The term apodicity means certainty arrived at through evidence. In psychological usage it refers to experiential knowledge. Knowledge is apodictic for me when, because of my own experience, I cannot congruently doubt it. Clearly one can go through th
Read more…Three Poisons
In Buddhist psychology, we classify mental maladaptation into the so called three poisons of greed, hate and delusion. This is a rough and ready idea since in most cases there is some mixture and the cut off points are not that clear. No
How are we to achieve the kind of direct experience which will liberate us? The philosopher Husserl believed that this required of us a great deal of unhooking of ourselves from what we have learned. He called this "bracketing". Bracketing means putt
Read more…Included in the selections from the Parinirvana Sutta posted in the Buddhism Group is the following:
22. "Now there are eight kinds of assemblies, Ananda, that is to say, assemblies of nobles, brahmans, householders, ascetics, of the Four Great Kings
Read more…This is a space in which to discuss and share matters relating to depression, sadness, grief, melancholia, and related phenomena. There is a relevant paper posted in "Pages" listed in the right margin of the group page.
Read more…Earlier this week I was giving a seminar called "Beyond Carl Rogers". Rogers was a humanistic psychotherapist who had been inspired in some way by exposure to Eastern ideas. Western psychotherapy all the way back to William James, has benefitted by s
Read more…This weekend we have just completed a workshop in Belgium at Zenshin-In on the theme "Anger, Blame, Guilt and Sorrow". This provided an excellent medium for personal growth work and to this end we thought in terms of assisted auto-analysis.
What do w
Read more…The attached article on Initiation by Fernando Pessoa was originally posted on
www.greenmanscreations.com by Nicholas Lecerf and is here reproduced with his permission. It is a translation from a French version of Pessoa's work that is now out of pr
We are all aware that some objects have more power over us than others. If I ask you to describe a room that you are familiar with but are not in at this minute - your bedroom, say - then you will provide, probably, a fairly good description. If I th
Read more…Massimo wrote...... This Serapis space is very interesting. I was wandering if it would be possible to dedicate a corner of it to group practices that are not explicitly "therapeutic" but have very much to do with curing and healing as they help peop
Read more…Perhaps as a complement to the discussion area on Melancholia, here is a space for us to review the question of Happiness. You might find the article by Robert Ellia at http://www.middlewaysociety.org/the-happiness-delusion/ interesting.
Read more…This article by Lori Gottlieb makes sobering reading. We have seen how the trend to supposedly evidence based practice has led to cognitive work achieving a special dominance in psychotherapy services and here we see how various forms of coaching are
Read more…One could characterise Zen Therapy as Existential Tactical Therapy. Existential because it is much concerned with meaning and purpose in life, with spiritual dimensions in collision with reality factors, and Tactical because it employs challenge, dis
Read more…The original therapeutae were healers who lived in communities in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. From their name comes the modern term therapy. To heal means to cure, save, and make whole, sound and well. To be healthy in body, mind and so
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