The bear hunt

Ken: So, here’s tonight’s teaching in a nutshell. A guy gets a new rifle.

Student: A new iPod?

Ken: A rifle. [Laughter]

Student: An ancient Sufi story?

Ken: Arguably a modern Sufi story. This is quite deep.

So, he heads off into the mountains. He’s going bear hunting. Comes across a small bear and takes careful aim and shoots it. He’s feeling pretty good about himself, but there’s a tap on his shoulder. Turns around, and there’s a large black bear. The bear’s looking at him and said, “You shot my cousin. I’m going to maul you to death unless you have sex with me.” [Laughter]

Student: That’s not really funny.

Ken: Well, that’s one of those choices you can’t refuse. Afterwards, he limps home. [Laughter] Spends a few days in bed recovering. He’s not happy with how things went, picks up his rifle and goes out into the woods, up into the mountains, finds the black bear, shoots him. And there’s a tap on his shoulder. There’s a large grizzly bear. “You shot my cousin,” the grizzly bear says. “Either I maul you or we have sex the way I like it.”

He gulps. He’s not quite sure how he makes it home. Several months later, he’s ready to go out again, picks up his rifle. Finds the grizzly bear and shoots him. There’s a tap on his shoulder. There’s a very, very large polar bear. Looks at him rather sadly and shakes his head and says, “You don’t come here for the hunting, do you?” [Laughter] “You don’t come here for the hunting, do you?” [Laughter]

Yes, Ann. Do you not see the connection? Do you want me to spell it out?

Ann: If you like.

Ken: No, Do you want me to?

Ann: I see a connection.

Ken: Oh good. Well, please tell us what’s the connection with the teachings.

Ann: The connection with the teachings?

Ken: You didn’t think this was just a joke, did you? [Laughter] For heaven’s sakes!

Ann: Well, things got bigger and bigger.

Ken: They keep getting bigger and bigger, don’t they? [Laughter] Bigger and bigger. Are you happy to have sex? So, say more about things getting bigger and bigger.

Ann: I have to say more about things getting bigger?

Ken: That’s where you started.

Ann: Well, it’s like a reactive pattern getting bigger and bigger, it just keeps doing the same thing. It’s almost like …

Ken: Okay. That’s interesting. Keep going. [Silence] Anybody want to help her? No. Anita.

Anita: I’ll say one thing. I don’t want any questions. [Laughter]

Ken: Now you know that’s [unclear]

Student: [Unclear] rifle. [Laughter]

We may not know what we came for.

Ken: What did you come for?

Student: The weather.

Ken: So if you followed that, we should have a tornado tomorrow, or at least a hurricane, then a tornado. Then what?

Student: [Unclear] and pestilence.

Ken: This is Anita.

Anita: I came for the sunshine.

Ken: So you came for the weather?

Anita: That was one factor.

Ken: What was the other? She’s taken you right off the hook.

Ann: I’m sure you’ll be back.

Ken: Good.

Anita: Well, moving away from the weather …

Ken: Okay. So, you didn’t come here for the weather, did you?

Anita: No, not really.

Ken: What did you come for?

Anita: Well, I may have had this idea about getting enlightened and I may not know what it entails.

Ken: How’s it going?

Anita: It’s hard.

Ken: It’s not what you expected is it?

Anita: No, it’s not what you expect.

Ken: How many times you’ve been mauled there?

Student: Including this one? [Laughter]

Ann: You’re making an assumption.

Ken: Okay. How about you, Ann?

Ann: Well, you said, “How many times have you been mauled?” And there was an assumption that you didn’t realize that it was going to happen. You may have realized it but came anyway. I mean, that person, after the first time, maybe he didn’t realize that, but after the second time you would’ve thought he would have realized it.

Ken: Well, that’s a very interesting point. Was he expecting the tap on the shoulder?

Ann: Not the first time. Probably not, how could he? But the third time he went, he could have been expecting something, but he went anyway.

The taps on the shoulder

Ken: What does that tell you? So let’s talk about the taps on the shoulder. All answers not in here, are in here. [Laughter] In the other book, An Arrow to the Heart.: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra. Okay. So this goes back to something Bokar Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche’s heir, taught me in 1971. So, this is what we’re going to do this evening.

The awareness that there is nothing other than mind. The awareness that there is nothing other than mind. Find this in the mahamudra prayer.

