ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Practise What you Preach: Counsellors’ Experienceof Practising Buddhist Counselling in Thailand

Chomphunut Srichannil & Seamus Prior

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract This qualitative study considers Thai counsellors’ experience of practising BuddhistCounselling in Thailand, exploring how Buddhist philosophy is integrated into the counsellors’personal lives and then brought into their therapeutic practice. The study involved a focus groupand in-depth, semi-structured interviews with five practising Buddhist counsellors, with theiraccounts being analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings indicatedthat the participants considered their personal qualities as being key in generating therapeuticeffectiveness within their Buddhist Counselling, and they believed that they fostered thesepersonal qualities by internalising Buddhist ideas into their personal lives and by observingBuddhist practices. Implications for counselling practice, training, and research are discussed.

Keywords Buddhist Counselling . Thailand . Counsellors’ experience . Interpretativephenomenological analysis

Introduction

In Thailand, Buddhist Counselling is a form of psychotherapy based on Buddhist principles,incorporating Buddhist teachings into therapeutic practice. For approximately a decadeBuddhist Counselling has been taught to a number of Thai postgraduate counsellingstudents and offered to Thai people as a therapeutic intervention.

As Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist country - 94.6 % of Thais are Buddhist (CentralIntelligence Agency 2013) - Buddhist philosophy profoundly influences Thai culture and its coresocial values. Buddhist temples have long functioned as health care centres, and monks still havea special status in Thai society, enjoying a kind of therapeutic role (Bhikkhu 2007; Hathirat 1983).In Thailand, many Thais who suffer from emotional distress turn to the temple for Buddhistadvice and practice. Professional counselling, on the other hand, is new to Thailand. It was notuntil 1985 that Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s oldest university, offered a master's degree

Int J Adv CounsellingDOI 10.1007/s10447-013-9204-x

C. Srichannil (*)Department of Research and Applied Psychology, Faculty of Education, Burapha University, Chonburi,Thailande-mail: C.Srichannil@sms.ed.ac.uk

S. PriorCounselling and Psychotherapy School of Health in Social Science, The University of Edinburgh,Edinburgh, UK

programme in counselling psychology (Pokeao 2010). This counselling programme was foundedon Western approaches, with most counselling trainers being educated and trained in Westerncountries, especially in the United States (Tuicomepee et al. 2012).

However, in recent years, the counselling curriculum in Thai universities has undergonesignificant changes and it now offers Buddhist Counselling as an additional counsellingapproach. Training in Buddhist Counselling was first introduced in the Departmentof Psychology at Chulalongkorn University in 2002, and has been now extended to other Thaiuniversities. The course offers a basic model of the Buddhist Counselling process, and aims toprovide a fundamental understanding of human drives (i.e., desires or cravings), and humansuffering (i.e., the discrepancy between desires and actual experience) informed by the coreBuddhist concepts of the Four Noble Truths (discussed further in the next section), whichconceptualise the symptoms and meanings of suffering and propose the means to eliminatesuffering and achieve optimal mental health and well-being through the Noble EightfoldPath (Tuicomepee et al. 2012). As part of this counselling training, students areencouraged to integrate the Four Noble Truths into their daily lives, and to followBuddhist practices (Pokeao 2010).

This movement towards adopting Buddhist teachings grounded in Thai culture mirrors thecurrent trend in non-Western cultures of indigenising counselling practices (Church andKatigbak 2002; Leung and Chen 2009; Mohatt 2010). Given the fact that Western and Easterncultures display significant cultural differences, directly adopting Western models of counsel-ling and psychotherapy for counselling practice in non-Western cultures has been seen asinappropriate (Bojuwoye and Sodi 2010; Cheung 2000; Duan et al. 2011; Laungani 1997;Pedersen 2003; Yip 2003). For example, research by Duan et al. (2011) considering SoutheastAsian counsellors’ views on the internationalisation of counselling psychology to Asiancultures, suggests that there are limitations in the transferability of Western counselling modelsto Southeast Asian cultures. The authors argue that counselling needs to be indigenised inorder to serve local clients more effectively. Such recognition has led many non-Westernpractitioners to develop counselling interventions that are culturally relevant to their localclients (cf., Chong and Liu 2002; Lee 2002; Hoogasian and Lijtmaer 2010; Vicary andAndrews 2000). For example, Lee (2002) described how he worked with his Chinese clientsin Singapore by integrating three indigenous concepts and techniques-namely, Chinese med-icine, dang-ki (Chinese shamanism), and feng-shui (Chinese geomancy) - into his therapeuticpractice. Similarly, Buddhist Counselling in Thailand typically uses ‘local knowledge’ toinform existing therapeutic practice in order to develop a culturally relevant counsellingapproach, with a Buddhist conceptualisation of suffering as a foundation.

The Four Noble Truths as the Theoretical Framework for Buddhist Counselling

At the core of Buddhism are the Buddha’s ‘Four Noble Truths’, which provide an explanationof how humans respond to suffering, and also offer a framework for understanding and dealingwith suffering in our own lives. The first Noble Truth outlines the symptoms of suffering; thesecond offers a diagnosis of suffering; the third identifies the state of optimal mental health;and the fourth provides the Noble Eightfold Path as a way to eliminate suffering (i.e., properunderstanding, proper thought, proper speech, proper action, proper livelihood, proper effort,proper mindfulness, and proper concentration) (Payutto 1995). In the practice of BuddhistCounselling, the counsellors’ understanding of the Four Noble Truths provides them with atheoretical framework to understand, identify and work with clients’ suffering. This under-standing of the Four Noble Truths is initially gained simply through growing up as Buddhistsin Thailand, and is subsequently developed through Buddhist Counselling training, and

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through the counsellors’ direct experience of investigating their own suffering according tothe Four Noble Truths. The fact that Buddhist Counselling draws on the Four NobleTruths, which are deeply embedded in Thai society and which are learned fromliving in that society, differentiates Thai Buddhist Counselling from other counsellingapproaches where the theoretical framework is acquired mainly through specificcounselling training.

