Journal of Rational Emotive & Cognitive Behavior Therapy, 1998, 16, 5-43

THE INTERFACE BETWEEN RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY (REBT)

AND ZEN
Maurits Kwee & Albert Ellis
Abstract
While Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) highlights the norm of people's dogmatic,
fanatical, and rigid religious beliefs, it has always favoured several aspects of Zen-Buddhism as a
modus vivendi. Scientifically-based REBT and wisdom-oriented Zen have more in common than
one might think at first sight. In this chapter, I, Albert Ellis and Maurits Kwee show how REBT
and Zen have significant commonalities as well as differences. "What are these commonalities?",
and "What are the issues of mutual interest for REBT and Zen?" are the main questions that we
deal with here. It is submitted that most of REBT theory and practice are in keeping with the
spirit of Zen. We note that East and West may in some ways cross-fertilise each other in the
interface between these two proposed ways of living. The narrative techniques of Zen by means
of koans (e.g., analogies, metaphors, parables) and of REBT (its many cognitive, emotive, and
behavioural methods derived from its phenomenological view of human neurosis) are somewhat
complementary to each other. Zen practice, if stripped of its mystical and utopian aspects,
particularly by omitting the non-verifiable concepts of the ostensible "higher" (non-thinking)
state of consciousness, can often even be merged with REBT. One main (cultural) difference is
that Zen attempts to go beyond rationality/relativity by striving for a certain kind of selfrealisation (the irrational experience of satori) through paradoxically abolishing the self. The end
result of this is not that the Zen adept becomes a "better" human being, but often becomes more
aware of the hassles of life and how to cope with them from day to day. Something like the
REBT practitioner, who practises what she or he preaches, the Zen practitioner remains the
ordinary (though unique) imperfect human being as she or he was before, sadder but a little
wiser. REBT had better be integrated with the most useful of other therapies, including Zen, so
that it becomes and remains effective with many (not all) people much (not all) of the time. Due
to cultural differences, the practice of Zen is not always compatible with the practice of Zen.
However, the practice of REBT does fit with (post)modern Zen as an open living system. This
chapter is laced with two dozen classic and modern koans that are to be used readily in therapy
by the reader.
A businessman from Oakland climbed the highest mountain in Tibet to ask a venerable lama,
who lives at the peak, the question of his life. After weeks of torturous hardship, he finally
reached the summit, cold, hungry, and exhausted. When he found the lama meditating in a cave,
he fell on his knees and asked: "Master, I have been searching for you all the way from Oakland,
please tell me, what is life?" The lama opened his eyes and answered: "I have been contemplating
that very question for over fifty years, my friend, and came to the conclusion that life is a
fountain." The businessman looked astonished and exclaimed: "What! Did I come such a long
way facing all hardships just to hear that?" "Damn!", the lama replied: "You mean life is not a
fountain? You think bullshit is better?".

Anonymous
Introduction
In one of my early writings, I (AE) stated that many principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour
Therapy (REBT) are not new (Ellis, 1958). Some of them, in fact, were originally formulated a
few thousand years ago, in ancient Greece and Rome, and by some Taoist and Buddhist thinkers.
However, in the course of more than forty years since first using and writing on REBT (Ellis,
1957, 1996), I have never thoroughly explained the latter part of this statement. With Maurits
Kwee (MK), I now aim to fill this gap.
As with REBT, the first publications about Zen in psychological journals appeared in the
fifties (e.g., Sato, 1958). Although there have been other attempts to connect Zen and
psychotherapy (e.g., Fromm, 1960; Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967; Shapiro, 1978; Hirai,
1989; Kwee, 1990a; Kwee & Holdstock, 1996; Haruki, Ichii, & Koshikawa, 1996), an in-depth
analysis of this connection is lacking (cf., Peiser, 1977). In this chapter we try to further relate
REBT and Zen. Especially, to provide a bridge for Western and Eastern professionals to grasp
the essence of both methods efficiently and effectively and to show that Zen and REBT can
sometimes even be merged.
I (AE) see meditation, of which Zen is an exponent, as a legitimate cognitive-behavioural
intervention in general and as a useful self-regulatory method in particular (Ellis, 1962, 1984a).
However, we suggest discarding its mystical and unfalsifiable aspects. Although REBT employs
existential philosophy in its practice and conceptualisation, and includes some ideas of the
ancient East - particularly those of Confucius and The Buddha1 - it is mainly a Western,
scientifically oriented form of psychotherapy (Ellis, 1996; Ellis & Yeager, 1989). As I (AE)
stated recently:
The early constructivist practitioners were philosophers, such as the historical Buddha,
Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, who were quite active-directive and consequently
taught their students to look at their self-constructed thoughts and feelings, to reconsider
them when they didn't work, and to work vigorously at changing them (Ellis, 1993a,
p.535).
Both The Buddha and I (AE) start with the premise that "hassle" is the human life's predicament.
To live means to suffer and suffering can be reduced by means of a meditative way of life, thus
spoked Siddharta Gautama and many other Buddhas after him.
I (MK) observe that quite a few important leaders in Western psychology had a Jewish,
thus an Eastern background (Kwee, 1990b). As an ardent REBT practitioner and as a student of
various spiritual disciplines, MK also observes that there is an analogy between the rational
versus the irrational and the Talmudic notions of jetzer-tov versus jetzer-hara. People can act for
the better or for the worse, grow or decay by feeding their minds with good (jetzer-tov) or evil
(jetzer-hara) thoughts. This is congruent with what REBT calls rational (and irrational): that
which does (or does not) accord with social reality or the limitations of human life and does (or
1

* Whenever we write The Buddha we refer to the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni Siddharta Gautama, who lived
from 566 to 486 B.C.

does not) contribute to well-being and happiness or does (or does not) help people to prevent or
lessen unnecessary distress (cf., Fromm, 1966).
A frequently applied and established intervention, assertiveness training, described in the
early days of the behavioural tradition by Wolpe and Lazarus (1966), is clearly inspired by the
Talmudic saying: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" This idea recognises the
biological truth that the welfare of the organism begins with its own integrity. The fuller
quotation of the Talmud: "But if I am for myself alone, what am I?" conveys a golden social
mean. The proposed value for mental health is that the individual places herself or himself first,
but takes others into account. The Buddha himself also conveyed the importance of taking care of
oneself, as depicted in the following supposedly historical story that he, allegedly, used to tell:
Once there were two acrobats, a teacher and his pupil, a little girl. They used a long
bamboo stick for their performances. The stick was placed on the head of the teacher and
the little girl climbed slowly to the top. There she balanced while the teacher walked
around. Both needed to concentrate in order not to have an accident. One day the teacher
said to his pupil: "Listen Medakathalika" (that was her name), "I'll watch you, and you
watch me; thus we'll help each other to keep our balance so that we won't have an
accident." But the little girl said: "Dear teacher, I think it is better that we watch
ourselves, that you watch yourself and I watch myself. To watch oneself means to take
care for both of us. In this way, I'm sure, we won't have an accident, and we'll earn
enough money to eat".
Several Eastern and Western authors have tried to bridge the Eastern and Western
mentalities to improve the practice of psychotherapy and the well-being of humankind (e.g., Hall
& Lindzey, 1978; Walsh, 1989; Bankart, Koshikawa, Nedate, & Haruki, 1992; Mikulas, 1991,
1996; Kwee, 1990a; Kwee & Holdstock, 1996; Haruki, Ichii, & Koshikawa, 1996). Inoue (1990)
remarked that "in the past years there has been a growing interest in cognitive therapy among
Japanese mental health professionals. However, very few of them have ever used it as an option
for the treatment of psychiatric disorders" (p.130). One hampering factor is the issue of applying
a Western method of "talking" as a cure instead of having medication or meditation prescribed, as
expected in Japanese culture. When the client is trained to learn to respond "rationally", this very
term may be difficult for Japanese and other (South-)East Asian clients to understand, because
the irrational is not considered necessarily worse than the rational. "Self-help" is a relatively new
and overwhelming notion to all clients who are inclined to take a passive attitude, like in a
traditional doctor-patient relationship. However, homework assignments for self-help are daily
practice in meditation sessions of Zen and also in REBT. And "rational" in REBT means helping
oneself and one's social group, which people from (South-)East Asians can also sometimes
understand and work for.
In an illuminating chapter, Zen and the Art of Therapy, Haley (1992) drew attention to the
fact that Zen is apparently the oldest continuing art in which one person changes another person
within the context of a special relationship. Haley was a student of the late Alan Watts, a
recondite "backdoor" Zen master (not an officially trained authority on Zen), who used to be a
consultant of Gregory Bateson's coterie. The teachings of Watts, especially on paradoxes, helped
him to understand and adopt some of Milton Erickson's directive strategies. Haley (1992)
discovered parallels between Zen and his branch of therapy:

In Zen, enlightenment is sought through a relationship with a master who believes that
change can be sudden and discontinuous; who becomes personally involved with the
student; who joins the student in a task that involves directing him or her; who attempts
to escape from intellectualizing about life or monitoring personal behavior; who poses
impossible riddles and insists on solutions; who approaches each student as a unique
situation; who has a wide range of behavior and many techniques, including a
willingness to be absurd; who focuses on the present and not the past; who solves the
systemic problem that attempting to change prevents change; and who, within a kindly
framework, uses ordeals to force a change (p.33).
Let us note here, however, that a significant difference in motivation exists between
trainees of Zen - who are quite willing (sometimes eager) to accept ordeals (in order to discover
that enlightenment occurs in other ways) - and clients in therapy who are sent unwillingly to
therapy or are "enjoying" the secondary gain which their "bad" symptoms sometimes provide. "If
you are unhappy" is a fable, that could be a humorous educative Zen story or modern koan,
which MK often tells his clients who are reluctant to give up their neurotic symptom.
Once upon a time, there was a non-conforming sparrow who decided not to fly south for
the winter. However, soon the weather turned so cold that he reluctantly started to fly
south. In a short time, ice began to form on his wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard,
almost frozen. A cow passed by and defecated on the sparrow. The sparrow thought it
was the end. But the manure warmed and defrosted his wings. Warm and happy, able to
breathe, he started to chirp. Just then a cat came by and investigated the sounds. The cat
cleared away the manure, found the chirping bird, and promptly ate him. The moral of
this story is threefold. Firstly, even people who cover you with excrement are not
necessarily your enemies. Secondly, those who get you out of the excrement are not
necessarily your friends. Thirdly, if you are in excrement though warm and happy, keep
your mouth shut!
Throughout this chapter we will apply koans as educational means that are mostly derived
from Kwee (1996). A koan can at best be described as a humorous educative narrative or little
story that is a tool for the teacher (or therapist) to help the pupil (or client) to attain an insightful
experience. Traditional koans are known from the seventh century on and are fixed mostly as a
paradox (a kind of riddle that cannot be solved by logic, a phrase from a sutra (Buddhist
scripture), or an exchange of an ancient master and a disciple. Present-day koans might take a
diversity of forms, such as an anecdote, metaphor, parable, analogy, simile, fable, or even a joke.
Mostly a valuable koan is characterised by a funny (under)tone that results in a conjoint
enlightened "aha" and joyous "haha" experience. Zen culture ridicules openly anything that could
possibly become sacred by scoffing at the Buddhas and sneering at the patriarchs. Because Zen is
alive, a koan can be extracted from many sources and adapted (in an eclectic way) to our
postmodern era. Jokes are particularly suited to the purposes of Zen and REBT in reaching inner
(emotional) balance. Zen and REBT share the common contention that emotional disturbance is
largely due to overseriousness and that humorous interventions, if applied appropriately, can (a)
highlight the fatuous nature of irrational beliefs, (b) be an effective teaching device, and (c)
become a vehicle for rapport-building.

REBT and ZEN

While REBT finds one of its roots in Stoicism, starting from Zeno, in the 4th century BC up to
Epictetus (1st century AD) and Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century AD (famous for his book
entitled Meditations [Staniforth, 1964]), the origins of Zen can be found in the teachings of The
Buddha (6th century BC). Famous is Marcus Aurelius's adage endorsed in REBT:
If thou art pained by any external thing,
it is not this that disturbs thee,
but thy own judgement about it.
And it is in thy power
to wipe out this judgement now.
The Buddha was born in what has now become the country of Nepal and lectured
in the Northern parts of India. The technique of meditation or the "art and science of thought
stopping" was, and still is, known under the Sanskrit term of Dhyana. Twelve centuries later,
Dhyana was brought to China by a Southern-Indian prince - known as Bodhidharma, the first Zen
patriarch - where it became Chan. It was heavily influenced by the indigenous Taoist tradition
and eventually reached Japan in the 12th century AD where Chan blossomed to become Zen as
we know it today.
Among the range of psychotherapeutic approaches, REBT appears perhaps the
most suitable partner for Zen in trying to bridge Eastern and Western methods of mental health.
Zen is chosen here as a prototype of a meditative discipline, and does not claim to be better than
the Taoist, Hindu, Chassidic, Sufi or Christian modes of meditative practice. Neither Zen nor
REBT is a religion. Both discard religiosity or dogmatism. An idea like, for instance, "the holy
city," leading to fanatism and warfare, is totally alien for a person of Zen. From a Zen point of
view my (AE) earlier opinion can be supported: "The elegant therapeutic solution to emotional
problems is to be unreligious...The less devoutly religious they are, the more emotionally healthy
people will tend to be" (Ellis, 1980, p.637). In Zen, heaven and hell are not to be sought in the
hereafter, but in one's experiences in the "herenow", like in the following elegant koan (cf., Reps,
1957):
A proud warrior - a samurai - visited a Zen monk and teacher to learn about heaven and
hell; do they really exist? Instead of answering him immediately the teacher kept him
waiting for a while, treating him like a beggar. The samurai gradually became impatient,
angry, and demanded a proper answer at last. "You are too stupid to understand", the
monk replied. Furiously the samurai drew his sword, wanting to kill the teacher, who at
this moment raised his index finger and said: "Experience the gate of hell!" All of a
sudden the samurai understood that this was his lecture, bowed in deep grace and
kneeled in merciful surrender. The monk smiled, raised his finger again and concluded:
"Experience the gate of heaven!"
Zen is above all practical and does not concern itself with metaphysics. Questions
like "What is heaven or hell?", "Who created the universe?", or "Does God exist?" are considered
irrelevant. Instead Zen mentality includes the saying, "A day without work is a day without food"

(Po Chang, 8th century AD). Like REBT, Zen is nonreligious, non-cultic, and against dogma or
all devout, fanatical forms of theism. I (AE) call myself a probabilistic atheist, because no
evidence for Almighty God - "an old fart" - exists, nor in all probability ever will (Ellis, 1981,
1984, 1994c, 1994d, 1996). Therefore, it is highly likely (though not certain) He or She does not
exist. Zen is non-theistic, meaning that it is not for or against the existence of a God. The
existence of a God is not denied, nor confirmed. For Zen this issue is simply unimportant. The
following traditional koan is illustrative:
A monk once asked his master: "How can I reach enlightenment?" The master's reply
was: "Did you have breakfast today?" The student answered: "Yes I did." Whereupon
the master said: "Then go and wash the dishes." Hearing this the monk awakened.
Zen is nonreligious and non-cultic since it does not have an image of a God, as in the JudeoChristian tradition, and is not involved in liturgies or sacraments. Zen is humanistic and foremost
concerned about the art of down to earth daily living.
The above statements reflect only partly what Zen tries to be. Essentially Zen is an
experience: Only on its periphery Zen is an outlook and a philosophy. To try to grasp Zen is a
process that in the first instance bears resemblance to the Buddhist parable, known as "The blind
men and the elephant".
Once a king visited a township where all inhabitants were blind. Everybody greedily
touched the mighty elephant on which the king was seated. When the event was over,
each one told his story. The man who touched an ear said: "An elephant is a rough mat."
Another man who touched the trunk said: "It is not a mat but a snake." Still another man
who touched a leg declared that he was right: "An elephant is a pillar".
Whereas REBT has a philosophical basis, Zen does not pretend to be a philosophy, neither does
Zen consider mysticism nor utopianism to be important issues. Although originally developed out
of the Buddhist heritage, Zen refers to, and is solely interested in the hard won genuine
experiences of The Buddha. Zen came into existence to denote that it is not equivalent to
Buddhism. Zen is not an "ism" at all, but is in essence a relatively permanent emotional
experience of happiness and inner harmony despite the hassles of life. The appropriate category
to which Zen belongs is that of a way of life, a lifestyle that forms an antidote to life-inherent
suffering; thus, it is more a kind of psychotherapy than a religion.
REBT would appear an excellent partner for Zen because the two methods have
much in common in their construction of (social) reality and creation of representational models
of the world. They also complement each other also in their main techniques to reach inner
balance concerning action, emotion, and cognition. Unlike Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli, Fritz
Perls and (later in his life) Carl Rogers, who tried to incorporate spiritual issues in their work, we
take an opposite stance. As REB-therapists, we do respect the boundaries between therapy versus
theology, while employing various kinds of meditation - as techniques - in nonreligious ways.
REBT and Zen can largely - but not completely - be merged with each other. REBT is primarily
concerned with "cure" (or improvement) but also includes "growth" (the search for meaning or
self-actualisation) whereas Zen is primarily directed towards "growth" but also includes "cure"
(that necessarily precedes self-actualisation). To avoid a mishmash, it is important to underline
the specificity and integrity of each discipline.