Look at objects, and there is no object: one sees mind.

Aspirations for Mahamudra

That’s what we’re going to do this evening. That’s cool. And then there’s the tap on the shoulder. You can’t stop there. Why not? Caroline.

Caroline: When you look at mind, mind is empty.

Ken: Yes. So …

Student: You didn’t come here for something.

Ken: Well, you thought, okay, so what is this? What’s this experience? It’s all mind. There it is. You can’t stop there.

Ann: No, but you know, my pain, right? My pain exists. Wrong word. I experienced my pain vividly. Yet when I asked myself what experiences this, I see nothing. Those things and happening exactly at the same time. And so, it’s just how it is.

Ken: Yes. But you can’t stop there either.

Ann: From there, that’s it. There’s a bear in the future.

Ken: Yes. More than one, I fear. So now you come to the understanding that mind also isn’t any thing. What’s the tap on the shoulder now? Gary.

Gary: As I said before, you have to be careful what you hunt for. [Laughter]

Ken: So mind’s nature is empty. How’s that?

Student: There’s no emptiness.

Ken: How does that help?

Student: Just thinking about the Heart Sutra paragraph there.

Ken: It says there’s no pristine awareness. It doesn’t say there’s no emptiness. So mind’s nature is empty. A lot of you know about that. Is that good enough? Franca.

Franca: It’s the basis of everything.

Ken: Yeah, but damn well it still exists, right? That’s the little tap on the shoulder. In this verse,

The wise know that these two understandings are not things.
After the awareness that there is nothing other than mind,
comes the understanding that mind, too, is nothing itself.

Wake Up to Your Life, Ken McLeod, p. 382


The wise know that these two understandings are not things. You’ve worked so hard. You can’t hold on to it. Right?

And then not holding on to even this knowledge, they rest in the realm of totality.

p. 382

Now, it’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter where you run across it. Those teachings, or those four lines are a summary of the Five Teachings of Maitreya, which were compiled by Asanga in the ninth or tenth century, probably a little earlier than that, probably eighth or ninth.

Student: Where is it in the book?

Ken: Page 382. Then you find in the mahamudra tradition as it’s taught in the Kagyu schools … actually, before we go there, you go to Mind Training in Seven points from Atisha. Well, Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, lineage from Atisha, which actually goes back to Serlingpa. Life is but a dream. That’s appearances are mind, so the first mind training instruction says, “Regard all experience as a dream.” Second one is, “Examine the nature of unborn awareness.” Look at your mind. Third one is, “Let go of that understanding too.” It’s exemplified in “Let even the remedy subside.” Then the fourth instruction is “Rest in how things are.” And so that’s from the mind training tradition.

Then in the mahamudra tradition, you have:

Appearances are mind.
Mind’s nature is empty.
Emptiness is natural presence.
Natural presence is natural freedom.

Ken: Now, as I said, I realized when I began looking at this book seriously, that it consisted of what I would have to do to translate it. We got the four steps that I’ve been describing. You’ve had three versions of them so far and see the similarities. Okay.

First, come to know through your own experience, that all experience is inexpressible emptiness.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (Translator), p. 189


Inexpressible or ineffable, if you wish, emptiness. (p. 189). And that the implication of this is that:

Basic space is a single naturally occurring, timeless awareness.

p. 189


Theravadans would have a hey day with that one. “A single naturally occurring timeless, awareness.”

They would say, “Oh, you’re making it a thing.” I remember I was having a discussion with a chap called Jason Siff, who also uses this facility. We were discussing the first verse of the Dhammapada—you were there weren’t you Caroline—and someone said, “This is a really interesting translation.” And he just looked at us and said, “Oh, you Mahayana essentialists.” I realized that the Mahayanists are just as much a straw dog for the Theravadans as the Hinayanists are for the Mahayanists. Always need straw dogs to bash down.

This timeless awareness embraces all experience, open and uninterrupted, free of restrictions or extremes. And that results in a state of natural presence, forever effortless and naturally lucid.

This timeless awareness embraces all experiences, samsara and nirvana, open and uninterrupted, free of restrictions and extremes.

Natural presence forever effortless, and naturally lucid.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (Translator), p. 209


In other words, the words change. They’re all pointing to the same thing. They all have endless debates among these different schools. “Well, we mean this,” but “we mean this.”

