Meditating in good times and bad

Ken: Verse four, or practice number four.

You will separate from long-time friends and relatives. You’ll leave behind the wealth you worked to build up. The guest, your consciousness, will move from the inn, your body. Forget the conventional concerns—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 4

Student: Opposition back here.

Ken: We have some opposition back here? Give that gentleman a microphone, I want to hear this. [Laughter]

Student: Yeah, I’m reactive to that because I feel like I’m finally in a place in life that I don’t have concerns. My four kids are raised. The retirement is good. I live in San Louis Obispo. And yet I recognize that I’m so in my comfort zone that that’s become an impediment. I can’t quite articulate it, but I feel it.

Ken: An impediment to what?

Student: I’m not sure. I don’t seem to get up and go. I’m just too comfortable.

Ken: Well, there are things we can do. We could change that.

Student: All the adventures I thought I was going to go on.

Ken: That can be very easily managed you know. [Laughs]

Student: I don’t know.

Ken: Oh, well, just give me your address and your bank account. We’ll take care of things very quickly.

Student: Ah, okay.

Ken: Now, so what happens to you when you read these verses, this verse?

Student: Makes me sad.

Ken: Say a bit more, please.

Student: It’s associated with loss, sadness, everything. What immediately springs to mind is, I have a 94-year-old dad that I spend a lot of time with. I have a two-and-a -half year old grandchild, and they both give me a lot of pleasure. And yet I know they are going to go. I’m going to go.

Ken: Yes.

Student: There’s just an inevitableness of the stream of life that I’m at times with and at times opposing, and there’s sadness for me.

Ken: Yeah. And, and you’re absolutely right. You’re in your comfort zone. You’ve been fortunate in your life. You’ve had a family, you’ve had a career. Things have worked out for you. You’ve probably made sensible decisions about managing your affairs and so forth. You’re one of the fortunate, shall we say, and it’s going to change. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Here’s where a very important question comes up. When everything is going well in our life, what is our practice about? Now, for me it’s always been the opposite. That’s because I do everything backwards. When everything’s going well in my life, that’s when I can practice. The rest of the time there’s just too much pain. So that’s when it’s really, really difficult for me.

But for most people, it’s the other way. When things aren’t going right, then they feel motivated to practice and come to a deeper relationship in life. When everything’s going well, then everything goes. They just want to enjoy life. So, what role does your practice have in your life when everything’s going well, as it is now?

Student: I’m more, I think at times, using it to manage neurosis. Again, the word that comes is comfort. I’m just in this comfort cycle. And it’s not that I’m not aware of problems that are gonna happen. I have sort of long-term health issues that I’m gonna have to deal with. And I go volunteer at a hospice, I do all that. But at the same time, it’s just so good right now.

I was telling my friend here, we spent all day with the grandchild yesterday, and I got my bank statement, and I’m not rich. But I mean, I realize everybody else is stressing over money. And I don’t stress over it. It’s like I can just go down the line of blessings, for want of a better word. And so when I meditate, it’s like whatever little disruptions—if I have a fight with my wife or something little—I want to meditate and just get back in the groove. [Laughter]

Ken: Better knock on wood. [Laughter] Do you know why we knock on wood? Hubris is the Greek spirit that embodies pride. And Nemesis always came along and knocked Hubris down whenever he got out of hand. Nemesis is a wood spirit. So when you knock on wood, you’re paying homage to Nemesis. And I think it’s a good suggestion. [Laughter] Now, first off, you’re one of very few people who I’ve heard say it in a while, that life is good. Because as you said, for a lot of people, particularly these days, there’s a lot of struggle. And I’m going to go a bit out on a limb here. No, I’m not gonna go out on a limb. I’m gonna let you go out on a limb. Why’d you come here today?

Student: I was really taken with the retreat I did with you a year ago. I remember coming back to the sangha in North County. I did a little presentation of it. And I had my book full of notes. And the spirit was on me and—

Ken: I did that hand thing, right?

Student: I guess so. I was very excited when I heard you were coming again. And so I’m here.

Ken: I appreciate that. Thank you. But I need to push you a little bit further. What moved you?

Student: What was singular from last time, was your challenging us about the three quiet questions as opposed to the loud answers that are circulating around. I’m a process kind of person. I like to look. The format worked for me. The questions worked for me. And I’ve gone back to those questions and—

Ken: What were those questions? I can’t remember.

Student: Well, you don’t remember mine. But you asked each of us—

Ken: The three questions for yourself, that’s right. Yeah. Okay. So what brings you here today? What questions? Now you don’t actually have to answer. What I’m doing here is showing that even though life is good for you, there are questions that do operate in you.

Student: Oh, absolutely.

