Buddhist Counseling: An Introduction of Buddhism as a Theoretical Orientation

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Buddhist concepts and practices have been gradually integrated into professional psychology. With its own epistemological assumptions about human nature, psychopathology, ideal health, and curative factors, Buddhism provides a comprehensive system of human psychology. Using Early Buddhist teachings (teachings introduced by the Gautama Buddha) as its source information, this presentation will discuss different components of Buddhism as a theoretical orientation and its application to counselling. Buddhist counselling is a holistic approach that helps clients use every encounter to open a gateway to cultivating the mind and gain an accurate understanding of reality. Reality, according to Buddhist theory, is a phenomenon of dependently co-arising conditions: every experience in life is merely a product of the interplay between multiple, interdependent factors (Karunadasa, 2013). Further, every condition is susceptible to change at any moment, and only certain conditions can be under control at any given time, which explains why the Buddha described all phenomenon as impermanent (Dhamma, 1997). Human suffering is rooted in ignorance of this impermanent nature of phenomena, as an untrained mind is inclined to hold onto phenomenon, exerting control or rejecting changes in an attempt to satisfy egoistic needs for illusory control, which will eventually lead to dissatisfaction. Buddhist counsellors facilitate clients gaining insight into the arising, changing, and cessation of all phenomenon, without clinging to them, by cultivating an awareness of the mind's activities that create emotional suffering. Once clients gain thorough insight into the mind's mechanism, they can gain the agency necessary to making deliberative decisions in life. The Buddhist counselling process includes an assessment of clients' internal and external conditions, enhancement of clients' awareness through mindfulness, chanting, cultivating compassion, or other techniques and the examination of desire and clinging. A clinical case vignette will illustrate the application of Buddhist counselling in detail.