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When the Buddha Needs Therapy
Awakening is not what you thought.
These pages explore the idea that it is possible to be liberated from the suffering of this world, but that the path is a paradoxical one of embracing your ego even as you let it go. If you seek true liberation and freedom from the seemingly endless strife of life, you’re in the right place.
Spiritual traditions promise liberation but too often ignore the reality of psychological shadows and the effects of childhood trauma. Psychotherapy promises peace, but our egos are incapable of generating it for any length of time. Division seems wound into the human condition. And our world is more divided than at any time in living memory. We are at war, both with each other and with ourselves.
So how do we integrate the deepest and wisest of spiritual traditions with what we know to be true about our culture, our minds, and our physiology? How do we find liberation from suffering, without ignoring trauma, through the insights gained in a world that has come face-to-face with #metoo and George Floyd?
This book is an exploration of how, and where, we need to look.
______________________________________________________
“This is a terrific book, fully embracing a truly integral perspective and highly recommended.”
– Ken Wilber, author, The Integral Vision
“Keith cuts through the dualistic conflict of a spiritual identity and dysfunctional victim mentality. But be the first step on this path is the deconstruction of your precious ‘spiritual identity,’ so proceed with caution ... and persistence!”
— Doshin Michael Nelson Roshi, Abbot, Integral Zen
“This book achieves the extraordinary task of challenging the notion that spiritual awakening can happen in any other way than being fully in this world. It is in the fullness of our lives, and only there, that the possibility of true freedom and awakening lies.”
— Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S, President of the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute and creator of Synergetic Play Therapy
“This book chronicles the interface between enlightened states and healthy functioning in the material world.”
— Dr. Keith Witt, author of Shadow Light, Loving Completely, and Integral Mindfulness
“Keith offers a thoughtful view of the relationship of psychotherapy to spiritual insight.”
— Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi, author of Everything Is A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution
These pages explore the idea that it is possible to be liberated from the suffering of this world, but that the path is a paradoxical one of embracing your ego even as you let it go. If you seek true liberation and freedom from the seemingly endless strife of life, you’re in the right place.
Spiritual traditions promise liberation but too often ignore the reality of psychological shadows and the effects of childhood trauma. Psychotherapy promises peace, but our egos are incapable of generating it for any length of time. Division seems wound into the human condition. And our world is more divided than at any time in living memory. We are at war, both with each other and with ourselves.
So how do we integrate the deepest and wisest of spiritual traditions with what we know to be true about our culture, our minds, and our physiology? How do we find liberation from suffering, without ignoring trauma, through the insights gained in a world that has come face-to-face with #metoo and George Floyd?
This book is an exploration of how, and where, we need to look.
______________________________________________________
“This is a terrific book, fully embracing a truly integral perspective and highly recommended.”
– Ken Wilber, author, The Integral Vision
“Keith cuts through the dualistic conflict of a spiritual identity and dysfunctional victim mentality. But be the first step on this path is the deconstruction of your precious ‘spiritual identity,’ so proceed with caution ... and persistence!”
— Doshin Michael Nelson Roshi, Abbot, Integral Zen
“This book achieves the extraordinary task of challenging the notion that spiritual awakening can happen in any other way than being fully in this world. It is in the fullness of our lives, and only there, that the possibility of true freedom and awakening lies.”
— Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S, President of the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute and creator of Synergetic Play Therapy
“This book chronicles the interface between enlightened states and healthy functioning in the material world.”
— Dr. Keith Witt, author of Shadow Light, Loving Completely, and Integral Mindfulness
“Keith offers a thoughtful view of the relationship of psychotherapy to spiritual insight.”
— Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi, author of Everything Is A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution
199 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 30, 2022
21 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 1, 2022
A beautiful read - that will be hard
This book is absolutely beautiful. It may seem like you’re buying something that makes Zen approachable, but it’s not. This books is a candid, honest look within our beliefs on enlightenment, our spiritual selves, the realities we create, and our own self induced suffering. It will challenge your mind and invite you to look at all these topics in new, neutral, and somewhat uncountable ways. Highly recommended (and read it at least three times).
