Andrew Shugyo Bonnici, Ph.D.
Doctorate In Humanistic Depth Psychology
Master Zen Teacher, Trainer,
And Life Counselor
Soto Zen Priest: Founder Of Jotoku-Ji Temple
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I am a 80-year-old Master Zen Teacher, Trainer, and
Transpersonal Life Counselor with a Doctorate in Humanistic Depth Psychology. I received my
Doctoral Degree from Saybrook University in 1978. I also hold a
Master's Degree from San Francisco State University that focuses on Self-Actualization Psychology And Interpersonal Growth. I am currently a
member of the "Society for Humanistic Psychology" that is known as
"Division 32" of the American Psychological Association.
While doing my undergraduate and graduate work at San Francisco State and Saybrook University, I daily studied, researched, and practiced Zen meditation on my own from 1966 to 1977. In 1978, just before I received my Doctoral Degree, my wife and I decided to practice Zen meditation with others who trained at a local Zen Temple named Genjo-ji. Genjo-ji, located on Sonoma Mountain in California, was founded by Jakusho Kwong-Roshi, a Zen Priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi who founded the San Francisco Zen Center in 1962.
In 1980, a year after I received my Doctorate in Psychology. I established a private professional practice for individuals, couples, and groups so they may achieve and sustain peak experiential states of health, wellbeing, synergy, love, and happiness. For over forty years, I have had the honor of guiding and empowering people from all walks of life to embody the farther reaches of healing and longevity, caring mindfulness and inclusive empathy, prolific creativity and intuitive insight, team synergy and easeful leadership, behavioral wisdom and deep compassion for self and others.
In 1987, Jakusho Kwong-Roshi ordained my wife and I as lay-monastic practitioners of Soto Zen Buddhism. In 1988, my wife and I decided to leave Genjo-ji so I could establish a formal Soto Zen Training Temple at our home in Rohnert Park, CA. I named our Zen Home Training Temple Jotoku-ji which means 'Quite Virtue Temple.' While still counseling people in my private practice during the day, I taught, trained, and guided a dedicated group of lay-monastic Zen practitioners at Jotoku-ji Temple. For over twenty-five years, I held study groups and Zen training sessions in the early mornings and midevenings twice a week. In 1996 and 2005, I also founded, taught, and guided two other Zen practice groups in Long Beach, CA and Kamuela, HI, respectively.
On a personal note, I have been married for 58 years to my lover, friend, collegue, and soul-mate Diana. We have two wonderful sons, two cherished daughters-in-heart, and four precious grandchildren. I am grateful that we all share our lives on the Big Island of Hawaii.
There I continue to counsel people in the still embodiment of core-Self intelligence, teach Zen meditation and mindfulness on a variety of social media platforms, and publish articles and books on living the enlightened Zen path of human peace and healing. I also provide real-time Video teaching, counseling, and training to individuals, couples, and groups who want to advance personal transformation, interpersonal growth, optimum team synergy, spiritual fulfillment, and a healthy, balanced, and passionate life success.
Office Phone: (808) 880-1395
Email: DrB@Zendoctor.Com
Zoom, Skype, Or FaceTime Video Counseling
View My Counseling Intake Form
The Ancient Zen Roots of Applied Meditation Therapy®
The Transmission of Core-Self In This Only Moment Body
Since 1966 I have had a deeply
passionate and enlightened experiential intimacy
with the ancient humanistic psychology and embodied transpersonal therapy known as "Zen mindfulness and meditation." Over the last 45 years of daily living, teaching, and counseling others in the depth practice of embodied Zen mindfulness and meditation, I have come to fully realize and experientially verify that living Zen enlightenment is simply the Way of being a caring and loving human being from the still intelligence of our "core-Self."
