Buddhism or Psychotherapy? Mix and Match… 

Psychotherapy heals with talk. Buddhism heals with silence, i.e. meditation. Which is better? That’s your choice, or it could be a combination of the two, in which a sweet spot is found, somewhere near the center, in something of a perfect and creative combination of the two. Because psychotherapy runs the risk of never really solving the problem, since there are always more words to toss on the fire, while Buddhism runs the risk of never really solving the problem, because they ‘bypass’ it and merely leave it there dangling helpless. 

Both criticisms may be right to some extent, but it may be helpful to ask why. Because it seems as if psychotherapy does its share of ‘bypassing,’ also, but in an attempt to get at the root of the problem, not some superficial solution. The problem is that it never ends. Psychotherapists don’t expect their clients to articulate their problem for themselves, but only offer enough clues that the psychotherapist might have some insight into the underlying causes that manifest in ways that can be crippling to the victim. Buddhist meditation is often accused of making an end-run straight to the problem’s superficial solution, without really dealing with the issues. 

One interesting aspect of psychotherapy is that it tends to be a Western ‘problem,’ by world measures, i.e. the people seeking such help tend to be European or European-descended by birth. Psychotherapists scarcely exist in many Asian countries (this is changing), and when they do, are often there for Western ex-patriates and their English language. So, does the entire Asian continent ‘bypass’ its supposed need to confront its deepest darkest demons by linguistic means, or does the West maybe have a problem of loving the ‘dualism’ of language, i.e. usually Indo-European language, something which never seems to let us go, unless we let it go. 

Thus the ‘problem’ seems to be a slippery one. The more we examine it, the harder it is to find. By this point in my life, I may indeed have a predilection for the silence over the noise, but I’m almost always willing to split the difference, as long as that allows a meandering path and a hopefully creative solution. This isn’t Math 101, after all. So, let’s say that the full thesis can be forsaken forthwith, in favor of a soft solution, in which the linguistic and existential hurdles are acknowledged, including sexual slights and psychic manipulation, as long as there is no expectation of ever any total reconciliation. Silence is more honest than that. It allows unlimited freedom of movement, after all, with no retribution necessary. Deal.