When compassion eludes you

Student: When I am dealing with hatred and intolerance, I’m trying to just be present and maybe curious. Compassion eludes me, so I try to practice radical curiosity, but it’s very overwhelming. Exterior stuff happens, and I get attached to that hatred, then I remind myself of the “shouldn’t,” then “shouldn’t” for the “shouldn’t,” and on it goes. Infinite regress.

I have these words that help me, “radical curiosity” or “relax” but sometimes the words get a little stale. They lose their meaning. And it is still intolerable and sustained.

Ken: Is it okay if we engage this a little bit here? Okay. So can you bring up the feeling of intolerance or hatred? Or can you recall it? Recall it and tell me what happens in your body.

Student: It’s like a black ball right here.

Ken: Okay. What physical sensations?

Student: It’s hot. Hot. Okay. It’s tense.

Ken: What’s the ball made of?

Student: Fire and black tar.

Ken: It’s right here, solar plexus? Okay. Now in this exchange, we just go as far as you want, you tell me, okay? Now, my sense is that you’re already feeling something else.

Student: Than the anger? Probably, yeah.

Ken: If I’m reading you correctly, it’s hurt and pain. Is that fair? You don’t have to explain what it’s about, okay? But it’s there. So, on the one hand, there’s this hatred, which is an intolerance, which is a hardening. And on the other hand, there’s the hurt and pain, but you can only experience that because you’re softening. So you have this hardening and the softening going on at the same time. And it’s probably a little confusing.

Now that’s always the case. Wherever we are angry, there’s that hardening, and that heat and fire. But wherever there’s the anger, there’s also this hurt where we feel weak, vulnerable, at threat, and hurt. I’m going to ask you to do something that may be a little challenging. I want you to do this, at this point, only at the level of the body.

I want you to feel the hardening and the softening at the same time. Take a couple of moments. There’ll be parts of you that harden and burn, and parts of you that soften and feel hurt. Do that and take half a dozen breaths. Just feeling that … [Pause] What was that like?

Student: I’m shaking. Convulsing almost.

Ken: Yeah. There’s a lot of energy there. Was it tolerable?

Student: Yeah. I mean, it’s a little bizarre because everyone’s watching me, so …

Ken: Well, actually they were probably all doing it themselves. I was watching it [Laughs]

Student: Yeah. I feel like perhaps I would have shaken, my body vibrated more, if I had not contained it because I’m holding a microphone …

Ken: Didn’t want it to go flying across the room … When there’s that kind of hardness and that kind of pain, there’s something innocent trying to come out. And when we go with the hardness, we just shut everything down, and it doesn’t feel very good. And when we go with the softness, it feels overwhelming, and that doesn’t feel very good.

Like I was suggesting before, with busyness and dullness, you include both and don’t try to be balanced. Keep including both. Sometimes the body’s shaking, but it allows for whatever is at the core to start to come out. Don’t try to do this necessarily all at once, because the sense that I have is there may be something a little deep.

When you practice, rather than being curious, which is good, or trying to be a certain way, just open to exactly what you’re experiencing, and use your meditation practice to stay with it.

When you notice that you’re hardening against it, ease off, because that doesn’t help. When you notice that you’re getting lost in it, ease off, because that doesn’t help. And you just feel your way with this. You’re going to be doing that a lot [laughter] because there’s all this stuff in us that we haven’t experienced. When anything outside resonates with it, all of these very powerful feelings are coming up.

It’s interesting what you say about that ball of anger being this black, burning thing. Because that’s exactly how the hell realms are described in Buddhism. You have this thing inside you, which is burning you from the inside out. You make it really alive that way. Also, you can see, we didn’t have any “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts” in here. They’re not helpful. Okay.

Experiencing the deep pains within us

Student: In the last couple of classes on the four immeasurables, you had mentioned that you were talking with another practitioner and that you agreed that you wouldn’t wish—and I’m using the word “pain,” I’m not sure exactly the word you used—but you wouldn’t wish this on anyone. And so my question is, can you elaborate on the characteristics of that experience versus the characteristics of avoiding?

Ken: I’m curious about your curiosity about this question?

Student: Well, I thought you would be. [Laughter] There’s a lot of cautions and caveats and all these things about undertaking this work, “going there.” And then there’s this place that I’m experiencing of no escape. It really is Dante’s Inferno. It’s like I’ve turned around to go back to the hill and there really is a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf there.