Ken: Yeah. And listening to those questions and allowing those questions to speak to you, that’s what you’re practice is about. And your grandchild, your father, everything in your life, as you say, it is wonderful. It’s something you enjoy greatly. And that in itself is wonderful. And in addition to all of that, there’s something in your spirit that speaks to you.

And the tendency, I’m not saying you’re doing this, but the tendency of many people is when life is good, they stop listening to the spirit. And they die. Not physically necessarily, but something dies when they stop listening to that part of themselves. So that act of cultivation is very important. That make sense to you? Okay. Thank you.

Student: Thank you.

Cultural conditioning

Ken: So, I want to touch on this: Forget the conventional concerns for a moment. Because here again, this is a translation point. But I think it’s worth laboring over a little bit. I can’t remember the actual phrase in Tibetan. I could look it up on my computer, which I think is somewhere around here. The phrase in Tibetan is attachment to this life. So, it says, Forget attachment to this life.

And we have to understand this as coded language. Now, in the Tibetan worldview, and in the Indian worldview, etc., there’s life after life after life after life. And so the idea is, forget about making things nice in this life because you gotta make things better in your future lives, etc. So that’s why you’re meant to do good now, etc. And you’ve got the working of karma and all of this business. How many of you know that you’re going to live another life? Absolute for certain you’re going to live another life? Now, we can get into Pascal’s gamble here, but we don’t know. It’s all conjecture. But when you look at what is being taught, when they say, Forget attachment to this life, it’s that we are heavily conditioned by the culture that we grow up in. And we are taught, these are the criteria for success. I mean, the criteria for success these days is to be an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is all the rage. And if you aren’t an entrepreneur, then you’d be a leader in some way or other. Being a leader is all the rage. These are the criteria for success.

And Buddhism, many years ago, just reduced these to four very simple things. How do you know you’re successful? If you’re happy, you’ve gained something, you enjoy prosperity, there’s gain. You’re respected. And, you’re famous, you’re well known. That makes you successful. And on the other hand, you’re not successful if you’re unhappy, struggling with necessities of life, obscure, and disdained. Then you’re unsuccessful. Well, these are known as the eight conventional concerns.

Now, as long as you take those as your principal concerns in life, you are doing exactly what society wants you to do, because you’re positioning yourself so you can do what society really wants you to do, which is to reproduce and continue society. You’re following society’s things, and you’re providing for your children, etc., etc. That’s exactly what society wants you to do.

How many of you want to do exactly what society wants you to do? How many artists are here? Yeah. Now, as artists, how often do you do exactly what society wants you to do? So artists are the canary in the in the coal mine, you see. They always go in a different direction. So when it comes to spiritual practice, it’s not about being a good member of society. And I have to put in parentheses, and it’s not about being a bad member of society either. It’s not about society at all.

It’s about what this gentleman reminded me. It’s about feeling and listening to our own questions about life, so that we can find a different relationship with this experience we call life. One in which we aren’t struggling, one in which we feel at peace and free. And so, this is what this phrase, let go of the attachments of this life is really pointing to. It’s saying, let go of these conventional concerns and focus on what is truly important to you.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t take care of our parents when they’re ill or struggling. We just forget about our children. It doesn’t mean that we just ignore all of that stuff. It means that in addition to tending to the matter of life itself, we don’t neglect our own internal relationship with life. And we have a long heritage of this in the West, a very long heritage. But we lost it somewhere along the way.

The Greek philosophers, particularly the pre-Socratics, this was what was vitally important to them. How do you live in—to use Zorba the Greek’s great phrase—the full catastrophe, and be awake and present in your life? This is the question that concerned the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. And for them, philosophy was a way of life. It wasn’t a system of belief or a system of thought. It it was an actual way of life.

And if you read the Stoics and the Epicureans, both of them, they have very, very sophisticated and subtle responses to that question. Even though we regard Stoics and Epicureans as being different, in practice, they come out very, very similar, even though they’re coming from slightly different places. So this to me is the primary question of life. How do we tend to the affairs of life and live in the spirit at the same time? I’m using Western words there, but I think you understand what I mean.

And one of the best ways to sharpen that question for us, is to consider the matter of death. Because it marks an end to life. It’s part of life, and it’s being the end of life. And it reminds us, we don’t have eternity to figure this out. Because the only thing any of us will ever know is this life. Even if there’s something called rebirth, or whatever, whoever that is, it’s a different person. It’s not who you are now. This is the only experience you’ll ever know. So the big question is, what do you do with it? And this is something a lot of us actually just don’t think about. We go through our lives never thinking about that.

Pick good friends

Ken: Now, the next two verses are very interesting. And basically, they’re what your mother or your grandmother always told you. Yeah. Be careful who your friends are. Pick good friends.

