At my best, I see psychotherapy in the same light. Many people who come to therapy are disgusted with themselves for one reason or another, much as the Buddha was in his own time and in his own way. This disgust can take many forms: shame, fear, anxiety, or feelings of unworthiness are common expressions of it, but the possibilities are endless. Some people even develop what is called a “reaction formation” and seem the opposite of disgusted. They come across as prideful or conceited and unwilling to admit their faults or self-doubts. But these individuals are often just propping themselves up, creating a false front to mask their vulnerabilities, and somewhere inside they are troubled because they know they are not being real.

The Buddha’s teachings run counter to this tendency to find fault. He normalized feelings of inadequacy and threw responsibility back onto the individual to sort them out. He taught mindfulness as a method of probing the self and found that impartial attention to moment-to-moment experience yields surprising but predictable insights into the self’s

contingent and relational nature. These insights, which precipitate spontaneously out of concentrated attention and mindful reflection, make abundantly clear that our habitual efforts to defend ourselves against our intrinsic groundlessness make things even worse.

As a therapist, I have been taught to pay close attention to the intimate details of people’s lives in order to help them decipher the mystery of who and what they have become. But as a meditator, I have learned that experience isn’t everything. It can just as easily obscure one’s truth as reveal it. This is the paradox I have faced in bringing these two worlds together. Traditional therapy unpacks in order to make sense. Meditation asks us to stop making sense so that we can find where happiness truly abides. Therapy examines the accumulated self, the one that is shaped by all the defenses we have used to get through life. Meditation asks us to divest ourselves of those very defenses so that we can recapture the original and intrinsic vitality we were born with.

Shirley is striving to be “indifferent,” in her words, to her exhusband’s complaints, but I know there is an alternative to indifference that is closer to equanimity with a dose of compassion. Of course her ex is enraged and of course she feels unfairly attacked but, from an emotional

perspective, he has a point. Just as a mother has to bear the hatred intrinsic to being a mother, Shirley will have to accept the consequences of her decision to divorce. Craving understanding from the person she has left is not going to get her anywhere.

Dr. Kernberg was kind to me and helped me to see that, while their deprivation may have been real, these patients had lots of internal conflict around anger that was holding them back. In showing me this, he also, without having to say it directly, made me see that I, too, was pushing anger away. He gave me language to use. “You might not be aware of how angry you are,” he suggested I say. “But you are in danger of destroying the very support you need the most.” By beginning my communication with “you might not be aware” rather than confronting my patients’ anger directly, I could encourage them to reflect upon something they were otherwise just acting out unawares. My skills as a therapist improved dramatically as a result. Kindness without the proper intelligence to back it up was of little use, but the use of kindness in the service of therapy’s insights was very helpful.