Responsible Sharing of Zen

The absolutely fundamental bedrock of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) is moral philosophy - and not even so much moral philosophy as moral practice based on whatever philosophy is necessary.

Morality means, first and foremost, I will not harm another human being.  In order to provide some level of guarantee of that moral stand, I consciously accept that I must undertake the following commitments:

1. I undertake the precept to refrain from harming living creatures.

2. I undertake the precept to refrain from taking what has not been given to me.

3. I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual immorality.

4. I undertake the precept to refrain from speaking falsely.

5. I undertake the precept to refrain from taking intoxicants.

I will not adopt any philosophical perspective that could promote in others the idea that morality might be merely ‘culturally relative' and therefore dismissible!

Some promoters of liberational philosophies in India and elsewhere, in the past, overlooked the fact that not everybody is ready to hear of those liberational ideas.  Some individuals are so little committed to acting morally that, given insight into some of the philosophical formulations of Zen, or Hinduism, or Mahayana Buddhism generally, they are likely to pull those ideas down to the level of the gutter.  Those individuals are operating from what we call in CENT ‘the Bad Wolf' side of their character.

Therefore, in CENT, we do not share the major and most radical insights of Zen with the general public, or with our new clients.  We would only share those ideas with individuals who are ‘safe' in terms of being committed to moral functioning in the world - and even then we would be quite careful what we shared with whom.

There are some aspects of Zen that are safe to share with the general public.  These include: the process of meditation; some reframing ideas contained in the Zen Tigers page; and some Zen sutras incorporated into the Six Windows Model.

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