This book is absolutely beautiful. It may seem like you’re buying something that makes Zen approachable, but it’s not. This books is a candid, honest look within our beliefs on enlightenment, our spiritual selves, the realities we create, and our own self induced suffering. It will challenge your mind and invite you to look at all these topics in new, neutral, and somewhat uncountable ways. Highly recommended (and read it at least three times).
September 15, 2023
Don’t kill your ego; heal it, strengthen it—and see through it to the deepest truth of who you are.
When the Buddha Needs Therapy explores how we can use therapeutic healing practices and spiritual development to find a path that meets our needs for a strong sense of self while leading us to the egoless joy of feeling one with all that is.
Keith Martin-Smith’s wisdom on this subject is grounded in his own mysterious and confounding youthful experiences of transcendence. “It was like my heart sang for the very first time, and I was freer than I’d ever been,” he writes of the moonlit night when he suddenly felt a blissful sense of connection to “all of humanity, past and present.”
He went to bed “alive and happy,” only to wake up “a sullen teenager again.” His Catholic upbringing and working-class Philadelphia neighborhood provided no context or space for such experiences.
But they kept happening. In his early 20s, at a Catholic wedding, he looked at an image of Christ and felt his heart open “to an overpowering love of everyone and everything.” Yet, he’d been an atheist for years. “I had no reference point for anything mystical. … I didn’t meditate. I didn’t pray, much less believe in a creator.”
Martin-Smith concluded that he was mentally ill. Scared and ashamed, he didn’t seek help or talk to anyone about his turmoil. Instead, he drank and had panic attacks.
Then, he stumbled on Ken Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality in a bookstore. “Wilber put my many experiences into a context of spiritual unfolding—something I had no idea existed.” He found a Buddhist psychotherapist and read books by other writers who explored higher states of consciousness.
Eventually, Martin-Smith found his Rinzai Zen teacher, the late Jun Po Denis Kelly (whom he has written about in two previous books). With Jun Po’s philosophical guidance and rigorous meditation practices, Martin-Smith stabilized the egoless awareness that had been so fleeting and confusing. “Sometimes I would be in an egoless and nondual state for months at a time,” he writes.
But as the title implies, Martin-Smith needed more than awakening. His ego was clinging to his spiritual accomplishments—identifying as “enlightened.” Then, when he lost touch with the nondual state, “the pain was almost unbearable.”
In tears, he called another teacher, Doshin M.J. Nelson. “He helped me see the trouble was my ego, which was still badly fractured from unresolved wounding and childhood trauma. … What I was lacking was integration.”
The book is much more than a spiritual autobiography. I’ve highlighted Martin-Smith’s personal experiences to encourage readers of this review to see him as I see him—a spiritual teacher who has earned his insights through grueling trials and rigorous practice and is willing to be vulnerable and authentic with his readers.
In the rest of the book, he writes about how political and even spiritual identities can constrain growth and hinder awakening; the differences between consciousness and awareness; the importance of taking responsibility for our emotional traumas and triggers; the illusions of control and specialness that we must let go of to awaken from mental suffering; and much more.
In the end, he returns to the personal with a gripping pandemic-era anecdote: A painful encounter with his romantic partner triggered his childhood trauma and evoked a feeling of self-hatred so powerful that he began hitting himself. “My right hand, seemingly possessed, rose up and struck me across my own cheek, repeatedly and savagely.”
In the aftermath, he realized he was still hiding from his deeply buried pain. “I had to practice what I was preaching in this book, which meant turning into all of this, fully. … Stting on my meditation cushion when I was indescribably exhausted and afraid, but choosing to sit there and face what was.”