When I speak
of "Zen mindfulness and meditation", I am making reference to the daily embodiment of core-Self that was originally practiced by the prehistoric Chinese sages who lived around 5000 B.C. This ancient Way of mindfully living from the still intelligence of our core-Self is really the accessible Way of living enlightenment right here and now. Two ancient Chinese texts reveal how the Chinese sages embodied their core-Self in everyday life. The first is called the "I Ching," or "The Book of Changes." It was written around 2953 B.C. The I Ching encourages the harmonious human embodiment of change, impermanence, and duality while teaching people how to blend their everyday behavior with the dynamic functioning of a vast Oneness that upholds the boundless intimacy of the whole universe. The second Chinese text is called the "Tao Te Ching," or "The Book of the Way and Its Virtue," which was written about 550 B.C. The "Tao Te Ching" instructs people to return to their natural, original, or radical Way of being fully human. It encourages all of us to embody the virtuous root of humanity (core-Self) while yielding to the Way (vast Oneness) that upholds the integrity and interdependency of total reality. Although these two texts indicate how the Chinese sages embodied the bright wisdoming of their core-Self in everyday life, no dominant figure in China interpersonally transmitted the still integrity of core-Self within an embodied lineage.
However, in the year 528 B.C., a human being from India intuitively embodied our radical humanness, interpersonally transmitted core-Self in ungraspable enlightenment, and thereby gave birth to the ancient lineage of Zen. That historical Indian figure who embodied core-Self in boundless intimacy was named Shakyamuni Buddha. Although the Buddha verbally shared the insights of his core-Self enlightenment through the language
of his people, he also freely transmitted the embodiment of core-Self through a 'nonverbal visceral intimacy' between himself and his assembly of lay and monastic practitioners. This visceral core-Self transmission of the
Buddha's Way of living enlightenment in everyday life
has been authentically perpetuated for over 2500 years as the embodied seal of "zazen-only" that is exactly just living through our core-Self in this Only Moment Body of everyday life.
It is this visceral core-Self transmission in zazen-only that has come to be known as the experiential lineage of Zen that is beyond all beliefs, scriptures, words, and letters.
It is this genuine Zen seal of being core-Self in this Only Moment Body of zazen-only that continues to be openly and freely transmitted amongst Zen
teachers and student practitioners to this very day.
Since
its prehistoric origins in China and its historical embodiment and
intimate transmission by the Buddha in India, the Zen seal of living core-Self in this Only Moment Body of zazen-only
has continued to nourish, inspire and guide humanity toward deeper levels of spiritual consciousness,
peak experiencing, behavioral wisdoming, compassionate being,
and optimum states of health, healing, and longevity.
Over
the last 35 years of my teaching, training, and counseling practice, I
have taken a wide variety of psychotherapeutic insights and strategies from Humanistic
Psychology and integrated them with the ancient Zen Way of embodying core-Self in boundless intimacy with total reality. I have named this complimentary integration the science of Applied Meditation Therapy®.
The Practice Focus Of Applied Meditation Therapy®
Liberating Core-Self Wisdoming in Everyday Life
Applied Meditation Therapy®
redefines the ancient Buddha seal of zazen-only as a " therapeutic methodology for realizing, living, and verifying human enlightenment as the daily experience of boundless intimacy, unconditional compassion, bright wisdoming, and unobstructed empathy." This means that AMT is primarily the application of an "inner science" for actualizing the farther reaches of human nature in our everyday life and relationships.
As
the "inner science of human enlightenment," the Way of living as core-Self in zazen-only includes the
daily application of principles and concepts that have emerged within our Western 1) cognitive-behavioral therapies, 2) our humanistic
interpersonal therapies, 3) our somatic biofeedback therapies, 4) our
transpersonal growth therapies, and 5) our research and
investigative methodologies that focus on depth experience and embodied consciousness.
1)
Viewed through the principles of our cognitive behavioral therapies, AMT is a practical tool for
bringing the light of consciousness to causal interactions between
thoughts, perceptions, feelings, sensations, and behaviors that usually
keep us in bondage to fear and anxiety, unhealthy dependencies,
egocentric views, social/religious conditioning, chronic mental
chatter, self-preoccupation, and dysfunctional reactive impulses.
