Emptiness and the Relational-self

I have often wondered where conceptions of the "self" in contemporary psychotherapy fit in with the Buddhist notion of "emptiness" or "non-local self" that is so central in meditative practice. This is not an insignificant question. For years both academics and practicing psychotherapists have explored and critiqued many distinct notions of the self used in modern psychology, examining what appears on the surface to be inconsistent if not incompatible notions about the self within and between the psychologies of East and West.¹ Though there have been specific attempts to apply Buddhist meditative practices in psychotherapeutic work with the self, many practitioners remained uncomfortable when attempting to reconcile what appear to be fundamental differences in the way the different traditions look at the ego and the self.²

One of the recurring problems has been the Cartesian body/mind split that has informed so much of the limited and misleading notions of mind and the "self" in Western psychology.³ Many psychotherapists have recognized the limits of much contemporary thinking on the subject and have looked to other traditions for a more workable model for talking about the self in post-modern society and clinical practice.⁴

Self-relations psychotherapy (Cf. Gilligan, 1997; Gilligan, 2002; Gilligan & Simon, 2004) is one example of a form of psychotherapy that has taken us very far from this notion of the "solid" disembodied self to a conception of the self as a fluid-unfolding-fully-embodied-field-based-relationship. This has been a significant advance, and one of the important contributions of self-relations psychotherapy to a growing critique of modernist conceptions of the self in psychology and philosophy. In this paper I would like to explore some of the similarities and differences between the concept of the "relational self" in self-relations psychotherapy and some of the perspectives on "emptiness," "inter-being" or "non-local" mind and self found in Buddhism.

There is a statement by the 14th Century Tibetan Lama, Tsongkhapa, "Unborn emptiness has let go of the extremes of being and non-being. Thus it is both the center itself and the central path. Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves."⁵ Stephen Batchelor explores this intriguing statement in his wonderful book, Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997). I have found it very stimulating, a sort of koan on which I have meditated many times in thinking about the self in the context of my psychotherapy practice. It has also served as a wonderful jumping off place in thinking about how Buddhism might inform modern psychotherapeutic conceptions of the self. Bachelor warns against the tendency to speak of contingent conditions and consequences as though they were things. When we look at such "things" closely they turn out to be processes with no independent reality. Batchelor (1997: 76) asks, "Sit on a chair, close your eyes, and listen attentively to the rain falling outside. Where does the sound of he rain stop and your hearing begin? Where, for that matter, does your bottom end and the seat of the chair begin? While conceptually the sound of rain is as different from my hearing as my bottom is from the chair, experientially it is impossible to distinguish between them. Rainfall blurs into hearing; bottom blurs into chair." We are so quickly seduced by the blinders deeply embedded in everyday consciousness into thinking that things are solid and non-contingent when they are really quite non-solid, ephemeral, and contingent. We continually speak of conditions and consequences as though they were things but looking closer see that they are in fact processes with no independent reality. In everyday life our taken-for-granted ways of seeing and experiencing trip us up continually. Batchelor points out that a harsh barbed remark can haunt us for days, but in fact it is no more than a brief instance isolated from a torrent of events. In our everyday consciousness such remarks stand out in the mind's eye as something intrinsically real and apart. Ultimately this habit of isolating things leads us to inhabit a world in which the gaps between them become absolute. Ultimately it is these self-constructed gaps in experience that create suffering and bring people into our offices feeling symptoms and great pain.

Bachelor goes on to point out (1997:77) that by regarding things as absolutely separate and as desirable or by seeing them as inherently fearful, we set ourselves up for much needless suffering. We become intent on possessing something we can never have or eradicating things that were never there in the first place. If we can somehow notice how things emerge from and fade back into an unbroken flow of conditioning, we can begin to lighten up our perceptions and begin to experience things with "new" eyes. Most importantly, we recognize how things are relatively, not absolutely, desirable or fearful. We see more clearly how things interconnect and interact, each contingent on the others, no one of them intrinsically separate from the rest.

How we work with human subjects in clinical practice to begin to free up their ways of seeing and experiencing themselves is a lot about the stuff psychotherapists try to understand and put in practice in working with clients. How can we help our clients let go of their attachments to solid selves and frozen identities? How do we repair breaks in being and relatedness and attempt to help our clients reconnect to the flow and subtle currents in their experience? Where are the hidden parts, the abandoned and disavowed fragments of being, frozen and lost in time, that we seek to midwife back into the contingent relational flow of experience? All these questions are very central to how we think about the self and how we work with our clients in helping them repair the "breaks" in being and relatedness that cause such suffering. When we talk about these breaks or "absolute gaps" in experience are we referring to something very similar to what Buddhism refers to as "emptiness" or are they in fact quite different? Where do the notions of "embodied experience" and "field" that are so important to modern psychotherapy tie in with Buddhist psychology and Buddhist notions of the self and emptiness? And how does Buddhism inform our thinking about what we refer to as the ground of being or the larger human situation that surrounds our lives? All these questions are central in exploring potential points of contact between Buddhism and the post-modern psychotherapeutic sense of the self. Hopefully the following pages will provide some answers to these questions.

