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Concept
Shoma Morita
Summary
Masatake Morita, also read as Shōma Morita, was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud and the founder of Morita therapy, a branch of clinical psychology strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. In his capacity as the head of psychiatry for a large Tokyo hospital, Morita began developing his methods while working with sufferers of shinkeishitsu, or anxiety disorders with a hypochondriac base.
According to Morita, how a person feels is important as a sensation and as an indicator for the present moment, but is uncontrollable: we don't create feelings, feelings happen to us. Since feelings do not cause our behavior, we can coexist with unpleasant feelings while still taking constructive action.
The essence of Morita's method maybe summarized in three rules: Accept all your feelings, know your purpose(s), and do what needs to be done. When once asked what shy people should do, Morita replied, "Sweat."
Accept your feelings - Accepting feelings is not ignoring them or avoiding them, but welcoming them; Vietnamese poet and writer Thich Nhat Hanh recommends we say, "Hello Loneliness, how are you today? Come, sit by me and I will take care of you." Morita's advice: "In feelings, it is best to be wealthy and generous" - that is, have many and let them fly as they wish.
Know your purpose - Implicit in Morita's method, and the traditional Buddhist psychological principles which he adapted, is an independence of thought and action, something a little alien to the Western ideal to "follow our whims and moods". Morita held that we can no more control our thoughts than we can control the weather, as both are phenomena of most amazingly complex natural systems. And if we have no hope of controlling our emotions, we can hardly be held responsible any more than we can be held responsible for feeling hot or cold. We do, however, have complete dominion over our behavior, and for Morita, that is a sacred responsibility. "What needs doing now?" is like a mantra in his methods.
Official source
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