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

October 6, 2010

Cultivating attention

Ken: So, meditation. One way to think about meditation—and given what most of you have said, I think this is a good way for you to think about meditation—is that it’s about the cultivation of attention. And several of you have already talked a bit about that in your comments. Now, I choose the word cultivation as opposed to manufacturing. It’s not something we make. We create the conditions in us so that attention can grow. And attention will grow at its own rate. How many of you do any kind of gardening? Okay, so you put a seed in the ground and you can’t make that seed grow faster. I mean, you can do little dances around, and prayers, and things like that, but it doesn’t make any difference. You just have to provide it with the right conditions and the seed grows.

Meditation is very like that. We all have the seed of attention in us. We all have that potential. And when we create the conditions, then that seed grows. And as we get better at creating the conditions, then it grows stronger at its own rate. So the first thing we’re going to do is talk about the conditions. Now, physically, it’s very simple. If I say to you, sit in attention, what happens to your body? Anybody.

Student: Rigidity? In attention?

Ken: Oh, okay, so it’s like the army. I didn’t mean it quite like that. How do I get out of that one? Well, nobody boxed me into that one before. [Laughter] That’s cool. I don’t want to use pay attention.

Student: Attentively?

Ken: Oh, thank you. That’s great. Okay.

Sitting with attention in the body

Ken: So if I say sit—I’ll do it slightly differently—sit with a sense of attention in your body. What happens? Well, do you go like this? No. Something in your body just wants to straighten up. So the first step is just to allow that straightness to manifest. Now, in many traditions of Buddhism you’re told to sit straight. And in the Zen tradition particularly, very, very rigorous about the posture. But the idea is that, one of the conditions for attention to grow in our system is that the body is straight. What does that mean? It means that we support the body from here. We’re not holding up our body from the shoulders. So, you need to have a firm basis on a cushion, on a chair, whatever. And the spine is straight. The shoulders hang, just sit on the spine. The head sits on the top of the spine. To do that, it helps to draw the chin in slightly. You’ll find it moves the head back so it’s right on top of the spine.

And a couple of things with the arms. There’s two positions of the arms which people find helpful. One is the traditional meditation posture, which is the hands held one in the other. And it doesn’t matter whether the right is on the left or the left is on the right, though you’ll probably get into a lot of debates with people about that. And one of my teachers said, “Some people say the thumbs should be held so that they’re just touching. And other people say that their thumbs should be held so that you can just put a piece of paper in between them.” And he said, “When I heard that, I realized that people would argue about almost anything.” So you hold the hands. If you’re using this position, it’s actually quite important to hold the elbows out like I’m doing here. If you hold the elbows in here, you’ll find that your chest is constricted and it constricts your breathing. So it may feel a little unnatural in the beginning to hold the shoulders out, but it actually allows the breath to flow much more easily.

The other position is to place your hands on your thighs. And you want to position your hands at the appropriate place, so that the elbows are right below the shoulders. So you just find where that is for you. If you have long arms, they’re going to be out here. If you have short arms, they’re going to be back here. And that’s going to vary from person to person. I find that when you meditate with the palms up, it actually has the effect of dissipating energy, and it’s not conducive to the mind resting. Palms down seems to work better. And so you just sit like that.

Now, if you’re sitting on the cushion, try to let your knees come down to the mat as much as possible, because that provides a more stable basis. There’s lots of stretches and things you can do to facilitate that, but not everybody is built for meditating on a cushion. I’m not. I did it for seven years, and I made myself extremely sick. Then I did it for another seven years, made myself even sicker. And then I started meditating in a chair and my meditation actually improved significantly when I finally took that big step. It’s relatively important for the body to be reasonably comfortable when you’re sitting, so you work that out. So that’s the body.

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

Resting in the experience of breathing

Ken: Now comes this little matter of the mind. We cultivate attention. And there’s a very simple principle about cultivating attention. You do something which requires little intellectual effort, but does require a little bit of attention. And you do it again, and again, and again, and again, and again. That’s how you cultivate attention. What we do is we breathe. It doesn’t cost anything. It’s a free app. And what we do is we rest in our experience. And what are we doing in this experience? We’re breathing. So, you can think of meditation as resting in the experience of breathing. So the gong here represents the experience of breathing. The striker represents attention. Place attention in the experience of breathing and rest. That’s all there is to it. There is one small problem. That’s the problem. Our attention falls off, it happens, it happens to everybody. How many has it happened to here? Good. We’re on the right track.