With some friends, the three poisons keep growing, Study, reflection and meditation weaken and loving kindness and compassion fall away. Give up bad friends—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

With some teachers, your shortcomings fade away and abilities grow like the waxing moon. Hold such teachers dear to you, dearer than your own body—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verses 5 and 6

I had a student for a while, short period of time, who was a concert-level violin player. He was a pathological liar, I discovered, at least he owned up to that in the end. But the really sad thing about him was one of the teachers that he had studied violin with, and from whom he’d learned very much how to play violin at a very, very high level, had also completely poisoned him as a person. Because he was really not a nice guy, this violin teacher. And the poison in him, he had—inadvertently, or maybe intentionally had, though I doubt it—passed on to the student.

I’ve always remembered that. And all of you know this as parents. How many, when you look at your children, you say, “I wish I hadn’t passed that on to them.” And you didn’t even know you were doing it at the time. The people with whom we associate in our lives have a tremendous influence on us.

I think the research shows siblings are just as influential on us as our parents, and so forth. We know this from growing up in teenage years, and so forth. So what is being said in these two verses is very, very important. If you’re really serious about questions in life, then hang out with people who actually allow you to explore those questions and don’t dismiss them as some, you know, spiritual nonsense or what have you.

I think Ella Fitzgerald was once asked, “What was your secret to being such a great singer?”

And she said, “I always hired the best musicians.”

And there’s something to this. Finding people who share the same kind of interests and concerns, who embody the qualities you seek to embody yourself, this is—it sounds really stupid perhaps, but it’s really, in my experience—really good advice. It’s one of the reasons why things like the White Heron Sangha, and so forth, are really helpful. Because it’s where like-minded people come together, associate with each other, and through that association, then they create an environment in which things can grow in a constructive way.

Find a good teacher

Ken: And one of the things that I consistently advise people, because people say it’s difficult to find a teacher, is find a group, and learn together. It can be extremely helpful. And that’s what I take as the message that is in these lines. One further thing about teachers: good teachers are hard to find. They’re usually harder to find than good spouses and good partners and things like that. So if you find a good teacher, take care of the relationship. It’s fairly important. And the other thing is that we tend in the West—because we’re a little bit naive about these things—to put everything in one basket.

There are really three functions of a teacher. One can break it up more finely than that, but I think three is sufficient. One of the functions of a teacher is to reveal, demonstrate, or show possibilities. And that can happen in a number of ways. They can embody possibilities for you. They’re like a model, a role model or example. The interaction may be such that they open up possibilities in you. Well, that’s a different way of showing possibilities. But that’s one function of a teacher, is to reveal or show possibilities.

A second function of a teacher is to provide you with training and instruction in the practices and the skills you’ll need to meet and respond to the spiritual questions you have in yourself. There are actual skills. It’s just like, learning meditation is a particular skill. But there are also skills in relationship with ethics, skills in relationship with communication, skills in how we actually interact with our lives. So there are a lot of different things to learn there. And that’s a second function of a teacher, is to teach you how to do that, how to build the muscles that you’re going to need, and so forth.

And then the third function of a teacher is to point out the stuff in yourself that gets in the way, your own reactive patterns and so forth. Now, most people want all of those three qualities in the same teacher, as functions in the same person. It’s not actually necessary. Very, very often the person who shows possibilities is someone you may only have a little bit of interaction with now and then. The person from whom you’d learn skills, and capabilities, and how to develop, that’s a person you really need to have regular interaction with, because you’re learning something. It’s like learning a musical instrument. And the person who is pointing out what gets in the way, that’s also a person you need to be able to have actual conversations with. Because that’s case by case, situation by situation.

There aren’t any cookie cutter approaches that you can apply to that. And just to give you one example of a teacher, and revealing possibilities, there’s a teacher in England I met a couple of times who’s a bit of an odd duck. Quite idiosyncratic, his name is Chime Rinpoche. He told me that when he was young, in his training in a monastery, he’d heard of this teacher called Khenpo Gangshar. He was a fantastically talented teacher in Eastern Tibet and completely idiosyncratic himself, very unconventional and quite controversial.

One time he arrived at a monastery, and there was a person in a retreat hut, who had barred himself in. They just slipped food in the door. And, as he walked by the hut, he said, “Get me an axe.” “Why do you want an axe?” I said, “Just get me an axe.” And so they gave him an axe and he just hacked the door down. This guy’s inside. He busted the door, grabbed the guy and said, “Where is your mind?” And the guy had experience of awakening right there [laughs].

