Ven. Robina Courtin speaks with Lynn McDaid

Ven. Robina Courtin: It often happens at Dharma centers, for example, that a person seems to have a lot of problems; they get angry, make trouble and so forth. A common response is that they should get therapy first, then they can practice Buddhism.

Lynn McDaid: No, no! That’s not my view at all. That is making a heavy delineation. People must have a strange view of what Buddhism is. Buddhism is a means to change the mind. In my view, the person needs Buddhism, the practice of Dharma, helped possibly by some therapy. There are lots of therapeutic tools that can help a person inch along the path, but what the person needs is Dharma.

Someone I met recently said he’d been living at a monastery in England for a year. He had problems with people and eventually they asked him to leave. Also he said the monks told him that he “needed therapy.” What do you think about throwing people out of Dharma centers?

I don’t know … This makes my heart sad. Maybe in some centers it is correct to ask a person to leave, kindly and gently. Perhaps there is no one there who can deal with it, work with it, and in that case the person needs to go somewhere else. But that person is not the source of the disharmony; the disharmony is within ourselves. We are looking at the person who is making the noise, not at the feelings that are coming up within ourselves.

I am more for holding someone very strongly within Buddha’s energy at the center and having therapy, perhaps, within that. I would not separate anyone, but it depends on the director of the center, where they’re at in themselves, what they are able to hold. I would wish to say to the person, “You stay right here within Buddha’s energy and you work with me.” I would like to be able to hold the energy for that person until they could hold it themselves.

I would hope to make absolutely everybody feel equal, that they all belong at the center. It’s the belonging that matters; to feel that you are valid and equal; it makes no difference where you’re at. What matters is that you are at the center, everyone is equal and gets what they need. But your heart needs to be really big to do this.

Often what’s going on, though, is that everyone in the center seems to be getting along nicely then along comes a person who “makes trouble.” No one gets along with them, and so all people point the finger at that one person as being the cause of the problems, the disharmony.

We all do this, don’t we? It’s very easy to have a black sheep, and for everyone to dump their own garbage on that person and not to hear what’s going on inside them. The black sheep might even be speaking words of wisdom, but everyone is too busy being holy and good, being sweet and charming to each other.

The goal, of course, is to have harmony within the group. However, harmony is not saying, “We don’t want you because you disrupt the energy.” Harmony is learning how to include the person; to understand them, to hear them, to practice patience. They are actually showing us an aspect of ourselves that we don’t like, and we want to get rid of them because we can’t stand that part of ourselves. We need to draw it in, see what is going on, put our arms around it, embrace it as something precious and then transform it. Harmony is not about getting rid of that person.

It shouldn’t be, “I don’t like you …” It’s that I don’t like the feeling I get when you are around. But it’s my responsibility how I feel around you. You’re not causing me to feel that way, what you are doing is putting me in touch with something I feel that I don’t like. If there is anger in me, it is my anger. This is a teaching tool for me. I’m learning something here that is really difficult, but thank you so much for showing me.

Hear what Shantideva says; The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life is my constant companion. I need to hear it and hear it and hear it; and practice it and practice it and practice it. Thank you so much for this difficult situation. How wonderful! May I be of benefit to this person. In fact, my goodness, this person is of benefit to me! This person is so precious to me. What am I doing that is causing this person to behave in this way around me? What have I done in the past to cause this?

Of course, it is very scary to be around disharmony; all we want is for it to stop; all we want to do is get away. We can get away from it temporarily, but because it’s inside us, we will bump into it again somewhere else.

If possible, it’s better to hang in there and try to see where the source of the pain is coming from within us. What is it within us that finds it so difficult to cope with this person? This is how we take responsibility for ourselves, how we actually transform what’s going on inside. We can’t transform anything we don’t take responsibility for.

We meet nothing but ourselves all the time in every person we bump into, in every situation. We might not like it, but that is how it is. No one else causes us to feel anything. We feel it ourselves and must take responsibility for our feelings. How we react to someone is up to us.

We need to get away from reacting to people; we need to respond. These are two key words that I find very helpful. We need to respond to people from our hearts, to their needs, to where they are at.

We all know when we are reacting out of anger rather than responding with compassion. If we want to push away – that’s anger. If we are deliciously, kindly warm and want to wrap something sweet around someone, that’s compassion. We all know what a soft heart feels like, as opposed to a hard mind, a hard attitude. I am saying all this, but please don’t think that I have perfected it. I am struggling and struggling with it, so my clients and I struggle together.