Recognize and return

Ken: Now, even though this happens, there’s something else that also happens every time. The attention falls off, some time later, there’s a moment of recognition. There’s always a moment of recognition. It may come a fraction of a second later. It may come ten years later, but it always comes. So, what you do at that moment of recognition is very important. It’s the most important thing. What most people do is they say, “Oh, you stupid idiot, you’ve been wandering again and this is not how you meditate.” That’s what most people do. And that doesn’t help meditation at all. The best thing to do is, “Oh.” That is, you recognize, and you can say to yourself something like “thinking,” or whatever, and then you just return to the experience of breathing. And you rest there, and it happens again. Recognize, return, recognize, return. So meditation looks like this. And people say, “When is it going to rest there?”

I say, “Well, after you’ve done this a million times, we’ll talk about it.” Because it doesn’t matter until then. And many of you have already found that just doing this actually changes things, and it does. So don’t be worried about it falling off all the time. We’re going to meditate, we’re just going to do some short meditations this evening, just a lot of short ones. And you may find it falls off five or six times during the short meditation. That’s not a problem at all. Maybe it falls off 10, 20 times. So what? If it fell off 10 or 20 times, it means you recognize the falling off 10 or 20 times. And if you’re recognizing it that quickly, that’s great. That’s how you cultivate attention.

If it falls off once, you don’t recognize it, and you sit there for the rest of the meditation period in the story. Ah, that’s not so great. So don’t worry about the number of times you fall off the meditation. How often do you recognize it? How quickly do you recognize it? Unfortunate little thing, we have no control over how quickly we recognize it. We can just create the conditions for it to happen. We can’t control that. That’s the bad news. But it always happens. That’s the good news. Okay. Any questions up to this point? Is this clear to you? Okay. So I just want us to try this. Just resting in the experience of breathing. We’ll do that for a few minutes and then I’m going to talk a bit more about what it really means to rest in the experience of breathing and how to do that. So let’s just do this for a few minutes, and you can put this on pause after the gong.

[Gong] [Pause]

Any questions? Have I terrified you about asking questions?

Student: I was just wondering what you’re supposed to do with your feet. Because I’m really small, so I can’t have both my back against the back of the chair—

Ken: Put a cushion under your feet. It’s a very good point. That may be too thick. And thank you for raising that. Part of the reason we sit on cushions is that when you sit on a cushion, the knees are below the hips. And when you’re on a chair, it’s actually important for the knees to be below the hips. So when I sit on a chair, what I do is I stick a towel under the back legs so it just raises it up, tips the chair forward very slightly. So, the knees are below the hips. That means that blood doesn’t collect here, and it makes a very big difference to the back. So you don’t want such a thick cushion that your knees are up here. That’s not going to be so helpful.

Generally speaking, when we’re sitting in a chair, it’s best to have everything at right angles like that. But this chair is a little too low for me, so what I’m doing this evening is letting my legs cross, which brings my knees down. You see? If I put it up here, they’re just that little bit higher. So I’m meditating like this, this evening, because the chair is a little bit too low. But, I have a higher chair at home and I tip it slightly. That’s a really good question. Thank you. Does that help? Yeah. And use a phone book if you’re at home, or something like that. I mean they still have phone books. I know we don’t use them anymore, but we still have them. Any other questions? You can’t have your feet hanging in mid-air. That just doesn’t work.

Grounding in the physical experience of breathing

So what I want to do now is, we’re going to do another short meditation. But I really want to focus on resting in the experience of breathing, and we’re going to do this in three steps. So the first one is, guess what? The body breathes, right? So, the next few minutes, what I want you to do is to rest in your experience of the body. Now notice, I’m just going to point a few things out, but I really want you to do this as an exploration on your own.