One occasion, a friend of mine I knew from being at Rinpoche’s monastery in India, in the early 1970s. And I had carefully crafted that we would have Rinpoche alone to ourselves for supper as we on a ferry from Victoria back to Vancouver. Because we wanted to talk with him about self-emptiness and other emptiness, which is the only major philosophical debate in the Tibetan tradition. So we got seated at the table and ordered and everything had arrived. And I said, “My friend Karma Yonten wants to know about self-emptiness and other emptiness.”

Rinpoche’s response was, “Karma Yonten is very clever.” And we had a sinking feeling that this was going to be a very difficult dinner. [Laughter] We got absolutely nowhere with him. He just said, “When you understand one, you understand the other. They’re not different,” which is typically how Rinpoche would come out on these things. Even though Rinpoche in his own philosophy and way of expression was very much in other emptiness. That’s how he saw and presented things. So people get stuck on words all the time. People get extremely attached to their own vocabulary. So much so, that they often cannot see what is staring them right in the face. Always look for what is being actually talked about.

I’ve been puzzling over this for a few days. It was like, “Oh, I get it. It’s this process. Here’s the Kagyu version, because it’s very straight forward. “Appearances are mind. “

You already have this in your notes.

Appearances are mind.
Mind is empty.
Emptiness is natural presence.
Natural presence is natural freedom.
[Ken’s translation of the four transmissions in Kagyu mahamudra from The Ocean of Definitive Meaning by Wangchuk Dorje, the 9th Karmapa]

Now, this is all you need to know. There isn’t any more than this. There’s only one hitch. You have to know it experientially. Larry, say something about what that entails, would you? I think you have some experience of that.

Feel it in your bones

Larry: It entails not automatically going to thoughts about what it means, but rather giving yourself a chance to feel it deeply.

Ken: Is feeling deeply enough?

Larry: Well, so that you can know it.

Ken: What’s the difference?

Larry: Knowing is more in your bones.

Ken: How many of you remember the four horses from Suzuki Roshi? It comes from a Theravadan sutra. Not sure which one, but it’s not a terribly long one, so I don’t think it’s in the middle-length discourses. Buddha’s talking about the four horses. The first horse gallops at the wish of the rider. The second horse gallops when it sees the whip being raised out of the corner of its eye. The third horse gallops when it feels the pain of the whip on it’s skin and the fourth horse, doesn’t gallop until it feels the pain of the whip in the marrow of it’s bones.

And one of the things I like about Suzuki Roshi is that he takes how it’s presented in the Theravadan sutra and he says, “When we hear this” … well, let me just ask this. How many of you would like to be the first horse? Nobody? So it goes right back to the Sufi story about the two groups of disciples. Of course, we all want to be the first horse. Everybody wants to be the first horse. Don’t give me this nonsense. You want to be the first horse. And if we can’t be the first horse, we want to be the second. No? Franca, tell me what I’m saying is wrong.

Franca: I don’t want to be any of them.

Ken: I’m not sure that’s true either. So, what Suzuki Roshi points out is that people who find it very easy to sit often have a great deal of difficulty really getting to what he calls the marrow of Zen. Conversely, people who have a lot of difficulties sitting, find a way to the marrow of Zen because they have a lot of difficulties sitting. Then he says, “Sometimes then the best horse is the worst horse. And the worst horse is the best horse.” This is a very, very difficult teaching. As Larry said, “Feel it in your bones,” that’s different from feeling it. I hesitate to use the word … I was going to use the word hard, but there’s something—here’s a fancy latinate word instead—incontrovertible about it. And that’s what’s important.

It’s very interesting reading this book because he’s describing various visionary experiences. All the chapters start off with having come to a definite conclusion, which I would translate as having come to an incontrovertible experience. And it says, “On another occasion,” and then you go two chapters up and it says: “Seven years later, having come to a definite conclusion.” Or, “In this way, after a long time, I reached a definite conclusion and then came to a decisive experience.” Now this is supposed to be a red-hot yogin and it’s taken him years to really know this.