TIR as a Basic Model of the Buddhist Counselling Process

Soree Pokeao, a pioneer of Buddhist Counselling in Thailand, has proposed a basic model ofthe Buddhist Counselling process. It consists of three main features: tuning in (T), identifyingsplit (I), and realisation (R) (Pokeao 2010).

It is important to point out at the outset that Buddhist Counselling in both theoryand practice shares significant similarities with other counselling approaches, particu-larly those located within the person-centred and humanistic/existential approaches. Aswith these approaches, Buddhist Counselling emphasises creating a therapeutic rela-tionship through empathic attunement to the client’s implicit and explicit feelings,emotions and thoughts in order to understand and empathise with the client from hisor her internal frame of reference. Likewise, the Buddhist Counselling notion ofsuffering as being caused by a discrepancy between desire and reality, can be comparedwith the person-centred notion of incongruence between the constructed and the realself (Rogers 1951). This conceptualisation may also be compared with the idea ofintrapsychic conflict in psychodynamic counselling (Leiper and Maltby 2004). There isalso an overlap in therapeutic intervention between Buddhist Counselling and that ofother approaches, in that they aim to facilitate the clients’ insight into the causes oftheir psychological problems and to provide them with new understanding. What maybe regarded as distinctive to Buddhist Counselling is that practitioners offer clientsparticular perspectives on suffering and its acceptance, grounded in core Buddhistphilosophy and practice, and what is particular to the current study is that our researchon the practice of Buddhist Counselling was conducted in contemporary Thailand,where counsellors and clients are embedded within a predominantly Buddhist culture.Further details of the TIR model of the Buddhist Counselling process is given below.

In Buddhist Counselling, ‘tuning in’ (T) is when a counsellor makes a profound engage-ment with a client, by listening to him or her attentively, in order to clearly and deeplyunderstand the client’s experience from his or her point of view, and then by conveying thisunderstanding back to the client in language attuned to his or her experience and feelings.‘Tuning in’ is regarded as a starting point in establishing and maintaining the therapeuticrelationship, and a key point in generating therapeutic change. The counsellor’s profoundengagement with a client will make it possible for the counsellor to understand and identify theclient’s suffering.

In Buddhist Counselling, the cause of suffering is viewed in terms of a discrepancy betweendesires and actual experience, called identify split (I). This concept of suffering isinformed by the second Noble Truth. Buddhist counsellors believe that underneath thevarious problems the client brings to therapy, the root of those problems essentially isthe same; namely, ‘unfulfilled expectations’. The role of the counsellor is to identifythis discrepancy in the client, and to facilitate the client’s realisation (R) of it. Thisrealisation, Buddhist counsellors believe, can facilitate the client’s movement from astate of attachment to one of an acceptance of circumstances. This acceptance canultimately help lessen the client’s suffering.

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Buddhist-Informed Psychotherapies

Although Buddhist Counselling in Thailand has only recently been established, attempts tointegrate Buddhism and psychotherapy are not new, and the compatibility of Buddhistphilosophy within the realm of counselling and psychotherapy has been widely acknowledged(Bowman and Baylen 1994; McWilliams 2010). Numerous authors have sought to explorehow tenets of Buddhist psychology can be used to enrich the practice of various therapeuticapproaches (cf., Daya 2000; Gehart and Paré 2008; Kumar 2002; Nissanka 1993; Wada andPark 2009). For example, Gehart and Paré (2008) suggested ways in which Buddhist ideasmay be integrated into family-based therapies; Kumar (2002) provided a concise summary ofthe key Buddhist concepts that can be applied by the Cognitive-Behavioural therapist. Inaddition, Buddhist practices, especially mindfulness, have received a surge of interest from anumber of researchers and therapeutic practitioners, especially those working within acognitive-behavioural orientation. Four well-known interventions applying Buddhist practicesare: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (Kabat-Zinn 1990, 1982); Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) (Segal et al. 2002); Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)(Linehan 1993); and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) (Hayes et al. 1999).

While there has been substantial interest in integrating Buddhist ideas and practices intotherapies, most of these Buddhist-informed therapies were developed for non-Buddhist pop-ulations in Western countries, rather than for Buddhist populations in Buddhist countries. Thispaper aims to explore the views and experiences of counsellors practising Buddhist Counsel-ling in a Buddhist context and mainly for Buddhist clients.

Additionally, most of the existing studies on Buddhist-informed psychotherapies haveemployed quantitative research methods to measure their effectiveness. While the results ofsuch studies generally support the effectiveness of the approaches in improving a wide rangeof both physical and mental health problems (cf., Hahrinth and Rungreangkulkij 2008; Marlatt2002; Rungreangkulkij et al. 2011; Ushiroyama 2006), they do not provide a clear under-standing of the process of the various Buddhist-informed therapies. Hoshmand andPolkinghorne (1992) argued that the knowledge-base of psychology, counselling and psycho-therapy should not be limited to positivistic inquiry, but should include “the knowledge ofpractice”. They emphasise the need for research that “allow(s) practitioners to contribute to theknowledge base of the profession” (Hoshmand and Polkingkorne 1992, p. 56).

The present paper is based on the first author’s doctoral research, supervised by the secondauthor, exploring how Thai counsellors and clients make sense of their experiences of BuddhistCounselling. This paper focuses on one of the emergent themes from this doctoral study,namely, how the Buddhist counsellor participants regarded their personal internalisationof Buddhist thinking and practices as integral to their professional practice.

Method

This study involved a focus group and in-depth, semi-structured interviews of a small group ofBuddhist counsellors, with the data examined using interpretative phenomenological analysis(IPA). IPA is a qualitative approach underpinned by phenomenology, hermeneutics andidiography (Smith et al. 2009). Its phenomenological dimension enhances capturing ofpeople’s lived experiences of particular phenomena from their subjective points of view. Itshermeneutic dimension enables the researcher to develop a more explicitly interpretativeanalysis of participants’ accounts in order to throw light on the deeper meanings containedwithin them. Its idiographic dimension highlights the importance of individual cases in seeking

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to understand shared experiences, thus potentially providing greater understanding of the topicbeing studied.