So we’re sitting like this and we’re breathing. When we’re breathing the body is not static. It’s moving because the breath is going in and out. And for the breath to go in and out, a lot of stuff has to happen. My chest is going in and out, my stomach is going in and out, my diaphragm is going up and down. You might think that’s all that’s happening, but that’s not all that’s happening. As I sit here and breathe, as I breathe in, my chest goes out. Not only does my chest go out, it lifts a little bit. As it lifts a little bit, my back actually straightens a little bit. As it straightens, my chin goes down a little bit because my head is sitting on the spine. So these are very small movements, but that’s all part of the experience of breathing.

Similar things are happening with the stomach. And those little subtle movements in the torso translates into maybe some sensations in the arms and legs. So what I want you to do for the next few minutes as we sit is, don’t exaggerate these movements, you don’t need to. But just really feel everything that’s going on in your body as you breathe. And you can offer your observations at the end of it. There aren’t any tests on this. Any questions about that?

So we’re just going to do the same thing, resting in the experience of breathing. But I want you to put a little emphasis, okay, resting in the physical experience of breathing and notice all the things that are going on in the body. Another few things, just to give you some ideas. What happens in the back of your throat as you breathe? Is the breath through the nostrils the same? Is it the same volume, is it the same temperature? What’s happening with your eyes? Eyes can be open, eyes can be closed. But what’s happening with them? What’s happening with your ears? There are all kinds of possibilities. And rather than hunting around for this, one piece here, a bit there, a bit there, what I’m going to suggest you do is just open to the whole experience and see what’s there. So you’re experiencing everything all at once and just seeing what that’s like. Okay? So let’s do this for a few minutes and you can tell me your experience.

[Gong]

How was that for you? Say more.

Student: I find that the deeper I breathe, the more energy I have as far as meditating, that makes it much easier. As opposed to feeling tired and feeling like you’re going to doze off. I don’t feel that at all.

Ken: What was it like to rest right in your body this way?

Student: It’s comfortable. It’s comfortable. Peaceful.

Ken: Peaceful? Yes. Anybody else? If you don’t volunteer, I’m just going to start handing the mic over. Yes. Back there, please.

Student: As soon as I started breathing, I suddenly had this thought that I had forgotten to make a phone call today. And then I thought, oh shit, I better write that down. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I was afraid to stop thinking about it because I knew if I stopped thinking about it, I wouldn’t remember after we got done and I wouldn’t make the phone call. So it was kind of like this, I need to stop thinking about it so I can meditate, but if I do, I’m not going to make the phone call. What do you do then?

Ken: Well, this is wonderful. You really got caught, didn’t you? That’s a very good example. Thank you. Now, I’m going to put my foot in my mouth here if that’s okay. At least I’m not sure, but I think I’m going to put my foot in my mouth. So, how much do you trust yourself?

Student: Not very much.

Ken: Maybe that’s the problem. What would it be like to have said to yourself, “Oh, I’ll remember.” What would it be like to say that?

Student: I probably will remember, but it will be like, two days from now.

Ken: But you see how it’s related to a matter of trust. So this is how meditation brings these things to the surface. What I suggest you do, do you need a pen? Write it down right now, so you don’t have to worry about it for the rest of the evening. Let’s be practical about it. Thank you. Any other questions? Dilemmas? Yes. Let’s have one up here.

Student: Thank you. When I do the meditation, that’s not just focused on the breath, but on all the sense doors. For me, that’s the most satisfying one, because I get glimpses where my external and my internal really blends.

Ken: Not on the breath, but what did you say?

Student: If I focus on everything, on the entirety of the experience and not just the breath, but when I expand it to vision and sight and sound, all of that, then the me as I know it becomes blended in with what’s on the outside. And it’s more of an intricate fabric, and it’s just glimpses, but those glimpses are very satisfying and peaceful.

Ken: Well, we’re going to work towards that this evening. But I want to do it in these stages. Okay? So just bear with me. We’ll get there, I hope. Hope we don’t run out of time. Was there a comment over here? No. Okay. One more.

