5. The Impact of Our Actions on Experience
Ken delves into the question of why actions matter when experience is just experience. "The basis of Buddhist ethics is simply what leaves your mind or you at peace," he explains, emphasizing how ethical behavior creates conditions for clarity and balance. Topics covered include the nature of karma, minimizing harm, and living free from the projections of thought and emotion.
Opening questions
Ken: Ann?
Ann: Yes, Ken.
Ken: What do you want tonight?
Ann: What do I want?
Ken: Yes!
Ann: More. [Laughter]
Ken: Please, sir, may I have some more. [Laughter] Okay. Yes?
Student: You are looking at me?
Ken: Yes.
Student: What is this?
Ken: Which is that? Actually …
Student: Manifesting action in the world, on page 41. I read it last night, and it was making the other book look simple.
Ken: Which other book?
Student: The blue one with all this blah, blah, blah … [Laughter] I mean I read this last night and it’s bizarre. And I wonder if you’re going to be speaking to it somehow.
Ken: I hadn’t planned on it.
Student: You just kind of put it in there for us to find?
Ken: I’m glad you found it. [Laughter]
Student: Well I noticed it because I heard Caroline giggling [laughter], and I peeked over at what she was reading. She was reading this.
Ken: Oh, Caroline.
Caroline: Yeah?
Ken: Please explain.
Caroline: Explain? That’s why I was giggling! [Unclear]
Ken: It’s the Genjokoan. And probably Dogen’s most commented on work.
Student: This? [holding up book]
Ken: Yeah [laughter]. And my aim was to … I couldn’t find anything comparable from the Theravadan tradition, which had the faith in the heart, or faith in the mind in Chinese. And you have the Genjokoan from Japanese. All the other stuff, dzogchen, mahamudra sources and things like that. And I thought it would be interesting for you to have exposure to how other traditions talk about the same kind of thing we’re doing.
Student: This [unclear] suddenly he says something “What?!” and it’s so crazy!
Ken:
Flowers scatter in our longing and weeds spring up in our loathing.
Sounds of Valley Streams, Translation of Nine Essays from Shōbōgenzō, Francis H. Cook, p. 65
Such as that?
Student: That actually makes sense!
Ken: Oh, well, if you understand that, then where’s the problem?
Student: There is a great deal more than that one! [laughter]
Ken: Give me a sentence.
Student: I don’t understand … a lot of it is language, of course, obviously.
Ken: Of course! It may not be the best translation, but the other translations I was having problems with too. So …
Student: And this is one thing that you are not going to retranslate.
Ken: In Japanese it makes sense.
Student: Probably not, but for example, he refers to “the myriad things” and it seems like it is a special term for … What?
Ken: All experience.
Student: [Unclear] Dharmata?
Ken: No, “all experience.”
Student: “All experience.”
Ken: Yeah, it is usually translated as”the 10,000 things.” That’s what the Chinese says. This is what the Japanese says literally.
Student: So, “To study the buddha way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be authenticated by the myriad things.”
Ken: Substitute “enlightened” for “authenticated.”
Student: [Unclear]
Ken: I don’t, but it’s the usual translation.
Student: Ok.
Ken: “Awakened.”
Student: If I substitute with “awakened”, then: “To forget the self is to be awakened by a myriad of things. To be awakened by a myriad of things is to drop off the mind-body of oneself and others.” That actually reminds me of what we were talking about last night, now that …
Ken: It’s definitely clearer isn’t it?
Student: Well, it’s not crystal clear! [laughter] It’s going to [unclear], so that’s fine. I’m curious about it because there are things that kind of resonate a little bit, but it’s just bizarre. So …
Ken: Look, you know about Kalu Rinpoche’s with Seung Sahn.
Student: [Unclear]
Ken: Yeah, I think it is. So, it’s all set up in Boston for these two great teachers to meet.
Student: I’m sorry, who was he meeting?
Ken: Seung Sahn Sunim, a Korean Zen teacher, who died not too long ago. And Seung Sahn Nim flips out an orange and says: “What is this?” [Laughter] The translator translates this to Rinpoche. It was Peter who was translating. And he says something to the translator. The translator and Rinpoche talk back and forth for about 10 minutes, which is an extremely long time in front of an audience.
Student: Yes, it is.
Ken: Finally Peter, the translator, turns to the audience, and says: “Rinpoche is very confused. Don’t they have oranges from where he comes from?” [Laughter] This is somewhat better than the meeting between Trungpa and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Student: Oh, what happened?
Ken: Well, there was a friend of mine who was present at this meeting and actually who had helped to set it up. She said “they were both at their worst.” And she was a student of both of these people. [Laughs]. Thich Nhat Hanh was a his puritanical worst, and Trungpa was two hours late and completely drunk. [Laughter] What does this tell you about being awake? Both of these stories, what do they tell you?
Student: They don’t stop being human.
Ken: No.
Student: It get’s lost in translation.
Ken: Very well put! It gets lost in translation. [Laughter] Yes?
Student: So can I ask about for example …?
Ken: I don’t guarantee to be able to comment on this.
Student: And I have no guarantee talking about any matter whatsoever. But I can try. So, the last paragraph on the first page. On page 41. “Firewood becomes ashes and cannot become firewood again.”
Ken: The second law of thermodynamics. [Laughter]
Student: [Unclear] There are firewood and ashes where I come from. “However you should not think of ashes as the subsequent and firewood as the prior of the same thing.” Ok, now I’m lost because that’s exactly what I think of them. “You should understand …”
Ken: Oh, you think in terms of cause and effect, don’t you?
