In the Buddhist tradition, a sutra refers to the meeting of the teacher’s mind and the student’s mind.

February 13, 2011

Resting in the experience of breathing

Ken: As many of you know, what I’d like to do in these sessions is take your questions because then I know that I’m saying something that’s possibly relevant to at least one person. Do you need a chair?

Student: I’m just waiting till my leg wakes up. Okay.

Ken: Before we started meditation, there was this one question about different meditation techniques and I offered a kind of three-line instruction which will probably serve you well … it’s 80 to 90 percent of what you need to know about meditation. So I’m going to repeat those three lines and then give a little bit of commentary on them. And then I’d like to take your questions.

Rest in the experience of breathing.
Rest in the experience of attention.
Rest in the experience of knowing or awareness, whichever you prefer to use.

Now a couple of things here. First. It’s not about observing. It’s not about watching. You don’t watch the breath. You don’t observe the breath. You rest in the experience of breathing. When you rest in the experience of breathing, necessarily you have to relate to the body. Why? Because guess what’s doing the breathing? It’s your body. When we talk about body in a Buddhist context, it is usually far more than most people think it is. Body or form in the context of Buddhism, means everything we experience in or through our senses. Everything we experience through our senses. Now, if we start there, then it’s kind of overwhelming and confusing. So we start with resting in the experience of breathing. And you start noticing little things about the body. You know, the cool sensation at the back of your throat when you breathe in, which is oddly absent when you breathe out. Why? Because the air is warmer. You may notice that the breath is greater volume in one nostril than the other, particularly if you have a cold.

In the Theravadan tradition, attention is brought to a very slight sensation on the upper lip and is used. That’s used as a way of developing attention and then is used to move through the whole body. There’s the movement of the diaphragm, which is an innovation in the Theravadan tradition that took place in the late 19th, 20th Century. Before then it wasn’t diaphragm breathing, it was just ordinary breathing. But it was, I think, Munindra who moved the attention to the diaphragm for certain reasons. When you are breathing you notice that the chest expands, the stomach expands, and with that there’s a little bit of motion in the back. It straightens up when you breathe in, bends forward when you breathe out. And with that there’s a little bit of motion in the chin. And as you rest more and more deeply in the experience of breathing, you become more and more aware of all of the different body sensations that are associated with breathing. But you also become aware of other sensory experiences, all the sensations of touch, the experience of clothes touching the body, the weight on your cushion or seat, the sound of the traffic. Whether you’re meditating with your eyes open or closed. Different visual phenomena. In other words, you begin to rest in your total sensory experience. All of that is included in “rest in the experience of breathing.”

Opening to the whole field of experience

Ken: Many people have the idea that when they rest in the experience of breathing, they should shut everything else out and there should be only the breath. They should concentrate. This is a form of meditation, but I have found consistently that in the circumstances in which we practice—in which we live very full and very active lives— trying to shut things out, focus down etc., is for many people, or results for many people in a form of suppression and strain and tension in their practice. I found it much, much more fruitful for people to rest and open to their experience.

There’s a wonderful poem from the Chinese tradition, which I unfortunately have not memorized, but it’s to the effect that: “I sat in the mountains. Until there were only the mountains.” Now, this doesn’t mean that he or she focused on the mountains till that was all they were experiencing. It’s actually the total opposite. This person sat until their mind became so still, there was nothing else. There was no sense of self. There was nothing that separated them from their experience of mountains. That’s what it means to say “There were only the mountains.” There was no “me” or “I” there anymore. I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself there, so let me come back. So as you rest in your experience of breathing. At first you get distracted by everything. Anybody have that problem besides me? Okay. You know, you get an itch, you want to scratch it. You think of somebody you met the other day in the conversation and now you’re having dinner with them.

