Reports and questions

Ken: Some traditions have really cheery ways of looking at things. Dilgo Khyentse was once asked why do we practice? And he said, “To make the best of a bad situation.” [Laughter]

But here’s something from the Sufi tradition:

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.
You asked me what to do about them.
It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.
Face that one first.

Your Problem, Reflections, Idries Shah, p. 79

So, how’s it going as a member of the human race? [Pause] Let’s take the first part of this evening and hear about some of your practice experience, questions, challenges, or insights.

Chuck: Claire and I have been wondering for the last 15 years about the last sentence on page five.

Ken: Who and you? Claire. Oh, in this book?

Chuck: Yes. The mahamudra book.

Claire: The last paragraph on page five.

Chuck: And then there’s the next paragraph on the other page:

This essence is not something that exists within the mind-stream of just one individual person or just one buddha. It is the actual basis of all that appears and exists, the whole of samsara and nirvana.

(Then on the next page it sort of follows along with it.)

The Great Brahmin Saraha stated: “The single mind is the seed of everything. From it, samsaric existence and nirvana manifest.”

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Erik Pema Kunsang (translator), p. 6

What does all that mean?

Claire: And is there an absolute?

Ken: So that’s the real question, is there an absolute?

Chuck: That’s her question.

Ken: Okay, what’s yours?

Chuck: Mine is, what does it mean? I’m primarily interested in the one: “The single mind is the seed of everything. From it samsara and nirvana manifest.” Now, does this mean each one of us? Is that what it’s trying to say? It seemed so lonely. [Laughter]

Ken: May I be glib first? It’s only lonely if there’s somebody there.

Chuck: [Laughter] I see. So, there isn’t even a single mind seed?

Ken: Well, no, there isn’t. This is a very good question, Chuck. Let me respond to Claire’s question first, because that’s a little easier. At least for me, it’s a little easier. It may not be actually easier, but for me it is. Is there an absolute?

Claire: Is that single mind?

Ken: Yes. Well, in a phrase that became a cause celebre in the last decade, it depends what you mean by is.

Claire: Actually, it depends on what the meaning of is is.

Ken: Okay. It depends what the meaning of is is.

Claire: “It is the actual basis.”

Ken: Okay. It says, “It is the actual basis.”

Claire: It says, “It is the actual basis of all that appears and exists, the whole of samsara and nirvana.”

Ken: Yeah. Now, it’s one thing to have a philosophical discussion, and we can go into a philosophical discussion, but in my experience it’s relatively useless. What I would like to invite both of you to do is: when you read this, there’s something that happens in you. Okay. Claire, you’re first. What happens?

Claire: I would love there to be an absolute. I would like to have something to believe in, because I don’t believe in any of this, as you well know. [Laughter] If you’re a buddha and I’m a buddha, and we both experience emptiness, are we both experiencing the same thing?

Experiencing the same thing but not having the same experience

Ken: Ah, now you move on to Chuck’s question, which is the more difficult question.

Claire: You haven’t answered mine.

Ken: Well, you just took care of yours by revealing what the real question is, which I appreciate. Thank you. It’s wonderful that you should ask this question because a week or two ago, I received an email inviting me to participate in a documentary film—to be interviewed—on the subject of the vision of nondual truth. And there were going to be representatives from the Buddhist tradition, and the Christian tradition, and the Sufi tradition, and Jewish tradition.

And the purpose of the documentary was to show that—while it may be expressed differently in different traditions—the vision of nondual truth was the same in all traditions. And so I emailed back the producer and said, “I’m very honored and a little surprised that you’re asking me to participate. And I’d be very happy to. But you should know that what you take as a premise, I take as a question. And this may affect your interest in having me participate.”

So literally 10 minutes after I sent the email, my phone rang, “What do you mean?” [Laughs] And so we had about a 15 or 20 minute discussion, the core of which was something like, “Ken, when there’s no duality, there’s no experiencer and there’s no experience.”

I said, “Oh, are you out cold?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you out cold? Are you unconscious when you’re experiencing nondual truth?”

“No.”

“Oh! So, there’s some awareness of some kind. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, awareness is an experience.”

He went, “Hmm, okay.”

“And how can I tell whether the experience you’re having of nondual truth is the same as the experience I’m having of nondual truth? We can’t even tell whether the experience of the strawberry pie you were eating and the experience I’m having when I’m eating strawberry pie, is the same experience. We can’t even know that. How can we tell whether our experience of nondual truth is the same?”

So, there is no way—there is absolutely no way—of determining whether the experience one Buddhist is having is the same as the experience another Buddhist is having, or if the experience you’re having is the same as the experience Chuck is having, etc. There’s absolutely no way of knowing that.

Claire: Well, then what does that mean? What does this mean that it is the “seed of everything?”

Ken: Okay. Now this goes back to something that we discussed in the first class. What is the one thing you know?

Claire: That I’m aware.

Why are we here?

Ken: Exactly. Yes, that’s the only thing. Now in your world, in the world which is illuminated by your awareness, which is not the world of stuff—it’s the world of your experience—how are things? How are things in your world?

Claire: My world is a good world.

Ken: Why are you here?

Claire: Why am I here?

Ken: So it’s basically a good world, but there’s something that gnaws at you, right?

Claire: [Pause] I think you’re a good teacher.

Ken: [Laughter] Why is that important to you?

Claire: The reason that I’m here, I think, is rather serious. And it has to do with this question. I would love to find something to believe in, because I don’t believe in nirvana, and I don’t believe in samsara. I don’t believe.