So he’s a little unconventional. So anyway, Chime Rinpoche desperately wanted to meet him and study with him. And it happened that Khenpo Gangshar was visiting his monastery. So he submitted a request for a meeting with him. And he got no response. He didn’t get a denial, he just got no response. And Khenpo Gangshar was only there for a week. And the days went by and nothing happened. So he decided he would stretch the monastery protocols and make a second request. Again, no response. And then he knew that Khenpo Gangshar was going to be leaving the next day. So he made a third request, which is really quite questionable in how the monasteries were structured. And again, there was no response.

So, there he was sitting in his room that evening and just heartbroken that he’d not been able to make any connection with Khenpo Gangshar. And he just couldn’t sleep. And he was just sitting in his room, not knowing, devastated by the fact that he hadn’t even gotten turned down. Nothing had come back. And so there he was, sitting in his room. And then there was a knock on his door very late at night, it was one of Khenpo Gangshar’s servants. He said, “Come with me.”

And he went, “Oh, great. I’m going to be able to ask my questions. Finally!” And so he’s led into Khenpo Gangshar’s room. And he sat down. And the monastery protocols were such that as a junior person, he had to wait until the senior person spoke to him before he could say anything. So he just sat there. And Khenpo Gangshar was attending to business with some other people, and said nothing to him. And this went on for about half an hour, just burning with questions, what he wanted to ask him. And an hour went by, and still nothing. And then Khenpo Gangshar looked at him. And then went back to his business, and said, “Okay,” and motioned for him to leave.

And Chime Rinpoche went, “What?” And he had no choice. He had to get up and leave. And he went back to the cell. And he was just absolutely devastated. I mean, he’d seen him, but he hadn’t been able to ask a single question or say a word to him. And so he just laid on his bed and cried himself to sleep. The next morning he woke up and he knew that Khenpo Gangshar had left, because those were the plans and things like that. He didn’t know what to do. And he sat down to meditate. And he found his meditation was completely different. It was a totally different quality in his practice that had never been there before. And he says even though that was the only interaction that he had with Khenpo Gangshar, he regards Khenpo Gangshar as one of his principal teachers. So, possibilities.

Protection and refuge

Ken: Now, the the next verse.

Locked up in the prison of their own patterning, whom can ordinary gods protect? Who can you count on for refuge? Go for refuge in the Three Jewels—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 7

Again, the whole notion of refuge comes right out of the cultural setting of the time. The time of Buddha was roughly similar to the Warring States period in China, where you had a number of competing kingdoms. Armies were always marching back and forth. And there’d be periods of peace. And then a new king would come to the throne and want to expand his kingdom. Or somebody else thought he was weak and they could grab some of his kingdom.

So there’s a lot of this going on. Now, as we all know, in times of war, who takes the hit? It’s the serfs and the peasants, because it’s their fields that are getting trampled over. Poland knows this very well because it sat between Russia and Germany. If you look at the European history, it’s just endless armies going back and forth over Poland. It’s an absolutely miserable place to have been, because it’s very flat land so they just go over it.

So, your only protection in those days was the warlord, who had a big castle and a big army, and he could protect you. So this is the idea of refuge. And we carry with this, the idea that we’re going to someplace safe. This is actually the wrong way to approach this. When you embark on the spiritual path, you aren’t going to someplace safe. You don’t know where the hell you’re going. All you know is that the way you’re currently living your life is unacceptable, and you’re going to explore something else. So you’re stepping out into the mystery of life itself. And most mysteries aren’t particularly safe. You don’t know what’s out there. You’re entering into the dark.

A refuge prayer for modern times


Ken: So, some time ago I wrote a refuge prayer, which I thought was more appropriate for modern times. And it’s up on my website. You’ll find it under the practices section. It’s basics, isn’t it? Yeah, I asked Art because he organized the website. So, and any problems with it, speak to him, not me.

Knowing there is nothing outside or inside to free me,
I take refuge in buddha.
Knowing that experience and awareness are not two,
I take refuge in dharma.
Knowing there is nothing to grasp or oppose,
I take refuge in sangha.

Taking Refuge

Let’s just take the first one of these. We know very well from Buddhism, there’s nothing out there that’s going to save us. Ironically, the implication of that is that there’s nothing inside us to save us or free us either. So, there is nothing outside or inside to free you. What I want you to do is just sit with that for a moment. Let me know how it feels. There’s nothing outside or inside that can free you. [Pause] Okay, so what happens when you sit with that? Anybody?

Student: It just feels fatalistic. No way out.

Ken: No way out of what?

Student: Good question.

Ken: [Laughs] Yeah, well I asked it.

Student: No way out of what is, I guess.

Ken: Okay. No way out of what is.

Student: Nowhere to go.

Ken: Nowhere to go.

Student: And with my cultural conditioning, that’s very uncomfortable. My personality structure also.

Ken: So what are you going to do now?

