There is this body of teaching that comes down to us, which is extraordinarily rich and multifaceted, which has been practiced for 2,500 years. There’s a huge body of experience, and wisdom, learning, and understanding in it. And every single individual has had to find their own path. You take what is useful, and you find your own path. And it’s very important, I think, that you do not let the social pressure, or peer pressure, or cultural pressure, lead you to believe something that doesn’t actually fit with you. Now, you may find at a certain point that something you’ve been holding, which is very important to you, you may find that that’s completely wrong. And then you let it go yourself. But that’s because it no longer makes sense to you.

Student: Where does the the feeling of lack of self-worth come from?
Ken: I think it’s always learned. We feel that we aren’t worth anything or that we aren’t worth very much because somebody who is fairly important in our lives treated us if we didn’t matter. I don’t think it’s a natural feeling. I think it’s always learned from our interaction with the world and as such it’s not a fact. It’s a story. And it may be a story we have deeply, deeply internalized and it may seem like a fact to us but it really is a story. And one of the ways that I’ve come to that conclusion is from my experience of working with people in meditation. I’ve consistently found that after about three or four months of meditation, regular meditation, people’s relationship with themselves starts to change and they start developing a quiet confidence. And I’ve seen that over and over again.

In some traditions of Buddhism, things are really goal oriented. Somewhat in the Zen tradition, it is: reach satori, or attain nirvana, or get enlightened. Not just the Zen tradition, of course. And it’s like there’s something out there, which if you can get to, then everything is going to be okay. And I certainly labored under that impression, for a very, very long time. I had the good fortune to be able to be with some of the senior teachers in the Tibetan tradition. And as I observed them in their lives—and these were people who had practiced for years in mountain retreats— and everything wasn’t okay in their lives. They still had to deal with some really thorny problems. So this idea that you attain this state in which everything is just okay, I began to suspect this might not be the case.

In most forms of Buddhist meditation, we don’t try to control the state of mind with the breath. There are many meditation traditions in which you do just that, pranayama, and Hinduism, and yoga, for instance. And they’re very, very good techniques. But that isn’t the way that we generally work within the Buddhist context. We just breathe naturally. And what I like to say is, let the body breathe. It knows how to breathe a lot better than you do. If you ever you find tension building up around your breath and it feels strange, it’s because you’ve started to decide how to breathe, and you’re not letting the body breathe the way that it wants to. So just whenever you notice that tension, just relax. Let the body breathe and you’ll find everything just calms down quite naturally.

One one thing is the issue of trust towards our teachers. A lot of Western teachers have some degree in therapy or psychology, engineering or something. And then the the other thing I just wanted to bring up is that for for many of us, our teachers are people we haven’t even met, you know, online. We’ve listened to their podcasts. So like, Ajahn Amaro is he my teacher? I don’t know, I’ve never met him.

We asked our teacher, “How do you decide which meditation technique to use?” He said, “Well, usually you can boil it down to about five, right? So you have five. Now if you look at those five, there’s one you’re not really that enthusiastic about. And now you look at those four. And, you don’t like this one quite so much as the others.” So basically you you take something that speaks to you and, what I like to say to people, something that speaks to you even when you are completely crazy. And that’s usually what I say about finding the teacher. The teacher is a person who who you will listen to even when you’re completely crazy. The right meditation practice for you is something that you will do even when you’re completely crazy. That’s the right one. And work it, and work it very, very deeply. There’s not a right or wrong here. It’s the one that works for you.

How many of you at some point in your life, probably when you’re young, ran into some kind of difficulty, and somebody extended some kindness to you with no strings attached. Does anybody remember something like that? What was that like for you? Most of us remember that, whether it was a parent, or an uncle or an aunt, maybe it was a school counselor, or a teacher, or somebody. Most of us remember that very, very vividly, because there we are, and somebody is giving us a place in the world. Well, that’s what mothers do. And that’s the essential gesture of loving-kindness.

One of the important things that I’m messing around with here is the distinction between thinking and thoughts. When we are thinking, we are wrapped up in thoughts. We’re going round and round and round. And when that is happening, our experience of life is duller. It’s more distant. It’s a little confused. But when we just rest in our experience, using any of the methods which I was just demonstrating then the mind is clearer, or the way we experience things is clearer. It’s more vivid, it’s more open.

Student: Well, specifically with respect to the guilt, I realize that I’ve made some very painful decisions in my life. Went through all the pain, like the horrible agony of those decisions, but never really allowed myself to get the goods, like to experience what it was I was after by making those decisions because I felt so guilty. So in other words, I did it, but I didn’t let myself. I don’t know if that makes any sense.
Ken: You bought a winning lottery ticket. You never cashed it in.
Student: Exactly. So what I’m trying to do, because I know last time you talked a little bit about a practice where you kind of go toward those. I’m trying to let go of the guilt, and I can’t figure out a practice that’ll help me. I don’t want to intellectualize it. I want to really get it.

And as we rest more and more deeply in the experience of attention, things gradually change and we find our relationship with thoughts and feelings and all of that mental stuff changing. We begin to become aware of something else and this is very difficult to describe. The easy term to use is space.

Ken: The theme that’s common here is, or what I’m picking up here is that being here the way that we usually are is just not acceptable. Does that fit?
Student: A lot of things are not acceptable.
Ken: A lot of things are not acceptable. Okay. Well, let’s just start with that one.
Student: Well, I started wondering, you know, there are no real alternatives. Because everywhere I would be instead, would be also not acceptable. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
Ken: Okay. How do you go from resenting to accepting?

Regardless of where you’re meditating, either in the middle of a forest or in the city, or in a group of 10 people or one person, there’s always distractions, and I was just wondering how you can deal with that when meditating?

A lot of people approach meditation as a place to recharge batteries and get calm, clear, and feel good, etc., etc. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very, very helpful that way. But what I’ve tried to show you today is another possibility, and that is, that this is the way to actually practice living. You’re actually practicing living by experiencing what is arising, not trying to do anything about it immediately, but actually experiencing it.

What do you understand and what questions might you have around faith: its role is in spiritual practice in general, its role in meditation? What do you have faith in? The difference between faith and belief, if any? These kinds of questions. I’m just going to throw that out as a general topic. If any of you have any questions about faith, I’d be very interested in them.

Student: How does faith apply to Buddhism?

When you asked, “What is experiencing all this?” and you said to notice the shift, it was really weird because, what is it experiencing the thoughts? What’s the me factor in it?