So these are very, very difficult forms of knowing to really take in because there’s so much resistance. That’s why we practice. And in the course of this retreat, my intention anyway is, to the best of my ability, show you or lead you or assist you or whatever, in coming to whatever experiential knowing you’re capable of. And that happens. That’s not the end. That’s the beginning. Now you have to soak in it until it soaks right into the core of your being. So just having the direct experience, while very, very important, isn’t really enough. It has to soak in to the very core of your being. And in the process, you’ll find that all kinds of assumptions and ideas about what we are and who we are, and how things are, get uprooted. And that’s not always comfortable. There’s these bears that keep tapping us on the shoulder. And somewhere in this process, we find there is a freedom, which is always different from what we expected.

What am I?

Ken: So yesterday you focused on “What am I?” In traditional parlance, this is focusing on the non-self, it’s the individual, which is an answer to the question “What am I?” Then we came to, as several of you explored more deeply in your practice, there isn’t any thing there. There isn’t an entity which I am. There’s nothing that corresponds to the name or even the pronoun ‘I”. There isn’t a perceiver. There isn’t an agent. There is nothing there.

Around 80 years ago, the South African poet and naturalist, Eugene Marais, published The Soul of the White Ant, the path-breaking the study of the life of termites. In it he gave his reasons for thinking that ants have a soul or psyche, but one that is communal. At the time, this was a revolutionary result, but it has been confirmed by later research. In an illuminating experiment, the removal of highly efficient insect nurses from a colony led them to forage more and nurse less , while in the main colony less efficient nurses nursed more.

When the efficient nurses returned to the main colony, they returned to their previous activities. This is quoting from Eugene Marais:

What is particularly striking about the insect colony is that we readily admit that its separate components are individuals and it has no center of localized self. Yet the whole does behave as a unity. And as if there were a coordinating agent present at its center. What we observed from insect colonies is no different from what we find in ourselves.

The Soul of the White Ant, Eugene Marais


As Francisco Varela puts it:

A selfless self or a virtuous self, a coherent global pattern that emerges from the activity of simple local components, which seems to be centrally located but is nowhere to be found. In humans, as in insect colonies, perception and action go on as if there were a self that directs them when, in fact, none exists. We labor under an error. We act in the belief that we are all of one piece, but we are able to cope with things only because we are a succession of fragments. We cannot shake off the sense that we are enduring selves. And yet, we know, we are not.

Organism: A meshwork of selfless selves. In Organism and the origins of self. Francisco Varela, p. 95

Surprisingly, life becomes quite a bit simpler when one lets go of the idea that one is an enduring self. It allows a lot of other things to arise and respond to things. So, in a very real sense, one becomes more creative. One also becomes impossible to insult or praise because there isn’t any sense of the central self. So there is just arising and response. This actually is much simpler and, in many respects, a more interesting way to live. If you ever want to see the burdens of the self, particularly of self-image, just follow the life of any politician. It’s very difficult. However, having come to that, who feels a tap on the shoulder? The tap is: “Okay. So, I don’t exist the way that I thought I did. I can even relate to that. But what’s all this?” So, what is all this? Caroline, the brave soul … they are closely connected. Have you experienced any grief in your life because you took your thoughts and feelings so seriously?

Caroline: Constantly.

Ken: Maybe it does matter.

Caroline: I don’t mean that it doesn’t matter. I mean, does it really matter? I don’t mean to imply a meaninglessness to it.

Ken: What do you say?

Caroline: It’s just there.

Ken: Yes. Do you relate to it as just there or not?

Caroline: I think so.

Ken: Is that good enough?

Caroline: [Unclear]

Ken: Exactly. That’s right. So that’s what we’re going to look at this evening. Those of you who have done this before with me, be patient. Those who haven’t, you’re invited to the party.

Caroline: [Laughter] You have an evil look on your face.

Ken: It’s because I’m a very evil person. Does anybody see anything in my hand? This is exactly how things were in the great debates in India. Rinpoche used to tell the story of this one monastery in India, and their lead debater. I can’t remember whether he was ill or absent and a rival sect showed up at the gates of the monastery and challenged the monastery to a debate. All the monks were lined up and the head of the challenging sect says, “Do you have a head? Do you have a head?” Nobody would say anything. Because if they said, “Yes, I have a head,” then they were in the debate. Now the reason why this was so important is that if they lost the debate, everybody in the monastery had to convert to the new sect. That’s how things worked. That’s why Nagarjuna and Naropa were the gatekeepers for Nalanda University. A gatekeeper was a very, very high position because you were responsible for being able to meet these debates and defeat. Otherwise the monastery belonged to somebody else. So there was a lot of stake here.