Student: At a certain level it feels like, forget it, why bother?

Ken: Okay?

Student: I dunno. Why am I here, in a sense?

Ken: Well, I was just going to ask you that. [Laughter]

Student: Gee, you’ve got good questions.

Ken: Yeah. So, what brought you here today?

Student: A little bit similar to the woman in back of me. I also have chronic pain and it feels very trapping. I feel very trapped by it, of late.

Ken: Yes. Okay. I can relate to that. So, you’d really like something to free you, wouldn’t you?

Student: Right. It’s the striver, the doer in me.

Ken: Yeah. So I’d like to explore it, if it’s okay with you. You say it all feels very fatalistic. There’s no way out, no way out of this experience. Okay. Suppose we take that as being true. There is no way out of this experience. What then?

Student: Well, that in a way is freeing.

Ken: Boy, that was a big jump. How’d you get there? [Laughter] I’m sure there are a lot of other people who want to hear the answer to that one.

Student: Well, it feels like it relieves me of the burden of efforting.

Ken: Okay. Could I ask you to say one or two more sentences about that?

Student: Well, going back to the pain, I feel that I need to do something about the pain. And it goes back to what you said about my relationship with my pain. It’s an antagonistic relationship. It doesn’t feel like a be-with-it relationship, an accepting relationship.

Ken: Right. But you don’t have any choice, do you?

Student: No.

Ken: And that’s what makes it so hard because we grow up with the idea that we can change anything in our lives. And then we have these things and we can’t. In some cases, because of modern technology and so forth, there are extraordinary possibilities, which weren’t available in earlier times. But still, there are things that we absolutely can’t change. And then the question is, how do I live with this? And I think you’re absolutely right. As long as we have an antagonistic relationship with those, life becomes a fight, or life is a fight.

And it’s very easy to say, “Well just accept things.” But it’s not that easy because acceptance here doesn’t mean just rolling over and playing dead. [Laughs] That doesn’t work either. And it’s very interesting to explore what acceptance actually does mean.

There are two pieces here that I think are important. One is recognizing just as you’ve said very nicely, there is no way out. But there’s another piece which we often overlook—and that I’m not sure this is the best wording for it—is there’s no way out. That can make things feel very solid and imprisoning. Are you with me? The other piece is, there’s also no ground. It’s all just experience. We don’t actually get to choose what the experience is. But it is no more than an experience. Do you follow? What happens with you when I say that?

Student: Well, I know from experience that when I do get to the point of being able to just come from, well, there it is. It radically changes things.

Ken: And how does it change things?

Student: It’s almost an energy shift. You know, even when I say that, I can feel my shoulders relax and that relaxes my neck, which is where my pain is.

Ken: Yes. Okay. Just from what you’ve said, this is why I say spiritual practice is really learning how to experience life differently. Not necessarily changing anything in life, but how to experience it differently. Because when we do experience it differently, then things actually, or sometimes I won’t say always, sometimes change. But the one thing that has changed is, is how we experience and it opens up other possibilities.

And so that way of approaching refuge in buddha—nothing outside to save us, nothing inside to free us—this is it. And then, the second one—experience and awareness are not two—that moves us into the area of no ground. It is just experience. And we find a way to be with that experience.

My favorite expression is when people come in and say, “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this.” Because the one thing I know is that they’re going to handle it. They may handle it more gracefully or less gracefully, with more drama or less drama. But they’re absolutely going to handle it because they don’t have any choice [laughs]. So it isn’t a question of whether we’re going to handle it or not. It’s a question of how.

That’s where the third line comes in: Nothing to grasp or oppose. And the one that’s in parenthesis there is: and nothing to ignore either. So maybe these will be helpful to you in some way. So thank you. Anybody else with nothing outside or inside? Yes.

Experience and awareness are not two

Student: Actually, I just have a question, a clarification. What would be the difference then between experience and awareness?

Ken: Well, experience and awareness are not two.

Student: So, there is no difference between one or the other then?

Ken: Well, I have here for all intents and purposes a stick. Okay? This is one end of the stick and this is another end of the stick. Can you separate those two ends?

Student: No.

Ken: No. And experience and awareness are a bit like that. When we talk about experience, we’re talking about what arises in awareness. And when we’re talking about awareness, we’re emphasizing the aspect of what is aware. This is a little difficult to do, but if you rest in meditation and let a thought float up, you able to do that?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. Now, what is aware of the thought?

Student: The thing that I’m looking for.

Ken: Yeah. But there’s the thought …

Student: Right.

Ken: Can there be awareness of the thought without the thought?

Student: No.

