the buddhist psychotherapist

What is a Buddhist Therapist?

I am a Buddhist therapist. In session, I rarely initiate conversations that are obviously about spirituality. I almost never teach people to meditate as a part of their therapy. I do not understand what people mean by “Buddhist psychology,” and I generally don’t talk about mindfulness or impermanence or tell Buddhist stories. I actively work against the temptation to indulge the rather ridiculous fantasy of myself as a wise guru dispensing spiritual wisdom. So, what does it mean to be a Buddhist therapist?

Most attempts to integrate Buddhism with psychotherapy do so by isolating specific, psychologically useful aspects of Buddhist practice and philosophy (i.e., mindfulness, acceptance, compassion) and turning them into teachable skills. This is surely useful. Still, a true integration will be deeper than an importation of ideas. Buddhism is more than a collection of concepts and practices; it is a dynamic and holistic way of life. Two and a half millennia of practice and tradition have revealed that engaging earnestly with Buddhism has the potential to transform a person’s mind, heart, and way of being.

How do we merge this power and that of psychotherapy with adequate respect and depth? This is no simple or easy task. Buddhism works with the mystical and mysterious aspects of being alive in ways that greatly transcend a psychological frame. I do not expect to plumb the depths of this integration as a single person, and certainly not in a single essay. In this space, I aim to begin an exploration of how the practice of Buddhism is relevant to the practice of psychotherapy. I start with the underexplored impact of Buddhist practices on the development of the therapist as a person.

What a therapist does has power, but this power comes to life through the person of the therapist. Psychotherapy aims to alleviate psychic pain and improve people’s lives. The therapist’s person, their character and way of being, is a crucial factor in how consistently and how well this aim is achieved. Buddhism is, in part, a sophisticated, immersive path of human development that exceeds limited goals of self-improvement. In this context I ask again, what does it mean to be a Buddhist therapist?

What Makes Therapy Effective?

Psychotherapy, like Buddhist teaching and practice, is aimed at reducing individual and collective suffering through transformation and liberation. And, in many cases, therapy is helpful. Sixty to 80% of the time, therapy relieves suffering when compared to no treatment. But why are therapy experiences helpful in some cases, but unhelpful or harmful in others?

The bulk of research and investment has focused on developing and determining what types of therapies are most effective. But as long as a therapeutic method is theoretically and empirically sound, is meaningfully structured toward change, and the therapist is adequately trained, the particular model of therapy usually does not have a strong influence on whether therapy is helpful.* There is little variation between therapies, but there is significant variation between therapists: some therapists are consistently more helpful than others.

Interestingly, the most effective therapists are not distinguished by their theoretical orientation, years of experience, level of education, content area knowledge, or adherence to a treatment protocol. It seems that who a therapist is as a person is of much greater importance. Of course this is so. In any meaningful relationship, the human beings involved are not interchangeable parts. Who we are in particular matters.

The specific traits and meta-skills of highly effective therapists are not fully understood, but what has been found through research is not at all surprising. The most helpful therapists stand out as people who are especially empathetic, authentic, attuned, and responsive. They notice and respond to subtle communication, and they deal directly and effectively with relational ruptures. Perhaps counterintuitively, therapist self-doubt is positively correlated with effectiveness—those who consistently question whether they are helping tend to help people more. They are also realistic about their limitations and engage in deliberate practice to address their weak areas.

Even though the person of the therapist matters at least as much as what the therapist knows or does, almost all therapist training is focused on knowledge and skills. Of course, we do need knowledge and skills. It seems we also need personal character development. These two are not really separate issues—skills and concepts are learned by and enacted through the person of the therapist. A therapist’s character, who they are, will influence how they learn, understand, and make use of their training. The maturity of the therapist as a person can have positive downstream effects at all these levels: what the therapist thinks and does in session, as well as how they do it.

A therapist developing their self as a person may not look anything like one engaged in clinical training. Maturing the person of the therapist may rely on the kind of unpredictable change that happens through experience, rather than overt, directive learning. How does one cultivate their self—their mind, their heart, their ways of being—to most help the people that come for therapy?

(See Johns et al., 2019, Harrer et al., 2025, Castonguay, L. G., & Hill, 2017, Cuijpers et al., 2021 & Miller et al., 2008 for research backing this section.)

Buddhist Practices for Therapist Development

The common aim of Buddhism and psychotherapy is the reduction of suffering. Therapists with more mature character are consistently more effective at achieving this aim. A path that includes this kind of personal development is largely present in the practice and philosophy of Buddhism. At the same time, Buddhist practice can be enriched by modern depth-oriented psychology. I intend to explore the potential of this reciprocal integration on the personal development of therapists.

