A sufi story


Ken:

A stream from its source in far off-mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.

It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered, ‘The wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.’

The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand, and only getting absorbed, that the wind could fly and this was why it could cross a desert.

‘By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over to your destination,’ said the voice.

‘But how could this happen?’

‘By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind.’

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?

‘The wind,’ said the sand, ‘performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as the rain, the water again becomes a river.’

‘How can I know this is true?’

‘It is so, and if you do not trust it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years. And it is certainly not the same as a stream.’

‘But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?’

‘You cannot in either case remain so,’ the whisper said. ‘Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today, because you do not know which part of you is the essential one.’

When he heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly, he remembered being a state in which he—or some part of him was it?—had been held in the arms of a wind. He also remembered—or did he?—that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing, to do.

And the stream raised his vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain, many, many miles away. And because he had had his doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in his mind, the details of the experience. He reflected, ‘Yes, now I have learned my true identity.’

The stream was learning. But the sands whispered, ‘We know because we see it happen day after day. And because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountains.’

And that is why it is said that the way in which the stream of life is to continue on its journey is written in the sands.

The Tale of the Sands, Idries Shah


As T.S. Eliot says in one of the Four Quartets, “To become what you are not, you must go by the way in which you are not.” We gather here to practice and to study together primarily because at some level we know that we don’t know what we are.

And the aim of our practice, of our effort, is to come to know that. We think or believe that this will make a difference, and it does, but not the difference that most of us think it’s going to make. I think a lot of people think it makes life simpler. No, it makes life much more complex.

A question that always arises is: do we scramble around in our confusion and discover how things are through our scramble? Or do we have a picture, an idea that points us in a certain direction? And this has been a source of contention, a difference of opinion that has probably existed for as long as teaching has existed.

The arising of experience: a mystery


Ken: This morning I want to do two things. One is to paint—paint is too elaborate a term—sketch a picture, to provide you with a framework. And my intention here is that, that sketch will help you in making the right kind of effort. And then the second thing is to discuss that effort in terms of practice, in more detail.

We experience things, or maybe a little more accurately, experience arises. If you reflect a little you may come to the conclusion that, that’s about the only thing we know. Experience arises. How many of you know what experience is? When you look at it that way, it becomes a bit of a mystery doesn’t it? It’s as mysterious as: what am I?

So that’s our starting point, experience arises. The way most of us experience things—I say most of us because I don’t want to inadvertently insult anybody who’s actually awake here—is that I know what I experience. And in saying that, we have expressed the fundamental framework of our perception, which is subject/object, that I am separate from what I experience. And that’s how we approach pretty well everything.

And we take that framework a bit further. And from it, come to the view that there is a world out there which I experience. And we go further, and we say at some point, I am born into this world. And at some point, I will die and leave this world, but the world goes on. This I think is the usual way of seeing things. The question is, is it true? Is it accurate? Now, it seems common sense, logical, accords with our experience. And many of you have a been around when I’ve done this before, but, here you see a salmon colored piece of paper. I think everybody can see that. And if I ask you, where is the paper? You all point to it. And if I say, well, who sees it? You say, me. Okay.

But I have one further question. Where is the seeing? Where does the seeing take place? That’s a little more difficult. If we say the seeing takes place in the paper, how do I experience it? If we say the seeing takes place here in me, then how do I see something that’s out there? And of course the next thing is, well, it takes place somewhere in between, but that doesn’t seem to make much sense either. And when we consider just the seeing, the experience seeing the paper, it’s very difficult to say where that is. In fact, it’s not possible.

There’s a great deal of research taking place with PET scans and mapping brain functions, etc. But they can’t get away from this problem. They can track to an increasingly precise degree brain activity associated with quite explicit experiences. But the experience of seeing doesn’t take place in the brain. That’s where the electrochemical activity takes place. But the actual experience, where is it? Now, the picture I want to sketch is that the subject-object framework is an abstraction. It’s an abstraction and a construction that arises because a certain understanding or knowing is not accessible for most of us right now.

