In the Buddhist tradition, a sutra refers to the meeting of the teacher’s mind and the student’s mind. This is the first of many sutra sessions held in Los Angeles. In these Ken converses informally with students about life and practice.

Questions as an act of generosity

Ken: So my name is Ken McLeod, and I’m using this fancy device because I have a very soft voice, and with a loud air conditioner, you probably wouldn’t hear a thing I said. And so I’m very happy to be here this evening. We’re going to follow the usual format—a period of meditation, and then we’ll have a little conversation. When Mary said there’s going to be a loud air conditioner, I asked Elena, who’s my great sound person—so thank you—if she could fix up the speaker. And we said, “Oh, what the hell. Let’s record the thing, too.”

So we have a hand-held mic for you, which you can use to ask your questions. And don’t worry, this goes out over the internet. Everybody’s going to know everything. But that’s what I do with all of the talks that I record. I put them up on the internet for free, and there’s a few people who download them. So think of your questions as an act of generosity, because, if you have a question about practice or something, there’s probably, you know, 4 or 5,000 people out there who have the same question.

The basics of meditation

Ken: I know this is a kind of embarrassing question, but I don’t mean it to be embarrassing. But, for how many of you is it your first exposure to meditation, or things like meditation? Okay. There are a few.

There are a lot of different metaphors we could use for meditation. The one I find has worked best for me is, to regard meditation like growing a plant. And the plant you’re growing is attention. We all have the seed of attention in us. And, you know how it is with plants. You put the seed in the ground, and you water it, and you protect it from a lot of heat. And, you just do various things, but there’s nothing you can do to make the seed grow. It just does that by itself.

So the way we talk about this in Buddhist parlance is, the seed is the genesis, and then you just arrange the conditions, and it grows. So, one way to think about meditation is, that you’re creating the conditions for the seed of attention to grow in you. That makes a big difference in our lives if we’re more attentive, more present. A lot of you all know this under the rubric mindfulness.

So how do we create the conditions for the seed to grow? Well, sitting straight helps so the body isn’t strained. We should be comfortable, but not too comfortable, otherwise, we go to sleep. For sitting things, it’s just very simple. Make sure your elbows are under your shoulders, so there isn’t any back strain, just little things like that. Tuck the chin in very slightly so the throat and the neck are open. But basically, if you just let the body settle by itself, it’ll tell you how it wants to be.

You do the same thing with the breath. You just let it settle. There are many meditation techniques in which you breathe a certain way, but I’ve never found them very helpful. So you just let the breath be quite natural. And then there’s the little question of the mind or attention itself. And if this is your experience of breathing, this is your attention.

That’s what you do. You place your attention in the experience of breathing. Now this doesn’t mean concentrate. Concentrate would be like this. You just place it and let it rest there. And that’s very simple. You just breathe out, and you find you’re in the experience of breathing. You’re aware of your body. You’re aware of the motion of the breath. You’re aware of the motion of the body breathing. You’re probably aware of all of the sounds. You may be aware of a few thoughts going on inside you. Does anybody have that? Okay. And that’s fine. That’s all part of the experience of breathing.

Now, there is one small problem that happens for a few people now and then. The attention falls off. We get distracted by something. But there’s a miracle that happens whenever that happens. There’s a moment of recognition. You go, “Oh.” Now what most people do at that moment of recognition, “Oh, I should be meditating. I’m not doing it right. I’ve got to try harder.” They do all of that stuff. Anybody do that? Okay, so you place it in, you rest, falls off, you go, “Oh.” At that moment of recognition, you’re awake, right there you’re awake. You have a choice. You can either go on with the distraction, or you can come back to the experience of breathing.

Now, in meditation, we try to come back to the experience of breathing. So we rest there and then it happens again. And this is meditation. People say, well, “It’s always like this. It never changes.” Yeah. Basically, don’t worry about it until you’ve done this about a million times. If it’s still the same, then maybe there’s a problem. Okay, so just rest in the experience of breathing. Whenever you recognize that you’re distracted, just come back to the experience of breathing. So we’ll sit together for about half an hour. [Gong]

So it’s July 15th. I thought Harry Potter debuts on the the 15th.

Student: How was it?

Ken: I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet.

How do I bring meditation into life?

