I have some handouts here from yesterday. Is there anybody here who has not got? Anyone else who hasn't got, I'm afraid you'll just have to check. Okay, well, welcome everybody, and a good warm day to be working on. Okay, so yesterday I was talking about the Satipatthana, the sutta on the mindfulness, foundations of mindfulness, or the direct path to realization through mindfulness. And... I was particularly talking about the way that this text shows not just a kind of one-off, this is how to be mindful, but also that mindfulness is a path, it's a process, it's something that we begin with attention to particular detail and it takes us on into other practices and other practices and other practices.

[01:24]

So we can read the whole text as a kind of process model of the path from... immediate experience of watching the breath and meditation through to an understanding of impermanence, of dependent origination and of the other core Buddhist teachings. So today I want to build on this and talk a little bit about Buddhist psychology and the way that I use this understanding of Buddhist psychology in my work as a therapist. So how does a text like the Satipatthana inform me in my practice as a therapist? So this is going to be a more practical day than yesterday. Yesterday we did a lot of theory. Today is going to be more practical. But I do still want to look at theory because there's a lot more in this text that we can draw on. Okay, so... The first thing that I would like to say...

[02:29]

You know, this text starts with the foundation of mindfulness. Mindfulness is foundational to any kind of interactive practice. I'd like us just to take a few minutes just to start just by sitting quietly and again going back to that first section, looking at the breath. Here, gone to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty hut, the practitioner sits down. Having folded his legs crosswise, set his body erect and established mindfulness in front of him.

[03:31]

Mindfully, he breathes in. Mindfully, he breathes out. Breathing in, he knows, I breathe in long. Breathing out, he knows. I breathe in long. Breathing in short, he knows. I breathe in short. Breathing out short, he knows. I breathe out short. He trains thus. I shall breathe in, experiencing the whole body. He trains thus. I shall breathe out, experiencing the whole body. He trains thus. I shall breathe in, calming the bodily formation. He trains thus. I shall breathe out, calming the bodily formation. Just as a skilled turner or his apprentice, when making a long turn, knows I am making a long turn. Or when making a short turn, knows I am making a short turn.

[04:37]

So too, breathing long, he knows. I breathe in long. And so as we sit, we give our attention to the breaths. And as we give attention to the breaths, we connect both with the outside world of the air and the inner world of the body space. As we follow that flow between outside and inside,

[05:41]

like we are both in touch with our own bodily experience and we're in touch with the experience of being present in the world. Okay, so just opening your eyes when you're ready. So this coming present into the breathing, into the sitting, into the space of the room, this is fundamental to therapeutic method.

[06:46]

When we train people in therapy method in England, in our the first thing that we do is we do grounding practice. So focusing on the breath, but particularly actually focusing on the sitting, sitting on the chair, feeling the chair underneath us. Because it's like when we have that feeling of connection to the physical world and to our body sense, it's like we are... We're doing two things. On the one hand, we are creating a space in which we can receive whatever the person who is talking to us is going to give. But also we're connecting ourselves to something that is solid and firm. We're ourselves becoming grounded. And these two functions are actually really fundamental to the therapy process. And, you know, I sometimes think about this. You know, if you've got the...

[07:48]

person who is the listening person they sit on their chair right so as you as you're sitting on your chair you're breathing you're receiving you're receiving from the world and you're also you're aware that you are in physical contact with the chair so just now when I was reading the text and you close your eyes You have these two awarenesses, the awareness of receiving and the awareness of being held, and particularly the connection here to the ground. And in terms of working therapeutically with people, this is probably the most important thing you do because it's like, in a way, what we create is we create a kind of bowl. We become a solid container.

[08:50]

We are held. We feel ourselves held by the environment that we're in. We become conscious of that holding. We become grounded. We become calm in mind. We become spacious. And there's a kind of emptiness that opens up in us because we've created that space. We've set aside our own anxieties, worries. preoccupations, enthusiasm, whatever they are, we've set those aside and we've just created this space. This space becomes a bit like a bowl. Okay, so I like to think of the body when we're working therapeutically as a kind of bowl that receives. So when I'm listening to what you're saying, what you're saying, what you're saying, in a way I'm receiving it into the physical bowl of the body. This is mindful presence. And it comes out of that sense of connection to the earth and the solidness of the chair that I'm sitting on, the solidness of the ground underneath me.

