Including emotional material in practice is essential

Ken: Work with a painful aspect of the emotion, see what happens and come back with your experience this afternoon, okay? And just do that. I think you may discover something here. Art?

Art: I was thinking of doing this with someone who was obviously acting out of pain, but one of the ways they’re acting out in terms of directing some anger out, and that raises a whole lot of issues within me doing this. Is that an appropriate subject to choose for this, or is there just too much going on internally for me there?

Ken: I don’t know. I guess you’ll find out. The only—and I don’t say that facetiously—I think it was Nietzsche who said, “What doesn’t kill you, strengthens you.” In practice, being killed is losing our attention. So, if you can work with very strong feelings and not lose your attention, then it definitely strengthens your practice and enriches it very deeply. If you lose your attention, get lost in it, that’s not particularly helpful. But it can be very helpful working with powerful feelings, and if you have the willingness to work with them and the capacity to do so, you can learn more about experience than about a half hour sit with something that was tearing you apart than you can from about five years to just resting in equanimity. And I know this because I’ve worked with people who’ve practiced for 10, 15, 20 years, and they really know nothing because they’ve never included their emotional material in their practice. They can have very, very solid attention when they’re sitting. As soon as they get up, there is nothing. So actually mixing emotion with the practice of attention is essential because, if it doesn’t manifest in how we actually interact with others, what good is it? So, explore.

Work the edge

Student: What about handling emotion that’s really huge, and it is very powerful? Is it possible for this practice [unclear] … to let it manifest and not take in everyone else’s take on it? To work on it [unclear] important to them.

Ken: This goes back to the theme we discussed yesterday, and is a very important one: work the edge. So, if you only work within your comfort zone, all you’re going to do is reinforce the patterns that are already there. If you work beyond your capacity and attention, all you’re going to do is recondition your defensive mechanisms. Neither of those are helpful. You’ve got to work right at the edge. So, you’re being stretched in your practice. And what’s very important here is that each of you learn to be able to go to your edge and be willing to. That’s how you bring energy, discipline, and the appropriate effort to your practice. In many training situations, the circumstances are made deliberately harsh so that people are pushed to their edge. And that can be very useful, but basically you’re relying on an external force to push you there and one doesn’t develop the ability to do it independently. The way that I’ve been approaching this is really encouraging people to find the depths of inspiration, the depth of commitment, courage, and faith, as we were talking about it. Actually go to the edge. In some of the interviews, when people come in and say, “I have this emotion and if I go there, I know I’m going to get lost.” And I say, “Okay, it’s like a pit is it?” “Yeah, it’s like a deep dark pit.” I say, “Go to the edge of the pit.” Go to the edge of the pit and stand there. And you stand there for as long as you need. You look into that pit, but you’ve got to stand at the edge of the pit.

Mix experiences of bliss with emptiness

Announcer: This question is from Meg in Toronto: “Since attending your Mahamudra retreat in 2007, I’ve been following the Sukhasiddhi instructions. There’s often a feeling tone associated with this practice: happy, joy, smile. This feeling tone can also arise during the day with no apparent external cause. It seems to be an indicator of a certain state that I can’t use words to describe. My instinct is to say to myself, ‘Don’t go after the feeling tone, but recognize it as a path marker that’s telling me, okay, I’m on track here.’ Is this what’s actually going or am I off base or kidding myself?”

Ken: Well, it’s a little difficult to tell at this distance, but let me say a couple of things. First, Sukhasiddhi is one of Khyungpo Naljor’s teachers. Her name means the attainment or the ability of bliss. So I don’t think it’s any surprise that you were feeling happy, joyful, like smiling in connection with this practice. Secondly, we often have the impression that if we aren’t struggling with something, then there’s something wrong with our practice, but this isn’t the case. What our practice results in is a sense of relaxation, which is self-sustaining and a wakefulness which doesn’t involve an effort. So you have out of that, self-sustaining relaxation and that effortless wakefulness you’re probably going to feel good. And the bliss or happiness arising in body and mind is often indicative that the body and mind are essentially resting, or to put it a little more generally, where they’re meant to be.