Student: I find that my experience is that I have a ton of anxiety when I start to do that. And it kind of links back to what you were saying, which is that I do that exact same thing, but all day long. So no matter where I am, I have to be doing something else or I’ll forget. And the thing that’s so fascinating, that I’m learning is that I won’t forget. I’ll never forget. That’s sort of the problem. And, I’m starting to realize that it’s a bit of a control issue. In that meditation in particular, I found it really unnerving, the lack of control that I had. That the breathing is going to happen, and the fluttering in my eyes is going to happen, and the tingling sensations in my back and my feet are going to happen. And that’s just how it is. So, that was my experience.

Ken: Thank you. Can you live with it?

Student: Yeah, I think so. I’ll be okay.

Ken: I don’t have to prescribe Ativan, or something.

Experience the breath as it is

Ken: Next step, this was the body we just did. Now I want you to rest, in addition to the body, in the actual experience of the breath. Now, as you breathe in, there’s certain sensations, and actual emotions that happen at the beginning of the breath. And then as the breath is coming in, there’s other sensations experienced in the middle of the breath. And as you’re just about reaching the point that you can’t take any more breath in, then it changes again. And then you start to breathe out. And as you start to breathe out, there’s a certain experience there. And as you’re breathing out, there’s a certain experience there. And as you finish breathing out, there’s another experience there.

Now, I don’t want you to think about this a lot. I just want you to breathe. But note all of those places and what’s happening in the experience. And as this woman was saying, just be in the whole experience that’s there. There was another piece I wanted to give you here but I forgot it. Oh, yes, that was it. Ordinarily, we think of the breath as flowing smoothly in and flowing smoothly out, but it doesn’t always flow smoothly. Sometimes there are little catches in it. Sometimes there’s little tensions associated with the breathing in or breathing out. So don’t get judgmental about yourself, it should be this way or it should be that way. In addition to being in the body, the experience of the body as you breathe, now be in the experience of the breath as you breathe. You know, beginning, middle, end, beginning, middle, end. Is it smooth? Are there little ripples, or little catches, or little tensions? Just, what is breathing actually like? So we’re going to do this for a few minutes now.

[Gong] [Pause] [Gong]

A couple of things I’m noticing. Please pay attention to the position of your head. A couple of people I’ve noticed, I’m going to point them out. If your head is down like this, and you have a tendency to have your head down like that, you actually create a pattern of depression. So you want to be straight forward. Okay? Your chin is up. Yours is up a little bit. It does a couple of things. It cuts off circulation to your brain, so the result is you become arrogant and paranoid. [Laughter] Over time, not immediately. So there’s things, you lean this way and have certain problems, you lean this way and have certain problems. So just experiment and play with it. It feels more comfortable, but it’s going to happen. It’s a different view of the world this way. So I just invite you to play with it a little bit.

There are a couple of other people back here that I think your chin is up a little bit, so just pay a little bit of attention to that. One of my students one time used to be the chief surgeon at UCLA. He’d retired when he came to see me. He’d been meditating for about a month. He said, “I’m going to have to interrupt our sessions, Ken. I have to go to Holland and have surgery.”

And I said, “Why?”

“Well, there’s a pain in my neck here, and the best surgeon is in Holland, so I’ll be back in a few months and we’ll continue.”

I said, “Would you show me how you meditate, please?” And he was meditating with his chin up. I said, “Why don’t you just try moving your chin down like that?”

“Oh, the pain goes away then.” [Laughter] Well, it’s another of those cases where if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So if you have a pain and you’re a surgeon, then you cut it out. But that wasn’t actually necessary. So do pay attention to these little things. And this is all part of really paying attention to the body when we sit. How is that resting in that detailed experience of the breath? What was that like for you? Restful?

Student: Too subtle.

Ken: Okay. More general attention is better for you?

Student: I don’t have the power to discern them.

Ken: Okay. And this is a very important principle. What I say this evening, if it’s useful to you, use it. If it isn’t, throw it away, because it’s really important to work with what actually works for you. Anybody else?

Student: It was fine for me.

Ken: Okay. It’s good for you?

Opening to everything in experience

Ken: I want to add something else now. And this goes back, now we arrive at what you were talking about. The sequence I’ve been taking you through here is: ground in the body; rest in the breath; the next step is open to everything that you experience. You’re grounded in your body. You’re intimately connected with the sensations of breathing. With that as a basis, open to the experience of everything.