2)
Viewed through the principles of our humanistic interpersonal therapies, AMT encourages the practice of
embodied truth, genuine compassion, deep listening, forgiveness, open
dialogue, upright communication, authentic and congruent relationship,
mutual respect, balanced in-dependency, romantic sensuality, marital intimacy, and the
mystical sacredness of being orgasmic Oneness.
3)
When viewed through the principles of our somatic biofeedback therapies, AMT encourages you to experience your
body as an intelligent and wisdoming resource. Somatic education and
training in AMT emphasizes that being consciously intimate with your
"only moment body functioning" is vital to wellness, healing, growth,
intuition, creativity, joy and peak performance. AMT deepens and
broadens awareness of what is happening within the body
moment-by-moment. AMT somatic therapy focuses on passing sensations,
arising tensions, finding alert relaxation, being intimate with breath
and vital energy, skeletal-muscular ease, postural alignment,
spontaneous and creative movement, and the meaningful orchestration of
biofeedback wisdoming.
4) Viewed through the principles of our transpersonal growth therapies, AMT focuses on the emergence
of our True Nature or Original Self. The word "transpersonal" means
beyond the personal, or transcendence of attachment to the ego-self and
the reactive or conditioned patterns of our personality and thinking
mind. AMT training and practice gradually reveals the transparency and
insubstantiality of our arising thoughts, our ego-self, the
psycho-dynamics of our personality, and our over-identification with
thinking mind. Thus, AMT as a transpersonal therapy reveals that human
beings have an original Self that is free from bondage to reactive
behavioral patterns, perceptual biases, and the conditioned self-talk
that hinders inner growth, bright wisdoming, self-compassion,
relational intimacy, loving-kindness, clarity of being, passionate
living, and multidimensional life success. AMT helps us to recover our
pristine human experience of childlike wonder and awe, our originally
enlightened consciousness, and our felt empathic intimacy with a
Infinite Transpersonal Wisdom that penetrates our own bodies and all of
life and death.
5)
As a consciously embodied research methodology into our unfolding
journey of life and death, AMT helps us to compassionately and diligently investigate the meaning,
direction, and purpose of our ever changing needs, desires,
perceptions, intentions, feelings, and motivations in order to clearly
illuminate the wisdoming nature of our impermanence, the wisdoming nature of
our being and becoming, the wisdoming nature of the embodied Self just as IT
is, the wisdoming nature of loving and being loved, and the wisdoming nature of all beings and things just as
they are.
This
is the historical, multidimensional, holistic and integrative approach
that I emphasize when counseling, mentoring and training people in the daily practice of Applied Meditation Therapy® (AMT).
The True Practice Body Of Applied Meditation Therapy®
Eight Bright Marks of
Core-Self Wisdoming
1. EMBODIMENT: Aroused wakefulness
and deep intimacy with flesh, blood, bone, marrow, electrochemistry,
cell metabolism, breath, bioenergy, gravitational alignment, and
quantum integrity. 2. TRANSPARENCY:Seeing
and experiencing the functional value, emptiness, insubstantiality and
virtual reality of self, ego, personality, beliefs, linear time,
culture, history, and thinking mind.
3. IMPERMANENCE:Recognizing
and embracing the wisdoming of impermanence in all beings and things.
Acknowledging death as an intimate companion while clarifying the true
values of life, love, caring, family, and friendships.
4. INTERDEPENDENCY: Experiencing
the dynamic interrelatedness and wisdoming Oneness of all phenomena
across the vastness of interstellar time and space. The wholeness of
body wisdoming consciously merging with the infinitely wisdoming nature
of a Whole Universe.
5. ARISING PEACE:
A sense of deep joy and tranquility in experiencing the wholeness of
body wisdoming and the felt immediacy of a future where all human
beings exist with a sense of harmony and balance within themselves and
amongst each other.
6. COMPLETION: A sense of dignity, nobility, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. No gap between the actual experience
of the embodied self and any social or mental projection of an ideal or perfected self.
7. NOT-KNOWING:
Not attaching to any arising insights, acknowledging Infinite Wisdoming
beyond self, enjoying the freshness of wondering mind, embracing
ceaseless investigation of life and death, and resting in the innate
humility of humanness.
