Student questions on verses 4 to 7

Ken: So, should we turn to the text? We’re looking at three, four, five, six, and seven. The first thing I’d like to do is just to take up any questions any of you have about any lines in the text in terms of what they mean, or if you suspect there’s differences between how I translated them and somebody else translated them, and you’re curious about that. And this is in the area of comprehension.

Student: In all four, five and six?

Ken: In all four verses. Yeah. Okay. Joe.

Joe: On seven, my first understanding was a mistaken one because—Locked in the prison of their own patterning, whom can the ordinary gods protect?—because of the closeness of whom to patterning, I assume that it meant that whom was the one locked up their own patterning. In other words, myself. But then I realized when I’m reading other translations that the gods are locked up.

Ken: That’s right. Yeah, the gods are locked in the wrong pattern.

Student: That’s what I thought.

Ken: George?

George: In four, the last line: Forget the conventional concerns.

Ken: Yeah, that’s one I underlined.

George: Steve, and Michelle and I talked about this at dinner time today. We saw a number of different ways of looking at it, and maybe there are different levels like the exoteric and esoteric and ultimate level, or different ways of looking at it: conventional concerns, also this life, also this incarnation.

Ken: Well, I’d underline this as a potential one to discuss. The Tibetan is tshe ‘dii blo gtong (pron. tsé di lo tong), and it means literally, get rid of the mind that is focused on this life. And probably most people translated it something like that. Now, when I translate, there are a couple of things I try to do. One is, I try as much as possible not to make belief in past and future lives a condition for understanding the text. And second, although it sounds like English, it isn’t really English: get rid of the mind that focuses on this life. Well, of course I focus on this life, why wouldn’t I? The meaning in Tibetan is not captured by the phrase, focus on this life because we have food and things like that.

And so, I chose to be a little more interpretive here, because what it’s really referring to is the agendas defined by conventional notions of society, etc. Conventional success and failure, what you’re meant to be doing as a member of the society. And that’s really what it’s directed at. And so, I decided to render it in a way that made that meaning explicit. Now, in doing so, I probably opened up other areas of interpretation, which actually is fine, because one of the things that I started to do in translating, probably about 10 or 15 years ago, is to translate where I could with a deliberate ambiguity so, that the English became rich and full of interpretations rather than focusing on just one thing, because the Tibetan is rich and full of interpretations. And just to pick one of the many possible meanings and translate that actually does a disservice to the text in some way. Julia?

Julia: When I read that I thought about the eight worldly concerns, is that also implied?

Ken: Well those are the things, that’s exactly what focusing on this life means. You’re concerned with happiness and unhappiness, success and failure, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, respect and disdain. That’s what one focuses on. Yeah. Robert?

Robert: Back to verse seven, the words ordinary gods. [Ken laughs] Can you say a word about that?

Ken: Sure. The Tibetan is ‘jig rten lha (pron. jigten lha). ‘jig rten is the word for the world of ordinary experience. It literally means the container for everything that can be destroyed, which is a great way to refer to the universe. But what does that mean? Well everything’s destroyed by impermanence. And so, when it says the ordinary gods, you’ll see this almost always translated as worldly gods. But again, I just didn’t like that in terms of the English. It’s standard Buddhist-English, but I’m very tired of Buddhist-English, and I’m trying to put it into English-English. So, that’s why I chose the word ordinary, because these people, or these gods, have not stepped out of reactive patterns. They’re caught up in them in exactly the same way that we are.

Robert: In Buddhism or the Tibetan text, are they actually using the word gods?

Ken: Yes. And again, one can look at this in different terms, different ways of interpretation. So, to respond to Michelle, the Buddhists were always beating up on the Hindus. So, they would regard Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, etc., as worldly gods. Indra lives in the heaven with the 33 levels or the 33 level palace or whatever it is, and thinks he’s lord of the universe. But actually he just got a hell of a lot of good karma and it’s going to last him for a few billion eons, but then he’ll be back in the hell realms like the rest of us.