Ken: Why would you like to—or love to, as you put it—find something? Why would you love to find something to believe in? If you found something to believe in, what difference would that make?

Claire: Well, it really wouldn’t make any difference at this point in my life, but it would be interesting for me to know that, yes, there is a basis for all the things that I do. My awareness is what it is, my insight, the clarity which I nurture and have had experiences of—

Ken: That there’s some basis for that. What difference would it make knowing that there was some basis for it?

Claire: I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Ken: But it gnaws at you, doesn’t it? Yeah. Okay. That’s all I wanted; that it gnaws at you. Okay. So by this, what I’m trying to point out here is we know we’re aware; we’re aware of our world. And as we’ve talked about before, that world consists of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. And there’s something out of balance.

Claire: There’s something out of balance?

Ken: Yes. And the reason I can say that is there’s something that is gnawing at you. Okay? So, you’re here out of an interest in finding a way to address an imbalance that you experience.

Claire: Yeah. Perhaps. It’s better said than I’ve said it. [Laughter]

Ken: I think that was an agreement, don’t you? Okay. I’ll take that as a yes. That is why we study and practice Buddhism. Each of us has come here, and each of us undertakes this, because there’s something in each of us, and it may or may not be the same thing. That’s all conjecture. It’s something that gnaws; it disturbs. Sometimes it’s something that we can feel as being really upsetting and we’re really out of balance. And other times it’s just this little thing that keeps pushing at us or keeps us from resting. But it’s all the same reason. Now, what do you do about that?

Claire: Are you asking me?

Ken: Yes.

Claire: Sit.

Ken: Why?

Claire: Why? Because it’s the only thing that …

Ken: What does sitting do?

Claire: Because sometimes when I sit, or after I’ve sat, I have an insight into something that’s bothering me or gnawing at me. But this thing that I’m talking about now is much deeper than any of these others.

Ken: Yeah. But because of your experience with sitting—that has helped you to understand and to know things differently so that imbalances are addressed—you suspect that if you—

Claire: There may be an answer.

Ken: Okay, may. Fine. And so you’re willing to engage that path just on that basis, and that’s about it. Now, here’s the important point. Would believing in something actually help you in this?

Claire: [Pause] No. No, it wouldn’t. [Laughter]

The rocky path of not knowing

Ken: Okay.

Claire: Because what I do believe in is the ambiguity of not knowing.

Ken: Yeah. The not knowing provides a path, doesn’t it?

Claire: Yeah. But it gets rocky sometimes.

Ken: Oh, it does get rocky, you know. It also gets muddy, and sometimes it gets very, very narrow. Okay. Now, Chuck, your question: Is there one or many or something like that?

Chuck: Yeah.

Ken: Okay.

Chuck: “The single mind is the seed of everything.”

Ken: Now, does that mean the seed of everything in my world of experience, or the seed of everything in everybody’s world of experience? Is that your question?

Chuck: Yes, I think it should say for each individual.

Ken: Why?

Chuck: Because of what you were saying before; we have no idea whatever anybody else is thinking or what their world of experience is.

Ken: Is this okay with you?

Chuck: No.

Ken: No, it isn’t okay with you. What’s not okay about it? I think you said it earlier. It’s really lonely!

Chuck: Right. Yes. It’s one of these things that gnaw at you.

Ken: Okay. What experiences loneliness? [Pause] Or, may I go a step further? [Pause] Is what experiences loneliness, lonely?

Chuck: Not after it gets used to it. I mean, I’ve had times where I maybe go out on a long trip or something alone, and you start out, you feel a little bit alone.

A different kind of answer

Ken: Yeah. But I want you to look at—

Chuck: But then it clears up and—

Ken: But I want you to look a little deeper, okay? Let’s go back. What experiences loneliness?

Chuck: Well, this thing called “I,” I guess.

Ken: Is that what experiences loneliness?

Chuck: I think it’s a bodily experience and a mental experience, yes.

Ken: An emotional experience, yes. Okay. What experiences that? Now, this is important. [Pause] Go back to something that you and I messed around with many, many years ago. We did this a little bit the other day. So, just rub your hand on cloth. You experience texture, right? What experiences the texture?

Chuck: My awareness.

Ken: What experiences texture? Now, you look, right? What do you see?

Chuck: You don’t see anything.

Ken: Okay, so when you see nothing like this, you’re looking right at what experiences texture, right?

Chuck: Right. And that’s what experiences loneliness.

Ken: Yeah, but is it lonely?

Chuck: I don’t think so.

Ken: No. [Pause] Good. See what I’m pointing to?

Chuck: Yeah. On the exercise of capacity, I got to a point where I was looking at experience experiencing me. And then it’s all experience.

Ken: Yes. And what experiences that? Okay. And it becomes undefinable, right? That’s where you rest.

Chuck: I see.

Ken: You see. This may be revealing too much, but what the hell.

Student: We won’t get it anyway.

Ken: I hope somebody will get it. We have these questions. What is life? What am I? So forth and so forth. And our conditioning is such that we think there’s an answer; life is this and I am that … fill in the blank. And we further think that if we knew what filled in the blank, then everything would be fine. But this isn’t the case. It isn’t the case at all.

Just as Claire came to see in our little interchange that she started from the perspective, “I would love to believe,” but then saw that actually believing in something would be a hindrance in the very inquiry that she was engaged in. Any cognitive answer to these questions—I am … fill in the blank, life is … fill in the blank—is a stopping of awareness. It’s a block. It stops.

