The Boundless Universe of Presence

Course overview

From the point of view of Tibetan Buddhist psychology, presence can be seen as a gateway into the virtual entirety of the dharma teachings. Understanding and cultivating mindfulness practice within this understanding is a pathway to deepened therapeutic presence and clinical impact with clients. As with similar constructs, it is useful to think of presence in stages. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end--a ground, a path, and a fruition. The ground is comprised principally of four groups of qualities: 1. Kindness, gentleness, and straightforwardness 2. Discipline and joy 3. Freedom from hope and fear 4. Unpredictability or inscrutability The ground alone, while vast, is not enough. In psychotherapy, it exists as a vehicle for very personal communication. This is where the path comes in. The path becomes operative through the content of what is being communicated or taught-in this case, some aspect of the psychotherapeutic process. Finally, with the passage of time, one often forgets a great deal of what one has heard. What one remembers instead is how one felt at the time of the communication and how the other person seemed to be--the element of connection. This is the fruitional element of presence, which is a kind of transmission, and it goes far beyond the written or the spoken word.