The no-nonsense orientation

I (AE) have described how I came to REBT largely through my interest in philosophy, my hobby
from the age of sixteen (Ellis, 1984b, 1990b, 1994c). My favourite philosophers were not usually
armchair intellectuals but activists who applied philosophy to human happiness and encouraged
people to do something to change their misery-creating thinking. Among others they included:
Schopenhauer, Santayana, Russell, Emerson, Thoreau, Kant, and Dewey. An active and "nonmusturbatory" attitude is in full accord with Zen, where the adage "Be in this world but don't
cling to this world" applies. Zen promotes tranquillity or a peace of mind - perhaps the term
"heart," referring to affect, would appear more suitable than "mind" - which may imply the
misunderstanding of quietism. The following koan is a classic one to illustrate the case in point:
Once (in the 8th century AD) a monk was sitting cross-legged all day long in meditation.
His master asked him what he sought by doing so. "My desire is to become a Buddha",
the monk answered. Hereupon the master picked up a piece of brick and began to polish
it on a stone, explaining that he wished to make a mirror out of the brick. The monk
reacted astonished: "But no amount of polishing will turn the brick into a mirror." "No
amount of sitting cross-legged will make you a Buddha either", the master replied.
Although The Buddha serves as a model, Zen is not a religion. Buddha statues are
considered worthless in Zen. They are good for fuelling the stove to warm oneself against the
cold. Zen opposes idolatry and worship. Like REBT, it does not deify or devil-iffy anybody or
anything. Questions like, "Who is the Buddha?" will find answers like: "Three pounds of flax",
"Clean your mouth", or "A dried piece of manure". The Zen master who made the last statement
(Yun Men, 10th century AD) was once declared unanimously to be China's wisest man (Blyth,
1970).
The no-nonsense orientation of Zen towards life may be illustrated by numerous
examples (Kwee, 1993, 1996a, 1996b). One example refers to Pu-Tai, the Buddha with a big fat
belly who lived in the first half of the 10th century. It was told that he was very much in need to
urinate and wanted to do that against a Buddha statue of some monastery. When the abbot
furiously ordered him to spring a leak elsewhere, he answered: "Could you show me a spot where
The Buddha dwells not?" Another example tells about a disciple who thought that he just reached
Buddhahood. To prove this he cleaned his arse with an old sutra. When asked by his master
Hakuin (18th century) how he could do such a thing, he answered: "Since I am a Buddha, what is
wrong with cleaning my Buddha-arse with a sutra?" Hakuin replied: "Assuming that you have a
Buddha-arse, how can you clean it with old paper? You should do that with brand new paper!"
Hereupon the monk asked for forgiveness (Kaiten, 1915).
The following narrative allegedly based on history is a warning for those who are
inclined to deify The Buddha or any other teacher. For The Buddha truth is relative, meaning that
truth is what is functional or useful for a certain individual at a specific place and time during
one's life:
Once The Buddha and his disciples spent a rainy night in a tavern. The keeper of the inn
was an opponent of The Buddha and his teachings. To test The Buddha he gave him a
room with a leaking roof. When The Buddha asked for another room, the landlord

sarcastically asked: "How can a little bit of water disturb someone who has conquered all
suffering?" The Buddha smiled and countered: "Indeed, I tell you, a little water means
nothing for someone who has conquered suffering, but if I want to sleep I don't wish to
swim".
Accordingly, REBT contends that what is deemed "rational" by one community, group, or person
can easily be regarded as "irrational" by another group or person. The REB-therapist persuades or
even cajoles the client to engage in doing something s/he is afraid of doing, which itself serves as
a forceful counter-propaganda agency against the nonsense s/he believes (Ellis, 1962, p.95).
Another example is given by an anonymous master, probably five centuries ago,
who lectured a group of bald-headed monks on "enlightenment" (de Groot, 1988):
What have you baldheads, disciples of The Buddha, done? You have raised The Buddha
to your Lord. You have made a legend out of his life to satisfy your phantasy. You have
deified and worshipped him. You have learned his words by heart and made them
sacred. You have established schools, written books and discussed endlessly. You have
built temples and made many statues. You have burned incense night and day. You have
created dogmas and creeds. You have invented do's and dont's, and exercised a lot.
Baldheads, you have deceived yourselves and are lost. You have thus filled your minds
with nonsense and crap that do not really matter. You fools, listen to me. I shall reveal
you the secret of enlightenment: "It does not exist!"
Zen, in fact, is demoralising for people hankering after religion in a rigid or dogmatic way. A
moderate instead of a fanatical form of religion is hardly incompatible with REBT or Zen. Note
the similarity to the REBT vantage point that rationality is not to be elevated to something
"holy". If one absolutely believes in REBT, then one gets oneself really into real trouble. Though
it was once positivistic, REBT now takes a postmodern, liberal social constructivistic view of
"rationality" and psychotherapy (Ellis, 1990a, 1993, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d, 1995, 1996).
The ABC model
REBT is not only rooted in Stoicism but also in the writings of Epicures (4th century BC), who
strived for a long-term hedonism: the enjoyment of life led by reason. True happiness can be
found by means of serene contemplation and in a peace of heart, called ataraxia. REBT strives
for Epicurean hedonism and emphasises the great importance of philosophic contributions to
neurotic disturbance, as summarised in the stoic adage that people become emotionally upset not
by the events but by the views they take of them. The notion that cognitive functioning is an
important determinant of affect and behaviour was also observed by Shakespeare, who had
Hamlet say: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so". In several of my
lectures I (AE) have illustrated the combined practice of stoicism and hedonism by saying that "if
your aeroplane is bound to crash, you better enjoy until the last moment". How similar this
sounds to the Buddha's following analogy, in which he teaches about the either/or orientation:
Striking across a field a man came across a tiger. The tiger chased him while he fled.
When the man stood before an abyss he managed to cling to the root of a wild climbingplant and dangled over the brink. Above his head the tiger snarled at him. Trembling

with fear, the man looked downwards where another tiger was waiting to devour him.
Only the climber held him. But two mice, a white one and a black one, began to gnaw at
the plant. Then, suddenly, the man noticed a strawberry. While holding on tight to the
climbing-plant with one hand, he picked the strawberry with the other. "How sweet it
is!", he exclaimed.
In technical terms of REBT: It is not the Activating event (A) that creates
disturbed emotional and behavioural Consequences (C), but largely people's own irrational
Beliefs (B). The message that humans are largely responsible for their own emotions and
disturbances echos The Buddha's words: "It is foolish to see any other person as the cause of our
own misery or happiness" (Strig, 1964). This basic principle of REBT has been illustrated
earlier by a famous Jataka story, the fable about The Buddha and the hare:
Once upon a time there was a hare sleeping under a mango tree. Suddenly he heard a
loud noise and he thought that it meant that the end of the world was coming, so he
started running. When the other hares saw him running, they asked: "Why are you
running so fast?" The hare answered: "Because the world is ending". Hearing this, they
all joined him in his flight. The deer saw the hares running and asked: "Why are you
running so fast?" The hares answered: "Because the world is ending", upon which the
deer joined them in their flight. Thus, one species after another joined the running
animals, until the entire animal kingdom was involved in a frantic flight that eventually
would have led to the demise of them all. When The Buddha saw the animals rushing
along in their panic, he asked of the last group that had joined in: "Why are you running
so fast?" "Because the world is ending", they answered. "That can't be true", said The
Buddha, "for the world has not come to an end yet; let's try and find out why they think
so". He questioned one species after another in succession, finally arriving at the hares.
They pointed at the one that had started the story, and The Buddha turned to him and
asked: "Where were you and what were you doing when you thought the world was
ending?" The hare answered: "I was sleeping under a mango tree". The Buddha replied:
"Then you probably heard a mango fall from the tree; the noise roused you from a deep
sleep, you thought the world was coming to an end and you took fright. Let's go back to
the tree you were sleeping under to find out whether this is indeed the case". Together
they went back to the tree and saw that a mango had actually fallen where the hare had
been lying. Thus, the Buddha saved the animal kingdom from annihilation.
By going back to the scene of the original incident (the A) the thought(s) about the end of the
world could be falsified (the B); this relieved the hare and the other animals from the feelings of
anxiety and panic (the C).
The A-B-C model - a cornerstone in the theory and practice of REBT - is in fact a
popularised version of the cognitive behavioural S-O-R paradigm (Stimulus-OrganismResponse). Conveying the A-B-C framework is one most relevant teaching task of the REBtherapist. Although quite simplified and unidirectional, the nature of the A-B-C's can be
interactional, overlapping and complex. Note that:
Emotional disturbance doesn't come from anybody's fucking childhood. The idea that
your mother made you disturbed is Freudian horseshit! The Freudians always forget to

