approaching therapy

Happiness is one’s capacity to love and to receive love.

I have attended some meditation retreats where you sit for a bunch of days and try and observe sensations that arise in your body. It can be hard on a Westerner’s knees. You’re supposed to try and observe without reacting. In fact, sometimes you are exhorted to commit to not uncrossing your legs or opening your eyes for an hour straight. These retreats are silent, ‘cept for noontime opportunities to ask questions of the person or couple who happen to be acting as the teacher.

My question to them was always the same: How am I supposed to not react?

I have been to retreats in California and in Nepal and I got the same answer to my question. They all say the same thing: “Keep trying.”

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf

– referenced in Goldstein, J. & Kornfield, J. (1987) Seeking the heart of wisdom: The path of insight meditation. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., p. 51. Apparently, this quote appeared as a caption on a poster which featured a yogi (allegedly Swami Satchidananda) on a surfboard.

Waves?
The sensations that come and go.

There is nothing in this world more difficult than another person

– Buddhist Monk.

Found that at the top of an article by Stan Tatkin, Psy.D. in The Therapist, called “Marital Therapy and the Psychobiology of Turning Toward and Turning Away.” January/February 2005 p. 58.

What’s so difficult? I ask people, “what’s really the problem?”
Reminds me of when people tell me their partner has a problem.
Is it really their partner who has the problem? The partner might not say so.
Are you having a problem with your partner’s “problem”?

Again, what’s really the problem?
According to my understanding of the Buddhist perspective,
perhaps the problem is the difficulty with being with the sensations that arise in us, when we are in the presence of another person, or when someone says something to us, or when something goes down between us and someone else.

So, it’s not really the other person.
It’s just sensations.
Sensations in us.