Don’t mess with experience


[Students were not recorded]

Ken: Yesterday I talked a bit about the differences between Sutrayana and Mantrayana, Vajrayana. I omitted a small point. You may recall that I described Sutrayana as seed vehicle, which one cultivates the seeds and grow the qualities which will create the conditions for awakening. Vajrayana is termed result vehicle. You also see it translated as fruition. And the idea—or the notion—that this is based on: one goes directly to the result, or in the lingo of L.A., you fake it until you make it. So that’s what we’re going to be doing this weekend.

Now there’s a solid basis for that approach, particularly in the philosophy, in the philosophical underpinnings of Vajrayana, which, as I described last night, consists of the view that what we are—ultimately, open empty awareness—is not subject to change or modification. So, the view that the result is already there makes a lot of sense. And the question then is not, how do you bring about this result? But, how do you live from it?

There are several things I want to cover this morning. Last night I also talked about different approaches: cultivation, purification, transformation, releasing. Vajrayana, there are different approaches, but the approach we’re going to take here is that everything is done in the context of self-release. So we’re going to employ, or use as our basis for reference, a very deep perspective. And that is that all experience is just what it is, and if you don’t mess with it, everything’s fine. And the trick is learning how not to mess with it.

Now, you may say that’s difficult. Several of you have mentioned anger. What’s the problem with anger? [Unrecorded] Does anger do that? [Unrecorded] Again, and you introduced a very important point. Does anger do that? Or is it you’re foisting it upon them that does it? Well, you foist your anger on them, right? What if you didn’t mess with the anger? Just experienced it, didn’t mess with it. What would be the result there? [Unrecorded] Churn, churn, churn, rage, storm, rant. In other words, if you don’t mess with it, it releases. So anger is not the problem. Follow? This is what it means not to mess with experience.

The way you describe anger is very vivid, bodily sensation, there are physical sensations which can vary from being mildly discomfort to intensely uncomfortable. And then there’s emotional stuff, which can feel very hot and frightening in its intensity. And then there are all the stories, and justifications, and we get into wonderful things like self-righteousness and outrage. “How could somebody do this?” Moral justice and all of these great themes. And 99 times out of 100, one of those things becomes too much for us to experience. Maybe more than one, but at least one. And so we start messing with the experience.

When you’re obsessing about anger, you keep falling out of attention, and just churning in the anger. Experiencing the anger, you’re staying in attention so you know what’s going on. When you’re obsessing about the anger, you’re regularly losing, and you’re getting lost in the anger. But if you’re experiencing it, there it is, and it may be churning around, but you know where you are, you know what’s going on.

Be in it first, then look at it. That’s the method. As long as you keep it out there, it remains a somewhat intellectual game. You have to be it, and then look at your experience. Okay? So the problem is messing with experience.

And this is the fundamental principle on which mahamudra and dzogchen is based—both those traditions are based—that if you don’t mess with experience, it arises and releases naturally. And not only emotions—thoughts, sensory impressions, everything. And those practices basically consist of developing a capacity of attention, so that one can actually just do that.

[Unrecorded]

Well then you have a little problem, which is why we have all the other methods, exactly why we have all the other methods. And this is one of the first misconceptions about Vajrayana, that you don’t have to do anything. It’s not true. You have to maintain attention. And in these relatively advanced and high level practices, if you do not have attention, you have nothing.

There are lots and lots of people, and I would estimate thousands of people, who are sitting thinking they’re doing practice, and they’ve got nothing. Nothing is happening. They’re just sitting, usually in a state of dullness or distraction, of varying degrees. But there’s actually no active principle operating their practice. In the Zen tradition, in the vipashyana tradition, Theravadan, Tibetan, all of them, it’s actually very widespread.

The Kagyu lineage holders


Ken: Now, so the first thing I want to do is to go through very quickly—quickly as we get through it anyway—practice of direct awareness or self-releasing. Page four, The Short Vajradhara Prayer. This prayer is very central in the Kagyu traditions, and traces one of the very important lineages of mahamudra. And then in the last four verses, embodies, gives what actually is pretty complete instruction in the mahamudra tradition. This prayer is often used as a pointing-out instruction.

When I was in the three-year retreat, in the second three-year retreat, Dilgo Khyentse who is a close friend of Kalu Rinpoche, and one of the most extraordinary of the Nyingma masters of the 20th century, came to visit us, and this is what he taught, was this prayer. And I’ve received teaching from it from many different teachers.