Well, this is very interesting. One of the genius aspects of Buddhism is that it encourages very, very explicitly, never stopping at anything. And it’s got all these tools; whatever you stop at, it blows it out, so that you can continue, just like the exchange I had with Claire. And that’s what all of that logic is about. It’s not about trying to prove anything. It’s about blowing up whatever’s blocking your path.

Chuck: I see. And then just looking.

Ken: And then you continue. What does this mean? It means that the answer to such questions as What am I? and What is life? is not a cognitive statement. It is the experience of awareness. That’s not the kind of answer we’re used to looking for. Do you follow? And what we’re doing in such practices as mahamudra, is developing the know-how, the capacity, and, hopefully, the willingness we have, to be able to engage that way. Because anything which says, “Okay, it is this,”—that’s a stopping point and everything dies right there.

So, when you’re reading these passages, don’t try to understand them intellectually or cognitively. I know this sounds a bit strange, and part of the problem is this was translated like 15, 20 years ago so the English is not as good as it could be. It’s not as clear as it could be, as you know. If you try to understand them intellectually or cognitively, it just ties you up or stops you. Rather, whenever you come across—and this is why I think your question here was very good—when you come across a phrase which throws something up in you, then move into that experience because something is waking you up there.

So open to that waking up, which is going to feel like, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on!” [Laughs] But that’s the sign that you’re waking up. Because there’s something there that has just removed, or undermined, or negated, or questioned, at least, something you actually believe in or want to believe in. And so here’s this statement which is saying … And that’s what all that jarring is, and confusion, and things like that. But that’s the waking up process.

Chuck: So just sit on it and meditate.

Ken: Yeah. And don’t meditate on it. Just be in the experience. And that’s essentially what we’re trying to do is learn how to be in the experience of whatever’s arising. This goes back to the point that I think Darren was raising last week or two weeks ago. When you’re awake, you don’t get to choose what you’re aware of. Someone could say, “That’s a real bummer.” But that’s just how it is. Okay. Any other questions? Steve, and then Kate.

The capacity to rest

Steve: Last week you talked about a wave being part of the ocean, and it’s an image that we’ve talked about before. And in the example you just went through with Chuck—Is what experiences loneliness, lonely?—for me, there’s a moment when it comes together, and then there becomes two. Very quickly, there’s this one here who doesn’t experience loneliness, and then there’s this one here who experiences loneliness. And I noticed that in some of the practice we had, for example, when you bring the thoughts into the field of awareness, that it’s like different things. So I’m just curious about … There’s a moment when it’s not. The first moment it’s not, and then it very quickly goes into that.

Ken: That’s entirely a question of capacity. You move into it, but you don’t have the capacity to rest there. So it splits because of the force of habituation. So as you practice this again and again, you build up the capacity gradually, so that you can stay. You can actually rest in that first moment of looking.

Steve: So, the instruction essentially would be …

Ken: Just come back.

Steve: Just come back into resting.

Ken: Yeah. Now, there’s nothing you can do to stop that. You only can create the conditions for it to happen.

Steve: So, once it’s happening, it’s happening, and then—

Ken: And once it stopped happening, it stopped. And then you have to recreate the conditions. You can’t take the two and move back to the one. You’ve just got to stop and start again. Okay. Kate.

Kate: I’ve been using the meditation, “Don’t pursue the past, don’t entertain the future, don’t dwell in the present.” And I’ve realized I don’t really get what that means—”don’t dwell in the present.” I mean, aren’t we supposed to be in the present?

Ken: Maybe we should change it to don’t dwell on the present. It means don’t think about it.

Kate: Oh. Okay. So, it’s just a matter of the thinking process, not the experience.

Just jump

Ken: I love the way you say it, “It’s just a matter of the thinking process.” Well, if it’s that easy for you, there shouldn’t be any problem at all. [Laughter] When we don’t pursue the past, don’t entertain the future, and don’t dwell on, or in, the present, then in a certain sense, we step out of time. Because, what is time?

Kate: Well, it’s a cognitive construct.

Ken: Yes.

Kate: You sort of create this linear construct of the past, the present, the future. But in experience, there’s just now.

Ken: Okay. So, I think that answers your question, doesn’t it? There’s no time in the world we actually experience. There’s only time in the world of shared experience. This is why I think it’s such great fun that the physicists are trying to figure out what time is. They’ll never get there; it doesn’t exist as an experience. Does that help?

Kate: Yes, I mean, just to clarify, so I’m not thinking about the present, but I am experiencing the moment.

Ken: What are you trying to hold on to?

Kate: I’m sure some sort of intellectual understanding.

Ken: Yeah. Sounds like it. Why do you need to understand this intellectually?

Kate: I do find that if I have some intellectual understanding that it does tend to sift down over time. “Oh!” Then it sifts down into my experience. I mean, at least that’s the way that it seems.

Ken: You don’t like jumping off cliffs, do you?

Kate: No.

Ken: Well, you need to practice jumping off cliffs because that’s what the instructions are. Don’t pursue the past. So, you can’t go back there, okay? Don’t entertain the future. So you can’t go there. Don’t dwell on the present, which means you can’t stay where you are, either. Now where do you go? There! Jump! That’s it! Exactly. Very good. [Laughter] You get it? Okay. That was it. See, you don’t want to go there. Too bad. Okay. Thank you very much.

