Upcoming Talks 2025 (To Be Announced)
Selected Previous Year Talks (2024) Paul Cooper: “Four Points of Realization in Zen & Psychotherapy“ *
This talk reviews the four foundational points of the realizational perspective, which reflects a clinically relevant integration of Buddhist thought and practice with psychoanalytic thinking and clinical practice. The experiential nature of the realizational perspective serves as the fundamental converging point shared by both the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion and the Soto Zen priest Eihei Dōgen and includes:
1. Primacy of experience rooted in the present moment.
2. Radical openness to unknowing.
3. Relationship between intuition and cognition.
4. Shift from an emphasis on static mind states to the fluidity of psychic functions and actional relationships.
It is within the structure provided by these four points that the realizational orientation will be elaborated
Seiso is a transmitted teacher in the Soto Zen lineage of Dainin Katagiri; Member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association; American Zen Teacher’s Association; Co-founder and former guiding teacher: Two Rivers Zen Community in Narrowsburg, N.Y.; Lincoln Zen Center, Lincoln, Nebraska; Faculty: Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Psychotherapy and California Institute for Integral Studies, Former Dean of Training: National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis; Faculty, training analyst, supervisor: Institute for Expressive Analysis, Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Member Vermont Association for Psychoanalytic Studies; Award-winning author: Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism: A Realizational Perspective (2023), Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting (2019), The Zen Impulse and the Psychoanalytic Encounter (2010); private practice in Montpelier, Vermont.
Melvin Miller: “Meditations on Time and Self.” *
The enigma of time has fascinated, if not plagued, human beings for ages. Time conundrums, along with related notions such as impermanence, being time (uji), questions related to meaning making and the self, all seem to stir up uncertainty, often anxiety, for many in this modern era. This talk endeavors to shed some light on these ever so puzzling concepts. Beginning with an historical overview of time conceptualizations posited over the years, we’ll take a brief look at time from the scientific, philosophical, Buddhistic (Dogen, Katagiri), and psychoanalytic (Bion, Modell) perspectives. We’ll move cautiously from our historical review to an investigation of a few of the more challenging questions that have emerged about time–questions that have perhaps befuddled both Buddhists and psychoanalysts alike. And, of course, we’ll ponder ways to incorporate some of these fresh realizations about the ineffable nature of time into our day-to-day practices. I’ll conclude with the sharing of psychoanalytic case material related to both matters of time and conceptualizations of self, likely raising even more questions rather than providing answers. Ideally, this offering of practical clinical material will hold implications for your respective practices.
Melvin is a private practice psychoanalyst in Montpelier, VT. He is currently President and Faculty member of the Vermont Institute for the Psychotherapies (VIP). He writes about spiritual matters in adult development, philosophical world views, and the interface of Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Among his books, he co-edited The Psychology of Mature Spirituality.
Kagayaki Karen Morris, LP, NCPsyA
A Bodhisattva Walks Into A Dream*
A piece of rope walks into a bar. The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind.” The rope walks outside ties himself into a knot and frays one end. He walks back into the bar. The bartender says, “Hey, weren’t you just here?” The rope says, “No. I’m a frayed knot.”
Abstract:
This exploration of the analyst’s dharma position while working with patients’ dreams will begin with a brief review/discussion of Freud’s (1905) ‘A Case of Hysteria,’ concentrating on Dora’s first and second dreams, in which he elaborated on the precedents he set for technique in working with dreams. The presentation of my patient’s single dream will follow, giving two crucially divergent interpretations, the first through diagnostic categorization of severe paranoid-schizoid pathology, and the second through the lens of indeterminate dimensionality, or religious vertices as identified by Bion, Meltzer, and Rhode (1998). Notations of oscillations and developments in the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions will be discussed in terms of Buddhism’s liberative processes in action as depicted in the dream. The analyst/therapist’s clinical orientation along with arising moment-to-moment awareness in relation to their dharma position result in radically differing interpretations and understanding of our patients’ dreams.
Kagayaki is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Montpelier, VT. She is an ordained, transmitted teacher in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage, on the faculty of the Buddhist Education Institute, Indian Creek Zen Hermitage, Ottawa, IL. She is a volunteer public educator on the subject of the commercial sex industry and its impact on domestic minor sex trafficking and sex tourism with children. She is a facilitator of social dreaming matrixes in retreats, workshops, and conference spaces. She is an award-winning writer and poet. Her new volume of poetry, Nothing Happened Last Night, from Finishing Line Press (2024), was recently released.
Jeanne Even: “The Zen of “O”: Bion’s Reverie and Buddhist Meditation”
This paper will examine the interdisciplinary connection between Zen Buddhism and Bion’s theoretical idea of the “unknown”, absolute truth, or “O”. Bion describes ‘O’ as a state of being- in-the-present-moment. It is the truth of what is happening and is specific to the particular analyst and the particular patient at the particular time in the analysis. In Zen Buddhism, the practitioner has to simply be aware of the rising and falling of all physical, sensory, and mental perceptions; to be comfortable with not knowing, allowing the mind to detach and develop a reflective capacity. In this paper I will present the clinical case of Ms. A, which will illustrate
how I was able to use my practice of meditation as an instrument for applying Bion’s concept of the unknown or O. Bion describes a theoretical concept of relinquishing memory, understanding and desire in a clinical session. Ultimately, I developed a more profound sense of the meaning of her words, as opposed to my intellectual interpretation of her words. I was able to understand what she was thinking rather than what I thought she was thinking, acknowledging the unknown of the present moment.
Jeanne is a member of IPTAR, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She has been a member of the Program committee for many years and was recently elected as Chairman of the Program committee; completed training in Hypnosis at the New York Milton Erickson Society for Hypnosis; accredited CAC, addictions counselor. Areas of specialty include Drug and Alcohol Addictions, Eating Disorders, and Internet Video Gaming.
“Pilar Jennings, “Equanimity & Affect: A spacious Approach to Working with Trauma”
This Dharma talk will explore the Brahmaviharas, with an emphasis on equanimity for clinicians and patients working through complex trauma.
Themes will include:
- Unconscious identification with affect and its working through.
- How the analyst can utilize equanimity to facilitate a steady and
compassionate holding environment. - How the patient can slowly incorporate this practice to withstand affect associated with trauma and risk greater access to a fuller range of feeling states.
- The protective nature of equanimity for treatments rife with conflict,
ambivalence, or enactments.
Pilar is a psychoanalyst based in New York City with a focus on the clinical applications of Buddhist meditation practice. She has been working with patients and their families in private practice and through the Harlem Family Institute since 2000. She has been a Buddhist practitioner for the past 40 years and is a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism in the Sakya lineage; visiting Lecturer at Union Theological Seminary; Columbia University; and a faculty member of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. Her area of interest include: Intersubjectivity in the spiritual dyad; developmental perspectives of Buddhist meditation across traditions; and psychodynamic work with spiritual practitioners. Dr. Jennings’ publications include Mixing Minds (Wisdom 2010) and To Heal a Wounded Heart (Shambhala 2017).
Barre Zen Meditation Center Kokyoji, (Eternal Mirror Temple) 