Participants

Prospective participants were recruited mainly through personal contacts (n=4) and oneparticipant was referred by another (n=1). A total of five Buddhist counsellors participatedin this study, and all took part in both the focus group and individual interviews. There werethree female and two male participants, aged between 30 and 45 years (mean 35.8 years). Allparticipants were Asian/Thai and identified themselves as Buddhists. Four participants hadbeen trained to masters, and one participant to doctoral level in Buddhist Counselling from thesame university, and all knew each other. All of the participants described themselves asBuddhist counsellors, and had practised Buddhist Counselling for an average of 8.4 years(range 2–10 years) in different settings: private practice, a university, and a medical setting. Allthe participants, except one, knew the first author personally.

Ethical Considerations

This research received ethical approval from the University of Edinburgh Ethics Committeeprior to the commencement of the study. Due to the existing relationship between the firstauthor and the participants, it was felt that the participants might feel obliged to take part in thestudy, or volunteer because they would like to help the researcher as a personal favour, ratherthan truly wishing to contribute to the research. With these concerns in mind, great care wastaken when recruiting the counsellors by making clear the voluntary nature of the research. Inaddition, as the first author had been trained in Buddhist Counselling, the counsellors mighthave assumed that the first author had prior knowledge of Buddhist Counselling practice andtheory, and so may not clearly or fully explain their own experiences of Buddhist Counselling.

To deal with this latter issue, the first author informed the counsellors clearly at thebeginning of the focus group and interviews about her role as a researcher interested inunderstanding the participants’ own experiences from their points of view, and asked theparticipants to give their own stories in as much detail as possible. The first author also madean attempt to be vigilant regarding her previous knowledge about Buddhist Counselling andtook a naive position towards the Buddhist Counselling language used by the participants.Adopting this position led to the participants needing to clarify what they meant when talkingabout some Buddhist Counselling terms or concepts. For example, the researcher asked ‘Youmentioned “tuning in” - can you tell me what you mean by that term?’ This type of questionencouraged clarification of the participants’ meanings and understandings, thus obviating thepotential reliance on assumed shared understandings. A pseudonym was assigned to eachparticipant, and all identifiable information was altered to preserve anonymity.

Methods of Data Gathering

Two different methods of data collection were employed in this study: a focus group and semi-structured interviews. A combination of the focus group and individual interviews was plannedto provide complementary data - that is, individual interviews were used to elicit detailedpersonal accounts of the participants’ experiences of Buddhist Counselling, whereas the focusgroup was interactively oriented aiming at generating dialogue among the participants abouttheir personal experience of Buddhist Counselling. In practice, the individual interviews andthe group discussion generated similar accounts.

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Data Gathering

The focus group was conducted in a private room in a university setting. The meeting wasdigitally recorded and lasted 2 h 36 min. The researcher’s main role in the focus group was tomake the participants feel at ease, to open and facilitate discussion with minimal input, and tomake sure that all the participants had equal opportunity to talk. The focus of the discussion inthe focus group was the Buddhist counsellors’ shared or divergent experiences of practisingBuddhist Counselling.

All five focus group participants also took part in individual interviews. The interviewstook place after the focus group either at the participant’s home or workplace. Each interviewwas digitally recorded and lasted from 1 h 45 min to 2 h 30 min. The major role of theinterviewer was to encourage the participants to tell their stories in their own ways, and toprompt for further elaboration to gain more detailed information of the topic under discussion.The focus of the interviews was the participant’s personal experience of practising BuddhistCounselling.

Analysis

The analysis of the transcribed interviews followed IPA recommendations (Smith et al. 2009).It began by looking at the cases individually and then went on to make comparisons acrosscases. The first stage involved re-reading each transcript, and notes were made in the left-handmargin. From this stage, emergent themes were developed by turning the initial notes intomore concise phrases that reflected the essence of the content and meanings found. The nextstage involved looking for patterns and connections between those themes. Once each table ofthemes from the five participants had been completed, connections across cases were made.Recurring themes across cases that captured the most powerful and interesting aspects of theparticipants’ experiential accounts were identified. Several emergent themes appeared withinthe individual transcripts, and when the same themes were found in more than half of the totalnumber of cases (i.e., at least 3), they were identified as recurring, and were incorporated intothe master table of analysis.

Following the recommendations of Tomkins and Eatough (2010), in order to balance theindividual and the group levels of analysis, the focus group data were analysed by followingthe conventional process of IPA (i.e., the process used to analyse individual interviews) tocreate a table of themes for the group as a whole. Following the completion of this table ofgroup-level themes, the accounts from each participant were examined to assess whether thetable of group-level themes did justice to the experiential accounts of the individuals. Twomain steps were involved in this: the first step was a top-down process, which involved goingthrough each group member’s account as a whole, and the second step was a bottom-upprocess, which involved identifying how the individual account reflected the group-level themes. The analyses of the two sets of interview and focus group data were thencombined.

While this analysing process foregrounded the meaning of the phenomena from theparticipants’ points of view, this process inevitably involved the researchers’ interpretativeengagement with the data also (Smith 1996). Eatough and Smith (2008) noted that there aredifferent levels of analysis within IPA: an empathic-descriptive level, where the analysis isgrounded in the participant’s own account and sense-making; and a more critical-hermeneuticlevel, where the analysis goes further than meaning restoration and which may be differentfrom what the participants might offer. In other words, an empathic-descriptive interpretation isrequired to capture and ‘give voice’ to participants’ claims and concerns, whilst a more critical-

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hermeneutic interpretation is required to contextualise and ‘make sense’ of the meaning ofsuch claims and concerns (Larkin et al. 2006, p. 102).

