Counseling and the Context of Contemplative Practice

Counselors, Contemplation, Context―oh my!

Counselors are taught to understand that the context (e.g., history) of approaches to therapy are crucial in delivering quality care. So, counselors-in-training study theorists, and in the process they decide which "theoretical orientation" resonates best with them. This approach to teaching counselors derives from the fact that effective counselors provide their clients with feasible explanations for their thoughts, behaviors, and concerns that they bring to session (Wampold, 2015). "Feasible explanations" for psychological stuff is the whole point of counseling theory in the first place!

I think this holds true for using meditation as a counselor or educator. In other words, given the growth of mindfulness-based interventions within the "third-wave" of cognitive behavioral therapies (Corey, 2017), I firmly believe that understanding the context of contemplative practices are vital for interested counselors to practice ethically and safely. Indeed, every contemplative practice comes from a rich context. Whether religious and spiritual (e.g., centering prayer), or therapeutic and secular (e.g., mindfulness meditation), each contemplative practice has a history and conceptual framework which provides the practitioner (e.g., meditator, counselor, educator) with a guide to practice.

Another way to phrase this point, and perhaps more powerfully: Contemplative practice is the individualized enactment of the beliefs, understandings, and insights of a contemplative tradition. These practices constitute a vital aspect of the "lived traditions" that are still with us today―including the "tradition" of mindfulness-based interventions, which are currently a powerful force for counselors and therapists.

These points, though perhaps obvious, are essential for counteracting a prevailing force which has popularized contemplative practices such as mindfulness: that meditation is a "science of the mind," or that an individual can "experiment in the laboratory of their mind." To the contrary, these practices are not scientific; they are existential reconfigurations of one's relationship to the world and their self. This is not to say that they cannot be studied, but only to say that an individual meditator is not undertaking some form of scientific (i.e., intersubjectively verifiable) experiment in adopting a specific meditative practice.

In this vein, secularized and therapeutic mindfulness is a practice of pursuing these very human, existential goals, in the hopes that your relationship to some aspect of your existence is positively changed in the process.^[1]

Certainly, the reaction itself, of a meditator feeling threatened by pursuing an activity that is not purely or verifiably scientific,^[2] speaks more to the supremacy that our western culture has bestowed on scientific knowledge―and often to the detriment of other forms of knowing and being. This rhetoric of "contemplative-practice-as-science" was carefully argued and refined over the past century and a half, as different religious and spiritual practices vied for space in the secular-materialist culture of the 20th century. In other words, non-Christian contemplative practices "from the East" were only able to become popular through adopting scientific rhetoric and proving themselves to be different, or better, than just a religious practice (McMahon, 2008). Among these contemplative traditions were the varying schools of Buddhism that entered western popular consciousness, including Zen, and Tibetan and Theravadin Buddhism (Harrington & Dunne, 2015). Indeed, in the case of Theravadin Buddhism, the argument was not that these practices were not religious; it was that the religion itself was more scientific than the Western monotheistic alternatives (Braun, 2016).

These "streams" of Buddhism―and their interaction with western scientific, philosophical, and psychological cultures―provide the crucial context necessary for understanding how mindfulness entered into and functions within therapeutic practice.

So, this focus on Buddhism is an important gateway toward understanding the larger fields of contemplative studies, contemplative science, and, in the field of professional counseling, mindfulness-based interventions. In fact, the rhetoric I have hinted at here is perhaps most eloquently criticized by philosopher Evan Thompson in his book, "Why I Am Not a Buddhist."

In the exploration below, I focus on how Thompson's arguments have impacted my understanding of contemplative pedagogy, which is the specific use of meditative practices in the higher education classroom. This work is especially important to me, as I am actively working on understanding how to integrate contemplative pedagogy into training future counselors. As I have found, and as you may experience in the post below, interdisciplinary work is messy and talks across conceptual scaffolds, often in roughshod ways that don't always land. However, if you're interested in how to use contemplative practices for counselors-in-training―or in contemplative studies and counseling more generally―some of the ideas below may prove invaluable for reflecting on your intentions and potential cultural blinders.

Buddhist Exceptionalism and the Rhetoric of Mindfulness

In "Why I am Not a Buddhist," philosopher Evan Thompson makes the point that, for many modern westerners practicing mindfulness meditation as a "spiritual" pursuit, there is likely a central tension of Buddhist exceptionalism running through their practice.^[3] Otherwise stated, many westerners practicing mindfulness unknowingly adhere to a set of beliefs about meditation and Buddhism, religion and science. This exceptionalism asserts that Buddhism, unlike other world religions (especially Christianity), is uniquely superior in its compatibility with Western philosophy and science.

In general, Buddhist exceptionalism diminishes and decontextualizes the cosmology, philosophy, and ritualistic aspects of Buddhist traditions in order to sanitize meditation practices to fit modern sensibilities. Adherents tout that "Buddhism is compatible with science" or that "Buddhism is a philosophy or way of life, not a religion." These beliefs expose another core assumption common among modern westerners: Namely, that religion is "incompatible" with science, or that religion (so vaguely defined) is something to be discarded in modernity. Thompson disagrees deeply with these rhetorical moves and their underlying assumptions. He argues that Buddhist exceptionalism fundamentally misunderstands religion, science, and their intersection in the "secular" or "spiritual but not religious" practice of mindfulness. He writes that modern western Buddhism:

While this is fascinating from a Humanities & Religious Studies perspective, its relevance also extends into any domain that seeks to utilize contemplative practices, such as professional counseling and counselor education. Certainly, for the counselor interested in contemplative practices—either as a personal practice, a formal practice with clients or counseling students, or as a topic of research—Buddhist exceptionalism still exerts its influence. Before moving to professional counseling specifically, it may be helpful to synthesize the argument of how unspoken assumptions of our contemplative practices―such as mindfulness―may enter into our work as counselors:

"The meditative practices of (mindfulness/yoga/my practice of choice) are compatible with—and may be integrated into—the modern counseling, psychological, medical, educational, and mental health professions."