[09:54]

If I can be aware of that, then this is like the first step in terms of offering something to the person. There's a... There's a Japanese... I would like to just talk a little bit about at this stage. It's a little bit of a diversion, but I think it's quite valuable in these terms. This therapist, he's a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist priest, a Pure Land priest, and he's also a psychologist and works in a person-centered modality. But he's developed a particular... a form of therapy which he calls Shinshu counseling, which is based on Buddhist principles. His name is Gisho Psycho. And what he says is that when you come together with the client, and he represents it in a diagram like this, he says the counselor comes together with the client.

[11:04]

You can think just the practitioner with a friend or the Dharma teacher with a student, however you like to think about it. But the two people meet as equals. They meet in a situation where each of them brings something to the interaction. The counsellor brings their experience, their skills and so on. The client brings their story, their life experience, and they come together and neither of them actually knows very much about the other at that point. You know, they meet at this small point of contact, very important point of contact, but a small point of contact in which nothing is actually known between the two. You know, it's just a kind of fresh meeting. But what he says is that beneath the surface of the session, something else is going on. And he talks about this in terms of Buddhist faith.

[12:05]

Because he's a Pure Land Buddhist, and Pure Land Buddhists talk a lot about faith. But you can think about it in terms of trust. You can think about it in terms of confidence. You can think about it in terms of groundedness. You can think about it in terms of solidity in your practice. However, whatever terminology you want to use, But there is solidity that is available to anybody. Anybody can be grounded. Anybody can be present. Anybody can be in the present moment. Anybody can be mindful. So it's just there. It's available. But what he says is that the counselor, because they have learned skills and they have practiced, they are solid. They've got this solidness. So having accumulated this practice through mindfulness, through confidence in their own training, through life experience, however they've achieved it, they have this solidity.

[13:10]

The client, on the other hand, arrives and they don't have confidence. It's still there. They've still got the solid base potentially there, but they're not in touch with it. And... Really, the reason that they've come to talk to somebody because they're disturbed or whatever is because they've lost this solidity. They're floating around in life and they feel unstable and unsupported and so on. They are unmindful, if you like. And what he says is that really the therapeutic process is about gradually catching this solidness, learning this solidness. And they do it by kind of piggybacking on the counsellor. In a way, what happens? If you're in the presence of somebody who is calm, solid, grounded, you pick it up. So being able to be grounded, mindful, present, this in itself is offering something that is therapeutic to the other person.

[14:18]

It's probably the most important thing that's offered. And so according to Gisho Saika's model, What is offered is that groundedness that the council brings to the session. And over the course of the meetings that they have together, the client gradually gets that groundedness, that mindfulness, and they go away in a state of faith, having learned to live life in a much more grounded, solid kind of way. Okay, so we didn't come back to our... listener you know we can we can think of this in a very embodied way and i think that the satipatthana starts with the body partly because the body is very accessible and we start our meditation practice with the body but we do it for a reason you know the body is accessible but it's also the first step in terms of working with psychology so becoming grounded becoming solid in the body

[15:21]

is the first step towards that calm and so on, which then arises. Okay. So when we are working as therapists, we work with groundedness. We create this empty bowl in order to be receptive to whatever the person who is talking with us is listening to us. And this is something we all do, you know. I don't know how many in this room ever work in any kind of counselling or listening setting, but all of you listen to other people. You know, all of you are spiritual friends to other people. All of you are available to other people as a listening ear on occasions, I'm sure. And so, you know, practising this mindful listening, this being present, being grounded, being in contact with the chair that you're sitting on, being in contact with your breath, being in contact with the other is important.