For each theme presented in the following section, descriptive interpretations of the extractsare given, and these are then followed by more hermeneutic interpretations. Although weprovide these two levels of interpretation in presenting the findings, we do not rely too heavilyon the hermeneutic interpretation. This is our attempt to avoid taking anything away from therich and authentic voices of the participants. Hermeneutic interpretation is thus given whereappropriate to clarify the meaning underlying the participants’ accounts, and when thishappens it is presented in more tentative tones.

The focus group and individual interviews were conducted in Thai, and the data transcrip-tions were transcribed verbatim in Thai by the first author. In order to stay close to the originaldata, the analysis was conducted using these original transcriptions. The extracts were thentranslated into English also by the first author. The main goal of the translation was to stay asclose as possible to the original text and to convey as accurately as possible the meanings ofthe participants’ experiences. Attempts were made to maintain a literal translation of the text interms of the participants’ original vocabulary, sentence structures and styles as much aspossible. However, changes were made when the literal translation appeared less comprehen-sible. Nevertheless, a meaning equivalence was sought and generally sustained. These trans-lated extracts then were checked with a monolingual native English speaker. This involveddiscussions in English about the meaning of words and grammar structures from the originaltext and negotiations about suitable English words, meanings, styles and tenses. This was toensure the readability of the translated data.

Five super-ordinate themes were identified from the analysis: (1) Taking up BuddhistCounselling; (2) Conceptualising Buddhist Counselling; (3) The personal qualities of thecounsellor as key; (4) The impact of practising Buddhist Counselling; and (5) EvaluatingBuddhist Counselling. This paper reports on the third super-ordinate theme, entitled “Thepersonal qualities of the counsellor as key”. It explores the ways in which the participants triedto develop themselves through integrating Buddhist ideas and practices into their personallives, and details the role the participants’ personal development played in their therapeuticpractice. This theme was chosen because it was the one theme that emerged unsolicitedly andspontaneously from the participants in the focus group and individual interviews. This theme isnot only significant because of its clear importance to the participants of this study, but alsobecause it is prominent in the counselling literature across many counselling approaches (cf.,Aron 1996; McConnaughty 1987; Reupert 2008, 2006). What is distinctive here are theparticular personal qualities that these Buddhist counsellors identified and the rich descriptionsthey offered of the integration of personal beliefs and ways of living with professional practice.

Under this super-ordinate theme are two master themes, and their interrelated sub-themes (see Table 1). For each sub-theme, descriptive and hermeneutic interpretationsare given and these are supported with translated extracts from the participants. This is

Table 1 Master themes and sub-themes of the personal qualities of the counsellor as key

Master themes Sub-themes

Developing the counsellor’spersonal qualities

Internalising the Four Noble Truths Observing Buddhist practices

Bringing the counsellor’s qualitiesinto therapy

Therapeutic presence as key Understanding and identifyingclients’ suffering

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“not only to enable the reader to assess the pertinence of the interpretations but also toretain the voice of the participant’s personal experience” (Shinebourne and Smith 2009,p. 155).

Findings

This paper focuses on the significance of the personal qualities of the counsellor in practisingBuddhist Counselling. The following extract from Manid, one of the participants, captures theessence of this theme:

It [practising Buddhist Counselling] really really really depends on me. To be successful,I need to be peaceful and in harmony with the client. (Manid - Focus group)

The three repetitions of “really” emphasise her strong sense of belief in the signif-icance of “the counsellor’s personal qualities” in generating therapeutic effectiveness. All theparticipants in this study could not emphasise enough the significance of theirpersonal qualities to their therapeutic work. They believed that they could developthe personal qualities that they saw as essential for practising Buddhist Counsellingthrough internalising the Four Noble Truths and through observing Buddhist practices(‘Developing the counsellor’s personal qualities’), and they highlighted the significantrole that their personal development practices played in their therapeutic practices(‘Bringing the personal qualities into therapy’). These two master themes and theirsub-themes, as shown in Table 1, will be explored in turn.

Developing the Counsellor’s Personal Qualities

Internalising the Four Noble Truths

All the participants maintained that to integrate the Four Noble Truths into their therapeuticwork, they needed to move beyond theoretical knowledge of the Truths and develop anunderstanding of them, “wholeheartedly”, by living them:

Buddhist counselling, I feel, depends on the counsellor, the counsellor who … who asDenchai said, needs to understand them [the Four Noble Truths] wholeheartedly and liveour lives in that way. (Somsak – Focus group)

Somsak clearly felt that congruence between the personal and the professional wasimportant. The use of the word “wholeheartedly” suggested that, for him, an effectivecounsellor does not simply have theoretical knowledge, but lives in a Buddhist way. Thismeans that therapeutic work does not depend only on theoretical knowledge and techniques,but is principally driven by the personal qualities of the counsellor, and these qualities, hebelieved, could be developed by internalising the Four Noble Truths. Manid similarlydescribed this point in the following extract:

What I feel makes Buddhist Counselling distinctive and interesting is that firstly thecounsellor needs to have Buddhist knowledge; this is not only theoretical knowledge. Imean the counsellor needs to look … look at their own problems and their own mindusing Buddhist ideas as well. (Manid – Focus group)

Understanding the Four Noble Truths through direct experience of investigating thecounsellor’s own suffering, Manid seemed to believe, can help the counsellor move beyond“theoretical” understanding of the Truths to understanding them “wholeheartedly”.