Resting in attention

Ken: You know, you rewatch a movie, all kinds of things happen. But I’m sure many of you have experienced this after a while, and it may be after a couple of centuries of meditation practice, you find there’s a kind of shift and something intangible but solid is there in your practice. Does anybody know what I’m talking about here? It’s like suddenly you’re just there and it feels very solid, but there’s nothing that is solid, if you know what I mean. So it’s a settled feeling, okay. And it’s a very definite sensation. It’s something you experience. Okay. That is the beginning of attention. And now the practice changes a little bit. Rather than rest just in the experience of breathing or all of your sensory experience, you start to rest in the experience of attention.

Well if you thought you were distracted before, now you get thoughts and emotions, all kinds of things, flying all over the place because your level of attention is higher if you wish, and so it brings you in touch with a whole bunch of other experiences which either overwhelmed you or you didn’t notice before. And so this brings about a very, very different relationship with ourselves. In the beginning we feel so justified in all of our feelings and emotions. But as we continue to practice and continue to rest in attention, we begin to see that all of these emotions and thoughts, they just come and go and there’s no pattern to them. There’s no rhyme or reason.

We can construct wonderful theories using Freud or Erik Erikson or any number of psychological theories. You know Jung, lots of people love those theories, but they’re just stuff, and it’s the stuff of life. And so much of it, we think and we pick pieces and think this is really important. But then at another phase of our life or maybe two seconds later, this is really important and it just goes on and on and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. It’s just stuff. This is very disturbing. Then we start resting in that. And there we are in that experience of attention as all the stuff is going on, and it has nothing to do with anything. You know, we think of something that happened to us the other day. We got so upset about it. We go on thinking, our heart’s pounding and we’re sweating, our skin is tingling. We keep just resting in the experience and then it just suddenly goes. And we can’t even bring back the emotional charge. “What was all that about?” And yet, if the other person had been here, we would have said something. We would have seduced them or yelled at them or done something. But having sat in it, it’s just stuff that comes and goes.

The end of struggling with experience

Ken: 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. But it’s not a space you can point to. You can’t say where it is. You know, here we can point sort of to the space in the room, but this space, there’s nowhere to point to. And if you’re asked, “Well, is it space, like there’s nothing there at all?”

You go, “no, that’s not quite it because here’s this knowing quality, it’s not just like nothing.” And you can’t differentiate that knowing in the space in any way.

Now I have to tell a story, which I think I’ve probably told a few times here. It’s one of my favorite stories. There are two young boys. They’re playing together and one said the other, “Here we are, we’re playing on the ground but have you ever wondered what supports the ground?” And the other young boy looks at the first and says, “You know, I have and I asked my dad about that the other day. He said that the ground is supported by four giant elephants.” And the first boy went, “Oh!” and they went on playing. And a few minutes later he said, “If the ground is supported by four giant elephants, what are the four giant elephants supported by?” And the second boy said, “Yeah, I agree, I asked my dad about that too. He said, ‘They’re supported by this giant turtle. They stand on the shell of this giant turtle.'” And they went back to playing. And then a few minutes later, the first boy said, “What supports the giant turtle?” And the second boy sat and thought for a long time. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s turtles all the way down.” [Laughter]

Well, that’s what this sense of space is like. It’s turtles all the way down. And the strange thing is that it’s in your body, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Another strange thing is that when you actually rest in that knowing there’s no struggle. There’s no struggling with experience. Experience just arises and comes and goes. In Buddhism, we talk about the end of suffering. That is the end of suffering. You no longer struggle with what arises in your experience. Now this is quite accessible to all of us. It takes a bit of effort. When I say accessible, it’s possible to experience things this way. To experience things this way all the time, that’s much more difficult. That’s a life’s work. And some people have devoted their lives to just that. And those that come to something along those lines, they become the great teachers of each generation. But the possibility of knowing that in your own experience, this is very accessible and it changes your life. It’s no longer the same. Not everybody wants that. Okay.

