1. Eugene Gendlin's 'Clear Space'

A Western philosopher and psychotherapy innovator contributes to our understanding of Mindfulness

I have been reflecting for some time that, in the Buddhist tradition, the notion of self-enquiry (in Sanskrit: dharma vicaya – pronounced 'vichaya') – sometimes spoken of in terms of 'self-discovery' – generally tends to be thought of as a solitary practice. To support and develop a culture of dharma vicaya within Western Buddhism, there is perhaps a need however, for us to explore effective forms of meditative self-enquiry dyad practice – collaborative spiritual practice in which Buddhist friends sit together and take it in turns to 'hold space' for each other, so that each practitioner is supported to go deeper in their self-enquiry. Having studied and practiced Eugene Gendlin’s 'Focusing' dyad practice for many years, I have come to see it as a model that Western Buddhists might wish to draw upon – while staying firmly rooted in Buddhist philosophical principles, and using aspects of the 'Focusing' method to engage in direct experiential enquiry into the bodily-felt experience of those principles. Western Buddhists, not being constrained to traditional forms, have the freedom, after all, to adopt any practice that is an expression of the core values, principles and insights of their tradition. I know I am not alone in this conviction about the value of the insights that 'Focusing' can bring to Buddhist self-enquiry, so I would like to share some reflections in this series of articles. This is partly for my own clarity, but I hope that others will find it stimulating also.

The notion of 'self-discovery' is one that I have taken from the 2004 'Three Myths' article by Dharmachari Subhuti. The ‘Three-Myths’ model presents an extremely useful framing of the way spiritual practice naturally moves through a three-fold deepening process – 'self-development' (self-power); 'self-surrender' (Other Power); and 'self-discovery' (Vajrayāna)– a staged process that can be said to reflect, at least to some degree, the three cultural and historical phases of the Buddhist tradition as a whole (Hinayāna, Mahayāna and Vajrayāna).

Utilising this 'Three Myths' frame of reference, I hope to show that Gendlin's Focusing dyad practice may be of significant value for practitioners who find themselves moving through these stages and wanting to embrace a three-fold mode of practice in which 'self-discovery' is fully integrated. When, as Buddhists, we reflect deeply on the 'Three Myths' model we begin to recognise that every aspect of our practice moves through stages that can be characterised in terms of the three stages that the model describes. I hope to touch in this essay, on the way our approaches to meditation practice, Mindfulness practice, and Buddhist study and contemplation, each go through this three-fold refinement process, and this three-fold expansion of our frame of reference.

I have taken these themes as a starting point for a very deep exploration of the connections between two very fundamental Dharmic frameworks – the Buddha's 'empty' skandhas and the ancient Indian brahmavihāras. I regard these as two of the most powerful and foundational self-enquiry frameworks that the Buddha has given us – a precious gift for those who find themselves on the path of 'self-discovery'.

While I shall be drawing on Dharmic frameworks that have been generated within the Triratna Buddhist Community, the interpretation and integration of these ideas that I am presenting here are mostly my own. As always, please understand that this essay is not in any way pretending to be representative of the consensus of opinion within Triratna. I am merely sharing my own conceptual explorations as a contribution to the discussion – albeit with the conviction that I feel.

---

A Phenomenological Approach to the Nature of Mind

Eugene Gendlin was a Philosophy professor at the University of Chicago in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and his primary area of scholarly expertise was Phenomenology – which, in the context of modern philosophy, is that approach which values the actual reality of human experience over any abstract conceptualisation of that experience. It is an approach that rigorously applies the principle that concepts must serve to deepen our experiencing and not take us away from our experience – as conceptualisation so often does. Focusing practice may be seen as a training in this phenomenological attitude that was also central to the Buddha's approach to Mindfulness and self-enquiry practice. Buddhists who are familiar with Eugene Gendlin's work, and with his Focusing dyad practice, will understand that this training in the phenomenological attitude, inevitably tends to develop a deeper and more experiential understanding of the nature of mind than those whose engagement is more intellectual and philosophical.

The Buddha, it can certainly be argued, shared Gendlin's phenomenological focus, and the Buddha's 'emptiness of the five skandhas' teaching can be thought of as an example of him taking an established ancient Indian conceptualisation of the nature of mind, and subjecting it to a rigorous phenomenological analysis. He appears to have reframed the teaching completely – highlighting its erroneous concretisation, or reification, of the functions and data of our cognitive and perceptual processes. Indeed, he presents the ancient Indian five-fold framework in an entirely fresh way. He presents it as what, in modern terminology, we might call a dynamic 'open system' model of mind and experience – one in which everything is process, and nothing is fixed, or personal, or separate.

Buddhists studying Gendlin's work, recognise that he was engaged in what may be called the 'very Buddhist' activity of investigating his experience in a penetrating and objective way. If we define meditation broadly, as direct engagement with the body-mind in order to achieve its transformation and recognise its ultimate nature – then Gendlin was certainly a meditator. But, because of his background in both Philosophy and Humanistic Psychology (and his deep engagement with the research of his University of Chicago colleague, the Psychologist Carl Rogers) he brings attitudes to his approach that Buddhists may sometimes miss. Indeed, it is common for even passionately engaged Buddhist meditators not to see meditation in terms of self-enquiry; or 'self-discovery'; or self-empathy; or 'resting as Consciousness'; or as gaining familiarity with the relational nature of the body-mind. While all these attitudes or approaches are implicit in Buddhist approaches to meditation, Gendlin's Focusing makes them explicit.

