Meet Lin-Ann Ching

     uddha taught that The Middle Way was a manner of living life in a balance, avoiding extremes of austerity or indulgence and knowing our limits. 

Dialectics is a philosophical approach to the world in which no absolute truth exists, but rather, one in which we seek to find the wisdom in multiple truths, even those that seem paradoxical or in opposition to one another. To take a dialectical view of the world is to aim the mind towards the notion that many perspectives--even seemingly contradictory ones--can be true at once.  For example, when you are angry, can you also feel regret and guilt? Can you stand in the same river twice? To walk the middle path means to find a new answer that is both yes and no.

 

Those of us who suffer, with anxiety, with depression, with trauma, with worry thoughts about the past and the future, are often consumed by the extremities of these emotions, thoughts, and the behaviors they lead us to pursue. We hurt, we are angry, we worry, we suffer, and so we look to food, to alcohol, to sex, to aggression, to "should haves" about the past to "what ifs" about the future, to bring us away from the pain we feel in the moment. In the process, we turn away from, fight, and resist the reality of the present moment, and unwittingly add fuel to the fire of our suffering.

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Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a treatment approach developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan that overlays buddhist principles of mindfulness, acceptance, and non-attachment onto a cognitive-behavioral, skills-based treatment. DBT seeks to find the middle path--the dialectical synthesis--between acceptance and change. Practitioners of this treatment seek to acknowledge the wisdom in both perspectives and walk the middle path--a bit like holding two sides of the same coin in your hand at the same time. Walking the middle path is a dynamic process, one that requires constant movement, speed, and flow, one that avoids clinging to any one extreme because therein we find suffering. Walking the middle path asks you to open your ears and eyes to the wisdom in each moment, in each perspective, in each viewpoint, even if that moment, that perspective, or that viewpoint is painful. We are asked to listen to what pain or sadness or fear or anger is telling us, so that we may learn from our emotions, learn to befriend them, even our worst demons, so that we may find our way out of them. That is where we learn to accept the painful realities of life, and find freedom from suffering.