Now it’s your turn. We have a microphone here. We record these things. They’re put up on the internet so that people can hear. I want to remind you that when you ask questions—what are we, about 40 people here today—I guarantee that if you ask any question, there are probably at least four other people in the room with the same question who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to ask it. So you’re actually exercising generosity by asking a question. And I know from the emails that I get that when people listen to these, the actual interactions and say, “oh, that person asked a question that I’ve been struggling with and it was so helpful to hear your answer and the interaction.” You know, there’s probably 100 or 1000 people who will also benefit from what you offer here today. So that’s just to make you feel no pressure whatsoever.

Experiencing emotion without analyzing it

Student: You know, I hear a lot about the idea of moving toward an emotion. And I understand that in the sense of not trying to escape it or change it or analyze it. I get that part. But the part that is really hard for me is when you’re sitting and you have an emotion, or maybe you’re sort of searching for what exactly is going on, in the body or, you know, in the breath. My question is, when you move towards the emotion, how do you do that without analyzing the emotion?

Ken: This is a good question. Thank you. It’s an important one. Do you have a favorite emotion? By a favorite emotion, I mean …

Student: Anger. [Laughter]

Ken: Okay.

Student: It oscillates between anger and fear, usually at the same time with occasional joy.

Ken: Well, let’s start with joy. Is that okay? Can you bring joy to mind right now?

Student: Absolutely.

Ken: Okay, take the mic. Keep the mic. Okay. So. Perhaps you can tell me what you understand by move toward. Because you use that phrase and I haven’t heard it before, so I’m interested what you understand by that.

Student: I guess I think of it in terms of aversion, I think of it as … rather than moving away from it. So I don’t necessarily know what not to do versus what to do. So I think of it as sort of my practice, in aversion, you know, in looking at aversion.

Opening to joy

Ken: Thank you. So let’s take joy, and everybody can do this. We can all do this together. Bring something that elicits joy to mind and then open to the experience of joy and first open to the physical experience of joy. That is, how does joy manifest in your body? Just sit with that for a few moments. [Pause] Okay, that’s probably enough. How does joy manifest in your body?

Student: I feel sort of a lightness in my head.

Ken: Anywhere else?

Student: A little bit of relaxing in my chest and heart.

Ken: Let’s try it again. I felt light in my whole body. What about you?

Student: Well, I don’t think I felt light in my whole body because I wasn’t able to isolate only that one emotion.

Ken: Oh don’t isolate. Just experience everything else. Don’t try and concentrate on it. You know, concentration is what we do to oranges.

Student: Wait. We do it to what?

Ken: Oranges.

Student: Oh, I get it. Don’t concentrate.

Ken: Don’t concentrate on this. Just open to the experience of joy. And just how does that manifest in your body? So we’ll do this again, okay? [Pause] And just to give you a little juice, you just won the lottery and your partner proposed to you. Okay. How do you experience that in your body?

Student: Well, that was interesting because you said that and I thought, well, those things go away. So I’m not going to focus on those. [Laughter]

Ken: So we have a little trouble with joy do we?

Student: So then instead I said, and then all of a sudden I had this image of my liver smiling. It was really weird. It was like all of a sudden it was an organ and the organ was smiling. I’m going too deep here. I’m sorry. I did feel I did feel a little bit of a lightness in my lower body that I didn’t feel the first time.

Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For this once more.

Student: I’ll do it all day long.

Ken: Okay. That’s great, I love that, liver smiling, that’s a lovely image, it’s great. Don’t hold on to the image. Go back to your body. Don’t block the image. We’re not into blocking here. But don’t attach to that even though it’s a lovely image. And just go back to your body. And as you say, you’re beginning to feel a little lighter. So I just want to push a little bit further. Okay. Let’s do it once more. Do I have to stimulate you?

Student: No, no, no.

Ken: Okay. Good. All right. But I wouldn’t know what to stimulate you with this time. So just open to the experience of joy. I’m going to float away here soon. [Pause] Okay, so what do you feel in your legs?

Student: It was sort of like this dancing feeling.

Ken: Okay, what did you feel in your torso?

Student: I didn’t.

Ken:: Okay. What did you feel in your heart? Upper torso.

Student: That felt really good. That just felt open. Good. Open.