[16:22]

And what happens is that when somebody else comes to talk to us, they sit opposite us and they sit in their chair and they talk and they give us their stories, we start to feel it, we start to resonate. And you know how it is, you're with somebody Maybe they're a bit anxious, maybe they're a bit agitated, and you start to get a bit agitated and anxious as you listen to them. And so it's like we need to learn to hold that experience of being with the other person, receiving their way of being, but at the same time holding on to this solidness for them. So... One of the things that we do in our training is to work with that ability to have both states, to be able to, on the one hand, be solid, mindful, available, and at the same time to be able to hold all the kind of confusion of human emotions that we receive.

[17:24]

You know, we receive those in a way in the bowl during the session, but we hold on to this as our groundedness. And so we are able to be with the person, share it, help them to... untangle some of that tangled mess that they're holding and struggling with and at the same time to be with our own solidness and groundedness. Okay, so what's all this? What's all this? Now I think the Satipatthana actually goes on and tells us quite a lot about the this that we're receiving, the emotional stuff, the mind states and so on. And in a way, the Satipatthana gives us a structure, a model for thinking about the way that mind states create themselves. So we looked yesterday at the different aspects of working with the body.

[18:26]

We looked at how the body sequence goes through, first of all, the... just being aware of the breath, then being aware of the body in different postures, then being aware of the different activities of the body, then going into the different parts of the body, the constituents of the body, working with the elements meditation, working with the channel ground meditations, the corpse decomposition of the body and so on. So like we went through all of that sequence around the body. The next stage is the second part of the Sutta, looks at Vedana, and it's Vedana that I would like to talk about next. Vedana is often translated as Vedana. Now, one of the... Vedana is talked about in many different teachings.

[19:43]

But one of the teachings that we find Vedana referred to in particularly is the teaching of the five aggregates or the skandhas. And we'll actually come back to the skandas when we look at the last section of the text, because they are actually there as the second of the elements, the objects that are looked at in the section on dhanas. So, what is Vedana? Vedana is basically... Let's go back to Two People Meet. When you are experiencing, what happens? In the skandhas, the first of the skandhas is rupa.

[20:44]

So, when two people meet, the first thing that happens is that there is a perception of the other person. Rupa is the perceptual form. So when the client comes into therapy, what they will tend to do is they will tend to talk about people, objects, things, things that have concern. But basically, they are talking about things that are important in their life so they might come in they might talk about say a situation in a relationship that they have and the person that they talk about you know say they talk about i don't know their partner jenny so jenny would be rupa okay so this person is coming and they're talking about uh jenny

[21:57]

person they're talking about. As they talk about this person, we have a sense of a reaction. The reaction is better than that. Maybe they like this person, maybe they don't like this person. Say they don't like this person. Say that this is somebody that they had an argument with. So as As a client comes in, they start talking about Jenny. They say, you know, today I was at work and Jenny walked into the office and I immediately just felt on edge. And that immediate reaction, that immediate reaction, this is their dinner. So, Veduna is like... We sometimes describe it as the kind of reaction that an amoeba has.

[23:01]

You know amoebas? They're kind of like little microscopic creatures that go around. You learn about them in biology in England when you're at school. I don't know whether you learn about them over here. But anyway, they're little unicellular creatures that kind of go through the sort of murky waters. Probably loads of them down there in the creek. Yeah. But anyway, they go around and they come up against something and they either gobble it up or they push it away. Well, this is the veterinary action. It's either a gobbling up or it's a pushing away of experience. And it's the immediate way in which we engage with things. And, you know, I think what you can tell looking at the structure of the Satipatthana is like we've started looking at the body. What we start to notice as we become more aware of our body practice is we start to notice these reactions a lot sooner.

[24:04]

You know, so I think what the Satipatthana is doing here is it's saying you start to practice with the body. You become more aware of breathing. You become more aware of all these different aspects of body experience. And then you start to become much more aware of the way the body is constantly discriminating between like it, don't like it sorts of things. OK, so Vedana is the second of the skandhas and it's our reactive aspect. OK, so we start off, we see something, we react to it and we grasp it or we push it away. And that happens at a very kind of immediate, visceral gut kind of reaction. It's a body, an embodied process. Vedana is very important in Buddhist psychology because on the one hand, it's a very, is a precognitive experience. You know, as I was saying this morning, it's something that it happens before we actually have the chance to think about anything or whatever.

