Zen and Psychotherapy: Partners in Liberation, by Joseph Bobrow

(246 pp., Norton Books, 2010)

Joseph Bobrow’s teacher, Robert Aitken Roshi, once challenged him, “Are you a Zen student who is a psychotherapist or a psychotherapist who is a Zen student?” This book is the author’s answer. Zen and psychotherapy are partners, certainly dedicated to liberation in their own ways. Psychotherapy contributes what, to date, is sometimes lacking in the Western sangha, where the individual’s progress on the meditation cushion doesn’t necessarily align with his or her conduct. Bobrow demonstrates how this alignment might actually work in the world. The Deep Streams Zen Institute he founded engages therapy, meditation, community-building and social engagement to support war veterans and their families. With forty years of training in Zen and psychotherapy, both in word and in deed, Bobrow Roshi furthers the partnership of East and West. The deep stream of a good marriage runs warm and clear in his pages.

From the Fall 2010 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 27, No. 1)

© 2010 Patrick McMahon

Psychology, Zen

Patrick McMahon has been a contributor to Inquiring Mind since 1997, writing on literature, East and West, and whether and whither the twain meet. As a member of a sangha that includes two cats and as an occasional peripatetic monk, he persists with his training as a Zen Buddhist layperson in Oakland, California, at the Persimmon Tree Zendo, an affiliate of Ring of Bone Zendo. He is presently participating in an oral history project exploring how Bodhidharma came to the Northwest.