Ken: Good, open, come on, say more.

Student: It was like an open sort of expansive light.

Ken: Energized.

Student: No, I felt more energized in my head.

Ken: Okay, well describe that.

Student: That was just more like, inspired, like a greater inspiration. So I was thinking recently about how excitement can be sort of like anxiety. I got this excited feeling I’m doing too much studying here. You know, the brain needs to take a rest.

Ken: But the brain doesn’t help here.

Student: I know the brain doesn’t help but I got this sense of excitement. And then there was a quick judgment of “don’t get excited because you’re attaching and if you get excited, your body is going to feel the same feelings that you get with anxiety, the racing heart, you know.” And so the joy started quickly turning into excitement, which I judged. So I know you’re trying to get me in my body and I’m really trying to go there, but that word is a problem. So it’s hard, you know, you’re on … I’m on the spot a little bit, but I’m open to what you have to say now. [Laughter]

Ken: Are you sure? Okay. Well, it’s a mess, isn’t it? Here we are with joy, and we’re in a total mess.

Student: I guess it comes down to it’s hard to let it in and trust that moment. That joy is right here. And you can have it right now if you feel that, want to feel that.

Ken: So, you know, isn’t this interesting? You have problems feeling positive emotions. And between you and me, you’re not the only one.

Student: This whole thing just gave me anxiety. Like sweating … [Laughter]

Ken: Okay, so when we talk about raising the level of attention, we’re talking about actually experiencing the emotions. And we start off in the body. But as you saw, the body leads. When you start really relating to the body, then you start actually experiencing the emotion. And then some old mechanisms begin operating and no excitement, bad, click, shut down. And this is what happens, it’s really difficult to fall in love with this kind of stuff operating.

What shuts experience down

Student: You know it feels like control, like an inability to totally let go and you’re controlling your experience.

Ken: So now we go to the next step. Are you up for this? Okay. You’re not going to like this one. Probably. Okay. But this is what it means. And this is the difference between analysis and being in the experience. You experienced something in you beginning to operate which shut down the experience of joy. Okay. So what I want you to do this time, we’re going to go back to the experience of joy. You open to the experience of joy until something starts to shut it down. And then I want you to be in the experience of what shuts it down. Don’t analyze it.

Student: That’s the part I don’t get. Just be in the experience, don’t analyze it. That’s my question.

Ken: But you didn’t ask that about joy at all. You just did it, right?

Student: Yeah.

Believe the bird

Ken: Okay, so just do it. I mean, there’s a wonderful quotation from John Audubon of bird fame. “When the book and the bird disagree, believe the bird.” This is great: “When the book and the bird disagree, believe the bird.” Okay. Translation. When your experience and analysis disagree, believe your experience. You got it. Are you up for this? All right, let’s do it. So, does anybody else have any similar mechanism going on where …? you do. Okay. So you do the same thing here when you open to this experience and something … oh great, you’re just cringing now. All right. That’s about par for the course. When something starts to operate to undermine, distract, deflect, shut down whatever—because it’s different for all of us—just open to the experience of that. Don’t judge it. Don’t analyze it. Don’t try to figure out what it is or why it’s doing it. All of that intellectual stuff doesn’t help. Just okay, something’s shutting down. How do I experience that in my body? That’s not analysis, you see. And it’s like, oh, the jaws of death have just grabbed my heart. There’s a little different image from liver smiling, hey, somebody’s boring a hole into my stomach. That’s a very physical thing, I don’t know. It’s different for different people. Okay, so that’s what we’re going to do. Open to the experience of joy; if something else starts to operate, open to the experience of that. [Pause] Okay. What happens here? She’s lost in her trance.

Student: What’s the question?

Ken: She was lost in her trance. Yes. What happens?

Student: I … like what happened for me?

Ken: Yes.

More than one feeling at a time

Student: I went, I went … I had a feeling of guilt.

Ken: And how do you experience guilt in your body?