Problems related to clinging

Ken: This evening, we’re going to talk about all the problems with this kind of meditation. Jamgön Kongtrül—who was one of the great 19th century teachers—in a really wonderful summary of mahamudra teaching that he wrote at the end of one book, basically said in this practice there’s only one kind of mistake. It’s clinging. “Where there’s clinging there’s a mistake. Where there’s a mistake, there’s clinging.” And that’s it. And it’s very true. So, that’s one of those totally irritating, yet very profound, simple instructions.

And it’s a good thing to keep in mind while reading through this, because basically what both Natsok Rangdrol and Tashi Namgyal are saying, or enumerating, are different forms of clinging. What time is it? Quarter to nine. I’ll try. We usually go to 9:30, right? Okay.

So, on page 25 in Lamp of Mahamudra—and I think most of you were able to get there—he goes through and says a lot of what mahamudra meditation is not, or what is not mahamudra meditation.

A little note about the word meditation. We’re using meditation to translate the Tibetan word sgom (pron. gom). And the word means to make familiar. That’s why they often use the word practice also. And there are several words in Tibetan that have been translated one way, which would be much better translated differently. It’s one of the reasons why I used the word cultivation with respect to meditation, because in English you have this idea that you’re meditating on something, meditating on mahamudra, which is like nothing. So you’re meditating on nothing. But it’s much better and much more accurate to think of this as cultivating or familiarizing.

Now, I was just giving Kate a little bit of a hard time about jumping off a cliff. How do you familiarize yourself with the experience of jumping off a cliff? You gotta jump off a cliff, right? Now, when we jump off a cliff this way, how long do we fall? Valerie?

Valerie: No time at all.

Ken: Yeah, there’s like about a quarter of a second and then everything starts up again, right? And so we do it again. And we do it again. And we do it again. And eventually we fall off the cliff for half a second. And if we fall off the cliff for like one or two seconds, then we totally freak out. It’s like, “Aaah!” Because we’re actually experiencing it now. Like, “Oh, there’s nothing here!” But this is actually how you become familiar with jumping off a cliff. You know what we believe about this cliff that makes it difficult for us to jump off?

We believe there’s a bottom to it. We believe that very, very deeply. So we go, “I don’t want to jump off of this ’cause I’m going to go splat!” But if there’s no bottom to the cliff, what’s the problem with jumping off it? Right?

Student: It’s a bottomless pit.

Ken: Yeah, it’s bottomless. Not that it’s a pit, but it’s bottomless. So what’s the problem?

Student: You just fall forever. It’s great.

Ken: And if you’re falling forever, what’s the difference between that and standing on what you think is firm ground? So basically what we’re doing here is familiarizing ourselves with the experience of free fall, because the more capacity we have to just experience falling, then we don’t step out of it in the way that Steve was describing. And we begin to know how things actually are.

So, these are all ways that we stop jumping off the cliff, like we call it pulling a parachute, or grabbing onto a branch, or igniting our rocket engine or, you know, all these different ways that we stop falling off the cliff.

Some meditators regard meditation practice simply a thought-free state of mind in which all gross and subtle perceptions of the six senses have ceased.

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Erik Pema Kunsang (translator), p. 25


Clinging to quiet states

Ken: So, this person doesn’t even jump off the cliff. They just let everything become very quiet. They’re sitting on top of the cliff and they’re going, “Oh!” Just sitting there more or less with their eyes closed. That’s meant to be enlightenment, or mahamudra, or whatever. Okay.

Some presume stable meditation to be a state of neutral dullness not embraced by mindfulness.

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Erik Pema Kunsang (translator), p. 25

Now, mindfulness is another one of these words that we really should get rid of. The word for mindfulness basically is the word to recall. To be mindful means to recall, to remember. And you can think of it as remembering what is. Remembering the breath. So in this case, it’s remembering what is. And if you’re not remembering what is, then you aren’t anywhere. So it’s not just a dull, passive state. That’s very important.

Some regard meditation as complete clarity, smooth bliss or utter voidness and cling to those experiences.

p. 25

Now, this is very common, and it goes on into this much more later. We have these experiences of non-thought or clarity, even to the point of clairvoyance—we know what other people are thinking, and so forth. Or there’s bliss that pervades the body, and the mind is just like … wonderful. And in Hinduism, you find people pursuing very, very intense states of bliss. One might think, “that’s meditation!”

No, all of those are experiences that arise, which reveal possibilities. But go back to what I was asking earlier. What is the one thing you know? You know that you’re aware, so there’s an awareness of emptiness. The awarenesses is the emptiness, but just awareness. There’s an awareness of clarity, or clarity is awareness. And the bliss is awareness. And the common feature here is that awareness, not the content of the experience. And that’s very, very important. ???

So, mahamudra practice is about familiarizing yourself with that awareness; not with the clarity, not with the non-thought, not with the bliss. Those may arise, and those may fuel or power your attention so that it’s easier to stay in touch with the awareness, but it’s actually about the awareness. It’s not about the experiences. You with me? Okay.

Some chop their meditation into fragments, believing the objective of meditation to be a vacant state of mind between the cessation of one thought and the arising of the next.

p. 25

One thought stops. And sometimes there’s a moment, and it can be kind of neat. Then the next thought begins. And this is very easy to experience because all you have to do is breathe out, and at the end of the out-breath there’s a pause before the in-breath starts. That’s the same gap. That gap can be very useful because there’s actually an experience of just being aware in that gap. But that doesn’t mean to say that practicing the gap is the meditation. It’s the awareness; that’s what you’re familiarizing yourself. And that’s simply a way of helping you recognize and begin familiarizing with the awareness.

Some hold on to thoughts such as, “The mind nature is dharmakaya! It is empty! It cannot be grasped!”