Student: “… bias in its own state, as firewood and has …” Well, we have had conversations about genesis, and you grind your axe about the word hetu [cause] and view, and how it should be this, and shouldn’t be that. Acorn and oak, you know. I think of an acorn as prior and an oak as subsequent of the same thing.
Ken: Yes.
Student: Kind of the same thing. And so, you know, like I just … He’s lost me completely. I don’t understand the point that he’s trying to make. And he hasn’t made it yet [laughter]. “Firewood abides in its own state as firewood, and has its own prior and subsequent.” And then he says:
Although it has its own prior and subsequent, it is cut off from prior and subsequent. Ashes are in their own state of ashes and have no prior and subsequent. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after turning to ash, so a person does not return to life again after death.
Sounds of Valley Streams, Translation of Nine Essays from Shōbōgenzō, Francis H. Cook, p. 67
[Laughter]. “It’s the fifth teaching”—and this gets really really weird— “in the Buddha dharma.
Life does not become death. And therefore we call it non life. It is the fixed sermon of the Buddha that death does not become life. And therefore we call it nondeath. Life is situated in one time and death is situated in one time. For instance, it’s like winter and spring. We do not think that winter becomes spring or the spring becomes summer.”
p. 67
Well [laughter] Exactly!
Ken: No.
Student: I mean …
Ken: Welcome to Dogen.
Student: Wow! You know, I mean, Zen Kitchen was cool I liked it.
Ken: No … Did you read the first part of Zen Kitchen because it is all like this?
Student: Well, this is really weird.
Ken: Well, this is a little rich. One feels that Dogen was, you know, inexcusably pretentious and arrogant, but …
Student: I’m sorry but could you say the first part?
Ken: A little rich. A friend of mine in the Bay area and a student in a Zen center and very conversant with Dogen. Doesn’t like Dogen at all. He thinks he is very arrogant. But, you know, it gives you some taste. So when you read this, what happens?
Student: Your mind stops.
Ken: Oh.
Student: It’s very much like your book. [Laughter]
Student: Well, Ken is clear. He is dense, but he is clear.
Ken: That’s not the book she is referring to.
Student: The Arrow.
Student: Oh, it’s the Arrow.
Student: Clear. It’s clear. [Laughter]
Student: There is clear, and then there is … [Unclear]
Ken: Okay. Let your mind stop and rest there.
Student: My mind stops when I read the instructions on how to use a machine too, so …
Ken: Rest there too [laughter].
Student: I’m too lucky!
Ken: Ok, so far, we’ve answered two questions haven’t we?
Student: I don’t know. [Laughter]
Ken: What am I and what is life? Those last two teachings, right? Is this clear Franca?
Franca: I know you came in saying: “What do you want tonight?” Two different people asked for what they wanted and now you’re going to do what you want. So that’s clear [laughter]. I feel like the mouse picking up this paper. [Laughter]
Ken: You know why cats play with mice?
Franca: No
Ken: It gets the adrenaline of the mice going, and that runs through all of their muscles and makes the meat tender. [Laughter]
Franca: I think it is just the opposite.
Ken: No, apparently it sets up a whole bunch of enzymes which breaks down the meat.
Ann: Mice must be different from other mammals.
Ken: Well, I don’t know the physiology. [Laughter]
Student: It’s a tenderizing process.
What matters?
Ken: I’m hungry. [Laughter] Okay. What am I and what is life? Well, there’s a third question. We’re continuing our discussion of the view. What about the actions I do? What’s up with that? Does it matter what I do? Does it not matter what I do? This is another question that most of us have, right? So the usual answer to this question is—what is the famous line? “Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Train your own mind. This is the Buddha’s teaching.” Right? That’s the usual instruction: Do virtue. Avoid non-virtue. But we have a problem now. If there’s no thing which is me, and experience is just experience, what does it matter what I do? There’s nothing for me to be hurt. There’s nothing to me to be benefited.
Student: To be?
Ken: To be benefited. By good karma. So what’s the diff? So that’s the next question that comes up. No? Does anybody entertain this question?
Student: Could you state that first part again? There’s not me and …
Ken: If there’s no me, nothing exists except as experience, then what matters? What difference does it make how I am? You know. There are a lot of people who say, like the “everything’s empty” school, “Go out. Have a gay old time. Do terrible things to people, saying, well, it’s all empty so it doesn’t matter.” It’s a rather naive understanding. Well, this may partially answer your question, Donna. Probably not completely.
We experience things. Some things we like. Some things we don’t like. Some things seem to have a beneficial effect. Some things seem to have a harmful effect. All of this is a way of experiencing the world that is organized around the sense of self. To be more precise, it’s actually organized around a bunch of sense of selves.
Student: What did you say? Organized around?
Ken: A bunch. A bunch of sense of selves. Or is that senses of self. Yes. Bunches of senses of self. Now we have the illusion that we are a consistent entity. You know, we do everything for a rational reason and so forth. And it can all be made sense of, and we spend thousands of dollars in therapy making sense of it. [Laughter]
But in many respects, it’s more accurate to see that what we call our personality consists of the pretty Darwinian struggle among a bunch of senses of self. All competing for various resources and getting them according to the results that they produce. Hmm? One sense of self makes everything go nice, then we tend to spend more time with it. Then another one gets upset, and really throws a tantrum, and completely gums up the works.
I mean, I live in Los Angeles. I know all these people who rode the ladder to success. Then they had some really strange part of themselves come out and kaboom, the next thing they knew they were on the street. It happens all the time. Of course, we’re all consistent, rational human beings. So every one of these senses of self has a distorted way of experiencing the world. And this [unclear] gives rise to what we call the six realms and all of this stuff, and because of that distortion or those distortions, then because it’s based on the projections and not on what actually is, how we act introduces imbalances. And thus, we get into trying to compensate for these imbalances and it just turns out to be a big mess. That’s pretty much the state of affairs in a nutshell. Yes, Marsha?
