Dharma Practice and the Unconscious Part II — Personal Accounts - Sensei Lawson Sachter

The first part of this article presented an overview of some of the complexities that can arise as the unconscious is mobilized through Dharma practice.  In hopes of offering a broader, and more personal, perspective on this subject, I’ve asked several Zen practitioners who have been through Davanloo’s ISTDP to write about some of their own insights and experiences.  Naturally some people are more eloquent, and some have histories or experiences or openings that are simply more dramatic.  Such accounts tend to be more readily included in a piece like this.  The people whose accounts have been given below were not all my clients, and all but one of them refers to experiences that took place within the past 15 years.  Needless to say, ways of integrating these ways of working are continually being refined.

The truth is that much of the time the work is fairly simple and direct. Resistances are addressed, a layer of the unacceptable feelings comes to the surface, and there’s an opening through which a range and depth of previously repressed feelings reveals itself – grief, rage, guilt, and much more.  Being simple doesn’t mean easy. These repressive forces can be tenacious.  Most of us have spent a lifetime developing sophisticated ways of avoiding what seems so unacceptable, often at great personal cost.

Zen and the Unconscious, Part I - Sensei Lawson Sachter

“If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you.

If you do not bring forth that which is within you, it will destroy you.”

The Gnostic Gospels

A Zen Master once said, “Dharma practice is like the ocean; the farther out you go, the deeper it becomes.”  Deeper levels of practice offer the hope of more than simply calming our seemingly endless internal chatter, and helping us become more ‘mindful’ in each moment.  Intensive forms of practice also open us to a level of non-dual awareness, one that transcends the conceptually-grounded understanding we so naturally take for granted — and in doing so reveal new possibilities of freedom. But those who are drawn to these deeper waters may find themselves confronted by painful and disturbing mindstates.  The Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross somewhat poetically referred to this part of the journey as passing through “the Dark Night of the Soul,” but surely, finding our way through these realms is never easy.

Psychodynamic Zen™, an Introduction - Sensei Lawson Sachter and Sensei Sunya Kjolhede

Psychodynamic: The interplay of conscious and unconscious mental or emotional processes, especially as they influence personality, behavior, and attitudes.

We’ve created this section of our blogsite as a way to share some of the more psychodynamically oriented work that’s being integrated into the training at Windhorse, and to invite ongoing discussion. In the future we hope this site will also attract the work of others who share similar concerns, and that it can serve as a link to related resources.  This particular section grows out of the recognition that unconscious forces can play a hidden, but significant, role in Dharma practice; and that these forces often function in ways unique to the Western psyche.  Certainly the unconscious can complement the creative and compassionate sides of practice, but it can also manifest itself through all kinds of self-afflictive mindstates.

The Cascading Mind - Sensei Sunya Kjolhede

When we first take up a sitting practice and look into our minds, we may be shocked to discover what’s going on in there. As the inner noise quiets down a bit, we start to see how scattered and unruly the thoughts are—how they race and tumble and repeat themselves, compulsively judging, labeling, dissecting.

We begin to feel the cocoon we’ve woven for ourselves out of all this mental turmoil and deadening abstraction, how it isolates us from others and from the rich texture of our lives. What often becomes painfully clear is that as long as this compulsive inner dialogue persists, any true sense of peace, intimacy, and presence is impossible.

This first step of simply experiencing the “monkey mind” is a necessary and important point in practice. Vajrayana teachings call it the stage of “Attaining the Cascading Mind,” and it is in fact a notable attainment, for it occurs only when we free ourselves, even slightly, from a tight identification with our habitual discursive thinking.

The Jackalope of Self - Sensei Sunya Kjolhede

When we cling to the familiar, to this notion of self that we have welded out of thoughts and memories since time immemorial, then we’re identifying with the wrong master. Zen Master Bassui’s essential question was, "Who is the Master?" Who is the one who hears, feels, sees, and talks? Our task in sesshin and in our lives is to put this true master, this "True self that is no-self," back on the throne. Otherwise all kinds of tricksters and demons break in and take its place.

This brings to mind an image from The Wind in the Willows, the part where Toad is absent from his big beautiful mansion. He’s been arrested and thrown into prison, and all these crafty, greedy weasels pour into Toad Hall and take over. They put on his fancy smoking jacket, they smoke his fancy pipes, they drink his expensive wine, and they trash the place. Ultimately, of course, they have to be driven out for Toad to be reinstated. Of course, we wouldn’t characterize this True Master as having Toad’s personality! – ornary personality or characteristics at all. This is utterly beyond birth and death, good and bad, self and other – beyond all dualities. And yet this is the One who is always right here, this living pulse of our being. Who else could it be?