ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Buddhist theory of the skandhas, showing how clinging is established. When health professionals take people out into nature, one aspect of what health professionals are doing is to help people to create new stories. Collective stories are strong, but generally even the compelling associations they evoke are interwoven with personal ones. The process of interpretation and distortion begins at the simple level of language. Experiencing is an inner dialogue between direct perception and words. The process of attachment is described in a number of Buddhist teachings. Notably two of these, the skandhas and the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, describe the process as a cycle of perception, reaction and becoming. In the Ten Directions model, working at the personal level involves exploring the way that individual histories affect people's relationships with the environment. The theory of object-relation proposes that the mind is conditioned by the object of attention.