To think, “Everything is devoid of true existence! It’s like a magical illusion! It’s like space.”

p. 26

And having those kinds of thoughts—is that meditation practice? No, that’s thinking.

And other people claim that whatever is thought or whatever occurs is the nature of meditation.

p. 26

No, that’s just thinking too. There’s nothing being cultivated there. Then others take the opposite view. They think thinking is a defect and they try to get rid of thinking.

In fact Gampopa said, “I have this student who meditates up the mountain, who is very strong, but he regards thoughts as the enemy. If he didn’t regard thinking as the enemy, thoughts as the enemy, he would have woken up years ago. But he has this attitude.” Gampopa wasn’t able to get him off it. ???

Recognizing awareness and then building capacity

Ken: The one thing that’s going on all the time—whether your mind is still, or in turmoil, or crazy, or wrapped up in sensory experience, wrapped up in emotional turmoil or whatever—is there’s this awareness. And what mahamudra practice consists of is recognizing that awareness, and just being with it. And that can be quite difficult when your mind’s all turgid and things like that, which is why we usually start by working with relatively peaceful states, because it’s a little easier to recognize then.

I want to say again that this is not a matter of understanding. It is primarily a matter of building capacity. And I was talking rather loosely, and somewhat in fun, about practicing falling off a cliff. But that’s actually what you do. And you jump and you experience that moment of free fall. And it dissipates, and then you do it again. That was the instruction that I gave you three or four weeks ago—just experience that free fall, and do it again, and do it again, and do it again. So you’re familiarizing yourself with that experience of free fall.

Now, as you do that, and you’re able to recognize the awareness, then it becomes possible to experience that free fall as you go about your day. And then you can start practicing mahamudra all the time. That’s what it means when it says, “Recognize the mind essence and maintain it.” In the language that I’m using tonight, it’s drop into free fall and stay there. And if you step out of it, then drop into it again. And every time you step out of it, drop in again.

Now, this really does take practice. In one of the traditions of mahamudra in which I was trained, you first start doing this in sitting practice, and once you’re able to do it just in sitting practice, then you look at a mountain or something in the distance until you can be in free fall while experiencing the mountain. And then you’d take a tree or a bush, and you practice so that you can be in free fall with that. And you gradually add more and more visual objects.

So, you’re actually training how to be in free fall as you experience seeing, and all the different things that we see. And then you do it with sounds. And you start off with natural, unobtrusive sounds because it’s easier. And you actually build up to the point that you can experience being in free fall when you’re listening to people talk in your own language, even though the spoken word engages and pulls.

Can you actually experience being in free fall in that? And a very good place to practice that is at movies. It’s a little more difficult now because of this stupid stuff on the screen—ads and junk like that. But you know how everybody talks at the beginning of a movie? Well, you can just sit there in your seat and listen to all of that talking, but you listen to all of it, and you don’t try to follow any particular conversation. And eventually you can hear all of the conversations at the same time. And it’s just sound.

Has anybody seen a rather pretentious movie that came out many years ago called the Thirty Two Pieces of Glenn Gould? He does this in one of those 32 pieces. He goes into this truckstop. All these truckers are there. They’re chewing on hamburgers, and having coffee, and chatting with each other, and there’s the sound of the kitchen, things like that. And he’s just sitting there listening to it as he would listen to a Bach cantata or something like that.

And this is how you actually practice. As I said, it’s Christmas season. How many of you are going to shopping malls to do your practice? Because there you just walk, and you’ve got all of this stuff. Go to glasses stores or Pottery Barn, for example, and just see it all. And when you try to open to all of it, you’ll go into free fall. So, you can start familiarizing. Chuck.

Chuck: If you go to the top of the West Side Pavilion, you can look right down the whole corridor and see all the lights. I remember that the first time you told me this was years ago, and it was just so spectacular.

Ken: Yeah. It will give you a whole new appreciation of mall architecture. I’m quite serious about doing this. It’s a very good way to practice. Parking lots are really good. Because you have these natural frames, and it’s very easy to do that. Yes, Steve.

Steve: Again, in the practice you gave us, there were stages where we brought in more …

Ken: That’s the primary practice, going through those stages? Yeah.

Narrow or wider focus?

Steve: I was just thinking, as you were talking about it. When you’re engaged in an activity—a focused activity—you’re building something. What is the difference between the awareness where it’s actually advantageous to be completely focused on that activity and the awareness where you’re letting everything in? Is it the same as in the practice, when you’re just doing the object practice, then you bring in …

Ken: Again, it’s a matter of capacity. When you can do the activity with full attention, you can then start including more. You remember what it was like to learn how to drive? Brake, clutch, steering wheel, turn signal … red light?! “Oh yeah. I meant to stop.” It’s like that. I was teaching someone how to drive. He went straight through a stop sign. I couldn’t believe it. [Laughter]

He was concentrating on so many other things that he didn’t see it. But it’s like that when we learn how to drive, right? But with more experience driving, we develop the capacity to take in more and more and more, and then it becomes very easy. We can even talk on the cell phone. Even though that reduces our driving to something like a person who’s definitely under the influence.

But we increase our capacity. So that’s the relevant point here—focus on the activity and when you can do that, then you add to it. You can actually include more, so you can bring much more attention into the activity, because you’re aware of not only the activity, but everything connected that you’re experiencing with it.

Steve: So, if a surgeon is in surgery, you’re saying that with more capacity, it’s not that he would block out—

Ken: No, he wouldn’t need to block out. And because he or she is aware of more, they may actually practice better surgery. Because when they’re first practicing, they’re going to be focusing on one thing over here and they may not notice this little thing happening over there. But as they develop the skill they might notice, “That shouldn’t be happening, oh, okay.” There notice a sign that something is going on.

