Resting and observing: What’s the difference?

Student: Is there a difference between rest and observe? The reason I have the question, I’ve been taught to observe—watch my breath for instance. And in my mind, the way I think, I watch it, I observe it, and I don’t deal with it or experience it—I just watch it. When you say “rest,” which is the first time I’ve heard that expression in this context, that to me says immediately that I’m going to experience it. I’m going to involve myself in it in some way. So I guess my question is what is the difference between the two, so that I can get some understanding of what either means. Or maybe it’s the same? Am I making any sense?

Ken: You’re making a great deal of sense, and I think it’s a very important question. A great deal of meditation instruction is given in terms of watch the breath, put your attention on this object, etc. Some of this may be a translation problem, I’m not sure. In my own practice, I found that the distancing that occurs with that instruction very problematic for all kinds of reasons. Other people, they don’t have any problem with it, but for me it was a problem. And, when I started to just rest in my experience of breathing, as opposed to trying to watch the breath, there was a lot less struggle. I could actually start resting. And as I rested, quality of attention develops in a way that it didn’t in the other approach. So yes, there’s a difference, I think. And I’ve found that this notion of resting in our experience very helpful, because it’s something I can easily take into my life. Whatever’s happening, I can just be in that, if you’re following.

And, it gets rid of the tension that I found was created when I was trying to observe the breath, I kept having to push this other stuff away. And that made a lot of struggle. When I rested in the experience, I didn’t have to push any of that stuff away because that was all part of the experience, which is basically what I’ve been trying to say today. But as I rested more and more deeply, I don’t know whether any of that stuff goes away, but it ceases to distract and that makes a difference. Does this help?

Resting and looking

Student: According to what I’ve learned, it sounds like for her question, isn’t it that the one-pointed meditation of watching the breath is shamatha, and the all-inclusive resting is vipashyana, which are two different levels of meditation? The first is the calm abiding, and the shamatha is given as an instruction to calm the mind so that the resting and the vipashyana can begin to happen.

Ken: That’s very interesting. I think there’s a difference in the way the same terminology is used in Theravadan and Mahayana, from your question. What you’re describing would, in my own training, be described as two different aspects of shamatha. Yes, the first aspect is what is usually translated as mindfulness, which I don’t like as a word anymore. And I know this is how it’s defined in the Theravadan and the Mahayana tradition. It’s defined as the mind joining with the object of attention, not focused on, but joining with. And that to me comes about through resting. So the resting quality is very much there. As that resting quality develops, another aspect of attention starts, and we call that awareness, which is defined roughly, as knowing what is going on. And it’s the difference between meditating in a closet and meditating in an open field. That’s a subjective feeling. And when that quality arises, then there’s much less struggle because you know what’s going on, and there’s a deeper level of resting. And you’re still resting in the experience of the object, but you also know everything that’s going on. Those two together form shamatha.

What is called insight in Mahayana, in my own training, is another quality yet, which basically grows out of the awareness that I’ve just mentioned—that expansion—that takes it a step further. Because it’s possible to rest, but then you learn to look in the resting. And we do this in various ways. I’m doing this for some of the questions today, but you’re looking basically at, “What is this experience?” Not trying to answer the question, but to look at, or more precisely, into it. So there’s a resting and a looking. Now in the beginning, when people start to look, their attention destabilizes very, very quickly, which is why that resting quality is very important. As practice matures, then it becomes possible to rest into looking and look in the resting. Now there’s quite a different quality to practice.

Dealing with distractions

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

Ken: I think this is very important. When we say there are distractions, it’s because we have an idea of how things should be and something keeps pulling us away. Right? So, what if you drop the idea of how things should be and there’s just how things are. So here we are, and you know we’ve got cars going by outside, and we could have motor bikes too, just to make a little juicier, or police sirens or what have you. And that’s just stuff that’s happening in the environment. Now, have you ever gone on a walk on a fall day when the wind has been up and there’s blowing leaves all around? Do you find that the leaves distract you from walking?

Student: No.

Ken: Why is that?

Student: Because they’re natural, a part of the path, I guess.

Ken: Yeah. And you just walk and the leaves blow around. So we can practice meditation the same way. Now, we’re very used to walking, but if you ever watched a very small child, when the leaves start blowing around,

Student: They try to chase everything.

Ken: Yeah. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? They’re chasing and they get all confused and, you know, leaves are going around all over the place and they don’t know what to do, but being the sober serious adults that we are, we just walk and the leaves blow around.

Behind this, there’s the whole idea of why are we meditating? Why do you want to practice meditation? Yeah. I’m talking to you. Nobody else here will have the same reason as you do. So this is your time.

Student: To try to find some quiet and non-attachment.

Ken: Some quiet and non-attachment. So, the way I’m understanding that is you meditate so that you aren’t being pulled all over the place by everything you experience. Isn’t this really like that little child?