The tendency here is that one can become attached to such experiences. That can be a problem. One is attracted to them, one wants to hold onto them, and make them last longer. That’s where it begins to become a problem. One of the ways that we counteract that tendency is to mix such experiences with emptiness. That is, when such experiences arise, just stop for a moment and drop into emptiness, or if you don’t know how to do that, then just start breathing for a moment, and you’ll find that everything stops inside you. In that state let the experience— in this case, the joy, the happiness—arise in that open space. That’s how you mix it with emptiness and then just continue on from there. The other thing is—and this is linked to not being attracted or attached to such experiences —don’t build an identity or make something special out of them. From the Buddhist point of view, nothing special is happening, we are, at long last, perhaps, coming to know and dwell in what we actually are. And there’s nothing really special about that.

How to work the edge of practice

Announcer: This is from Ann in New Zealand: “What do you mean by finding and working at the edge of practice? In my experience, the questions behind practice change over time. I started out by wondering how I could stop being engulfed by anger, but a consistent practice has been helpful and the hell realm experiences of barriers, aggression, and opposition have diminished, and life is much less difficult. So now the core question seems to revolve around how to use whatever time is left to me. What is my practice about now? This question is resonating at a broad level and also from moment to moment. Is bringing one’s changing questions and motivations into awareness what you mean by finding the edge in practice? And if so, how do I work with the edge?”

Ken: There are at least a couple of meanings that we can associate with the phrase, finding the edge. In no particular order, the first one is exactly what you described in your question: bringing one’s changing questions and motivations into awareness. For instance, in your case, you say the question is, “What is my practice about now,” or “How do I use whatever time is left to me in this life?” To use the traditional phrase, how do I live a life with no regret? But that’s a question. And to work that question or to work the edge of the practice would mean that you let your mind and body settle, or to be more accurate, to let your body and mind settle. And in that quiet, bring that question to mind.

And you’ll notice that the body reacts in a certain way, and various emotions arise. Without trying to sort any of that out, or make it any different from what it is, you rest in that experience. And in this way, you move into a deeper relationship with the question. You’ll also probably notice that different stories arise. Well, it’s about this and about that, different answers to the question, but they’re all just ideas. You rest in the experience of the body, the experience of the emotions and the experience of your mind, all of that, keeping the question in mind and letting it deepen, letting your experience of it deepen. And as you do this over time, some kind of insight, not just an idea, but some shift in you will take place and the knowing will arise. That knowing will be non-conceptual in nature, even though you may find that it takes form as a conceptual understanding, but the actual knowing you’ll recognize as not being based in concept, it’s just there. Now you’re beginning to find the path, and resting in that knowing, and coming to know that knowing more and more deeply, is what the path is about. You may find that in that knowing no questions arise, but that’s something for you to explore.

A second meaning for working the edge is when we are working with difficult emotions or difficult questions. If we don’t entertain them, we find that we can rest quite happily. If we entertain them deeply, we find that we are just overwhelmed and lost in chaos and disturbance. Between those two states, there’s an edge. There’s an edge where we are at the edge of being able to rest but not tip into chaos and confusion. That’s finding that point in your practice, and it will differ exactly where that point is on any given day. But finding that point and resting right there is the second way of working the edge in practice.

Boredom and lack of intention in practice

Announcer: This question was submitted by Bertrand from Morocco: “You once said that boredom in formal practice arises when there’s too much attention with insufficient intention. So, then you encourage us to ask ourselves, “Why am I doing this? What do I want from this practice? What am I trying to make different about my life?” I’m wondering how to remedy the lack of intention. Is there even a way? I need to understand where the lack of it comes from. Can you cultivate intention? If so, how? Or does intention just boil down to the whacking stick?”