And because that knowing isn’t accessible to us, we experience what arises as other, construct or create a sense of self in opposition to the other, the sense of the knower, which we now form an identity around. And then from the field of experience, we abstract particular qualities, such as round and square, brown, green, loud and soft, warm cold, all of the different sensory experiences. And those become, in the end, objects. We organize them into objects, which we then talk about saying, this glass case. It’s much easier for me to say to you, “I have this glass case.” You then say, “yeah, it’s a glass case, a little old and dilapidated, but it’s a glass case.” But if I say it is a brown oblong so-and-so and so-and-so, you don’t know what I’m talking about. But then something happens. We forget, indeed If we ever knew, that the labels are just a shorthand. And we now take the labels to refer to actual objects. And from that, we construct an external world, which is filled with work and activities, people, ideas so forth and so forth.

But we don’t feel part of that world. We stand, we are other. That’s the usual way. If on the other hand, we say, okay, experience and knowing are not separate. And just take that in for a moment. We sit in this room, beige carpet, light, play of light and shadow, other people, certain sounds, but all of those are composed of various sensory experiences: sight, sound, touch. So just experience that. And maybe there are thoughts and emotions going on at the same time. So just experience that. What happens? Well, if we just open to all of that experience, the sense of separation tends to drop, decreases. We feel a little confused because we aren’t sure who we are—me, I. But if we can just rest with that discomfort, because that discomfort itself is simply another experience, then something shifts.

And now it’s not so much as, I experiencing that as just experience. And if you go a little further—like, dislike, anger, desire—all of those different emotional things that come up, they don’t have the same … there isn’t anything for them to really latch onto in the same way. There is maybe pleasant, unpleasant. But if there’s no sense of I, then there’s nothing to oppose or try to take ownership of—experience itself—it’s a different way. And it feels perhaps a little more complete. It’s a bit strange because actually nothing has been added. But it feels more complete, whole.

Practice opening to the world of experience


Ken: Now, that’s the picture. During the retreat, after the retreat, make a point of touching into that. You’re walking up to the zendo or just open to the world of experience and just be there. You don’t have to do it for a long period of time, just a few seconds, but do it repeatedly, dropping the sense of I/other, and just being there. Now, the sense of I, as we all know, is deeply, deeply conditioned. And, undoing it is a non-trivial task. This is what individuals, such as Buddha Shakyamuni, Bodhidharma, Longchenpa, other great spiritual teachers, this is actually what they did. And for most of them, that was a work of many years, if not most of their lives.

There is extraordinarily strong resistance to experiencing the world this way, at least experiencing it this way for anything more than a few moments. And that resistance is the momentum of the I/other perceptual framework. To undo that, we need to make an effort. And that’s what this retreat is about. The first step is to start undoing some of the mis-perceptions we have about experience. One of those mis-perceptions is that some things in our experience don’t change. Well, this isn’t true. Everything in our experience changes. So that’s the first contemplation we’re going to do. Now, a number of you have practiced these meditations before.

So I’m not really concerned that you’re just repeating it. There’s benefit in that. I’m going to suggest a number of approaches here. One of the ways that things are often expressed in the Tibetan tradition, is outer, inner, and usually translated as secret, but hidden is actually better. So we can have outer change, inner change, and hidden change. Outer change refers to the objects of our senses. So, what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we touch, what we smell. So, is there anything in that field of sensory experience that doesn’t change? Well, for most of the senses, it’s pretty straightforward. Well, touch is actually a little more solid. Smell, it’s very, very fluid. And taste, you know, does anything ever taste the same way twice?