[25:13]

It's a conditioned experience. So it comes out of our general mental process. but it's precognitive. So it's like it catches us unawares. But learning to be mindful of that reaction is the way into starting to change our patterns, or it's one of the ways into starting to change our patterns. So, you know, when you read texts about Vedana, then often it's seen as that point in the... cycle of conditioning at which we can interrupt things, we can do something about it. So noticing that kind of instant automatic response that people have to situations, this is how we can start to become mindful and start to make a difference. So we've introduced the calming effect of mindfulness, but we can now start to use the mindfulness as a way to start to become more aware of the way that a person is constructing their world.

[26:20]

So in the Satipatthana, the Vedana reactions that I described are basically just the three forms of Vedana. So Vedana is basically simply plus, minus or plus, minus. It's either positive, negative, or neutral. And in this text, these qualities are described both in terms of worldly aspects and of unworldly aspects. And I think this is quite interesting because, in a way, what it's describing is not going into a sort of inhuman state in which we have no reactions to things. But it's basically saying that some of these reactions might actually be ones that are spiritually useful, whereas some of these reactions are ones that are problematic for us. And so actually, even in that sort of reactiveness that we have, it doesn't mean that we have to kind of throw it out entirely.

[27:29]

It means that it's something about understanding the conditioned aspects of it and the unconditioned aspects of it. So there will still be... positive and negative reactions to things. You know, we'll have positive experiences of those things that are spiritually inspiring. For example, we might be drawn to those things or we might reject things that are spiritually dangerous to us. And these would be wholesome qualities. But for the most part, as ordinary people, our reactions at the level that they don't have are negative. reactions that get in the way and that cause problems. Okay, so I'd like to just talk a little bit more about the skandas, because the skandas actually create a kind of cycle. And so we're basically, we talk about rupa, the perception of things, which leads to vedena.

[28:33]

And this then leads us into what's called Samshina, which is usually described as perception. I usually prefer to talk about associations. One of the problems with the teaching of the Skandas is that often we're reading this in English, in which case you'll find it listed as form... form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness. This is how the skandas are normally translated. I tend to use the Sanskrit words for them because I think it's quite useful to unpack what's actually meant by each. Because often people get into some confusion trying to understand the skandas just because the translations, I think, are too broad. They don't actually give... much of an idea. Sanjana is basically about getting into our script.

[29:37]

So I tend to use association because it's like, it's when we associate things with our particular script. So it's not just kind of any old perception. It's about putting a perception onto something that is personalized, that's conditioned. You know, I interpret this in terms of, so if we go back to our client who comes in and talks about Jenny in the office, she's probably, by this stage, got a story running about Jenny. You know, she's seeing Jenny as that person who's always getting in my way and always irritating. You know, so she's gone from seeing her into reacting into a storyline. And Sanjana is a storyline. And on the basis of that, according to the standards, she will then... create metal formations which will lead to which is conditioned consciousness.

[30:46]

And that will lead her to go on seeing things in a particular way. So basically what's being described in the teaching of the skandhas is a process which is a kind of cycle of reinforcement of the self and the identity. I'm digressing into this because it's very much embedded in the satipatara. So this cycle of the skandhas, this cycle of creation of the identity, and incidentally it also maps very much onto the 12 links of dependent origination. which give a more filled out version of this cycle. But basically it's a cycle whereby we go around looking at the world in a conditioned way, reacting to it, building it into our storylines, elaborating those stories, and incidentally laying down a whole lot of karmic seeds around those stories.

[31:54]

which leads us to have the conditioned consciousness that leads us to go out looking for more things that will reinforce that sense of self. And this creates a kind of bubble of identity which we inhabit. So all of the time that we're around in the world, that we're seeing things, you know, when you walk into this room, when you listen to this talk, when you meet somebody on the street, all of the time, because we are living in a conditioned consciousness, we're going out and we're seeing things in a conditioned way We're reacting to them according to that conditioning. We're building associations. We're linking it into previous associations. We're building new formations, and we're going round and round this cycle. It sounds like the process of memory. Memory, yes. Memory is very much linked into it, yes. But it's also an embodied memory. Because samskaras are... Another way of thinking about them is this is about karmic seeds.

