Meditation & Buddhist Psychology
For more than twenty years I have studied and practiced Zen mediation as a student of Charlotte Joko Beck, founding teacher of the Ordinary Mind School of Zen and resident teacher at the Zen Center of San Diego. Like constructivist psychology, Zen and other Buddhist perspectives view self or “ego” as a human conceptual invention that may serve a useful function but that contributes to human dissatisfaction, dysfunction, and suffering when held too rigidly. Also compatible with constructivist approaches, Zen teaches that we create our suffering and dissatisfaction by our tendency to expect the world to conform to our expectations and to resist accepting, and directly experiencing, events as they actually unfold. The practice of Zen mediation as taught in the Ordinary Mind School addresses directly how we tend to solidify our version of “how things should be” in a way that creates dissatisfaction and teaches awareness of thoughts and their emotional concomitants. My research and scholarship, in addition to my daily practice, draws connections between Zen and Buddhist concepts and techniques and constructivist approaches to psychology and knowledge.