Ken: No

Student: No. So, what is looking is, is … is …

Ken: Well, if we try to put it into words, we end up tongue tied very quickly. But what I’m pointing to is that awareness and experience can’t be separated. And yet we do it all the time. And that’s what gives by saying, I am not that. And, you know, here’s a bottle of water. Well, I have exactly the same relationship with this bottle of water as I have with a thought in my mind. I have the illusion that I can throw this away, but it’s just as much part of me as the thought in my mind. It’s something I experience. Do you follow?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Now, just as this gentleman was saying about pain, we think we have the luxury of being able to choose what we experience and what we don’t experience. And you’ve probably heard the instruction, which is very popular in Mahayana Buddhism: Regard life as a dream. Have you heard that instruction? Yeah. Most people think, well, it means it doesn’t matter because it’s a dream. But, to my mind, that’s not what the instruction’s pointing to at all.

When you’re in a dream—and let’s just suppose for the purposes of this discussion that you’re dreaming and you know that you’re dreaming, i.e. lucid dreaming—what is all the stuff in the dream? You have people, you have your husband, children, maybe it’s a different husband, maybe it’s different children. You know, you have mythical figures, you have forestries, mountains, buildings, fires, earthquakes, great feasts. Anything’s possible in a dream, right? What is all that stuff?

Student: Thoughts. My thoughts.

Ken: Yeah. And so it’s you, right?

Student: Right.

Ken: Yeah. All of this is you too. You can’t ignore or get away from any of that stuff in the dream because it is you. And that, I think, is what is really being talked about in the example of the dream is that all of this is—I’m speaking from my point of view now—all of this is me. And so I can’t ignore, push away, or take just what I want. I have to relate to all of this because it’s all me. What happens when you think of approaching life that way?

Student: Well, I think for me it just, it’s an opening. It feels like things open.

Ken: Do you feel a shift in your body?

Student: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Ken: Could you describe that?

Student: An opening of my center, to where it’s not just a little thing anymore. It’s beyond words. Huge thing … just feels bigger.

Ken: So that’s something you might explore. All right. Now I’ve got three verses to do in five minutes. Well, a little bit longer.

The next two verses are very traditionally based. Verse eight is about karma. There are two ways of understanding karma. One is understanding karma as an explanation of why things are the way they are. And it is a very old, traditional explanation, with the idea that if you do bad things in previous lives, that’s why you end up having a miserable experience in this life, whether it’s illness or pain or poverty or need or what have you. And if you’ve done good in the past life, then you’ll experience good and you’ll experience good in future lives if you’re good and so forth. This is karma as explanation.

How many of you have read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce? His indictment of Catholic Christianity, in which he says, “Any religion which tells you that you’re eternally damned before you were born is inhumanly cruel.” I feel the same way about karma as explanation. You know, so there’s a busload of school kids. It drives over a cliff. Everybody’s killed. Oh, it’s because they were murderers in their last life. I’m sorry, I don’t buy it.

The other way of understanding karma is karma as instruction. And that is, that it’s pointing to what I think is a lot more than a possibility. I regard it as the fact, but I’ll just say possibility here. That everything that you do, everything that you say, and everything that you think, plants propensities for thinking, saying, and acting that way in the future.

Now, some would say that’s a theory, but I’ve seen enough of it in myself, at least if I’m interpreting my experience correctly, that it is true. And so in this sense, I create my own life. And just as in a previous verse, we talked about who you hang out with has a big effect in your life. What you hang out with internally has a very big effect on your life.

And there’s a lovely Cherokee tale of a young brave in the tribe who’s acting up badly. And his grandfather pulls him aside and says, “Go for a walk with me.” And as they walk along, the grandfather says, “There’s a terrible battle going on inside me.” The brave says, “What are you talking about?” “There are two wolves inside me, and they’re fighting all the time.” And now the young man’s getting quite confused. “What, what, what, what two wolves?”

“There’s a wolf who is very proud and arrogant and greedy and feels that he can just take what he wants and get whatever he wants, and he doesn’t have to care about other people. And then there’s another wolf who understands his relationship with the tribe and knows that people need to be treated with respect and dignity. And sometimes things are difficult to bear, and he needs to have patience. and so forth. And these two wolves are fighting very, very deeply inside me.” And by now, the young man’s actually quite frightened. And he looks at his grandfather and said, “Which one of them is going to win?” And the grandfather stops walking, turns to his grandson and says, “The one I feed.”

And so, this is the main import for me of karma. It’s very, very important to bring our attention to what we say, what we do, even what we think—to the extent that we can do that—because this is how we create our lives. This isn’t about doing good because somebody is telling us, “You should do good.” And not doing bad, because some authority out there is saying, “That’s the wrong thing to do.” It’s about bringing attention to what we do. So it is commensurate and compatible with how we want our lives to be. And it’s all coming internally. It’s not coming from some supposedly higher authority outside ourselves.