I remember an important conversation I had on an internet discussion List with Stephen Gilligan (1997), the noted psychotherapist and guiding force behind self-relations psychotherapy, about the self as a process. In this conversation he also talked about the self as resting in a "field" which is both a conduit and container for the energies of the self. He offered a very relevant discussion of many of these important questions about the self. He said (See Rossel, 2005):

I suggest that the main ingredient in good sponsorship is intentionality. A person consciously makes a decision to support and become interested in the awakening process of a person or community. He or she makes a commitment or "solemn pledge" . . .to behold / take interest in / be delighted by / become attentive to / become curious about / support / acknowledge / protect / honor etc. the natural awakening process that is already occurring in that person or community. It is a disciplined act of falling in love and serving. The motivation has multiple roots, self-interest and self-awakening being at the top of the list. To make a difference in other's lives, it appears that you have to nurture and cultivate your interest in the larger community, beyond your local interests.

But intentionality is not sufficient. Practices / traditions / disciplines must be invoked implicitly or explicitly. . . A sponsor does not operate in a vacuum; if he or she tries to, the descent into being a hero or patronizing fool occurs quickly, as the sponsor falsely assumes it is his or her presence that is making the difference. But the great thing about sponsorship is that it requires that the sponsor surrender to a larger field him/herself. That is, you are part of a beautiful tradition of awakening the human spirit. The traditions you are operating in -- e.g., psychotherapy, parenting, art, athletics, social justice, etc., --are the real "sponsor." Thus, being a good sponsor requires that you connect with those that have gone before you and those who have started a little bit after you (on that particular path). You are a conduit that is receiving and giving i.e., passing it on by letting it in and then letting it out.

In this important communication Gilligan points out that acts of sponsorship that sustain the process of awakening are connected unconsciously by a web of relatedness spun by countless other acts of sponsorship connected in consciousness across time. This web of relatedness is intersubjective and beyond the ordinary time/space dimensions of experience within which we live, but nevertheless is very "real." Conceptualized this way the "field" might be thought of as the container within which sponsorship takes place. But to understand what the "field" as container really means, we need to look a bit more deeply into the places where both Buddhist psychology and quantum physics inform modern clinical practice. (Cf., Rossel, 2004; 2005).

The "field," largely unconscious and intersubjective, has been described by the physicist, David Bohm ( 1979) as the "implicate order." As we will see, the "implicate order" is an important bridging concept between Buddhist notions of "emptiness" and modern Western psychotherapy. It provides a context for understanding the relationship between sponsorship, fluid selves, and the field as "container" as played out in therapeutic relationships. Another important communication to the list by Steve explored some of these key ideas:

"I wish I had suggested in The Courage to Love (1997) that there are at least two levels of field. The first is a dynamic one, where we experience and know the world phenomenologically. They include emotions, perspectives, relational structures, patterns of knowing, etc. They are transitory and relative, and they are where most of our attention is most of the time.

I am suggesting a second, deeper level of field consciousness, one difficult to describe, perhaps because it is difficult to experience. In . . . David Bohm's terminology, it is the "implicate order" from which the "explicate order(s)" unfold. It has no space/time coordinates, so it is not experienced phenomenologically--through representational systems. In Eastern terms, it is the nothingness out of which everything arises and returns. In creative terms, it is the place where new life / ideas / forms arise. In [Milton] Erickson's terms, maybe it is "the middle of nowhere." Sometimes folks seem to sense it at those unpredictable moments when life just seems perfect as it is.

Anyway, my point is that because of the difficulty in getting there, we need to listen in and feel the whispers and loving practices that those precious souls have contributed to over the generations in building accessible pathways to that "awakened consciousness." So when I talk about traditions in this sense, [this is what I mean]. It is not about political control or "getting ahead" or imposing something on another, although those dynamic fields and their multiple motivations may (and do) co-exist with this deeper field.