Often it seems that we think that practicing Dharma means smiling and behaving nicely and being holy, and as soon as trouble comes we can’t handle it. As long as we’re comfortable …

Goodness knows, we all long for that, but it is not reality, not how our minds are inside. The minute some little fly lands in our soup, we don’t like it. We need to try and see the suffering in the person who seems to be causing the problems and then have some compassion. Imagine what it must be like to be that person, to feel that amount of hurt and pain! Compassion, compassion, compassion; patience, tolerance, sweetness, kindness for that person. Giving them something that makes them feel better, something sweet, a gift, making them something beautiful. Make them feel precious and not dirty, because they are precious.

Everyone is struggling to do their job, struggling to make everything work, struggling to be good, then along comes someone who seems to make it all difficult and conflict arises. Then there is all the discussion, how to make the person behave; mediation. But we’re not looking at the whole picture, at each person’s part in it, and it gets so righteous: you work a lot with families and groups, so how would you help a center in this situation?

In a center where the energy is disrupted, everyone is suffering, everybody is so unhappy. I would approach it with all heart, warm, and holding every single person in the center. Everybody is important. What everybody feels and expresses is valid; every single person there needs to be validated.

So, first, I would have everyone talk to me until they had finished talking. Everyone would just talk and talk and talk. And then it’s a matter of gently – and I mean gently – bringing people together, gently understanding what is going on.

The director, for example, carries a heavy responsibility that is not easy. Other people, also, have their own investments and needs. And the person who is mostly causing the disruption is hurting terribly. So I would like to help people look at themselves: what is it that is so upsetting about this situation? What’s going on? What’s the problem?

Generally, there are set patterns within groups like this. There is the black sheep, the person everything is dumped on. There is usually an intelligent one, and on that person all those labels are put. Someone else looks like the holy one, and even though they may not be, that label gets put on them; all the holy things are laid at their door. Another is the person who always wants to make everything all right between everybody, and that person runs around doing that. Then there is the mother figure, and the demon, and the rest. People tend to get labeled in these situations, and they act out these roles because everybody is expecting it.

Instead of each one of us being individually responsible for all these parts inside ourselves, they get spread out among the community. Everything is scattered, all over the place. And everybody is unhappy.

How would you like everybody in the group to feel in the end?

I would like everybody to feel what they want to feel in the end, which is probably to feel like a unit, to feel that they are together. What I find working with groups is that everyone starts off being all over the place, but after 10 weeks, say – I usually work in batches of 10 weeks, meeting once a week – everything is different. Everybody is together, and the bonding is huge. They feel heard by each other, each of them is held as valid.

I am, of course, validating each person constantly, and everyone in the group sees each person being validated equally. So then they feel validated themselves. Suddenly it comes on the ground. Suddenly people are able to relate to each other as human beings, not as objects.

This is what is brilliant about working with groups. People feel heard, feel validated, feel understood. Also, hopefully, people would feel a bit more humble, a bit more human, and a bit more aware of their own garbage. Because once we are more tolerant of our own garbage, we are more tolerant of everybody else’s. The problem is, we sort of separate ourselves off, and we’re scared of our own garbage and want to be away from it. Acknowledging it, however, makes it a lot easier to feel sympathetic toward someone else’s.

The more aware we are of ourselves – the good, bad and indifferent – the more tolerant we are of everybody else. It’s okay if we make mistakes; that’s the way we all are. Then it’s okay if other people make mistakes; lie to me, let me down.

You’re not saying a single thing here that the Buddha didn’t teach. Buddha taught how to transform the mind, not to blame, how to take responsibility for our own problems, how to be humble, how to be kind. Why do we find it so hard to put it into practice? What do you think?

Perhaps in the West some people must have the perception that practicing Buddhism is something to do with being holy or sitting on cushions, when actually it’s so basic, so on the ground. And it means that we have to put our hands in our own shit. It’s nothing to do with being holy.

Do you think it would be helpful to have a person like you, who is skillful at working with groups, to help them sort things out? The FPMT, for example: would you recommend that we have someone like you as part of the organization; someone who can be brought in to help solve harmony and communication problems? To train others how to do this?

My first response, of course, would be to see what Lama Zopa Rinpoche thinks. My own feeling is that these things help me personally. They help me enormously to get my practice on the ground, so I don’t see why they couldn’t be beneficial for centers too. Any tools that help us be better Buddhists – use! Reach out and grab them!

In my role as a Tibetan Buddhist therapist, I am working in conjunction with my lama, who holds all the answers. On the ground level, however, I can help people hold the energy on the ground, to try and practice. I have nothing but encouragement from my lama to keep doing what I am doing. Without him I probably wouldn’t bother doing half of what I do.

So, I do feel that whoever might work with centers in this way should be a Tibetan Buddhist, otherwise they are seen as a therapist and something separate from Dharma.

My purpose is Dharma, and it underpins everything that I do. My work as a therapist and my Dharma are not separate. There is no difference.