One of the basic principles of our approach, as was established by Honen Shonen, is that faith and practice cannot be differentiated. The spiritual and the concrete are not separate.
Years ago, when I was a social worker, I worked in various hospitals in the North of England. I worked with medical consultants. In some settings, the patients were adults with psychiatric conditions. In other settings they were children with medical conditions, sometimes psychosomatic. The doctors were interested in fitting the client into a diagnostic category that would enable them to prescribe the appropriate medication. That was the purpose of diagnosis.
These diagnoses were of no relevance to my work as a social worker. I often found myself writing reports that began: “Whatever the medical diagnosis of this patient may be, the reality of their life is as follows…”
This concern with the concrete reality is an important part of Buddhist psychology. The Buddha was concerned to help people in the plight that they found themselves in. He didn’t prescribe chemicals. He listened and dicerned the nature of the spiritual problem as it was manifesting in behaviour and circumstance. If he met a woman who acted like a wild lunatic like Patacara, he wanted to hear the story. It turns out that her husband, two children and parents had all died within the course of a few days. This was surely enough to unhinge the best of people. His response to her tipped her into a grieving process and gave her insight into impermanence - not impermanence as an abstract idea, but as a lived reality that brings pain and suffering to innumerable people.
If someone tells me that such and such person is suffering from depression, I’m likely to say: “You mean, they’re sad? Please tell me, what they’re sad about. That’s what I want to know.” I want to know what life this person in living.
A therapist might say to me: “I’ve three patients and they all suffer from anxiety.” That makes it sound as if these three people are just the same as each other. But, of course, they’re not! Each of them is anxious about different things for different reasons. I want to know what those reasons are. The similarity of superficial presentation, it means nothing.
We talk about depression and anxiety as if they are diseases to be cured. But there are reasons why people become sad. There are reasons why they become anxious. If we didn’t have those feelings, we wouldn’t have survived all these millennia.
Sometimes these feelings are entirely appropriate. They’re grounded in the real life. When one understands the actual life of the person, the feelings make sense. But when this happens, the feelings cease to be the matter of central concern.
As a therapist I’m not in the business of rectifying feelings. I’m concerned to know the spiritual problem, the koan, that’s hindering this person’s liberation; and that spiritual issue manifests in the concrete circumstances of their life. Each person has lived through events and circumstances. They’ve tried to make sense of them. They’ve tried to understand the meaning. Experiences shape us.
If I know the experience a person has had and the sense, he has made of it, then I have a fair chance of understanding the dilemmas that face that person today, what it is that’s holding back their life.
In Buddhist terms: if I know the dukkha, and I know the samudaya, then I have some chance of finding an appropriate nirodha, that may set them on a wholesome path. The concrete cannot be separated from the spirit – and the spirit cannot be separated from the concrete life.
Faith and practice cannot be differentiated.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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