[32:58]

This is about the seeds of karma that we lay in our consciousness. And karma is very much linked to action. So it's an embodied memory as well as being just simply a mental memory. There's not that split between the mind and body in Buddhist psychology. And so going back to mindfulness, you know, we start off with mindfulness of the body because the body is the instrument through which all of this is processed. Okay. So what are we doing time-wise? Okay. So Vedana is the second. Awareness of Vedana, observing Vedana, is the second of the Satipatthanas. And based on this is the third of the Satipatthanas, which is citta. Citta is the mentality. And in a way, we can see that, you know, we've gone from here through to here. I mean, it's not quite like that, but, you know, I think it's a way of thinking about it.

[34:02]

The mentality, what's this made up of? It's made up of, first of all, what we call root relations. Greed, hate and delusion. Lustful, angry and deluded thoughts. You know, these are the, what are called, the root relations. root conditions of the mind. So, you know, we talked about Vedana as being the immediate positive, negative, neutral response to things. But we can also see that the mind has predominant states. We all have tendencies to be either a greed type person or a hate type person or a deluded type person and these these tend to be more pervasive types of states you know and yes i mean we have different patterns of these things but it is surprising how much people do tend to be in one or other of these camps which doesn't necessarily mean that they're you know if they're a hate person type paced person this doesn't necessarily mean they go around hating everything it may mean that they're

[35:21]

withdrawing from life a lot of the time it may be just a negative kind of mentality in which they are feeling avoidant of things or negative towards things or they don't want to try things or whatever so it doesn't necessarily take on a hostile kind of aspect but we will tend to have mentalities that follow one or other of these things and You know, I mean, it's quite interesting. I've worked quite a lot with people with eating issues. And, you know, you see this with eating issues. People tend to have patterns of either they tend towards not eating, they tend towards anorexia or compulsive exercising or a kind of what you might think of as a very restrictive mentality and so on. And so on. But of course, you see this in other things, like they might just be very rigid about their practice, for instance. You see people who are very kind of severe Buddhists who are going to be very much into that kind of mentality where I'm going to sit on my cushion until it finishes me off kind of thing.

[36:31]

So you get these kinds of withdrawing kind of mentality, or you get the person who wants everything, the person who eats everything that's going. not looking at myself, but, you know, great book and package of food laid out and you just want to try a bit of everything. Or, you know, you come to a centre like this and you want to have a go at everything that's on offer. You want to sit every practice period that's on offer. You want to go and get in the bathhouse as fast as you can, be down there in the creek. You want to be walking up the hills and having conversations with everybody and, you know... It's not necessarily a negative thing, but these are kind of root conditions. They're the root states of the mind, and we tend to get into these pervasive states. And you can see how, because the psychology of the person is a cyclical thing, and we go round and round this, that if we're constantly on the sort of positive greed kind of... functioning we're likely to build up those patterns or if we're constantly on the withdrawing kind of functioning we like to build up those patterns and so on and so the mindset is that underlying ongoing principle that's there and so when we are with somebody we're listening to them then you know we we start to get a sense of what their patterning is and of course it's it's complex

[37:58]

You know, I mean, I've talked in very general terms about how we tend to be kind of positive or negative, greed or hate mentalities, or however you want to put it. And I don't think we should take these things as being pejorative. But, you know, we can also think about these as being kind of more subtle than that, that actually there are many different layers of, and a lot of the therapeutic process that one goes through is about hearing how these patterns play out. On the one hand, the same patterns again and again and again in different circumstances, and probably that person's relationship to Jenny is probably in some way somewhat similar to relationships they've had with other people, maybe people that they grew up with, maybe relationships with teachers or parents or with whoever it is, because we tend to keep repeating these patterns um but also you know we have different modes of being and because all of these mindsets are conditioned actually what you find is that people often have more than one sort of mentality that they they move between so you know somebody might be very generous when they're