So, does anybody see if I’m holding anything in my hand? We’re going to have a long quiet night.

Anita: I see different things.

Ken: Yes, Anita. It’s too bad isn’t it. Anybody else. Most of you have done this with me, right? Okay. So let’s get to the punchline. Where is the seeing? Where the experience of seeing? Now, everybody experiences seeing the screen. Right? So there’s an experience of seeing. Where is the experience?

Eli: In mind?

Ken: Where’s that?

Eli: I don’t know. [Laughter]

Ken: You see, this is what we do. Eli, when I asked you the question the first time “Where’s the experience of seeing?” what did you experience?

Eli: Uncertainty

Ken: Uncertainty. Very good. Before the uncertainty what did you experience?

Eli: Yes, I think [unclear].

Ken: Where is the experience of seeing? We can do this another way? So, just sit and let your mind go quiet. Imagine a flower. It’s a white flower. Maybe it’s a daisy. White petals, yellow center. How many of you can see that flower, that daisy, in your mind’s eye?. Okay. Where is it? Where is the flower?

Student: In a previous experience

Ken: Imagine it right now. So imagine a new one. Now you have a red rose. Where is it? See the red rose. Can you see where it is? Can you point to where it is? [Silence]

[Sound of a bowl ringing] Where is hearing the sound? Where is that experience?

[Sound of a bowl ringing] The sound is there. We hear it. Where is the experience? The sound seems to come from here. We hear it.

[Sound of a bowl ringing] Where is the hearing?

Where is the experience of seeing? Now. look around this room. You see people wearing different colors of clothes, lights, shadows, colors, pictures, books, carpet. All of this experience. Where is the experience of this room? Where is the experience of seeing this room? Just look around. Now when I ask the question this way what do you experience? Anita.

Anita: I experience my mind kind of stopping and opening a little bit to this thing I cannot understand conceptually.

Ken: Keep going.

Anita: It feels like I’m sort of on the edge of … knowing somehow.

Ken: Knowing what? Don’t conceptualize. Keep going back to it.

Anita: I don’t think I could conceptualze it.

Ken: Keep going back to it

Anita: It happens.

Ken: Yes. Where is the experience? Of seeing. Can you say where it is?

Anita: No

Ken: Does it arise with it?

Anita: Yes.

Ken: When you look or rest in the experience of seeing, what happens to subject-object?

Anita: I don’t know

Ken: Can you rest there? How is that?

Anita: Very peaceful.

Ken: Yeah. What do you experience, Cindy?

Cindy: Umm …

Ken: Start again. This time, don’t take a breath. Go back. Look around the room and ask, “Where is the experience of seeing?” When I ask you what you experience, don’t take a big breath. Just speak directly from the experience. What do you experience?

Cindy: A tightness and expansiveness in the chest.

Ken: Okay. How does the room appear to you? Can you tell me where the experience is?

Cindy: No.

Ken: Very strange. You have all of these experiences and you don’t know where one of them is? do you do with that? [Unclear]

Cindy: [Unclear]

Ken: Okay, relax. First line on page 25.

Perceptions, which never existed in themselves are mistaken for objects.

Aspirations for Mahamudra

We look at this green pamphlet. There’s a perception. There’s an experience of seeing. That’s what perception refers to here. Where is this experience?

Cindy: I keep looking but I can’t find it.

Ken: Yes. So I want you to watch very carefully now. Where did the experience of seeing go?

Cindy: [Unclear]

Ken: Are you experiencing it? So try again. Where did the experience of seeing the green pamphlet go? A little difficult to say, isn’t it? So we’ll try this once more, the other way. Are you ready? So one moment there is no experience of seeing, the next moment there is. Where did the experience come from? Want to try it again? [Pause] Where does it come from? Comes from nowhere. Isn’t anywhere, goes nowhere. What do you ordinarily say about things that come from nowhere, aren’t anywhere, and go nowhere?

Cindy: [Unclear]

Ken: You’re experiencing … a little bit of a conundrum, isn’t it. So, perceptions, which never existed in themselves, that’s the nature of all experience. It’s there and doesn’t exist, as such. But what do we do with our experience of seeing, rdinarily?

