Student questions on the text

Ken: But in our culture where we don’t have this same worldview, the same cosmology, we’re more likely—and I think it is more appropriate for us—to look at what we’re calling inner interpretations of this text rather than the outer. I don’t mean to dismiss the outer, but I want to highlight the inner. One comment that was made, for instance, with regard to verse 5:

With some friends, the three poisons keep growing,
Study, reflection, and meditation, weaken,
And loving kindness and compassion fall away.
Give up bad friends—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 5

Inner interpretations of the text

Ken: Now, in almost any commentary that you’re going to get from a traditional perspective, it would be taken just as that. But at least one person, I think two or three people said, “Well, yeah, but I can also see this as applying to patterns because that’s who we hang out with a lot.” And I just wanted to highlight that and say that this is a very appropriate, I think a very helpful way to look at this, to be looking at it at that level as well. I just didn’t feel I’d given sufficient support for that last time. So, following the way that we approached it last week, these three verses, are there any conceptual points or translation points or anything in the text you’re curious about, you’d like to ask? Catherine?

Catherine: Your translation in the 10th stanza, about give rise to awakening mind and in the Dalai Lama’s translation and then the other one I had, it was altruistic intention. And then I found a lot about altruistic intention that was written in the new book of The Words of My Perfect Teacher. And the Dailai Lama had a lot to say about it, so I wondered what you were thinking.

Ken: Okay.

Catherine: I know that’s probably a big deal.

Ken: It is, but it’s an important matter. The Sanskrit term here is bodhicitta. The Tibetan is byang chub sems (pron. jang chub sem), and the English translation that I’ve evolved to is awakening mind. Now, you’re right, there’s a big topic here. Bodhicitta, you have the two words, bodhi and citta. Bodhi is the word for awakening. For many years, most of us translated it as enlightenment, but awakening is the more appropriate English, and citta is the word for mind. Now, there are many, many words for mind, and there are many meanings for citta, or sem in Tibetan. In this context, what is it, the altruistic attitude?

Catherine: Intention.

Ken: Intention. It can be thought of as an intention or an attitude or a way of approaching things. Now, the reason that it’s been translated as altruistic is that the idea is—one is in bodhicitta—you discover the possibility of awakening in yourself. And with that discovery, you understand that this is the only way to be free of suffering. So, you naturally want all other people to experience it too.

And so it’s a very, very expansive quality, very inclusive quality. And out of it evolves what we call the bodhisattva vow, which is the vow to awaken this attitude in everyone. And the only way to do that is to achieve awakening in yourself. So, it’s the vow to wake up completely in order to be able to help all others wake up. Now, that’s why it is translated as altruistic. Personally, I feel that altruistic is to bodhi or awakening mind as skim milk is to cream.

That’s just my personal feeling about the relative weight in the words. And I think awakening has a lot more power. It also includes another aspect which altruism just doesn’t embrace in English at all. And that is that this awakening mind, or this mind of awakening—which might be a better way of putting it, it’s just clumsy in English—has two aspects. There is the experience of awakening, which means there’s an experience of knowing what experience is.

What is experience? Experience is empty. When you know experience is empty, that is freeing and filling at the same time, because all things become possible. Well, rather than say filling, it’s freeing and enriching. A lot of people think of emptiness as a negative, but it really isn’t. So, that aspect of awakening mind doesn’t come through the word altruism at all, which is why I declined to use that term. Okay?

Catherine: That reminds me at the beginning when we have emptiness and compassion are together.

Ken: Yeah, that’s right.

Catherine: And I kept seeing that in a lot of places.

Ken: Out of that direct understanding then naturally arises compassion, which is, “Everybody’s got to experience this.” Yes?

Clint: But the premise is, it’s out of the awakening mind, something we were talking about … [unclear], it’s a cause and effect of awakening mind, is compassion or is it …

Ken: Well, yes and no, sorry, the usual Buddhist answer. [Laughter] You can cultivate awakening mind through developing compassion. And when awakening mind arises, compassion arises even more strongly. So, it operates both ways. That’s why I say yes and no. I’ve been talking about it as awakening mind, that discovery of that possibility, as the genesis for a very deep form of compassion.

But if you read Kongtrül in The Great Path of Awakening, he is recommending that you cultivate taking and sending, because through that you engender compassion, and with that engenderment of compassion, you open the door to having this level of awakening mind. So, it depends which way you want to work it, and you can work at both. In the Zen tradition, they work it from discovering that awakening. In the Tibetan tradition, it’s much more about cultivating the compassion leading into that.