ask the most relevant question: "Who listened to your mother's crap?" The answer is,
"You did!" And who carried on her slop to the present day? Again the answer is, "You
did!" As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and it is us!" We upset ourselves! Nobody
in human history was ever made upset (Ellis, in Yankura & Dryden, 1990, pp.40-41).
As for the A-B-C's or the BASICI.D. of multimodal therapy (Behaviour, Affect,
Sensation, Imagery, Cognition, Interpersonal relations, and Drugs related biological issues), Zen
is relatively more concerned with the A, the perception or Sensory modality. REBT is mainly
concerned with the B, the Cognitive and Imagery modalities. Both are interested in the C, which
represents the Affective, Behavioural, and Interpersonal modalities. While taking account of the
biological (or D.) modality, both REBT, multimodal therapy and Zen practice make use of all
modalities in bringing about change (cf., Lazarus, 1989, 1997; Kwee & Lazarus, 1986).
The performance basis
The original name I (AE) gave to my approach to psychotherapy was Rational Therapy (RT) and
then Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) (Ellis, 1957, 1962). Recently - in 1993 - I (AE) renamed it
REBT to stress the equal importance of its behavioural modality along with its cognitive and
affective modalities. Especially when serious behavioural symptoms are involved, such as in
obsessive-compulsive disorder, several kinds of phobias, and depression, REBT applies in vivo
performance-based techniques. Cognitive and emotive methods are also used to help the client's
self-instruction for relevant behaviour modification (cf., Lazarus, 1989). I (AE) have always
favoured implosive or massed in vivo exposure rather than gradual or imaginal desensitization
(Ellis, 1984, 1994c). Various homework assignments accompanied by self-reward and sometimes
self-penalisation (but not of course: self-damnation) and shame-attacking exercises are included
in REBT's behavioural modality. Furthermore:
I was wrong to call it...RT and then...RET...the term "rational" itself was probably an
error, because it mainly means empirical and logical (but)...as the postmodern thinkers
point out, we can have no absolute criterion of "rationality"..."(R)ational" has always
meant cognition that is effective or self-helping, not merely cognition that is empirically
and logically valid...If I were to rename RET today I might well call it cognitive-emotive
instead of rational-emotive therapy; but it is a little late in the game for that change...For
several reasons...RET has really always been...REBT...its treatment methods are quite
multimodal and significantly overlap with those of Arnold Lazarus... (Ellis, 1993c,
pp.257-258).
"Right action" is a Buddhist main issue and part of the "eightfold path" that can
take many forms. According to de Silva (1984, 1986, 1996) the range of behavioural strategies
found in the Buddhist literature is wide (de Silva, 1990, p.248):
When these are described using modern terminology and listed together, they look like
the contents page of a modern behavioural therapy manual! These include: fear reduction
by graded exposure and reciprocal inhibition; using rewards for promoting desirable
behaviour; modelling for inducing behavioural change; the use of stimulus control to
eliminate undesirable behaviour; the use of aversion to eliminate undesirable behaviour;

10

training in social skills; self-monitoring; control of intrusive thoughts by distraction,

switching/stopping, incompatible thoughts, and by prolonged exposure to them; intense,
covert, focussing on the unpleasant aspects of a stimulus the unpleasant consequences of
a response, to reduce attachment to the former and eliminate the latter; graded approach
to the development of positive feelings towards others; use of external cues in behaviour
control; use of response cost to aid elimination of undesirable behaviour; use of family
members for carrying out behaviour change programs; and cognitive-behavioural
methods - for example, for grief.
The Buddhist action-orientedness is illustrated by a parable, entitled "Kisagotama
and the mustard seed", telling how The Buddha dealt with pathological grief during his time:
This is a story about a mother who mourned and wept about the death of her child. Her
very young son was bitten by a poisonous snake. As she could not accept the fact of his
death, she was out of her senses with grief. Nobody could comfort her and at last she
desperately went to The Buddha to ask him for his advice. "How can my son be cured?"
she asked The Buddha. He replied: "There is only one way to help you and your child.
Look for a black mustard seed that has to come from a house where no one has ever died
and which should be given to you by someone who has no deceased relatives". So the
woman left, seeking from one house to the next, but she was unable to find such a black
mustard seed. Finally she realised what The Buddha must have meant with his
assignment and she was healed.
In order to make good use of the remaining 167 hours in the week, reality testing by means of
behavioural self-instruction and homework assignments assumes an important place in REBT
and also in Zen. Most behavioural techniques in REBT are aimed at facilitating meaningful
philosophical change for the client, but can also be useful in providing opportunities for skills
practice. Even though both practices are skeptical that any "objective reality" or "absolute truth"
exists, both help people to face and cope with probabilistic (and ever-changing) social realities
(Ellis, 1994c, 1995).
The empircal ground
An important common ground between REBT and Zen is that both appreciate an empirical
working mode and the logico-empirical methods of science, which are flexible and antidogmatic. Where feasible, REBT tries to help people internalise the scientific method and to use
it to solve their own emotional and behavioural problems for the rest of their lives. It hopes that
they will, during and after therapy, adopt flexible, undogmatic, empirically-oriented ways of
thinking that - it assumes - make up a main aspect of emotional health. It tries to teach clients that
it is preferable to use REBT effectively, but that there is no reason why they must absolutely do
so (Ellis, 1984b, 1994c).
In REBT, therefore, we endorse Beck's (1976) collaborative empiricism. The
therapist and the client discover and proof together whether the irrational thoughts and the
concrete treatment goals fit social reality. In a liberal postmodern fashion, REB-therapists know
that nothing can be proven absolutely. A "real" or "objective" truth does not exist (most
probably). At least it has not been proven until now. It is hard to believe that it can ever be found

11

by scientific observation and experimentation. Logical positivism is pass for REB-therapists.

Instead critical realism is embraced: All things and beings exist in a constant flux, there is no
incontestable truth, and reality is largely an intersubjective social construction.
Moreover, I (AE) also stress the notion that REBT is not sacred, and that if you
dogmatically believe in REBT, then you will find yourself in neurotic trouble. How similar these
words sound to the Zen saying "When you meet The Buddha on the road, kill him!" In order to
become the master of one's own inner path - i.e., to achieve self-mastery - one had better stop
being someone else's epigone. In fact, The Buddha himself is against any kind of epigonism or
zealotry and has a clear preference for (collaborative) empiricism. For instance, in a discourse he
once offered the following advice to the Kalamas (Kalupahana, cited by de Silva, 1993):
Do not accept anything from hearsay, because of tradition, or because of the reputation
of the teacher. Accept what you can see for yourselves as valid... When you have
verified for yourselves that this is wholesome and that is not, this is blameless and that is
blameworthy, this is conducive to well-being and happiness and that is conducive to
suffering and illness, then you will choose this as your practice and reject that.
Buddhist psychology (Kwee & Holdstock, 1996) that forms one root of Zen
developed outside of, and prior to, Western psychology and is thus "prescientific" (Katz, 1983).
However, it can offer testable hypotheses in a spirit that encourages empirical enquiry and
discourages some of the "New Age drivel", such as channelling, Tarot, handpalm reading, I
Ching, and numerology. The following didactic story about tackling guilt displays the
(collaborative) logico-empirical methodology:
A wife asked of her husband to promise never to take another woman after her death.
"And if you break your promise, I'll return as a ghost and won't allow you any rest", she
said, and so he promised. Unfortunately, a few months after she died, he fell in love with
another woman. Shortly after that he saw his ex-wife's spirit appearing, condemning him
for breaking his promise. The spirit knew everything he thought, felt, and did, including
all about his relationship with the new woman. He went to a Zen master for advice.
"Your first wife has changed into a spirit", the master explained. "Whatever you do, say,
or give to your new wife, she knows. She must be a very wise spirit. Behold, you have to
admire such a spirit. The next time she appears, you just arrange with her. Tell her that
she knows so much about you that you can't hide anything from her, and that you'll break
up your engagement if she can answer one question." "Which question do I have to put
to her then?", enquired the man. The master replied: "Take a handful of beans and ask
her exactly how many beans you have in your hand. If she can't tell you that, then she'll
never trouble you again". The next time the spirit appeared, he flattered her by saying
that she knew everything. "Indeed", the ghost answered, "and I know that you've been to
a ZEN master today". "If you know so much", the man insisted, "tell me how many
beans do I have in my hand?"... The spirit disappeared, never to reappear again.
REBT makes use of several types of disputing, such as logical disputing,
pragmatic disputing, and empirical disputing. The latter type of disputing is to explain that
absolutistic demands are usually inconsistent with known facts and observable data. Irrational

12

thoughts block the person from her/his moderate emotional-behavioural goals and do not stand
the test of empirical veracity.
On the humanistic stance
The Buddha underlined the tenet that human beings do inherently possess a self-directed freedom
of choice that is decisive for their psychological gate. "Liberation", "salvation", "enlightenment"
- in common words: "A self-realised relatively perpetuating state of health and happiness" - can
be attained depending on one's own choice, in spite of the "slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune". REBT takes a similar humanistic-existential outlook and is indeed doubly humanistic in
that it attempts to help people maximise their individuality, freedom, self-interest, and selfcontrol, while simultaneously trying to help them to live in an involved, committed, and
selectively loving manner with other humans (Ellis, 1973). It focuses mainly on human survival
and happiness rather than on any absolutistic or authoritarian world order or on supernatural
dictates. It views and accepts all humans as human, never as either subhuman or superhuman. It
emphasises some degree of free will and choice rather than rigid determinism or fate in human
affairs (Ellis, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d, 1996).
REBT sees all as people equal in their personhood and brings this into practice by
condemning the sin, but accepting the sinner. REBT is opposed to deifying or devil-iffying
human beings who are all considered unique (cf., Ellis, 1984). The practice of Zen breathes the
same tenet of individuality. The following story is told to illustrate how Zen appreciates Andr
Malraux's "la condition humaine" in dealing with someone's inferior self-image:
A famous general, a samurai, went to a Zen master. He felt insufficient when noting the
bright and wise master, overflowing with compassion, and asked: "Why do I feel
inferior? A short while ago I felt OK. I have seen death often and was never frightened.
Why am I afraid now?" The master said: "Wait; tonight, when everybody has gone, I'll
tell you". Throughout the day people came by to consult the master and the samurai
began to feel even more inferior. At dusk he asked for his answer, and the master took
him to the garden. It was a full moon night. The master said: "Look at these two trees
here, the big one and the small one blossoming now. They have been in my garden for
years already, and that never caused any problems. The small one has never told the big
one that it feels inferior. This tree is big, the other tree is small, why have they never
heard about inferiority?" The samurai was absorbed in thought and replied: "Because
they do not compare themselves with one another". The master responded with a smile:
"So you know the answer. Small trees also bloom beautifully, since they make no
comparisons".
In a most influential Buddhist textbook, the Dhammapada (Humphreys, 1987, p.93), we read:
By oneself, indeed, is evil done; by oneself is one injured. By oneself is evil left undone;
by oneself is one purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself. No one purifies
another.

