Article
[…] the transgression against me, you help me come to terms with the reactive process within myself. Yet it is still up to me to work through the reactive patterns that gave rise to that transgression. In the Protestant context, the picture is a bit different. With the elimination in all but name of the mystery […]
Article
The final challenge of habituated patterns is to question direct experience. How do we know? How can we trust this knowing, which is totally beyond the ordinary conditioned experience of life? Like Buddha Shakyamuni, we turn to no external reference and live in the knowing. We rest in presence, in the very mystery of […]
Chapter 6 of “Releasing Emotional Reactions”
[…] deliberately, intentionally, is they run and hide. So you evoke the feeling and [Ken snaps fingers], it goes. Because the whole idea here is that for that reactive pattern to operate, you are meant to be out of attention. Then it can run; it can do it’s thing. Like Nasruddin and the fox. He got […]
Chapter 7 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] to throw in a caution here. All of us have experiences that we can’t stay present in or haven’t been able to. That’s what originally produced the reactive patterns which mess up our lives. And one may feel that, “Oh, I should just go straight into these and open them up.” This actually isn’t such […]
Chapter 8 of “Karma: Awakening From Belief”
[…] of attention. And you include in your experience of the breath the experience of the feeling. Okay? Student: And then, I breathe in the experience of the reactive pattern? Ken: No. Breathing in, I experience the reactions to the feeling. Student: Okay. Ken: Breathing out, I experience the reactions to the feeling, or the problem, […]
Article
[…] emotional patterns. If you now repress the emotions, pushing them out of attention, two things happen. The higher level of energy in your system flows into the reactive pattern, making it stronger. The higher energy also flows into the repressing pattern, making that stronger. Both the reactive patterns of the emotion and the repression are […]
Chapter 12 of “37 Practices of a Bodhisattva”
[…] actually, I have a little story about it. Ken: I don’t want to get off topic yet. Catherine: Okay. It’s about cutting. Somebody cut for me a reactive pattern that I was in. I was completely immersed in this, really sad because of something somebody said to me. I was not in attention, and I […]
Chapter 9 of “A Trackless Path II”
[…] situation and survive. So what reactive patterns know extremely well, really, really well—I shouldn’t say “know” what they’re good at, because there isn’t any awareness in a reactive pattern—what they’re good at, they’re very, very finely-tuned mechanisms which are really good at surviving. I mean, they’re really good at it. They’re much better than you or […]
Chapter 10 of “Five Elements Five Dakinis”
[…] As you open to that experience which is bringing attention to it. You don’t have to do anything you find that space in the experience. Now the reactive pattern is just experience, it’s just stuff and you’re functioning in a different way. So yes it does dismantle them, but it isn’t by you taking them […]
Chapter 6 of “Practicing the Diamond Sutra”
[…] five themes that are present in the first three or four chapters, and then they revisit those themes again and again, basically driving the point home. Interrupting reactive patterns Ken: Okay, the faculties: Subhuti, what do you think? Does the thus come have physical sight? Now when you come across something like the five eyes, […]
Chapter 14 of “Mind Training in Seven Points”
[…] in the three problems. [Learn to meet three challenges, 2005 ed.] The Great Path of Awakening, p. 39 We discussed this in detail earlier. Recognition of a reactive pattern, developing a practice to work on it, and cutting through. I gave the one method of recognizing reactive patterns: observing what you don’t notice, observing what […]
Chapter 12 of “Mind Training in Seven Points”
[…] cannot be present if you do not know your intention. What are you there for? A very useful method of uncovering the emotion that is driving a reactive pattern is to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” You ask, “Why am I working at this job?” “Well, to earn money.” “Well, why am I […]
Chapter 3 of “Chö: Cutting Through Demonic Obsessions”
[…] I have contributed to it. And at least up to this point, the way I contributed to it has always been due to the operation of some reactive pattern in me, which I may not have been aware of at the time. But when everything collapses and it’s just a big mess, then I get […]
Chapter 1 of “Eightfold Path”
[…] insistence. Insistence. It has to be this way! Whenever the internal vocabulary is, “has to, must do, always, never,” very, very good chance that there’s a reaction, a reactive pattern operating. Well it just has to be this way! I mean, one person I was reading recently said, Belief is where we stop thinking. This is […]
Chapter 3 of “There Is No Enemy”
[…] we take that attitude to life we have handed over our life to others, completely. Mind-killing Ken: So I just wanted to revisit those because our own reactive patterns and many forces in our society engage in an activity which a friend of mine called mind-killing, which is a very strong term but he likes […]
