The following was an email response on a topical group mailing list I’m on. There is a connection between spirituality and therapy that I am trying to learn within myself. I find it interesting that so many of my clients ascribe the label “Buddhist” to me when I am not formally a practitioner.

As you are seeking to practice psychotherapy from a buddhist perspective, you may want to consider what a “buddhist psychotherapist” is. There are as many ways to practice buddhist psychotherapy as there are — well — ways to practice Buddhism. How you and your client/patient experience therapy may vary depending on the approach you follow. There are Buddhist therapists from firmly psychodynamic and analytic camps (e.g., Mark Epstein; Barry Magid), and from cognitive behavioral schools (e.g., Tara Bennett-Goleman), as well as from every other therapeutic perspective I’m sure. Likewise, if your own meditation practice is rooted in Vipassana or in Zen traditions,for example, your therapeutic foci may differ. I mention all of this (which may be obvious) because I think a necessary foundation for practicing Dharma informed therapy, is to establish your own practice and to observe your experiences first. In fact, I’ve always understood that that was the Buddha’s instruction: “Don’t accept my teachings on faith. See for yourself.”

I think what triggered this commentary from me, was my reaction to your questioning how to label character types based on grasping, aversion, and delusion. One Buddhist tradition may view this typology as critical, but the Soto Zen practice I follow, for example, suggests to me that such classification is both dualistic and unnecessary — greed, greed hate and delusion have the same root. As with using other psychological labels (consider the DSM-IV-R), there is a risk of assuming too much about the human sitting before you, and in possibly relying too heavily on “prescriptive” treatments.

Let me very humbly offer that you allow your Buddhist practice to aid you in understanding yourself first, then in understanding your client, and PERHAPS later in knowing what to prescribe, if anything.

Merely another opinion.