Through sleepless nights, ketamine therapy, working with two therapists, and a men’s group, Martin-Smith slowly emerged with “a deeper understanding … a deeper integration, a deeper capacity to see what was real, and what was true.”
As a reader, I’m grateful that this highly evolved soul chose to work so hard on himself and this book. May it bring you vital wisdom and encouragement on your path.
When the Buddha Needs Therapy explores how we can use therapeutic healing practices and spiritual development to find a path that meets our needs for a strong sense of self while leading us to the egoless joy of feeling one with all that is.
Keith Martin-Smith’s wisdom on this subject is grounded in his own mysterious and confounding youthful experiences of transcendence. “It was like my heart sang for the very first time, and I was freer than I’d ever been,” he writes of the moonlit night when he suddenly felt a blissful sense of connection to “all of humanity, past and present.”
He went to bed “alive and happy,” only to wake up “a sullen teenager again.” His Catholic upbringing and working-class Philadelphia neighborhood provided no context or space for such experiences.
But they kept happening. In his early 20s, at a Catholic wedding, he looked at an image of Christ and felt his heart open “to an overpowering love of everyone and everything.” Yet, he’d been an atheist for years. “I had no reference point for anything mystical. … I didn’t meditate. I didn’t pray, much less believe in a creator.”
Martin-Smith concluded that he was mentally ill. Scared and ashamed, he didn’t seek help or talk to anyone about his turmoil. Instead, he drank and had panic attacks.
Then, he stumbled on Ken Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality in a bookstore. “Wilber put my many experiences into a context of spiritual unfolding—something I had no idea existed.” He found a Buddhist psychotherapist and read books by other writers who explored higher states of consciousness.
Eventually, Martin-Smith found his Rinzai Zen teacher, the late Jun Po Denis Kelly (whom he has written about in two previous books). With Jun Po’s philosophical guidance and rigorous meditation practices, Martin-Smith stabilized the egoless awareness that had been so fleeting and confusing. “Sometimes I would be in an egoless and nondual state for months at a time,” he writes.
But as the title implies, Martin-Smith needed more than awakening. His ego was clinging to his spiritual accomplishments—identifying as “enlightened.” Then, when he lost touch with the nondual state, “the pain was almost unbearable.”
In tears, he called another teacher, Doshin M.J. Nelson. “He helped me see the trouble was my ego, which was still badly fractured from unresolved wounding and childhood trauma. … What I was lacking was integration.”
The book is much more than a spiritual autobiography. I’ve highlighted Martin-Smith’s personal experiences to encourage readers of this review to see him as I see him—a spiritual teacher who has earned his insights through grueling trials and rigorous practice and is willing to be vulnerable and authentic with his readers.
In the rest of the book, he writes about how political and even spiritual identities can constrain growth and hinder awakening; the differences between consciousness and awareness; the importance of taking responsibility for our emotional traumas and triggers; the illusions of control and specialness that we must let go of to awaken from mental suffering; and much more.
In the end, he returns to the personal with a gripping pandemic-era anecdote: A painful encounter with his romantic partner triggered his childhood trauma and evoked a feeling of self-hatred so powerful that he began hitting himself. “My right hand, seemingly possessed, rose up and struck me across my own cheek, repeatedly and savagely.”
In the aftermath, he realized he was still hiding from his deeply buried pain. “I had to practice what I was preaching in this book, which meant turning into all of this, fully. … Stting on my meditation cushion when I was indescribably exhausted and afraid, but choosing to sit there and face what was.”
Through sleepless nights, ketamine therapy, working with two therapists, and a men’s group, Martin-Smith slowly emerged with “a deeper understanding … a deeper integration, a deeper capacity to see what was real, and what was true.”
As a reader, I’m grateful that this highly evolved soul chose to work so hard on himself and this book. May it bring you vital wisdom and encouragement on your path.
August 7, 2023
Very thoughtful and guides you as to how to best move through your spiritual journey with an integral approach.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews