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Practise what you preach: Counsellors’ experience of practising Buddhist Counselling in Thailand

This qualitative study considers Thai counsellors’ experience of practising Thai

Buddhist Counselling, exploring how Buddhist philosophy is integrated into the

counsellors’ personal lives and then brought into their therapeutic practice. The

study involved a focus group and in-depth semi-structured interviews with five

practising Buddhist counsellors, with their accounts being analysed using

interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings indicated that the

participants considered their personal qualities as being key in generating

therapeutic effectiveness within their Buddhist counselling, and they believed

that they fostered these personal qualities by internalising Buddhist ideas into

their personal lives and by observing Buddhist practices. Implications for

practice, training, and research are discussed.

Keywords: Buddhist Counselling; Thailand; counsellors’ experience;

Interpretative phenomenological analysis

Introduction

In Thailand, Buddhist Counselling is a form of Buddhist-informed psychotherapy. It

incorporates Buddhist teachings into therapeutic practice, and for approximately a decade this

approach has been taught to a number of Thai postgraduate counselling students at numerous

Thai universities, and has been offered as an approach to Thai people.

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As Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist country - 94.6 % of Thais are Buddhist

(Central Intelligence Agency 2013) - Buddhist philosophy profoundly influences Thai culture

and its core social values. Buddhist temples have long functioned as health care centres, and

monks still have a 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 Buddhist advice and practice. Professional counselling, on the other hand, is new

to Thailand. It was not until 1985 that the first counselling programme was offered in

Thailand, at Chulalongkorn University. Such counselling typically is founded on Western

approaches, with most counselling trainers in Thailand being educated and trained in Western

countries, especially in the United States (Tuicomepee et al. 2012).

However, in recent years, the counselling curriculum in Thai universities has

undergone significant changes and it now offers Buddhist Counselling as an additional

counselling approach. Such training was first introduced in the Department of Psychology at

Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s oldest University, in 2002, and has been now extended

to many Thai universities (Tuicomepee et al. 2012). The course offers a basic model of the

Buddhist Counselling process, and aims to provide a fundamental understanding of human

drives (i.e., desires or cravings), and human suffering (i.e., the discrepancy between desires

and actual experience) informed by the core Buddhist concepts of the Four Noble Truths,

which conceptualise the symptoms and meanings of suffering and propose the means to

eliminate suffering and achieve optimal mental health and well-being through the Noble

Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths are discussed further in the next section. As part of

this counselling training, students are encouraged to integrate the Four Noble Truths into their

daily lives, and to follow Buddhist practices (Pokeao 2010).

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This movement towards adopting Buddhist teachings grounded in Thai culture,

mirrors the current trend in non-Western cultures of indigenising counselling practices

(Church and Katigbak 2002; Leung and Chen 2009; Mohatt 2010). Given the fact that

Western and Eastern cultures display significant cultural differences, directly adopting

Western models of counselling and psychotherapy for counselling practice in non-Western

cultures has been seen as inappropriate (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 Southeast Asian counsellors’ views on the internationalisation of

counselling psychology to Asian cultures suggests that there are limitations in the

transferability of Western counselling models to Southeast Asian cultures. The authors argue

that counselling needs to be indigenised in order to serve local clients more effectively. Such

recognition has led many non-Western practitioners to develop counselling interventions that

are culturally relevant to their local clients (cf., Chong and Liu 2002; Lee 2002; Hoogasian

and Lijtmaer 2010; Vicary and Andrews 2000). For example, Lee (2002) describes how he

worked with his Chinese clients in Singapore by integrating three indigenous concepts and

techniques – namely, Chinese medicine, dang-ki (Chinese shamanism), and feng-shui

(Chinese geomancy) - into his therapeutic practice. Similarly, Buddhist Counselling in

Thailand typically uses ‘local knowledge’ to inform existing therapeutic practice in order to

develop a culturally relevant counselling approach, 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

explanation of how humans respond to suffering, and also offer a framework for

understanding and dealing with suffering in our own lives. The first Noble Truth outlines the

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symptoms of suffering; the second 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., proper understanding, proper thought, proper speech, proper action,

proper livelihood, proper effort, proper mindfulness, and proper concentration) (Phra Prayudh

Payutto, 1995). In the practice of Buddhist Counselling, the counsellors’ understanding of the

Four Noble Truths provides them with a theoretical framework to understand, identify and

work with the clients’ suffering. This understanding of the Four Noble Truths is initially

gained simply through growing up as Buddhists in Thailand, and is subsequently developed

through Buddhist Counselling training, and through the counsellors’ direct experience of

investigating their own suffering according to the Four Noble Truths. The fact that Buddhist

Counselling draws on the Four Noble Truths, which are deeply embedded in Thai society and

which are learnt from living in that society, differentiates Thai Buddhist Counselling from

other counselling approaches where the theoretical framework is acquired mainly through

specific counselling 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 of

the Buddhist Counselling process. It consists of three main features: tuning in (T), identify

split (I), and realisation (R) (Pokeao 2010).

It is important to point out at the outset that Buddhist Counselling in both theory and

practice shares significant similarities with other counselling approaches, particularly those

located within the person-centred and humanistic/existential approaches. As with these

approaches, Buddhist Counselling emphasises creating a therapeutic relationship through

empathic attunement to the client’s implicit and explicit feelings, emotions and thoughts in

order to understand and empathise with the client from his or her internal frame of reference.

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Likewise, the Buddhist Counselling understanding of suffering as being caused by a

discrepancy between desire and reality, can be compared with the person-centred notion of

incongruence between constructed and real self (Rogers 1951). This conceptualisation may

also be compared with the idea of intrapsychic conflict in psychodynamic counselling

((Leiper and Maltby 2004). There is also an overlap in therapeutic intervention between

Buddhist Counselling and that of other approaches, in that they aim to facilitate the clients’

insight into the causes of their psychological problems and to provide them with new

understanding. What may be regarded as distinctive to Buddhist Counselling is that

practitioners offer clients particular perspectives on suffering and its acceptance, grounded in

core Buddhist philosophy and practice, and what is particular to the current study is that our

research on 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 engagement

with a client, by listening to him or her attentively, in order to clearly and deeply understand

the client’s experience from his or her point of view, and then by conveying this

understanding 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 therapeutic

relationship, and a key turning point in generating therapeutic change. The counsellor’s

profound engagement with a client will make it possible for the counsellor to understand and

identify the client’s suffering. In Buddhist Counselling, the cause of suffering is viewed in

terms of a discrepancy between desires and actual experience, called identity split (I). This

concept of suffering is informed by the second Noble Truth. Buddhist counsellors believe that

underneath the various problems the client brings to therapy, the root of those problems

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essentially is the same; namely, ‘unfulfilled expectations’. The role of the counsellor is to

identify this discrepancy in the client, and to facilitate the client’s realisation (R) of it. This

realisation, Buddhist counsellors believe, can facilitate the client’s movement from a state of

attachment to one of an acceptance of circumstances. This acceptance can ultimately help

lessen the client’s suffering.

Buddhist-informed psychotherapies

Although Buddhist Counselling in Thailand has only recently been established, attempts to

integrate Buddhism and psychotherapy are not new, and the compatibility of Buddhist

philosophy within the realm of counselling and psychotherapy has been widely

acknowledged (Bowman and Baylen 1994; McWilliams 2010). Numerous authors have

sought to explore how tenets of Buddhist psychology can be used to enrich the practice of

various therapeutic approaches (cf., Daya 2000; Gehart and Paré 2008; Kumar 2002;

Nissanka 1993; Wada and Park 2009). For example, Gehart and Paré (2008) suggest ways in

which Buddhist ideas may be integrated into family-based therapies; Kumar (2002) provides

a concise summary of the key Buddhist concepts that can be applied by the Cognitive-

Behavioural therapist. In addition, Buddhist practices, especially mindfulness, have received

a surge of interest from a number of researchers and therapeutic practitioners, especially

those working within a cognitive-behavioural orientation. Four well-known interventions

applying Buddhist practices are: 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

into therapies, most of these Buddhist-informed therapies were developed for non-Buddhist

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populations in Western countries, rather than for Buddhist populations in Buddhist countries.

This paper aims to explore the views and experiences of counsellors practising Buddhist

Counselling in a Buddhist context and mainly for Buddhist clients.

Additionally, most of the existing studies on Buddhist-informed psychotherapies have

employed quantitative research methods to measure their effectiveness. While the results of

such studies generally support the effectiveness of the approaches in improving a wide range

of both physical and mental health problems (cf., Hahrinth and Rungreangkulkij 2008;

Marlatt 2002; Rungreangkulkij et al. 2011; Ushiroyama 2006), they do not provide a clear

understanding of the process of the various Buddhist-informed therapies. Hoshmand and

Polkinghorne (1992) argue that the knowledge base of psychology, counselling and

psychotherapy should not be limited to positivistic inquiry, but should include “the

knowledge of practice”. They emphasise the need for research that “allow(s) practitioners to

contribute to the knowledge base of the profession” (Hoshmand and Polkingkorne 1992, p.

56).

The present paper, based on the first author’s doctoral research supervised by the

second author, qualitatively explores how Thai counsellors and clients make sense of their

experiences of Buddhist Counselling. It focuses on one of the emergent themes from the

doctoral study – i.e., how the Buddhist counselor participants regarded their personal

internalisation of 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

of Buddhist counsellors, with the data examined using interpretative phenomenological

analysis (IPA). IPA is a qualitative approach underpinned by phenomenology, hermeneutics

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and idiography (Smith et al. 2009). Its phenomenological dimension enhances capturing of

people’s lived experiences of particular phenomena from their subjective points of view. Its

hermeneutic dimension enables the researcher to develop a more explicitly interpretative

analysis of participants’ accounts in order to throw light on the deeper meanings contained

within them. Its idiographic dimension highlights the importance of individual cases in

seeking to understand shared experiences, thus potentially providing greater understanding of

the topic being studied.

Participants

Prospective participants were recruited mainly through personal contacts (n = 4) and one

participant was referred by another (n = 1). A total of five Buddhist counsellors participated

in this study, and all took part in both the focus group and individual interviews. There were

three female and two male participants, aged between 30 and 45 years (mean 35.8 years). All

participants were Asian/Thai and identified themselves as Buddhists. Four participants had

been trained to masters, and one participant to doctoral level in Buddhist Counselling from

the same university, and all knew each other. All of the participants described themselves as

Buddhist 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.

All the participants, except one, knew the first researcher personally.

Ethical Considerations

This research received ethical approval from the University of Edinburgh Ethics Committee

prior to the commencement of the study. Due to the existing relationship between the first

author and the participants, it was felt that the participants might feel obliged to take part in

the study, or volunteer because they would like to help the researcher as a personal favour,

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rather than truly wish to contribute to the research. With these concerns in mind, great care

was taken when recruiting the counsellors by making clear the voluntary nature of the

research. In addition, as the first author had been trained in Buddhist counselling, the

counsellors might have assumed that the first author had prior knowledge of Buddhist

Counselling practice and theory, and so may not clearly or fully explain their own

experiences of Buddhist Counselling. To deal with this issue, the first author informed the

counsellors clearly at the beginning of the focus group and interviews about her role as a

researcher interested in understanding the participants’ own experiences from their points of

view, and asked the participants to give their own stories in as much detail as possible. The

first author also made an attempt to be vigilant regarding her previous knowledge about

Buddhist Counselling and took 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 talking about some Buddhist Counselling terms or concepts. For example,

the researcher asked ‘You mentioned “tuning in” - can you tell me what you mean by that

term?’. This type of question encouraged clarification of the participants’ meanings and

understandings, thus obviating the potential reliance on assumed shared understandings. A

pseudonym was assigned to each participant, 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

planned to provide complementary data - that is, individual interviews were used to elicit

detailed personal accounts of the participants’ experiences of Buddhist Counselling, whereas

the focus group was interactively oriented aiming at generating dialogue among the

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participants about their personal experience of Buddhist Counselling. In practice, the

individual interviews and the group discussion generated similar accounts.

Data Gathering

The focus group was conducted in a private room in a university setting. The meeting was

digitally recorded and lasted 2 hours 36 minutes. The researcher’s main role in the focus

group was to make the participants feel at ease, to open and facilitate discussion with minimal

input, and to make sure that all the participants had equal opportunity to talk. The focus of the

discussion in the focus group was the Buddhist counsellors’ shared or divergent experiences

of practising Buddhist Counselling.

All five focus group participants also took part in individual interviews. The

interviews took place after the focus group either at the participant’s home or workplace.

Each interview was digitally recorded and lasted from 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours 30

minutes. The major role of the interviewer was to encourage the participants to tell their

stories in their own ways, and to prompt 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 Buddhist Counselling.

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

across cases. The first stage involved re-reading each transcript, and notes were made in the

left-hand margin. From this stage, emergent themes were developed by turning the initial

notes into more concise phrases that reflected the essence of the content and meanings found.

The next stage involved looking for patterns and connections between those themes. Once

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each table of themes 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 the participants’ experiential accounts were identified. Several emergent themes

appeared within the individual transcripts, and when the same themes were found in more

than half of the total number of cases (i.e., at least 3), they were identified as recurring, and

were incorporated into the master table of analysis.

Following the recommendations of Tomkins and Eatough (2010), in order to balance

the individual and the group levels of analysis, the focus group data were analysed by

following the conventional process of IPA (i.e., the process used to analyse individual

interviews) to create a table of themes for the group as a whole. Following the completion of

this table of group-level themes, the accounts from each participant were examined to assess

whether the table of group-level themes did justice to the experiential accounts of the

individuals. Two main steps were involved in this: the first step was a top-down process,

which involved going through each group member’s account as a whole, and the second step

was a bottom-up process, 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 then

combined. While this analysing process foregrounded the meaning of the phenomena from

the participants’ points of view, this process inevitably involved the researchers’

interpretative engagement with the data also (Smith 1996). Eatough and Smith (2008) note

that there are different levels of analysis within IPA: an empathic-descriptive level, where the

analysis is grounded in the participant’s own account and sense-making; and a more critical-

hermeneutic level, where the analysis goes further than meaning restoration and which may

be different from what the participants might offer. In other words, an empathic-descriptive

interpretation is required to capture and ‘give voice’ to participants’ claims and concerns,

whilst a more critical-hermeneutic interpretation is required to contextualise and ‘make

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sense’ of the meaning of such claims and concerns (Larkin, Watts and Clifton, 2006, p. 102).

For each theme presented in the following section, descriptive interpretations of the extracts

are given, and these are then followed by more hermeneutic interpretations. Although we

provide these two levels of interpretation in presenting the findings, we do not rely too

heavily on the hermeneutic interpretation. This is our attempt to avoid taking anything away

from the rich and authentic voices of the participants. Hermeneutic interpretation is thus

given where appropriate to clarify the meaning underlying the participants’ accounts, and

when this happens it is presented in more tentative tones.

The focus group and individual interviews were conducted in Thai, and the data

transcriptions were transcribed verbatim in Thai by the first author. In order to stay close to

the original data, the analysis was conducted using these original transcriptions. The extracts

were then translated into English. The main goal of the translation was to stay as close as

possible to the original text and to convey as accurately as possible the meanings of the

participants’ experiences. The first author translated the extracts from Thai to English.

Attempts were made to maintain a literal translation of the text in terms of the participants’

original vocabulary, sentence structures and styles as much as possible. However, changes

were made when the literal translation appeared less comprehensible. Nevertheless, a

meaning equivalence was sought and generally sustained. These translated extracts then were

checked with a monolingual native English speaker. This involved discussions in English

about the meaning of words and grammar structures from the original text and negotiations

about suitable English words, meanings, styles and tenses. This was to ensure the readability

of the translated data.

Five super-ordinate themes were identified from the analysis: (1) Taking up Buddhist

Counselling; (2) Conceptualising Buddhist Counselling; (3) The personal qualities of the

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counsellor as key; (4) The impact of practising Buddhist Counselling; and (5) Evaluating

Buddhist Counselling. This paper reports on the third super-ordinate theme, entitled “The

personal qualities of the counsellor as key”. It explores the ways in which the participants

tried to develop themselves through integrating Buddhist ideas and practices into their

personal lives, and details the role the participants’ personal development played in their

therapeutic practice. This theme was chosen because it was the one theme that emerged

unsolicitedly and spontaneously from the participants in the focus group and individual

interviews. This theme is not only significant because of its clear importance to the

participants of this study, but also because it is prominent in the counselling literature across

many counselling approaches (cf., Aron 1996; McConnaughty 1987; Reupert 2008; 2006).

What is distinctive here are the particular personal qualities which these Buddhist counsellors

identify and the rich descriptions they offer 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 interpretations are

given and these are supported with translated extracts from the participants. This is “not only

to enable the reader to assess the pertinence of the interpretations but also to retain the voice

of the participant’s personal experience” (Shinebourne and Smith 2009, p. 155).

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

Master themes Sub-themes

Developing the counsellor’s personal qualities

Internalising the Four Noble Truths

Observing Buddhist practices

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Master themes Sub-themes

Bringing the counsellor’s qualities into therapy

Therapeutic presence as key Understanding and identifying clients’ suffering

Findings

This paper focuses on the significance of the personal qualities of the counsellor in practising

Buddhist Counselling. The following extract from Manid, one of the participants, captures

the essence of this theme:

It [practising Buddhist Counselling] is very much about myself, very much about myself, very much about my mind in being able to work successfully with the client or in being fully in harmony with the client. (Manid - Focus group)

The three repetitions of “very much” emphasise her strong sense of belief in the significance

of “the counsellor’s personal qualities” in generating therapeutic effectiveness. All the

participants in this study could not emphasise enough the significance of their personal

qualities to their therapeutic work. They believed that they could develop the personal

qualities that they saw as essential for practising Buddhist Counselling through internalising

the Four Noble Truths and through observing Buddhist practices (‘Developing the

counsellor’s personal qualities’), and they highlighted the significant role that their personal

development practices played in their therapeutic practices (‘Bringing the personal qualities

into therapy’). These two master themes and their sub-themes, as shown in Table 1, will be

explored in turn.

Developing the counsellor’s personal qualities

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Internalising the Four Noble Truths. All the participants maintained that to

integrate the Four Noble Truths into their therapeutic work, they needed to move beyond

theoretical knowledge of the Truths and develop an understanding of them,

“wholeheartedly”, by living them:

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

Somsak clearly felt that congruence between the personal and the professional was important.

The use of the word “wholeheartedly” suggested that, for him, an effective counsellor does

not simply have theoretical knowledge, but lives in a Buddhist way. This means 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, he believed,

could be developed by internalising the Four Noble Truths. Manid similarly described this

point in the following extract:

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

Understanding the Four Noble Truths through direct experience of investigating the

counsellor’s own suffering, Manid seemed to believe, can help the counsellor move beyond

“theoretical” understanding of the Truths to understanding them “wholeheartedly”.

The underlying justification for this internalisation is the notion of “practise what you

preach”. As Somsak said:

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

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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

her own life first:

Before offering the service, I think it’s necessary to test by trial and error what we will use 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 a

Buddhist way:

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

For Somsak, internalising the Four Noble Truths enables the two domains of his life - the

personal and the professional - to become one, and this alignment helped strengthen his

understanding of Buddhist ideas. This better understanding of Buddhist ideas is explicitly

linked to a better understanding of Buddhist Counselling. As Noree pointed out:

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

Noree’s extract above suggests that the level of counsellor competence in practising Buddhist

Counselling varies over time and varies also from one counsellor to another. This

competence, Noree believed, is determined by how well the counsellor understands Buddhist

ideas. Padee’s comment that “the direction we will take a client is the route we have walked

before”, also helps to make sense of Noree’s comment that “the more we understand

Buddhist ideas, the more we understand Buddhist Counselling”. These two extracts convey

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the idea that counsellors are only capable of taking a client as far as they have gone

themselves. Thus, to be able to understand and help suffering clients, the participants felt they

needed first to investigate, 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 developing their personal qualities. Each participant

chose what they considered to be the most suitable type of practice for them. Somsak and

Padee both talked about developing their awareness and sensitivity while working with

clients and both had experienced formal Buddhist practice a short time before the study:

Somsak and Padee undertook formal Vipassana meditation, taught by a Buddhist monk

inSomsak’s case, and by a Buddhist nun in Padee’s case. This practice involved applying

their attention to and increasing their awareness of their own mental and bodily sensations.

The other three participants, Denchai, Noree and Manid, practised daily mindfulness, which

they described as regular daily private exercises aimed at cultivating an awareness of their

thoughts, feelings, and emotions.. Manid also sometimes practised meditation informally at

home, by focusing her mind on the present, and chanting. Despite their differences, the

central component of all these practices is paying attention to the present moment 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, like seeing that this is my anger. Vipassana helps me to see what is happening to my body when I’m angry oh! It’s not peaceful, it’s hot. (Somsak – Interview)

In the next extract, Padee explains why she felt it was important for her to follow

Vipassana practice:

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

In this extract, the idea that “we can’t turn the switch on as soon as we are in the

counselling room” again suggests that it is not simply a technique that can be applied: the

person needs to be the counsellor, not just act the counsellor. Thus the two parts - the

personal and the professional - cannot be separated. Padee regarded being “peaceful” as

important but challenging, both in her professional and personal lives. However, she found

that her Buddhist practice gave her the ability to be peaceful not only in her therapeutic

practice, but also in her personal life outside the counselling room.

The participants’ Buddhist practices appeared to have an impact on their counselling

practices in terms of providing them with a better understanding of Buddhist concepts and

improved therapeutic presence. Somsak, who practiced Vispassana, viewed this practice as a

useful tool in developing an understanding of Buddhist ideas:

Before, I may have understood Buddhism superficially, I never did any Buddhist practice, 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 understand Buddhist ideas if we just study them theoretically […] before, I thought I understood the concept, but practice makes me see oh! impermanence is actually like this, it is not only about knowing it superficially, I can’t explain how it feels like when knowing this wholeheartedly. (Somsak – Interview)

This extract indicated a shift in Somsak’s understanding of the Buddhist concept of

impermanence, 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 this

self-transformation in turn had a positive impact on his therapeutic practice:

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Before, my counselling work was at a thinking level, I thought and then I saw oh … this way was for this client, but my real self didn’t change; I was still moody, angry. But when I, as I said, practise Vipassana, I can feel that inside me also changes. As a consequence of my practice, I can feel that I’m less moody, I have fewer expectations of something, and this has an impact on my counselling work; that is, I could more fully concentrate on my clients, and I could completely let myself be with the client; these things were really helpful. (Somsak – Focus group)

In this extract, Somsak explicitly linked his Vipassana practice to inner change (change

in himself) and this brought about outer change (change in how he was with clients). More

specifically, Vipassana practice helped improve his mood, in that it helped him to be “less

moody”. This emotional improvement in turn appeared to facilitate an increased level of

therapeutic presence.

From this perspective, Buddhist mind training seems essential in enhancing the

participants’ personal and professional development. On the other hand, not practising mind

training can bring about the opposite result. Below, Manid expresses how the absence of

mind training had 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’t have concerns and expectations, and when I don’t have self-practice, my mind wanders easily. 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,

and this untrained mind limited her ability to be fully present with clients. Given the

beneficial results of Buddhist mind training, regular practice over a period of time is

highlighted by many participants as necessary to cultivate and maintain this quality of mind.

This is reflected in the participants’ use of comparative language to highlight, firstly, the

importance of having a clear mind in therapy - “the clearer my mind is, the more perceptive I

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will be” (Padee – Focus group) - and, secondly, to stress the importance of maintaining

regular mind training – “the more we practise, the sharper we will be” (Somsak – Interview).

This master theme has shown the ways in which the participants developed their

personal qualities through internalising the Four Noble Truths and through observing

Buddhist practices. Developing themselves in these ways fostered the participants’

development of the skills and qualities necessary for practising Buddhist Counselling. The

time and energy the participants devoted to their Buddhist personal development was thought

to influence the quality of their therapeutic practice and distinguishes the therapeutic

competence of one counsellor from another.

The next theme goes on to explore how the participants’ personal development played a

role 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 client as fully as possible. For them, to be able to

stay fully in tune with clients meant “leaving their selves aside”. In the participants’ accounts,

this was when they let go of their subjective preoccupations:

To be able to do so [tuning in], I need to put my expectations, and my desires aside. I need to connect with the client’s world, I need to be equal and in harmony with the client. To be equal, I mean I have to put my thoughts, beliefs, biases, previous experiences, my standards, oh everything, aside; this is to understand the client’s suffering 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 to

engage deeply with the client. This means that to get to the full meaning of what the clients

are expressing she believed she must approach the clients’ experience from the position of

21

‘not knowing’. The two extracts below demonstrate how approaching the clients’ experience

from a 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 previous knowledge, 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 I realised 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 about what the teacher taught me - what I have to look out for - but I try to be as peaceful as possible, and gradually I will see oh! it clicks!, it should be like this. (Somsak – Focus group)

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 different

therapeutic outcomes.

In the first extract, Padee attributed her times of ineffective counselling practice to

operating from thinking and knowing. She regarded holding on to “the map”, or her

theoretical knowledge, 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 in his or her own preferred ways. For Padee, holding on to what she “thought she

knew” was by no means helpful for the client, as this kind of knowledge appeared to block

her from truly being in the moment with the client, and blocked the client from freely and

deeply exploring himself or herself.

In the second extract above, Somsak talked about the “click” moment, which was the

moment when he realised the client’s main concern and knew how to respond to the client’s

issue. He attributed this click moment, which appeared to arise “automatically”, to his

22

embracing a ‘not knowing’ stance. Committing himself to a position of not knowing allowed

Somsak to let go of “what the teacher taught” and his own theoretical knowledge; it was the

absence of thinking about what to do next that appeared to foster a peaceful mind. This

peaceful 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 to

become deeply immersed in the client’s experience and feelings. This potentially enhanced

his attuned 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 the participants “leave” their selves was emptiness, peace, concentration, and

mindfulness. These qualities 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 in their lives and

applying them in their counselling work. In other words, there was a parallel between what

the participants could do for themselves and what they could do for others. Maind used

comparative structures to express this:

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

Internalising the Four Noble Truths to investigate and understand the participants’ own

suffering appeared to help them to appreciate the suffering of clients. As Denchai said:

23

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

Saying that the lived experience of investigating his own suffering made Denchai “think

less”, suggested that this lived experience made it easier for him to understand and identify

the suffering of his clients.

In the next extract, Denchai further described how his direct experience of investigating

his own suffering influenced the ways in which he worked with his clients. This lengthy

extract is interesting on several points, not only because it clearly shows the participant’s

direct experience of the use of Buddhist concepts in dealing with his own suffering, but also

because it is a powerful illustration of the role that the participant’s internalisation of

Buddhist ideas plays 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 from my broken relationship, other people said to me that I should have stopped listening to sad songs; I had to take my mind off this problem. These suggestions were okay, but they didn’t fit my feeling. As I really suffered, so I only wanted to look at my suffering. I found my clients coming to see me with this kind of feeling as well. From my experience, 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’m able to help them in a Buddhist way [to] look at their own suffering mindfully, help them be in touch with their direct experience of suffering, and eventually realise how much they are suffering. (Denchai – interview)

In this extract, we can see the ways in which Denchai moved back and forth, comparing

what he did to bring himself out of his own suffering, to how he tried to help his clients.

Again, this supports the idea of using what helps oneself to help others. The direct experience

of his own suffering 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

24

immerse themselves in their suffering “mindfully”, rather than unconsciously. Being with

their suffering “mindfully”, Denchai believed, can help clients come to terms with their

suffering, as he did.

This way of looking at suffering mindfully is informed by the first Noble Truth.

According to this, to clearly understand ‘dukka’ or suffering we need to investigate it

carefully and directly from our own experience. Facilitating a mindful exploration of

suffering, the participants believed, not only helps clients to understand their own suffering

more clearly, but also helped 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

by the second Noble Truth appeared to help Noree identify clients’ suffering and this led her

to invite clients to see the beliefs that make them suffer, and to see how their beliefs are

incongruent with what they are experiencing. This careful exploration of the cause of

suffering is believed to help facilitate clients’ realisation of their own suffering, and offers a

way to bring themselves out of that suffering.

This master theme shows how the participants’ personal qualities played a significant

role in their therapeutic practice. Buddhist practices appeared to help foster the participants’

therapeutic presence. Utilising the Four Noble Truths to understand their own lives appeared

to help the participants strengthen their understanding of these Truths, and this understanding

helped enhance their therapeutic competence to understand and identify clients’ problems.

These therapeutic qualities, the participants believed, helped contribute to their therapeutic

efficacy.

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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

and practices, and how they regarded these personal qualities as integral to their practice of

Buddhist Counselling. Inviting the participants to report their experience by adopting the

qualitative 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

Counselling in Thailand and to the growing body of work on Buddhist-informed therapies, by

providing a more comprehensive understanding about the lived experiences of counsellors

practising Buddhist Counselling.

One of the most striking features of the findings presented in this paper is that the

participants described their personal qualities as the key therapeutic tool. The participants

placed a greater emphasis on the personal qualities of the counsellor over technical skills, and

they believed that the counsellor’s personal qualities have a greater impact on the therapeutic

process and outcome than theoretical orientation.

The significance of the counsellor’s personal qualities as key in therapy has been

recognised widely across the psychotherapeutic literature (cf., Aron 1996; McConnaughty

1987; Reupert 2008, 2006). Aron (1996), a psychoanalytic therapist, noted “[not] only does

every intervention reflect the analyst’s subjectivity, but it is precisely the personal elements

contained 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

of school, who determines the quality of the therapy” (p. 307). Smith (2000) commented on

the importance given to therapeutic techniques: techniques, he argued, can only be used and

made possible by the therapist. In this light, counsellors coming from the same therapeutic

26

orientation, and using the same techniques, can generate significantly different therapeutic

outcomes depending on their experience and expression of personal qualities. In this study,

the participants also described how different Buddhist counsellors provide qualitatively

different therapies, as the quality of therapy is thought to depend essentially on the personal

qualities of the counsellor.

The participants in this study believed the counsellor’s personal qualities that are

essential for practicing Buddhist Counselling can be cultivated through living in a Buddhist

way. By this, 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 of Buddhist mind training. The participants’ aim in internalising the Four

Noble Truths was to investigate and understand their own suffering, and this understanding in

turn helped them to understand their clients’ suffering.

This perspective is reminiscent of the concept of the “wounded healer”, first referred to

by Carl Jung (Wheeler 2007), which is that “the more healers can understand their own

wounds and 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 the participants’ 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

professional and the personal domains. This finding provides support for the point made by

Donati and Watts (2005) that a belief that therapeutic change is mainly brought about by the

27

personal qualities of the counsellor, rather than by any technical skills, is likely to see the

personal and professional development of the counsellor as being one and the same.

The concept of inter-dependency between the personal and professional development

of counsellors is not novel in the literature (cf., Cigolla and Brown 2011; Johns 1996;

Skovholt and Ronnestad 1996; Wilkins 1997). Indeed, Skovholt and Ronnestad (1996) noted

that this inter-dependency has been increasingly recognised in the field of counselling and

psychotherapy, and they argued that personal development and professional development

constitute “counsellor development”. Counsellors across a range of theoretical orientations

have sought different 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 Prior 2012) and of mindfulness practice (Cigolla and Brown 2011) on counsellors’

personal lives and on their therapeutic practice.