Cindy: Objectify it?

Ken: Exactly. It becomes an object and the awareness of the seeing becomes … a self. That’s how the whole mess starts. Donna.

Donna: I’m really struggling with the physiology of sight. I used to teach biology. So it started when you said visualize a white daisy, and if a person had never been sighted, they wouldn’t be able to visualize the white daisy.

Ken: Yeah, we had a blind person on the last retreat so we just worked with sound.

Donna: But what I’m saying is, all of us were able to do this because we had that experience in the past, that past sighting and then memory calling it up. And then this thing with the green card, I mean, literally we’ve got the rods and cones, the retina reflection and stuff going on …

Ken: Yeah, all of that stuff’s going on.

Donna: How can we say that doesn’t exist if physiologically it’s going on?

Ken: This could be very disturbing.]

Donna: Very disturbing?

Ken: You have choices, whether it’s up to your neck or over the top. [Pause] What perceives rods and cones?

Donna: I don’t need to perceive them for them to function.

Ken: No. What perceives rods and cones?

Donna: Well, I am now there because I’ve seen them.

Ken: So you perceived.

Donna: Yes, I perceived.

Ken: Same process, isn’t it? Something arises in perception. How do you know you existed yesterday?

Donna: How do I know I existed yesterday? A memory of events … and [unclear]

Ken: You have a dream. It seems to be a totally consistent world, doesn’t it. You even have memories and dreams of things that happened earlier in the dream. Any of that true, any of that exist before the dream started?

Donna: I’m confused.

Ken: I suggest you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. In particular, the chapter on the meeting with the ruler of the universe. Franca’s going to kill me.

Franca: [Unclear] I’m grateful for a childhood which extended into my adulthood. I read all these things [unclear] than the things I’m supposed to read.

Ken: So in this Donna, they meet the ruler of the universe and a person asked the question: “So what did you do about this?”

And he says, “This is a question about the past, is it?”

The person says, yes. And the ruler of the universe then says, “How do I know the past isn’t a fiction that I’ve constructed, which is designed to resolve the discrepancy between my current physical state, and my current mental state?”

So, we have here an extraordinary dilemma. Everything seems to make so much sense, until we examine it. Then it all falls apart. Marsha.

Marsha: If I close my eyes, I have no perception of the green card.

Ken: That’s right.

Marsha: Why can’t I say my perception is in my eyeballs?

Ken: If you take your eyeballs out …

Marsha: But those are like an insect colony. My eyeballs are a part of an organism that is fragmented. You could take my eyeballs out. That would be a fragment of the organism.

Ken: So since you’re appealing to the termite colony, then I will simply ask: “Who sees the green pamphlet?”

Marsha: I would say the collection of fragments that I am sees the green pamphlet.

Ken: Who’s talking to me right now.

Marsha: Why, myself! [Laughter]

Ken: I’m sorry. I don’t recognize you. [Laughter] We got the point.

Marsha: No, I don’t actually.

Ken: Because we have this idea of “I”, and this is what I was saying a moment ago. Everything seems to make sense until we start to examine it and then it all falls apart. And what we find out is, not saying that things don’t exist because … It’s not saying this doesn’t exist. It’s saying that the way we experience is different from how it actually is. And you heard Anita. When you shift from seeing this as a green pamphlet, to the experience of “seeing” itself, subjects and objects simply disappear. They don’t arise. Everybody experiences this in their lives. The typical situation in which this is experienced is when a friend or a close family member comes to you and tells you some tragedy that has befallen them. “I” and “other” disappear, communication takes place, something happens. It seems utterly magical, timeless. But it usually takes that kind of energy or attention to bring that about. You follow?

Practice instructions

Ken: So, next piece in your practice. You do the primary practice, say. And if you just do it at the first level, welcome to all sensory sensations. You can do this right now. We sort of did it before. Now we have the sound of the rain outside too. All of the sensory sensations. Forms, colors, shapes, sounds. All of the sensations of the body, tactile, kinesthetic. Where are they? [Silence]

All this experience. And we can’t say where it is, or where it came from, or where it goes. Now we need to go a step further. We see shapes and colors. There is a space where shapes and colors arise. Open to that space. You hear sound. There’s a space which we call silence in which sound arises. Open to that space, that silence. We don’t have a lot of it right now, but there is movement. And there’s a stillness in which all of that motion arises. And we have thought and feeling. And there’s a space in which all of that arises and we call it sentience or knowing. Open to that. There’s a space in which appearance arises. You may recall the words of the Heart Sutra. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form. Form is not other than emptiness. Because whatever arises as the appearance of form is not separate from, in opposition to, or other than the space. And so it is with everything else. Okay. Relax, look around. Questions? Different way of experiencing things?