[39:19]

with their family and so on, but they might, when they go into work mode, they might actually be quite fierce and critical of people and so on. And the same person might have completely different modes of being depending on the circumstance. So, you know, I don't think we should get the idea from this and from the other Buddhist scriptures that we are dealing with a kind of simple state in which people are of one kind. We actually have many, many layers of conditioning which have been layered at laid down over the years and it's very subtle and you know you you think you understand something and actually you don't you know there is always more layers there's always more that emerges so you know i think these these texts they give us a guide they give us a map but you know it's like any map it's a simplification it gives us a kind of picture of the territory um but it doesn't give us kind of the answers of where to go Okay. I wanted to just, before we finish, goodness, we're going to be running short on time here, but I'd like to give you this anyway because I've brought it with me and because I think it's a useful text.

[40:35]

I have here a text of another sutta, which is called the Ant Hill Sutta. You know it? Yes. It's one of my... my favourites, which is one reason I'd like to share it, but also I want to share it because it gives another picture of the way that the self is created, which in many ways maps onto this and maps onto some of the stuff that we've set in the chart now. Okay. So, the anthill sutta, this text... is basically the story of a dream, which, if you haven't read it and you're interested in psychology, is well worth looking at. So I'll tell you the story, basically, rather than you needing to read it. You can take this away and then you've got a copy of it. By the way, can I just say, if you're looking for these PI texts, then this website, accesstoinsight.com,

[41:45]

Not sure the end. I think it might be .com. I think so. Anyway, if you Google access to insight, it's got most of the texts, most of the key texts in the Pali canon you'll find there. And it's an excellent resource if you're wanting to look at Buddhist texts from the Pali. Okay, so the story of the anthill. This is a story of a dream. One of the monks brings a dream to the Buddha for interpretation. And in the dream, he is walking along and he sees an anthill. And a deva appears and gives him a sword and says, dig into the anthill. Okay, so he digs into this anthill and he brings out a whole series of objects from the anthill. So... Basically, when the Buddha gives the interpretation of it, and I'm kind of skipping over this quite fast, what emerges is that the anthill is a model of the person.

[42:52]

It's a representation of the person. And the sword is like the sword of wisdom, you know, Manjushri's sword. So, what we're having here is we've got a description of what happens in the process of meditation as we start to look at all the layers of the psyche. So, it actually provides us with a very interesting model of how the sense of identity is created. And so the objects which he comes up with are, first of all, Ba. And what the Buddha says the Ba represents is a complete refusal to look. Okay, it's the... It's actually the gate that's crossed the village street as people come into the village. Okay. So that would be like a person who has a lot of delusion. So this would be the person who is complete. Don't want to go there.

[43:53]

You know, they are in total denial, delusion. Don't want to talk about myself. No, I haven't got any problems. I'm fine. Understood. Then we get them told, he's spared you to anger. Okay, and I think this is a kind of passive-aggressive stance. I think what's being described here is the person who is very nice, but there's all that kind of grumpy nastiness kind of is just seeping out around the edges. Okay. The next object is the fork. And I think this is basically, what would this be, sort of provocation.

[44:58]

The person who won't make their mind up. The person who is constantly wavering between different options and won't actually make a decision to do anything or say anything. Okay. So this is the five hindrances. And then we have the tortoise, which is the skanders. I'm gonna come back to these three in a minute. And then we have the icon block. And this is the senses. And I think this is a lovely image of the senses, because it's like the senses are grasping onto things. So it's like the knife hitting into the butcher's block. Okay. So, you know. Yeah, want it. No, don't want it.

[46:00]

It's the way that attachment is going on. This is neat. Finally, we have the larger circle. says don't harm the Nagasa. This is the spiritual energy. Okay. Now, I said this is the... Lust. Lust. A piece of meat. It's lust. Yeah. It's quite a meat market, you know. It's... Now, one of the reasons that I wanted to just share this text, although, you know, I could have done three sections just looking at this text, is because we actually find it here. These, oops, no, wrong three.