13

One other much quoted passage from the Dhammapada reads as follows: "The task has to be
accomplished by yourself. The enlightened ones only teach the way". The same message is
expressed in The Buddha's last words he spoke to his brother before he died:
And whoever Ananda, now or after I am dead, shall be an island unto themselves and a
refuge to themselves, shall take to themselves no other refuge, but seeing Truth as an
island, seeing as a refuge Truth, shall not seek refuge in anyone but themselves - it is
they, Ananda, among my disciples, who shall reach the Further Shore! But they must
make the effort themselves (Humphreys, 1987, p.94; italics added).
Such an outlook concurs with the enlightened self-interest endorsed in REBT.
Emotionally healthy people put their own interests and goals first most of the time, while putting
those of significant others a close second. This is the only way to be able to give more to others,
to prevent emotional bankruptcy, and to preserve one's own integrity. One has to feed oneself,
dress oneself, brush one's own teeth, etc., and this principle of self-interest applies in the pursuit
of one's own happiness as well. However, such an attitude cannot be equated with egotism or
selfishness (the ruthless pursuit of one's own goals while cynically disregarding those of others).
Emotionally healthy people are also willing to accept the flip-side by accepting the responsibility
for their own psychological disturbances, instead of defensively blaming circumstances or others
for their own functioning. In the same tenor, emotionally healthy people accept that other people
and they themselves are imperfect mortal beings who are almost never old enough to learn. This non-utopian - humanistic stance is also reflected in the following Zen-story:
Zen-students stay at least ten years with their teachers before daring to lecture others.
Once, at a rainy day Tenno, who has become a teacher himself, visited Nan-in. Tenno
wore wooden sandals and carried an umbrella. After having welcomed Tenno, Nan-in
said: "You have left your sandals in the hall. I wonder where you have put your
umbrella. Did you place it on the left or on the right side of your sandals?" Confused,
Tenno could not give the answer, and realised that he was not yet able to be in Zen all
the time. It lasted six years more for Tenno to reach a state of Zen on-every-moment-ofthe-day.
On relativism
One of the core themes in REBT is to refute perfectionism. Indeed I (AE) was influenced by
Karen Horney, who emphasised the tyranny of the should. Shouldism or "musturbation" is allied
with dichotomous reasoning, also known as the "black or white" mode of thinking based on the
principle of tertium non datur: a thing is either A or not-A (instead of allowing more
classifications: tertium, quartum, quintum datur).
A dualistic way of dividing the world does certainly have advantages for the kind
of absolutistic logic formulated by Aristotle many centuries ago (4th century BC). Dualism
creates order out of chaos in the first instance and thus helps us understand the world a little
better, at least to a certain degree. However, when we get stuck in contradictions like good or
bad, friend or enemy, saint or sinner, and when we fail to see the middle ground, then this logical
device becomes a danger for sanity. The mind is apt to catch a disease that we might call

14

"Aristotelitis", because the tendency to perfectionism is likely to be part of the imperfect state of
the mind itself (Ellis, 1962, 1994c; Korzybski, 1933).
Believing in the real existence of these dichotomies, while forgetting that the mind
has artificially created them, is like eating the menu card by mistaking it for the meal. IndoEuropean languages are replete with black and white terms. Some other languages do have words
to denote variations between the two extremes. For instance, Innuits have 20 words along the
spectrum from love to hate. They have a word to denote: "I like you very much, but would not
like to go seal hunting with you" (De Bono, 1991). To see the colours of the rainbow in the
versatile contradictions around us is, metaphorically, to think like one of the two Alberts
(Einstein or Ellis) instead of thinking like an Aristotle, and to apply relativity (rationality) to the
intra- and interpersonal realms of life. We will even go so far as to submit that if one would be
allowed to describe the message of REBT's major philosophy of life and therapy in only one
word, that word is relativism.
Perfectionism includes the possibly inborn tendency of humans to see the black
only or the white only, instead of seeing all colours of the kaleidoscope. It is failing to recognise
that contradictions do not always fight against each other, but often complement each other. It is
failing to understand and accept that imperfection characterises growth and therefore life itself,
and indeed to recognise the fact that the only perfect state is death. As long as one grows one
remains imperfect. Only when growth ceases one is perfectly dead. Life and death make each
other complete. Completeness denotes a totality that reflects more of a quality (e.g. a relative
state of experiencing joy), whereas perfection refers to a quantity, a 100% that can never be
achieved in life, thus remaining an Utopia. Demanding oneself to achieve perfection or
"musturbation" is the recipe for neurotic disturbance.
According to Zen we live in a relative world of YinYang experiences instead of a
theoretical world of all-or-nothing type of thinking. The wisdom of YinYang is exemplified in the
following narrative:
Once there was a poor old man whose only possession was a white horse. For years his fellow
villagers advised him to sell this horse and make a lot of money. But the old man refused. "The
horse is part of my family and you don't sell your family", was his regular answer. One night the
horse disappeared and the people said: "You shouldn't have been so stupid not to have sold the
animal. Now you have nothing left. A bigger misfortune could not have happened to you". The
old man smiled and said: "Who knows whether it's a misfortune or not. The only thing I know is
that the horse is gone". A few weeks later the horse returned to the stable and brought 12 other
wild horses with him. Apparently he went to look for other horses and found his way back. The
villagers said: "Old man, you're right, it was not a misfortune at all, but a great fortune that the
animal broke out. Now you are a wealthy man". But the old man smiled and replied: " Who
knows whether this is a fortune or a misfortune. The only thing I know is that the horse came
back with 12 other horses". In the weeks that followed the son of the old man tried to tame the
wild horses, fell from a stallion, and broke both his legs. The villagers said: "Indeed it wasn't
such a good fortune that your horse brought all those other horses to you. You are completely
right. Now your son is an invalid and a bigger misfortune could not have happened to you". The
old man smiled and countered: "When will you stop at last pretending as if you know what
tomorrow will bring? The only thing I know is that today misfortune has befallen me, but that is
all I know". A few months passed by, a war broke out, and all

15

the young men of the village had to serve in the army. No one returned to the village alive. And
what did the villagers say to the old man when they met him...?
Perfect human beings do not exist as is underscored in the following Zen version
of an old wise rabbi-story:2
Once a famous master sat amid his students. All of a sudden he bent forward in deep
contemplation. The students waited curiously for the results of this deep inward
concentration of their master. After a while the master sat upright again, held both hands
upwards, and spoke blissfully: "I had great inspiration, I am going to write a book about
'The Perfect Man'". After this stunning announcement the students began to discuss what
this book would be all about. But then suddenly the master bent forward again to remain
in a long and very deep state of meditation. Nervously the students whispered that
something even more important would now be announced. Indeed, after a few moments
the master held his hands up again and expressed in a deep voice: "An even greater idea
just bubbled up in my mind!" The students became very excited, shouting in chaos
asking what it was. The master replied: "The wise idea that I just begot is, that I am not
going to write that book".
On the self
REBT helps people strive for an "egoless state of being", meaning that it objects to rating the
self. I (AE) have noted (Ellis, 1976), besides REBT only Zen to abandon (most of) the human
ego. In REBT, one's self - defined as the sum of one's overt and covert behaviours - is never
judged, simply because there is no accurate way to rate it. Only your performances, acts, and
deeds can be rated, mostly by how well they help you succeed or fail at your chosen goals. At the
worst, you can fail at specific tasks. Thus, you may overcome the fallacy of non sequitur that you
become identified with failures you may have committed (Ellis, 1973, 1976, 1994c; Hauck, 1991;
Mills, 1993).
Lazarus (1977) mitigates global self-ratings in clients with overgeneralised selfappraisals who suffer from self-blaming and self-damning propensities as follows:
Instead of viewing oneself as possessing a unitary "self" that amounts to one's total being, it is
important to tune into a plurality of "selves" across numerous situations. Thus, "I am useless!" is
a self-statement that implies zero value in all areas of life - useless as a sibling, a son or daughter,
spouse, parent, friend, acquaintance, colleague, movie-goer, tennis-player, oyster-eater, TVviewer, music-lover, plus innumerable other roles that constitute the "self". In place of the
widespread proclivity to place one's entire being on the line, a simple technique can often
counterbalance this unfortunate tendency. Thus, a client who had extreme anticipatory anxiety
over a speech he was to deliver was addressed as follows: ...Instead of saying "I am giving a
speech," think of your "self" not as one big "I" but as a whole complex of iiiiiiiiiiiiiii's. Each little
"I" corresponds to some facet of your being. So instead of saying "I am giving a speech",