Ken: Very wonderful to be with you this evening. So, I always have difficulty when I’m asked, what do you want to teach? because I have no idea. So, you all came here this evening for a reason. It probably wasn’t exactly the same reason for each person, probably a variety of reasons. But I suspect that a number of you came here to learn something. So my question is, what do you want to learn tonight?

So, what are some of the things you’d like to learn? I find it very interesting when I throw out this question, because people say, “Learn?” But there are things you want to know, maybe about meditation, maybe about how meditation applies to life, maybe about different issues that you’re facing in your life. Yes.

Student: I would like to know how to bring the meditation into daily life. How, in the moment, to be able to respond rather than react?

Ken: So the question is, how to respond rather than react, and how to bring meditation into daily life. This question comes up again, and again, and again. And if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s the wrong question. What if you turn it around? Let me talk a little bit about why I think it may be the wrong question. When we sit and if we sit on a regular basis, we begin to get this experience of actually just being able to rest. And when thoughts come up, we don’t get all uptight about them. They come and they go, and we begin to get a different relationship with ourselves. I could talk about that a lot, but I don’t think I need to right now.

And then we think, “Oh, this is very nice. I mean, I finally am not being driven crazy by all the stuff that’s going on in my head.” Something like that? And so we think, “Gee, it’d be really nice to be able to live this way too.” And we think, “How do I take this peace and quiet, or this clarity, or freedom, or however you want to describe it, out into my life.” How long does it last? How long does it last when you try to take it out into your life?

Student: It depends on how stressed and what triggers are hit. The more insecure and scared I feel, the less I remember—in the moment—to pause, and the more I just respond habitually, usually not with kindness and compassion, unfortunately.

Ken: See, there’s an old adage from military planning here. The best battle plan lasts until first contact with the enemy. So, basically, it doesn’t work because we take it out, and it’s just as you describe. We encounter something and kaboom, right back into all the old patterns of reactivity and so forth. So this idea of taking our peace and clarity into our lives, people have tried this, and tried this, and tried this, and it just doesn’t work very well. So, what if you turn the question around. Instead of, “How do I take my meditation practice into my life?” What if you ask, “How do I take my life into my meditation practice?” Have you ever thought of thinking that way? No. Okay. So, what would that look like? Well, what do you do in meditation that’s different from what you do ordinarily in your life?

Student: Well, I guess it’s I meditate every morning for an hour, so I tried it.

Ken: Very good but during the meditation period, I suspect you’re doing something different from what you’re doing the rest of the day. Or trying to do something different.

Student: Yeah, I am trying. For me, it’s a conscious contact with God. So I’m trying to just be open and just try to quiet the mind so I can just say, “I’m available. I’m here, please be loud God, so I can do your will.” And so that’s different. During the day I try to, but there’s a lot of me in there during the day, trying to get what I want.

Ken: You would introduce that me thing. Now we get very deep. God was fine. But when you introduce me, it gets much deeper. You look very puzzled there, but let me explain why. You sit quietly. And as you say, you’re actually letting things quiet down so you can hear God, right? Now, where does me come from? See, I told you it got deep very quickly. Where does me come from? She has an idea. Why don’t you give her the mic? Won’t that be such a relief? Where does me come from?

Student: The actions and thoughts that you have throughout the day. You kind of identify with me, your identity.

Ken: Okay. That’s good, because that’s exactly what happens. But it didn’t answer the question. Where does the me come from? She wants to. Okay.

Student: I would say me is who I am, my soul, who I was born, who I am, and then my thoughts. Yeah, I think of me as my thoughts because that’s …

Ken: How many of you would say you are your thoughts? Hands up. Well, you don’t have many supporters here. [Laughter]

Student: Not my thoughts, okay. But I guess me is, my soul, my heart, who I am.

Ken: This gets very, very deep, you see. What’s that? Now, I’m not going to push you too hard on this, but, you see, it’s really difficult to say what that is, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s why I said it gets very deep. So let’s just put all that on a shelf because, we could drown here very easily. And go back to your question. And the question I propose to you, how do you take your life into your meditation practice?

So, you started off by saying that you sit in meditation. You do an hour in the morning, you sit quietly. And so you become very open. Okay. And then something happens during the day so that that seems not to be possible in the same way. This is what we need to look at very carefully. So you and I are talking right now. Okay? What if you go completely open right now? What happens?

Student: In the first moment I got scared because there’s a vulnerability and then there’s an ease.

Ken: How long did that take you?

