Here are some notes and highlights from this excellent book:
(the location figures refer to Kindle locations and are not usable links)
Without more culturally appropriate interventions such as psychotherapy, even some advanced meditators continue to suffer from anxiety, depression, isolating narcissism, or numbed disengagement.Read more at location 145
Buddhist teachers counsel us to abandon anger, develop patience, give up attachment, and understand the absence of self; this is taught in a context of disciplined communal practice—the sangha. Therapists, conversely, encourage those who are emotionally shut down to experience feelings of anger, and they facilitate the quest for relationship and intimacy; this is done in a context that supports self-assertion and individuality. How are we to follow both approaches? How can we productively understand these inconsistencies? Can they be reconciled?Read more at location 157
During the last decades of the twentieth century, not much attention was paid to the substantial differences in culture and psychology between traditional Buddhism and modern Western culture.Read more at location 162
There is no end to the possible misunderstandings that can arise when students from our therapy-oriented culture wish to share their thoughts and emotions with a teacher who comes from a culture that honors restraint and humility. Teachers who explicitly or implicitly encourage such values may seem to be encouraging passivity and self-denial, and this can be particularly onerous to women, people of color, and other oppressed minorities who need to be appropriately self-assertive in their quest for social justice. When unacknowledged, such cultural gaps can cause teachers to misunderstand their students, who in turn suffer feelings of alienation and emotional injury and, in extreme instances, choose to leave. If we lack a clear understanding of our differences, opportunities for benefiting from the profound spiritual insights offered by the tradition can be lost.Read more at location 172
For example, many of us, through direct experience with therapy or under its ubiquitous influence in our culture, will use time on the cushion to immerse ourselves in the contents of our mind, rather than observe its process as traditional teachers would instruct. Through engaging in the former, we may indeed further our psychological understanding of ourselves, but we prevent contact with a specific path to deeper reaches of freedom. It is through the mindful experience of such inclinations and a detailed emotional understanding of their workings that we can begin to have some control over the pervasive cultural influences that limit our lives.Read more at location 184
Unfortunately, every day in my psychotherapy practice I am struck by the cost of individualism run amok. I particularly see it in the isolation of single mothers, who struggle to find support in raising their children. I also see it in the physical and emotional isolation of individuals and even couples who, often because of moves related to education or work, feel unconnected and lost, a feeling exacerbated by a social environment that encourages independence rather than support and connection.Read more at location 542
Note: One of many differences between US and Asian views of life Edit
In terms of our identity, the way we choose to express ourselves through our work lives is central to who we are and consequently a critical aspect of our mental health. I had my own wake-up call in this regard in the winter of 1980, while studying with Ga Rinpoche in Clement Town, India. When I learned that I had been denied tenure at the university where I’d been teaching, I realized I had lost my career. I wanted to inform the teacher of my situation, but I realized there was no way for me to say in Tibetan, “I have lost my career.” I could only say that I had lost my work. Over the years I have thought about this. What did it mean that in Tibetan I could say only that I had lost my work? Why did I feel that saying this didn’t really communicate my situation?Read more at location 553
Note: Who am I without my career?
Our sense of individuality and our emphasis on personal choice is often striking to foreigners, who are astounded by the array of options presented for eating lunch at a restaurant or shopping for shampoo. We take this for granted if we haven’t visited places where choices are far more limited. The Tibetan lama Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche reported his utter amazement at seeing grandparents in a restaurant asking their five-year-old grandchild, “What do you want, tomato soup or split pea soup?” In his traditional Tibetan community, children eat what their parents offer them. On the other hand, Joseph Campbell famously counseled, “Follow your bliss”—epitomizing the values of entitlement, uniqueness, and choice that characterize our culture.11Read more at location 564
Note: What do I choose? Or what is my duty?
The capacity to evaluate preferences and make choices is a critical marker of mental health according to modern Western psychology. In order to know our bliss and be able to follow it, we must be aware of our feelings. Over the past one hundred years, the institution of psychotherapy has emerged to support the discussion, acknowledgment, and validation of feelings. Such emotional skills help create and support our sense of individuality.12 In contrast to societies in which togetherness rests on extended family, stable identifiable roles, rules of behavior, shared myths and rituals, and some degree of nonverbal emotional attunement, we create relationships through establishing ourselves as individuals and verbally sharing our separate feelings and exploring our free choices with each other.13 Richard Shweder shaded this a bit further with the observation that in India emotions expressed are dangerous and don’t go away, whereas in Manhattan, emotions unexamined and unexpressed are considered dangerous.14Read more at location 589
Exploring the cultural context within which meditation was traditionally taught may expose us to perspectives we might otherwise miss if we focus only on the details of meditative technique. For example, if we have certain feelings of agitation while meditating, our traditional teachers might recommend dietary changes and herbal remedies—unfamiliar interventions in our culture. On the other hand, we need to be aware that our culture has resources unique to our way of understanding things. Asian teachers would not try to understand the experience of anxiety within the context of our relationships, but it might be extremely useful and culturally acceptable for us to do so.Read more at location 603
Note: Meditation here is different from meditation in traditional Asian practice
Daily practice, with an occasional boost from a more intensive retreat, makes an enormous difference in what we internalize from the teachings. Unfortunately, one of the patterns I see as a teacher is that students would like to keep virtually all of their time commitments the same and yet experience life completely differently—which is impossible, of course. This is attachment (in the Buddhist sense) at its finest!Read more at location 3130
Note: Americans differ from Asians. Aronson can help with the US angles
Some individuals will channel all of their tight fixation into practice. This has a particular and recognizable flavor to it—one Tibetan text refers to it as “being rigid in mind like a tree.”5 Here the disease contaminates the medicine. It occurs, for example, when a practitioner feels that her meditation never goes right if she starts after 9:30 PM sharp or if she has run out of her favorite brand of Tibetan incense. Practice becomes one more thing to control in a life pervaded by fear.Read more at location 3158
Note: Meditative practice or words can be used poorly, keeping us in a rut
Another student, when confronted with difficulty with his girlfriend, states in a therapy session with me, “I need to give up my attachment.” In the context of our ongoing work, I recognize that this is not an actual spiritual reflection on getting stuck or fixated, but rather a way he is using to avoid looking at his feelings and reflecting on them, and a way of saying that being engaged in life leads to pain and it would be safer to live life at the margins as he has tended to do. Here, good medicine is used in the wrong way, with no positive change.Read more at location 3162
Note: Sometimes we cover up what we should look at fully