Vajradhara is Buddha, the original Buddha in Sanskrit, Adi-Buddha, you might say the Buddha principle, and also described as the Vajrayana expression of Buddha Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. And you’ll see pictures often in the Tibetan tradition, a blue figure who holds a vajra bell crossed over his heart symbolizing the union of means and wisdom, arrayed in usually very ornate jewelry, symbolizing the richness of sambhogakaya, actually.

Tilopa was an eighth, ninth century Indian mystic who received direct inspiration from Vajradhara. He also had human teachers. He was a very weird guy. For a while he was a pimp, other times he ground sesame seeds for a living, which is a really low-level occupation in India. But he was just right there, and there are a couple of biographies of Tilopa out there, and they’re very strange reading. They’re also quite difficult because a lot of it’s highly symbolic language. His principal student was Naropa.

Naropa at one point was one of the gatekeepers at Nalanda. Now, you may think a gatekeeper is a low-level occupation, but in Buddhist India, gatekeeper was a very high rank. Because at that time, if you were a teacher, or a guru, or a philosopher, you had your acolytes, and you wandered around. And you would meet other ones, and you would debate, but the debates were very serious. If you won the debate—and the debate was a combination of your intellectual and philosophical understanding, as well as your actual understanding, as well as your ability to direct energy—these were difficult things. And if you’re able to defeat the other person in debate, then he or she became your disciple, along with all of their followers, along with all of their patronage. So this is significant. So, the gatekeepers at Nalanda were very important. They had to be the top people, because if someone came along and challenged the gatekeeper to a debate and the gatekeeper lost, that was the monastic college, and we’re talking about 10,000 monks or something like that, everything had to change.

So anyway, one time Naropa came back to his room and he saw this horrifically ugly woman. She was fat, obese, long straggly hair, covered with warts. And she was going through his texts, and this was not according to the monastic rules. And so he said, “What are you doing here?”

She turned and gave him one of those looks, you know, that you feel you’re totally naked and being seen right through. And she said, “Do you understand the words?”

He said, “Yes.”

She jumped up and down, keeps shaking all over, laughing, laughing. He thought, this is very strange. Then she looked at him again, “Do you understand the meaning?”

And Naropa thought, well, she liked my response before. So, “Yes.” And she just started to howl, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. Well, Naropa didn’t know how to relate to this. He’d been a monk all his life. What do you do with a woman who’s crying? So he just sort of sat there, finally said, “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

And she looked at him a third time and said, “When you said you understood the words, you spoke the truth. When you said you understood the meaning, you lied. You need to see my brother, Tilopa.” And then she disappeared.

So Naropa went, and he had a hell of a time trying to find Tilopa, and when he finally found Tilopa, he had a hell of a time with Tilopa. But through this, he received a great deal of teaching and instruction, and woke up to the nature of his own mind.

Naropa’s principal student was Marpa, who was Tibetan. When Marpa was born, his father looked at him and said, “This kid’s got such a temper, either he studies the dharma, or he destroys the world.” So Marpa was directed in that way from an early age, and he became a very profound teacher. He was responsible for translation of a large number of texts.

His principal student was Milarepa, who many you know about, and Milarepa’s biography has been translated into English. Started off by killing, learning black magic, used it to get revenge on the usurpation of his inheritance, killed his uncle’s family and 37 people. Decided this was not such a good thing, and eventually found his way into Marpa’s tutelage where Marpa trained him, taught him everything that he had received from Naropa. And Milarepa meditated in mountain wildernesses for most of his life.

His principal student was Gampopa, who started off as a monk, actually started off as a doctor, and then his wife died, and he was so grief-stricken that he became a monk. And after many years of training, he didn’t feel he was getting what he wanted out of spiritual practice. So he left the monastery, and hiked into the mountains, until he found Milarepa and became his principal student. And Gampopa had four principal students and one of those was Düsum Khyenpa, who was the first Karmapa.

And when the fourth line in this stanza, which says the four great, those are the four principal students and I can never remember what they are. They are Trikung, Taklung, Tsalpa, and the fourth one, is it Drukpa? It’s so long since I taught this, I can’t remember, my apologies. But one of those four had eight great disciples. And so you have this tradition of 12 lineages coming out of Gampopa, which are known as the Kagyu lineages in Tibet.