8. LIFE AS PRACTICE: Endlessly training and beginning again to deepen felt intimacy with the wisdoming of embodiment,
transparency, impermanence, interdependency, arising peace, completion, and not-knowing.
My Counseling, Training, Mentoring & Teaching Principals
As a professional specializing in higher levels of human
consciousness, peak states of somatic intelligence, and the farther
reaches of loving relationships, I emphasize the following principles
in my face-to-face and worldwide tele-counseling practice:
1)
Rather than an investigation of the "self" based upon introspective
probing or psychological analysis, I emphasize an ancient therapeutic
discipline that is wholeheartedly grounded in the embodiment of
silence, stillness, truth, wakefulness, courage, emptiness, and
integrity.
2) Rather than the attainment of a transcendental knowledge or esoteric wisdom, I emphasize a constantly deepening
understanding of our humanity & an ever growing compassion for Self & Others.
3)
Rather than negating worldly success & sensual pleasures, I
emphasize an experientially rich & abundantly shared
Life freed from mental bondage to egocentricity, endless grasping,
arrogance, unhealthy narcissism, and self-belittling absorption.
4)
Rather than abolish all stress and tension, I emphasize living a
passionate, vital, and energetic Life based on balance, creativity,
& empowered insight into the interdependent causal relationships
that exists between body, mind, heart, and spirit.
5)
Rather than endlessly seeking or unquestioningly adhering to an
absolute answer regarding the purpose and meaning of life and death, I
emphasize, wholeheartedly and courageously Being the Question while
embracing the wonder, awe, and mystery of this precious human
existence,
Just as IT is.
6) Rather than striving for the attainment of perfect wisdom or absolute enlightenment, I emphasize living a simple
life of embodied Faith before beliefs and the daily
practice of Health,
Healing, and Peace in the seated stillness of
your Only Moment
Body. |
Professional Background .
About Meditation Therapy.
Professional Code of Ethics & The Nature of My Services
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My private counseling, mentoring, training and coaching in Applied Meditation Therapy, as well as my group workshops and free on-line public educational services adhere to the same code of ethics followed by teachers, counselors, pastors, and mental health care providers.
Please Note that all education and behavioral/cognitive training, mentoring and counseling in Applied Meditation Therapy is meant to support, and not replace any of your current medical and mental health care or any therapeutic relationship you may now have with a physician, psychiatrist, licensed psychologist, social worker or marriage and family therapist.
As a teacher, counselor and trainer in Applied Meditation Therapy, I do not provide any clinical diagnosis or treatment for any physical illness, mental disorder, or emotional dysfunction. Where the practice of Applied Meditation Therapy® is suggested in relation to sustaining health, well-being, longevity, personal growth, interpersonal synergy, stress balancing, inner peace, embodied faith, and the daily practice of transpersonal intimacy, it is done solely within the context of spiritual teaching, counseling, mentoring, coaching and training in meditation and core-Self mindfulness skills in order to 1) enhance people's experience of clarity, joy, wonder, peace and creativity in daily life; 2) to help individuals realize and actualize the farther reaches of embodied wisdom and the compassionate depth of their humanness, and 3) to expose them to the practice of meditation as an inner wisdom based therapeutic approach to living their everyday life with wakefulness, caring, integrity, vitality, authenticity, equanimity, core intimacy, and an ever fresh and passionate Way of doing, loving, working, playing and being.
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Andrew Shugyo Bonnici. By virtue of the International Berne Convention
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all the literary and artistic works at this web site, are also
internationally protected by legal conventions in other Countries.
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Trademarks, and Clarification of
Professional Role and
Services.
WHAT IS APPLIED MEDITATION THERAPY®?
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Diminish Stress, Anxiety, Fear, & Suffering.
Realize The Farther Reaches Of Our Human Nature:
Optimum Health, Self-Healing, & Increased Longevity
Greater Empathy, Inner Fulfillment, & Spirituality
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