[47:02]

These three. The sieve, the tortoise, and the knife block, which we actually find, again, in the Satipatthana. We find the five hindrances, We find the aggregates, the skandhas, and we find the senses. And you see, I think what's happening in the Satipatthana is that, in a way, as we go through the process of the text, we start to see in this last section that what we've got is basically part of this description of how we become aware of the identity being created and a kind of unpicking of this process. So the first thing that we come to is the hindrances. The first thing that we become aware of through the process of mindfulness is these behaviors which are the things that start to be about personal attachment and personal patterns of behavior.

[48:15]

And they're very practical things. So the hindrances are these are all things that get in the way of your practice or get in the way of you doing what you want to do in life. Sense, desire, aversion. I've heard these somewhere before. Sloth and torpor, so laziness. Restlessness and remorse, so agitation and worry and so on. And doubt, as in, and I think this is different to the the doubt that's represented by the fork. I think this is the sort of worrying doubt, the kind of, I can't possibly do this, I'm no good at it, I'm hopeless, I just can't do it kind of doubt. And so the hindrances, I think, are all the sort of manifestations of the sense of identity as they manifest in our behaviour in the world. So as we become more mindful, we start to become aware of these patterns that are our patterns of behaviour. Okay? And so when we are looking at, when we're with somebody and we're starting to hear their story and we're starting to receive all this kind of tangle of stuff that we receive in this bowl of mindful attention that we're giving to them, you know, it's often the things that are in the hindrances that we start to become aware of.

[49:32]

You know, they're patterns of behavior. You know, and then we start to inquire into it and what do we find? We find the scandals, the patterns of... perception, the patterns of reaction, the patterns of mental story that the person is carrying, and we can start to work with that. And what are these based on? They're based on the raw attachments of the senses. So as we start to work on those, we start to come back to. And I think that what's interesting when we look at this is that the progression comes back through to what in many ways seem like the most primitive aspects of the person. You know, it's not like the thing that's close to the spiritual energy is the person who is kind of being nice. The thing that's close to the spiritual energy is actually the raw sensual grasping the person's got.

[50:36]

And this is something that we see in quite a few of the teachings. that actually getting in touch with these raw emotional kind of impulses is actually the first step, but it's also the step that's probably the least complicated. It's not got messed up into a whole lot of entrenched patterns of behavior. It's our kind of immediate response to life is based in the senses. So actually working around those kind of sense impulses can actually be the most productive area in terms of starting to unsettle some of the difficult patterns of behaviour that people have got into. Okay, now I'm very conscious that we're probably getting quite close to, yes, we've got about a little under 10 minutes left. And I'm aware that I've kind of given you quite a bit of material here, but I hope it kind of holds together and gives you some sense of maybe where the Satipatthana is going in terms of its uncovering of these processes which create the sense of identity and which uphold the sense of identity and how through mindfulness there's a kind of loosening of that structure that can become problematic for people.

[52:01]

Okay, I'd like to open up for questions now, because I think that's probably the most useful way to sort of move this on. So... Yes? Thank you for your lecture. When you were talking about the model, CERCO's model... CERCO's model, yes. I noticed that you substituted counsellor-client for teacher and student. Yes, yes. So my question... which has an optional how at the beginning, is how is a therapist different from a Buddhist teacher? Good question. Or is a therapist different? Is a therapist. Well, I think there are structural differences and there are contractual differences. The structure of the relationship with the therapist is obviously limited to the particular... brand of therapy that you're doing, but usually it will be time-limited, usually it will be found in certain ways.

[53:03]

The relationship between the teacher and the student in Buddhism will have different structures to it. So that's one aspect. I think contractually it's different because the client is coming to therapy in order to probably work through particular things or for... emotional development and so on, whereas the trainee who's coming to a Buddhist teacher is coming in a much more holistic way and is going to have a much longer term relationship. So I think it's a matter of degrees is one aspect of it. And then obviously there's going to be kind of more particular stylistic things. So I would see there being quite a lot of common ground, but also some quite important differences in terms of distinction but I think it is important because a lot of the you see in therapy we put a lot of emphasis on boundaries and on being clear about the boundary nature of the relationship and on talking about like the way in which the there are limits in how the therapist and client probably don't meet outside of the session and what behaviour can go on between them and so on

[54:20]