And the Drikung Kagyu, Taglung Kagyu, Tsalpa, Drukpa are all one or more of these lineages. Several of these lineages have now died out. The principle ones are the Karma Kagyu, with the Karmapas, the Drikung Kagyu, and the Drukpa Kagyu, the Drukpa Kagyu is still very strong. I think there’s the Taglung Kagyu still, to some extent, but those are the main instruction lineages of the Dakpo. Dakpo is another word or is another name for Gampopa. He was the physician from Dakpo, it’s a region in Tibet.

So, what these first two verses are doing is describing the lineage through which these teachings came into Tibet and how they manifested in Tibet. And all of these are mahamudra lineages. Each one of them takes a slightly different emphasis. So, in the Drikung Kagyu you have ro mnyam (pron. ro nyam), which is even flavor. And it emphasizes the aspect of one taste, and many, many different variations. But they are all really teaching the same thing.

Motivation for practice


Ken: What do they teach? This is what’s described in the next four verses.

Disgust and disenchantment are the legs of meditation.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


Right from the beginning of Buddhism, the motivation for practice is the recognition of suffering, that life in some way isn’t satisfactory. And that may arouse disgust, it may arouse disenchantment, it may arouse disillusionment, it may arouse curiosity. But at least in Buddhism, that’s always regarded as the primary motivation, the most fundamental and reliable motivation.

It’s what motivated Buddha Shakyamuni. He saw that there was old age, illness and death. And he went, “How can this suffering be? I don’t understand this. I need to get to the bottom of this.”

As I say, Gampopa was motivated by grief. His beloved wife who died very, very young, and he was a doctor and couldn’t cure her. And he went, “What’s the point?” And that was his motivation. And one can go through many, many teachers and you find the same thing.

To this meditator who does not yearn for comfort and wealth
And has severed ties to this life
Give me the energy to stop longing for money or prestige.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


So, this first verse is about establishing motivation. There’re two primary ways we establish motivation. The cultivation of an awareness of death and impermanence, and what awareness of death and permanence does, is lead you to understand that whatever this life is, your life consists only of is what you experience. And that all the agendas that we have learned from our education, and from our society, and from our family, are all somebody else’s agendas for different things. For society, it’s about continuity.

And so we get sucked into this game of happiness and unhappiness, gain and loss, and fame and obscurity, and respect and disdain—the eight worldly dharmas. But as you come to appreciate death and impermanence, you come to appreciate more and more that those are irrelevant considerations. And you begin to see that this experience, which we call life, large portions of it are consumed by reactive patterns, we aren’t actually present for it at all.

And so, the second aspect of motivation arises. There are these reactive patterns, and they’re consuming my life energy. And they’re consuming my experience of life, so I’m going to do something about that. And that leads you into the workings of karma, and the six realms, and all of that stuff.

Now, many of you who have been exposed to Vajrayana and traditional Tibetan teachings will know this last line as: Bless me so that I stop longing for money or prestige. That’s a Victorian-era translation. The word in Tibetan is byin briabs (pron. jin lap) and literally means energy wave. What makes it possible for us to take these steps in our lives is having a level of attention—having a level of energy in the attention—so that we actually are not passive with respect to the arising of desire, in this case for money or prestige.

Just say, “Okay, that’s an experience, this wanting money or prestige.” And we don’t have to mess with that experience, we have that level of energy in our attention. So that’s what one’s praying. It’s not some kind of external thing, which is just someone is going to touch us on the head, or wave a magic wand so that everything is suddenly fine. It’s experiencing a level of energy in our lives so that we can actually engage our lives the way that we want to.

Respect and devotion


Ken: The second of these four verses:

Respect and devotion form the head of meditation,
so the teachings say.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


Describes the primary method by which energy is developed in practice, in particularly the Kagyu tradition, but generally in Vajrayana. Vajrayana, by and large, is devotional in nature. And I want to say something about devotion. Devotion does not mean blind faith. The term in Tibetan is mos gus (pron. mu gu) which is probably best translated, clumsily, as respectful appreciation. That doesn’t have enough juice in it because it’s in English.

But it has these two qualities of respect—and out of that, reverence and so forth—and appreciation. In appreciation, there’s an opening quality, which we also try to capture using the word devotion. But it isn’t a closing down, as in, “I’m devoted to this.” And it is the sense of just closing down and really focusing on nothing else. It’s appreciation. It’s much more an opening, and that is the sense of this quality in the Tibetan phrase in mos gus, is that it inspires awe and it opens at the same time.

