Buddha And The Couch Buddha and the Couch focuses on the challenge of overcoming depression and anxiety, from both Eastern and Western perspectives. It covers a range of practical, detailed suggestions, as well as more theoretical ways of thinking about the problems and pains of these wild moods. Buddha and the Couch is updated weekly by Marty L. Cooper, a licensed psychotherapist in San Francisco, CA. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 2283

Articles from Buddha And The Couch

The Wisdom of Harold and Maude 2007-05-02 22:38:00 One of my most beloved movies of all times is Harold and Maude. I've seen it probably a dozen or more times over the last fifteen years, and each time I see something different, or feel another resonance that mirrors a change that's happened in my life since the last viewing. But the quote below, from Maude, has always stayed with me, from one of my favorite scenes in the film. It strikes me as a beautifully concise description of the development of deep empathy, of viewing life not as an enemy to be overcome, but as a friend and fellow to embrace. This applies to anything seen as an enemy, including chronic depression and anxiety.The great successes I've seen and had in working with these states is when this fundamental shift happens. You realize that the fight for your life perhaps needed to happen, but can now be let go of, and since anxiety and depression thrive on aversion and struggle, they start transforming into something entirely different. Demons, as it were, don't much k ...

A Wily Kindness 2007-04-20 12:00:00 My experience has been that when you are really effectively dealing with depression and anxiety, what you're doing is a kind of wily kindness. Much of the suffering in these states (i.e., the often linked states of depression and anxiety) comes not so much from their natures, as from how we struggle with them. They're like arm wrestling a rose bush--if you enter the game, you're going to end it bleeding.Wily kindness is looking at your own experience without hostility, but also without blinders. With just the kindness, you often will lack the motivation or energy to actually get things done in your life. And with just the wily, you might be able to punch through the anxiety/depression, but underneath the hatred and struggle with, the lack of acceptance of, these states is causing you deep suffering.I remember hearing an interview with an environmental activist who had been imprisoned in Arizona. She talked about the struggles of prison life, and about her own growth in the midst of ...

Cafe Gratitude 2007-04-11 16:53:00 It wasn't really my intention when starting this blog to include restaurant reviews, but Cafe Gratitude, which has several locations throughout SF and the East Bay, is a curious and rather delightful place to can see the intersection of psychological insight and spiritual values. And the food, an all vegan and raw menu, is across the board exceptional. The staff is generally delightful, the atmosphere alive and colorful...and it's a place that could have gone terribly, awfully, horribly wrong.What seems to make the place work is what, as far as I can see, is its (and its founders') utter sincerity about their philosophy of abundance. All the menu items are given descriptive names (cashew enchilada, say) and then an ordering name, such as, "I Am Delightful." When you order, you're saying "Yes, I'd like the 'I Am Delightful," at which point the server will reply, "You are delightful." Or if squeamish, you might say, "Um, well (short giggle), I think I'll have the enchilada, ok?" w ...

The Unavoidable Filters of Spiritual Practice 2007-04-04 23:00:00 Jack Engler kicks off the recently published anthology, Buddhism and Psychotherapy Across Cultures, with a punchy essay entitled "Promises and Perils of the Spiritual Path." In it, he makes the assertion that,"[W]e cannot help but assimilate our approach to Buddhist practice [this applies to any spiritual practice] into our preexisting emotional patterns, some of which are inevitably maladaptive. Assimilation is inevitable. It unavoidably affects not only our work and relationships but the way we understand, practice, and experience Buddhist teaching."He later speaks about the unavoidable multi-determined nature of behavior: our choice of spiritual path, spiritual practice, spiritual teacher (not to mention therapist) is a confluence or combination of desires and intentions. Pure desire for transcendence comes along with, say, the desire to find an perfect mother figure (when our own real mother failed dramatically). Attachment to a strict teacher can mirror both our intuition about th ...

The "doing" and "non-doing" of anxiety and depression 2007-03-27 16:00:00 The treatment of depression and anxiety conditions comes in two forms, it seems to me: the management of the symptoms in order to avoid overwhelm, which inevitably means more or less skillful manipulation of experience--the "doing" of treatment; and the endeavor to find acceptance and a mere knowing of the experience--the "non-doing" of treatment.With the "doing," it is vital to develop the ability to track, in detail, the way in which different part of the mind and body dance their way into depression or anxiety states. For instance, you'll be going along fine, enjoying the sunshine while driving, and then stopping at a light behind a few other cars, boom, you get a surge of anxiety. Being able to break down the experience can make you aware that the car ahead has a bumper sticker advertising chickens. You saw the image of the chicken, and had a memory association of your mean uncle's farm. You felt a clenching in your gut that brought up another memory, of being five and having to ...