Ken: Well, let us temporarily move this to another arena. Let’s say the arena of swimming. Well, we’re going to go swimming, we have a reason. Maybe we want to have some fun. Maybe there’s someone in trouble in the water and we’re going to help them. Maybe it’s the only way to cross a lake or a river, but there’s a reason. Now, if you were standing by a river and saying, well, I don’t have any reason to go swimming. Then, how useful is the question. “I need to understand where the lack of reason comes from.” I’m not sure that’s really helpful. Can you cultivate a reason to go swimming? Of course. But if you asked me how to do that, I don’t know, I’d have to know the circumstances of the situation.

Of course, if someone was standing beside you, whacking you with a stick, then you’d have a reason for going swimming pretty quickly. But that’s just to get out of that situation. And that intention is not going to last very long, because once you enter the water, then cross to the other side, you have no reason to go swimming again. The only reason you were doing it was to get away from the pain. So rather than taking that approach to this, I’d like you to go back to the questions that you quoted here in your your message. “Why am I doing this? What do I want from this practice? What am I trying to make different about my life?” And and really consider those questions very, very deeply. What do you want from your practice of meditation?

Why are you doing it? Often we are given the reasons: to get enlightened, to be able to help all beings, and so forth. So we’re given all of these different reasons, but those may not be our reasons. It’s very, very important, if you’re going to work at spiritual practice, to discover what your own reasons are. For some people, they want inner peace. For other people, they want clarity. Other people want to experience no separation from the world they experience. Other people want to deepen compassion. Other people want to experience the joy of freedom. I can go on and on. These are all different reasons that people have expressed to me at one time or another about why they want to practice or what they want from the practice.

When you know what you want from the practice, then you need to look at, does the form of practice that you’re doing bring that about? And you need to understand how it brings it about, so that when you become clear about your intention, and you know that the form of practice that you’re doing is consistent with that intention, then you’ll have very little problem with putting energy into your practice. And it won’t be boring because it’s something of vital interest and vital importance to you. But relying on a whacking stick or entertaining such questions about where does intention come from, they’re probably not the most useful things you can do.

Getting lost in action

Announcer: This question was submitted by George, from New York City: “I attempt to be present, but my attention becomes diffused and I get lost in action. Even when I become aware that this has happened and I recall my intention to be present, this just seems to be another entry way for reactive patterns or strong sense of self to come in and act out. I do know that having a sense of self feels safer to me, but I also feel robbed by it, like I’m somehow missing an opening. I’m confused about what to do when this sense of self and reactivity arises and I try to be present.

Ken: From the way that you posed this question, my sense is that the best place for you to put your effort is building capacity in attention. You have the intention to be present, but presence requires a certain capacity in attention. It’s not something you can just decide to do. Sometimes it’s a bit like going wind surfing in a hurricane. We may know how to wind surf, but the wind is simply too strong, and just creates certain problems.

You say in your question that when you recall your intention to be present, then a stronger sense of self or other reactive emotions, just pop in. What I suggest you do is to spend some part of your meditation time, if you do practice meditation, just resting with the breath. It sounds from your question that to rest in the awareness or in presence itself, isn’t going to work for you right now.

When I say resting in the experience of breathing, just sit comfortably in a chair or the meditation position and feel your body breathing. You’ll naturally become aware of the breath. Don’t try to still thoughts, and also don’t be distracted by them. Realistically, all of us are distracted by the thoughts, but the moment you recognize that, just say to yourself, “thought,” and then come back to the sense of the body breathing. The idea here is your meditation practice has more the quality of returning to the experience of breathing and resting there, rather than try and hold on to some sense of presence. You just keep coming back to that, it’s a very simple practice. It’s also a very, very effective and very profound practice. As you do this over time, I think you’ll find that opening to a sense of presence will begin to become a little more stable. You won’t be immediately seized by a reactive emotion or a stronger sense of self.

As you say, a sense of self feels safer to us, and that’s the reason why when we move to a sense of presence, we often react to it by becoming more self-conscious. It’s because we’re not used to being in the world of experience with that kind of openness. And that’s why it’s important to build up this capacity of attention.