And it’s the same with music. It’s the same with everything. As you develop more capacity, then you can become more aware, not only of the particular activity, but the context in which it is taking place. And so something very different starts to happen. Okay?

Michelle: What’s wrong with being totally focused on the activity itself?

Ken: Nothing. It’s just a stage. And it’s a way of building capacity. And you can build that. But as capacity develops, if you then restrict it to that one activity, you’re actually creating something that’s out of balance. You’re creating an imbalance because you can actually be aware of far more.

Michelle: I think I’m confused because some of my favorite moments are those where I am completely absorbed in something. And I feel more present in those moments than I do when all the other chatter, and even just visual or auditory awareness are going on.

Ken: I can quite understand that. And it’s not just because you’re completely absorbed. But because all your attention is there, everything is moved into a balance in you, so there’s a physical and emotional experience that goes with it. And that’s very good. That’s one of the reasons why we focus; so that we experience that. What I’m saying is, that’s not the end. You can regard that as the beginning. Because that gives you a chance to recognize a different way of being aware—i.e., the awareness that we’re talking about—than what we’re used to in our ordinary interactions. So, it opens that door. What I’m saying is, it’s possible to have that same quality and experience everything.

Student: I wanted to ask about working with thoughts. I was one of those kinds who thought that by working with the gap, I was on the right track. Then I read the texts and it gave me the idea that I should be not so judgmental about my thoughts. And then everything came more into mush. I lost a lot of clarity. I was much … everything went duller. So, what to do?

Ken: Yes. What’s aware of thought?

Student: The awareness.

Ken: Then that’s what you do.

Student: But I get dragged in.

Ken: And that goes back to what we’ve been talking about. It’s a matter of capacity.

Student: Yeah. So, how to develop capacity?

Ken: Yeah. So, you may want to work with the gap, but now you have a better understanding of what you’re actually doing; you’re developing capacity. And what he’s arguing here is against people who regard working with the gap as the end state, which exactly corresponds to Michelle’s question. There are methods by which we can build capacity, which are more restricted instances of working with awareness. It makes it easier to recognize. It makes it easier to line things up. And they’re very useful that way. I’m not saying that it’s wrong.

But if you regard that as, “Oh, this is the meditation,” then you’re making a mistake. And last week we went through a series of pointing out, showing you that it’s actually just this natural awareness that’s there all the time. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It doesn’t go anywhere. What is happening is that we’re failing to recognize it over and over again.

So we make use of the gap, or we make use of the experience of being focused, to recognize and familiarize ourself with that natural awareness. But as our capacity to recognize it increases, then we want to recognize it everywhere that it occurs. And that’s what advanced practices like dream and clear light are. It’s being able to recognize it, even when we’re dreaming or sleeping.

Student: I just wanted to ask one other question, because in other talks, you have said that the reason for an emotion is to be felt. What is the function of a thought? There’s something in the text that says the thought stops functioning as a thought. Huh? [Laughter]

Ken: What’s the function of a thought? A thought is like a mini emotion. From the Buddhist perspective, there is not much difference between thought and emotion. One’s a bigger version of the other. They’re both regarded as a certain kind of movement. What is problematic about both of them is that they’re seductive and that they pull us into the dualistic mind. Both emotion and thought do that. And what we’re doing is developing a capacity so that we can experience both of those without falling into the dualistic framework. So, from that point of view, the function of thought is exactly the same as the function of emotion—to be felt. And if you think about it, what usually happens with a thought is we don’t experience what it’s about; we get lost in its world.

And when you are able to sit and just let thought come and go, then thought ceases to be a problem that arises. More than that, when you can actually rest and let thoughts arise and follow them, then it actually puts us in touch with awareness. Because as a thought arises, there’s a heightening of awareness. When a thought passes, there’s another heightening of awareness. Another thought arises, another heightening. So it’s a way of coming again and again into awareness, when you have the capacity to experience thought without being seduced by its content. Does that make sense? Okay. There’s a question back here? Joe.

Joe: One of the most interesting things about actually practicing this is the moments at which something stops the process.

Ken: Yes.

Joe: And there are many of those things, but the one that I’m thinking about right now has to do with the basic practice that we’ve been talking about. And I’ve asked this question before of you and of other people. It has to do with experiencing all of those different things at the same time, and whether it was sequential or all at once. And I realized, I think, that what I was anticipating, or my experience was, that I didn’t think I was experiencing things until I named them, until I went into that cognitive act.

Ken: [Laughing] Yes.

Joe: And I realized that is one of these stoppages.

Ken: That’s exactly right.

Joe: I don’t recognize that I’m aware, often, until I name it. And then I’m not aware.

Ken: No, actually, when you name it, you’re simply conscious of it. You actually stopped being simply aware. You’ve fallen into something else.

Joe: Exactly. That’s it.

Ken: Robert Irwin: “Seeing is forgetting the name of the object that you’re looking at.”

I want to move on at this point, because I want to cover these. In both texts, there’s the eight strayings. They’re a little more clearly translated in Clarifying the Natural State. [Pause] I’m never going to find them. Well, I may have to go back to the other one because I can’t find it right now. [Pause] Okay, well, let me use Lamp of Mahamudra, because it’s disappeared in that book.