Thinking is serious 2007-03-19 17:59:00 Daniel Goleman has written a follow-up to his book Emotional Intelligence, his 1995 work arguing that there are various lines of intelligence, not simply a cognitive, logical thinking. His second book, called Social Intelligence, focuses in on the neurological underpinnings of social relationships, giving a rather startling amount of evidence for the way in which human brains are structured to be social. For instance, he describes "mirror" and "spindle" neurons whose purpose is to create the ability to feel what another person is feeling, literally feel, as they duplicate the experience we perceive others having. There are varying degrees of aptitude at empathy--you can probably scan your friends and identify those who seem to always know what others are feelings, and those who struggle to feel into another person's experience--but every human brain is wired for empathy, for literally resonating with others.However, Goleman makes the point that, in humans, what interpretation is given ...

Body language 2007-03-13 16:55:00 I am very fortunate to be taking a class with Don Hanlon Johnson (a professor of somatics at CIIS and a phenomenologist) which has as a main focus the embodiment of language, how writing or speech does or doesn't resonate in one's individual body. One argument of phenomenology is that the use of language (especially in academia) is typically disconnected from direct experience, making it stale and unauthentic. Re-embodying language is one of Johnson's concerns--well, re-embodying everything in one's life, to provide a basis of wisdom and an authenticity to one's choices and beliefs. (He's pointed out that the various fascist movements have always persecuted phenomenological thinkers, as well as sought to dumb down language.)So here is an experiment to try:1) Carve out about 20-30 minutes, and find yourself a quiet, unstimulated place.2) Think about some concern that's been nagging you, and find the key words for that concern. Trying writing a short description of the issue and s ...

Rumi's "Chickpea to Cook" 2007-03-06 16:18:00 Here's Rumi on the development of both the teacher and student, from the understanding of pain and change as persecution, to learning how to align with difficult experience in one's own, and others', self-interest.Chickpea to Cook~Jalaluddin Rumi(translated by Coleman Barks) A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled. "Why are you doing this to me?" The cook knocks him down with the ladle. "Don't you try to jump out. You think I'm torturing you. I'm giving you flavor, so you can mix with spices and rice and be the lovely vitality of a human being. "Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this."Grace first. Sexual pleasure, then a boiling new life begins, and the Friend has something good to eat. Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook, "Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can't do this by myself. "I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention to his driver. You're my ...

Likes and dislikes, sunlight and overcast 2007-02-27 14:29:00 It has been raining heavily in San Francisco these last few days, in counterpoint to what has been a pretty dry winter. Last night, hail the size and shape of ball bearings clattered down for about a minute, covering the streets and cars in pointillist whiteness, and then, gone, followed through the night with stabs of rain, and a clear sky this morning.S.F. is similar to Boston, where they quip that "If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes." I've always preferred these storms to the long stretches of overcast--"pointless clouds" as a friend recently put it--that characterizes winters in my home town, and it's probably not coincidence that I've ended up in a town with such micro-variable weather. There's a sense of aliveness in the clatter and crash and flash of a decent storm that's hard to find in day of dim light and canvas-simple clouds.Now, as I sit in my office, there's medium-heavy rain slanting down onto the roofs below the balcony window, and sunlight slanti ...

Innocence 2007-02-22 10:09:00 One place where psychotherapy is, to my mind, gaining immensely from Buddhist practice is in its experimenting with mindfulness techniques--i.e., experiential, here-and-now awareness--in the therapy setting. Adyashanti (in Emptiness Dancing) has an interesting comment on the felt difference between experience that is filtered or un-filtered, as well as the legacy of language:It can be difficult to understand how thorough this innocence [of direct, unfiltered experience) is. For example, if you are sitting in your chair and you have a certain sensation arise in your body that your mind would immediately label fear, the innocence wouldn't know that. Even a feeling the mind would call fear isn't recognized by innocence because it's not perceiving through mind. It would look at it like, "I'll be darned, what is this?" When you become interested in something, you move toward it. If a sound is interesting, you lean into it. if a smell is interesting, you sniff. Innocence just looks with ...