Marsha: Because we’ve been talking about this question that has come up. “What difference does it make?”
Ken: Yeah. Well, Buddhist ethics comes down to one very simple principle in my opinion. If you go into a situation or you encounter a situation and you know what the right thing to do is. And maybe it costs you something to do it. Maybe it costs you some money. Maybe it costs you some inconvenience. Maybe it costs you your job, or a friendship, but you know what the right thing to do is, and you do it. How long do you think about it afterwards?
Student: Not at all.
Ken: Well, if it’s a big thing, you may think about it a bit afterwards.
Student: But you don’t go around obsessing.
Ken: What if you don’t do it?
Student: [Unclear]
Ken: Then you do start obsessing about it. You know. For like three or four millennia or something like that. So, … Yes?
Student: I have a question.
Ken: Fire away!
Student: Can you act and you do the right thing, but it really is cutting through a pattern, and so you still have trouble with it, because the pattern doesn’t like what you did?
Ken: Yeah.
Student: So, you can obsess about it also, even though it was the right thing to do.
Ken: Understand that if you take a closer look at that situation: you know what the right thing to do is. It’s different from what you’ve usually done in that situation. You do it. And you experience something which you didn’t experience before. Something which you have avoided experiencing for a very, very long time, right? So that’s a little bit of a shock to the system, right? It’s like throwing a stone into a pond that ripples out. And that is what you are experiencing. They are the ripples of the shock. When you act in that situation, and you are clear— I’m going to put that in the same condition—do you question afterwards whether you did the right thing or not?
Student: No.
Ken: No, that’s what I mean. Yeah, there may be ripples and turbulence and things like that, but you acted in accord with things.
Student: I don’t know if I agree with that actually, because I see it in myself and I know I’ve done the right thing, but I have another pattern which is just to go over and over and over the situation whether I did the right thing or not. And that’s also a pattern.
Ken: Yeah. And that has developed to dissipate attention so that you don’t experience something else.
Student: It is a big mess.
Ken: It is a big mess, and the patterns are interconnected and all kinds of stuff. Anyway, returning. The basis of Buddhist ethics is that. In other words, the basis of Buddhist ethics is simply what leaves your mind or you at peace. Now, from the perspective of direct awareness, dzogchen, mahamudra, or whatever you want to call it: is there anything which can be harmed? Is there anything which can be benefited? Now you have to keep in mind Yogi Berra’s injunction here: “In theory, there’s no difference between practice and theory. In practice there is.” Because we don’t have the capacity to experience whatever arises, then we experience things affecting us.
Student: We experience how?
Ken: Affecting us.
Student: Because we have reacted to what has arisen?
Ken: Well, you can put it in terms of reaction, or you can put it in terms of there’s a sense of self, which categorizes experience into what supports, or threatens, or is indifferent. If we go to Buddha’s enlightenment: what Buddha did on that full moon night, Bodhgaya, 2,500 years ago, was reach a level of attention in which he could experience whatever arose. This now goes by the very fancy name of vajra-like samadhi. It simply means one can experience whatever arises in experience. So just take that in for a moment. What would your life look like If you were able to do that? Franca?
Franca: My house would be very messy. [Laughs]
Ken: Would it?
Franca: Or other people would mess it up. I wouldn’t be doing anything. So …
Ken: Is that true?
Franca: Ask the question again please?
Ken: What would your life be like if you could experience whatever arises in your experience, just experience it completely. Well, number one, would you have any enemies?
Student: Would you have any …
Ken: Enemies. Why not?
Student: You wouldn’t have any enemies because there would be no block between what came and what you were left with. So there would be no remaining.
Ken: Yeah.
Student: Time doesn’t function. So you’re not holding on to junk.
Ken: Yeah. The only reason we have the experience that somebody is an enemy, it’s because interaction with them elicits something we don’t want to experience.
Student: On the other hand though, you wouldn’t experience them as an enemy, but that doesn’t mean … because others may not be able to experience everything that arises. And so you may still have enemies. And I seem to remember Stephen Batchelor talking about in the life of the Buddha, someone trying to assassinate the Buddha.
The man who thought he was a kernel of corn
Ken: Yes. This takes us to a very important story about the man who thought he was a kernel of corn. [Laughter] The man who thought he was a kernel of corn.
Student: A kernel of?
Ken: Corn!
Student: Oh, my! Reminds me of the bear story.
Ken: The bear story was a good story. So there’s this guy …
Student: It’s corny! [Laughter]
Ken: We’ll call him Bob. He thinks he’s a kernel of corn and everybody in the world is a chicken. [Laughter] Needless to say he ends up in the mental health institution. Extreme paranoia. He works with this doctor for many, many years. A psychiatrist. And he comes to understand that he is not a kernel of corn. The psychiatrist says, “You know, this is really good! Great! You’ve been here on these grounds for many, many years. Would you like to maybe tomorrow we go out and take a look at the city?”
Bob said, “You know I would like that, that would be great.”
So, the next morning, Bob and the psychiatrist go out the gates of the grounds of the mental health institution. And across the street, there are a bunch of people lined up, waiting for a bus. Bob takes one look at them, and takes off. He goes so fast that the psychiatrist has no idea where he’s going. He calls the police. And late that night, they find Bob cowering in some drainage culvert in another part of the city. They bring him back to the mental health institution. They clean him up, put him to bed. Next day Bob comes in to the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist says, “Bob, I don’t get it. You know, you’re not a kernel of corn. What happened yesterday?”