You can’t go back, how do you go forward? I was looking at Japanese Buddhism, and found this fellow that founded Shin Buddhism, Shinran, and he basically declares to his followers, “Hell is my only destination and I’m walking to the pure land.” And when Art is reading about reincarnation, I think, oh, well, I’m already in and out of a lot of hell realms. So which hell are we talking about?

Ken: This is a very interesting question to me and something to which I gained an additional insight relatively recently. So I’m very glad you asked it. But I actually said in the classes that I wouldn’t wish the pain on my worst enemy, so it’s actually quite a bit stronger than anyone.

I have a friendship with a Buddhist nun who is from California, lives in England right now and practices in the Theravadan tradition. She’s been a nun for a long time and was trained very thoroughly. And she used exactly the same phrase to describe some things that she’d been going through a little while ago. And so we had a nice discussion about that.

Now, I’ve got to take a big leap here, which you may find a little strange, but I’ve often contrasted the icons of Buddhism and Christianity. The principal icon of Buddhism is a statue or the picture of Buddha seated in meditation with one hand touching the ground. And it goes back to the moment of Buddha’s awakening when he’s challenged by Mara saying, “What gives you the authority to sit here, or to say this?” and the Buddha touches the ground and says “The earth is my witness.” Which is a very powerful way of saying, “I’m here.” And that’s that.

The principal icon of Christianity is the Christ on the cross writhing in agony from the pain. I read a book, The Life of Pi, in which this question of these different ways of relating, or symbols in these religions was brought up again. So that got me to thinking about this whole thing. And it just happened that I was going through a very difficult period in my own meditation, where I was again experiencing very difficult pain. And I said to myself, “I feel like I’m being crucified.”

And then it occurred to me. One of the things you’ve heard me say before is that when you get right down to it, the aim of Buddhist practice is to be able to experience just what arises in our lives. And in order to do that, we actually can’t be anything. Because as long as we have this idea of being something, then we are in opposition to our experience. To be completely open in an experience is to be no thing.

And all of us have had experiences of that—being out in nature or something like that, and just opening. And we don’t feel like we are a thing at that point. And yet the experience is extraordinary, rich and beautiful and so forth.

And another circumstance which many people have experienced is when someone very close to them has experienced a loss or tragedy. You’re talking about it and you don’t feel like you are any one or something apart from that. You’re just right in that—the whole experience. It can be quite magical, even if it can be very intense and very painful.

That complete experience, in which we are not a thing separate from experience, I think is at the heart of Buddhist practice. In our lives, most of the time, we’re going along, something happens, it resonates with stuff, and we just ignore it and go on. And we react because we aren’t really in tune with what’s actually happening.

But as we practice more and more in our meditation, we become more and more able to be that in tune. So when we see something in the world that resonates with us, we can be in that experience, we don’t have to push it away.

I think, inevitably, in our meditation, we’ll run into experiences which we have ignored for a very long time. Something in our lives, something will open them up and there they are. You can say it is experiencing the pain that caused our conditioning.

The only way we can do that is by being in a form which can experience that pain. I think this is what the Christian symbol is about. It’s about, if I put this in Buddhist terms, the dharmakaya—emptiness or whatever—taking form in this case as Christ to experience the pain of conditioning, which is the crucifixion, so that they can know its own nature, which is dharmakaya.

That may be a bit of a stretch, but the rhetoric about Christ dying for our sins, I think, is a kind of distortion of that essential truth. I think that’s the underlying power of that symbol, saying, “There are pains, very deep pains in us. Can we actually be present in them?” Because if I can be present in those pains, then I can be present in everything in my life and then I don’t have to react at all. And that puts an end to suffering.

Now, what are the characteristics of that? I don’t know. How do you experience it? I know the characteristics of mine. I don’t know the characteristics of yours.

Student: It’s such difficult material to approach, molten almost, and not related to any particular words or language or specific memories, moving through the body. On the cushion that all works out fine. It’s off the cushion and moving through the day when there’s an event that triggers a reaction and I step into it and do the drill.

And there’s a point that I found over the last few weeks where I’m not really there. The attention has degraded, and I have become it, or fallen into it. And it’s still painful and I haven’t yet discerned a different sensation in my body at that switch. But the quality of what I’m experiencing is very different.

Ken: Yes. You’re pointing to or describing what’s a very important point. In order to know what we are, we have to know that we aren’t the pain. That is that the pain, whether emotional or physical or whatever, is something that comes and goes. And if it’s something that comes and goes, then it isn’t what we are. It’s an experience.