Don’t try and sort it out. We have traffic outside. A sense of stillness here. A sense of energy beginning to happen as we practice together. There’s all the sensations in the body. There are emotions, and feelings, and maybe anxiety, or fear, or peace, or ease. All different kinds of feelings come up. Just open to the experience of all of them, so that you’re experiencing them all at the same time, and resting in. Because in the bigger picture that’s all the experience of breathing. Everything that is going on in our experience constitutes our experience of breathing right now. So we have a bus going by outside. That’s part of the experience. One doesn’t have to fight any of it. It’s just an experience. And we’re grounded in the body, resting in the breath, and with that basis, we can experience everything. That’s what I’d like you to explore for a few minutes right now.

[Gong]

Okay, a few of the things I’m noticing. You, you, and you, are all looking to the right when you practice. Maybe the left, whatever it is, but you’re actually facing this way. So try … you’re already doing it, move your head. No, not that much, right, straight ahead. When you’re meditating, your head’s turned a bit left that way. A lot of us have these kinds of things. Your body’s turning a little bit. Yours is very slight, but I noticed it. The thing is, these are old patterns that come out in us. And we sit this way. And they actually change things. So when we sit, we want to actually check our posture. And don’t try to hold it rigidly, that’s not helpful. But every time you notice that, and when one’s meditating it’s good to check one’s posture from time to time. And if the chin’s gone up, or the chin’s gone down, or your body’s twisted, these are old patterns coming out. All you do is you gently come back, and rest, and five minutes later you’re doing this again, and then you come back. And in this way, gradually, your body becomes accustomed to sitting balanced and straight, and you’ll find that actually changes things. But do it gently, don’t try to force it.

Some people, they just try to hold their body still. That’s something I’ve noticed about you. I want you to, we’re going to work on this right now, actually, but I want you to explore resting a little more in your practice. Rather, it seems to me you’re focusing. So I want you to explore just resting, and that’s what I want to talk about right now.

Balancing focus and rest

There’s two aspects to attention. There’s focusing and resting. And we often think of meditation as really focusing on the breath, or something like that, and people forget about the resting quality. Other people think the meditation is all about resting, and there’s no focus whatsoever.

But, the quality of attention that we’re trying to cultivate here has both focus and rest. The general principle that seems to work best is to start with focus and then rest. If you start with resting and then focus, it doesn’t quite work so well. But a lot of people never get to that resting quality and I can speak for that myself. I just really worked at my practice. I didn’t pay much attention to that resting quality for a very, very long time, until my body really broke down quite badly, and then I had to. Then I discovered there’s a whole ‘nother aspect to meditation, which comes through the resting.

So, in this next period of meditation, here we have all of this experience. We’re grounded in our body. We’re intimately connected with the breath. We’re open to everything. The focus is a kind of awake quality in our attention. So we’re really there, and at the same time, we’re resting in the experience.

Now, in the beginning, it’s a bit like riding a bicycle. You’re leaning a little to the left, okay, you’re going to lean to the right. A little too far to the right, lean to the left. So you’re going to go back and forth between focus and rest, focus and rest, focus and rest. And eventually you find you’re doing the two together. And again, that’s something you’re going to cultivate over time. But I just want you to explore that a little bit this evening. There’s that focusing quality, that being really awake in the experience of breathing. And so set that wakefulness and then rest in it. And if you find that it goes dull, then energize with a bit more focus. And if you find that there’s a lot of thoughts, or there’s tension coming out in the body, then a bit more resting. And just play with that and see how it goes. Okay.

[Gong]

Longing, confidence, and faith

Ken: Two more steps, we’re a little tight for time, so I may go a little bit over. Next thing I want you to do. There’s a kind of longing that brings you to meditation. Longing to experience the world in a different way. Anybody know what I’m talking about? Okay. For how many of you do feel a kind of confidence in yourselves? Possibly through your practice, confidence about life. Okay. So either or both of those, what I want you to do is just sit for a few minutes and feel whatever it is that you long for. And not focusing so much on the what you long for in terms of meditation practice and what brings you here, but the actual experience of longing.