“Look, Doc. I know that I’m not a kernel of corn. You know that I’m not a kernel of corn. But those damn chickens out there, they don’t know that!” [Laughter].
So I suspect that just because you have no enemies, it doesn’t mean that somebody won’t regard you as one. Okay. But that’s one thing that would be different. What else would be different if you could experience whatever arose? Anita.
Anita: You wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in your head.
Ken: Say more.
Anita: I don’t think it would require a whole lot of thought,
Ken: Why not?
Anita: Because if you can really experience what arises, I think things would be clearer.
Ken: There’s a line in the Heart Sutra about this, isn’t there?
Anita: Plus you wouldn’t need to be obsessing about the past and the future.
Ken: Yeah. That’s true. “Because for bodhisattvas there is no clouding in mind, they have no fear.” Okay? So the whole world changes when you can experience things completely, There’s another little one. If you’re an emotion, what do you want?
Student: Attention.
Ken: Attention? Go a little bit further.
Student: You want to be felt?
Ken: You want to be felt. Feelings arise to be felt. What happens when you don’t experience a feeling that arises?
Student: They take other forms.
Ken: They keep knocking at the door, don’t they? If you push them into the body, then they manifest in the body, and eventually you get cancer or something like that. They keep calling for attention. What if you do experience a feeling, what happens then?
Student: It goes away.
Ken: Yeah, it’s done. It’s fulfilled it’s reason for being. So you could think of feeling feelings as an act of generosity. In fact, this is exactly what the burnt offering we do every morning is about. All of those current debts and things like that are basically feelings that haven’t been felt. And they keep coming, creating disturbances in our lives and our practice, etc. And what we imagine in the fire offering [Mountain Burnt Offering Ritual] is offering everything wonderful and beautiful so that they get exactly what they want. That is, they get to be felt, and they’re done.
If you could experience everything
Ken: So, what would life be like if you could experience everything? Dan?
Dan: Profound equanimity?
Ken: Yep. Extraordinarily profound equanimity. What else? Yes?
Student: I just keep thinking that you feel a lot more pain, and in my little experience of it, I also feel more compassionate.
Ken: You would see the pain clearly?
Student: Sorry?
Ken: You would see the pain clearly?
Student: Yes.
Ken: Yeah, and the results of the pain? And compassion would arise?
Student: Yes.
Ken: Yep. Yes?
Dan: You wouldn’t experience things through labels.
Ken: Right. Would you be able to make distinctions?
Dan: Yes.
Ken: So you have equanimity. You have distinctions. Things arise clearly. Right? Very clearly. No clouding. Would you know what to do?
Student: Mm-hmm
Ken: Why?
Student: Because of clarity.
Ken: Because there’s no separation from the situation. The situation tells you what the next action is. Correct? So what I’ve just summarized there are actually the four pristine awarenesses or timeless awarenesses if you choose to call them like that. Equanimity is eveness or balanced pristine awareness. Distinguishing is distinguishing. Being able to discern differences is distinguishing pristine awareness. Things arising clearly like reflections in the mirror is mirror-like pristine awareness. And knowing what to do is effective pristine awareness. Totality is totality pristine awareness.
Dan: The traditional name for pristine awareness is?
Ken: Ahh. They’re also called the five wisdoms. Pristine awareness is one translation. Timeless awareness is another. I prefer to use, to reserve “wisdom” for another word in Sanskrit, prajña. And the Sanskrit word for pristine awareness is jñana. But that you’ll see in a lot of contexts that will be translated as wisdom. Yes?
Student: Did you say the five wisdoms and before something else?
Ken: No, those are the four. And then the fifth one is totality
Student: What are the four? Sorry, I didn’t catch the grouping.
Ken: Did I say the four something?
Student: The four wisdoms?
Ken: There are five pristine awarenesses. Yeah. So, no, I didn’t mean to imply that there is a group of four. You sometimes see four of them grouped together. Okay. So when we sit and do nothing, we’re introducing a different dynamic into the evolution of our experience. What’s the first thing you experience when you sit and do nothing? Yeah. Various things such as chaos, mess, etc. I’m going to suggest that the first thing you experience is the Darwinian struggle among all those different senses of self. What’s very interesting is that when you sit and do nothing, you aren’t participating in the struggle. What does that mean?
Student: You see it more clearly.
Ken: You see it more clearly? What does it mean for the struggle?
Student: You react … reaction?
Student: It is suspended.
Ken: Well, I wouldn’t say it’s suspended.
Student: While you’re seeing it. I mean, you’re not doing anything.
Ken: You’re not doing it. Yes. But the struggle still goes on.
Student: But it’s getting your attention.
Ken: Go on.
Student: When you were talking about how if you feel your feelings, it releases the feeling or it’s completed. Well, if you are not participating in the struggle, you’re actually experiencing the struggle taking place without taking sides basically.
Ken: Yes.
Student: All of those parts are getting attention at the same time.
Ken: Maybe not all at the same time, because we don’t have that capacity quite. So what’s the effect on the struggle?
Student: De-energizes it?
Ken: Well, you could say it de-energizes it. But I think there would be a more helpful way of looking at it. Is that actually de-energizing? As Caroline was saying, there’s a kind of energy going into it but in a different way. What’s your experience?
Student: It’s a little bit like somebody fighting, but they can’t find an opponent. It’s like ….struggle with … There’s nothing there to engage in. Or something like that.
Ken: Alex?
Alex: They don’t fight with each other.
Ken: They can do that. Both are possible,
Dan: But it needs you there.