Examining Mindfulness in Cognitive, Psychological, and Neuroscience Research

When we decide to use contemplative practices in higher education settings, counseling interventions, or as a subject of research, we must first clearly understand our intention and its implications (Barbezat & Bush, 2014). Yet scholar-practitioners often neglect to understand how the value systems implied by their contemplative practices impact their work. As hinted in the introduction, understanding the context of a practice means that you need a grasp of the tradition that the practice descends from. You don't just need time practicing; as an educator, you need to be able to provide a background for any practice you introduce into the classroom.

My academic background includes studying Buddhist modernism, especially in western countries and therapeutic settings. So, let's focus a bit more on mindfulness within the psychological research literature.

In counseling and psychology, "mindfulness-based" interventions are often lumped in with cognitive-behavioral therapy, which was essential in making it more palatable among the "evidence-based" community of practitioners. This, however, misunderstands the purpose of these systems of categorization: Buddhist theories of mind are normative and soteriological; that is, they make moral value judgments about how to achieve salvation or liberation.

Of course, this is to be expected of a religious system. Yet if you believe that Buddhism is not a religion, you may gloss over the ethical judgments implied by impermanence, suffering, and no-self, the three (Buddhist) marks of existence that often trickle into our psychological explanations of how mindfulness can heal human pathologies. As Thompson takes pains to demonstrate throughout his book, these conceptualizations of meditation practice are not value-neutral investigations of human cognition and phenomenology, which is expected of a human science. This transplanting of Buddhist soteriology (i.e., a salvation narrative) into psychological explanation―which is then touted as "scientific" fact―exposes a deep "buddhocentrism" in the study of contemplative practices, especially in therapeutic research literature (Komjathy, 2018).

Again: None of this is to say that we cannot achieve a contemplative science, or that contemplative practices cannot be utilized for therapeutic and other secular benefits. It is only to say that we―westerners conditioned to scoff at religious practice and taught to laud science as the most preeminent of all human knowledges―often confuse our terms in our misguided and unexamined cultural biases.

It is precisely this intersection of a re-imagined religious tradition within contemporary mental health care that should concern the counselor or counselor educator.^[7] The veracity of this claim depends heavily on how mindfulness, meditation, and ultimately Buddhism are discussed in the counseling and psychological literature. In other words, this gets to the heart of the matter: the decontextualization and re-contextualization (or appropriation) of contemplative practices.

Recontextualization or Appropriation?

This phenomenon—assumptions from Buddhist exceptionalism leading to a research literature which uncritically appropriates Buddhist philosophy and soteriology—threatens the contemplative scholar-practitioner's work. The trend of Buddhocentrism in psychology and counseling represents a larger threat in contemplative studies more generally, which is the decontextualization and recontextualization of contemplative practices (Komjathy, 2018). The "proper" use of certain practices from certain traditions must remain an ongoing conversation, as we cannot expect a final authority on the matter, lest we resort to a colonialist imposition of power and authority.

Deciding on the appropriate use of contemplative practices is a tricky game. Especially for those who are invested in the practices they research, the scholar-practitioner needs ways of navigating the myriad assumptions and biases they bring to the table. The practice of meta-reflection mentioned above is an invaluable component to our work; consequently, contemplative-studies seeks to more rigorously integrate introspective first-person experiences as valid objects of study in the research literature. This may utilize forms unfamiliar to the academy, such as the autoethnography as a bracketing and contextualization tool. Regardless, the use of contemplative practices as fair re-contextualization or unfair cultural appropriation will depend on several factors, including:

• the scholar-practitioner's abilities of intentional integration,
• the institutions in which these practices occur,
• the inclusion or exclusion of the originating contemplative traditions, and,
• the openness or opaqueness of the ensuing conversation.

As this research continues to unfold in counselor education programs, more specific forms and examples will take hold. For now, though, these suggestions leave open the possibility of a fruitful integration of contemplative practices into educating counselors.

Bibliography

• Barbezat, D., & Bush, M. (2014). Contemplative Practices in Higher Education: Powerful Methods to Transform Teaching and Learning. Jossey-Bass, a Wiley brand.
  
  
• Braun, E. (2016). Birth of insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Paperback edition). University of Chicago Press.
  
  
• Corey, G. (2017). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (Tenth edition). Cengage Learning.
  
  
• Harrington, A., & Dunne, J. D. (2015). When mindfulness is therapy: Ethical qualms, historical perspectives. American Psychologist, 70(7), 621–631. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039460
  
  
• Komjathy, L. (2018). Introducing Contemplative Studies (First Edition). Wiley.
  
  
• McMahan, D. L. (2008). The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford University Press.
  
  
• Purser, R. E. (2019). McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Repeater.
  
  
• Thompson, E. (2020). Why I Am Not a Buddhist. Yale University Press.
  
  
• Wit, H. F. de. (1991). Contemplative psychology. Duquesne University Press.
  
  
• Wampold, B. E., & Imel, Z. E. (2015). The great psychotherapy debate: The evidence for what makes psychotherapy work (Second edition). Routledge.

Footnotes