Student: Not very long.

Ken: Not very long. So that was a very small example of taking your life into your meditation practice. Okay. Now, what if you did that all the time? You’re absolutely right. On the one hand, it’s totally terrifying. Because something happens and you’re just open and feeling vulnerable and open because when you’re open, you’re kind of vulnerable. And so all of that stuff comes up. And then strangely, actually, almost mysteriously, there’s like, “Oh, I can be here.” But now it’s different from the way one ordinarily would be, isn’t it? Yeah. So that’s what it means to take your life into your meditation practice.

And you can start off with really, really small things. One of my friends suggest you start off with opening doors. How many of you open doors during the day? We all do that, right? So I gave this to a student of mine down in Orange County. I used to stay overnight because I had an office down there. A couple of weeks later when I was down there, I came and he had green post-its on every door in his house. Not just the doors from room to room, but the kitchen cabinets, the refrigerators, everything, because he was practicing it. And so, as soon as you reach to open the door, you open like that.

Now, what happens here when you do this is you’re taking your life and bringing it into the same kind of effort you’re doing in meditation. You’re not trying to bring anything to your life. You’re bringing life into that openness, if you see what I mean. And it takes practice. You’re going to fall down, skin your knees, bloody your nose a million times; that’s just going to happen. But that happens when we sit. Everybody knows that when you sit, the first time you sit, it’s just complete chaos. There’s all these thoughts all over the place, and you know, where did the breath go? But after a while, you begin, oh, some continuity. Exactly the same kind of thing happens here. So you just open and it takes [snaps fingers] that long.

And the more you do it, the more it becomes part of the way that you’re practicing in your life. That’s what it means to bring your life into the practice. So that’s one thing, you can do it with opening doors. Once you get the idea of opening doors, then you’ve got to change it, because otherwise we just get habituated.

Second thing—well, this is from Thich Nhat Hanh—it’s the telephone meditation. Always answer the phone on the third ring. How many of you like to answer it on the first? Like, ring, “Hi.” Right? And you run, run, run. But what happens if you answer it on the third ring? The way Thich Nhat Hanh presents this is actually very nice. When the phone rings the first time, instead of answering it, you say, “calm” to yourself.

Student: Calm?

Ken: Calm, it’s my accent. I’m sorry. Calm. How do you say it? Calm. Okay. So the first ring, you say “calm.” Did I get it right? And the second ring, you say “smiling.” This is what Thich Nhat Hanh likes, and it’s good. And the third ring you say “present” and you pick it up. Now, how are things going to go if you’re calm, smiling, and present when you pick up the phone? Maybe it’s the cable guy. Maybe it’s a telemarketer, but it’s going to be different. Maybe it’s your mother-in-law, but it’s going to be different. And again, this is what it means to take life into practice. That is, we start working it right in our lives. We don’t try to take something from our meditation practice to our lives. We start working things right in our lives. You get the idea?

I’ll give you one more, which I found so useful, and there’s two parts to it. So I suppose it’s two different practices. One is, always take a breath before you speak. Now, when you’re having a conversation with a friend, how often do you wait? How long do you wait between the time when your friend stops talking and you start talking? One, two milliseconds, something like that. What happens if you start taking a breath right there? Well, the first thing that’s going to happen is you will never be interrupted and you will never interrupt anybody else. That’s quite a change right there.

The second thing that’s going to happen is that people know they’re going to have to be quiet if they want to hear anything that you have to say. Because if they start talking again, you’re not going to jump in. You’re just going to wait. And then when they stop, you’re going to take another breath. So they’re going to start listening. And this is very effective. I do a little bit of business consulting. This really upsets people. It really upsets them. People saying, “You’re so quiet, Ken, you listen to everything.” They aren’t used to it.

The other practice, which is also connected to the speech, but it’s another example of how to take life into practice. You’ll probably kill me after I tell you this one, or after you try it for a week. Most people do. When you are speaking, listen to your voice as if you were listening to another person. When you are speaking, listen to your voice as if you were listening to another person.

Now, I had a student, again, down in Orange County. This woman, she was a real estate broker, very nice woman. And I gave the group exactly this practice. And when we met the next time, I asked them, “How many of you brought this part of your life into your practice?” Nobody had even tried it. So I made some rude noises. And then the next week, this woman, her name was Linda, came a bit early to the group. I said, “Linda, did you try this practice?” And she looked at me like this. I said, “Why?”