To do so, we have to have a certain capacity and attention. Attention that basically operates at a higher level than that conditioned experience, the conditioned pain. If our attention isn’t at a higher level of energy, then when that experience arises, all our free attention is consumed. Now we just relive it, which is not the same as experiencing it in attention.

What this points to is building a capacity in attention which is primarily why we practice meditation, formal meditation, unmixed with other activities. That’s where we build that capacity. We do things like the four immeasurables or devotion practice or energy work or energy transformation work—all these things. They’re all building our capacity. So that when something arises, we can just experience it.

What I suggest on a practical basis is that you experience it for a short time and then stop. Before all of your attention is consumed. Because once it’s consumed, then you’re just reconditioning yourself. That is not so helpful.

Student: It doesn’t seem very helpful other than I’m aware that it’s happening and I’m observing the cycle of it, but it doesn’t seem to feel right.

Ken: Yeah, but there’s a difference. You have a different experience when you’re actually in the experience and awake in the experience. That feels different, right? Yeah. So you do that for short periods and then go off and do something else. You don’t try and do it all at once. If you do that repeatedly, then you are actually building capacity but not reconditioning yourself. Learning how to do that is a very important part of practice.

We also do this with positive experiences. You can be experiencing non-thought or bliss or clarity or any of these things, and when they arise, you don’t try to hold on to them. You just experience it, touch into it and let them be there, then go off, continue with your day. And then when it arises again, touch into it.
The key is being awake and alive and really present in these experiences. Once, once we start trying to hold onto it, then we’re into attraction, one of the three poisons. Once we’re consumed by it, we’re just being reconditioned. Learning how to do that skillfully is an additional element of practice.

Working with anger

Announcer: This question was submitted by George, from Seattle: “When doing bodhisattva practices such as taking and sending, and the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, how does one steer clear of moralism that is simplistic, fundamentalist, naïve and unrealistic?”

For example, it’s one thing to acknowledge anger as a cause of suffering and to therefore form the intention to accept insult in hardship, but trying to eliminate anger seems to lead toward repression and suppression. In other words, what causes the tendency to try to stamp out negative emotions and how does one work with them?”

Ken: Well, there are a couple of questions here. Let’s start with how to work with anger as it comes up in our lives.

We go to work and we’re doing a good job. We think we’re doing a good job. Out of the blue, somebody attacks us with some vicious insults. Maybe he does it in front of other people. It’s both embarrassing and irritating. It provokes anger. From the point of view of the bodhisattva path, what do we do with that?
In the Tibetan tradition, when a reactive emotion such as anger arises, there are three things that are possible. They aren’t necessarily available to everyone, but there are three things which are possible.

One is when our level of attention is sufficiently high or strong. When anger arises then, we actually don’t experience it as anger. We experience it transformed—as extreme clarity, clarity of mind. There is no oppression or suppression of any kind. When situations arise, which would ordinarily provoke anger, we experience extraordinary clarity. That sounds like magic, but it actually is possible to train and develop the capacities in this so that just happens.

But for most of us, mortals, it’s a little different. In this situation, we’re angry or hurt. Why did this person make this comment in front of all these people? We don’t understand. So we come to a second way. And the second way is when anybody attacks us, insults us, or what have you, it’s pretty reasonable that they’re coming from some place of hurt or upset, and this is their way of dealing with it.

Anything that we define disturbing or problematic immediately elicits compassion. That also is the result of training. And we say, well, this person is hurting. We take in their anger, we take in their suffering, we take in their pain and we give them whatever peace of mind, joy, or a feeling of wellbeing that we know. And so the anger now becomes a stimulus for our own compassion.

That’s the second way of working. Some of us are not able to do that in all situations. We come to the third way, which is simply to restrain so that we don’t react in kind. Because that just escalates things and doesn’t do any good.
There’s a tendency here, for many people, that when they restrain themselves, they suppress the emotion, and the energy of the emotion goes into the body and it causes stress. And if it’s done repeatedly over a long period of time, that will cause chronic illnesses of all kinds. Suppression is not a very good thing.
When one encounter situations like this, what is a good way is to get out of the situation or get through the situation as best as one can, without doing anything harmful. And then in one’s meditation practice, recall that situation and open to the experience as completely as possible. Open to the experience by first experiencing what happens in the body.

There’s a situation that happened to me earlier this year which was very, very upsetting and made me extremely angry. And as I say, I got through the situation as best I could. For the next several days, as it was a very, very upsetting situation, every day I would sit in my meditation, recall the situation, and all of a sudden it would be there.