Then the next verse is concerned with freedom. The way that I would interpret this particularly, is to listen to the very deepest questions you have inside you. Listen to the very deepest questions you have inside you, because they’re the ones that are important. They’re the ones in which your whole sense of your life rests. We live in the culture, which unfortunately is set up to distract us from exactly that.

We are bombarded with different sources of entertainment. We are told that this is important and that’s important, things that are completely removed from our immediate life experience. We’re led down wild goose chases in terms of material objects and ideals and so forth. The very technology which gives us so much information and ability, fragments our intention so that we can never actually listen to ourselves at all deeply.

So, when I say it’s very important to listen to the deepest questions inside, I’m going right against the direction that our culture has been evolving for the last 30, 40, 50 years. And yet, if you want to know peace and freedom in your life, the only place to start is inside. So this particular verse, I see as an injunction or a suggestion that you learn, you create the situations in your life, the conditions in your life that you can actually listen to what’s inside you.

Earlier, if you go back to verse three: rely on silence. It’s in silence that character grows. And what relationship you have with silence, and how much you can experience silence yourself, has a huge influence in what kind of character or personality you develop. If you’re quiet inside, then you’ll experience quiet in your life. Something Ben Franklin said: “If you want to know peace in your old age, study tranquility in your youth.” A little bit late for some of us, but there it is.

The next verse comes right out of the worldview of Tibetan Buddhism, that if you’ve had infinite lifetimes, then every being has been your parent an infinite number of times. And those of you who have studied any mathematics of infinity understand how that works. But I’m not going to go into the details. What this verse I think is conveying is that—whether we acknowledge it or not—our life is a life of relationships.

Our life consists of relationships

Ken: Now I’m on verse 10. I may not have been clear. Our life consists of relationships: it’s relationships with objects, it’s relationship with people, and it is meaningless to consider a life in which we have no relationships. It’s unimaginable. What would life be if there weren’t any relationships? And just as we were discussing in reference to verses seven and eight, we don’t get to choose all of those relationships. We don’t get to choose what arises in our life.

A couple of people here have said that they have chronic pain. I’m quite sure neither of them chose to have chronic pain in their lives. We live in the illusion that we actually control what happens in our lives. We don’t actually. There’s a book I read recently, which I deeply recommend, a novel. I read very few novels, but this was one which was like sipping a very good glass of wine. And I would only read a page or two at a time, which is not the way I usually read novels at all. It’s Night train to Lisbon. It was a bestseller in Europe. It’s a very well-written book. And there’s many, many interesting ideas in it.

There are two books by the name Night Train to Lisbon. This is one by Pascal Mercier, I think is the author. But look for the one that sold two million copies in Europe and then you’ve got the right one. Among the ideas that’s expressed, is that people consistently ignore how much of life is pure chance, pure luck. You meet a person here. Through them, you meet another person. And the next thing you know, you’ve come into contact with someone who is profoundly important in your life. And it just seems like happenstance.

I can say, there’s several aspects of my life, when I look back, I went, “God, that was just pure luck.” And it’s worked out very well. But it’s the same with bad luck. And so, we think we have this possibility of controlling our lives. For most of the time, it’s just: stuff happens. And we come into relationships with people, and people come into our lives, people go out of our lives. It’s all a bit like a dream.

Embrace life in its fullness

Ken: Verse 10:

For time without beginning, mothers have lovingly cared for you.
If they’re still suffering, how can you be happy?
To free limitless sentient beings, give rise to awakening mind.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 10

Awakening mind is a technical term here. But the essence of the idea of awakening mind is to embrace life in its fullness, which means all relationships, everything. And know that that’s all there is, is just relationships. Don’t try and make anything more of them than they are. Some say, this is the most important relationship, my story, this person that’s the most meaningful. Yeah, all of that’s true. But everything is relationship.

In just the way that you were talking about earlier, about when you open to life as a dream, everything becomes more open. This is another way of just opening to the fullness of our lives. And that’s what awakening mind is really about. As I was saying to you earlier, we can’t get out of this life, but what does this life consist of? It consists of experiences, and they’re just experiences, and they come and go. And this verse is saying the same thing in a different way, particularly in the context of our relationships with people.

The core of Mahayana teaching

Ken: And the final one that we’re going to discuss this morning—and then take a break for lunch—you can say, this is actually the core of this text. It’s the core of Mahayana teaching. This is verse 11:

All suffering comes from wanting your own happiness.
Complete awakening arises from the intention to help others.
So, exchange completely your happiness
For the suffering of others—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 11

There are a couple of ways to understand this. Tokmé Zongpo was one of those individuals who lived this quite literally. And that is why he is remembered as an extraordinary example of a life based on compassion. He did not care about being successful. He did not care about being recognized or appreciated. His only concern was to ease the sufferings of each and every person with whom he interacted. And he had a lot of difficulties in life. As I said earlier, sometimes he just didn’t know how he was going to make ends meet.