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The underlying justification for this internalisation is the notion of “practise what youpreach”. As Somsak said:

To help others to understand life as it is, we need to live our lives like that aswell. We need to be first in order to help others to understand what weunderstand. (Somsak – Interview)

For Padee, this internalisation was a matter of being “fair” and of showing “respect for”clients. Padee seemed to believe that she could achieve this by testing out Buddhist ideas in herown life first:

Before offering the service, I think it’s necessary to test by trial and error what we willuse in our profession by ourselves first. I feel this, er, it… it’s fair and what should I say?… This is also to show respect for the clients. (Padee – Focus group)

In the next extract, Somsak described why it was important for him to live his life in aBuddhist way:

If we live our lives or practise living in harmony with reality, live our lives based onBuddhist concepts, our work will be in line with our own lives, as we don’t separate lifeand work. But if we don’t live our lives like this, then work and life will be separate, andI think we will be unable to understand Buddhist ideas deeply. (Somsak – Interview)

For Somsak, internalising the Four Noble Truths enabled the two domains of his life - thepersonal and the professional - to become one, and this alignment helped strengthen hisunderstanding of Buddhist ideas. This better understanding of Buddhist ideas is explicitlylinked to a better understanding of Buddhist Counselling. As Noree pointed out:

I feel there are levels of understanding Buddhist Counselling according to our personalgrowth and our Buddhist understanding. The more we understand Buddhist ideas, themore we understand Buddhist Counselling. (Noree – Focus group)

Noree’s extract above suggests that the level of counsellor competence in practisingBuddhist Counselling varies over time and varies also from one counsellor to another. Thiscompetence, Noree believed, is determined by how well the counsellor understands Buddhistideas. Padee’s comment that “the direction we will take a client is the route we have walkedbefore”, also helps to make sense of Noree’s comment that “the more we understand Buddhistideas, the more we understand Buddhist Counselling”. These two extracts convey the idea thatcounsellors are only capable of taking a client as far as they have gone themselves. Thus, to beable to understand and help suffering clients, the participants felt they needed first toinvestigate, understand and work through their own suffering using Buddhist concepts.

Observing Buddhist Practices

The participants reported using formal or informal Buddhist practices as a way of developingtheir personal qualities. Each participant chose what they considered to be the most suitabletype of practice for them. Somsak and Padee both talked about developing their awareness andsensitivity while working with clients and both had experienced formal Buddhist practice ashort time before the study: Somsak and Padee undertook formal Vipassana meditation, taughtby a Buddhist monk in Somsak’s case, and by a Buddhist nun in Padee’s case. This practiceinvolved applying their attention to and increasing their awareness of their own mental andbodily sensations. The other three participants, Denchai, Noree and Manid, practised dailymindfulness, which they described as regular daily private exercises aimed at cultivating an

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awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Manid also sometimes practised medita-tion informally at home, by focusing her mind on the present, and chanting. Despite theirdifferences, the central component of all these practices is paying attention to the presentmoment and observing one’s feelings and thoughts:

Mindfulness helps me to know the state of my mind and its movements. (Denchai –Focus group)Meditation helps me to be able to pay attention to what is happening in myself, likeseeing that this is my anger. Vipassana helps me to see what is happening to my bodywhen I’m angry oh! It’s not peaceful, it’s hot. (Somsak – Interview)

In the next extract, Padee explained why she felt it was important for her to followVipassana practice:

We can’t turn the switch on as soon as we are in the counselling room; it’s important thatwe’re able to live in harmony, which is not easy … yes, it’s hard even to be peaceful inthe counselling room, but the teacher [counselling trainer] said that ideally even outsidethe counselling room you have to be able to tune in to the world - [Noree: “Witheverything around us”], and doing Buddhist practice can give me the ability to do so, tohelp me to be a counsellor longer, not only in the counselling room. [Padee – Focusgroup]

In this extract, the idea that “we can’t turn the switch on as soon as we are in the counsellingroom” again suggests that it is not simply a technique that can be applied: the person needs tobe the counsellor, not just act the counsellor. Thus the two parts - the personal and theprofessional - cannot be separated. Padee regarded being “peaceful” as important but chal-lenging, both in her professional and personal lives. However, she found that her Buddhistpractice gave her the ability to be peaceful not only in her therapeutic practice, but also in herpersonal life outside the counselling room.

The participants’ Buddhist practices appeared to have an impact on their counsellingpractices in terms of providing them with a better understanding of Buddhist concepts andimproved therapeutic presence. Somsak, who practiced Vispassana, viewed this practice as auseful tool in developing an understanding of Buddhist ideas:

Before, I may have understood Buddhism superficially, I never did any Buddhistpractice, never at all, and I thought I understood Buddhism, but actually I didn’t. […]Buddhist practice helps me to understand Buddhist ideas. We won’t truly understandBuddhist ideas if we just study them theoretically […] before, I thought I understood theconcept, but practice makes me see oh! impermanence is actually like this, it is not onlyabout knowing it superficially, I can’t explain how it feels like when knowing thiswholeheartedly. (Somsak – Interview)

This extract indicated a shift in Somsak’s understanding of the Buddhist concept ofimpermanence, from “superficially” to “wholeheartedly” as a result of Vipassana meditation.He also described the impact of his Buddhist practice in terms of self-transformation, and thisself-transformation in turn had a positive impact on his therapeutic practice:

Before, my counselling work was at a thinking level, I thought and then I saw oh… thisway was for this client, but my real self didn’t change; I was still moody, angry. Butwhen I, as I said, practise Vipassana, I can feel that inside me also changes. As aconsequence of my practice, I can feel that I’m less moody, I have fewer expectations ofsomething, and this has an impact on my counselling work; that is, I could more fully

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concentrate on my clients, and I could completely let myself be with the client; thesethings were really helpful. (Somsak – Focus group)

In this extract, Somsak explicitly linked his Vipassana practice to inner change (change inhimself) and this brought about outer change (change in how he was with clients). Morespecifically, Vipassana practice helped improve his mood, in that it helped him to be “lessmoody”. This emotional improvement in turn appeared to facilitate an increased level oftherapeutic presence.