Sometimes I’d experience it in my gut and sometimes in my throat. And sometimes just every cell of my body would be on fire and it just kept coming back and experiencing it and experiencing it. So first we experience it in the body.

When we’re able to stay with the experience in the body, we experience the emotions connected with it. Often in addition to the anger, there are feelings of hurt and shame, maybe jealousy, and we also have all the other aspects of anger, like revenge, etc. There’s all of this stuff going on.

You don’t try to sort it out particularly, just experience it. And when you can stay with this, then there’s all the stories that come with it. How could they do this to me, this wasn’t fair, and don’t they know who I am and it just goes on and on, all of these stories.

By staying in all of that—the body, the emotions, and the stories—a strange thing starts to happen. We find, to our surprise, that we can actually experience all of that and rest in that experience, which may seem strange, totally unbelievable, or inaccessible, but we actually can do that. And not only can we rest in it, we can actually relax. And when we can rest and relax in that intensity of emotional disturbance, then another possibility arises, a kind of clarity.

Often in the understanding of what all of this means to me, how it all came about, a sort of opening arises. We find the beginning of letting go or that it just goes by itself. This is how we work with these kinds of things without suppressing them and without acting them out.

The second part of the question is what causes the tendency to try to stamp out negative emotions? We try to stamp them out, we try to get rid of them as quickly as possible because we don’t enjoy the experience of them. And sometimes we’re afraid of the experience of them. That’s why we just react, so that we don’t have to feel it. It’s also why we try to repress them. So we don’t have to feel it.

When we act out these negative emotions, the energy goes out into the world and causes problems there. When we repress them, the energy goes into our body and causes problems there. But we do this because we’re either afraid or unable to experience them.

The way that one works with that is to practice just the way I described before—building the capacity to experience the emotions. When we can experience them completely, then we don’t have to act them out and we don’t have to repress them. And this is helpful for everyone.

Working with depression

Announcer: This question was submitted by James, from Santa Rosa: “I suffer from clinical depression with mixed states. Lately, I’ve been doing a meditation where I watch the rising and falling of my abdomen, saying to myself ‘rising’ as my abdomen rises and ‘falling’ as my abdomen goes down. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. What should I do when I feel like I am crazy?”

Ken: With depression, one has to be careful with meditation because the dynamics of depression and the dynamics of meditation are very similar. And it’s possible that upon meditating, one can fall into a dull state, which moves into depression.

Generally speaking, I would suggest you make sure that when you’re practicing meditation, your mind is open and clear. If you find yourself in a dull state for any period of time, better to stop the meditation, go for a walk and continue practicing walking meditation, if you wish, but move the body and make sure that there’s a good bit of energy and liveliness in your system in general.

The technique that you’re describing sounds like one that is practiced widely in the Theravadan tradition, usually associated with the diaphragm rather than the abdomen, but I think we’re talking about the same thing.

It’s not clear from your question, why you feel like you’re going crazy. Though I am reminded of a quotation from Gunaratana’s book, Mindfulness in Plain English, which you might find helpful. It’s a very good book.

He says something to the effect that at some point in this process, you will come to the conclusion that you are completely crazy. That your mind is like a wagon running down a hill, completely out of control and nothing can be done about it. And then he says, “Congratulations!” That’s how it is, but you’re no crazier than you were yesterday. It’s just that you know it now.

The fact is that we have all of these thoughts coming up. We can’t control them. As a friend of mine says, we can’t control the number of thoughts that we have. We can’t control what thoughts are going to come next. We can’t even control whether a given thought is going to distract us or not. In that sense, the mind being completely out of control is a very common experience for anyone who practices meditation.

Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind gives the advice of giving your mind a very large field, and he likens it to a horse. If you put a horse in a small corral, it’ll tend to run and run around and get agitated, never settle down. But if you let the horse loose in a very large field, it’ll run around for a while and then it’ll stop and just start chewing the grass.

And so what I usually recommend to people is that when you have a lot of thoughts, don’t try to control the mind. Don’t try to make the mind quiet because that kind of forceful approach actually increases the agitation in the mind and generates even more thoughts.

Instead of that, just relax and sit in the mess. Keep some attention on the rising and falling of the abdomen, as you say, but don’t try to control the mind. Sit in the mess. You may be surprised that if you just sit in the mess, you may find some peace in the mess. And if you find some peace in the mess, then the mess doesn’t really matter. That’s one way to approach that and see if that is helpful to you.