Review of Mixing Minds: The Power of Relationship in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism

This is a new book by Pilar Jennings, a psychoanalyst who has studied Buddhism mostly in the Tibetan tradition. A friend mentioned it to me and it grabbed my attention. 

The chapter that interested me most is “Asian Monastic Teachers and the Western Psyche” which is about how Asian teachers and Western students tend to misinterpret each other based on our world views. Having studied with Japanese teachers for years, I resonated with a lot of what Jennings says. For example,

“It is not uncommon for Western students to bring a pervasive psychological narrative to their Buddhist teachers, who will in turn respond through a karmic narrative…or with an emphasis on morally based choices specific to the more communal cultures from which they come.”

Like this:

Reminded me of an old Katagiri story. Someone who had been in therapy for years but was still deeply suffering with his life came to Katagiri Roshi and shared his churning psychological stew for about 30 minutes. The fellow then asked what Katagiri had to say about it. 

“Well,” said Roshi, “the most important thing is that it really is no problem.”

The man later reported that he left the meeting relieved. That’s not so much an example of coming from a karmic or moral perspective, though, but more like seeing things from a different, perhaps broader perspective. 

Most Zen students these days, however, like maybe 90% in the US, study with Euro-Americans. I’d say even most of the teachers had Euro teachers. But that doesn’t matter so much – the dharma is coming from a couple thousand years in so-called Asian culture (which is hardly a monolith but anyway…) so we’ve got to deal with that where ever our teacher is coming from.

One miss is how the Western psyche is about the I-me-mine ego and the Asian perspective is much more a “we-go,” as Jennings cleverly puts it. The communal “we” is more important than the individual. Much has been written and said about all that and there may be ways in which empathy and a sense of interconnectedness are more accessible from the we-go organization of self.

But maybe not. Seems to me to be more of a alternate organization than a step up. We Western’s often idealize the “we-go” and try to play that we have that organization when we don’t. So its just another false self.

Better is to see what the self is, any way one organizes that bugger, than replace it with somebody else’s way. That can be a mask on top of a mask. But that could be just me.

Jennings also tells an interesting story of Joseph Goldstein doing koan work and her last chapter, “Healing Goals in Buddhism and Psychoanalysis: Enlightenment and Integration” that I haven’t gotten around to writing about yet and this is already too long and I’ve got to go and get my son.

So I may have more blogslop on this topic later.