Alex: Well, it needs me to believe it. That’s the thing. That’s the belief gets a little bit shaken by watching [unclear].
Dan: We can see what we’re doing to ourselves. It’s harder when we are acting.
Student: There’s more space.
Ken: There’s more space. So what happens to the struggle?
Student: It relaxes.
Student: You want the real thing? [laughter] It catches me, and I go off, and I go crazy for a while. And then I come back.
Ken: Yes. And then?
Student: Well, this has been going on 49 years, Ken. When I’m 89, I’ll give you a call and let you know.
Ken: No, no, this dynamic of sitting and doing nothing, has not been going on for 49 years. Here you’ve had three or four days now of doing nothing, what’s your experience? A lot of you have come in and told me something about your experience. So what is it?
Student: My experience is that it kind of loses organization and I get a big shot of energy. And if I don’t go haring off [laughter] into the next set of patterns, there’s an experience of clarity. Sometimes of peace. Sometimes of bliss. Strong emotions.
Ken: Anybody would like to do this?
Student: I would just want to add a little bit. There is some kind of newness in possibilities, and …
Ken: Yes, you see all kinds of new possibilities. Right.
Student: That were not there before.
Ken: But the struggle basically plays itself out. Unless of course we get caught by taking sides and then the whole thing starts off again. So …
Student: Can I ask a question there? So you don’t have to experience each one of those fully and go through the whole … or …
Ken: Oh, I think you end up doing that, yeah. No escape. [Laughter] It plays itself out. And we find ourselves just resting there. And as Franca pointed out, all of the energy that was being dissipated in the struggle becomes available for attention. So as I say, one is introduced to a different evolutionary dynamic into the system by doing this. Hence the importance of intention. That’s what keeps it going. You know?
Student: Did you say intention or attention?
Ken: Intention. Sit and do nothing. Now, many of you would have heard the story of the monk who was sitting in the courtyard, meditating. The abbot comes up and says, “What are you doing?”
“I’m meditating to reach enlightenment.”
The abbot sits down beside him in meditation posture. He picks up a stone from the courtyard, starts rubbing it with this cloth. The monk continues to meditate. The abbot rubs the stone. Half an hour goes by. An hour goes by. The monk is still meditating. The abbot is still rubbing the stone with the cloth. Eventually the monk can’t stand it anymore.
“What are you doing rubbing that stone with a cloth?”
“I’m making a glass tile,” says the abbot.
“You can’t make a glass tile by rubbing a stone.”
“Nor can you wake up by meditating” says the abbot. In other words, as long as you’re working at something, you’ve taken sides. How is that, Anita?
Anita: Well, I was thinking about that today. [Laughter]
Ken: Say more.
Anita: I thought that this practice would be easier if I had amnesia every time. [Laughter]
Ken: Explain that a little more fully, just in case anybody …
Anita: Well, if I am able to be present to my experience, and I want to do that again, to reach a state of peacefulness with that.
Ken: Right. So what prevents you?
Anita: Trying.
Ken: Where does the amnesia come in?
Anita: If I could kind of forget … if I could just be present and not be thinking about where I want to get.
Ken: Oh, would this come under the rubric of hope?
Anita: More like striving.
Ken: Oh, striving.
Anita: [Unclear] and all those things that aren’t relevant.
Ken: So why do you do that?
Anita: Its automatic.
Ken: No, try again.
Anita: Why do I do it?
Ken: Yeah.
Anita: Because I have preferences. [Laughter]
Ken: Much better answer! [Laughter] So what are we going to do?
Anita: Well, I’m doing …
Ken: There’s the teaching from the mind-training tradition on that. Unfortunately I don’t have the book here, so I won’t be able to remember it, but it goes something like: “When my mind is all disturbed and agitated and going crazy there’s no better place to be than this mat.” This present state is just fine. I’m not being burned in hell. Great! I’m not being roasted and scalded. Great! Or even more to the point, this is a wonderful little prayer. This is intended for people who are ill. “If it would be better for me to get better, may I get better. If it would be better for me to stay ill, may I stay ill. If it would be better for me to die, may I die.”
Many years ago, I was working with a woman who had terminal cancer. And it was just a matter of time. And we went through a bunch of stuff and then one day she said: “Can you give me a prayer to work with?”
I said, “Well, yeah, here’s this prayer.”
She went, “What?! Are you nuts!”
I said, “Well, you asked me for a prayer, here it is.”
“I don’t want that prayer! Take that damn prayer! I don’t want to hear about that?”
“Okay. Fine.” I came back two weeks later to see her.
“Do you remember that prayer that you said last time? I can’t get it out of my head. And in an odd way, it’s very comforting.”
Kongtrül describes this prayer as one which dissolves hope and fear. So you’re absolutely right. Preferences. I want to experience this. I don’t want to experience that. Right? What do you do?
Student: More than that, you know, just being okay with what was going on.
Ken: Go further.
Student: I’ve been seeing that it doesn’t matter.
Ken: Why not? Why doesn’t it matter?
Student: Well, if the preference is all about this practice. And those particular preferences, don’t get me to this … my preferred place. And that they have the opposite effect, then I give it up.
Ken: So you can get to your preferred state?
Student: No! [Laughter] I couldn’t go that far. I’m not going that far. Seeing the loop. So that helps me let go of it.
Ken: Yeah. As a friend of mine puts it, “We’re in a box. To deny the existence of the box, is to be in the box. To ignore the box, is to be in the box. To try to dismantle the box, is to be in the box. To try to get out of the box, is to be in the box.” What can you do?
Student: Be in the box.
Ken: Exactly. That’s it.
Student: More specifically: experience the box.
Ken: Okay.