Clint: Is there an awakened mind that has not cultivated compassion?

Ken: That would be a contradiction in terms. You aren’t awake to how things are if you aren’t experiencing compassion. Yeah, that’s just true. Okay. Any other points in this? Joe.

Joe: So, could we say if we recognized or experienced exactly how things are—that we had no separate existence—the … [unclear] to that would be that we were connected. And if we actually recognized that we were connected, we would recognize that any harm we did would be done to ourselves. And the opposite of that, we would do no harm.

Ken: Yes, basically that’s right. I just want to be careful about the language, because there are a lot of slippery things in the way that you articulate it. And when we go through—in terms of practice experience—verses eight and nine, that point’s going to come out very clearly. But what you’re saying is right. I would just clean up the language a little bit.

When you say we wouldn’t be separate. Well, actually we aren’t separate, but we experience ourselves as separate. So, that’s what drops, the framework which causes us to experience things. And to say then when we do others harm or actually harming ourselves, that can easily slide into a kind of rather naive new age form of thinking, which I’m sure isn’t what you intended, but it has that danger. It is more accurate to say that when we do harm to another, we initiate a process which creates suffering for ourselves and others. Okay? Okay.

Student: Words: spacious, spaciousness, and also wisdom. Are they synonymous really with emptiness?

Ken: I would say it depends who’s using them. In my experience, quite often when people use the word spacious in describing their experience, they’re actually talking about a certain kind of dullness.

Student: Certain kind of what?

Ken: Dullness. And so I get a little curious at that point, not always, but quite often. At the same time, the word spacious is a pretty useful word for translating certain vocabulary in dzogchen, where you have chos dbyings mdzod (pron. chö ying dzö), treasury of the space of all experience—big. Wisdom, again, it depends a little bit on how it’s being used. When you’re talking about wisdom in the sense of the Perfection of Wisdom, it means knowing emptiness directly. Now, you get into some nice philosophical things about, is knowing emptiness equal emptiness? Well, in a certain sense it is, but you’re going to talk about it in a slightly different way, if you see what I mean.

What is emptiness?

Ken: I think part of your question is, what is emptiness, right? Well, you may think this is being a little glib, but I mean this in all seriousness, emptiness is not a thing. And you need to take that one in very, very deeply, because the human tendency, whenever you hear a word—empty—you may make it into a noun. Nouns are things, so now emptiness has suddenly become a thing, and it becomes an object of study, etc., etc.

Emptiness actually is much more a description, but it’s not a thing. And it points—and that’s why I say a description—it points to an aspect of experience that we consistently ignore or simply are not aware of. And what is that aspect of experience? It’s that what arises, nothing that arises in experience is a thing either, but that’s how we experience it. Okay? Michelle.

Michelle: My understanding is that the Hopi language has no nouns, that the way you describe something like a tree translates roughly as it grows. Is that analogous to what you’re talking about?

Ken: I don’t know enough about the Hopi language. In fact, I know nothing.

Michelle: That’s everything I know.

Ken: Well, I know less than that. I don’t know. Is it analogous to what I’m doing? I don’t see it. Okay. But that may be just because I’m thick tonight. Okay. Other points, translation points or questions about the text, conceptual questions. Clear as mud, right?

Student’s reflection on the verses

Ken: Okay. When you reflected on any of these verses, what came up? [Pause] Now, we may not get through everybody, but something absolutely came up for everybody. [Laughs] Somebody says, “No, nothing came up”. Then I suppose you didn’t do it. So, what have you got?

Student: In verse eight: “For that reason, even if your life is at risk, don’t engage in destructive actions.” [Ken laughs] When I read, even if your life is at risk, I’ve read it before, the Bodhicaryavatara talks a lot about it. Every time I read it, I get simultaneously just totally afraid and also depressed, because I don’t think I … If my life was at risk, I know I would engage in destruction actions.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: I mean, I know I would as I sit here today. I guess I get self-critical.

Ken: Yeah. You want to comment on that?

Student: It’s an interesting thing because this was a very vibrant stance he makes. And what was completely clear is that my life was at risk, not in a physical sense. And the whole point of the destructive actions which are generated internally. And because the lower realms are in fact very hard to endure if you’re rolling around with them. But it brought me right to the place of needing to die and being willing to die. And it brought me right back to offering … [unclear] to the wrathful deities. Actually it brought me right back to that practice.

Ken: Protector practice?

Student: That’s what I meant. And it’s just a different way to look at life when at risk.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: And the only way to do it is to die.

