In this workshop, Dr. Loizzo will draw on his experience integrating Buddhist psychology with contemporary psychotherapy to help participants understand the wisdom of selflessness as a practical way to heal the heartbreak of early trauma and live from our relational Buddha-self of radical openness to loving connection.
Contemporary psychology has rediscovered many of the timeless insights of Buddhist psychology and validated the healing benefits of its contemplative methods. This half-day workshop focuses on two recent breakthroughs that shed light on the Buddha’s single most crucial discovery: that the root cause of our suffering is our fixation on the traumatic sense of being a separate, disconnected self, alone in an uncaring world. The two recent breakthroughs—the neuropsychology of attachment and attachment trauma—shed light on the deeper meaning of that root cause, and help us understand and apply the wisdom of selflessness in a way that frees us to develop wiser and more caring relationships with ourselves, others and the earth we share with all life.
While the Buddha considered attachment (raga) one of the three main toxins fueling the cycle of trauma that poisons our lives, in current psychology the term actually means something more like love (maitri), one of the medicines he prescribed as vital to the path. In fact, Buddha anticipated the gist of attachment theory—that our primal survival drive as humans is not to defend a separate self but to seek loving connection—when he taught that our most primal instinct is to long for care from an all-loving, all-powerful other, a piece of wishful thinking he called the demon of wanting to be a child of god (devaputra-mara). At the same time, he also anticipated the science of attachment trauma—through which we develop a traumatic identity and lifestyle by reacting and defending against any and all threats of rejection or abandonment—when he taught that the confusion caused by identifying with our instinct for self-protection (atma-graha) over our primal openness to loving connection was the first link in the development of a dissatisfactory, traumatic personality and way of life.
Please join us for a half day of deep reflection, shared dialogue, and contemplative practice in a safe and brave communal space, to practice awakening together to our primal Buddha-nature of radically open, loving connection and communion!
Online via Zoom
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$75 Member / $90 Non-Member
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About Joseph Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D.