I think that in the Buddhist world, in some cases, that can get very messy, basically. And I think, to be honest, Buddhist teachers could do with knowing a bit about things like transference. And because I think sometimes it can get in the way. But that's a whole other lecture series. What about the process, though? Is there much difference in the process? Process. The structural elements, right? And actually what happens between people, because that's what people... I think, again, it's a matter of degree and it's a matter of how deep the client's willing to go and how deep the therapist is willing to go. But I think basically spiritual development and mental development are, you know, they're inseparable. Spiritual development? Mental development or therapeutic process. You know, it is a spiritual process. I don't think you can kind of make a cut off, but you can make it. cutoffs in terms of degree and in terms of the sort of contract for what you go into, I think.

[55:21]

Yeah. So both yesterday and today, my thoughts were quite related to this merging or this partnership or this mirroring of a Buddhist teacher's relationship with the student versus a therapist's relationship with the client. And then the items that you mentioned, as far as the different restrictions, a therapist is also provided by external sources, as far as licensing, as far as government, et cetera. To me, that's the safeguard for the client. And I think, and I've attended a few of these faculty Buddhists, and I still am worried for Buddhist Western community with teachers dipping into this half-armed skill without any regulations required by a therapist.

[56:31]

And I wonder if we are putting a false degree of intellect or degree of skill for Buddhist teachers that are putting students at risk. And, you know, and I've, you know, it's, you know, I don't, I understand, or I'm thinking, I think I'm understanding the collection of a model and skill. It's duplicated in a number of different different models, which is reassuring. But I think that we're very, I think it may seem like a different conversation, but it's a more conversation for me. And I don't want students to feel In any regard, a Buddhist teacher is, to me, I don't know if you're familiar with the 12-step program, where they say it's one alcoholic talking to another, another dad talking to another. To me, that's what a Buddhist teacher is. It's one Buddhist talking to another.

[57:33]

And then, I'm just saying, and then you go to therapy, and I've been a therapist for addicts, and there's a different process that they have to go through. Mm-hmm. It doesn't have to be spiritual, it could be ethical, physical, mental, where they derive it different things, but the two separate elements are the main ingredients to the outcome of health. And so this merging or this splattering of thinking were all one scared me. Did they? Yes. Well, you know, I mean, these are huge areas, as you know, and I could go on talking all evening about this. Right. But, you know, I think it's a really important area. I think that it's complex. I think Buddhist teachers ideally should be operating in a situation where there will be other peers and probably higher teachers who are there to be their spiritual friends and to kind of pull them up or give them advice or whatever.

[58:34]

So I don't think they should be. You know, just as a therapist has their supervisor and their professional body, so too I think the Buddhist teachers should have some sort of source of reference. Yeah. So I think that's one thing. I think also that you can't necessarily determine what the relationship is just from what it's said to be. So even when you're saying we are two equals... I think you can be on quite dicey ground. So even in something like the 12-step where, yes, it's one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, you're still going to have some people who have more natural authority than others and who will attract... transference and so on based on that and if they then step out of line and behave inappropriately that will be damaging for the person yes so you know whatever you say and this happened you know i lived through the humanistic psychology world of the 1980s and there was a lot of we're all equal so we can do what we like kind of thing and everyone takes responsibility for themselves and how you know there were therapists sleeping with clients and students sleeping with

[59:43]

tutors and, you know, goodness knows what. And, you know, you can't just say we're all equal. There's inequalities all over the place. And I think a lot of this work is about being aware of what is rather than what's said to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are running over time. What's transference? Transference is the tendency to reproduce in one relationship phenomena that belong to a previous relationship. And quite generally, it's at simple levels. It's treating as an adult, going around seeing other adults as parent figures, teacher figures and so on. Yeah. But it's unconscious. But it's unconscious. Yes. Yes. It's an unconscious process that's going on. Yes. what you're saying about Buddhist teachers knowing about transmits because they all transfer on to their students.

[60:43]

Yes. Well, quite. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. It's not a one-way street at all. No. No. So maybe we can just end in if people want to ask questions. Actually, put the playing back. They are intentional and equally extended to every being.

[61:08]

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