Ken: You coming on Sunday, Warrior’s Solution?

Student: I’m still not sure.

Ken: It’s right on topic. Yeah, it’s exactly this point. Maybe you should come. [Laughter] Okay. Give me an example of a circumstance in which you would do a destructive action if your life were at risk.

Student: [Pause] It’s interesting because I didn’t really think of it that specifically.

Ken: You just read that and said—

Student: I just read it and I just—

Ken: Okay. Now that was not reflecting. [Laughter] Okay. But see, because you notice, okay, when would I actually do that? I’ll come to you, Chuck, in a sec. I want to torture her a little bit.

Student: You can torture me.

Ken: Okay. So, when would you do that?

Student: Maybe if somebody was putting you down. Put them down, respond in that manner.

Ken: Okay. So, when it came down to your survival, you would drop into anger or whatever. Okay. Can you imagine acting in the same circumstance without anger, even doing the same thing?

Student: You mean putting them down without anger?

Ken: Yeah.

Student: Yeah. I mean, well, I could imagine responding to them in a direct way, maybe not putting them down, but certainly responding in an honest way without anger.

Ken: Now, picking up on what Janneke was referring to, suppose somebody insults you. What’s the natural thing most of us do in that circumstance?

Student: Defensive.

Ken: Yeah, or snap back at them in some way. Harsh speech, slander, whatever, you know the 10 non virtuous acts. Okay, that’s destructive action. Why do we do that?

Student: You feel hurt. And so you want to hurt back.

Ken: In other words—and this is what we’ll be talking about a bit in the Warrior’s Solution—you’re not willing to experience what is arising for you. You’re not willing to experience that discomfort and die in that experience. We collapsed down onto our ordinary sense of ourselves and kill the other person. Do this all the time. Okay? So, I think this is what Janneke was referring to when saying, our life is already at risk—our awakened life.

[Unclear] … phrases. And Clint, this goes to your question last week, how do you work for this? Okay, you read a phrase—For that reason, even if your life is at risk, don’t engage in destructive actions—you think, “What? That’s totally unreasonable.” Right? That’s all you do. I mean, “That’s just stupid. It’s really important to live.”

Well, these people were actually pretty serious when they wrote this kind of thing. And so the first step when we have that, which is an experience of not being able to take it in, okay? Now in the reflection stage, I mean, we understand the words, that’s easy. In the reflection stage, we’ve got to make that our own, which means that we have to work through what is not allowing us to take it in.

I suggested one way of helping to do that. I say, “Okay, even if your life is at risk, don’t engage in destructive actions.” I think, “Okay, let’s suppose my life is at risk to the point that I would engage in destructive actions. What would that actually look like? What is such a case?” That’s one way. Maybe that’s the mathematician in me. Because one of the things you learn when you’re in mathematics training is when you can’t find the solution to a problem you say, “Well, I can’t find the solution, but maybe I can figure out what the solution has to look like.” And so you think, “Okay, what would this look like? What is such a case?” And that’s going to lead you in a whole different direction just as you noticed. Okay?

And then another way to reflect on it leads you into the other side of things, “Okay, why do I engage in destructive actions? What actually happens when I put somebody down? What happens when I kill somebody’s trust? What’s happening in me when I want something that somebody else has?” And when you look at that, it doesn’t take long to see that I don’t want to experience something. And it means that I go into this action because I go to sleep. Okay, now, “What’s my life about?” Well, it’s meant to be about being awake, so … [laughs]. So, you see, you follow? Okay, so those were a couple of ways. Okay, Chuck?

Chuck: Well, I was thinking of a situation where you might have to, in a situation of self-defense, you might engage in destructive action.

Ken: Well, I happened to be at a talk given by the Dalai Lama when he was asked one of these stupid reporter questions, which I thought he handled with consummate skill. He said, “If you were standing at the door of the strategic air command thing, NORAD under Colorado, and you saw that one of the generals was about to push the button to launch a nuclear war and you had a pistol or gun, would you use it?” [Laughter] You see what I mean about one of these stupid reporter questions? And the Dalai Lama, without any sense of irritation or mockery or anything like that said, “If it was clear that there was no other alternative, I would give it very serious consideration.” [Laughter]

Now, in the Mahayana, and I don’t know this point in the Theravada well enough, maybe somebody here does—I’ve got to take this one up with Jason when we do our program together—but in the Mahayana anyway, the morality of an action is determined both by the nature of the action itself and the motivation in it, that propels it. And that’s why I was asking Kate about that. So, if a person is attacking you—or a group of other people or what have you—and you go, “This is wrong,” and you stop him, perhaps even by violence, but you’re not acting coming out of anger, that’s a very different matter from getting angry about it. You follow?

