“To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to to be actualized by myriad things.”
– Dogen

This evening Chandranishta will share her personal experiences with psychotherapy and Buddhism and how it has changed over time.

In her words:

“Both psychotherapy and Buddhism have a lot to offer in terms of a deeper understanding of the human condition and offering ways to alleviate suffering. Psychotherapy typically focuses on the developmental, the individual, how childhood wounds shape the adult, while Buddhism emphasises the fruitional and universal (freedom is available in the present moment regardless of history).

There is common ground and in recent years several therapeutic approaches have turned to Buddhist psychology and have incorporated concepts like compassion and mindfulness. Buddhism has been said to be the religion of choice for many therapists and that was definitely true for me.

I stepped onto the Buddhist path whilst working as a counsellor for a charity helping people who were affected by trauma, abuse and addiction. I was definitely looking for something different at the time, a spiritual path and community. I moved from a position where I thought we had to sort out all psychological issues and childhood wounds and bring to light all past painful events in order to be free, towards a position where I know that it is possible to let things be and transcend the problems by changing levels of consciousness and expanding awareness. The buddhist path in my experience gives me an all encompassing way to transform suffering. I appreciate having a system of practice, community, an ethical compass, meditation and the vision of awakening, enlightenment and transformation.

In my experience both the spiritual/fruitional and psychological/developmental way can be engaged with unhelpfully: spiritual practices can be used to spiritual bypass, to avoid facing deep-seated psychological issues that require therapeutic processing and the drive for self development can become a subtle form of self-aggression, a drive for impossible perfection based on a false view that there could be a perfect self that can be permanently fixed.

It seems like we need to know the ‘self’ in order to let it go. And what is the difference between a fixed ego and a fluid interconnected state of being? I would like to invite you to engage in an evening of exploration of this territory and our views.”