* It is noteworthy to remark that the perennial psychologies of diverse orientations, like for instance ZEN and
Chassidism, have much in common (Kwee, 1996).
2

16

consider the fact that you are not on trial. It's not the total you. Think instead: "i am giving a
speech" (Lazarus, 1997,p.69).
Each role is a constructed personal reality which meaning can be understood when the therapist
listens to the client's story. Thus, the "self" is constituted by the integrated stories of all of her/his
most important roles, that change necessarily during one's lifetime.
As submitted before, human life finds itself in a changing flux, constantly growing
and decaying. Any final judgement of the self is incorrect, because an ongoing process will then
be impeded. It is impossible to say everything about a dynamic living and moving complex. Even
if a representative sample of all the aspects of the self is observed, the judgement of the total self
would be a pars pro toto, a fallacious identification of a concept with the "self". Thus, a rational
answer to such a compelling question as "Who am I?" cannot be given satisfactorily, because
whatever one says it is, it is not (Korzybski, 1933). REBT suggests a rational exercise in
relativity instead of overgeneralising, by only rating one's behaviour(s), as in the following
analogy (Walen, DiGiuseppe, & Wessler, 1980):
Imagine that you have just received a large basket of fruit. You reach into the basket and
pull out a beautiful red apple, and then a ripe juicy pear, and then a rotten orange, and
then a perfect banana, and then a bunch of grapes, some of which are musky and rotten.
How would you label the basket as a whole? Clearly, some of its contents are good and
some are bad; you'd want to throw away some of it, but not all of it. You see, the basket
represents you and the diversity of fruits that varies in ripeness or rottenness is like your
traits. Rating yourself by a trait is like saying that the basket is bad because it contains a
piece of bad fruit.
Like REBT, Zen particularly unmasks "I am..." statements as false identifications.
Perhaps the only "I am" statement that is correct is: "I am 80% water," but this refers to what
instead of who I supposed to be. Instead of saying "I am bad", it is better to say "I see myself (or:
some of my traits) as bad," just to avoid the is of predication implying that badness really exists
in the universe. The eminent Zen scholar Suzuki (1960) stated: "If a person is identified with
nothing more than an act, then the person is not a living human being at all, but a concept of the
mind" (p.46). A concept about the self turns it - a dynamic developing process - into something
that is abiding, static, rigid and thus not liable to change. Both Zen and REBT ad8vocate
unconditional acceptance of one's self as a "fallible human being" who is ready to take action for
change (Ellis, 1973, 1976, 1994c). In Zen, one speaks about accepting the self "without rank" or
"without (the emperor's) clothes" (Lin Chi, 9th century AD). A loving relationship with oneself is
recommended; in practice this means taking care of oneself first in order to be able to give more
to others. Altruism and egotism are discarded in favour of self-interest, a golden mean also
endorsed in REBT as explained before.
A discrepancy between REBT and Zen regarding the self is that Zen tries to
achieve something epitomised by the term satori, moments in which one paradoxically
experiences the "abolition" of the ego altogether. In Zen such a process of dis-identifying one's
self with one's overt and covert behaviour is called "detachment" (relative freedom from
attachment). This experience goes beyond the boundaries of rationality or relativity and might
even be qualified paradoxically as "absolute." We may wonder whether this is a delusion. But,
according to those who claim to have once experienced it, such as one of us (MK), it is definitely

17

not a psychosis. One is completely compos mentis/compos sui, before, during and after the
experience, and may be said to have a fully awakened and clear state of awareness. It is
impossible to fully describe this "perfect" (complete or fulfilled) state because one remains an
imperfect human being (who is sometimes not less meshugge than before).
To paraphrase William James's (1902) idea, it is as if one lets the waxing and
waning stream of consciousness flow down the river until it reaches the endless waters of the
ocean and with which it merges like a dew drop. Words fail to depict the complete experience.
But vigilant exhilaration or silent ecstasy (as if the whole body is in a state of orgasm) and a loss
of the ultimate fear, the fear of death, are essential characteristic features.
As stated earlier, such an experience in Zen is called satori, the best translation of
which is "selflessness" or self-realisation. Satori is the raison d'tre of Zen. Paradoxically, in
Zen, satori is met if one willfully succeeds in experiencing this "deflation" of the ego. Beyond
the satori comes a life that on the surface does not differ from the one before (eating breakfast
and washing the dishes, for example). Its "cash value" is found inwardly: One feels relatively
more reassured and "arrived," within a context of a more balanced state of affect than before. As
formulated in a Zen saying: "When sitting just sit, when walking just walk. Above all don't
wobble".
On cognitive strategies
REBT and Zen definitely differ in their concrete practices when dealing with cognitions. REBT
is concerned with changing irrational cognitions and replacing them with rational cognitions
through a process of internal dialogue and also through changing one's feelings and one's
behaviours (Ellis, 1994c; Ellis & Dryden, 1987; Ellis & Abrams, 1994; Lazarus, 1989). Zen does
implicitly the same and considers the internal dialogue as just one part of consciousness and in a
sense an unnecessary limitation of consciousness to the verbal faculty (cf., Schwartz, 1986).
Wegner's "white bear phenomenon" (Wegner, 1989, 1994) is relevant in this
respect. Thought suppression has a paradoxical effect as evidenced by robust empirical data. The
instruction not to think of white bears leads to a more frequent and intensive occurrence of white
bear cognitions in the stream of consciousness during or after the suppression period. In fact, this
finding offers the Zen way to handle cognitions - namely, to let them go, or leave them for what
they are - an experimental underpinning par excellence. This phenomenon occurs in a classic Zen
story:
Once there were two Zen monks travelling by foot on their long way back to the
monastery. On the road they saw a beautiful woman crying and close to desperation
because she was afraid to cross a dangerous river on her own. The woman asked the
older monk to carry her to the other bank. But he replied: "No, I can't, because that's
against the rules. I am forbidden even to look at a woman. Touching or carrying is
absolutely out of the question". Then she called on the younger monk and he, in silence,
carried her safely to the other side. Many miles further, already nearing the monastery,
the older monk spoke to his younger colleague, saying: "I'll report your misconduct to
the master!" The old man smiled and countered: "I have unburdened her from my
shoulders hours ago, but you are carrying her still".

18

In a recent experiment on "ironic processes of mental control" Wegner and Gold (1995) indeed
found that subjects who had suppressed thoughts of a still-desired relationship showed
heightened emotional reactions. Trying to forget painful thoughts seems not only to prolong the
misery, but makes it even worse.
In dealing with unwanted cognitions, the Korzybskian (1933) principle of "selfreflexiveness" is helpful in REBT and in Zen. In general, one is not conscious about one's own
thinking, one just thinks but does not identify one's thoughts as (just) thoughts. The lack of selfreflexiveness or meta-thinking, i.e. the inability to observe one's own thoughts, leads to the false
assumption that the content of one's thinking is necessarily true. For instance, if one fails to
identify the thought, "She does not like me", as a cognition, one is not likely to scrutinise its
contents as true and/or false. In REBT the therapist will subsequently argue the irrationality of
the cognition "She must like me, or else I am a worthless person!" In Zen the person will proceed
with detaching from the cognition. Walsh and Vaughn (1983) describe such a process of
disidentification as realising one's identification with a cognition and consciously distancing
one's self from this cognition. It is a process that goes from an ego-syntonic state to an egodystonic state, resembling Beck's distancing technique (Beck, 1976). Other cognitive behavioural
techniques are available to control unwanted intrusive cognitions that bear a striking resemblance
with Buddhist tactics of eliminating such thoughts during meditation as nicely reviewed by de
Silva (1985).
The importance of General Semantics (Korzybski, 1933) for REBT has been
emphasised time and again (Ellis, 1962, 1994a, 1994b). For instance:
[REBT] is one of the few truly semantic therapies that now exists... I stick very closely
to [some of its] principles as originally laid down by the brilliant Alfred Korzybski
(Ellis, 1977, pp.27-28). The more I think about Korzybski's masterpiece, Science and
Sanity, the more I am enthralled by its revolutionary title (Ellis, 1994b, p.218).
Self-reflexiveness was also formulated in Korzybski's famous map-territory analogy: The ideal
map represents a map of the map of the map, etc. Thus, one can speak words about words about
words, etc. On a verbal level there will always be an abstraction and therefore reduction of the
world as experienced on a nonverbal level, or, as Korzybski preferred to call it, a "silent" level of
sanity.
As MK has outlined before, this implies the existence of different levels of
abstraction, where each "higher" level leaves out data of the foregoing "lower" levels, thus
creating a potential source of dysfunctional (self-)communication, resulting in the end in
emotional disturbance (Kwee, 1982). At least four levels of abstraction with regards to a
(nonverbal) stimulus can be differentiated (see also Chapter 2):
1.
the perceptual (or observational) level (e.g., seeing or hearing);
2.
the descriptive (or objective) level (e.g., "this room is 3 by 2 metres");
3.
the inferential (or interpretational) level (e.g., "this room is small");
4.
the evaluative (or appraisal) level (e.g., "I hate this den").
Because "we read unconsciously into the world the structure of language we use...to be means to
be constructed" (Korzybski, 1948, p.35, italics added), one is advised to be aware of the
correspondence of the semantic structure constructed by the human mind (levels 2, 3 and 4) and
the structure of the world on a nonverbal level.