Student: Well, it was like a version, like I felt …

Ken: But how do you experience in your body?

Student: In my body? Just like a tight, tight, tight feeling in my chest. I sat with the guilt and the …

Ken: Temperature?

Student: Didn’t look at that. Okay?

Ken: Okay, how widespread is it, a pinpoint or …

Student: No, it was vast, like a vast sort of guilt, it was like a …

Ken: A vast guilt centered in your chest. This is fine.

Student: Big chest. Yeah, I guess I felt a guilt sense sort of feeling. And I guess I didn’t really go into my body very much, to be honest. I stayed in my head a little too much with it.

Ken: And this is what happens. This stuff starts coming up and we go into our head. Do you know why we go into our head?

Student: Habit?

Ken: Well, yes, habit but I’m looking for a little stronger …

Student: To try to analyze it?

Ken: Well, that’s what we’re doing.

Student: To avoid it.

Ken: Yes. Gold star.

Student: To avoid it. Yeah, yeah.

Ken: And is it effective?

Student: Not really.

Ken: No, It’s very effective at avoiding it.

Student: Yeah.I had this experience when my dad died of cancer, when he was really ill, he said something to me like, a couple hours before he died, and he said, I just had this realization that I can feel two really juxtaposing emotions at the same time because I feel so joyful that you’re here right now with me because we had a hard time together in our lives. And he goes, it’s like I waited my whole adult life for this. Here you are and at the same time, I’m dying and it’s going to end. And I thought, wow, I can feel the joy and the guilt. And so the chest was tightening, but the body down here was a little lighter.

Ken: So this is wonderful because like your father—and that was a wonderful thing to hear from your father—we can experience many things at the same time and we don’t usually allow ourselves to. The way we do this is to keep coming back into the body and just experience what’s there. And we find that there’s this very, very rich world. Okay. Are you up for one more thing?

Student: Okay, so with the guilt, for example, are you suggesting that … so the guilt came in and then you’re sort of saying to look in the body and see where …

Ken: Just experience what’s going on in your body. And as you say, you felt the guilt up here and the joy down here and you know, and just experience that. Don’t try to make it one way or another.

Student: Mm-hmm.

Ken: And Thich Nhat Hanh is quite a wonderful teacher. It’s one of my favorite quotations. “The practice of meditation is the study of what is going on. What is going on is very important.” We’re usually not aware of what’s going on. It’s not to understand it. It’s not to analyze it. And along the same lines, I can’t remember who, it may have been Mother Teresa. But I think it was another Christian mystic. But she was asked, “What do you do when you pray?”

“I listen,” she says.

“Who do you listen to?”

“I listen to God.”

“What does God say?”

“God doesn’t say anything.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s listening too.” [Laughter]

That’s wonderful. So what I want you to do now, I want you to do exactly the same thing that we’ve been doing with aversion or anger. Okay. So anybody else have any anger issues here? Okay. So you’re invited along for the trip to. Exactly the same thing. Bring up something which elicits anger. How do you experience anger in the body? What arises in connection with the anger? And how do you experience that in the body? No analysis, no reasoning. No trying to figure it out. Just being in the experience of what arises. [Pause] Okay. What was that like for you?

Student: Well, it quickly changed to, being disappointed and hurt.

Ken: How do you experience disappointment and hurt in your body?

Student: I couldn’t find it.

Ken: How did you … Okay, then I have to ask you this question. How did you know you were experiencing disappointment and hurt?

Student: I just felt it.

Ken: How did you feel it in the body?

Student: I don’t know.

Ken: Okay, well, there’s your practice right there.

Student: There was sort of this moment of … I could cry, just a feeling of like … but it’s all in the head.

Ken: Well, there’s more to you than your head you know. Okay. And that’s the practice. Exactly.

Student: Thanks so much.

Ken: You’re very welcome. Thank you. I hope other people got a little bit out of it, but I kind of think they did. Okay. Oh, dear. Well, we probably have time for just one more. Okay, fire away. Sorry.

Student: Where are we going?