And I think it’s in the Surangama Sutra, there’s a categorization of various forms of meditation fixations and the corresponding god realm that you’ll be born in. So, if you have this kind of fixation, you’ll become a god who thinks he’s the creator of the universe. And if you get this one, you’ll become a god who thinks he’s this, and so forth. And he goes through all of the various notions of deity and tracks them down to coming from very particular meditation fixations. It’s kind of interesting that way. It’s sort of devastating to all the other religions but that’s another matter. He definitely uses the word gods as something that we regard as higher or superior and has some kind of power and intervene in this.

Now, the way that my colleague Michael Conklin and I, and a lot of other people now, approach this is, what are the gods in our society? Well, what are the gods? Beauty, money, thinness, fame, and if you look at Greek mythology, that’s exactly who their gods were. Well, there was Aphrodite—beauty—and there was war, and some people regard war as a god. There’s Ares, or that’s the Roman name. Oh, right, Mars is the Roman, Ares is the Greek, and so, forth.

So, a mythology consists of the anthropomorphization of our own obsessions, and then it becomes a whole pantheon, etc, etc. But that’s what our gods are: money, power, so forth. And health is another one. “I’m going to be perfectly healthy.” A friend of mine who used to counsel people with AIDS. All of these people living such pure lives, and in the end, they’re going to find themselves dying of absolutely nothing.

And when it says go for refuge, this means where do we go for security? And absolutely in our society, people go for security in money, and they think that’s where they’re going to find security, and happiness, and fulfillment, etc., etc. And it’s a bit of a shock to people when they realize that they don’t. In my work at HBO, one person left while I was coaching her, and there’s a good possibility another person is, so I’m going to have an interesting reputation there soon [laughs]. And the reason is through our interaction, they’re coming to realize that the job they have isn’t the sum total of who they want to be.

But in an institutional setting, that’s exactly what you try to sell the person, “This job is you.” And that’s how people are chained into an organization. But it isn’t. And one of the things that I found consistently with meditation practice that after about, oh, somewhere around nine months of a consistent meditation practice, sometimes it’s a bit longer, sometimes it’s two or three years, but it usually begins at around nine months—people start letting go of their identification of themselves with their job. They still will do their work very competently, but their job is no longer what they are. And that’s a very, very important transition because it’s stopping taking refuge in work, which is exactly what a lot of people do. Okay. Clint?

The meaning of friends

Clint: What’s the meaning of friends?

Ken: Well, it is, [pause] It’s who you hang out with.

Student: You’ve already gotten rid of them in verse four. Long-time friends, you’re going to separate, then it brings it up again, which I thought was kind of strange. Is that your gang?

Student: Unless you interpret that as you’ll separate from them when you die.

Student: Oh, when you die, oh.

Ken: Let me see.

Student: Four is about impermanence.

Student: Are you separating?

Ken: Well, verse four says your friends and relatives with whom you’ve associated for a long time, you’re going to separate from. And as people have said, it definitely means they’re talking about death here. That verse is about death. The subsequent verse, verse five, is about who you hang out with now.

Student: So, why would they bring in verse four this thing about death, when this is one of the practices of a bodhisattva, is holding death in mind at all times.

Ken: Well, let’s take a look at a slightly deeper level. We have spouses and partners and people we have an intimate relationship with. We have our children. We have our work colleagues, people we do things with, people we play with, okay. And we say we have all of these relationships. Of what does the relationship actually consist?

Student: Are you asking me?

Ken: Yes.

Student: Connection? You mean each relationship that you’re talking about? Attachment?

Ken: There are all of those things there. But take your husband, okay? You’re going to hate me for this in the morning.

Student: I know, I can tell. [Laughter]

Ken: What is your husband in your world?

Student: Everything to me. I know he’s emptiness too, he doesn’t really even exist, but I mean, everything!

Ken: Well, he might have something to say. [Laughter] Okay, I’m trying to figure out how to point this out to you without giving it to you.

Student: Okay. He’s a long time friend.

Ken: Yes.

Student: And a relative.

Ken: Yeah. [Laughter]

Student: No, I mean he’s my husband.

Ken: In any instance where you see him or think of him, what is that?

Student: He’s connected to me. He’s me in a way. I mean, he’s a reflection of me maybe.

Ken: There’s no way to do this, I can’t think of that.

Student: Just spit it out.