Student: So much for chapter, whatever it is.
Ken: Chapter?
Student: Dismantling the box.
Ken: It’s how you do it!
Student: Dismantling the box?
Ken: No. Experiencing the box. It goes back to what I was saying earlier.
Student: In order to dismantle the box?
Ken: Ah, you raised a very important point. In being in the box, Eugene, what’s the intention?
Eugene: To not want to be somewhere else.
Ken: Yeah. Because if you approach it with, “I’m going to experience the box, so I can be free of the box” guess what? You’re in the box.
Student: If you don’t examine the box, or experience the box, not to want to be somewhere else. You experience the box because you’re curious about the box. You’re willing to know the box.
Ken: Yes. It’s what you’re experiencing right now.
Student: Yeah. But it still has this flavor of avoiding, if you’re doing it …
Ken: Exactly. That’s right. And this is the conundrum of this kind of practice. It’s very easy to start to approach this kind of practice with the expectation of a certain kind of result. But once that expectation is in there, you can no longer be in the actual experience.
Student: The only way I have ever found for myself to work with these things that are so painful, is to be curious. That’s the only way.
Ken: Okay. And that’s a very good way.
Student: Is to be?
Ken: Curious.
Student: Okay.
Ken: Yeah. This is what Stephen Batchelor says about the first noble truth. The appropriate response to the first noble truth which is, there is struggle or there is suffering, is to get curious about it. Ah, that’s strange. So all of this is part of the view. We have to let go and let go and let go. And it’s far from easy because we have these deeply instilled notions that this is good for me, that’s bad for me. And out of those deeply instilled notions, we seek to control our experience.
Student: But there’s an aspect of letting go that could be interpreted as doing something, you know, trying to let it go.
Ken: Yes.
Student: And so I’ve heard the definition of letting go, or I read it in Kornfield’s book , that it could mean let it be.
Ken: Yeah. That’s actually from Joseph Goldstein’s book.
Student: Oh, Goldstein’s book.
Ken: And I think it’s … I think it’s a very, very good instruction. When we say that we’re going to let something go, this means we’re just going to let it be there and experience it. We’re not going to try and do anything with it. Okay.
Student: Let me circle back to the “What’s the point?” thing. There’s the question, what’s the point, why do anything, if there’s no me. There’s no stuff. What about reactions?
Ken: Why are you here?
Student: I’m drawn here.
Ken: [Laughs] By? It’s not my personality. I know that. [Laughs]
Student: I’m drawn here. I mean, I can make up all kinds of rational reasons for being here, but they’re not why I’m here for. I’m drawn here because of the experiences that I’ve had here, and with you, in retreat with you, and some other people in this room that I know. I don’t know all of you but, I’m drawn here because of the certainty of the knowing that I’ve experienced. And even when you said earlier about the preferred state, one of the things that I find has occurred to me and has been helpful is Ken’s “Do the silence” thing, he expands it, its worth the silence. And whatever you say, he just keeps expanding it. That’s very helpful. Well, it’s what it is. The preferred state, to give it a name, it’s always there. So there’s no problem. And so I have known that here or among these people, with you, etc.. So these elements draw me.
Ken: So I guess that answers the question of, “What’s the point? You are drawn to a set of conditions that increase your ability to let things just be.
Student: You said … you talked about actions at the very beginning. And a messy house and so forth. And just what occurred to me … Carolyn and I had the wonderful opportunity, just before we came here, to play with a 10-day old baby. And most people, I know that it’s not true for all people, but most people cannot hold a 10-day old baby and ask, “What’s the point?” It’s not possible. It’s not possible.
Ken: Okay.
Student: That’s what occurred to me when you introduced this subject at the beginning.
Ken: Oh, okay. Well, I wasn’t thinking of 10-day old babies or 10-year old ones for that matter.
Student: So it’s actually a little easier to ask what’s the point of this thing [Laughter] [Unclear]
Ken: What I was referring to is what people often do with this fear. They say it’s okay, there’s no self, it’s all just experience. It doesn’t matter what I do. The fact is it does. It matters a great deal not because I’m building up stores of bad karma or big accounts of merit,. Buddhahood without Meditation talks about, “Okay, so where is that bad karma store? Where does it actually exist?” It goes through the same kind of examination that we did the last couple of days. Because all of that’s a form of projection. And that’s why I posed the principle that Buddhist ethics comes down simply to what leaves the mind at peace. And thus creating the conditions to experience things as they are. And that’s why what we do matters, because with everything that we say or do, even think, we set in motion processes that can be disturbing or activating or unbalancing. And if you do, then we get caught up in the usual mess of trying to compensate and balance things and keep everything going, which is how we live most of our lives. And this possibility of just experiencing things as they arise, opens up new possibilities.
Seeking to minimize pain
Ken: And I want to make one more point. In most of our interactions with life, we seek to minimize pain. Why do we do that?
Student: We don’t want to experience it.
Ken: Yeah. What are we protecting?
Student: No pain.
Ken: Yeah. We are protecting ourselves from pain. It’s very different to live awake. Imagine a situation: some difficulty, say, with a friend, or maybe some difficulty with someone who isn’t much of a friend. And imagine interacting in that situation in a way to minimize pain. So what does that feel like? How many of you are busy strategizing right now? [Laughter] Okay. Take the same situation …
Student: When you are resisting pain, right?
Ken: Mm-hmm. Take the same situation. And be awake in it and be prepared to act in that wakefulness. What’s that like? How much strategizing is there going on?
Student: Well it seems like you’d be more willing to accept the pain. I was going to ask a question about what was the difference between that and masochism?
