8. Working with difficult feelings

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, […]

8. Working with difficult feelings

9. Understanding Metaphors in Buddhist Teachings

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 […]

9. Understanding Metaphors in Buddhist Teachings

10. Embodying the Five Dakinis in Daily Life

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 […]

10. Embodying the Five Dakinis in Daily Life

6. The Knowing that Needs no Explanation

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, […]

6. The Knowing that Needs no Explanation

14. Training in Every Moment

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 […]

14. Training in Every Moment

12. The Five Forces: Living and Dying with Intention

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 […]

12. The Five Forces: Living and Dying with Intention

3. Breaking the Spell

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 […]

3. Breaking the Spell

1. Practicing View, Intention, Speech, and Action

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 […]

1.  Practicing View, Intention, Speech, and Action

3. Deepening Attention: Opening to Experience Without Enemies

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 […]

3. Deepening Attention: Opening to Experience Without Enemies

6. Feeling the Form of Compassion

Chapter 6 of “The Jewel in the Lotus

[…] a manifestation of awakened mind, which is generally known as a yidam or deity, is to shift the basis of the organization of our personality from habituated reactive patterns to this expression of open, clear awareness, which is the unity of compassion and emptiness. All of the deities are the union of compassion and emptiness. […]

6.  Feeling the Form of Compassion

1. The Language of the Five Elements

Chapter 1 of “Five Elements Five Dakinis

[…] specific transformation process Ken: The structure of each of those meditations is very similar. You evoke presence of the dakini. Invite transformation. Experience the illumination of ones reactive patterns or reactive chains. The  transformation comes through a higher level of attention. And then the flavour or the gesture would be pristine awareness. And a way […]

1. The Language of the Five Elements