The human animal is animated by this plasmatic pulsation (emotion) of the organism. This energy process is indeterminable. The term that gets closest is “emptiness,” because the source is both from within and without.
Historically, Buddhist philosophy began with the question, why do we suffer? We suffer based on a sense of lack and crave something different to resolve the lack. The problem is that the instant we get what we want we want something else. We crave intimacy with others, but the Ego defensively plays psychological “games” with people to pass the time. In the end, the emotional drama (karma) satisfies our boredom and need for social recognition and affect. However, this comes at the cost of reinforcing our fundamental sense of lack.
DUALISM
To equate conceptual designation (Ego) as reality is delusion (ignorance). Based on four truths, the Buddha embodied a method (The Eightfold Path) to end suffering, i.e., Enlightenment. The dharma (teaching) is taught without teaching or a separate teacher. It is captured in the relational manifestation of absolute indifference. One does not give a fuck. The Buddha’s wisdom of the body-mind (nondual) is this notion of not two not one, which is in stark contrast with the western view of a substantive self.
The Ego holds and maintains metaphysical divisions to maintain itself. However, the body-mind is a unity of soma and psyche. Therefore, the motility of the human organism is the function of contraction (unpleasure) and expansion (pleasure). Functionally, we may view suffering and craving as parts of an integral whole (Ego). With the experience of anxiety, the body contracts (grasping). Pleasure is experienced in letting go (softening). Inhale (contract) and exhale (expand). To suffer is to crave for something different. We hold our breath in anticipation. To embrace suffering is to let go of the attachment to craving (surrender).
EGOLESSNESS
The psychiatrist Robert Phillips, MD described Ego as a false self-system. Interdependence and nonsubstantiality are un-understandable to the Ego. The Ego’s notion of itself as “real” creates a state of chronic dis-ease based on a sense of lack (craving). This understanding framed Phillips’s psychological and therapeutic approach: if everything is connected then in each moment all organisms are moving toward health or unhealth. He writes that most western psychotherapy modalities exclusively focus on “relief,” e.g., from symptoms, versus “recovery,” 4 (i.e., autonomy and intimacy). The emphasis on western therapies is the strengthening of the Ego versus the realization of not two not one. The result is a therapeutic centered on adjustment and conformity to the status quo. Zen questions the status quo from a place of subversion:
A master came to a passing.
The guard at the crossing asked, “Do you know you are at T’ung-kuan pass?”
The master said, “I know it.”
The guard said, “Those who have a passport can be let to pass; those who have no passport cannot be let to pass.”
The master said, “What about it when the emperor’s coach happens to come?”
The guard said, “It must still be checked to pass through.”
The master said, “You want to start a revolution?” 5
The Ego denies its nonreality through conceptual designations that it believes are “real.” The habitual grasp is to reify and concretize itself as a self. With the universe as a web of interconnections, interdependence, and co-arising, it is only the human Ego that creates separation, e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, political affiliation, etc., by conceptual designation. The dualism of a personalized “me” and “the world” is the prerequisite for the racist and nationalistic politics of “us” versus “them.” In this line of thinking, you are your body. 6 The illusion of a demarcation—“me” and “the world”—is both the Ego and the function of Ego (dualism).
Zen points directly at the illusory Ego as the root cause of our misery. We want because we believe we are a separate object. This separation (“me” and “the world”) through subjectivity creates a sense of lack or unsatisfactoriness, e.g., “I’m cold” or “I’m not productive enough…beautiful enough,” etc. This is derived from the myth of separateness. The impact is the inability to allow ourselves to be close to others. The Ego is the obstruction to intimacy. The momentary removal of this obstruction is the path to intimacy.
ZEN THERAPY
The concept of Zen Therapy is taken from the writing and teaching of David Brazier. Specifically, the 1997 book, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind. Brazier (1997) notes that both the therapist and the patient (not-two) are on the same path, i.e., the Way. The establishment of direct listening and concentration are the prerequisite for Zen Therapy. The methodology does not find fault with the patient or fixate on the resolution of psychiatric symptoms.
The writer has added directive meditation training (Zen) with the patient as a major aspect to treatment. The Japanese term is zazen or “just sitting,” i.e., concentration practice. Additionally, the use of transference and character analytic approaches as well as functional thinking (Wilhelm Reich, MD) are other aspects. These techniques and direct confrontation of cultural conditioning that the patient believes is “reality” are juxtaposed with the social psychiatry of Eric Berne, MD, bioenergetics, and Daoism.
Zen Therapy requires an understanding of the body-mind. On a relative level, the body and mind are two different things. From an absolute perspective the body and mind are a functional unit (contraction and expansion). The human organism’s motility is based on qi or the life force.