These crop up in many, many mahamudra texts, so they aren’t unique. And there are four areas. There’s not understanding emptiness, not understanding the path, not understanding remedy, and … Well, the translator is generalizing. That’s why I wanted to look there, because I have the actual Tibetan, but couldn’t find it.

Straying from emptiness

Ken: When we look at what experience actually is … We did this before. I can hold this up and ask, “What do you see?” Everybody says, “An orange book.” But now if I ask you, “Where is the seeing? Where does the seeing take place?” There’s a shift in your experience, and there’s no place we can say the seeing takes place. We can’t say it takes place inside us. We can’t say it takes place outside us ’cause then we couldn’t experience it. And in between doesn’t seem to be a place that we can point to.

So, in this very ordinary experience of looking at this book, when we actually look at where’s the seeing, there’s an indefinable quality and we can’t point to the experience of seeing itself. That is the empty aspect. And yet the seeing arises vividly. There it is. It’s a book. And it’s exactly the same with an emotion. You can take anger or desire or love or compassion. And we can experience the emotion very vividly, but then when we look at what am I experiencing? it’s very difficult to say. Or if we can turn it around and ask, “What is experiencing it?” it’s also difficult to say. And that’s all looking at the empty aspect.

The fundamental mistake about emptiness is to take it as something real, rather than simply an aspect of experience. The reason it’s so important is we aren’t usually aware of that aspect of experience. We are ignoring it; it’s blocked. And so, we take everything to be real, and we get locked into this world. And we have our fights, and loves, and quarrels, and things like that, and we suffer.

Whereas if we knew that empty aspect, then we’d realize, oh, things are just things, and this world is just this world. We don’t have to get quite so bent out of shape about everything. But the problem that can arise is that we take that empty aspect to be, that is how things actually are. This is a very common thing; we try to make everything empty. No, we can’t make everything empty because everything is empty already. So that’s not possible. So, emphasizing that empty aspect is—and trying to move to that not experiencing all the time—that’s the basic straying from emptiness.

Now the temporary one basically boils down to the notion that understanding it is enough. No, understanding it isn’t enough. And we may understand it well enough to be able to explain it extremely well to somebody else. But what’s important is knowing it; knowing it in moment-to-moment experience. Understanding it? That doesn’t change very much. Now, with respect to path …

Student: I think I found it in this book. [Clarifying the Natural State]

Ken: Okay. What page?

Student: Page 60.

Ken: Okay. Page 60: “Straying the path has two aspects.”

Straying from the path

Ken: Well, this goes straight to what I was talking about when I mentioned jumping off cliffs earlier. I said the problem with jumping off cliffs is that we believe that there is a bottom. Well, we believe that there’s somewhere to get to that we aren’t already at right now. Right? And so, as long as you’re practicing with the perspective of, “I’m going to get somewhere,” you’re ignoring, not paying attention to, and not experiencing where you are right now. So as soon as you jump off the cliff, you’re there. That’s it!

There’s a wonderful cartoon Gahan Wilson drew back in the ’60s, which was up on the bulletin board of every dharma center all through the ’70s and showed these two monks. One was relatively young, and the other was this old shriveled guy. The old guy’s talking: “What do you mean, ‘What’s next?’ This is it!” And this has to do with the fact that this is our nature. There isn’t anything we have to bring into being, or anything that we have to create or make. It’s already there. We simply don’t know it.

Suzuki Roshi refers to this in a very lovely phrase: “Our practice is absolute confidence in our fundamental nature.” Which is another way of jumping off the cliff. So, the notion that you’re going to travel this path and get somewhere is the basic straying from the path. No, whenever you practice and you just let your mind be completely natural, that’s it. And you familiarize yourself with that until you come to know it. That’s it. And you deepen, and deepen, and deepen it.

Temporary straying

Ken: And then the next one, temporary straying, is: “I don’t like what I’m experiencing now. I want to do something that’s more comfortable.” Well, tough! This again goes back to the point we talked about before: when you are awake and aware, you don’t get to choose what you’re awake and aware of. Whatever you’re experiencing right now, “this is your life,” to quote Uchiyama Roshi. That’s it. This is what it is.

There’s a story about this, about the frogs. How many of you have I told about the frogs? It’s very important to know about the frogs.

Once, a group of frogs lived in a pond, and they noticed that the deer had a king of deer, the big stag. And all the other animals, like the birds, had their king. And then there was the lion king. Etc. The frogs, though, didn’t have a king. So, a group of them said, “We should go and talk to Zeus about having a king.”

And there was some debate about this, and eventually a group of frogs was delegated. They hopped up Mount Olympus and eventually got Zeus’s attention. And Zeus said, “What do you want?”

“Well, we’d like a king.”

Zeus said, “I’ll send you a king.” They explained they wanted someone who would be their leader and they could organize themselves around, make a big fuss over, and so forth. So Zeus threw this big dead log in the frog pond, and said, “There’s your king.” And they decorated it with lotuses and lilies and lily pads, and all kinds of water plants, and things like that. They made a big fuss. And this went on for several months. But after a while they noticed the king didn’t respond very much.

So, some of the younger frogs said, “This isn’t much of a king. We’ve got to talk to Zeus again.”

The older frogs said, “I think we should leave Zeus alone.” The younger frogs were really adamant about this, and they hopped all the way up Mount Olympus.

And eventually they got to Zeus, and Zeus said, “What do you want this time?”

They said, “Well, we didn’t like that king. We want another king.” See? It’s just like the meditation practice. We want a different king.

Zeus said, “Okay, I’ll send you another king.” They hopped back down. Meanwhile Zeus says to the stork, “Hey Stork, would you like to be king of the frogs?”