Ken: I don’t know, over there first and then over there. Maybe you can squeeze in as well, I don’t know, we’ll see.

What analysis can and cannot do

Student: I’ll try and be quick. I have experienced when I have got a little bit of a glimpse of resting in attention that some early memories have emerged. I guess the question is, is that just more stuff or how much analysis does that information warrant?

Ken: It warrants none. It needs none. As your level of attention increases those beginning memories—what they represent will come into your experience. For that to come about, you don’t need to analyze it. Now, what I’ve just said is how it works but for many people, it’s how it works in theory. And as Yogi Berra said, “In theory, practice and theory are the same, in practice they’re not.” It may very well be, I don’t know, that some of those early memories are quite overwhelming at this point. And we think that understanding them is going to help. Well maybe it helps us to be with the experience more, it’s possible. But primarily it’s a question of capacity. Do you have a sufficient capacity in attention to be able to experience what’s there and not be overwhelmed or get lost in it? Because getting lost in that stuff is not particularly helpful. There are for some people quite deep issues which formed from relationships early in their lives. My experience has been that while in theory you should be able to release everything in meditation, I’m not sure I buy that completely. In practice it can be extremely helpful, if not actually necessary to be in some kind of relationship, so there’s a contrasting experience of relationship to what the early memories are about. And without the support of some kind of relationship—it can be a therapeutic relationship, or it can be a relationship with someone who’s close, a close friend or partner—then it can be very difficult for that stuff to let go. From my perspective, the function of analyzing here, is that for some people, when they understand where the experience comes from, the dynamics, then they may be more comfortable to actually open to the experience. And so it serves as that purpose, but it doesn’t actually perform anything. It’s a step to being able to experience what’s there. Probably a lot of people disagree with me, but this is just what I’ve come to. Okay.

Practice in everyday life

Student: Hi. I think it’s almost a little bit between the questions that I already heard. So I’m kind of wondering how to take what I do in my practice into my actual real life. To maybe give a case in point. I had some stuff from childhood that I’ve worked through largely with meditation and therapy. I think how it manifests itself in my life today is rage. So when I’m sitting and I’m in a safe place, and I’ve worked a lot with it in my meditation, and I’ve gotten a lot of healing around it. Unless I’m in a situation where I feel like I’m backed up against a wall and then rage can come up, and it’s not external, it’s not externally directed but I can feel it in my body. It can be very compelling and kind of seductive, kind of sultry and enticing to me. And I can kind of stay in that place for a really long time. And unless I have a few minutes to sit in my office and just kind of process that there’s really nothing that I can do with it. I just have to kind of be in it, and it’s really uncomfortable. And I thought that my practice would help me with that in my actual life. But I’ve been practicing for like seven or eight years and it hasn’t helped me. So I’m wondering, how can I take …

Ken: I beg to differ.

Student: Really?

Ken: Yeah. I mean, just listen to what you said.

Student: What did I say?

Ken: You said when this rage comes up, you sit for a few minutes in your office and just let it process or, work its way through, and then you’re okay. That’s amazing.

Student: Oh, man. So there’s no, you know …

Ken: Just a second. Here you are feeling this rage which goes back to these early experiences. You’re not acting them out. You’re not killing anybody. Okay? It doesn’t sound like you’re beating yourself up. No, but they’re there.You have sufficient awareness that when they’re there, you’re saying, “Okay, you’re back. You’re back again. Okay, fine.” And you breathe and you just open to it and don’t try and analyze it. You don’t try to figure it out. You don’t try to excuse it. You don’t do any of that stuff.

Ending the struggle, not the experience

Student: I guess it’s the Westerner in me because what I’m looking for is an end result.

Ken: You’re looking for perfection.

Student: If I do X, Y, and Z, then when I’m feeling that in my body, you know, I will feel anxiety, I will feel this. And I keep thinking, if I sit long enough, if I practice long enough, when that anger arises, I won’t have that internal experience, which is what I’m looking to let go of. I’m wanting that little shiny carrot, the little “I’m not going to feel that anymore if I keep …”

Ken: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” Browning. I understand …

Student: Okay.