In this study, the participants reported attempting to cultivate and maintain their

quality 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; Dunn et al. 2013; Ryan et al.

2012), the participants in this study found Buddhist practices enhanced their ability to be with

clients more fully. However, this study also found potential effects of Buddhist practices and

ideas on counsellors’ therapeutic work that have not been explored in the existing literature.

Firstly, the participants in this study reported that Buddhist practices helped strengthen their

theoretical understanding of Buddhist concepts. Secondly, the participants used the

Four Noble Truths not only to work with the clients (cf., Rungreangkulkij et al. 2011), but

also as the main tool for their own personal development.

28

The findings from this study indicate the usefulness of integrating Buddhist ideas and

practices not only into work with clients, but also into practitioners’ personal lives. Thus this

study suggests that counsellors practising Buddhist-informed therapies may consider

incorporating Buddhist ideas and practices into their personal lives, as a way potentially to

enhance their therapeutic effectiveness. Buddhist practices, and especially in recent times

mindfulness practices, have received substantial interest from counsellors across theoretical

orientations, and they have been widely acknowledged as effective ways of fostering the

physical and psychological well-being of people (Beitel et al. 2005; Brow and Ryan 2003),

and particularly of counsellors (Chistopher and Maris 2010; May and O’Donovan 2007). A

number of studies argue that the usefulness of mindfulness goes beyond it being an effective

therapeutic technique, and that it should be included as a significant part of counselling

training and be placed at the core of continuing professional development (Bruce et al.

2010; Campbell and Christopher 2012; Childs 2011, 2007; Gockel 2010). This study offers

suggestions in line with these studies; namely, that Buddhist practices, such as mindfulness

and meditation, would be of significant value for counsellors who are interested in finding

ways to cultivate and maintain the quality of mind that can enhance not only their therapeutic

presence, but also their psychological well-being.

It is apparent that the participants in this study seemed to integrate their personal and

professional lives to experience both in Buddhist ways. We can see then that the ongoing

professional development of the participants involved a dual process. Firstly, it was a process

of working towards bringing Buddhist teachings, the theoretical underpinnings of Buddhist

Counselling, into their personal lives. Secondly, it was a process of working towards the

integration of their Buddhist personal development into their practice of Buddhist

Counselling (Fear and Woolfe 1999).

29

The participants reported that this congruence between the ways they worked on

themselves and the ways they worked with clients was critical to effective practice. In

contrast, they perceived the lack of such congruence may result in poorer practice. This

finding concurs with research and scholarship on the importance of the integration of the self

of the practitioner in their work with clients in order to offer a fully engaged and authentic

‘presence’ in the therapeutic relationship with the client (Aron 1996; McConnaughty 1987;

Reupert 2008; 2006). While not specifically focused on indigenization – the argument that

intervention models and services need to be adapted to the local cultures of the populations

served (Duan et al. 2011; Laungani 1997) – this finding might be interpreted as supporting

the indigenization debate. These practitioners perceive the congruence between their personal

beliefs and practices, grounded in local culture and community, and their practice with clients

as essential to the integrity of their professional practice. Where the indigenisation argument

is usually based on the needs of the populations to be served, this research might point to

another dimension of cultural adaptability: that practitioners need also to practise in a manner

that is sensitive 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, and

there is, therefore, “no universal recipe for personal development work” (p. 524). The most

important thing, they argue, is that counsellors need to identify the personal qualities and

skills that are essentially relevant to their own therapeutic practice, and that are critical for

working effectively with their clients.

Limitations of the study

This study only looked at counsellors who had received Buddhist Counselling training from

one institution and in one cultural context. The findings generated from this study are thus

30

specific to this particular group of people. In addition, this research was conducted with a

relatively small sample of participants. It is, therefore, possible that the findings are not

generalisable to other Buddhist-informed counsellors. As such, it would be useful to learn

more about the Buddhist-informed psychotherapy experiences of counsellors from different

institutions and/or cultural groups. Such research may help confirm and/or extend the present

findings.

Conclusion

The results of this present study capture the detailed accounts of Thai practitioners’

experiences of Buddhist Counselling, in ways not possible with quantitative studies. As

discussed earlier, there is limited existing research in the field giving voice to practitioners

using Buddhist-informed therapies. This study opens up the practitioners’ lived experiences

of practising Buddhist Counselling in a Buddhist context by detailing the ways they cultivate

and maintain their personal qualities through the integration of Buddhist ideas and practices

in their 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 regarded

as 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 picture

and a greater understanding of how Buddhism and counselling are integrated in the practice

of these Buddhist counsellors in contemporary Thailand.

Acknowledgement

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

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