Buddhism can seem synonymous with meditation or mindfulness. In living Buddhist communities, though, meditation unfolds in a reciprocal relationship with the community, locally and globally. A foundational Buddhist principle is interdependence. Interdependence names the reality that the individual is inseparable from the whole. From one perspective meditation is a personal, inward practice that has impacts on the individual practitioner. At another level, one’s practice, indeed one’s life, unfolds in a web of interconnection.

Interdependent Buddhist practice includes more than meditation. It can also include a combination of community service, the study of ethics and philosophy, chanting and devotional practices, and body-based practices. Practitioners refine their spiritual understanding and personal character through meaningful, mutual relationships with peers and teachers. In the Zen tradition, practice is rigorous, holistic, and grounded in lofty aims of universal benefit. Multiple times a day, Zen communities take The Four Bodhisattvic Vows, together:

All beings without number, I vow to liberate
Endless blind passions, I vow to uproot
Dharma gates beyond measure, I vow to penetrate
The Great Way of Buddha, I vow to attain
(Windhorse Zen Community, n.d.)

The act of silent, still meditation, regardless of the specific practice, may develop qualities of self-reflection and distress tolerance. New meditators begin to notice their own thoughts, sensations, emotions, and habitual reactions through practice. In meditation, one becomes aware of inner experience, and can learn to respond to it while neither engaging immediate impulses nor ignoring oneself. On the fly, through the struggle of one’s own experience, one finds new ways of understanding, coping with, and responding to difficulty, building emotional resilience.

Sitting in meditation with openness and care, many begin to develop compassion for their self and for others in the common struggle of human life. As a practitioner gains experience, the surface level busyness of the mind may quiet, so that new strata of experience, observation, and reflection become accessible. This kind of learning is important for a therapist. To serve well, therapists must develop just these kinds of capacities: self-reflection, emotional resilience, compassion, skillful responsivity, and attention to subtlety. Having a silent, inwardly focused meditation practice may in itself be a potent training activity for therapists wishing to develop their person.

In Rinzai style Zen (my spiritual home), practice is often oriented toward an experience of personally breaking through dualistic perception. Deep questioning into reality and the self can reveal a capacity for nondual ways of experiencing. Duality refers to the way language and thinking define and divide our experience of the world. One usually sees the world through a dualistic lens: up vs. down, light vs. dark, self vs. other, etc.

Nonduality refers to experience before thoughts and words. We ask, what is it, right here and now, that is being named and categorized by the mind? For example, rather than the dualistic framing, “I am drinking this cold water,” a nondual practice looks to the experience itself, and the description may sound more like, “cold, flowing, drinking.” Through practice we can see through dualities and experience reality as inherently indivisible, unknowable, and ungraspable. We find, in fact, that we are this unfolding wholeness. In a nondual experience, even the distinctions between one’s self as an experiencer (subject) and everything else as being experienced (object) may fall away.**

There is a logically defensible case that a personal realization of one’s inherent interconnectedness could lead to positive change. Connecting with the truth of the wholeness and non-separation of all things, the thinking goes, will obviously lead to more compassion and inspire ethical action. These would be positive changes for the person the therapist. The realities of how this works in practice may be more complicated. Before considering how nondual experiences may or may not influence character growth, I’d like to explore how work toward these experiences in itself inspires personal maturation.

The simplicity and directness of nonduality is in some ways profoundly natural. For most people, though, it requires experientially forging upstream against strong currents of habit. The habit of the subject/object divide is deeply ingrained. Meditators find out quickly that the mind is often unruly and relentlessly busy. Nondual, inquiry-based practice is difficult, but it can also be deeply rewarding. Mumon, a 13th century Zen teacher, writes about the all encompassing effort called for to work through this challenge:

“How marvelous! Who would not want to pass through this barrier? For this you must concentrate day and night, questioning yourself through every one of your 360 bones and 84,000 pores. Do not construe mu [nondual reality] as nothingness and do not conceive of it in terms of existence or non-existence. You must reach the point where you feel as though you had swallowed a red-hot iron ball that you cannot disgorge despite your every effort.” (as quoted in Kapleau, 2000, p. 113)

In Zen, retreats called sesshin are held to support this concentrated form of meditation practice. Participants gather for some days (usually seven) to immerse themselves in silent, intensified practice together. The sesshin environment nests rigorous and demanding conditions within an atmosphere of camaraderie, encouragement, and deep mutual respect and care. At its best, it provides an optimal blend of intense challenge and attuned support, and it includes built-in opportunities for meaning-making.