Ken: I’ll just spit it out. [Laughter] You have a series of experiences of meeting a certain person, interacting with a certain person, or interacting with something you call a certain person, and you put those all together and say, “This is my husband.” But all you actually have is a set of experiences. Now that’s all any of us have about anything. There’s just this set of experiences. And we build up certain experiences that are deeply webbed into our whole thing, so we say, “There’s a person that I have a strong connection with.” But in any single instance, it is simply an experience. Now, when you look at things that way, what happens? Let me be a little more specific. Do things close down or do they open up?

Student: They open up.

Ken: Why is that?

Student: It cuts through the obstruction that … [unclear] experiences it. Gets rid of the impermanence of it.

Ken: Actually It highlights.

Student: It highlights the impermanence.

Ken: It gets rid of the permanence that you’re projecting onto the whole thing. Okay?

Student: Isn’t an experience ongoing?

Ken: Yes. But you get to experience the person now new each time if you look at it just as an experience.

Student: This is why I hold onto things. They kind of keep experience in concretized forms. It’s weird, it’s interesting.

Ken: Right.

Student: I have a question.

Ken: Please.

The inner world and the constructed world

Student: I’m picking up the kind of difference between things, separable things and some sort of ongoing something. Anyway, so …

Ken: You want me to talk about that?

Student: Yeah, sure.

Ken: This is the difference in perspective, and you’ve all heard me say this before. What our life consists of are thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Out of that, we construct a world of objects. That’s what we construct out of the sensory sensations. We construct an identity, actually, out of the emotions. And we construct stories out of all of the thoughts. And all of these interact and weave together to form a nice, solid web. And now we relate to the world that we’ve constructed as what is real. Does anybody have a copy of my book here? Pardon? No. My book … good grief. [Laughter]

Student: I do.

Ken: You get a gold star. [Laughter]

Student: Let me find it. Here it is. Let me take all my personal references out.

Ken: I’m just going to look at one page.

Student: Don’t look at any of my private notes. [Laughter]

Ken: Someone sent me a link—this is quite a long time ago—to Octavio Paz’s Nobel acceptance speech. And I recommend reading it, you can find it on the web quite easily. Why isn’t it there? Oh, it’s back here. I know we read it last night or Monday night. Yes. One of the things that he talks about in the speech is his experience in childhood, in moving from the world of thoughts, feelings, and sensations, which is where the child lives, into the adult world of objects, and people, and time. So, this is just a small piece from it, but it’ll give you the idea:

Any piece of news, a harmless phrase, the headline in the newspaper: everything proved the outside world’s existence and my own unreality. I felt that the world was splitting and that I did not inhabit the present. My present was disintegrating: real time was somewhere else.

In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging to the others was the real one, the time of the real present.

Octavio Paz

So, we’re moving into the second pass here. When you reflected on this, what came up for you? And again, anything? Julia?

Julia: I have a question. In previous teachings and instructions from you, we’ve received the instruction to continuously move into experience. And I remember you telling the story about the teacher and the tea boy, and how useful it is to have these enemies, and nuisance factors so we can generate bodhisattva qualities such as patience. That seems to contrast with the advice here when we’re being asked to remove ourselves from associating with people who are bad influences. So, I wondered if you could speak about that.

Ken: Well, I’m thinking of taking up windsurfing, but I’m really miffed because I missed a great opportunity to learn how to windsurf. I could have used Hurricane Katrina. [Laughter] You know, good solid wind there. [Laughter] John?

John: I got something from number six.

Ken: Yes.

John: I was resisting watching Crash again, and I really had to force myself to do it, only because of realizing that you suggested it.

Ken: Is that the reason you watched it?

John: I’ve seen it.

Ken: Yes.

John: And I didn’t like it, and it was hard to do, but that is why.

Ken: Because I’d suggested it?

John: Because I trusted you.

Ken: Why did you take that suggestion? [Pause] It’s not in there. I think there are a bunch of other factors. Are you going to come to film night?

John: You’re suggesting that maybe I didn’t want to come to film night not having seen it?

Ken: Or not having seen it recently? So, did that enter into it at all?

John: It could have been. What I’m saying is I still think I was inspired more to force myself to do it because I trusted you.

Ken: And from your experience, was I falling into the category of verse five or verse six? [Laughter]

John: Six.

Ken: You sure it wasn’t verse five?

John: No, I’m sorry. [Laughter]

Ken: No, no. What’s your point here, John? [Pause] “It wasn’t a pleasant experience for me,” that’s what I’m gathering. So, are you asking me why did I make the suggestion?

John: I’m saying why I pushed myself into watching it.

Ken: Right, now do you regard that as a good thing, or a bad thing, or what?

John: No, I’m very glad I did.

Ken: Oh, okay. You left that little bit out. Why are you glad?

John: Well, I enjoyed it the second time, quite a bit more than I thought I was going to [laughs]. And it might’ve been because it was on a small screen and I wasn’t being as critical, and any number of reasons. But I’m saying that what inspired me to do it was …

Ken: Was the fact that I pushed a bit.

John: Yeah.

Ken: Yeah, I mean it’s okay to say that. I’m a pushy guy. Sometimes I’m nice about it.

John: I’m talking more in terms of the teacher dear to you.

Ken: Yes. No, I understand that. Now:

With some teachers, your shortcomings fade away and
Abilities grow like the waxing moon.
Hold such teachers dear to you,
Dearer than your own body.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 6

Let’s take a little closer look at that. When you associate with certain people, yeah, shortcomings fade away and abilities grow. Why does that happen? It’s not magic. They don’t sprinkle twinkle dust or whatever, pixie dust. What happens?

Student: It seems like it’s in you, and you just get led there by these people, bringing out the best.

Ken: And how does that happen? And the reason that I’m pushing this one a little bit is because you’re very interested in how you interact with each other. So, this is very important.

Peri: They shine the light of their attention on those aspects and brought them forward. I recall, I remember saying to you a long time ago … [unclear] my practice seriously, I began to take myself seriously. Like that.

Ken: Okay. I think that’s a good example. And thank you. So, what is happening in the interaction?

Student: Coming into presence.

Ken: Let’s not use any cliches here.

Student: Resonance of shared attention.

Ken: Well, let’s take Peri’s example because I think it’s quite clear. Her experience was the person outside her, in this case it was me, was taking her practice seriously. What did that do in you? [Pause] What did it make possible and what did it make impossible?

Peri: It supported and strengthened [pause] my ability to make effort in the practice, go on retreat. And it made it impossible for me to diminish or minimize, ignore.

Ken: Yeah. So, that’s the kind of thing that happens. When I was studying martial arts, the martial arts teacher was very good at this. Anytime somebody said, “I can’t do that,” he’d hit the roof. He said, “I never want to hear those words. I know what you can do. I’m an expert in this. If I say you can do it, you can do it. So, don’t tell me you can’t.” That was his version of compassion [laughs], but it was very, very effective. And he would just yell at the person or, “Don’t tell me that, because you’re telling yourself that,” etc., etc. So, what is the difference between the people in verse five and the people in verse six?

George: Degrading clarity versus enhancing clarity.

Ken: I want to make it more specific, George. What is the difference in how they interact with you?

George: Their intention is completely different.

Ken: Make it explicit, George.

George: In the first case, their intention is towards the worldly concerns, or worse. In the spiritual friend’s intention, it is to uncover the fullness of who you are and your awareness at its highest level.

Ken: Yeah, I’m going to make it a little more explicit than you have. In the verse five, these people are intent on using you. In verse six, these people are intent on developing you.

Student: I also see it as using the word energy, that there are people who take your energy.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: Drain it, and there are people whose interaction gives rise to it.

Ken: Any other points coming out of reflection here? Just one second. There are a lot of other people that we haven’t heard from, I want to make sure they have a chance. Janneke.

Janneke: Akin to this in terms of what arose for me, a dangerous place for me is this stanza because it creates duality for me, it creates judgment for me, and it promotes separation.

Ken: Okay, this is an important point and I want to talk about it a little bit. Pardon?

Janneke: I am not done.

Ken: Oh, I’m sorry.

Janneke: The other thing that arose very strongly out of contemplating this, focusing on the negative things first was spiritual ambition.

Ken: Spiritual ambition. Ah, yes.

Janneke: I won’t go into it.

Ken: That’s a real tough one. Okay. I remember a friend of mine went to, I think it was Munindra, who’s one of the really, really big Theravadan teachers, because he was stuck in his practice and he explained where he was. And Munindra listened to him very patiently, very attentively. And when he finished explaining his difficulties, Munindra looked at him and just asked him two questions, he said, “Do you understand the teachings and what they say?” “Yes.” “Are you spiritually ambitious?” “Yes.” And then Munindra just shook his head and said, “What a pity.” [Laughter]

What to do with negativity in your experience

Ken: Okay, give up bad friends. One can look at this very literally, which Gyelse Tokmé undoubtedly means. But in the way that we were talking before, one can also look at it as: what do you do with negativity in your experience? And here, there are three ways of working with it. And which way you use depends on your ability with respect to that particular experience of negativity. If you have sufficient capacity and attention, you can experience the negativity and not lose attention. And when that happens, what is negative opens up and releases, and the energy locked in it becomes available to you in your practice.

And you can actually experience that with people, that if you are present with them, not reacting, their negativity can release and a very different kind of relationship and different possibilities can open up in them. And I know many of you have experienced that kind of thing, either being with someone who’s had that transforming effect on you or you having that transforming effect on them. So, that’s where you can actually drink the negativity, and it enriches you, which is Vajrayana level practice.

If you don’t have a sufficient capacity to do that, then trying to do that is actually counterproductive. So, then you make the enemy into a friend, an ally, which is analogous, you know, you’re going to have this fight, and you meet this person, you say, “Well, why don’t we go down to the pub and have a drink?” And you end up buddies, so you’ve changed it.

The principle practice that you have for that is taking and sending. And in any experience of negativity, there is a sense of separation and alienation. And in taking and sending you actually bridge that. But if you don’t have the capacity to form a relationship that way, and we don’t all. I was actually working on an area in my own practice and I discovered this quite large area, which I don’t have any relationship with. So, I thought, my work’s cut out for the next few months. I thought, oh, It looks like fun ahead. If you don’t have the capacity to form a relationship with it, then it’s actually best to limit contact.

Student: To limit what?

Ken: To limit contact, because you can’t experience it without getting lost in it. It’s not where you want to end up. It’s a practical thing to do in the short term. Now, look at these not as absolute injunctions, but pragmatic advice. These are not the 10 Commandments, you know, which is God’s word engraved in stone. They’ve been trying to engrave it in stone and install it in courthouses all over, they really want it.

These are instructions, these are practices, which doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want, but how do you use them? Well, if you hang out with certain people, you get distracted. They want to stay up late and drink and have a good time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that it weakens your intention in your life. That’s all. So, look at this in pragmatic terms. Now, is that a useful response to you?

Janneke: Yes, that’s the way I experienced it. And I utilized several of those techniques. What occurred or developed, was appreciation for them, as opposed to an opposition. And not only an appreciation, but there’s a progression from the forth stanza. I can open from one set of companions into another set of companions.

Ken: And there is that progression. Yeah, there is that progression. In the first, stanza four, it’s like saying, okay, every relationship you have is going to end, which means stop making any relationship the ultimate thing in your life. It’s all going to end, every one of them. And the next one is, okay, these are relationships which actually don’t do anything for you. They make your life worse. And then the next one is, these are relationships which make your life better. And then when you get to refuge it says, and this is what you’re really focused on, focus your attention here. This is what’s really important. So, there is exactly that kind of progression. Okay. Steve?

Steve: This number five is interesting that Janneke says, when I first started studying and practicing, that was a question I had is, what are all these people that I feel negative things? And a teacher just told me about that, that there’s a difference between judgment and discretion.

Ken: Yeah, very good.

Steve: And he said it’s okay to have discretion and say, these things are probably not in my best interest right now.

What were the challenges in incorporating these verses into your meditation?

Ken: Okay, now, I don’t want to go too late tonight. So, what were the challenges you faced, maybe none, in really incorporating this in meditation, really taking it in deeply? What did you encounter there? [Pause] Joe.

Joe: Something happened to me in meditation, which I think it was a result of the discussion last week. And, for example, number four, which started out in meditation as a basic meditation on death and impermanence soon led to the realization that maybe what I’m thinking about is not the end of my life, but what’s true about right now. It’s a description of what actually is now. I am separate from long-term, long-time friends and relatives. I have left behind the wealth because it’s not really part of me, in essence. And the consciousness is: I’m not my body. So, the reflection is always, what is true right now? And the same is true with gods. Who is my ordinary god? Who do I look to protect me, apart from societal things? Just who you are.

Ken: Okay, very good. That’s a very good thing to reflect on. Where do I actually go for refuge? That’s what you’re asking. Good. Anybody else? Susan?

Susan: I’ve been taking a new look at refuge.

Ken: Mm-hmm, I bet you have. [laughs].

Susan: In more ways than one. I realized that it’s not something that I just do at the beginning of our prayers, or even at becoming a Buddhist. But it’s something that is done over and over. It’s sort of a radical, and even a counterintuitive thing to do.

Ken: Say a bit more there.

Susan: Well, the first few verses are about taking very practical, fundamental, refuge in the three jewels. And it’s about having to give up everything that you think you know and is familiar to you … [Unclear] And then the deeper you go, maybe it’s less based on faith, and there’s more … [unclear] you experience, let’s say. You take it all the way ultimately to include everything.

Ken: Right? Okay. So, it’s an ongoing practice for you. Yeah. Catherine, can I borrow the book again?

This is also on the website in a somewhat more abbreviated form. The section on refuge, which is page 43 following. I offer three levels of interpretation of the buddha, dharma, and sangha. There’s the historical Buddha, the words that have been recorded and comprise the core teachings, and then the monks, which have carried on the tradition of the sangha through the centuries.

But you can also say that there is buddha in the sense of awake mind. And there is dharma in the sense of lived experience of the teaching, direct experience. So, rather than compassion being a concept, you experience being compassionate. And the sangha at that level are the people who actually help you bring that about.

And a third way of looking at it is:

To take refuge in the Buddha is to rest in the emptiness of original mind, free from any reference or defining characteristic. To take refuge in the Dharma is to experience the clarity of original mind, the natural awareness that knows what experience is and how experiences arises. And to take refuge in the Sangha is to be one with the unrestricted arising and subsiding of experience.

Wake Up To Your Life, Ken McLeod, p. 46

What was wonderfully ironic is that when I was organizing a program with Yvonne and Ajahn Amaro—Ajahn Amaro was trained in the Theravadan tradition—he said, “We never take refuge in buddha as the teacher.” The only refuge that he was familiar with was that last one, taking refuge in the emptiness, clarity and unrestricted experience of mind itself. So, they’re all of these levels. Okay, just want to make sure there’s anybody else. Okay, Peri?

Peri: I started thinking about it as … [unclear] would it be? Letting each thought be it. But it …

Ken: Wasn’t easy, [laughter] right. Okay. Other practice points. Robert.

Robert: I don’t know if it’s a practice point as much as my experience with number five. The friends that I experienced weren’t outer friends, but the inner friends, the habituated patterns.

Ken: That’s very good.

Robert: And to me, each of those friends were one of the six realms. And so, where was the attachment to each of those realms? Where was the aversion? Where was the indifference?

Ken: And where was the seduction? Yeah, good.

Student: And was the awakened friend also in you? [Laughter]

Robert: Yeah, but that’s not the one they’re talking about, [laughter]. They’re talking about the three poisons.

Student: Yeah, I was talking about six.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Clint.

Clint: Fairly technical question maybe. How do you take in these versus through meditation?

Ken: Well, I’m going to let somebody else answer that one. Anybody want to take this one? You’ve all been working on it. Somebody should be able to do this.

Elizabeth: The way that I work with it is that I’ll read the passages many times usually and see what grabs me the most. And then I’ll sit with that in meditation. I’ll think about it for a few moments, then sit with the effect of the thought, and do that, and see what develops in the process.

Student: From the beginning or after going through 10 or 15 minutes?

Elizabeth: Well, yeah, in meditation I’ll sit with my breath, or walk first. And then focus on a line that really grabs my attention, and sit with the actual feeling, experience, or sense of that. And I think repetitively about it. I’ll think the line or the phrase, or the paragraph, and see what actually arises as I sit with the kind of reverberation.

Ken: You let it rattle around in you. So, take any verse. Let’s say take verse six Clint, you read this over.

With some teachers your shortcomings fade away and
Abilities grow like the waxing moon.
Hold such teachers dear to you,
Dearer than your own body—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 6

Now here’s one way to do this. When you read the whole verse, what line or phrase grabs your attention, evokes something in you, stimulates you?

Clint: The waxing moon.

Ken: Okay, Abilities grow like the waxing moon that phrase. So, you could just sit with that. And as Elizabeth was noting, was mentioning, you go through the usual drill here. Abilities grow like the waxing moon. What happens in my body? What are the emotions connected with that? What are the stories? So, you really come into connection with that. And as Elizabeth was saying, that’s kind of the effect that the phrase has in you.

And that’s what I meant, you let it rattle around or reverberate around in you. You may uncover in the process, “I don’t think my abilities grow like that.” Well now you’ve just identified a self-image, a restricting self-image. And so, you can work with that, or you can go from there and explore, okay, “What do I actually experience in the interaction with my teacher?” Is it an opening? Is it a closing? And so, you’re really taking it in very deeply. Does this help?

Student: There is an explanation of the piece that Michelle put up from that nun in Seattle. An explanation—

Ken: Thupten. T-H is pronounced T.

Student: That person. And it’s an explanation of I think what she calls analytic meditation.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: It’s very helpful because she explains how we do it all the time. We take what somebody said about somebody, if we talk about relationships, something that somebody said about somebody, and play that in our mind and say, “Oh yeah.” And we can do the same thing with the things we read, outside, on the pillow, but also outside of meditation. “Oh yeah, Ken said that,” or “I read that.” It works. It works to rattle it around.

Ken: Exactly.

Student: One thing you can do is also ask the question of yourself, maybe even repeatedly. An example: “how do I act as a bodhisattva in everyday life when what I’m doing has nothing to do with what is in this 37 practices most of the time?” This is a mundane existence, a lot of the time, it seemed to me. So, I asked myself, “how can I apply this in my regular life?” And for the longest time there seemed to be a real separation, like a real dichotomy there. It’s like night and day. And then a few days later, actually, came the notion, the answer, look for the highest good in any situation.

Ken: Okay. So, that’s a reflective process, throw out the question and let it rattle around until something comes out of it. Okay. Peri?

Peri: I use a similar process like I usually ask, “Is it true for me?”

Ken: That’ll take it in deeply. Yeah. Is it true for me? And if it isn’t, then what prevents it from being true for me? Now, I do want to caution when you’re taking that kind of approach, it’s very good, it’s fairly easy to become quite judgmental about ourselves.

Peri: I don’t think I need any help with that. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, but that’s the danger that I’m pointing to.

Peri: But when I say it’s not true about me, it’s more like, does this resonate as true for me, which I think is slightly different.

Ken: All right. Yes, because when we read these things, it’s very easy to feel that this is a prescription of how we should behave. Now, this is rather a description of how a bodhisattva lives. Okay? And we aspire to it. But if we adopt a punitive approach to ourselves, “I’m not doing this,” and “I should be doing better,” etc., that kind of judgmental attitude, this actually becomes counterproductive, because now we’re reinforcing a negative self image. Do you follow?

And that’s why, as he says, this is a practice of a bodhisattva. This isn’t something you can suddenly just be, this is what you seek to practice. Now, all of you know this with respect to meditation. How many of you, the first time you meditated, just rested consistently with the breaths? [Laughter] And yet many people take that as the criterion for success or failure.

So many people, and a good number of you, came in soon after you practiced and said, “This isn’t for me, I failed. I wandered all over the place. I didn’t keep my attention on the breath for more than half a breath.” Okay, but you practiced it, and what happens is you practiced it? Well, eventually you’re able to stay with a breath for one whole breath. Then you have that magic moment where it comes three breaths in a row and like, “Oh, that was different.”

And this is how to approach this. These are things you practice and you’re going to fall down, and not do them again, and again, and again. So, don’t form a negative opinion of yourself. At that point just say, “Okay, that’s that.” Go on to the next; there’s the next moment. Okay, I just want to check at this point, how is this evening for you? Does this work?

Student: Yes. It felt more dynamic.

Ken: Yeah. Can we go on this way? Yes. Do I have permission? [Laughter]