She said, “She never shuts up.” She had heard herself the first for the first time. How much she talks. So this is a very powerful practice.

How many of you sometimes find yourself speaking in your mother’s voice or your father’s voice? If you do this practice, you’ll really hear that. And you’ll go, “That’s not me speaking. It’s them.” And if you actually practice this way, as soon as how you’re saying something is different from what you want to be saying, you’ll hear it because you’re listening to yourself. And so you’ll sort of get tied up in knots, which is bringing this quality of attention to your speech. And it’s bringing that, so it’s making a practice out of speaking, if you follow.

So you said at the end, so you can be kinder, more compassionate etc. Really important point, and I just want to touch on this, and then we’ll go to another question. One of the things that really confuses a lot of people about practice is differentiating between results and methods. Now, suppose you’re really tense, you had a big shock, or something like that. And, we happened to meet, and I said, “Oh, you’re really tense. Relax!” What would you do? When I say, “Why don’t you just relax?” That’s exactly right. You get more tense, right there. Okay. That’s result. So if I tell you the result, it doesn’t help you. But if I see you’re really tense, I say—what’s your name, by the way?

Corinne: Corinne.

Ken: Corinne, why don’t you take a deep breath? Let it out slowly. Do that again. Let it out slowly, nice and long. And do it once more. How do you feel?

Corrine: More relaxed.

Ken: More relaxed. So that’s the method. So, an awful lot of Buddhist teaching is description of result. And then people go off and try to do the result and it’s terrible. They get so frustrated because it simply doesn’t work. I went to hear a talk last weekend. Very nice teacher, but the whole talk was about result. He didn’t say one thing that you could actually do. And everybody was sitting there so attentive, and things like that. They didn’t know they were getting stuff that was absolutely useless. I just sat quietly in the back and snuck out at the end.

So this is very, very important. Kindness, compassion, equanimity, all of these things, they’re results. They’re results of bringing attention to what you do. And I’ve just been describing different ways to bring attention. The first one was, just open. You experienced that. You just opened, and suddenly there’s so much more attention there. It’s a little scary, in fact. Okay. And then there was bringing attention to the experience of opening a door. And you can do many others too, like there’s the traffic light meditation, and the stop sign meditation. It’s a great way to avoid tickets. You come to a stop sign, you stop, you take a breath. You’ll never get a ticket. Somebody behind may honk at you, but you’ll never get a ticket. And then there’s the, taking a breath before you speak, which, again, is bringing attention into speaking. And then there’s listening to the sound.

So all of these are about bringing attention. And all you have to do pretty well, is bring attention to what you’re doing, and you’ll find a lot of things will just change from that. You don’t have to worry about being nice, or being kind, or being compassionate. That will just happen. I mean, there may be a few really ugly, bent people that that doesn’t happen, but 99% of the population, they do this, and the results speak for themselves. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

So that’s what she learned. What anybody else like to learn? Yes. And what’s your name? Vic.

The war in my head

Vic: All right. My question is, even though this is my first time coming to meditation, I have tried doing it on my own a few times in the morning. But, as soon as I wake up, I have a war in my head. I have severe anxiety about everything I have to do, places I have to be, people I resent, things that are bothering me, am I going to be late for this? How’s the traffic going to be? I can’t calm myself to sit and meditate. And just like it happened today, the beginning, for the first few minutes, I was able to sustain my breathing, or concentration on breathing for, maybe 15, 20 seconds at a time. But as time went by, my lapses, where I was thinking about everything that I need to do, and what’s going on in my life, and everything else, started being four minutes, five minutes before I could pull myself back and start concentrating again. I am in a program where meditation is highly suggested, and I want to really get into the habit of it. But I don’t know how to start in the mornings, and get my myself to sit, and not worry about being late for something because I’m never really late anyway. I have a bit of an OCD too, so I have multi-issues.

Ken: You sound like the White Rabbit.

Vic: Yeah. I’m a winner.

Ken: Okay. Well, what kind of work do you do?

Vic: I work for a magazine.

Ken: High pressure, publishing.

Vic: Yeah. Advertising.

Ken: Oh, yes. Definitely. All right. Well, 15, 20 seconds? That’s good. What’s your secret?

Vic: As I was breathing, I was imagining a balloon, sort of like, expanding, like a pink balloon.