Experiencing and working through adversity in an adequately supported context can be an important source of personal growth. When we push ourselves right up to, but not past the edge of our capacity, our capacity grows. This is seen in areas as diverse as athletic training, memorization, and post-traumatic personal growth. Nondual practice, including sesshin, pushes us to the edge of our capacities for self-reflection, authenticity, and overall grit and supports our growth there.

When we can understand this kind of struggle in a larger context, it can become a meaningful part of who we understand ourselves to be. Buddhist communities and philosophy give practitioners a wide and coherent context in which to understand their practice experiences. Sesshin may be an ideal opportunity for therapists who have an affinity with this style of practice and who wish to develop their character.

So far I’ve explored from the outside how the act of engaging in Buddhist practice might influence character development. But what of the experiences themselves? How might a personal experience of nonduality change the person of the therapist, from the inside out?

The Importance of Integration

Most of us have at least some taste of nonduality. A strong memory for me is swimming in the ocean as a child. Jumping over and through the waves, one after another, it seems I had no thoughts in my mind. The sense of being observed from the outside, or of observing myself, simply wasn’t there. I was free and fully immersed in the joyful challenge of chaotic but rhythmic movement in the warm salty water. In most cases these experiences are wondrous but fleeting. Over time, they fade from something alive into a lovely memory.

In Zen, practice-induced experiences of nonduality are called awakening, or kensho (see Kapleau, 2000, for a collection of personal narratives of kensho experiences). Kensho experiences can be powerful. Even a glimpse that transcends the subject/object binary has profound personal implications. These experiences can include a sense of deep unity—an awareness that all things exist as one wholeness. Increased compassion and ethical action can flow from this realization, but this is not inevitable.

It is easy for Buddhist practitioners to vividly fantasize about “becoming enlightened” once and for all, and that this will spontaneously perfect their personality and character. The lives and teachings of countless Zen masters over centuries reveal that extraordinary character change is possible following an awakening experience, but it usually takes sustained effort. Therapists who want to deepen their capacities for empathy, authenticity, and attuned spontaneity will need some kind of structured training for this work.

I argue that the potential of Zen training in character development is not primarily through inducing nondual experiences. More than that, Zen’s great contribution to human development is that it offers a system for integrating awakening experiences. With sustained effort, kensho can become more than a lovely memory. Through unyielding inquiry and practice, one can live a life grounded in awakening. And as therapists, we can develop extraordinary capacities of presence, care, and responsiveness.

In the Zen literature, we see a tradition of masters acting out of deep, integrated awakening. In recorded interactions with their students, developed teachers display high levels of attunement and authentic spontaneity. These teachers are grounded in radical compassion, though not always in conventional social norms. Take for example this interchange between Huai-jang and his student Ma-tsu, which took place in China in the eighth century CE:

[Huai-jang] visited [Ma-tsu] in his cell asking, “In practicing sitting-in-meditation, what does your reverence aspire to attain?” “To attain Buddhahood!” was the answer. Huai-jang then took up a piece of brick and began to grind it against a rock in front of Ma-tsu’s cell. After some moments, Ma-tsu became curious and asked, “What are you grinding it for?” “I want to grind it into a mirror,” Huai-jang replied. Greatly amused, Ma-tsu asked, “How can you hope to grind a piece of brick into a mirror?” Huai-jang fired back, “[…] How can you sit yourself into a Buddha?” (Wu, 1995).

The exchange goes on from there, leading Ma-tsu toward an awakening experience. Huai-jang spoke and behaved in elegant responsivity to the needs of his student in that moment, not following any premeditated plan. Although the aim is different, Zen teachers must have a similar skillset as an advanced therapist: they must thoroughly attune to the other, connect to what might help this person in this moment, and then deliver it in a meaningful and impactful way. Not everyone can do this; it takes long-term, specialized training. Advanced forms of nondual integration work are a potent way of deeply developing these capacities. Over centuries, Zen has developed a sophisticated system of training that responds directly to this need.

‍ ‍In the Rinzai Zen tradition, post-kensho integration practice often takes the form of koan (KOH-awn) training. There is not space here for a full treatment of koan practice (see Kapleau, 2000 or Moore, 2020). Briefly, a koan is a story (often an interaction between a teacher and student), a question, or a phrase that a trainee works with in meditation and in formal interchanges with a teacher. Here are two examples of koans (Sekida, 2005):

Goso said, “When you meet someone of the Way on the path, do not meet him with words or with silence. Tell me, how will you meet him?”

A monk once asked Joshu, “What is the meaning of the Bodhidharma’s coming from the West [i.e., what is reality]?”  Joshu answered, “The oak tree in the garden.”