From this perspective, Buddhist mind training seems essential in enhancing the partici-pants’ personal and professional development. On the other hand, not practising mind trainingcan bring about the opposite result. Below, Manid expresses how the absence of mind traininghad a negative impact on her therapeutic presence:

I feel that when I work with my clients, I need to concentrate, to be peaceful. I mean I can’thave concerns and expectations, and when I don’t have self-practice, my mind wanderseasily. I mean, when something enters my mind, it takes over. (Manid – Interview)

Manid clearly attributed loss of self-control and concentration to her untrained mind, andthis untrained mind limited her ability to be fully present with clients. Given the beneficialresults of Buddhist mind training, regular practice over a period of time is highlighted by manyparticipants as necessary to cultivate and maintain this quality of mind. This is reflected in theparticipants’ use of comparative language to highlight, firstly, the importance of having a clearmind in therapy - “the clearer my mind is, the more perceptive I will be” (Padee – Focusgroup) - and, secondly, to stress the importance of maintaining regular mind training – “themore we practise, the sharper we will be” (Somsak – Interview).

This master theme has shown the ways in which the participants developed their personalqualities through internalising the Four Noble Truths and through observing Buddhist practices.Developing themselves in these ways fostered the participants’ development of the skills andqualities necessary for practising Buddhist Counselling. The time and energy the participantsdevoted to their Buddhist personal development was thought to influence the quality of theirtherapeutic practice and distinguishes the therapeutic competence of one counsellor from another.

The next theme goes on to explore how the participants’ personal development played arole in their therapeutic work.

Bringing the Counsellor’s Personal Qualities into Therapy

Therapeutic Presence as Key

All five participants reported that their main commitment in therapy was to tune in to the clientas fully as possible. For them, to be able to stay fully in tune with clients meant “leaving theirselves aside”. In the participants’ accounts, this was when they let go of their subjectivepreoccupations:

To be able to do so [tuning in], I need to put my expectations, and my desires aside. Ineed to connect with the client’s world, I need to be equal and in harmony with theclient. To be equal, I mean I have to put my thoughts, beliefs, biases, previousexperiences, my standards, oh everything, aside; this is to understand the client’ssuffering as fully as they are feeling it. (Manid– Interview)

Manid made an explicit link between the ability to leave her self aside and the ability toengage deeply with the client. This means that to get to the full meaning of what clients are

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expressing she believed she must approach the clients’ experience from the position of ‘notknowing’. The two extracts below demonstrate how approaching the clients’ experience froma state of (not) knowing can make a difference:

At that time I thought I knew the direction to go, and this was based on my previousknowledge, I had memorised the map, and when I relied on the map, I used thoughts,and I wasn’t connected with the client. Whenever I wasn’t in harmony with the client,my mind wasn’t peaceful, and when I felt that to help the client I had to do this or that,my mind wasn’t peaceful, and this means that I was increasing the client’s suffering.(Padee – Focus Group)When I talked to a client and when I was really peaceful, eventually at one point Irealised that it should be like this; I was not sure if that was right or wrong, I didn’t think,it came out automatically. So when talking to a client, I don’t think… don’t think aboutwhat the teacher taught me - what I have to look out for - but I try to be as peaceful aspossible, and gradually I will see oh! it clicks!, it should be like this. (Somsak – Focusgroup)

These two extracts focus on the idea of putting knowledge aside and also failing to do so,and demonstrate how these different ways of being in therapy can lead potentially to differenttherapeutic outcomes.

In the first extract, Padee attributed her times of ineffective counselling practice to operatingfrom thinking and knowing. She regarded holding on to “the map”, or her theoreticalknowledge, as falling into the trap of using her own reference frames to work with a client.By knowing “the direction to go” before being deeply immersed in the client’s world she was“dragging” the client into her own ways, instead of letting the client direct himself or herself inhis or her own preferred ways. For Padee, holding on to what she “thought she knew” was byno means helpful for the client, as this kind of knowledge appeared to block her from trulybeing in the moment with the client, and blocked the client from freely and deeply exploringhimself or herself.

In the second extract above, Somsak talked about the “click” moment, which was themoment when he realised the client’s main concern and knew how to respond to the client’sissue. He attributed this click moment, which appeared to arise “automatically”, to hisembracing a ‘not knowing’ stance. Committing himself to a position of not knowing allowedSomsak to let go of “what the teacher taught” and his own theoretical knowledge; it was theabsence of thinking about what to do next that appeared to foster a peaceful mind. Thispeaceful mind, in turn, enabled Somsak to be with a client without thinking. In other words,peace of mind enhanced authentic presence. Authentic presence gradually allowed Somsak tobecome deeply immersed in the client’s experience and feelings. This potentially enhanced hisattuned responsiveness, and ultimately provided him with a click moment.

Overall, the participants reported that the less they brought of their own selves to therapy,the more they could give themselves to the client. It appeared that what was left when theparticipants “leave” their selves was emptiness, peace, concentration, and mindfulness. Thesequalities of mind, the participants believed, could be fostered by observing Buddhist practices.

Understanding and Identifying Clients’ Suffering

All participants made a clear link between their capacity to internalise the Four Noble Truths intheir lives and applying them in their counselling work. In other words, there was a parallelbetween what the participants could do for themselves and what they could do for others.Manid used comparative structures to express this:

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The clearer you understand the Four Noble Truths in your life, the clearer you canunderstand them in clients. (Manid – Interview)

Internalising the Four Noble Truths to investigate and understand the participant’s ownsuffering appeared to help them to appreciate the suffering of clients. As Denchai said:

Knowing my own suffering helps me to work with my clients. When I work with myclients, I don’t think, I think less, I’m just with them, and I can understand the client’ssuffering - what and where the client’s suffering is. (Denchai – Focus group)

Saying that the lived experience of investigating his own suffering made Denchai “thinkless”, suggested that this lived experience made it easier for him to understand and identify thesuffering of his clients.