Student: [Unclear] towards the space in each field.

Ken: We usually ignore the space, don’t we? So if you’re having problems with your meditation, your mind is all triggered and full of thoughts. The knowing of which those thoughts are arising. Where is that? Can you rest in that? That’s a bit like being outside in the hail yesterday, but it’s still workable. Traditionally we make a big fuss about this space. Let me ask you some questions. Any of those aspects of space that I pointed to, where there’s just space in which appearances arise or the silence, or any of the others. Can anything be done which changes it? Can you do anything to it to make it go away?

Student: The space? Yeah [unclear]

Ken: Does it make the space go away? Suppose you filled this room with furniture, would it make the space go away?

Student: No. [Laughter]

Ken: Is there anything good, bad, pure or impure about the space? [Silence] Can it be created and can it be destroyed?

Student: The sense of it can.

Ken: Yes. The sense of it, but that’s just us going on and on. So it’s very interesting. In your practice now, when you are doing the primary practice, there’s that space in which experience arises. When you’re just sitting, doing nothing, there’s all that space in which experience arises, and you don’t have to do a thing about any of that. And we keep checking. Where is this experience? We can have bodily sensations. We can say this sensation is right there, or right here. But where is the experience? It’s a little more difficult. When you’re experiencing this way, how’s it for you?

Ann: Mysterious.

Ken: Ann says, “mysterious.” Good. Claudia.

Claudia: Open. Boundless. Freeing.

Ken: Freeing in what way?

Claudia: Because it doesn’t matter what’s arising.

Ken: And so we move into equanimity, of a different sort.

Eugene: It seems the mind has no location.

Ken: Yes, very good Eugene.

Eugene: So there’s no use in asking the question “Where is it?” [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, very good. You weren’t there are a couple of days ago. Now you see something. Next step , let it soak in completely. Mind has no location. Caroline.

Caroline: I was earlier having various reactions, and resistance and what not. The reaction was really a need to believe in “I”, that I exist. So the purpose of the reaction was to prove or to assert something, that I’m here, I’m important [unclear]. And although I was caught up, I could also see the spaces right there. They were really just together, but not together. And I just got a sense that there’s a really strong motivating factor in all the resistance.

Ken: You’re quite right.

Caroline: I mean, we were talking earlier about sleepiness. So I was trying to look at my sleepiness and seeing that I was there and then I was pissed off because of something, and I was there and I’m really just seeing all those different situations.

Ken: You’re quite right. One can put it in the way that you did, which is the function of reaction is to confirm or support the “I.” That’s very true. Another way of putting it is, the function of reaction is to dissipate attention. So that one doesn’t experience not existing.

Caroline: Right, that’s why the space is right there?

Ken: Well, all of that arises in the space and something that you said to somebody today came back: “I is an experience, not a fact.”

Caroline: But I want to believe that I exist, really badly!

Ken: That’s right.

Caroline: I don’t [unclear] huge.

Ken: “I “is an experience. That’s all. Any other questions?

Questions from students

Ann: Is that what dullness is as well? Is that dissipation?

Ken: There’s a break in the clarity. Activity dissipates the stability of attention, dullness dissipates the clarity of attention.

Ann: So when in this context where we’re doing nothing and when dullness arises, what do we do?

Ken: Get up.

Ann: Walk, move. So even if it happens during a session in here, we just have to wait until afterwards. And then go move in the next session.

Ken: And what you can do is put your attention on what experiences dullness.

Ann: And ask the question.

Ken: Is what experiences dullness dull? Go back to … the answer to more questions.

Student: When I don’t practice my mind is sharp and clear …

Ken: Actually, I was looking at page 25 again:

Since perception is mind and emptiness is mind, since knowing is mind and delusion is mind, since arising, is mind, and cessation is mind.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (Translator), p. 25

Student: So basically, mind is experience.

Ken: That’s right. Mind is experience.