And in the Tibetan tradition, again, every tradition has its point of surrender. And in the Tibetan tradition, the point of surrender is the teacher. In the Zen tradition, the point of surrender is the posture. And so one regards the teacher as your own experience of what it means to be awake, which is a paraphrase. It’s a traditional phrase: Regard your teacher as Buddha. It’s as much as you are capable of experiencing of what it means to be awake. So if you have this terrible teacher who behaves in all kinds of bizarre ways, that’s the best you can do at this point. That’s what you have to relate to.

The importance of the teacher is that it’s the interaction between teacher and student. Rinpoche used to explain what the teacher does is to take all of this massive instruction, and there’s hundreds, thousands of instructions. Think of the sutras and the tantras, it’s just books and books filled with instructions, and perspectives, and philosophies, and then you have reams of commentaries and all these different practices, etc.

And as many of you have said to me, “Where do I start?”

And what the teacher does is, getting to know you, says, “Hmm, this is where you start.” So it actually concentrates all of that material and gives you what is important for you at that moment. And that’s the service that the teacher provides, and provides a path for you. So that’s what it means:

To this teacher who opens the door to the treasury of pith instructions …

(These pith instructions, they concentrate or bring together, the essential points of practice and understanding that you need in your practice at this time.)

Give me the energy to discover uncontrived respect and devotion.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


Let the essence rest fresh


Ken: The third stanza is the essence of meditation. In the mahamudra tradition, it’s non-distraction. In the dzogchen tradition, it is relax. In the Madhyamika tradition it is don’t fall into an extreme, into a limiting position. But they all mean exactly the same thing, they’re just emphasizing different aspects. In the way that I was talking about it earlier, non-distraction means don’t mess with experience. When you mess with experience, you’re distracted. The key points in mahamudra instruction in the Kagyu tradition are don’t be distracted, or to put it this way: don’t wander, don’t control, don’t work at anything. Those are the three key instructions.

When you do that, any movement that arises, you can know its essence and you can just let it be there. And when you let it be there, it just arises and releases. That’s what the phrase:

[To this meditator who] lets the essence of any movement
Rest fresh right there, in the moment, not doing anything.

(Fresh is that awake quality)

Give me the energy for a mind free from working at meditation.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


And the result of that effort is that you become nothing. And in becoming nothing, you are completely available to respond to whatever arises, in whatever way is appropriate. And this is where the fusion of emptiness and compassion arises. In being nothing, being empty, then appropriate response arises naturally. That’s compassion.

To this meditator who arises as an unceasing play,

You can’t stop experience from arising, it’s just going to come out. And the experience of being somebody—I, me, whatever—that’s just an experience. There’s no basis to it. It’s just something arising. You don’t have to hold to it, and don’t mess with that one either, we usually mess with that one a lot. “I stand for this.” “You can’t say that to me,” and so forth, but it’s just another arising.

Being nothing at all, but arising as anything,

(according to the situation.)

Give me the energy to know that samsara and nirvana are not separate.

The Short Vajradhara Prayer


That is to say, samsara means in this context, experience based on habituated patterns and a sense of self. Nirvana, in this context, means absence of any sense of self. Usually we think of these two things as, you have this and this. But from the perspective of mahamudra and dzogchen, there isn’t any this and this. This arises in this. And when you know that, the arising of all of that stuff, the emotions, thoughts, things like that, ceases to be a problem, because it just becomes experience, which you now don’t have to mess with.

And Suzuki Roshi says, “Most of the time in the Western thought we think of freedom as the freedom to do anything that we want. In Buddhism, our notion of freedom is freedom from a disturbed mind.” It’s very different. And when you are free from a disturbed mind, it means you can experience whatever arises without messing with it, and now you’re free to respond. Follow?

Deity practice meditation


Ken: So, that’s about a third of what I was planning to do this morning so I’m going to skip the other stuff and go straight to your meditation instruction. I’ll elaborate on the basis for the meditation instruction this afternoon. I said earlier that the approach here is the result vehicle, and so the way that we work is you start by being the result.

Now there’s a lot of confusion about deity practice, you’re going to meditate on a deity, etc., etc., etc. The first thing is, what is the deity? This is a picture of Chenrezi, Avalokiteshvara. That’s not the deity. That’s not the yidam. What that is, we’ll get to in a couple of days. The yidam is awakened compassion. That’s what the yidam is. Yidam is a Tibetan word and it means what you bind the mind to. yid (pron. yi) is the word for mind; dam is the word for bind. So, bind the mind.