In the next extract, Denchai further described how his direct experience of investigating hisown suffering influenced the ways in which he worked with his clients. This lengthy extract isinteresting on several points, not only because it clearly shows the participant’s directexperience of the use of Buddhist concepts in dealing with his own suffering, but also becauseit is a powerful illustration of the role that the participant’s internalisation of Buddhist ideasplays in his therapeutic practice:

I’ve practised noticing myself and I have found that suffering makes me feel like this;this makes me focus not only on solving the client’s problem. Like when I suffered frommy broken relationship, other people said to me that I should have stopped listening tosad songs; I had to take my mind off this problem. These suggestions were okay, butthey didn’t fit my feeling. As I really suffered, so I only wanted to look at my suffering. Ifound my clients coming to see me with this kind of feeling as well. From myexperience, I found that looking at my suffering was okay, but I had to look at it really,really clearly until I found how heavy it was, why I still clung to it, and then I felt relief.So when I work with clients and I find that they still want to be with their suffering, I’mable to help them in a Buddhist way [to] look at their own suffering mindfully, help thembe in touch with their direct experience of suffering, and eventually realise how muchthey are suffering. (Denchai – interview)

In this extract, we can see the ways in which Denchai moved back and forth, comparing whathe did to bring himself out of his own suffering, to how he tried to help his clients. Again, thissupports the idea of using what helps oneself to help others. The direct experience of his ownsuffering allowed Denchai to appreciate the suffering of his clients and to not rush into “solving”their problems. This direct experience also helped Denchai help clients to immerse themselves intheir suffering “mindfully”, rather than unconsciously. Being with their suffering “mindfully”,Denchai believed, can help clients come to terms with their suffering, as he did his own.

This way of looking at suffering mindfully is informed by the first Noble Truth. Accordingto this, to clearly understand ‘dukka’ or suffering we need to investigate it carefully anddirectly from our own experience. Facilitating a mindful exploration of suffering, the partic-ipants believed, not only helps clients to understand their own suffering more clearly, but alsohelped the participants to identify clients’ problems.

When the client says something, sometimes only one sentence, I can see that there is a‘split’ in that sentence. And when I see this split, I help the client to examine it clearly.(Noree – Interview)

While listening to clients’ stories, an understanding of the cause of suffering informed bythe second Noble Truth appeared to help Noree identify clients’ suffering and this led her to

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invite clients to see the beliefs that make them suffer, and to see how their beliefs areincongruent with what they are experiencing. This careful exploration of the cause of sufferingis believed to help facilitate clients’ realisation of their own suffering, and offers a way to bringthemselves out of that suffering.

This master theme shows how the participants’ personal qualities played a significant role intheir therapeutic practice. Buddhist practices appeared to help foster the participants’ therapeu-tic presence. Utilising the Four Noble Truths to understand their own lives appeared to help theparticipants strengthen their understanding of these Truths, and this understanding helpedenhance their therapeutic competence to understand and identify clients’ problems. Thesetherapeutic qualities, the participants believed, helped contribute to their therapeutic efficacy.

Discussion

This paper has presented Thai counsellors’ experience of practising Buddhist Counselling,focusing on how they developed their personal qualities through the use of Buddhist ideas andpractices, and how they regarded these personal qualities as integral to their practice ofBuddhist Counselling. Inviting the participants to report their experience by adopting thequalitative approach of IPA offered a detailed picture of their subjective experience. This study,therefore, contributes to the relatively small pool of existing literature on Buddhist Counsellingin Thailand and to the growing body of work on Buddhist-informed therapies, by providing amore comprehensive understanding about the lived experiences of counsellors practisingBuddhist Counselling.

One of the most striking features of the findings presented in this paper is that theparticipants described their personal qualities as the key therapeutic tool. The participantsplaced a greater emphasis on the personal qualities of the counsellor over technical skills, andthey believed that the counsellor’s personal qualities have a greater impact on the therapeuticprocess and outcome than theoretical orientation.

The significance of the counsellor’s personal qualities as key in therapy has beenrecognised widely across the psychotherapeutic literature (cf., Aron 1996; McConnaughty1987; Reupert 2008, 2006). Aron (1996), a psychoanalytic therapist, noted “[not] only doesevery intervention reflect the analyst’s subjectivity, but it is precisely the personal elementscontained in the intervention that are most responsible for its therapeutic impact” (p. 93).Similarly, McConnaughty (1987) made it clear that “it is the individual therapist, regardless ofschool, who determines the quality of the therapy” (p. 307). Smith (2000) commented on theimportance given to therapeutic techniques: techniques, he argued, can only be used and madepossible by the therapist. In this light, counsellors coming from the same therapeutic orienta-tion, and using the same techniques, can generate significantly different therapeutic outcomesdepending on their experience and expression of personal qualities. In this study, the partic-ipants also described how different Buddhist counsellors provide qualitatively different ther-apies, as the quality of therapy is thought to depend essentially on the personal qualities of thecounsellor.

The participants in this study believed the counsellor’s personal qualities that are essentialfor practicing Buddhist Counselling can be cultivated through living in a Buddhist way. Bythis, the participants meant that they needed to develop their personal qualities continually,both through an application of the Four Noble Truths to their own lives and through the use ofBuddhist mind training. The participants’ aim in internalising the Four Noble Truths was toinvestigate and understand their own suffering, and this understanding in turn helped them tounderstand their clients’ suffering.

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This perspective is reminiscent of the concept of the “wounded healer”, first referred to byCarl Jung (Wheeler 2007), which is that “the more healers can understand their own woundsand journey of recovery, the better position they are in to guide others through such a process,while recognizing that each person’s journey is unique” (Zerubavel and Wright 2012, p. 482).The participants’ aim in following Buddhist practices was to help develop their personal self-awareness and concentration, and thus help foster their therapeutic presence. Although theparticipants’ primary aim in following Buddhist self-practices was to serve clients better,observing this practice was seen as having a positive impact on the participants’ daily lives,and not only on their therapeutic work.

The participants regarded Buddhist Counselling as a way of life that links the professionaland the personal domains. This finding provides support for the point made by Donati andWatts (2005) that a belief that therapeutic change is mainly brought about by the personalqualities of the counsellor, rather than by any technical skills, is likely to see the personal andprofessional development of the counsellor as being one and the same.