Student: Now I can [unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: We can talk. Mind is experience. Experience is mind.

Student: So I can process that. I feel that that the “I”, that we think of is process. We sort of rigidify it into a being, I guess. But now going back to this whole thing about emptiness and not being here [aughter] , my understanding of emptiness is as non-conceptual. So if you have an experience …

Ken: That’s a very conceptual understanding.

Student: Well for now.

Ken: So don’t try to understand it. Okay. I’ll give you a task. We have all the space in this room. Okay. Do you understand the space?

Student: No. You just feel it. You just experience it.

Ken: Try that with emptiness. Don’t try to understand emptiness because, I have it on good faith, there’s nothing to understand. What you’re doing is what people have done for centuries. This word emptiness has driven people nuts for at least 2,000 years. It’s a such a genius of a word. But, as you say, understand space, it’s hard to figure out what that might even mean. Right? So it’s the same thing.

Student: [Unclear] understanding.

Ken: He’s is actually doing something different. He knows, or she knows, not so much your understanding of space but knows how you experience space. Just go to the Getty in Los Angeles, which is quite brilliant that way. And also in Los Angeles, go to the two very large steel sculptures by Richard Serra. They’re quite extraordinary. We should take a group over there. You can spend a couple of hours there quite happily. It’s a very interesting combination of earth and water space.

Student: Can I say that emptiness equals nothingness?

Ken: Emptiness is a term designed to drive you nuts. Because you’re still trying to understand it.

Student: By way of experiencing what you know when you experience something without concepts directly? I thought that was emptiness. I could have been wrong. I thought that was my understanding.

Ken: You ready. [Bell ringing] Where is the sound?

Student: It’s around? [Laughter]” It’s here, it is there.

Ken: Where is here, where is there? So you move into direct experience. Just stay there. That’s it. Don’t try to understand anything. My father, when I came back from India, was a little overly enthusiastic about Buddhism, so I gave him a couple of books. He read them and then he would come up to me and say, “I really don’t understand why you’re doing this. It says right here, you cannot understand this.” [Laughter] We’re not in the understanding game. We’re in the knowing. So I didn’t ask you to try to understand everything about the primary practice, I just wanted you to experience it. When you experience something completely, you will know, and it can be a thought, and it can be a sound. It can be the sky, it can be a rock. It can be a tree. Doesn’t matter.Go

Student: Yeah. That’s what I understood.

Ken: Good. There’s one other question. Dan.

Dan: These lines that have been translated, are they designed to be in a sequence?

Ken: Yes. This is this is how the progression of introducing the view goes through. And I was looking at it and then it clicked on me. That was the same four things that I’ve come across in several other contexts, which is why I brought all of those together. this evening.

Dan: Which of these is important? From the exercise you’ve just given us it seems like it’s somewhere in the the first or the second.

Ken: It’s more in there because [pause]. Here we are. We’re giving you that vocabulary because [searching for the relevant text] in the section on page 191:

Abolishing conceiving of things as permanent with true existence from substantiality.

(Then)

All phenomena are actually empty.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (Translator), p. 191

All experience is actually empty, and here’s where I think it needs translation because it says, “Any material object you can destroy.” Since all material substances can be damaged by weapons. There’s a jump there. And what I’ve been trying to do this evening is not to let you jump off that cliff and fall into that gap because it’s not very useful. And the reasoning is: I can take this piece of paper and the space in which the experience in which a piece of paper arises I can’t do a thing with. We discussed before, can’t touch it , can’t affect it, nothing changes it, etc. Piece of paper, I can do something with. I can tear it up. I can burn it etc.

So in that, in that way of looking at things, it’s very easy to become confused between the experience of things and the things themselves. So, this is a piece of paper, but what Buddhism is really talking about isn’t pieces of paper but our experiences of pieces of paper. But what happens, as Anita and others pointed out, if we rest in the experience of the piece of paper, there’s no subject-object, there’s just experience. But as the mahamudra prayer points out, that’s not where we stay. As Caroline pointed out just a few moments ago, the sense of self is very strong. So we move out of that experience and make the perception into an object, and the awareness into a self and that’s where all the problems start. So this is why I’m not working from the text directly because it creates this kind of confusion. And one has to read this stuff again and again to get what they’re actually talking about. The very next section goes into the dreaming example. And then it becomes very clear again.