Ken: I got to try that. Oh, I like that. Okay, now. There’s a teacher in the Eastern part of America, Virginia, I think, who’s Sri Lankan. His name is, Henepola Gunaratna. I heard him once, afternoon workshop with him. When he teaches meditation, it’s like a string quartet playing. It’s so clear, just so beautiful. In one of his books, he says. “After a while, when you practice meditation, you will discover that you are completely and irretrievably crazy. Your mind is a gibbering mad house on wheels, rushing pell-mell down a hill, completely out of control. Don’t worry. You are no crazier than you were yesterday. The only difference is now you know it.”

Now, what you’re describing is the first experience you have when you start meditating. From your description, there is absolutely nothing wrong. This is most people’s first experience. There are a few people who they sit down, their mind becomes quiet. We aren’t even going to talk about them. And I can say the same for me. I started trying to practice meditation when I was at university, and then I went to India. You know how long I could last? Just take a guess. It was a little bit better than that. One minute, and that was it. That was a tough minute, too. I couldn’t sit still at all. I mean, literally, it wasn’t that I had lots of thoughts. I couldn’t sit for more than one minute. I had to get up and do something else. So, what’s really important here, and this is what I was trying to demonstrate with this. By now, we’ve heard all of these things about meditation: it’s so quiet, the mind is quiet, it’s peaceful, it’s open. Just forget all of that, okay?

Meditation is much more like going down into the basement, where you haven’t been for two or three centuries. And there are a few things down there, there’s some boxes, lots of boxes, none of them have ever been opened for a very long time. And then there are cockroaches, and spiders, and all kinds of other things, cobwebs, all kinds of stuff. And you go down and think, “Oh, I’m going to be nice and quiet down here and stuff, and all of the stuff is there, and you never knew it.

So here you are. You sit down to meditation and you find, “Oh, I’m a very anxious person.” And as you said so beautifully yourself, “I’m worried about being late, but I’m never late for meetings.” Well, that’s pretty good that you’re never late for meetings. Why do you worry about it? Well, there’s probably some very deep answers to that question. We don’t need to go into them this evening. But there’s the worry, which, by your own experience and by your own testimony, is completely baseless. But that’s the kind of thing that happens to us, isn’t it?

So I’m going to give you an instruction, which I came up with actually fairly recently, and I found it very helpful. And that is, whatever happens when you sit to meditate, I just want you to ask one question. “How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time?” Okay, so let’s take your anxiety to start with. “I’m feeling anxious. How can I experience this anxiety and be at peace at the same time?” What happens when I ask you that question?

Vic: I would not know how to start.

Ken: Well, start right now.

Vic: I would have to imagine it’s the last day of my life and just say, okay, screw it. I’m gonna—

Ken: Great. That’s wonderful. That’s another practice. That’s super. [Laughter] Okay. So do that. [Laughter] Does that work?

Vic: Yeah. [Laughter] Ultimately, when when I’m catastrophizing, which is something I do constantly. Which is, how can I be sitting here in my living room for ten minutes when there’s so much to do? Got to be on the freeway screaming at somebody.

Ken: You have to be on the freeway. You don’t have to be screaming at them.

Vic: But I do finally have to say, I have to take the extreme impossibility to calm myself and then enjoy it. So I’m thinking that with meditation, I would have to do the same thing.

Ken: Well, that’s where you’re going to start. And sometimes extreme measures are necessary. But I love that you have to pretend that it’s the last day of my life. “So screw it.” I’m going to use that. I have a different version, but I like yours better. My version is—we can just do this together right now—so you have all of the stuff in your life. We have 30 seconds to live. Notice how quickly the room becomes quiet. And that’s how it is with death. When we say, “Okay, it’s over,” then what’s really important becomes evident very quickly. And all of this other stuff, it just vanishes. So I love this. “It’s the last day of my life, so screw it.” Good.

So there’s that. Now you’ve got your first meditation practice. Okay? Now that’s going to last for 15 to 30 seconds. And then all of the other stuff is. But you will have experienced something in that 15 or 30 seconds. Right? So now you know that there is another possibility. Now you know what everybody does at that point? They try to hold on to that possibility. They try to bring it back. They try to make it longer. And you know what? It doesn’t work. You just have to do it again. So, you’re going to feel the momentum that keeps you anxious, that keeps you wound up.