Ken: Ah, big difference. A masochist enjoys the pain. That’s quite unbalanced. You come into the situation, you act. There is pain. Yes. But you don’t engage the pain to enjoy it. You engage it for another reason. For what other reason?
Student: Because it’s there.
Ken: Yeah, it’s unavoidable.
Student: Does that mean you let it in, you accept it?
Ken: Yeah. What?
Student: You don’t really have a choice.
Ken: Well, a lot of people try to avoid it.
Student: But if you sit still long enough to watch everything as it happens, it just means it takes much longer to release it …
Ken: Oh, you’re quite right. Postponing inevitable pain tends to increase it. One of the more dramatic experiences I had with this … There’s a woman in the group I had up in Orange County. And one night she told me that she wanted to talk to me about her son who was a drug addict. And in the same group, I had a forensic psychologist, so I asked her to stay. She’s very well acquainted with drug issues and the legal aspects related to them. So I asked her to stay on. So this woman explained the situation she was in. Her son was a drug addict and to support his habit, he was beginning to deal. He was in his early 20s. And she knew, because she knew her son, that he wasn’t really clever enough to be a good dealer. So she knew that he would eventually be arrested as a dealer, which carries, of course, much more severe penalties than being arrested as a drug user. And he refused treatment, etc. etc. So she had tried all of that stuff already. And she had consulted with people in the system and they said: “Well, one of the things you can do is to have it arranged for him to be arrested for possession. And then once he is in the system, he will actually get the drug treatment.” This is a hell of a choice for a mother! You know, do you arrange to have your son arrested so there he’ll get the drug treatment he needs, or do wait and let him live his own life, so he gets arrested as a dealer and he’s in jail for five or 10 times as long?
So we talked with her and at one point she said: “I’m just trying to find a good solution.” And at that point, I said to her: “There is no good solution here. There isn’t a good solution. You have choices to make, but there isn’t a good solution.” And my other student who was the forensic psychologist backed me up with that. “No, this is a bad situation. There is no good solution.” And then just hearing that … And this goes to your point about letting go. Let that be. That’s how it was. And then there’s a shift in her, and she said: “I know what to do.” She never told me what she was going to do. I don’t know untill this day what she did. But she moved into that clarity. So it’s very, very much that being awake means we meet what is there, and we don’t try to minimize pain, which is exactly what she was trying to do. We meet what is there and that’s it. It’s a different way of living. It involves quite often taking hits. However, it does have one important benefit. Your mind will be at peace, which is actually why we’re here, why you are doing this practice. We can’t predict what situations are going to arise. We can’t predict what we will do in them.
I was working with a woman who is dying of AIDS and she said: “What would you be doing in my condition?” And I said: “I have no idea. There are things that I would hope I would be doing, but how I would actually be in your position, I have no idea.” And that was the truth. And I don’t think we can know until those situations arise. We think we can strategize, we can speculate, etc. This practice is about living free of the projections of thought and emotion. What we’re doing in our formal practice, so to speak, is opening to the experience of things inside and out and not engaging, to the extent of our abilities, the projections of thought and emotion.
So, in one sense, it’s an extraordinarily simple practice. In another sense, it’s a very, very difficult practice because it’s unlike anything we’ve ever done in our lives before. And this is why one of the ways that this practice is approached is through refining the view. Getting clear: “Okay, I’m not what I think I am. Things are not what I think they are. The way actions work, is not how I ordinarily think that they work.” Each of these questions that we’re dealing with over these evenings opens up a different way of approaching this experience that we call life. Okay? Questions?
Questions from students
Student: Somewhere along the line, I made the association that the reason this type of ethical behavior keeps our mind calm is because it keeps us, for lack of a better word, aligned or in tune with our buddha nature, whatever that is. Is that true? And if so, what is buddha nature? [laughter]
Ken: Well, if you ask this in a Zen monastery, you know the answer you can get?
Student: Yeah [unclear].
Ken: I can pretend. My favorite way of regarding buddha nature is something I read in the Q and A session with Jamgon Kongtrül. It is actually a little book called Q and A with Kongtrul. He was asked all these questions and somebody was there writing down the questions and replies. So one of them was, “It says in the text that buddha nature pervades all sentient beings. What does this mean?” That was the question. Kongtrül said, “Well, the first thing it doesn’t mean is that there’s a thing called buddha nature, which pervades everything.
Student: It doesn’t?
Ken: It does not mean that. Then he said, “Buddha nature is what remains when all the confusion of samsara you’ve experienced is cleared away.” So, I have a question for you.
Student: Yes.
Ken: What remains when all the confusion of samsaric experience is cleared away?
Student: I don’t know.
Ken: [Laughs] Do you want to clear away all the confusion of samsaric experience?
Student: Sure.
Ken: [Shouts loudly] HAA!!! What remains?
Student: Hmm.
Ken: [Laughs] Very well put! The way you are approaching this is saying because it keeps in line with buddha nature. It’s an extra layer of complication. In your experience, what is buddha nature? Right. In our little exchange there. What was there?
Student: Nothing. Nothing, but I mean it’s …
Ken: Not nothing!! [laughter]
Student: [Unclear]
Ken: I’ve got to be so compassionate that I leave you completely alone with it. So nothing, not nothing. Say more.
Student: I keep wanting to go back to that idea of the space in the room where … where there’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s …
Ken: You’re trying to understand it.
Student: Oh yeah its … [Laughter] I’m trying to explain it. I’m not trying to understand it.
Ken: Not so. He’s not going to help you!
Student: I’m trying to explain it. I’m not trying to understand. I can’t describe it. I mean, it’s …
Ken: How do you know what to do in this situation? Let me qualify that. How do you know what to do in this situation if you don’t think about it at all?