Or if it’s more appropriate for you, more connection, one of the things that comes through meditation practice is the kind of quiet confidence in ourselves. We just feel more present, and we’re able to approach challenges in the world with a quiet confidence. It isn’t pushy, or arrogant, or anything like that. It’s just like, “Oh, I can be here with this.” Some of you talked about that right at the beginning.

Both of these are emotions. They’re very important emotions. So, what I’d like to do is just to take a few minutes now and for you to touch those emotions. You’re just going to do the same thing that we’ve done up to this point, going to rest in the experience of breathing, but allow yourself to feel either or both of those emotions. Not focusing so much on, as I said, on what you’re longing for, but on that heartfelt longing that is in us. Or, that quiet confidence that we feel we can just meet what arises in our lives. Or the two of them together, because that may be that way for some of you. Now, am I talking Greek here, or can anybody connect with this? So let’s just do that for a few minutes.

Student: I noticed that when I focused on longing, I was holding my breath. Not consciously, but holding my breath. And then when I switched my focus to the calm or the confidence that I experienced when I do meditate with regularity, I exhaled.

Ken: Yeah,okay. Anybody else? Way back there.

Student: I realized I got really conscious when it came to longing, and slowly I was just very awake. I felt everything, like goosebumps, almost. Then when I let that go, I just naturally started to feel more relaxed. I guess that’s where the confidence started to come in.

Ken: Okay. Thank you, anyone else? One more.

Student: I noticed that the longing made me have a sense of yearning for something that I didn’t have. And that I preferred the sense of a quiet confidence and I wanted to cultivate that. But I noticed also that there is a lot of subconscious longing that’s sort of there in the background all the time. This brought my awareness to that.

Ken: Both of these are emotions, and they’re actually both aspects of faith. They help faith. I’m talking about faith; I make a very definite distinction between faith and belief. When I talk about faith, I’m talking about our willingness to open to what arises in our experience. We can find that willingness either through the longing or through the quiet confidence. There are other aspects too, but these are the ones I wanted to introduce this evening.

How many found that you actually sat a little more solidly when you let yourself touch these emotions? That’s the primary reason these emotions are very important in our meditation practice is they bring another quality of presence. A lot of meditation instruction you’re taught, “Don’t feel any emotions,” but these kinds of things are really, really helpful. Loving-kindness and compassion can also do the same. But allowing ourselves to feel that longing, allowing ourselves to feel that confidence, can really bring a kind of stability into our practice. I wanted to give a little taste of that before I moved into the last step for this evening.

Resting in awareness

Ken: Now, please listen to me very, very carefully on this, because almost everybody does something else. I’m going to try to make this as precise as possible. We’ve been resting in the experience of breathing. And as we rest in that experience of breathing, there’s an awareness that knows everything, knows the sensations in the body. Is aware of the coming and going of the breath. Is aware of all of the richness of experience, sounds, tactile sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions. We touched into these. Is aware of focusing, and resting, and is aware of these emotions. So there’s this awareness. We never question it, and most of the time we aren’t aware of it. It just functions.

What I want you to do right now is to rest in the experience of awareness and there’s a particular way that you do this. So you just sit and rest in the experience of breathing. And in resting in the experience of breathing right now, it means resting in the experience of everything that is here. And then I’m going to ask a question. And here’s where I want you to pay very close attention. I don’t want you to try to answer this question. When I ask this question, you may experience a shift. You may experience it physically. You may experience it emotionally. You may experience it cognitively. Something seems to change in how you think, or whatever, or how you’re aware. So there may be a shift. I won’t guarantee that there will be a shift, but we can hope. And if you experience that shift, I just want you to rest in the shift. And the purpose of the question is to precipitate that shift. So don’t try to answer it, even though part of your intellect is just going to go crazy here, for some of you anyway, and just explore that.

So just rest in the experience of breathing, grounded in your body, feeling the coming and going of the breath. Open to everything that arises in experience. And also open emotionally to everything that arises in experience. Then ask yourself, “What is aware of all this?” And rest in the shift. [Pause] You may find that the shift dissipates. And if that happens, then you do the same thing again. Rest in the experience of your body, open to the coming and going of the breath. Open to everything that arises in experience inside and out. Open emotionally to everything that arises. And ask, “What experiences this?” And rest in the shift. [Pause] [Gong]

Ken: So, what was that like for you?