I remember when I first came to this area, back in the mid-eighties, I was invited down to work for a group in Orange County. And so there we were, about eight or ten people, and they wanted to talk about meditation and they practiced meditation in an apartment, and the door would be closed, make sure the sliding door is closed, so there was absolutely no noise whatsoever. It’s like trying to calm the wind down, so the leaves don’t blow. Well, what was great is that they had one of these old telephone answering machines so when went on you heard all of these gears and cogs, you know, this is way before digital or anything like that, just grinding away. But, I’ve always thought it’s great to meditate on a street corner, because that’s life! And the problem here comes if we try to control things and make them a certain way, rather than, “Okay, here is everything and I’m just going to be here.” And I’m going to quietly rest in my experience of breathing. And it doesn’t matter whether there’s cars going by on the street outside. It doesn’t matter whether there are planes going by overhead. And it doesn’t matter whether there’s some tune running in my head, which is just ordinarily driving me nuts. That tune can run in my head and that’s fine, I’m just going to continue to rest in my breath. And every now and then, I’m going to trip just like the little kid and I’ll end up in the tune. But sometimes—as was saying at the beginning of this—there’s that moment of recognition, and then I just come back and I continue to rest in my breath, but I don’t try to get rid of the tune. You follow? And maybe there’s an itch in my leg. Okay, so that’s there and I get really obsessed with it. Does this happen to anybody else? Then I keep coming back to the breath, and sometimes really difficult feelings may come up and it’s really difficult to stay with them, but here’s where meditation is a bit like doing exercise, you know, you build up strength, you can’t do it all perfectly. Thats why we call it practice because the nice thing about practice is you get to fail at it over and over again and it doesn’t matter. It’s not like our life depends on it.

There’s a thing in an old Tibetan text that says, “Meditate as if someone were holding a sword at your neck.” I don’t find this is a good way to meditate at all. And I remember one of my teachers who is just a wonderful Tibetan lama who knew everything under the sun. Whenever you asked him a question, you got a two hour answer. And one day, he was talking to us about meditation, he said, “Here’s how I was trained. We’d come into the main temple hall and we would sit down.” These were all monks, basically in their teenage years. “And then a string was strung and we were all positioned so our nose just touched the string. And every time the string moved, we were all beaten.” And then he leaned forward and he said, “This is not how you learn to meditate. This is how you learn to sit still.” And then he went on and said to us very much what I’m saying to you. You have this experience, rest in the experience. And yes, there’s going to be all kinds of things, but they’re only a problem if you regard them as a problem. If they’re just stuff, like the leaves blowing in the wind or whatever, then it’s just leaves blowing in the wind and you do what you’re there to do, which is to rest in the breath. And yes, you fall down and then you pick yourself up and do that. And that’s the learning and the building the muscles and so forth. Does this make sense to you?

Student: Yes, stuff to think about. Thank you.

The primary practice

Linda: Linda, Tybee Island, Georgia. I’m working with the primary practice off the cushion. I can do simple tasks for minutes at a time, but this doesn’t work with reading. Sometimes all sensory information moves to the background as I engage with the reading. Other times, I’ll suddenly effortlessly drop into an opening with ideas or issues in clear focus. Other sensations are in the background, but they’re dim, almost transparent. Again, I’m losing clarity and detail. Is this a capacity problem, or am I going about it wrong?

Ken: The primary practice you refer to is a way of progressively opening towards experience. It begins with opening to the sensory sensations, that is sight and sound and touch and even taste and smell, and then opening to the internal material; thoughts, emotions, values, beliefs, and so forth. And then, opening our heart to that whole field of experience, and then opening to the experience of awareness itself. This is something that, as you noted here, one practices on and off the cushion, it’s a way of experiencing our lives completely and transforming the experience of whatever arises into attention. So it’s a very effective practice and it sounds like you’ve made some good progress here.

I would say the difficulty here is primarily about capacity. To be able to maintain the primary practice while reading is no trivial task, and the fact that you’re able to do it at all, indicates that you’ve been doing some very good work here. So I don’t have the sense from what you said to me that you’re doing anything wrong. I think it is more a case of just continuing practice. Not trying too hard, just making a consistent effort. As you say, sometimes all the sensory information moves to the background as you engage with the reading. Well, yes that happens. And when you notice that happens, then you can open and include the sensory information again. And so it’s something that you work at patiently and consistently, rather than trying to make it to be a certain way. You notice when your quality of attention goes dull, then you re-energize and regenerate the clarity.

I would caution you about trying to hold onto states of attention. I’ve generally found that holding on almost always results in some form of depression, rather when the quality of attention dissipates or disintegrates, then start again and build it up through progressive opening rather than trying to hold onto something that is already past.

Include more and more as you rest with the breath

Janneke: Janneke, in California. You say that we should experience what arises when we practice. When we are doing basic breath meditation, and something arises—something like a disturbing emotion, or even overwhelming dullness—how do we work with that in conjunction with experiencing the breath? At what point, if any, do we step into the emotion, etc., and abandon the breath? And at what point do we return to the breath?

Ken: When we first start practicing resting attention on the breath, most of us find that our attention keeps falling off the breath, and we get caught up in emotion or thinking or whatever, just as you described. But as the quality of our attention develops, we then find it possible to rest with the breath, and we are aware of thoughts coming and going on their own. And as our attention continues to develop, we become capable of resting with the breath and experiencing emotions coming and going on their own. So, rather than move from the breath to the emotion, I think the better way is as we rest in the breath, we’re able to include more and more of our experience. So if we first begin with the breath and then we can include the bodily sensations, and then we maybe include thoughts when they do come, and emotions when they do come, and we don’t try to block or control any of this. We just continue to rest with the breath, but we’re open to experiencing what arises.

Now, many people think that as soon as something arises, they get lost in the experience and that’s right, they get lost in the experience, they get lost in the thinking and that’s not meditation. One’s lost all attention at that point and one is caught up. So I don’t mean when I say rest in the breath and experience what arises, I don’t mean that you just forget the breath at some point. You actually continue to be aware of the breath and aware of the body breathing, and you experience everything else all at the same time. Ajahn Chah, who’s a very great Theravadan teacher of the last century, once summarized his approach to practice very simply said, “Put a chair in the center of the room, sit in the chair and see who comes to visit.” So that’s what I suggest.