Each koan contains dualistic traps: words vs. silence in the first koan is an obvious example. These traps invite one away from a nondual grounding and towards conceptualizing in confounding and subtle ways. The challenge is to recognize and overcome these stuck points. Through a personal, experiential struggle, one learns how to return to nondual awareness in hundreds of different challenging situations. This kind of work is always undertaken in relationship with a teacher. In formal meetings, the student will physically demonstrate their understanding of the koan. The teacher will then evaluate this understanding, often sending the student back to continue working with some small clue as to where they’ve been hooked by dualisms.

Koan work is not hypothetical or explanatory; the practitioner is pressed relentlessly toward radical, spontaneous authenticity and the relinquishment of unhelpful habits of mind. Once a koan is penetrated experientially and adequately demonstrated, the teacher and student will work together to integrate and explain it cognitively, and at times overtly discuss how it applies to the student’s daily life. Over time, this ongoing work expands and integrates initial awakening experiences, allowing nondual awareness to permeate a person and their activities.

This advanced heart-mind training is powerful and may be particularly meaningful and urgent for therapists. As therapists, who we are directly impacts the people who come for our help. There are many possible developmental paths, and not everyone is drawn to this kind of practice. For those who are, this style of Zen training is a path that has been refined over centuries to support and inspire just the type of development called for in the person of the therapist.

The Path of the Buddhist Therapist

The qualities of effective therapists— empathy, self-reflection, emotional resilience, attunement, responsiveness, integrity and humility—are not gained through cognitive learning. Knowing that one needs to possess and display these qualities is not sufficient. Character growth is earned through personal experience and deepened through intentional practice. Here is a point of natural integration. Buddhist therapists engage in sustained, meaningful spiritual practice, and this practice can change them, as a person, in particular ways. This kind of personal development, when worked with skillfully, can positively impact the work they are able to do in session.

Earlier forms of practice can include a struggle toward awakening, and this challenge builds distress tolerance and demands honest self-doubt and self-reflection. Kensho experiences are important but not necessarily transformative. A moment of nondual awareness can open a doorway to increased empathy and authenticity, but one has to walk through the doorway and continue along the path on the other side. It takes continual effort if these qualities are to be thoroughly lived and not just understood and intended. Koan practice is a kind of deliberate practice, with immediate feedback, for authenticity, responsiveness, and self-reflection. Self-doubt and humility are earned through the ongoing identification and working through of stuck places in the heart and mind. I don’t suggest that one has to be a Buddhist or go to sesshin to become a good therapist. I do mean to say that spiritual development is likely an important part of that path for many people.

These forms of training do not inoculate one against doing harm. A small but significant number of Buddhist teachers in the West have acted in shockingly unethical ways, some even exposed as sexual predators. This is hard to understand unless we let go of the seductive idea that “enlightenment” is a final state rather than a dynamic process in need of ongoing refinement and questioning. Even long-term integrative nondual training will not resolve unconscious psychological issues. The intense inner vulnerability of this style of practice may even activate our shadows. Practice can be used to try to cover up or ignore unresolved emotional problems in a process John Welwood (1984) coined as “spiritual bypassing.” It doesn’t work. Psychodynamic theory teaches us that repressed material finds other, destructive ways of surfacing. This essay has focused on what Buddhist training has to offer psychotherapists, but depth psychology also has much to offer Buddhist practitioners engaged in intensified forms of practice. This side of integration will be explored in much depth in future essays. Neither Zen nor psychotherapy is a panacea. Still, new frontiers of human development may come into view if the powerful practices of nonduality and depth psychology can be worked with in reciprocal, mutually reinforcing ways.

Buddhist practice is not a self-improvement project. These practices that can help us grow are grounded in an ethic of interdependence and service. Nor is this a casual endeavor. The fruition of nondual practice takes diligence and long-term dedication. These are not caveats but features. The development of extraordinary human maturity is an extraordinary endeavor.

Buddhism and psychotherapy are both aimed at relieving suffering. As a therapist and as a Buddhist, I take this to heart. I return to the question with which I began: what does it mean to be a Buddhist therapist? I hope to continue this inquiry, and to never exhaust it. What I can say now is that being a Buddhist therapist means that I practice. I find myself elbows deep in my own work of spiritual inquiry, generally amazed and often fumbling. I want to respond to the suffering I encounter skillfully and ethically. My own spiritual development may be my most potent instrument.

Notes

*- There are a few exceptions to the rule that bona fide therapy modalities have generally the same effectiveness. For example, exposure therapy has been shown to be more effective than other treatments for PTSD.

**-I engage in a more thorough attempt to define nonduality in this post.

References

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