Student: It’s funny, it’s when I don’t react, it’s when I respond naturally. It’s, it’s …
Ken: Yeah, okay. Where does that come from?
Student: Well … [Unclear] I want to get out of the hot seat of this buddha nature question, but …
Ken: Yes, I know. That puts you right in the hot seat. So, where does it come from?
Student: I don’t know.
Ken: Okay. Can you rest there?
Student: At times.
Ken: Good! Do so. There’s something in experience and you can’t put it into words.
Student: Yes.
Ken: Rest right there.[Pause] Yeah, like that. Okay. Let’s take one question. I have one more piece to add here. Go ahead.
Student: Going back, way back, to your earlier comments about what we’re doing here is to rest, and not with effort or not trying to be someplace. But it seems to me that if we want to have attention, that you have to bring it back and you know in that quiet way, not forcibly, but we need to bring it back, don’t we?
Ken: Yeah. There are a couple of ways to approach this. One, the old Tibetan phrase is grim gyi bgrims la lhod kyi lhod [pronounced drim ji drim la lho kyi lho]. Drim is the word “to firm.” La is the word “to relax.” So you make an effort to move into attention and then you relax. Another way if you take the primary practice. There’s a certain effort involved in opening to all sensory experience. There’s a continuation of that effort, in opening to all the internal material. When you open your heart, you actually just open and you ride. When it all falls apart, you go through the same process. So, when it comes to building capacity, we do those things. When it comes to dzogchen itself, you just sit down and you forget everything you knew about meditation, and you just do nothing. Okay? One other piece I wanted to …
Student: You simply attend, right? You do nothing.
Ken: You are awake. What do you mean by being attentive?
Student: Awake. Aware.
Ken: Yeah. That’s still going on. Are you doing something when you’re doing that?
Student: Well, slightly. It seems like when you go off that then you have to do something to bring yourself back, don’t you? Or you just kind of … I mean some things you suddenly come back from the sound.
Ken: Okay.
Student: It brings you back.
Ken: Now, something brings you back, right?
Student: Yeah, something brings me back. Yeah.
Ken: The moment you recognize that, you’re back. You don’t have to do anything. The coming back is not something that you do by an effort, is it?
Student: Well, there are ways I guess. You don’t have to [inaudible].
Ken: A thought takes you off. Something takes you off. You decide to come back.
Student: No, actually you are right. Suddenly you’re back. Yeah.
Ken: Suddenly you are back. And now you just stay there. You don’t get to do any of it. Saraha, in the song about maahamudra, gives many, many metaphors. One of them is a bird flying away from a ship in the middle of the ocean. It flies and flies and flies. It can go anywhere it wants, but it has to come back to the ship. There’s nowhere else for it to land. So our thoughts go off. They have to come back to mind, because they are mind, there isn’t anywhere else for them to come back. So there’s always … we always come back, but it’s not something we decide to do. It happens. Then we don’t do anything. Caroline?
Caroline: Then … This is another question to ask. Then why when there is a boiling, something is disturbing the peace, and it’s not a thought yet, if I look at it, if I notice it right then, and I attend to it, it doesn’t become a thought. Why?
Ken: Because the energy that’s going into the boiling goes into the attention. And that is how you do one form of mahamudra practice. You look at what arises. And it goes puff. You want another approach? Be the boiling.
Caroline: Be the …
Ken: What happens? Yeah, that’s about right. Thank you.
Caroline: [Unclear]
Ken: Don’t think about it and understand it. Just do it. You see Carolyn I’ve said before. All the answers are in here [laughter]. Page 40. We’ll go through this later. Caroline is getting a little ahead of us here. Page 40, stanza 3.
Caroline:
Whenever conceptual thinking arises, don’t look at what arises.
Revelations of Ever-Present Good
Be what knows the arising.
Like an oak stake in hard ground, stand firm in awareness that knows, and go deep into the mystery.
I’m really glad you’re translating. Even from your own translation [laughter], I don’t get what you just had me do and experience from reading this.
Ken: What’s the relationship between the boiling and knowing the boiling?
Caroline: Contact, I guess.
Ken: Two different things in contact with each other?
Caroline: All I can say is from my experience of the other thing, noticing it, and …
Ken: Yes. That’s where you’re separating. I asked what’s the difference between the boiling and knowing the boiling. Just a second.
Student: Another book [laughter].
Ken: Or if you prefer …
Caroline: Exactly. There can’t be a difference.
Ken: Exactly. Be one. You’re still trying to figure it out [laughs]. It’s okay. We’re going to take a break. I’ll save the last bit for tomorrow.
Student: I have a last question.
Ken: Please.
Student: Do we not do this quite naturally, somewhat often during the day, without really noticing it?
Ken: All the time.
Student: Yeah. So, I mean, my point is only that we’re laboring here over definitions and understanding it, but I think it happens all the time.
Ken: You’re quite right. It happens all the time. Well, it happens frequently. It doesn’t happen all the time.
Student: No, but I mean … frequently.
Ken: Yes, and you’re quite right. It makes a difference when you see the times when it doesn’t happen.
Student: You know I went for a walk today and I did this and that, went on the swing and I had fun [laughter]. And I’m really … I think I was having a lot of those moments and I eventually realized that I, because it’s not in the room and I’m not, you know, doing the work and didn’t put it in this.
Ken: Yeah.
Student: I didn’t sort of equate it to this. But in fact it was the same thing.
Ken: It’s one of the reasons why I’ve said when things are getting heavy and your efforts in pushing the practice like that, stop. Go out and refresh the body and the mind. Okay, let’s take a short break.