We often think so or abbreviate it. That’s again part of the abstraction, but actually it always tastes different. It’s never the same experience. Sound of course, we really hear only when it changes. And if there’s a constant sound, that’s not too noisy, we cease to hear it. Among animals, human beings have the faculty of being able to see what doesn’t move. Birds, dogs to some extent, so forth, I think cats also, they are only able to detect things when they move. They can only detect motion. They can only detect change. Which is very good, you know, if you’re hunting or being hunted. We can actually see things which aren’t in motion. And there’s a consequence to that, that really reinforces very strongly our idea that there’s a world out there, because we see things that don’t change, like rocks, trees, stars so forth. But is it that they actually don’t change or that we don’t perceive change in them? And that’s the point of the reflections on change. It’s much more that we don’t perceive change. The sun always looks the same. Well, it’s good for a few more million years but it’s going to burn away eventually. But closer examination reveals that the sun is always changing, you know. There are solar bursts and sunspots and all kinds of things going on.

Outer change


Ken: So, in terms of outer change, you look at all of the different sensory experiences. And is there anything there that doesn’t change, that never changes? And intellectually, this is very easy to understand. You don’t have to have a lot of gray matter for this one, but there’s an emotional resistance. We want a world that offers a sense of security, of constancy. So when you do this practice, going through sensory experience, using the guidelines here or any others that work for you, you will experience that emotional resistance in a number of ways. One is, I think all this is boring, this is dull, it’s not interesting, I know this. And it’s actually a dissipation of attention so that you stop really feeling that change is around you all the time. Another way that emotional resistance manifests is distraction, you keep thinking about other things. But if you work a bit more, you work through those two. Then you’ll hit a third manifestation, which is kind of bewilderment or disorientation, a little bit of confusion. That’s actually a sign that it’s beginning to penetrate. So just stayed with that and keep going. That’s outer or external change.

Inner change


Ken: Internal change refers to the body. The body changes. The body is always changing. It started off as an embryo. We were born, matured through infancy, childhood adolescence, young adulthood, middle age and old age. Then it disintegrates. Sometimes that process takes place faster, slower, a lot of different conditions, but there’s the experience of the body and the experience of the body is one of constant change. So that’s the second area of contemplation. Now, most people experience even more emotional resistance to that.

One of my favorite memories, was a group I had in Orange County. We were doing these practices and a woman in her early forties came in after doing this experience before the group started. She just sat down and looked me straight to the eyes and said, “I hate you.” She’d been doing all of this contemplation on change in the body. But rather than think of the body changing in light of what I was saying earlier, this is an experience of the body. The idea that we have a body is a way that we conceptualize our experience, but all we actually do is experience something. And that experience is constantly changing. And you can contemplate how it is changing—fingernails grow, hair grows, hair falls out, changes color. Muscles grow, maybe they strengthen, maybe they atrophy. Bones change, digestion takes place, metabolism. Food is ingested, mixed with oxygen, burns. All of these changings are all taking place.

And, you know, there’s the change in the shape of the body and change the abilities of the body, all of these things. Nothing stays the same. And there’s nothing we can do about most of that. I received word a couple of days ago that an old student of mine, one of the first people that studied with me when I came to L.A. in the mid-eighties, died. Lung cancer, a bit younger than me. And when the AIDS epidemic hit, he poured his energy into helping people in the gay community. He was gay, and set up a number of AIDS projects. He was very active. And really very good heart, just gave himself. And in the course of, during the eighties, he’d probably been with well over 200 people as they died, which is quite extraordinary.

And he said they developed a kind of very black humor. He would share some of these things with me and also some very profound things too. But one of the things that he passed onto me was, all these people, they’re eating exactly the right food and getting all the right exercise and doing all of the right things. And, you know, one day, Ken, they’re all going to be dying of absolutely nothing. It’s just what happens. This is the experience of life, body changes.

Hidden change


Ken: And then there’s hidden change. Hidden because it is not so obvious. We have sensory experience. We have the experience of the body. But we also have other kinds of experience, particularly emotions and thoughts. Now we organize those too into a world. Beliefs, values, world views, obsessions, likes, dislikes, etc., what we might say the hidden world. And we do the same thing with that world that we do with the other two. We say certain things don’t change, again for the same reason we want a sense of constancy. So the third area of contemplation is to look at that, and you can look at that over periods of time. One of the things that I often suggest is that people look over it in five year periods and see how much change there takes place.

