Buddhist Mediation A Transformative Approach to Conflict Resolution

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Buddhist MediationA Transformative Approach to
Conflict Resolution

• Helena Yuen
• Centre of Buddhist Studies

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Background Development of Buddhist Mediation
ModelMediation Professional/SocialBuddhism
Personal/Cultural
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Objectives

• -To introduce a transformative approach to
  conflict resolution and mediation training by
  integrating the Buddhist and mediation theories
  and practice and to enhance the effectiveness of
  the Buddhist teachings in their application
• -To find the best way to aid trainees to become
  their own mediator and to mediate other peoples
  conflicts so that the training itself will be a
  transformative experience and in accordance with
  the Mahayana ideal.

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Rationale Buddhist Mediation Training Model

• Mediation training aims to develop conflict
  resolution skills and promote self-awareness
• Buddhism aims to deconstruct our sense of self
  and the misconception of reality which is the
  source of all suffering
• Buddhist Mediation aims to facilitate the process
  of transformation from self to no self

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Buddhist Mediation Training Model

• Introduction - Listening and restating, common
  ground and differences
• Ways to deal with conflict - Avoidance,
  Aggression,and Negotiation

• Dependent-arisingmeeting, relying and dependent
• Cause, Conditions and Effect - desire, hatred and
  ignorance

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• Karma
• The twelve links of dependent-arising a process
  of affliction and purification
• The Five Aggregates Observation, feeling,
  thinking, needs or action, consciousness
• The Four Noble Truths suffering, cause and
  cessation
• The Eightfold Paths mindfulness

• Principles of negotiation Power, Rights and
  Interest
• Process of mediation - explore problem, redefine
  problem and solution
• Communication skills - feelings and thinking, I
  messages, others point of view
• Be your own mediator
• Ethics Qualities of Mediator

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The Five Aggregates the I Message

• 1. Form/Observation the body or object reality
  - what one sees or hears
• 2. Feeling what one feels inside the body as
  emotions
• 3. Thinking/Discrimination what one is thinking
  or the logical conclusion from the form or
  observation.
• 4. Compositional Factors/needs or wants may be
  unconscious or conscious
• 5. Consciousness the five senses and the mental
  capacity through which different levels of
  awareness from 1-4 are experienced

• I am so ugly!!!
• 1. Observation The hairdresser has failed to
  deliver what I expected.
• 2. Feeling I am mad and hurt.
• 3.Thinking I am ugly.
• 4. Needs/Wants I may look ugly but I am
  more than my looks. My hair is a mess but I am
  not my hair. Therefore, I need to stop crying
  and I can choose to accept the hair style as it
  is or do something to improve it.

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The Twelve Links of the Chain of Dependent Origination Ignorance, 2. Karmic activities, (Past) 3. Consciousness, 4. Mind and Matter, 5. Six sense-doors, 6. Contact, 7. Sensation, 8. Craving, 9. Clinging, 10. Becoming, (Present) 11. Birth, 12. Old age, death,(Future)
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Consciousness 5th Aggregate
4.Mind Matter, 5. Six sense doors, 6.Contact 1st Aggregate (Name Form) 7. Sensation 2nd Aggregate (Sensation-pleasant, unpleasant, neutral)
3rd Aggregate (Recognition- wholesome, Or unwholesome) 8. Craving, 9. Clinging, 10.Becoming 4th Aggregate (Karmic activities or Obsession)
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The process of human transformation is
activated by the force of creativity or creation
and by an expansion of awareness. This article
examines the following specific dynamics and
activities involved in transformation
willingness and willfulness, the rhythm of
shedding attachment, facing fear, developing
discipline that leads to inner freedom, and
transformation of self through an alteration of
the experience of time and space. (Hart,2000,
p.157).  seeing problem management as
life-enhancing learning and treating all
encounters with clients as opportunity-development
sessions (Egan, 2002, p.6).
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Some modern scholars describe Buddhism not as a
religion but as a science of mind, the Dalai
Lama said in The Harvard Mind Science Symposium
on 24th March, 1991 featuring Mind Science A
Dialogue between East and West (Goleman
Thurman, 1991, p.18).

• One level is the empirical, phenomenal and
  relative level that appears to us, where
  functions such as causes and conditions, names
  and labels, and so on can be validly understood.
  The other is a deeper level of existence beyond
  that, which Buddhist philosophers describe as the
  fundamental, or ultimate, nature of reality, and
  which is often technically referred to as
  emptiness. (p.14)

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• Daniel Brown, a Harvard-based psychologist,
  highlights the difference between Western and
  Buddhist psychologies (Neotic Sciences Review,
  1988, p.16)
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• Freud once said that the most we could hope for
  from psychoanalysis or psychotherapy was to
  replace neurotic conflict with everyday
  unhappiness. The meditative traditions take up
  where he left off. They provide a method for
  focusing on everyday unhappiness and finding a
  way out. The way involves training attention so
  that you gain voluntary control over perceptual
  processes and eventually undercut the roots of
  reactivity in ordinary biased perception. This
  eliminates a great deal of suffering, since the
  bases of that suffering were in those mechanisms
  and that reactivity. You thus become a master of
  your own mind and experience.

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• (Ramaswami and Sheikh, 1989, p.120)
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• The psychology of Buddhism rests on the notions
  of the absence of a separate self, impermanence
  of all things, and the fact of sorrow. Human
  beings suffer because of self-delusion, striving
  to possess that which inevitably must crumble,
  and because of desire. The Buddha did not stop
  with a mere diagnosis. He proclaimed that the
  cure is to reach a higher state of being, wherein
  self-knowledge has eradicated delusion,
  attachment, and desire.
•  

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Egan (2002, p.19), Helpers need to be wise, and
part of their job is to impart some of their
wisdom, however indirectly, to their clients,
Baltes and Staudinger (2000) define wisdom as an
expertise in the conduct and meaning of life or
an expert knowledge system concerning the
fundamental pragmatics of life (pp. 124, 122).

• The ideal of the Arhat in Hinayana is replaced
  in the Mahayana system by the ideal of the
  Bodhisattva. From the ideal of a purely private
  salvation of Arhats intent upon realizing
  nirvana, Bodhisattvas have vowed to devote all
  their pursuits to the welfare of others and to
  work for a universal deliverance of all beings.
  (Macanin, 1986, p.6)

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(Ramanan, 1966, p.297) From the very outset he
seeks to realize the wisdom that constitutes
Buddhahood, viz., the knowledge of all forms, the
knowledge of all the ways of all beings. This is
what gives the Buddhas and the advanced
bodhisattvas the ability to keep themselves en
rapport with every situation and render help to
each individual in the way suited to him.
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• (Bush Folger, 1994, p.205)
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• Identifying these points in advance helps flesh
  out the general map of the process. This kind of
  advance notice enables mediators to keep
  transformative objectives at the heart of
  practice. If mediators walk into each session
  with even a small set of such signposts in mind,
  they are more likely to see the whole range of
  empowerment and recognition opportunities that
  surface as sessions unfold."