Chuck: Yeah. Dave and I discussed this earlier, and we came to … [unclear].

Ken: And I’m sure many of you have had the same experience. And when that happens, everybody else looks at you and says, “How’d you know how to do that?” or something like that. It’s because you were clear, not clouded by your obscurations. And so you do what is completely natural and is often the only reasonable course of action. But the others, clouded by their anger, or defensiveness or clinging to one thing or another, can’t see that as a possibility. Nava?

Nava: Also, recalling destructiveness, the way I use it during the day … [unclear] in speech so consistently, definitely recognize, and the harm I did was just being caught in thoughts, in planning, and all of that.

Ken: That’s right.

Nava: When I looked why it’s hard for me to die there, I was just afraid to die. That was it. Fear of dying, that it was so clear and simple the first time I made that connection.

Ken: Yeah.

Nava: And my question is, what is that is dying in that moment? We don’t think about it. Actually, this is not in our mind.

Ken: No, no, that’s right. Yeah.

Nava: There’s some knowledge in that moment that there’s emptiness, there’s some knowledge that is there.

Ken: Well, let’s look at it from both sides. When we don’t die, that is when we say the wrong thing or what have you, it’s because our attention has collapsed onto any or all of three things. These are the three marks of existence.

Student: Of what?

Ken: Three marks of existence. It feels like we have to act this way in order to survive physically, in order to get our emotional needs met, or in order to be somebody, to maintain our identity. Now, most situations, none of those are actually in play, but we think they are. So, when we’re clear … In our lives there are relatively few situations we encounter where we’re actually physically at risk of dying. But what helps with that, is the recognition, “Well, I’m going to die anyway. I’m not going to survive this life.”

A friend of mine would apply this to relationships, and he would say, “What is the one thing you know about this relationship you’re just getting into? What’s the one thing you know about it?” [Laughter] What do you think?

Student: It’s going to end.

Ken: It’s going to end. It may end with my death, it may end with the other person’s death, or it may end for any number of reasons before that. But that is the one thing you know about it, okay. If you are in a relationship and you know that it’s going to end, what is the appropriate thing to do in that relationship?

Student: Pop a bottle of champagne! [Laughter]

Ken: Yeah, basically. And the word that he used was, “Savor it,” whatever it is, because it’s not going to be there sometime in the future. And so if we can start cultivating that attitude, whatever arises in experience, savor it. You can even savor unpleasant things; they get kind of interesting. We have all these foods, and we have bitter foods and things like that, and sometimes we enjoy them, because they add something else to it.

Now emotional needs met—one can say, most of the suffering in the world is generated because people are trying to get their emotional needs met. Can you ever get your emotional needs met? No, because they were formed in the past. It’s gone, and all you’re trying to do is recover the past. That takes you out of the present and it never works. All it does is bend yourself and everybody else out of shape, and that’s suffering. So, that comes down to, “Well, there’s no sense in acting this way because I’m just trying to get my emotional needs met, and that’s not going to happen anyway.”

And then the other one is identity, image. “How could he say that to me?” And anything else you want. And from the Buddhist point of view, who is there to be? So, if we deeply inculcate those, cultivate those in us, we become more able to recognize when those are being triggered. Now, I’ll give you an example from my coaching. There’s a woman who was kicking up a fuss because she wasn’t feeling that she was being treated the right way where she was working. And she said, “When they started affecting the way that I earn my livelihood, that’s when I dig in, Ken.” And I said, “Oh, that’s very interesting. Are you telling me that if you lost this job, you wouldn’t be able to get another one?” She said “Nonsense, Ken. I’m very good at my job. I’d get another job just like that.” “Oh, then how are they messing with your livelihood?” “Oh.” So, she was locked into identity about that job, and she would collapse onto that and kick up a fuss about really meaningless stuff, because she wasn’t thinking in the larger picture. You follow?

So, if you think of the work on the six realms, you may find this useful. When you feel like killing somebody, which is hell, realm stuff, right? And you can say, “What am I opposing? Do I need to oppose this? Is opposing called for at all?” And you find that that will often change. And then there are comparable things you can say for other emotions, but that gets you out of your own identification of those things. Now, the whole point of meditation is to build up a capacity in attention so that you can experience the fear of dying and not act on it. It’s not to get rid of the fear, it’s to be able to experience the fear but not have to act on it.