Stork says, “Works for me, Zeus, thanks!” The stork flies off. Goes to the frog pond, starts eating all the frogs, spearing them with his beak.

A few survivors managed to escape, and they straggle all the way up Mount Olympus. “Zeus?”

“Yes, what do you want this time?”

“That wasn’t the kind of king we wanted.”

“They rarely are,” said Zeus.

So, you don’t get to choose what you experience in this practice. It’s whatever comes up. And that’s what makes this really difficult, because we all have lots of old stuff in us that we really don’t want to experience, which is why we’re thrashing around in our lives the way we are. And it’s going to be there. What we’re doing is developing the capacity to experience whatever is arising. The trick here—which only took me 25 years to find out—is to not fight what you’re experiencing. You’ll lose, every time. You may not be able to experience it, but don’t fight it. Don’t try to block it. That’s just creating further problems.

If you can’t experience it, it’s okay. Let things go, rest in the breath, or whatever. Come back to it later and gradually build the capacity so that you can just experience it. And then you find that it arises and releases. But what’s very important here is that the object of the meditation is not to have experience arise and release. The intention in the meditation is to develop the capacity to experience whatever arises. That’s all. Everything else will take care of itself after that. Our effort is to develop the capacity to experience whatever does arise. So, when things get too hot on the meditation cushion and you have to take a break, that’s fine. Do that. But there’s more capacity to develop.

Straying with regard to the remedy has two aspects.

Clarifying the Natural State, Tashi Dagpo Namgyal, p. 60


Staying with the disturbance is the remedy

Ken: This is very closely related to it. You think, “Okay, I have this emotion, I have this disturbance. If I can get rid of this, then everything will be okay.” No! The point of practice is, when that comes up, “Can I be in that experience?” And again, develop that capacity.

In the Theravadan tradition, they have basically straight application of the four stages of mindfulness. In Breath by Breath this is detailed. Sorry, it’s not the four stages of mindfulness. It’s the Anapanasati Sutra, the sutra on the full awareness of breathing. And there’s quite a good lengthy commentary in a book called Breath by Breath, by Larry Rosenberg. By the way, Thich Nhat Hanh does it as well. You work with all of the reactions that come up, until you can begin to find calm in the experience. And then gradually you find ease in that calm.

That’s when you’re moving, actually moving into something that’s akin to this. But what’s very important here is that you find calm and ease in the experience. What a lot of people try to do is they try to develop the calm and ease and then bring that to the experience. That’s the wrong application. You work in this until you find calm and ease in the experience. It’s a very, very different approach.

As long as you’re trying to get rid of the experiences—which is what you’re really trying to do when you say, “I’m going to have this big calm and ease, then bring it to the experience and everything will be fine”—you’re trying to get rid of what’s actually arising. That doesn’t work. You find calm, ease, understanding, awareness, whatever, in the experience. That’s a bit more difficult, but it really changes things.

And the “temporary straying from the remedy” is that you think, “Oh, just when I’m thinking, then everything’s gone out the window.” No. You were just caught. But the awareness is still there. Nothing ever happens to the awareness. We just lose our connection with it.

And so rather than try to make any effort to be in the experience of the difficulty, you try to get rid of the difficulty so you can go back to the good meditation. Anybody done that? Okay.

Generalization

Ken: Generalization. [Clarifying the Natural State, p. 61] And what generalization means here—what is the word for that? Oh, rgyas ‘debs (pron. jé deb). Interesting … rgyas ‘debs is stamping things with a seal. And remember, the term for mahamudra is the great seal. So this is about how you take your experience that arises in one context and actually generalize it to all experience? That’s what we’re talking about. ???

The fundamental error here is to think, “Oh, that’s empty, that’s empty, that’s empty, constitutes generalization,” and to do it conceptually or cognitively. That’s nothing. That’s thinking again. Generalization means, you’re having a conversation, and right in the conversation you are pausing to ask, What is listening? or, Who is talking? One of my students is a jazz singer, and at a certain stage in her practice, she said, “How do I work with this?”

I said, “When you’re singing, ask, ‘Who sings?'” And one night she was performing in a nightclub, and she disappeared completely. The song went on, but she wasn’t there. It was just the music.

She called me up the next morning and said, “That was interesting.” [Laughs] That’s generalization. “Who’s singing?” And if your work is such that you pour your attention into a single activity, then you can use that activity in just that way. That’s what she does with her jazz singing. So, there she’d be singing—she sings and her husband accompanies her— and she would ask, “Who’s singing?” And completely disappearing didn’t happen the first time; that was after about three or six months of practice. But “Who’s singing?” And then suddenly, “Oh, no one.” But it wasn’t a thought; it was an experience. Okay?

Temporary error

Ken: And then the “temporary error” here is trying to capture past experience and reproduce it. We’ve all had that experience. Anybody done that in their meditation? Okay. So those are the things.

And what does this all boil down to? Well, to use a different form of instruction, a mahamudra instruction in the Kagyu tradition:

Don’t be distracted. [Pause]
Don’t try to control your experience. [Pause]
Don’t work at anything. [Pause]

That’s how you practice. No distraction, no control, no work.

You don’t try to control what you experience. That’s recapturing, or saying it’s going to be this way or that way. And working at something is like going, I’m going to develop this quality or that quality. No! You’re just not distracted. You’re not trying to control. You’re not trying to work at it.

So really very, very little to hang on to there. So maybe make that the focus of your efforts over the next week. No distraction. No control. No work. See how that works for you.