Here I’m going to quote from Thich Nhat Hanh again. And I could also quote from a Zen teacher called Dogen, 12th century Japan. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The practice of meditation is the study of what is going on.” What is going on is very important. That’s exactly what you’re describing. When you sit down to meditate, you start to experience what’s actually going on in you: this anxiety, this tightness, the franticness and worry about everything. And that’s what makes your life, makes you restless, and consumes a tremendous amount of energy in your life, I imagine. So it’s very important. But as you keep coming back to that—and I want you to use the question that I posed to you: “how can I experience this and be at peace at the same time?”

So there’s the anxiety. How can I be at peace with it? Well, your answer was wonderful. “Screw it. It’s the last day of my life,” and allows you to experience the anxiety, but not really do anything with it. You follow? And that’s the start—right there. It’s not about getting rid of these things, but about being able to experience them and not have to do something about them. Do you see the difference? And it’s a subtle difference, but it’s a huge one.

Okay. You ever get angry? Oh, I’ll take that as a yes. Okay. We can all do this together. So think of something that over the last, 24 hours, and if you have to stretch it, 48, that made you angry. You got something? Oh, yeah. He’s such an easy person to work with, I love it. Okay, so call that to mind and then ask yourself the question. How can I experience this anger and be at peace at the same time? And remember the secret instruction that we got. “Screw it. It’s the last day of my life.” Okay, that may be applicable here. So here we are. There’s that anger. How can I experience this and be at peace at the same time? So what’d you get, Vic?

Vic: Well, I guess one of the reasons I finally decided to try this today—even though I’ve known this was going on for a long time—was because something did happen yesterday, which I’ve had to live with. And my reaction to it obviously didn’t work, which was that I was at a meeting and someone’s dog and leash was being caught into everyone’s legs. And because I’m temperamental, I happened to be the one that told him off. And he left the meeting and I felt anxious and bad, and I snapped, and I had a temperament. And it didn’t come from compassion, or understanding. Told him off in front of everybody, put him on the spot. He ended up leaving. And, if I were to go back and be pissed because this guy, in my mind, was being inconsiderate, to have peace with that temperament of mine. I would tend to think that this is my last day. I would understand that it’s not personal and have compassion and been more calm, maybe worked with him.

Ken: Or would have spoken to him, at least in a different way.

Vic: Right.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. And that’s great. I’m interested in when you think, “Okay, here’s this anger that I have. How can I experience it and be at peace at the same time right now?” What happens?

Vic: Acceptance.

Ken: Great.

Vic: I did it. I screwed up.

Ken: Yeah. Okay.

Vic: So, accepting that what’s done is done, and I need to move forward.

Ken: So you begin to see how it works. Is this useful to you?

Vic: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Ken: Good. Okay. I think we have time for one more. Any brave soul? Well, you don’t have to be brave. Does anybody find any of this discussion we had with these two people helpful? Okay. So, is there anybody else who would be interested in learning something? Okay, here we are. And your name?

Mary: My name is Mary.

Ken: Mary. Okay.

Labeling and organizing distractions

Mary: I have a hard time. It’s a little bit of, I guess his question, when I meditate and I can’t, I just keep getting distracted, and keep getting distracted, and I get very into organizing those distractions. Oh, that’s planning. Oh, that was a worry. Oh, that was a memory. I get so caught up in labeling.

Ken: Organizing distractions.

Mary: I know. I’m a Virgo. I get really caught.

Ken: What different categories do you have?

Mary: I have a lot.

Ken: Do you organize those too?

Mary: Sometimes. Yeah. Like, my planning can be either—

Ken: Okay. Different types of planning.

Mary: Yeah.

Ken: Okay.

Mary: And different types of fantasy. So, at any rate, the point is, I can get so caught up organizing my distractions because, like, oh, it’s a distraction. So that I can then go back to breathing. It’s just, that’s become, noticing distractions has become a distraction. Does that make any sense?

Ken: Oh, it makes a great deal. I think it’s fascinating.

Mary: Okay. So thoughts.

Ken: Noticing the distraction isn’t the distraction. It is what you do next. And so it sounds like organizing the distraction is the distraction. Okay. May I ask you a few questions? And I have no idea where this goes.

Mary: Okay.

Ken: What are you trying to achieve by organizing the distractions?