19

The Zen student is obviously interested in the "silent" level. He tries to function at
this level by acquiring the meditative skills to liberate or detach herself/himself from
preconceived ideas, hidden assumptions, rigid ways of thinking, etc., through the process of
disidentification from these mental phenomena. To let go does not mean that conflicting thoughts
have to be removed or repressed from consciousness (see Chapter 4), but only that one no longer
identifies one's self with them. It is evident that traumatic memories and experiences have to be
emotionally worked through first, before such a detachment can take place. That is why
psychotherapy had better precede meditation, especially in those instances when the meditator is
psychologically disturbed.
The interface revisited
In earlier publications satori has been differentiated in great Satori and little satori (Kwee,
1996a, 1996b). While the experience of the great Satori belongs to the realm of spiritual silence,
not to the field of (verbal) psychotherapy, little satori is a Eureka-experience mainly of a
psychological nature that one encounters in everyday life. REBT - or at least my (AE's) version
of it - does not deny that satori, or a state of unusual ego detachment, exists, nor that it may lead
to some beneficial results (Ellis, 1994; Hearn, 1994; Moore, 1994). But it is sceptical about all
"transpersonal", "mystical" or "no-mind" experiences for several reasons:
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

People usually consciously bring on satori experiences. They therefore include

volition and mindfulness. Furthermore, people desire to achieve satori. They wish
to have this experience and enjoy it. It therefore is not really utter detachment or
desirelesness.
The human brain, "mind" or "psyche" is practically never quiet, except for
possibly a few seconds at a time - if then! Even in deep states of
"unconsciousness" it seems still to be alive - and often kicking and screaming!
"No-mindfulness" either does not exist or is rare.
Many "visions" and "experiences" of "knowing" the secret of it all, being
personally in touch with God or the universe, having conscious awareness of
unconsciousness, etc. result from using drugs, from organic anomalies, from
psychotic states, from other brain aberrations, and come to an end when the
aberrant brain state ameliorates. Practically all "transpersonal" and "mystical"
experiences are quite probably similarly aberrant, even though those who
experience them are not usually psychotic.
When satori-like "revelations" are experienced, with or without drugs, they often
include "absolute truths" that are "inexpressible", cannot be clearly communicated
to others, do not lead to miracles, and cannot be empirically or experimentally
checked. In this sense, these truths seem to be, at least for us "normal" humans,
illusory.
Although feelings of great self-fulfilment or ecstasy frequently accompany the
satori experience, it may also include distinct disadvantages and unfulfilling
activities and processes, such as: (a) Spending huge amounts of time and energy
for relatively few moments of "full self-actualisation"; (b) Giving up other

20

6.

7.

important intellectual, emotional and physical pursuits; (c) Being over-absorbed in

oneself and under-absorbed in human relationships.
Satori experiences may serve as a distraction from what REBT calls the "elegant"
solution to neurotic disturbances. According to this solution, when people fully
and consciously accept grim social reality and when they unconditionally accept
their self and other people - but not accept their destructive behaviours - they not
only make themselves unneurotic but less disturbable. They then often
automatically reduce their absolutistic shoulds, oughts and musts and rarely
seriously upset themselves about anything, yes, anything. All kinds of distraction
methods - such as relaxation, meditation, and satori experiences - can appreciably
help them to overcome their present disturbances. But when taken to extremes,
these distractions and enjoyments may (paradoxically!) distract them form working
to achieve the elegant solution of less disturbability. REBT encourages working
for this state plus increased self- and social-actualisation (Ellis, 1991). Extreme
satori experiences may encourage the latter without the former, not a bad
solution!, but still not so good.
If we achieve satori - or a "non-thinking state of mind" - we had better use our
thinking state of mind - as well as our feelings and our actions - to make ourselves
more effective and happier. In other words, we had better use REBT after we do,
and if we do, achieve satori!

In general Zen adepts are cautious and usually warn novices to be attentive for the
many pitfalls that can occur during its practice in the pursuit of satori. The caveats vary from "a
holier than thou-syndrome", to using - energy depleting - (soft) drugs, to life abnegation to selfabsorption, etc. It includes the caveat of anarchy because Zen uses to ridicule openly and makes a
joke out of anything that could possibly become sacred, by for instance scoffing at the Buddhas.
Once - after having experienced satori - a Zen master even declared that he finds Zen not so
much worthwhile after all. It is this irony that makes any dogmatism in Zen impossible to survive
and places instead humour in the centre of its system.
Famous is the experience and deeper meaning of the smile in Zen that has found
some experimental underpinning (Zajonc, Murphy, & Inglehart (1989). For instance, subjects
who produce the sound "eee" (like in cheese when smiling) have a cool forehead and a
corresponding positive affect, while subjects who utter "oh" for instance, do not accrue such a
result. Sharing the same relativistic philosophy, the tactics of REBT are generally ready to be fit
in Zen. However, because of the cultural differences, some Zen meditation exercises will often be
considered palliative or too much alien to be directly applicable within the context of REBT (e.g.,
the laughing or smiling meditation).
By using metaphors, stories, slogans, humour, irony, exaggerations,
contradictions, and jokes REBT not only resembles but might even be considered equivalent to
Zen. Illustrative is the following verbatim example:
Cl.
AE

A couple of months ago, when I was anxious, I did what you're saying. I put a
picture in my head, about my wife or about some other sexy woman, and then my
anxiety would leave and I'd be all right sexually.
Yes, as soon as you focus on anything else, your anxiety will temporarily go. Let
me tell you a famous fable. A king didn't want to marry his daughter to a favorite

21

Cl.
AE
Cl.
AE

prince, who passed all the tests he was given, so that it looked like he would marry
the daughter. But the king was horrified at that, so he said to his wise men, "Look!
You find a test this son-of-a-bitch can't pass, or I'll cut your balls off!" The wise
men were very horrified about this. So they thought and thought and finally came
up with a test that the prince couldn't pass. Do you know what it was?
No, I can't think of one.
"Don't think of a pink elephant for 20 minutes!" You see, if you say to yourself, as
the prince did, "I must not think of a pink elephant! I must not think of a pink
elephant!-"
Then you're going to think about just that.
Right! And that, you see, is exactly what you're doing. You're saying, "I must not
be anxious!" Then you'll be anxious. Or, "I must be good sexually." Then you'll
make yourself so anxious that you won't be able to concentrate on sexual
enjoyment. Because to do well at sex, you have to focus on sexual thoughts - on
your wife or on some other desirable woman. You have to have sexy thoughts. But
if you say to yourself, "Oh, my God! Suppose I get anxious! Suppose my cock
won't go up and stay up!" Then it won't! So that's what you're doing. You're
demanding that you have to do well; and you're also insisting that you must not be
anxious. So if we can get you to say to yourself, and really believe, "I'd like to do
well, but I never have to" and, "I'd very much prefer to be unanxious, but fuck it, if
I'm anxious, I'm anxious!" then you'll get over this nonsense that you're now telling
yourself. Whenever you take a preference, a goal, a desire, and you say, "I have to
achieve it! I must perform well!" you're making yourself immediately anxious.
That's where your anxiety comes from. And that's what people do: They take their
strong desires and say, "I absolutely must achieve them! I have to; I've got to!"
Instead of, "I'd like to achieve them, but if I don't, tough! The earth won't stop
spinning!" (Ellis, 1996, pp. 228-229).