Student: Have to what?

Ken: Have to act on it. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay, good. John?

John: When you suggest that attitude in going into a relationship, it seems to me that you’re falling into the number nine. You’re looking for happiness, when indeed that isn’t really advisable. It also seems like if you’re opening up a bottle of champagne, you’re falling into another trap [laughs].

Ken: Well, yes.

Student: That just depends on your intention … [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: But you say number nine, verse number nine? Okay. Now there’s the difference between [pause] … Well, let’s turn to verse number nine.

Student: Can I ask a question on verse eight?

Ken: Pardon? Sure. Okay.

Student: I took this much more literally. I wondered how many of us in the McCarthy era would have been willing to stand up for our neighbors who were accused of being communists, if that meant that our own careers would be ruined, and our family lives.

Ken: Well, it’s interesting that you talk about that because I heard a discussion on NPR raising exactly that point about Margaret McCarthy, or whatever her name is, who got …

Student: And how many of us in Germany in the 40’s would’ve been willing to speak out, as opposed to standing passively by, which was in itself a destructive action.

Steve: Not necessarily. [Unclear] … family life.

Ken: Well, I think your points are very valid. But again, there are several slippery slopes here, and Steve’s just raised one of them. It’s interesting you raised that one because I just saw a play on that subject on Saturday night down at the Mark Taper, which if they hadn’t put the love story element in, it would’ve been a very powerful play.

Student: That’s exactly what I heard about it.

Ken: And that really killed it. But without that, it was pretty solid.

Three levels of experience

Ken: We have three levels of experience, at least. The world we live and our relationship with the society and environment. There are all of the emotions that come up and our relationship with all of that internal material. And then at the deeper level there is the relationship with ignorance itself, and to what extent we indulge it.

In the Tibetan tradition, you had the three vows: the monastic ordination—or individual liberation, individual freedom—the bodhisattva vow—the awakening being—and the vajrayana or knowledge holder. And basically those three vows work at those three levels. At the individual freedom vow, those are about specific actions that you take in the world. At the bodhisattva vow, it’s very much about intention and how you approach the world. And at the vajrayana or knowledge holder, it’s how you experience the world. That’s a very hard vow to keep. Atisha said, “The monastic ordination, never broken that. Bodhisattva vow, every couple of hours. Vajrayana, like rain.” [Laughter]

So, keeping all three levels in mind, that’s a full practice. Now, I want to caution all of you here, and Raquel brought this point up at our last meeting. Because we’re raised in … many of us are raised in Christian traditions, and I can’t speak for Judaism because I didn’t grow up in Judaism, but I get the sense that guilt is also a little thing that operates in that culture too. [Laughter] And because Judaism is based on a sense of law, we are very conditioned to regard moral precepts, we even have that term, as prescriptive. This is the way you’re meant to behave.

And I know that when I was working with Ajahn Amaro and Yvonne, one of the points they kept bringing out from the Theravaden and the Zen traditions is that, this is not so much how you are meant to behave. This is how an awakening being behaves. So, it’s a description rather than a prescription. And that’s why I emphasized the point last week, to approach this as a practice, not as, you do this or you go to hell. I mean, on a cheery note on that, Jamgön Kongtrül, who is one of the great 19th century teachers, writes in his biography, “If what it says in the sutras is true, the best of us are going straight to hell.” [Laughter]

So, what do you do? Savor it. [Laughter] What do you do with a practice? You make an effort—and all of you know this from your meditation practice—you fall out of attention, you wake up from that, you clean up the mess the best you can, and you go on. And you keep making the effort. You keep making the effort. You keep making the effort, whether it’s returning to the breath, or one’s moral code, or whatever. You just keep making the effort.

And that way there’s a sense of, well, there is a development, there is a cultivation, but you aren’t getting into this really tight mind, which is very counterproductive. And I’ve talked about this before. I can remember talking about it in our diety class a couple of years ago. It’s very important. This is really important—in your meditation and in your life—if you can meet difficulty and stay soft inside, then meet it all the way.

Student: Then what?

Ken: Meet it all the way, that’s in your meditation, in your life. But once your mind hardens up, then you are probably reinforcing problematic tendencies in you. You’ve got to change the way you’re working with the situation, you may have to get out of it. Developing a hard, brittle mind is really not helpful. And that’s something to watch for in one’s practice and in one’s interaction with people in life. Anytime you sense that hardness, I mean that’s a number one alarm bell that you’re protecting something, you’re blocking something, you’re suppressing something. And so even how you’re behaving, you’re no longer acting, even if you’re behaving very well, you’re no longer in full attention, in full presence.

