Let's take the case of trauma. Some very traumatic events happened—sexual abuse, let's say—and had very real consequences that deserve our compassion and our understanding. All of that was true. Did it happen to me? In some ultimate sense, no, of course not. But then, nothing does insofar as that “me” doesn't exist absolutely and independently. If what you're asking is: Does that shift in perspective substitute for therapy or does it shift the relationship to experience enough so that other kinds of therapeutic work become unnecessary? Well, I've never seen that.

You see, a lot of the Indian practitioners I met when I was doing research in Calcutta had suffered extreme trauma in their lives, just like many Western students. Really bad stuff. And some of them had reached pretty deep levels of enlightenment. No one claimed or presented themselves as having completed the path, but they had attained fairly deep levels. But it was clear that even with the shift occurring that you described, there was still a lot of personal suffering in their lives that they were going through and that had not been addressed—and was not getting addressed. And we see that in a lot of Western students and Western teachers. They've had their kensho experiences, their enlightenment experiences, and they're going down like flies. They're still misbehaving, sometimes outrageously so. They're still engaging in a lot of misconduct around—what else?—money, sex and power. So there's still a lot of personal work to be done. The only alternative position I think you can take is: Do more practice! Get more deeply enlightened. Go to the end of the path, and then none of this will ultimately be a problem for you. Well, I suppose that's a defensible position. In principle that's what should happen. I've just never seen it. Maybe I just don't know people who've gone to the end of the path. There ain't too many of them around…

I guess the only thing you can say is that, short of full and complete freedom, there's personal work to do. And you either do it or you don't… If you look at what the Theravada Buddhist tradition, for instance, claims happens when one has gone to the end, then yes, what it describes as the final outcome of spiritual practice is that all forms of self-generated suffering end, including personal suffering. But one of the things I've always found very credible in the Theravada tradition is that you don't get full freedom all at once. It comes by stages or increments. There are four different experiences of enlightenment. And the earliest stages are still compatible with a lot of personal meshugas [craziness] and ways in which we can still create problems for ourselves and others. So the ground shifts, and the relationship to self and to experience shifts. But it doesn't shift completely and all at once.

In these four experiences of enlightenment, the path to each is basically the same, but what's different are the “fetters” or the samyojanas that are extinguished in each enlightenment experience. These fetters are the root sources of inner suffering, and a different set of fetters is extinguished in each one of the four enlightenment experiences—extinguished irreversibly, permanently, according to the testimony of practitioners. No therapist, incidentally, would ever claim changes in therapy are irreversible! The progression in extinguishing these fetters fascinates me as a psychologist. The first set of fetters that are extinguished are basically cognitive in nature—what a cognitive psychologist would call “maladaptive cognitions” or “core beliefs.” In extinguishing these misguided beliefs about who we are, our basic understanding and perspective changes. But simply extinguishing basic beliefs and assumptions doesn't automatically shift the underlying motivations, impulses and emotions that can still drive us to act in ways that create suffering. Cognitively, we may relate to our experience differently, yet we can continue to act in the same neurotic ways. Not to the same extent, perhaps, but basically we can still find ourselves acting in unskillful ways that create a lot of problems. The second set of fetters reaches deeper into the psyche, into the affective or motivational bases of behavior. Motivations, impulses and affects are much more difficult to shift than cognitions and beliefs. The last set of fetters is extinguished at the fourth and final stage of enlightenment. The core of this group is called mana or “conceit.” This is a remnant of the tendency to compare self with others—the root of narcissism. The last fetters really have to do with rooting out the final residues of narcissistic attachment to self from the mind. And that's more difficult to shift than the affective or motivational bases of behavior.

The same progression happens in therapy. Cognitions, beliefs, perspectives change first. Core drives, motivations and impulses are much harder to change. Hardest of all to change is narcissistic investment in the self. So when you say that ideally the realization of emptiness should free one from personal neurotic problems, I don't think it's that simple. I think the shifts take place in stages. What the tradition describes and what we've learned in therapy are exactly the same progression. That shift doesn't take place all at once.

I was reading something the other day in Philip Kapleau Roshi's book Zen Dawn in the West. A student asks him a similar question about kensho, and Kapleau replies, ”Kensho doesn't eliminate character. If anything, kensho makes character failings more obvious.” He's talking about his own experience and his experience with his students. But he's also talking about the first experience of kensho. The Zen tradition has always said there can be little kensho and great kensho. The opening can be small or it can be large, but it's still just a first glimpse of enlightenment. My teacher, Anagarika Munindra, used to call it “a little bit of enlightenment.” That first glimpse doesn't shift everything.