Another similarity occurs in a group therapy session. One member reported his
guilt feelings about the fact that he thinks of other women during sex with his wife. After
resisting the idea that such thoughts are "normal", I (AE) told him the following joke to
emphasise that it is usually difficult to always maintain a high degree of physical attraction
within a long-term marriage (Yankura & Dryden, 1990, p.129):
A couple had a good sex and marital relationship. They'd been married for 25 years, their
children were grown-up and married themselves, and everything was fine. They decided,
"Hell it's our 25th wedding anniversary - we'd better do something special!" So they
went for a gourmet meal, which they love. But neither one got very aroused or excited.
Finally, after about ten minutes, the wife patted her husband on the shoulder and said,
"Well dear, I guess on this night of all nights, you're having trouble thinking of someone
else, too!"
The message in this anecdote is very similar to that of a little story told by a Zen master:
An ill woman who went to many doctors and tried already several medicines, but
nothing really helped. Desperately she went to a Zen master who assigned her to repeat

22

the following mantra at least ten minutes a day: "I am not ill, I am healthy". After a few
months she recovered. Because her sex-life was at a low pitch she went to consult the
master again for another mantra. When she returned home her husband wanted to know
her new assignment, but she refused to tell him. During the ensuing months her libido
improved, and the husband became very curious. On a Sunday morning he was unable to
suppress his curiosity and tiptoed to the bathroom door where, to his big surprise, he
heard her murmuring: "He is not my husband, he is not my husband, he is not my
husband".
The famous shame-attacking exercises of REBT in which clients engage publicly
in behaviours "normally" considered foolish or silly resemble ordeals that could also be assigned
to Zen novices on their way to satori. These are for instance: Go into a drugstore at a crowded
hour and say to the clerk in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear, "I want a gross of
condoms. And because I use many of them, I want a special discount". Or: Ride the subway and
announce the stops in a loud, clear voice, for instance "Forty-second street!" Then, stay on the
train. Or: Go to a department store at a busy time and unashamedly announce the time at the top
of your longs: "It's 4:45 p.m. and all's well!"
Closing comments
To understand the goals and the means of REBT vis vis Zen, it might be useful to compare and
contrast the positions taken by their respective founders: Albert Ellis and The Buddha.
The fact that the latter lived 2500 years ago in the East suggests seemingly
irreconcilable differences with a modern person from the West such as I (AE) am. However, if
demystified, the thoughts of The Buddha turn out to contain essential commonalities. The
Buddha was a prince who abandoned his worldly belongings in search of self-mastery, a choice
that fits in the cultural context of the time (events aptly depicted in Bertolucci's film "Little
Buddha"). In search of wisdom, he led an ascetic life for six years, after which austerities at the
age of 35, he experienced a blissful state. He then condemned his unnatural self-torturing
withdrawal as foolish, and started a fulfilling life, as normal for a teacher of his time, focussing
on how to develop a virtuous life. A central tenet in his discourses is to uncovet, which in REBT
terms would mean to uncling or to detach from "musts" and change these into "wishes". The
Buddha espoused ideas, which are imbued with rationality/relativity. Among other standpoints,
The Buddha saw his teachings not as a church-like religion but as a lifestyle ("right livelihood")
to cope with life-inherent suffering. He pointed out that, to achieve inner balance, meditation
should be practised without abandoning the world ("not fleeing to the Himalayas but staying on
the market place"), and that Nirvana is not a Utopia but just a name for an experience in the
"herenow," just as one may, for instance, experience in a genuine deeply-felt smile. Apparently
The Buddha never spoke about Nirvana, instead he talked about the meditative lifestyle that will
purify oneself from troubling emotions.
There exists no permanent ego or self in each human being. The individual is the
sum of her or his qualities taken together without bothering about the "soul" as some permanent
or persisting substratum (Zuercher, 1962). The Webster's New World Dictionary definition of
Nirvana as "the state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual excellence
and life absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit, or by the extinction of all desires and

23

passions", sounds like drivel from a Zen vantage point. When one lives Zen, one is only
interested in experiencing satori, as was attained through the ages by many Buddhas. The
remainder of Buddhism - including worship, rituals and temples - is irrelevant devotional fluff,
which, however, does not mean that these aspects cannot cause the experiencing of satori.
A meditative lifestyle, in a sense, can be seen as going through the "hells" of rage,
panic, or depression to full awareness, to achieve a state of balanced happiness, where feeling
appropriate or healthy emotions, such as grief after a loss of a significant person, have a definite
place. To free oneself from the attachments/preoccupations called egotism or greed is to
overcome the fallacy of identifying one's overt or covert behaviours with one's self. It is therefore
incorrect to state that Zen encourages people to become desireless - although some adepts might
think so - or to slip into a semi-schizophrenic state of withdrawal. Note the message in the
saying: "The highest truth is contained in carrying water and chopping firewood", that reflects the
attitude of Zen towards daily living, which nowadays can be observed in, for example, the SinoJapanese working ethos. Zen at its best strives for happiness, a transcultural experiential state that
can be achieved by means of meditation or by any other technique expediting this state. Zen does
not try to eliminate appropriate or healthy affects like irritation, concern, or sadness, when one
experiences unfortunate life events.
REBT and Zen have very similar goals, as both strive for "intense appropriate
feeling, commitment to life, and the unfrantic search for maximum enjoyment" (Ellis, in Hoellen,
1986, p. 90). I (AE) had my share of difficulties, such as being shy in my youth, being neglected
by my father when I was a child of divorced parents, suffering from a kidney disease early in my
life, and living with diabetes until my present age of 85. Like The Buddha, I try to practice what I
preach, and worked my ass off to achieve self-mastery from my childhood onwards. For instance,
I overcame my shyness by approaching 100 women for a date in a park at the age of 19, and by
delivering numerous public talks to overcome my public speaking phobia. By searching for
knowledge, earning my PhD at the age of 34, and leading a rational life myself, I have become a
relatively happy man who wants to die in the saddle, preferably at the age of 110. I have been
voted as one of the most influential psychotherapists of this century (Smith, 1982; APA, 1986;
Warner, 1991; Dryden & Ellis, 1990).
REBT and Zen are often similar, especially when REBT is directively taught as a
non-dogmatic way-of-life in the "herenow", when it insists that "life is a hassle", when clients use
behavioural homework (such as "shame attacking exercises") to overcome irrationally-feared
situations, when "non-cerebral" emotive techniques of humour, and the pursuit of happiness are
emphasised (Ellis, 1987). In a way, one might argue that general REBT often includes the
teachings of ZEN (except its culturally alien techniques) and modern ZEN often includes REBT's
relativism. ZEN, REBT, and General Semantics often significantly overlap and reinforce each
other (Ellis, 1994b; Johnston, Bourland, & Klein, 1994).
As in General Semantics, Zen aims to take a regular break from the "unsane"
crowded chaos of a turbulent world to correct the bad effects of uncontrolled circularity (Bois,
1973). Reaching for what is called in General Semantics a "silent level experience" is a way of
breaking out of the circle of sensing and thinking what one used to sense and think, and of feeling
and behaving how one used to feel and behave. In fact, such an experience is also the essence of
Zen, which can be attained by training not to talk to oneself. In fact, this satori level of
experiencing without any naming at all is striven for in Zen meditative practice. Johnson (1946)
describes the general semanticist's meditation - which is similar to a formal Zen exercise - as
follows:

24

Hold an object (ashtray, pencil...) in both hands, and look at it steadily, examining it. As
soon as you begin to verbalize about it, put it down. Take it and try it again. See, how
long you can stay "on the silent level" ... This should be practiced for a short time each
day ... You can also do it while watching a person ... listening to music ... (p.493).
Weinberg (1959) used the term "acceptance" to denote the "silent level" in the emotional realm,
which is in full accord with Zen and REBT:
The act of acceptance, the will to bear discomfort, has an immediate and profound effect
upon the intensity of the pain. It becomes much more bearable, less threatening...
Learning to accept what at the moment cannot be changed produces what I should like to
call an enlightened stoicism (p.188).
REBT and Zen are both constructivistic and rationalistic in that they convey
changes that might go far beyond symptom reduction (cf., Wessler, 1992). In some ways REBT
emphasises symptom relief and less disturbability, while Zen emphasises "personality" change or
growth, observable in a modified lifestyle. But REBT is also interested in a philosophical impact
on clients and is thus a constructivistic approach as well (Ellis, 1990a). Being mainly a
constructivistic approach, Zen longs for growth and happiness, which can be attained only after
solving neurotic habits by rational means. Elegant REBT, striving for symptom elimination and
philosophical change, also aims at growth and happiness. In its therapeutic phase, Zen - if
necessary - works through emotions via several useful techniques of meditation, for instance
laughing meditation, crying meditation, anger meditation, sexual love meditation and other kinds
of breathing exercises to prepare the adept for the last breath (see for a further discussion Kwee,
1990c; 1993).
A koan attributed to The Buddha himself depicts the Zen flavour of the art of
dying. Life consists of moments in the "herenow" and one day we shall all experience our last
moment when there is no longer any future. That moment can be a great lesson about the art of
living. Further techniques in teaching clients relativizing differ between REBT and Zen, as has
been explained in this chapter. In the cognitive area REBT often works via disputing irrational
self-talk and self-defeating meanings, while Zen mainly uses story telling, analogies and
metaphors. But REBT - like Lazarus's (1989, 1997) multimodal therapy - uses many cognitive,
emotive and behavioural methods that include some of these Zen techniques and other processes.
In conclusion, it is mainly in the striving for the "silent" level - or, because this
involves a prolonged absence of words, a "non-thinking state of mind" - that Zen and REBT
differ essentially. Since happiness is the sought benefit, the shortest route counts. And this might
be a different one for each individual living on this globe, East and West alike. Let us end with
the words of Wittgenstein in his Tractatus (1951): "About which one cannot speak, about that
one has to keep silence" and conclude, in the present Zeitgeist of psychotherapy integration, that
East and West, "the twain" have met in the interface between REBT and Zen.
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