Subtitled "Western Psychology meets Tibetan Buddhism", this book offers essays by pioneers in the healing
professions as they individually encounter an authentic Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The subject of these essays ranges from
"self-image" to "the meeting of western psychology and Buddhism" to "a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity". From "Western Psychology Meets Tibetan Buddhism," by Gay Gaer Luce: Detachment, a central concept in Buddhism, is largely
misunderstood in the West. It is not detachment from life, but from the conditional hangups we consider normal. We accept
competition, avarice, and deceit as normal in personal and economic life, yet strangely enough we never consider that they
have consequences for health… All summer Rinpoche gave us simple, straight-forward exercises in reversing stereotyped
habits. These showed us how our most inconspicuous habits were affecting us. "Don't say 'yes' for a week," he instructed.
This makes embarrassingly clear the amount of time and energy spent daily on hypocrisy, assenting to be nice, or from habit.
He asked us to be silent for a weekend. "We create friction and dissipate our energies in needless talk. Silence can heal
agitated patients," he said…We were discovering how heavily we had come to rely on words and constructs, experiencing the
world in terms of discriminations and differences. Western education fosters a dualistic mode of thinking, and we tend to
focus first on what is external to ourselves, learning to drive a car before we have learned to control our minds. To sit
quietly for five minutes without entertaining a thought or image is not so easy… "Deep relaxation can alter all of living,"
Rinpoche said. "When you are tight you cannot feel. Go deep. There is calmness and understanding there…satisfaction. Others
cannot always please us, but in meditation we can learn to please ourselves."