So your meditation instruction is: imagine, or be, the embodiment of awakened compassion. So when you go to sit, that’s what you are, you sit and you are awakened compassion. Awakened compassion is alive and present in you. Now, many of you have heard me give you instruction about when an emotion arises be the emotion, be the anger. It’s the same kind of thing. You just be awakened compassion. Now, right now, if you imagine you are awakened compassion, you are the embodiment of awakened compassion, what does it feel like?

[Unrecorded] Anything else? [Unrecorded] Frightening? What’s frightening about it? [Unrecorded] Yes. And what’s behind that? [Unrecorded] Keep going. Won’t be able to do what? [Unrecorded] Well, what’s going to happen if you can’t imagine yourself as the embodiment? [Unrecorded] Okay, so fear of failure. Okay, it’s another one.

So, when you sit being the embodiment of awake [Unrecorded] Say, “No, this isn’t working for me.” No, we don’t want anything to do with this. Right? That’s your practice right there.

Now let’s go a little bit further. You are the embodiment of awakened compassion. How does awakened compassion relate to reactive tendencies? [Unrecorded] Well, yeah, say more. [Unrecorded] You are the embodiment of awakened compassion. How does compassion, awakened compassion, relate to reactive tendencies such as fear, irritation, dismissal, resistance, etc.? [Unrecorded]

I’ll tell you one of my favorite Nasrudin stories. Many of you have heard me tell this one before. Nasrudin is a judge. A person comes to him clad in underwear, nothing but underwear, and says, “I’m a visitor to your village. I’ve been robbed, they’ve taken everything.”

Nasrudin says, “Doesn’t look like they took everything to me. You’re still wearing your underwear.”

“Well, yes.”

“Wasn’t from our village, we do everything thoroughly around here.”

So you do this thoroughly. You are awakened compassion. What’s that like? So when you sit and do this, all kinds of stories are going to arise: I can’t; this isn’t real, this is all make believe; I don’t like this, this is boring; I don’t know how to do this; I’m afraid of this. You’ll come up with your own, but those are just a sample. But remember, you’re the embodiment of awakened compassion. You have to relate to all of that stuff as awakened compassion.

And you may find it useful to give reflection to some other idea. If you’re really the embodiment of awakened compassion, how would you relate to your family? Or your work? How would you relate to being here in this retreat? So I want you to explore, in very real terms, what it’s like to be the embodiment of awakened compassion. Now this is going to involve some thinking. So I suggest you spend some time just letting the mind rest with the breath. And when the mind settles then, “Okay, I’m awakened compassion.” And you just sit and be that.

And if you can just rest with that feeling, very good. But if you’re like most of us, some things are going to arise, just as we discussed. “Well this is fine for five minutes, but let’s not get serious about this.” And the resistance starts. What would be the implications for your life? And I don’t want you to think of this in any naive sense. It’s not about giving up whatever you’re doing and going out and doing social work, anything like that, that’s just romanticism.

What does that actually mean in your life? And when you start thinking in those terms, you’re going to run very definitely into the habituated patterns which are responsible for the structure of your life right now. That’s probably going to be a bit challenging. But that’s the purpose here, is to use this identification with the results so that you see what prevents you from being awakened compassion, and also you see the possibility of being awakened compassion.

Now I think everybody here has a clear enough idea of what compassion means, but let me read this section from The Bodhicaryavatara.

May I be a guard for those who are protectorless,
A guide for those who journey on the road.
For those who wish to cross the water,
May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.

May I be an isle for those who yearn for landfall,
A lamp for those who long for light;
For all who need a resting place, a bed.
For those who need a servant, may I be their slave.

May I be the wishing jewel, the vase of wealth,
A word of power and the supreme healing.
May I be the tree of miracles,
For every being the abundant cow.

(which is a thing from Indian mythology)

Just like the earth and space itself,
And all the other mighty elements
For boundless multitudes of living beings
May I always be their ground of life, the source of varied sustenance.

Thus, for everything that lives,
As far as are the limits of the sky,
May I be constantly their source of livelihood
Until they pass beyond all sorrow.

Taking Hold of Bodhicitta, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Shantideva, Padmakara Translation Group, verses 18-22


It gives you some idea, okay? We’re a little bit behind, my apologies. Any questions before the break? I’m not giving you a lot to go on in your meditation, I think you’ll find there’s some fuel here. We’ll be doing meditation interviews, of course, but just be awakened compassion, not only during meditation, for the rest of the retreat. You are awakened compassion and you just keep that idea. Everything you do, everything you relate to, you relate as awakened compassion. Okay, thank you.