This was what was most meaningful to him. He would even let fleas eat his body because he thought, “I might as well make use of this body and it can be somebody’s food.” This is a bit extreme, but that was how he lived his life. And that’s why he is remembered, because the Tibetan tradition has produced hundreds of great scholars and people who wrote wonderful treatises on this and that and so forth, and guided people in practice and were good abbots of monasteries. But this person stands out because he embodies that ethic of compassion and it’s how he approached his life.

And there may be people here, maybe some of you who really want to approach your life that way. And if that is how you want to approach your life, there’s no one who should stand in your way. Most of us, however, that’s a really high ideal to aspire to. And as someone pointed out to me, not so long ago, living your life where you’re actually taking on all the suffering of others, it’s just not very practical.

My teacher said something very interesting when he was teaching this on one occasion. Suppose that you actually had the power to take in all of the suffering of the world: all of the famine, all of the illness, all of the pain, all of the war, all of the criminality, all of the torture, all of the arrogance, all of the oppression, all of the discrimination, all of the judgment, all of the inequity, all of the poverty. If you actually had the capacity to take all of that into you knowing that everybody would be free from it in a single breath, would you do it? Well, how many of you would? Yeah. So what does this tell us about ourselves? It tells us that very deep in us there is an ethic of compassion.

Because most of us, when they think about that, say, “Yeah.” I mean, it would be horrendous doing it, but that’s our relationship. We don’t give expression to that very much. So this verse is about giving expression to it. And I want to take it to another level. How many of you have parts of you from which you are somewhat or deeply alienated? Oh, there’s a lot of dishonest people here. [Laughs] I think all of us have parts in us, parts of us that we don’t like to admit are there, parts of us that we don’t want to be there.

Now I want to turn the tables here. Take one of those parts. How does it feel about you? Hmm? This part you don’t want to have anything to do with, how does it feel about you? Oh, it gets tricky here. [Laughs] No, here’s you … this part. It’s very easy for ourselves to tie us up on word games. But is there any part of you that you’re not comfortable with?

Student: Well, I understand that you were trying to get away from these rhetorical … I just wanna know what you mean by that. Because I feel like in our practice we’re constantly struggling with that very issue of you and then the oneness. And so, okay, I just wanna know what you mean by that. I mean, in the context of this being a dharma teaching, it seems kind of anathema to …

Ken: Okay, so, who’s talking to me right now?

Student: That’s a very good question.

Ken: [Laughs] But you have that experience. There’s experience of you. I don’t want to define it, but you have that experience. You’re talking to me, right? And I want to deal—

Student: This vehicle is talking to you.

Ken: Don’t worry. I’m fine with those words, doesn’t matter. Okay. Now when I say, “Is there a part of you from which you are alienated?” And don’t worry about what you means here.

Student: Right. I always need a few minutes to let the question sit. I don’t have ready answers to those. But when you said that, I felt like, no, that’s not the case. But when you said, were there parts of myself that I wish maybe would dissipate? Then the answer would be yes.

Ken: Okay. Very good. That’s all I want. Okay.

Student: And then with that relationship to that, to me then …

Ken: Well, so now this is a little fantasy, a little thought experiment. Suppose that part of you were a person. Okay? And they’re sitting right on the chair next to you. How would they look at you?

Student: Well, if the me that has a consciousness, then this other part of me wouldn’t have a consciousness, then I wouldn’t really be looking at me in any way. If I’m saying like me, this part of me is like my foot. How does my foot feel about me? Well, it’s not really a conscious element.

Ken: Of course not. But this person’s going to take, or this pseudo-person is going to have a pseudo-consciousness. But I think you get my point. So we have a part, okay? I’ll speak personally. So there’s part of me that’s very closed down. Now, does it have a consciousness? Yeah, it’s conscious. It’s conscious of being very closed down. And how might that part look at me? And that part might look at me and say, “You never listened to me. You’ve completely shut me out. So I’m not talking to you.”

And so, one of the things that I want to suggest about this verse is that it goes much further than just all beings. You asked, “What is you?” Well, someone said earlier, I think you have multiple personality disorder. We all do. There are many, many different selves. And so one way of looking at this line—it’s a little different, non-traditional interpretation—is that any part of you from which you are alienated, well you have a relationship because it’s part of you. And so you now start exploring that relationship by doing this taking and sending. Taking in the pain of that part, which is probably something that you’ve never touched, or only touched with great unwillingness. And we’ll return to this theme because it’s very, very important.