What I am saying is that while it is a good thing to be resisting/rejecting oppressive practices, we should be wary of becoming so self-righteous and political that we forget the deeper field that is the Source of it all. In my humble opinion this is happening in the postmodern world. And it is especially evident in the basic premise that all human reality is constituted in language. It is not that this view is wrong; it is that it is partial and therefore dangerous. It denies and turns away from the instinctual and archetypal self that forms the biological basis for the "constituted" (represented / constructed) psychological / personal / political self. . ."

In this post Gilligan points out that there is an important relationship between these two distinct levels of field that is often overlooked when we think about the self in modern psychotherapy practice. One level of field he characterized as dynamic, where we experience and know the world and each other phenomenologically. This is the level of field where we dwell most of the time and it is characterized by our transitory perceptions, emotions, patterns of knowing, etc. It is thus easy to see and sense that this is where we enter the field experientially and energetically. It is a "conduit" through which all kinds of energetic exchanges take place. The second level of field is much more difficult to describe and experience, but nevertheless is deeply "implicated" in everything that happens in the first field.

This second level of field might also be thought of as the experiential ground that Buddhism identifies as "emptiness." When the Tibetan Lama Tsongkhapa said, "Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves," he was pointing to the dynamic relationship between these two fields. The word he used for track was "shul." This term might roughly be translated as an "impression" or mark that remains after the thing that made it passes by -- a footprint, a foundation where a house once stood, a channel worn in a rock where a river ran in flood, the indentation made in the ground where an animal slept the night before. All these are shul -- impressions left by something that used to be there. A shul also becomes a path -- a regular set of impressions in the ground left by the regular tread of feet over many, many years, even centuries -- a path kept clear of obstructions and maintained for the use of others.

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¹My task here is not to explore all these questions. See Welwood (2002) for a review of many of the issues. Much of the controversy also comes from new advances in Western thinking, particularly looking at the self from the position of new advances in biology and cognitive science (Cf., Austin, 1998; Capra, 2002; Radin, 1997; Maturana & Varela, 1987; Jawarski, 1996; Bohm, 1994; Bohm & Edwards, 1991, Pearce, 2002; Gardner, 1983; 1985; Pert, 1999; Denton, 1998; Demasio, 1994; 1999; McLean, 1973; 1990; Sheldrake, 1981; Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski & Flowers, 2004 ).

²For just a few of the more promising examples ( Cf., Chodron, 1997; 2001; Nhat Hanh, 1991; 1998; Goldstein, 2003; H.H. Dali Lama, 2001; Tarrant, 1997; 2004; Epstein, 1998; Welwood, 2000; Kabat-Zinn; 1994; Kornfield,1993; 2000; Tolle, 1999). Most of these applications of Eastern meditative practice to modern psychotherapy have ignored or sidestepped some of the fundamental differences in thinking about ego and self in consciousness in the East and West. A couple of notable exceptions are Welwood, 2002 and Goldstein, 2003.

³For further discussion of many of these important issues (Cf. Bruner, 1986; 1990; Tayler, 1989; Demasio, 1994; Gardner, 1983; 1985; Gergan, 1989; 1991).

⁴For just a few of the more promising explorations Cf., Gardner, 1985; Gergen, 1985; 1989; 1991; Friedman, ed., 1993; Gilligan & Price, eds., 1993; Hillman, 1975).

⁵This is a translation of a passage from Tsongkhapa's commentary on Nagarjuna's second century text Malamadhyamakakariika (Root Verses on the Center). Bachelor says (1998:124) "the quoted passage forms part of Tsongkhapa's commentary to chapter 24, verse 18, which reads: "Whatever is contingently emergent/ Is said to be emptiness. / Is contingently configured, / It is the central path." He goes on to point out, "This presentation of the doctrine of emptiness is based on the interpretations of Tsongkhapa and his followers in the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism." See Geshe Rabten, Echoes of Voidness, Stephen Batchelor, (Trans. & Ed.), London: Wisdom, 1983.

*Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D. is a Life Coach/hypnotherapist practicing in Los Altos Hills, California. He is a long-time practitioner of self-relations psychotherapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. With an abiding interest in music, art, yoga, and other body-mind practices, Dr. Rossel is also a long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and has sought for many years to find ways to apply meditation and mindfulness in his psychotherapy practice. He may be reached at 10490 Albertsworth Lane, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024. Address all correspondence to his e-mail address: Rosselrob@aol.com.

We also thank Robert for his other articles, which we were happy to publish on our site:

Foundations:
The Ericksonian Legacy and Self-relations Psychotherapy
The Paradox of Surrender:
Finding Strength and Wisdom in the Struggle
The Expansion and Contraction of Being
Liminal Spaces and Transformation
Emptiness and the Relational-self
Our Clients, Our Teachers
Growing Up With Music
Things that Last
Mirror Work

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