The concept of inter-dependency between the personal and professional development ofcounsellors is not novel in the literature (cf., Cigolla and Brown 2011; Johns 1996; Skovholtand Ronnestad 1996; Wilkins 1997). Indeed, Skovholt and Ronnestad (1996) noted that thisinter-dependency has been increasingly recognised in the field of counselling and psychother-apy, and they argued that personal development and professional development constitute“counsellor development”. Counsellors across a range of theoretical orientations have soughtdifferent ways in which their personal development can foster their professional development.For example, research has suggested a positive impact of ch’i-related practices (Liou and Prior2012) and of mindfulness practice (Cigolla and Brown 2011) on counsellors’ personal livesand on their therapeutic practice.

In this study, the participants reported attempting to cultivate and maintain theirquality of mind through the use of both formal and informal Buddhist practices,including meditation, mindfulness, and chanting. In line with a number of studies(cf., Bell 2009; Campbell and Christopher 2012; Cigolla and Brown 2011; Dunnet al. 2013; Ryan et al. 2012), the participants in this study found Buddhist practicesenhanced their ability to be with clients more fully. However, this study also foundpotential effects of Buddhist practices and ideas on counsellors’ therapeutic work thathave not been explored in the existing literature. Firstly, the participants in this studyreported that Buddhist practices helped strengthen their theoretical understanding ofBuddhist concepts. Secondly, the participants used the Four Noble Truths not only towork with the clients, but also as the main tool for their own personal development.

The findings from this study indicate the usefulness of integrating Buddhist ideas andpractices not only into work with clients, but also into practitioners’ personal lives. Thus thisstudy suggests that counsellors practising Buddhist-informed therapies may consider incorpo-rating Buddhist ideas and practices into their personal lives, as a way potentially to enhancetheir therapeutic effectiveness. Buddhist practices, and especially in recent times mindfulnesspractices, have received substantial interest from counsellors across theoretical orientations,and they have been widely acknowledged as effective ways of fostering the physical andpsychological well-being of people (Beitel et al. 2005; Brown and Ryan 2003), and particu-larly of counsellors (Chistopher and Maris 2010; May and O’Donovan 2007). A number ofstudies argue that the usefulness of mindfulness goes beyond it being an effective therapeutictechnique, and that it should be included as a significant part of counselling training and beplaced at the core of continuing professional development (Bruce et al. 2010; Campbell andChristopher 2012; Childs 2011, 2007; Gockel 2010). This study offers suggestions in line withthese studies; namely, that Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness and meditation, would be

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of significant value for counsellors who are interested in finding ways to cultivate and maintainthe quality of mind that can enhance not only their therapeutic presence, but also theirpsychological well-being.

It is apparent that the participants in this study seemed to integrate their personal andprofessional lives to experience both in Buddhist ways. We can see then that the ongoingprofessional development of the participants involved a dual process. Firstly, it was a processof working towards bringing Buddhist teachings, the theoretical underpinnings of BuddhistCounselling, into their personal lives. Secondly, it was a process of working towards theintegration of their Buddhist personal development into their practice of Buddhist Counselling(Fear and Woolfe 1999).

The participants reported that this congruence between the ways they worked on them-selves and the ways they worked with clients was critical to effective practice. In contrast, theyperceived the lack of such congruence may result in poorer practice. This finding concurs withresearch and scholarship on the importance of the integration of the self of the practitioner intheir work with clients in order to offer a fully engaged and authentic ‘presence’ in thetherapeutic relationship with the client (Aron 1996; McConnaughty 1987; Reupert 2008,2006). While not specifically focused on indigenization—the argument that interventionmodels and services need to be adapted to the local cultures of the populations served (Duanet al. 2011; Laungani 1997)—this finding might be interpreted as supporting the indigenizationdebate. These practitioners perceived the congruence between their personal beliefs andpractices, grounded in local culture and community, and their practice with clients as essentialto the integrity of their professional practice. Whereas the indigenisation argument is usuallybased on the needs of the populations to be served, this research might point to anotherdimension of cultural adaptability: that practitioners need also to practise in a manner that issensitive and congruent to their culture and beliefs in order to be truly effective.

Additionally, the study strongly supports the idea put forward by Irving and Williams(1999), that each counselling orientation has its own unique aim and therapeutic theory, andthere is, therefore, “no universal recipe for personal development work” (p. 524). The mostimportant thing, they argued, is that counsellors need to identify the personal qualities andskills that are essentially relevant to their own therapeutic practice, and that are critical forworking effectively with their clients.

Limitations of the Study

This study only looked at counsellors who had received Buddhist Counselling training fromone institution and in one cultural context. The findings generated from this study are thusspecific to this particular group of people. In addition, this research was conducted with arelatively small sample of participants. It is, therefore, possible that the findings are notgeneralisable to other Buddhist-informed counsellors. As such, it would be useful to learnmore about the Buddhist-informed psychotherapy experiences of counsellors from differentinstitutions and/or cultural groups. Such research may help confirm and/or extend the presentfindings.

Conclusion

The results of this present study capture the detailed accounts of Thai practitioners’ experi-ences of Buddhist Counselling, in ways not possible with quantitative studies. As discussedearlier, there is limited existing research in the field giving voice to practitioners using

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Buddhist-informed therapies. This study opens up the practitioners’ lived experiences ofpractising Buddhist Counselling in a Buddhist context by detailing the ways they cultivateand maintain their personal qualities through the integration of Buddhist ideas and practices intheir own lives. It also shows how these qualities play a significant role in the participants’practice of Buddhist Counselling. As such, the results presented in this study can be regardedas an illustration of how Buddhist philosophy and practice are integrated into practitioners’personal lives and then integrated into their therapeutic work. This provides a clearer pictureand a greater understanding of how Buddhism and counselling are integrated in the practice ofthese Buddhist counsellors in contemporary Thailand.

Acknowledgments With heart-felt thanks to all participants for their valuable contributions to the study.

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