A Relational Understanding of the Body-Mind

Gendlin's rigorous phenomenological approach led him to a relational understanding of the body-mind – by which I mean that he came to the recognition that Consciousness exists in relationship with the cognitive-perceptual functions and processes of the body-mind. This relational approach is entirely intrinsic to Gendlin's approach to the body-mind – as it is to Buddhist meditation and self-enquiry – but this way of thinking is much less well-known to many Buddhists. Indeed, Western Buddhist philosophy and practice is deeply affected by the cruder, less experientially true models of mind that prevail in the West – models that fail to clearly establish the all-important relational distinction between, on one side, the mental, emotional, volitional, and sensory content of the mind, and, on the other, the Consciousness which is the witness of that content.

It is my conviction that Buddhists, while they may find the 'relational' emphasis initially unfamiliar, have a great deal to learn from exploring the practice of Focusing. This is especially so of those Buddhists who are seriously engaged with the task of locating the central Buddhist philosophical principles in their bodily-felt experience. The potential for Focusing practitioners to learn from Buddhism, may be even more significant however. Gendlin established the practice of Focusing only a few decades ago, in the 1960s, whereas there has been deep engagement with self-enquiry and meditation practice within the Buddhist tradition for twenty-five centuries.

Despite the obvious common ground between the two, and a common motivation, the dialogue between Buddhism and Focusing can easily fail before it gets started. Focusing practitioners may reject Buddhism as too conceptual and philosophical. And as too 'heroic' and ascetic in psychological terms – too disinterested in the mind's contents. Similarly, Buddhists can reject Focusing, regarding Gendlin’s philosophical framework as a narrow one, relative to that of Buddhism. Also, while the logic of Buddhist wisdom warns us against this, many Buddhists, because they have a great need to affirm their Buddhist identity, will absolutely limit themselves to practices that are expressions of their chosen strand of Buddhist culture and history – and will maintain an attitude of disdain towards anything outside of that purview. So, there are several obstacles preventing modern Buddhists connecting with Gendlin's Focusing. To miss the many direct parallels however, between the philosophy and practice of Gendlin's Focusing and the philosophy and practice of self-enquiry and meditation within the Buddhist tradition, would be a missed opportunity for both traditions, in my view.

Focusing and Buddhist Wisdom

It could be argued that Buddhists who explore Focusing have an advantage over other practitioners of the discipline, because they are open to the idea that both that which is observing, and that which is observed, are 'empty', or non-personal, and that it is our personalising identification with both of these poles in the subject-object relationship of our experiencing, that is the cause of our egoic dysfunction. This sort of understanding is implied in Gendlin's approach, and experienced in the course of Focusing practice, but not highlighted. This 'emptiness' of both subject and object however, is spelt out much more explicitly in the Buddha's teachings – especially in his 'emptiness of the five skandhas' teaching.

Many modern Buddhists, it needs to be acknowledged, do however find the five skandhas formulation impenetrable, and find themselves discouraged from engaging with it – which is a tragedy, given the absolute centrality of this teaching for the Buddha, and for the Buddhist tradition. One of my main aims in my various writings on the 'Mandala of Love' website, and indeed in this series of Substack articles, is to support a deeper engagement with the Buddha's teachings on the 'emptiness of the five skandhas' among modern Buddhist practitioners.

The five skandhas teaching is very complex. It is probably not surprising that we should find it so often placed in the 'too hard' basket. There are many established confusions and mistranslations that get in our way. In Buddhist tradition, the cognitive-perceptual relationship between that which is observing and that which is observed, is described very comprehensively by the 'five skandhas' formulation, but because this is what may be called a 'process model' it does not make a clear distinction between the cognitive-perceptual 'functions' of Consciousness and the cognitive-perceptual 'data' of Consciousness. Additional confusion is introduced by the fact that each of the five skandhas was described by the Buddha as functioning in two ways – 'internal' and 'external' (as are each of the 'Four Foundations of Mindfulness' incidentally). This is a very important detail of the teaching that is only very rarely acknowledged – but it is an aspect of the skandhas model that I personally find not only fascinating and deeply engaging, but essential to our understanding.

Most fundamentally, it is vitally important that we understand that in his frequent discourses on the 'emptiness of the five skandhas', the Buddha is taking an erroneous ancient Indian model of the self, and critiquing it – deconstructing it – not merely repeating it in its pre-Buddhist form, as many modern teachers do. In this teaching, the Buddha is fundamentally distinguishing his own more radical understanding from the five-fold model of mind that went before, and demonstrating that each of the five components of the previous model are 'empty' of self-nature. In more modern language he is saying that each skandha is better understood to be of the nature of a cognitive or perceptual process rather than as a fixed 'heap' (skandha literally means heap) – like the heaps, or aggregates (sand, clay, gravel, etc.), from which a house was constructed in ancient India. In the modern idiom we would say that what appears as a solid and permanent phenomena is in fact a moment-to-moment creation of cognitive-perceptual data-flows that have no inherent substance.

There is much that needs to be said about the 'emptiness of the five skandhas' teaching and the various common errors that have come into our modern understanding of it. The insight that comes most forcefully as we study both Gendlin and the Buddha, is that the five skandhas teaching describes the relationship between Consciousness and the four cognitive-perceptual functions of Consciousness. This perspective is clearly borne out by the mandala psychology that we see in Padmasambhava's Bardo Thodol texts – where the the 'empty' vijñāna skandha (Consciousness) is placed in the centre of the mandala.

© William Roy Parker 2025

Consider reading the next article in the Buddha meets Gendlin series: