Dissolving fixations

Ken: Verse 22:

Whatever arises in experience is your own mind.
Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations.
Know that and don’t generate
Subject-object fixations.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 22

Now, when I was looking at this earlier today, I thought there may be a bit of a problem with the idea of don’t generate subject-object fixations, as if that’s an act of will. And it’s more the sense of [pause], subject-object experience arises in terms of subject and object. And you can either hold onto that, or be more open, roughly. So, that’s what I’m trying to get at. Don’t generate subject-object fixations, doesn’t do it quite right.

Now, we’ve done this many times before. You look at a book, and ordinarily we say, “Okay, there’s a book. I’m seeing a book.” But if you stop for a moment and say, “Okay, there’s the experience of seeing a book,” which is different from saying, “There is a book.” There’s an experience of seeing a book. Where is that experience?

Now, suddenly everything shifts when you asked that question. And you see that the only place that experience of seeing the book can be is “in your mind,” wherever that is. You’re still with me. Okay? Now, if that’s the only place, that “that experience can be,” where is the book? Okay? That’s why from a Buddhist point of view, we cannot posit an external reality. There’s no way of knowing it. All we have is our experience. You follow? Is this making sense? It’s a little creepy. Pardon?

Student: Fleeting.

Ken: That’s good. Now, Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. That’s what that line refers to. That all experience, which we’re used to saying, “I see a yellow book,” but the experience of yellow, the experience of book, the experience of everything is something that is just arising in my mind. And we don’t think of mind as being here, but just in … you could say “in my knowing.” You follow?

When you look at that knowing, what do you see? Absolutely nothing at all, right? There is nothing you can say about that knowing, that “it is this,” or “it is that,” or “it’s there,” or “it’s not there,” or “it’s like this,” or “it’s like that.” So, that’s what the line: Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations.

Now, if you can know that moment to moment, you’re going to be dissolving that subject-object fixation moment to moment. And that’s why I’m not quite happy with this translation when I look at it, but that’s what the bodhisattva practice is, is dissolving that tendency to fixate in terms of subject and object. And you’re dissolving it moment by moment, and you can do it just this way.

There’s a guy called Douglas Harding, and if you look up Douglas Harding on the web, you’ll be led to his website. Now he’s very old, if he’s still alive. I think he’s still alive; he’ll be in his 90s. He studied Zen in Japan in the 50s, came back to England and wrote this delightful book called On Having No Head, and he’s done a few follow-ups.

And I know we’ve talked about this before, but it’s another way into dissolving subject-object fixation. Okay? When I look at my feet—and you can just do this yourself—when you look at your feet, you see feet, right? They can be painted, socked, or whatever, but they’re feet. You say, “Look, leg.” Okay, I see leg, hand, finger, arm. Okay? Now, not looking in a mirror, look at your own head. What do you see?

Student: A nose. [Laughter]

Ken: Now you’re looking at pink sausage. But, look at your head. What happens when you do that?

Student: There’s a gap.

Ken: There’s a gap. There’s a shift, right? Okay, now you’re carrying on a conversation with me right now, but we’ve just shown you have no head because when you look at it, you can’t see it, right? Now, from that perspective, when I’m talking to you, who am I talking to? [Laughter] And what is it like to experience the conversation from there? It’s different, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay. It’s another way to get out of the subject-object fixation. This is a wonderful technique and you can do it all the time.

And then you look in the mirror and say, “Well, I have no head. Who’s looking at this, and what are they seeing anyway? It doesn’t bear any resemblance to me.” I do recommend that book. And he goes through this exploring this facet. You can find it on the web. And he’s got about five or six short talks in which he just leads you through these different ways of looking at the world, all with the point of dissolving a particular fixation through which we ordinarily relate to our experience.

So, when somebody’s yelling and screaming and telling you all the terrible things you’ve done, and you have no head, you experience that in a totally different way. When somebody is madly in love with you, and telling you how wonderful you are, and you have no head, you experience that in a completely different way. You don’t take it personally, [laughs] which can be very helpful.

Student: I assume most people here saw the article on Jew-Bus in the LA times a week or two ago. If you didn’t, it was on Jewish Buddhists, because apparently the vast majority of Westerners who find Buddhism come from Jewish backgrounds.

Ken: I don’t think that’s true. I just think there’s a large number of Jewish people who do practice Buddhism.

Student: Okay. Well, the author seemed to think it was somewhat more extreme than that, but so there was this line in there that I had never heard, “If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?”

Ken: Well, you can take that, “Whose experience is it?” And feeling that we own our experience is fixation on a subject right there. Okay? So, that’s what verse 22 is about.

Relating to pleasurable experiences

Ken: Now, verse 23: When you come across something you enjoy …, a pleasant experience. The immediate response to a pleasant experience is to want more of it or to hold onto it. Can you hold onto a rainbow? Can you take hold of a rainbow?

There’s a wonderful hike in Yosemite, up, I think, it’s Misty Canyon, or something. And if you go there about 10:00 in the morning when the sun’s not too high, the spray from the waterfalls is such that you are walking through rainbow after rainbow after rainbow. I mean it’s unbelievable. There’s just rainbows every direction you look, and it’s amazing. It’s a very vivid experience of rainbows, because they are really, really bright. But there’s nothing to any of them. They feel solid. It’s right there and as you walk up, they disappear.

Now, that is how Gyalsé Tokmé is saying to relate to pleasurable experiences. They arise, and you can enjoy them, but there’s a difference between enjoying and trying to hold onto. I think we went through that last week. And the way you move from the habituated way of relating to pleasant experiences and this open way—it’s a little laborious, but as you practice it, it becomes more familiar—is look at the object you’re attracted to. Then move into the experience of attraction, how you’re experiencing it physically, how all the emotional stuff, all of the stories and associations connected with it.

You open to the experience of attraction itself. And if you want to take this a little bit further, ask: Who is experiencing this attraction? You’ll experience a shift at that point. Now you look at the object and you’ll find that you experience it in a different way. Why? Because you’ve moved completely into the experience of attraction in attention, so that transforms the experience. And now there’s just an experience of appreciation and enjoyment, without that grasping, holding quality.

And this you can do in every aspect of your life, it makes a big difference. That’s what 23 is referring to. And so when it says, Don’t take it as real, it’s not an ontological statement, it’s an instruction. Okay, Diane, you had a question here.

Diane: Can you substitute the word permanent for real or is that—

Ken: That’s one aspect of how we project reality, that it is permanent. But even if we know it’s transient, we can still regard it as real in some sense, that it actually exists. It’s something that we can take hold of, and own, and all of that. I mean, what the term real means, that’s a matter of intense philosophical discussion. I’m using it as a way when it says: bden par ma ‘dzin (pron. denpar ma dzin), “Don’t take it as true”, as something that definitely exists. It exists in as much as it’s being experienced. In that sense it exists. Whether it exists apart from that is another matter, and yet we ordinarily relate to it as existing apart from my experiencing it. You follow?

And this is a good point to remember. In Buddhism, everything is epistemologically oriented. How you are experiencing it? How you are knowing it? Not, what is actually there. Buddhism has consistently taken the position that trying to ascertain ontological status is a self-defeating and fruitless endeavor. It does not lead to any resolution of the problem of suffering.

Relating to the experience of pain

Ken: Now, going to verse 24. This is applying the same thing to the experience of suffering, of pain, rather than pleasure. And here rather than the summer rainbow, the comparison is like dreaming that your child has died. When something terrible happens to you, your spouse dies, you lose your job, your house is destroyed in an earthquake, terrible things. Okay? Again, we’re visiting territory we’ve talked about before. What is: your house being destroyed by an earthquake? What is it actually?

Student: An experience?

Ken: Yeah, it’s an experience. Okay? Now, where does that experience take place? Just the way we were talking before. You’re operating under the illusion that you had a house. [Laughs] You had an experience of a house, you were having a nice experience of a house. You’ve now had the experience of this house falling to bits. Does it affect what you actually are? Now, do we tend to forget that in those situations? Yes. We think, “Oh, I’ve lost this. I’m never going to be the same!”

So, we have two forms of confusion going on here. One is that the house existed as something that I owned, and not was simply an experience that I was having, and that the disintegration of that experience somehow does irreparable and lasting damage to me. Now, there are a lot of people, particularly in Hollywood, who feel that it does do that, and they act that way, but it doesn’t. Okay, Robert does this clear up?

Robert: I wasn’t confused. I was just arguing about the words.

Student: He’s a lawyer. [Laughter]

Ken: I want to pursue this for a moment with you. What do you get out of arguing about the words?

Robert: Well, you were taking the position that you were making a distinction between real and unreal, and then you were using the word real and that just felt—

Ken: No, just a second. I was taking that position?

Robert: Yes.

Ken: I just went through the position I was taking.

Robert: I understand. But initially before you had gone through that position, that was the position as I understood it.

Ken: Thank you. What is the operative phrase in that last sentence?

Robert: As I understood it.

Ken: Thank you. [Laughs] Was I taking that position?

Robert: As I understood it.

Ken: [Laughs] I think I’ve made my point. Okay. You engaged an argument there which actually existed only in your mind. And we do this, and it’s highly problematical, because in Buddhism, this is a classic case of looking at the finger, not at the moon. I will say this again, and if it’s the only thing you take from this evening, that’s fine. Buddhism is never, as far as I know, concerned with trying to say whether things exist or not. I know there’s all kinds of arguments in Madhyamika, etc., about proving things don’t exist. But all of that logic comes out of the intention to get people out of the ordinary way that they experience the world. And it’s an attempt to communicate. I don’t think it’s a very effective thing.

I think it was largely something that a lot of monks did to keep themselves busy beause they hung out in monasteries. I gave up trying to teach on the basis of that logic about 12 years ago, because I found that it fundamentally didn’t work. It’s not how most people process their experience through logic.

In all of these verses, and in all your reading in Buddhism, aim at: What are they trying to convey? What experience are they trying to communicate here, or to elicit? Always look at it from that point of view rather than terms of: Does this make logical sense? That’s quite an important point. Jessica, you had something?

Jessica: I’m okay.

Ken: You’re sure? You don’t dare ask your question though, right?

Jessica: That wasn’t really a question. It was just a quick comment and it’s not necessary.

Staying in touch with innate awareness

Ken: Okay. Now: When you run into misfortune, look at it as confusion. That’s my example about the earthquake destroying your house. “This is a misfortune.” No argument about that. But from a spiritual point of view, what do we do with that experience? Well, here is all of this, really upsetting. “Where am I going to live? How am I going to survive? What am I going to do? I’ve lost this. I’ve lost that.” There’s all of that stuff that goes on when your house is destroyed in an earthquake. What is all of that? It is an experience, a very confused experience, because we’re losing sight in that experience of what I actually am, and what this actually is.

Now, I brought this along because a long time ago I wrote some footnotes. This is Jamgön Kongtrül:

From time without beginning, mind, based on the incidental impurities of lack of awareness, arises as various appearances
(as experience, Okay?)
which, if not investigated or examined,
(That’s an old translation. Not sure what words I would use now, but “if you just take them at face value” is what he’s saying)
are like the bewildering appearances of dreams.

The Great Path of Awakening, Jamgön Kongtrül, Ken McLeod (translator) p. 76

Now, how are they like the bewildering appearances of dreams? If you’re dreaming and you don’t know that you’re dreaming, then you feel you’re in a world and there’s a subject and an object, and you’re trying to mess around with the stuff, and negotiate it. And things keep changing in a very fluid way, and you get upset, but that isn’t what actually is happening. It just feels like that’s happening. And basically Buddhism is saying, “It feels like all of this is happening.” And people will say, “Yeah, you’re damn right it feels like it is.” [Laughs]

Because we are losing touch with our innate awareness in the same way that we lose touch with it in a dream, and so we take it as subject-object. Now when we know that we’re dreaming, then we’re in touch to some degree with innate awareness, and now what happens in the dream doesn’t matter to us. Even if our house is destroyed in an earthquake—

Student: You’re going to wake up eventually.

Ken: Well, it’s not that you’re going to wake up, it’s that while you’re dreaming, you’ve lost your house and things like that, you’re going to be homeless and go through all of that mess—

Student: But you’re aware it’s just a dream.

Ken: You’re aware that it’s simply an experience. Now, what is it like to relate to all of this life as just an experience? It’s an extraordinary freeing. That’s what Buddhism is driving at. And this is a tough, tough teaching. When these appearances are examined, that is, when you look: “Okay, what’s actually going on here?” In exactly the way that I was describing: Where is the seeing? Where does seeing the book take place? That’s a form of examination. “When these experiences [appearances] are examined, they do not exist as anything and are empty by virtue of what they are.” There isn’t anything. Where is the experience of seeing this book? Well, we can’t say it started here, or it’s there, or it goes there. There isn’t any qualification we can put on it, so we say it’s empty. Hence, all appearances are simply creations of mind.

