Beyond Mindfulness and the Self. Applications of Buddhist “emptiness” training in the treatment of personality disorders.
Mindfulness training, as practiced in the context of evidence-based psychotherapy, is focused on developing and rehearsing one’s capacity for sustained attention and concentration on an internal / external object, function or experience. Mindfulness training has been used extensively in the management of acute and chronic psychiatric conditions and has become an important component of most approaches to the treatment of personality disorders.
However, because mindfulness training typically refers to (1) an observing subject, (2) an object , and (3) the process of paying attention itself, it inadvertently reinforces the notion that they are three distinct “separate” entities and, more importantly, it perpetuates the sense of the existing self as “real”.
In contrast, the more advanced “emptiness” (Sanskrit “Sunyata”) training focuses on how the “experience of the self” and the “cognition” of external / internal “objects” are created by and unfold in the human mind and brain. In the course of emptiness training, the very process of subject / object (self / other) “co-construction” is examined and, gradually, deconstructed.
As a result, some of the psychiatric / psychological symptoms and the underlying pathological aspects of the self and personality can be more easily transcended allowing for more efficacious self-regulation and more adaptive moment-to-moment functioning.
The workshop will compare and contrast the mindfulness and emptiness trainings both in the original Buddhist context and in contemporary psychotherapy. Particular emphasis will be given to practical applications of the emptiness training within an intensive, multidimensional / multivariable treatment of personality disorders. Review of specific techniques and a live demonstration will be offered.
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