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Postmodern Psychotherapy    Postmodern Psychology & Buddhist Practice 

American Dogen / Maitreyam Buddha

Dasein and Experience

Every person “is” in a certain, uniquely idiosyncratic way.  That unique “being” (Dasein) as a person, develops dialectically between the truth of what “I am” and the experience of who “I know” as my Self. The truth of “what I am” is elusive, ultimately unknowable, the Real, True Nature of each of us. The “who I know” is how I experience, perceive and think myself to be.

As in a mirror, there is an object – “I am” (Being) and its reflection – “I experience” (Self) mutually affecting each other. What I am influences the way I experience and perceive myself. The way I perceive, think and feel about myself influences what I am.

This fundamental dialectic of the mind, the opening between being and experiencing, creates a possibility for becoming human and conscious. It also creates a gap within the mind – in which the unconscious, the core of one’s subjectivity, appears.

Experiencing oneself, consciously or unconsciously, is always incomplete.

Our ability to experience anything is limited not only by the capacity of our sensory organs and nervous system to stream acoustic, visual, olfactory, gustatory and tactile / kinesthetic contents to the brain but also by the brain’s and mind’s capacity to process and represent it.

The experience itself is private, accessible only to the person who is experiencing. It is the Self experiencing the Being as mental events – sensations, thoughts, images, sounds. That initial raw input is than processed and organized by higher level, language-based system(s) of interpretation constructing subjectively referenced meaning. Any aspects of experiencing can be then externalized, expressed and communicated as images, sounds, movements or verbal language (semiotics) accessible to others.

These three levels of the mind – the “actual” (Real) being, the experiencing Self (“who am I”) and their articulation in the language of semiotics (expression) are always in the state of relative incongruity.

At the most fundamental (Absolute) level, the actual activity of the Mind can be best described by quantum physics and the Unified Theory (when available) and is not accessible to direct human experience.

At the next level, the quantum level events are translated into structural / functional neurocognitive changes in the brain which initiate and mediate vicissitudes in drive / mood / affect / activation states described by molecular neurochemistry. Some of these vicissitudes can be experienced directly in the consciousness as basic sensations, drives and instincts such as pleasure, pain, hunger, sex, excitation, fatigue, aggression, fear.  

Next, as proposed by the psychoanalytic theory, changes in the molecular neurocognitive brain-states begin to interact with unconscious contents of the mind forming the so called primary (unconscious) process. Finally, the unconscious material undergoes multiple modifications and transformations, via multiple layers of defenses, to become acceptable to the conscious, censoring, aspects of the Self and is, finally, ready for secondary process (ego) transactions and expression within the consensual (Relative) reality of our lives as described by psychodynamic cognitive science.

Psychological  Meditations 2003  

Postmodern Psychology & Therapy  

Buddhism and Psychology 

Buddhist Practice and Psychotherapy 

Waiting for American Dogen?  Consciousness is Space & Time

Dasein & Experience

Mind, God, Self & Reality 

Master Dogen on Zen koan MU 

Zen koan MU & the true text  

Living Buddhism  

Having Seen God

A letter from a Cheerleader Buddhist

10 Questions for a Buddhist Teacher 

Zen Master Dogen on "Existence"  

Questions about American Zen 

What is Self?  

Postmodern  Psychoanalysis

Mind, Meditation & Awareness  

Liberation & Free Will