Now, as Guenther points out in a lot of his writings, this is not naive idealism or mentalism in Western philosophy. When Buddhism says, “All things are creations of mind,” it doesn’t mean we’re simply making it all up. The only place experience can arise is in the mind, because that’s the only place that it is experienced. There’s nothing outside our mind. That might be a way of looking at it.

Consequently, the mode of being of the apparently (relatively) real is that appearances, which are held to arise externally, have no inherent nature and are like the reflection of the moon in water.

p. 76

You look at the moon and water, there seems to be a moon there, right?

There’s Nasrudin story about this. He’s walking along one night and he looks into a well, and he sees the reflection of the moon. He says, “Oh my goodness, you shouldn’t be there. You should be up in the sky! I’ll help.” And he goes and gets rope with a hook on it and throws it in the well, and as he’s hauling out the hook catches on the side of the well. So, he’s tugging away at it, tugging away at it, and eventually gives a big pull, and the hook breaks free and Nasrudin falls on his back, looks up in the sky, and he says, “There, that’s better!” [Laughs]

So, there’s the moon in the water. It looks like there’s a moon there. Is there a moon there? No, there’s just the appearance of a moon there. Okay? That’s like everything we experience. It looks like things are there, but no, it’s just the appearance of things that are there.

Student: Is there a moon there?

Ken: I knew somebody was going to ask that question. [Laughter]

Student: Well, I have to ask it.

Ken: Yes. Well, you’ll be sorry. [Laughter] When you look in the mirror, how do you know the mirror is there? Do you see the mirror? [Pause]

Student: I don’t know. Is that a good answer?

Ken: That’s your answer. So, next week …

Student: Yeah?

Ken: That’s your homework. Thank you.

Student: And what about the moon?

Ken: And when you answer that, I’ll answer the moon. Fair is fair. Okay?

Student: Yeah. Well, I see the correlation there.

Ken: Good.

Student: Because that could be a link up there too.

Ken: That’s another way of looking at it. What Kongtrül has been talking about up to this point is, here’s all the stuff we ordinary regarded as out there. But if we look at it, we see that it’s actually all composed of sensory experience. And where does that sensory experience, it arises in our mind, so there isn’t any out there, there. There is the appearance of out there, there’s all this stuff, and it feels a little strange. Now, there is this mind, which holds that that stuff’s out there and holds that there’s a self in here. That’s where all this seems to be taking place, that’s very loose language. What is the nature of that mind?

The mind that grasps is not located anywhere, externally or internally.

p. 77

Ordinarily we think, “Oh, the mind’s located in here. There’s this kind of boundary, which is this very thin thing we call skin, and there’s the world out there.” And that’s ordinarily how it appears to us, and it’s how we function. I, body, external, internal, external, all makes perfect sense until you actually look at it. Then it doesn’t make so much sense because there’s all just experience. What is experiencing all the experience? That gets really hard because you can’t pinpoint what is experiencing it.

And when I was doing my MA in Math, I’d have this discussion with the other grad students who were all quite a bit younger than me. These were typical academics. I would say, “If I stick a pin in your foot, where do you experience the pain?” What do you think they replied?

Student: “In my foot.”

Ken: No.

Student: “My brain.”

Ken: Brain. And I really, really wanted to stick a pin in their foot [laughs] because you do not experience the pain in the brain. You experience the pain in the foot. Okay?

Student: But this sends the message.

Ken: No, we don’t know what happens. I mean, that’s science, scientific theory. It’s always changing. Okay, what experiences the pain?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Yeah, I know. But what in your foot experiences the pain? When you really look, what experiences the pain? And this again is something that you can do. Put an ice cube—I suggest you use an ice cube rather than pins or flames. It’s less damaging to your body—put an ice cube in the palm of your hand, or on the back of your hand, or anywhere else. It doesn’t matter. Now, ice cubes are really good because they’re really intense experience, but it’s not going to do you any harm.

And it gives you an opportunity: What experiences this? And it becomes very interesting because you have an extremely intense experience, but if you look, you cannot find anything that actually experiences it. The experience is there, but what actually experiences it? That’s very hard to find, and I really recommend that you do this. So, that you have this experience, and then you start relating to everything that arises in your life in the same way. What is experiencing this? Because it really changes things.

Now:

The mind that grasps is not located anywhere externally or internally and does not exist concretely with a color or a shape.

p. 77

That sounds so simplistic, yet we feel that it does exist concretely, in the brain. We have all of these much more elaborate ideas of how things work now, some of them courtesy of science, but how do we actually experience it? That becomes a mystery.

From the continuity of ego-clinging, which mistakes that which isn’t (i.e., a self) for something which is, come the eight consciousnesses.

p. 77

Which are the eight consciousnesses, or the sixth sensory consciousnesses, the consciousness of the self and basic consciousness. And all of that is the manifestation of confusion, which is going back to the term you were asking about, Robert.

Yet that which simply is, the pristine awareness or wisdom that is empty of fixation and grasping, is present in all beings from buddhas to sentient beings; it is the potential for buddhahood and, is by nature, totally luminous and has never been blemished by incidental impurities.

p. 77

That is what we are. That is what is ultimately real. And in these two paragraphs, Kongtrül summarizes everything that’s important about Buddhist philosophy. Things appear, but they aren’t what they seem to be. That which holds onto the sense of self and the sense of other, when you look at it, is no thing. When you can rest in being that, you find you can experience the world, you can function perfectly appropriately, but there isn’t the same sense of “I” and other, because one is not fixated on those. And so you’re simply left with the task of actually relating to what is arising in experience.

Open to the totality of your own experience

Ken: Now, those of you who came to the Probing Presence workshop, this was exactly the principle that we worked on, that when you’re interacting with someone else, you open to the totality of your own experience. You didn’t try to figure out what was going on in the other person. You open to the totality of your own experience, which includes of course, the experience of the other person. But also includes your body and all of your reactions and everything like that. But when you’re completely in that experience, mysteriously what was appropriate to say, and how to say, it just arose. That’s the natural wisdom that’s there.

And for those of you who were at the retreat that we did a week ago, the same thing. When you are completely in your experience and you’re not looking to understand it or figure it out—i.e., coming at it from a conceptual mind, but you’re in it—then you find that your experience is pointing to where the imbalance is, if there is any imbalance. And there’s a natural movement toward balance. And that is how you actually find your way. It’s actually that simple.

What makes it difficult is the tenacity, or the solidity, of the conditioning that has developed, which prevents us from relating to the world and our experience that way. And what we’re doing in this practice, and what everything in this practice is geared towards, is undermining that conditioning, so we’re able to do that. Okay. Now, Robert,

Robert: With regard to verse number 23, the idea of attraction. I find that using taking and sending can be very effective in letting go of that attachment, but I find for example, with verse 24, when it comes to aversion, that taking and sending, I find much more difficult because it feels like at that moment I have nothing to give. So, I wanted to know if you could recommend a practice.

Ken: It’s interesting, everybody I know who practices taking and sending, either finds attraction easier to work with or aversion easier to work with. You happen to find attraction easier to work. So, here you have this horrible experience. Your house has fallen down a cliff, your wife has left you, you’ve been disbarred. Okay?

Robert: Okay.

Ken: What do you have to give? [Pause]

Robert: Well, intellectually it feels like there’s something to give, but emotionally there doesn’t feel like there’s anything there.

Ken: Okay. I forgot one thing. You have cancer. So, you don’t even have your health now. So, what have you got to give?

Robert: Well, theoretically there’s compassion, loving-kindness.

Ken: Yeah, but we’re not talking theory. What have you got to give? [Pause] That’s your homework.

Robert: Okay.

Ken: Good.

Jessica: Going back to the dream analogy for a minute. Sometimes when I’m asleep, dreaming, I have awareness that I’m dreaming, but usually not. That happens spontaneously. Can you give some instruction on how to make that happen more?

Ken: That’s the whole subject of dream practice, and there are particular meditations which can help that along, but all of them really depend on intention. So, if you just form the intention before you go to sleep to recognize dreams, that may increase it. And also, “When I recognize dreams, may I stay in that recognition.” And so you gradually stabilize it, and a lot of it has to do with stability of attention. So, developing stable attention and strengthening your intention will probably help in that.

Jessica: Do you find that that sort of practice has an impact on your life?

Ken: Well, very definitely, and this is the point of dream practice. When you experience a world which appears as subject and object and you know it is not subject and object, then you tend to take a second look at this experience.

Jessica: It’s easier to transfer. Okay. And also another, just a quick question. The folks that can walk on hot coals and not have any physical burns or anything like that, what’s happening there?

Student: Tony Robbins. Sticks something through their arm …

Ken: Ask them. [Laughs]

Jessica: I guess what I’m asking is, when you have that clear knowing that things are just arising and that it’s not really there in the way that we think it is, is it possible that the body responds differently?

Ken: Ah, you’re looking for a magic cure?

Jessica: No, not really.

Ken: Well, the 16th Karmapa died of stomach cancer. Suzuki Roshi also died of stomach cancer. These were people of considerable attainment and realization. That’s the experience that arose for them. Just because you know the nature of experience doesn’t stop bad things from happening.

Jessica: Yeah, I know that wasn’t really the question. Just if it’s possible to have an impact.

Ken: What’s behind this question, Jessica?

Jessica: Curiosity?

Ken: I don’t think so.

Jessica: I do.

Ken: What is the source of your curiosity?

Jessica: Curiosity.

Ken: Okay. What wants to know? Though, knowing you a little bit, it might be interesting to ask, “Who wants to know?”

Jessica: Okay.

Ken: That clear? Okay, good.

Student: I have a question. Following up on Jessica’s first question. How is what you were describing different from lucid dreaming?

Ken: It isn’t. Now, meditation-wise, how did you do with this? How did you work on it in your meditation? What’d you get out of it? Everybody’s looking at me very suspiciously now. That’s just a question.

Isabelle: I felt myself grasping quite a lot, and the more I grasp, the more I wanted to grasp and the less and less I was able to.

Ken: What were you grasping for?

Isabelle: I guess I wanted to enter some kind of pure state of mind where I wasn’t grasping, but the more I thought about that, the harder I grasped.

Ken: Yes, yes. This is a very good point. Now, right now, where is the pure mind that is completely free from all confusion and all conditioning? Where is that mind right now? [Pause] Isabelle?

Isabelle: You’re speaking to me?

Ken: I was speaking to everybody.

Isabelle: It’s nowhere.

Ken: It’s nowhere?

Isabelle: Yeah, it’s a figment.

Ken: Ah, Okay. Does anybody have a mirror here? Look at the mirror. Okay? Do you see a mirror?

Isabelle: Oh, yes, I see a mirror.

Ken: You do?

Isabelle: Yeah.

Ken: You see a mirror? I don’t. What I see is some screens, and some shades, and I see a light fixture and, some things on a wall, and I see a wall. Do you not see that?

Isabelle: Yes, I see that.

Ken: But you see a mirror too. How do you see the mirror? I don’t see the mirror.

Isabelle: When I look around the edges of it, I see where the mirror stops and the wall begins. And then I get the notion that it’s a mirror.

Ken: Ah, so do you actually see the mirror?

Isabelle: It’s something about the edge between the mirror and the rest of—

Ken: Yeah, but I think you’re right. I think you infer that there’s a mirror there from the juxtaposition of the reflections and the wall, right? Okay, but do you actually see the mirror? Put it this way, what is a mirror made of?

Isabelle: Glass and whatever the material is that causes the beams of light to reflect back.

Ken: Yeah, the silvering on the back. Okay. Now, do you see the glass?

Student: Yes, I see the glass.

Ken: I don’t see the glass. I just see everything that I was describing, but I don’t see any glass. I know my eyesight’s bad. Do you see the silvering?

Isabelle: No. I know it’s there, but I don’t see it.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. Do you get what I mean? Now, what I want to suggest to you is that when I look there, I’m actually seeing clear glass, but I don’t see it because there’s nothing to see. What I do see are all the reflections, but I’m looking at clear glass. So, if somebody asked me, “Where is the clear glass?” I would say, “I don’t see any clear glass.” Clear glass is nowhere, but that’s not true. The clear glass is right there, and I can look right at it, but I can’t see it because there’s nothing to see. Are you following? Okay. Now, when you look around here, what do you see?

Isabelle: I see everybody.

Ken: Okay. Do you see the clear nature of your own mind?

Isabelle: No.

Ken: But you’re looking right at it. [Laughter]

Isabelle: Thank you, Ken.

Student: Looking at what?

Ken: The clear nature, yes. Any questions? [Laughter] That was clear, wasn’t it? But that’s actually how it is. So, when you look at everything like this, and you see all these people sitting there. And you say, “Okay, I see all these people sitting here, but what I’m actually looking at is my own mind.” How does that feel?

Isabelle: Different.

Ken: Yeah. Does it feel good? Does it make you tense, and uptight, and anxious?

Isabelle: No.

Ken: No? No. Do you relax a little?

Isabelle: Yes. I relax.

Ken: So, let’s just pursue this a little further if that’s okay with you. Now remember what I was saying about having no head? What if you look at all this with the idea that I don’t have any head? They’re kind of similar?

Isabelle: With the idea that I don’t—

Ken: That I don’t have any head. There’s nobody looking at this, and yet I’m seeing it all.

Isabelle: I’m stuck.

Ken: Where are you stuck? If you don’t have a head—

Isabelle: I’m feeling very self-conscious. I feel like there’s this thing here, and there are these eyes here, and I’m thinking about them.

Ken: Okay, but when you look at your eyes, what do you see?

Isabelle: Well, it’s not very wonderful.

Ken: No, no, but right now. Right now, look at your eyes. What do you see?

Isabelle: Nothing.

Ken: Does that stop experience from arising? No. How does that feel? All this experience, got no eyes to see them with. How’s it feel?

Isabelle: Well, it feels like I’m right here.

Ken: There! Okay, good. Thank you. That’s all there is. Any questions, Diane?

Diane: No.

Ken: Are you sure?

Diane: Yeah, I’m sure, for now, I have to contemplate this a little further.

Ken: I have a recommendation for you. Don’t contemplate this. Just do it. There is actually nothing to understand. We think we have to understand it in order to do it. What is there to understand about the mirror?

Diane: Nothing. Just that things are not what they seem.

Ken: Yeah, things are not what they seem. But you got an idea of how to do this from my work with Isabelle, right? Just do it. But if you sit down, “I gotta understand this,” you’ll never get around to doing it. You’ll engage your conceptual mind, and how useful is your conceptual mind in understanding this?

Diane: Not very useful so far.

Ken: So, why are you doing that? Got it? There’s somebody back here, Chuck.

Chuck: Yeah, I can say that if I have no head, then you’re teaching and the whole classroom just arises.

Ken: That’s right.

Chuck: I have no control over it, but it’s just, there

Ken: There and you can’t escape it. [Laughter]

Student: I was wondering why I bothered to shave, or clean up, or do anything really, don’t have a head.

Ken: I take no responsibility for the effects of this class on your personal appearance. [Laughter] Does this help?

Student: Yes.

Ken: Okay. Robert, you sent me a question today and I have been answering your question all evening. Okay? Did you get the answer?

Robert: Yes.

Ken: Good. All right. We’re on time. We have four meetings, is that right, Deborah?

Deborah: No, three.

Ken: Three more?

Deborah: Six, 13, and 20 by the last three.

The six perfections

Ken: Then I would like you to do the six perfections, which is 25 to 30. So, let’s look at these for a moment. I would like you to do some reading on the six perfections. There’s probably all kinds of stuff on the net. In particular, what is really important here is the difference between ordinary giving and the perfection of generosity, ordinary generosity and the perfection of generosity. What is the difference?

Student: Say ordinary giving versus …?

Ken: Perfection of giving. What is the difference? Now:

If those who want to be awake have to give even their own bodies,
What need is there to talk about things that you simply own?
Be generous, not looking
For any return or result.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 25

That’s all straightforward. What turns ordinary giving into the perfection of giving? I want you to engage that question and explore it. And then the same applies to morality, and patience, effort, meditative stability, and interestingly enough, wisdom.

The six perfections are often described as one of the main components of a bodhisattva’s activity. It’s what a bodhisattva does. And this—time and again—is interpreted as: bodhisattvas give, they’re moral, they’re patient, they make an effort, they’re able to rest in stable meditation, and have a certain understanding. But in that description, there is no sense of the particular quality of the perfection of giving, the perfection of morality, the perfection of patience. So, a bodhisattva isn’t simply doing those things, he or she’s doing them in a particular way. And that’s what I want you to look at.

And over the next week, you can do this in any number of ways. You could take one day to explore each one, which would be an interesting thing. So, one day you explore generosity and practice giving in various ways. Next day you can practice morality.

Now here is one set of descriptions of the six perfections. You’ll find another set of descriptions of the six perfections in a short excerpt from a song by Milarepa, which I’ve translated. It’s up on the website in the translation section. And you can read a couple of other accounts of the six perfections. And so that’s what I’d like you to bring to the next classes, the results of your own research and investigation in these ways. I think that’ll be very interesting. All right. Thank you very much.