Ken: That’d be really nice, wouldn’t it? Just never to be bothered by this stuff ever again, you know? But let’s go a little more deeply into that. What would life be like if nothing ever bothered you?

Student: Well, yeah, there would be … it would be pretty boring, I’m sure. Yeah.

Ken: Be careful what you wish for. In all fairness, from what you describe, your practice has been extremely effective. And all power to you. We tend to be extremely idealistic in the West and somewhat naively idealistic. We come from a heritage where there is a heaven, and we think I can attain this and everything will be perfect. We forget that little bit about perfection being rather boring.

You probably don’t remember a show called The Twilight Zone. Well, there is this wonderful episode when this low-life crook is shot on the street. And then he rises up or somebody comes along. This big man in a white suit comes along, taps him, and he rises up and he said, “I’m not dead.” He said, “Come with me.” So he goes with this man in the white suit and he’s taken to a club and there’s pool tables and there’s beautiful women, and there’s fantastic food and great liquor and the man says, here’s my card. anything you want, just call. You go to this phone here, and he points to a phone and dial this number. There’s only one number on the phone, it’s the old dial phone, and I’ll come and take care of it. So he calls for this, and he calls for that. And, of course, you know, after a while, all of the women are just adoring him, he gets so tired that every time he takes a shot on the pool table, all the balls go down. You know, everything he does, it’s absolutely perfect. And he calls the number and says, I’m in the wrong place. I shouldn’t be in heaven. And the man in the white suit said, “Oh no, you’re not in heaven.”

So you forget this. To end suffering doesn’t mean that life is perfect. It means that we no longer struggle with what arises. You know exactly what to do when this rage arises. The way you describe it, you aren’t even struggling with it. You know what to do. It’s like an old wound. You don’t struggle with it. You take the appropriate steps and that’s it. That’s quite remarkable, it really is. I imagine there are few people who are saying, “I want that.” And when you no longer struggle with experience, then you’re free to experience everything. There is no enemy. There’s nothing you have to push away. And just to end on this note. A Zen teacher was once asked, “What have you got out of all of your years of Zen practice?” He said, “I used to be a tiger, but now I’m a kitten.” [Laughter] Does this help?

Student: Yeah. I’m surprised. Yeah. It did.

Ken: What’s happening for you?

Student: Disappointment. [Laughter] Yeah. I was hoping that you would say, you know, you’d give me some magic formula. An equation. You said I don’t beat myself up, I think I do beat myself up when I get attached. I get attached, I feel attached to anger when it arises. I do attend to it. But that attachment is still there. I think on some level I am beating myself up for that attachment. I feel like I should be again, in my mind, there’s this scale and I’m not … there’s a bar and I’m not meeting the bar.

As long as you want it to change

Ken: There’s an external, a kind of externalized judgment there. Let me give you … just to share something very briefly from my own experience. I mean, I can really relate to anger, but there is a point in my life…. and when I say a point, a point is the wrong time. There’s a period in my life. And when I say a period, I mean a period of years, if not decades. So it’s not a trivial thing. I experienced extraordinary bitterness, I mean really, really deep. So deep I never, ever thought it would subside. I thought I was going to have to live with it. And there’s a poem by Stephen Crane that I came across in that period. It’s very short.

“In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial.

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands.

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered.

But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart.”

Ken: It spoke to me very powerfully. Because it told me, okay, this is your experience. And when I stopped trying to avoid the experience. That’s when things began to change. But there is a real catch-22 here. As long as you want them to change, they never will. Because you’re holding out.

Student: Thank you very much.

Ken: You’re welcome. I’m sorry you’ve wasted the perfectly good 90 minutes. Let’s just sit for a few moments and I’ll say some verses.

Goodness comes from this work we have done.
Let me not hold it just in me.
Let it spread to all that is known,
And awaken good throughout the world.