Student: It didn’t make a difference.

Ken: Okay. It didn’t make a difference? You’ve practiced a lot.

Student: I just let it go as it comes in and just let it go.

Ken: All right. Anybody else? Anybody experience a shift? Okay.

Student: I noticed that sounds and sight and the sense door objects felt different than the emotional mental object. And then this last time, there was just simply no object for periods of time.

Ken: Anybody else?

Student: I had already gotten completely caught up somewhere else by the time you ask the question. I caught back up when you were asking …

Ken: The second time? Yeah. Okay.

Student: It’s like, what did he ask? And I noticed that shift of anxiety and, you know, kicking myself.

Ken: Well, that happens. Okay.

Student: I don’t know whether I understood your first question, but I thought you said, “What is aware of all of this?” All right. The emotion is just pure joy. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know who or what it is that experiences it ultimately. I do feel a very strong sense of connection and very pure joy in that connection.

Ken: The point isn’t to answer that question. That question just precipitates, or can precipitate the—

Student: Yeah, but that was the the emotional response that I got.

Ken: So you felt this joy. Great. Okay. Good. Now, we’re all ready over here. I’d love to spend all evening discussing this.

The possibility of not reacting

Ken: What I’ve led you through this evening is actually a pretty complete sequence of meditation and all of the different elements. Through my own experience, I found it very, very important to begin by grounding in the body. How many of you said you get caught up in the stories? The most reliable method I found for not getting caught up in the stories is to stay connected with the body, and every time you find yourself lost in the stories, is to come back to the body, the actual physical sensations. It just pulls you out of all of the stories into the present. You know, feet on the ground, it’s right in the body.

Then the next has more to do with emotion, and that’s the coming and going of the breath. And the very intimate connection between emotions, it’s particularly the reactive emotions—like anger, and pride, and greed, and jealousy, and shame, and guilt, and things like that—and the breath. You actually will find that you breathe differently for each one of those, you know, anger [loud and rapid breathing] and pride is [breath] and so forth. So by being intimately connected with the experience of breathing, it’s going to bring you into connection in a different way with all of those reactive emotions.

And then the third step was to open to the experience of everything. This is our mind. Our mind is how we experience the world. And so here, by opening to the experience of everything, we’re actually opening to our own mind. And what happens then is that we need to refine the quality of attention. And that’s why I introduced the balancing of focus and resting, which is very important. And it applies at all three levels and that’s fine. But I introduced it here at this point.

And then it’s very important to bring that quality of emotion in, of heartfelt emotion, which I introduced either in terms of longing or in terms of confidence. But whatever makes you willing to open to the experience of life. And really connect with that in your meditation. And it’s very, very fruitful sometimes. If your morning meditation is half an hour, spend the whole half hour just feeding that kind of confidence or that kind of longing in your heart. It’ll open your heart, but you’ll find it also brings a kind of stability in your practice, because you’re bringing in emotional energy. This is not a reactive emotion, it’s a very different kind of emotional energy.

Then finally there’s this quality which actually takes us beyond our ordinary way of experiencing when we ask such questions as, “What is aware of all of this?” Or, “What experiences all of this?” In the Zen tradition they have other ways of asking the question. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a very famous one. “What is your face before you were born?” The point isn’t the answer to these questions. It’s what happens to you when you ask the questions. It precipitates a shift, so you move into a different way of experiencing that has many, many different layers to it. But one of the common features that comes out, and this isn’t going to happen immediately, but if you do this over and over again, you find that, there’s just this open, clear awareness, and it’s just there. And you discover the possibility of being able to experience absolutely everything. And when you have that possibility, you have simultaneously discovered the possibility of never having to react to anything. And that’s freedom.

So I’ve tried to cover all of that this evening. It may have been a little bit much. So in conclusion, and thank you very much for your attention, I’d just like us to take a few minutes, consider whatever you’ve got out of this evening. And I’m going to say a few lines as a kind of dedication. Okay.

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

[Gong]

Thanks very much. Have a good evening. I’ll be back here on Sunday, as it turns out. Thanks very much for this opportunity, Mary.