Buddhist psychology suggests that psychological problems arise when we are locked in the deluded worlds that we have created. What we experience is a function of our need to maintain personal stability, and to this end, our minds insulate us from others by distorting perception. We see selectively or unconsciously distort what we see so that our perception fits with our pre-conceptions. The way out of this psychological rigidity is through more direct encounter with others, and the therapeutic relationship can be a forum in which this encounter is explored.

11-12 October
CORE SKILLS ONE: RELATIONSHIP AND DIFFERENCE: The creative power of helping relationships
The helping relationship involves a meeting between two people. Many therapists appreciate the value of finding common ground as a basis for empathic understanding. The resonance between therapist and client that comes from shared experience of the range of human emotions supports the building of trust and mutual understanding. On the other hand, it also carries the danger of collusion and it is often the points of difference that emerge in the course of the therapeutic relationship that create opportunities for psychological shift. It is at these points that the person to person nature of the encounter may be revealed and a real perception of the other emerges. The balance between empathic confluence and honest engagement with difference is therefore crucial to the relationship's healing quality. This skills weekend will explore the nature of this balance through practical exercises and will help participants to develop skills in building helping relationships with others.

13-16 October
SENSITIVITY IN ENCOUNTER
A four day group to explore relationship. This four day experiential course will use group sessions, discussion and other activity to explore the way that we relate to one another and the assumptions, habit patterns and attachments that may be activated in those relationships. We will look at the healing power of being together and the human warmth that emerges when we recognise one another in all our complexity and contradictoriness. Pureland Buddhism recognises the frailty inherent in being human, and the healing quality of real engagement with others. The programme will include facilitated group process sessions, experiential exercises and periods for reflection upon and learning from what happened in those sessions.

17 October
DAY SEMINAR: Cross cultural issues in counselling and therapeutic encounter
This course block focuses on the valuable role that human differences play in helping relationships. In this day seminar we will focus on particular examples of difference that arise when counsellor and client are of different cultural backgrounds. We will explore the possibilities for misunderstanding and miscommunication as well as the positive aspects of difference as a route to healing, creativity and social change. We will investigate our own preconceptions. We will consider how all counselling is, in one sense, a meeting across personal cultures and also how significant differences of culture between therapist and client can affect the process for good or ill.

18-19 October
CORE SKILLS TWO: OTHER PEOPLE, OTHER WORLDS: object relation work in cross-cultural contexts
Object relation work is a key area of skill for the Buddhist therapist. The term object relation refers to the conditioning of the mind by its object as described in the Buddhist Abhidharma and is a quite different theory from object relations theory in psychoanalysis. The Buddhist theory has implication for exploration of the "object-world" that the client inhabits: the mental images and scenes that predominate in the client's process. It also has implications in understanding the real environmental factors that condition the person's life on a daily basis. Continuing the theme of counselling across “cultures”, we will explore how different environments create different psychological constellations and how the therapist can work to understand and facilitate the client's process in ways that are sympathetic to this.