Big Mind 2007-02-19 11:47:00 Sitting with big souls, those who e e cummings called "Delectable Mountains," is certainly an invaluable, irreplaceable experience...but Youtube offers a decent second. It doesn't replicate what happens in the physical presence of great teachers and beings, but it can give you a hit, in addition to getting a different take on people who otherwise would only be known from their writing or from hearsay. (Ken Wilber is a good example of the benefits of online video: many, many people I've talked with have an image of him as an arrogant narcissist, derived from his books and sometimes just photographs. But seeing him speak on video, you get a much different picture, of someone with a deep compassion and wisdom often couched in a genuinely deep sense of humor and play. Here's an example.) People you would have had to travel to various mountain tops to meet, now you can Google-and-click in a few seconds. And as long as we are clear about the difference between video and face-to-face cont ...

Morning with Adyashanti 2007-02-03 20:29:00 The morning was crisp, the sky mostly clear over Lake Merritt; runners and walkers and lake cleaners and kids with moms and dogs--the wonderful gaggle of humans were out enjoying the morning. Once inside the United Methodist Church, though, none of the lake opera could be heard outside, and only the sky and pigeons could be seen through the windows behind Adyashanti, the morning's speaker.Perhaps 500 people showed up on last Saturday morning to listen to the Zen Buddhist teacher, who spoke for about 45 minutes before taking questions. It's always curious what one brings away from such a talk, and if I were to go again next week, to hear the exact same talk with the exact same people, I'd probably come away with a totally different understanding. What I retained was a sense that Adyashanti seems to have truly done his work--he came across as both a sweet and spiritually uncompromising man--and a quote from his teacher, "Dance your dance out till the end."Take a minute to sit with tha ...

Adjusting one's robe 2007-01-30 15:55:00 The other day, while talking with my wife and an old friend, a fragment of memory was dislodged from some underground crevice and shot up to the surface of my mind, vivid in its single detail: the image of Thich Nhat Hahn, onstage in Berkeley, adjusting his robe.The actual event happened about five years ago, shortly after 9/11. My friend and colleague David took me to see the Buddhist monk give a talk, whose exact subject I'm forgetting, except for fragments of his discourse on relating to such horrible events. It was a long evening, in a hall filled with perhaps a thousand people, and I seemed to have drifted in and out of listening, and probably sleep.But that one brief motion of Thich Nhat Hahn shifting his saffron robe has stuck with me. It was, in all honesty, breathtaking, and still is as I remember it. He was preparing for the discourse, and had just finished the introductory chanting and meditation. His monks were sitting still and waiting. Hahn reached down and took the edge ...

Eating the Blame 2007-01-22 17:25:00 I was out running in Golden Gate Park a month ago, and the title of a Zen koan (teaching story/exercise), without the actual koan, popped into my head. I found the story online, which goes like this:Eating the BlameCircumstances arose one day which delayed preparation of the dinner of a Soto Zen master, Fugai, and his followers. in haste the cook went to the garden with his curved knife and cut off the tops of green vegetables, chopped them together, and made soup, unaware that in his hast he had included a part of a snake in the vegetables.The followers of Fugai thought they had never tasted such great soup. But when the master himself found the snake's head in his bowl, he dummoned the cook. "what is this?" he demanded, holding up the head of the snake.'"Oh, thank you, master," replied the cook, taking the morsel and eating it quickly.The day in the park was just gorgeous, crisp blue skies and the deep greens of the cyprus and eucalpytus trees near Stowe Lake, the air clean from a ...

"Dissecting thoughts? And why would you want to do that?" 2007-01-13 22:23:00 I was recently experimenting with meditating on thoughts per say, and describing to my wife the curious experience of breaking a thought down to its components. She got to hear about how the thought, "I left the cell phone in the car," was constructed from an image of my truck, a felt sense of the time it takes to walk from my office to the parking spot, an image of where the phone was plugged into the recharger, and a trace of anxiety around fetching it before my client arrived. Her response was a curious, and brilliantly direct, "And why would you want to do that?" Here is how I tried to answer her:1) By working with thoughts as phenomenon, and breaking them down into smaller, linked parts, you develop an experiential understanding of the fundamentally composed nature of thought. Which means that your mind comes to see that thoughts are not reality, which is simple to get conceptually--of course a tree in your head isn't a tree you can perch in--but harder to hold onto as experience ...