Relationally, Zen Therapy approaches psychotherapy with the patient and therapist as a functional unity. For example, from an absolute perspective (no-egoic), the patient is not separate from the therapist. Relatively, there is a therapist and a patient. Moment to moment, there is an opportunity for the “two” to symbiotically be “one.” In other words the patient-therapist are not two not one. The two are merely occupying roles within a model to emphasize sincere engagement with others:
It is surprising, isn’t it, that the Eightfold Path and Four Noble Truths not only don’t mention meditation, but tend to encourage behavior that engages the world rather than withdraws from it? 7
Similarly, in the book Zen Economics, Urie (2016) Zen is not a form of individualistic sequestration of the self, but as a “social practice in addition to whatever else it might be.” He defies the Cartesian split of ego-consciousness from “the world”:
And ‘practitioners’ of Zen exist socially and utterly embedded in ‘the world.’ 8
Practically, the therapist uses their psychic energy in a specific way. The energy cathexis (qi) for the therapist is in their Center. This is near the belly button and is the “seat of consciousness.” This is our intuition or common sense. Also, it is referred to as prajñā or intuitive knowledge (wisdom). The duality of consciousness allows the therapist to not “be themselves” (non-egoic), to not “be the patient,” and to be themselves, be the patient, and not not be themselves be the patient. This suspension of Cartesian dualism allows “seeing” from the still point above opposites.
In other words, what D.T. Suzuki called the apperceiving mind allows for the therapist to fully identify as the patient, identify as themselves or identify as no-thing. At the same time, they are above the idea of patient-therapist, self or other, etc. D.T. Suzuki called it the still point above the turning world. Structurally, the patient and therapist are not two not one. By default, the therapist must momentarily suspend Ego (“emptiness”) meaning to be prior to conceptual designations (simple consciousness).
REMOVING THE OBSTRUCTION TO INTIMACY
Zen Therapy is revolutionary because both the mechanistic and mystical notions of reality are transcended. Life is this moment. The aim of Zen Therapy is not optimization of the self, but a withering away of the self. The practice is relational. The two of therapist and patient are not quite two and not one. This is the presupposition to work on the removal of the obstruction to intimacy (Ego). The result is the dropping away of the chains of culture conditioning. We are unshackled from the wants, prohibitions, commands, etc. of the Ego and set free. The therapist role is a reliance on intuitive knowledge, meditation (Zen), and clinical improvisation. The simple term is beginner’s mind, which is a non-gaining idea to the moment: life as it is. As consequence, every nonegoic experience is novel or brand new. Zen Therapy is rooted in the social versus the biographical individual (Ego).
For this practice it is necessary to understand personality and character structure, consciousness, as well as one’s communication patterns. This includes a comprehension of psychological “games” as well as the ability to facilitate the patient in the direction of new decisions. A new decision is made from the here and now in the here and now. This is in contrast with following early childhood commitments that are understandable in that context, but we were far too young to set our destiny based on adaptation.
Again, with Zen Therapy the task is not to find “fault” or etiology. The “knowledge” is not inside one’s head but affectively shared. The therapist and patient ideas co-emerge via sincere reflection. The psychiatrist and founder of transactional analysis, Eric Berne, MD describes the illusion of the Ego story and the belief of the therapist relative to curing the patient:
The transactional analyst believes that psychiatric symptoms result from some form of self-deception. But patients can be cured just because their lives and their disabilities are based on a figment of the imagination. 9
It is the patient themselves that learns and applies the understanding to themselves in order to make new decisions. Self-awareness and insight are built from analysis of one’s behavior. The result is appropriate closeness with others, the achievement of awareness, spontaneity, and ultimately intimacy. Overall, behavioral change is achieved by thinking and acting in the here and now from the here and now to assist the patient in curing themselves.
References
p. 9, Phillips, R.D. (1995). The recovery of the true self: The human animal in and out of therapy. Medicine Wheel Publications: Chapel Hill, N.C.
p. 67, Grof, S. (1985). Beyond the brain: Birth, death and transcendence in psychotherapy. State University of New York: Albany.
p. 125, Urie, R. (2016). Zen economics. Counter Punch: California.
p. 167, Phillips, R.D. (1995). The recovery of the true self: The human animal in and out of therapy. Medicine Wheel Publications: Chapel Hill, N.C.
Taken from the Recorded Sayings of Joshu Zhaozhou, Green translation. Excerpt is from p. 97-98, ewk (2022). Not Zen: Dogen Buddhism: What do real Caodong Soto Zen Masters like Dongshan and Wansong teach? Monee, IL. Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Lowen, A. (1975). Bioenergetics. Penguin Compass: New York.
p. 20, ewk (2022). Not Zen: Dogen Buddhism: What do real Caodong Soto Zen Masters like Dongshan and Wansong teach? Monee, IL. Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
p. 199, Urie, R. (2016). Zen economics. Counter Punch: California
p. 49, Berne, E. (1972). What do you say after you say hello?: The psychology of human destiny. New York: Grove Press, Inc.