Or you can look at it moment to moment and see that there’s really nothing constant there, it’s constantly changing. It’s about ten years or so, eight anyway, since I’ve taught this retreat. And it’s very clear that my whole perspective or way of approaching this has changed over those eight years, it’s not the same at all. So I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s not the same as what I wrote in Wake Up To Your Life. So this is the first effort that I want you to make. And this morning during the meditation period take some time, let the breath settle down, and then look at the world of experience, the world of external or sensory experience, the world of the experience of the body and open to all the change that is there. And as I said earlier, if you feel a little confused or disoriented, then just, that’s the experience. Rest right there. In other words, be in your experience and let its nature soak into you. Soak Into you as deeply as you can absorb it. That’s what I want you to do. So let’s take up any questions.

Student questions


Student: Do you want us to do one area of change for a half hour or all three areas?

Ken: Well, that really depends on the personality. There are those who meditate like a sparrow. They may flutter around all of those. There are those who meditate like an elephant. Both are effective. And I could say, do this or do that. But what I want you to do is to find what works for you. If you try to … the point here isn’t so much to cover everything, but to find what speaks of change to you in your sensory experience, and then let that speak to you. And find what speaks of change in your body, and let that speak to you. And find what speaks of change in your worldviews and thoughts, philosophies, etc., and let that speak to. So you’re undoing this tendency we all have to seek constancy or permanence in the world of experience. Now, it’s not necessarily fun because this tendency to seek constancy is so strong. And so sadness, regret, a feeling of loss, grief are all possibilities. Old angers or old desires, things that we thought we had laid to rest may come up. All of these are possibilities. And when they come up, just be in the experience, don’t have to sort them out, just experience them. Dave.

Dave: When you say old angers, regrets and stuff, is that, would that be the hidden change?

Ken: Well, it can come up anywhere. That is, you might be contemplating your body. And you realize that you have an injury in your knee which you never paid attention to when you did it in high school or something like that. And you just get angry with yourself for it. And so there’s, that’s what I mean about an old anger about things that are maybe long in the past, but you can’t do anything about. You follow? Or equally some old desire may come up. Now, as you say, they are in the area of hidden change, but they could, they can be provoked or evoked or triggered by any aspect of this practice. And when they come up, oh, there it is.

And when those old, old feelings come up, or if they come up, you can see how there was, they’re there, and they’re still there because you try to ignore some aspect of change in one’s life. You follow? Your old desire is, you thought, well, some part of you believed that was always fulfillable and there’s that game that’s seeking for constancy. I never accept, nope, this isn’t going to happen. Our relationship changed. That’s not going to happen. Okay? So all of those old things will come because an aspect of change was ignored at some point. Other questions? Mary Ann.

Mary Ann: I don’t know if I can phrase this well. Just being here for a meditation retreat and meditating on a consistent basis is a grasping for permanence and holding on to some type of belief about … [unclear] towards enlightenment. And so it’s that belief system that I feel, how do I sit with that and allow it to melt away?

Ken: It’s not a case of melting it away.

Mary

Ann: Or see it clearly, or …

Ken: I think you can do that, okay. “I’m going to get enlightened,” right?

Mary Ann: Well, maybe one step, or … [unclear].

Ken: No, go for the whole thing. “I’m going to get enlightened, right?” Well, there’s that constant belief. Now over the years, has your understanding of enlightenment changed?

Mary Ann: I don’t really know what it is. [Laughs]

Ken: Has your enthusiasm or interest in it varied?

Mary Ann: Yes.

Ken: Okay. So you see all of the change around it and you see this thing that you thought was very, very solid and very consistent. There is a great deal of change in it. So, you just explore that experience. It’ll be very interesting. It should be very interesting. Okay? Anything else? Everybody clear? No other questions? You’re letting me off very easily. Okay. Then we’ll break here.