Mary: I think somewhere in my head, or in a teaching, I picked up on this idea that somewhere in the teaching, it’s good to notice that you’re distracted, and label it, and then let it go. So that so appeals, I think, to that crazy organizer part of my brain that I’ve picked that up and just I’m running with it.

Ken: Okay. That’s extremely helpful. Thank you. Okay. Now, in ancient times, when one was training in spiritual practice, you got very, very little information. You were given one instruction, and your teacher usually knew you fairly well, and it was the right instruction for you. But we don’t live in those times anymore. In fact, we live in very, very different times, and they’re quite extraordinary. Where, here in Los Angeles and generally in this country, certainly in every major city, we have access to the wisdom and experience of all the great spiritual traditions all at the same time. It’s unique in human history. That’s wonderful in one sense. It’s highly problematic in another, because we hear this instruction, and it’s a very good instruction. But for you, it’s poison. And parts of you that are used to organizing things just latches on. Oh, “I can do that,” and off you go, but it’s totally the wrong instruction for you. So I’m going to ask you another question. What’s the right instruction for you?

Mary: Well, I think there probably is—

Ken: And you know it.

Mary: Really?

Ken: Yeah.

Mary: Okay. Well, I have two thoughts. The right instruction is: there isn’t necessarily any right instruction.

Ken: And that’s a cop out.

Mary: Okay. The right instruction is to relax. No, it’s, to really just focus on my breath, and that’s it. That’s all that I need to do.

Ken: Remember this?

Mary: Right.

Ken: How much organizing am I doing?

Mary: Not much.

Ken: How would this be for you? Oh, you don’t like that? [Laughter]

Mary: Did you see it in my eyes?

Ken: I felt it over here. Because all of that organizing couldn’t run if you practiced that way, could it? Just coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath, and leaving this big mess of unorganized distractions. What’s your apartment like or your home? Very tidy?

Mary: No, it’s not actually.

Ken: Interesting. Okay. Because if it was very tidy, I was going to tell you to mess it up. Okay, so you get the idea. There you are breathing. Something comes in. “That’d be a really neat restaurant to go to.” And automatically, fantasy, food, or something like that?

Mary: Fantasy or planning.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. So you know what your practice is? “Oh, that’d be a really neat restaurant to go” … oh, breath. That’s very interesting, what you say here. Because, the way that you try to cope with all of the stuff is to organize it. Whenever you’re distracted, you think, “Okay, if I organize it, it’s going to be better.” I gave an example of another way that people cope with distraction. And that is, when they’re distracted and they recognize that, they go, “Oh you stupid so-and-so, you’re never going to be able to meditate. And this is really bad, and you’ve got to concentrate harder.” I know that one because I’ve done it a lot myself. And there may be a couple of other people in here who do that. But that’s another way.

And other people, they get distracted. “Oh, that was so neat. I could really get into that.” But it’s the same kind of thing. What happens is, there we are resting. Something comes up and something always comes up, you know, it could be anxiety, it could be anger, it could be desire, it could be anything. And it catches us. That moment of recognition comes. Now all of us want to do something with the distraction, whether it’s organize it, use it to beat ourselves up, and get into it, or what have you. Okay. But the instruction is, come back to the experience of breathing. And that’s it, just coming back.

The labelling practice is actually quite subtle, and it’s very helpful for certain kinds of people. But all of these instructions, they work for some kinds of people and they don’t work for others. And which ones? And it’s very important to find the ones that work for you. Well, this obviously doesn’t work for you very well because it allows you just to spin, spin, spin, spin. So, oh okay, there we are, breath. How aware are you of your body when you’re practicing?

Mary: I come in and out of awareness of it, I think.

Ken: I think what may also be helpful to you then, is when you’re sitting is to stay completely in touch with your body. So whenever you notice you’re distracted, first thing you come back to is your experience of your body. I find that that really cuts through a lot of the intellectual stuff that goes on. And so, just come back, and you feel the body breathing, and then you find actually, frequently. that the rest is right there. You just come straight back to that. So that’s the other thing I’d suggest to you.

Well, it’s 9:00. Let’s sit for just a moment or two. And. If anything that we’ve talked about this evening you found helpful, you feel it has generated a possibility of good in your life, then just feel that goodness. And dedicate that goodness to the good of the world. You don’t have to figure out how that’s going to happen. Just form that intention that whatever goodness has come out of our time together this evening, you dedicate that goodness to the good of the world. We’ll just sit for a couple of minutes.