Student: How would you describe that?

Ken: The hardness? Well, you described it when you said, “I’m afraid of dying.” It’s like bang there’s a wall there. Now you start working with that wall and you begin to feel it. And I suspect that as you feel it, you’ll begin to notice that it’s not just here and there. It’s all over the place. It’s always present. And when you begin to sense that, that means you’re beginning to move out of full identification with it. It’s beginning to become workable, but it’s a process, you follow? You need more? Okay. Any other points about your experience with reflection?

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Okay. Fire away, Joe.

Joe: When I thought about expressing what had happened to me, the first way I thought about expressing it was with the words, it was a pun, “Drive all threats into one.” What I meant by that was that, again—trying to bring down what looks like a description of a larger world into the immediate—by recognizing that I can see my happiness disappeared despite that, right now in a given moment and reappear or not. But I found it interesting that I used the word threat, and it reminded me that, and this came up mainly in eight. It reminded me that it’s really hard for me to not posit somebody or something threatening me with punishment. So, when I read something like “suffering in the lower realms is really hard to endure,” I always hear, “You better do this … or else.” And I rebel. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, okay. This is precisely where the process of reflection is really important. And it’s reflection more than meditation, because we have our background, and that’s how we were brought up, that moral authority comes from outside. And when it says: The Sage says it as the result of destructive actions, suffering in the lower realms, Buddha didn’t say, “If you disobey me, you’ll be damned.” That occurs in other traditions. Okay? What Buddha said was, “This is how it works. If you do this, you’re going to experience that. That’s just how it works.”

He doesn’t say, “I made it that way,” or “I’m going to punish you,” or anything like that. He said, “This is just how it works.” And what the purpose of our reflections are, is to see if that’s how it works for us too. Buddha is saying, “This is how it works for me. This is what I’ve seen.” But, he also said, “You’ve got to take my words and see if they’re true for you.” So, when he says, “You gotta see if this is true.” When you suffer, what is the genesis of that suffering? Now, I just described to you an incident I had last week, which is causing me a good bit of suffering,

But I’m actually quite grateful for it because it’s a nice reminder. There are certain kind of situations where I tend to lose attention, so it reminded me. That’s how I’m using it. You follow? But I don’t have any idea, any sense that somebody’s doing this or somebody’s telling me. Now, sometimes like you, I will get a little rebellious, and I’ll just say, “Oh, the hell with a whole thing.” But you know why I go there? It’s exactly the same reason you go there, because right there, there’s something I’m unwilling to experience. That’s where it all starts, right there. So, when you are becoming rebellious, you can use that as an alarm bell. “I’m feeling rebellious now. What am I unwilling to experience?” Can you use that?

Joe: Yeah.

Ken: Yeah. What am I unwilling to experience right now? That I’m alone, and afraid and I’m miserable. Of course, I don’t want to experience it!

Joe: Reminds me of that thing we discussed last week about a given situation in which you can either find energy and for practice, ally with, or go away from.

Ken: Yeah, that’s right, and that goes to the point I was making earlier about being soft. If you can’t experience it and stay soft, then you leave. But you leave in a good way. You just don’t engage any action. But if you can actually experience it, to whatever extent, and stay soft, then you start that transformation process.

Student: Can you describe soft again?

Ken: Well, rather than do it with anger, let’s do it with desire. You see something and you like it, “I don’t need it.” And then something hardens in you.

Student: Say what?

Ken: Something hardens in you. Do you know what I mean? That’s the opposite of soft.

Student: Like I don’t deserve it. I’m never going to have it.

Ken: Or, “I’ve got to have it.” It can go any direction, but that’s the opposite of soft. It’s when there’s some kind of imperative. It’s this way. And you can feel the loss of flexibility in your system. Okay?

Michelle: Isn’t it accompanied by an actual physical tensing or relaxing?

Ken: Usually. I don’t want to say always because the same process happens at fairly deep states of mind, but there’s probably something physically going on. But certainly in our own experience, yeah. And you’re referring to another principle which I found very useful is, use your body to tell you what’s happening. The body is very reliable.

An experiment with desire

Student: So, would you experience desire the same way that you describe experiencing fear, in attention? That is, you experience the desire and the feelings in your body and the way you feel about the desire, and yet in attention, not act automatically on it one way or the other.

Ken: Well, let’s not talk about this theoretically, we did this a couple of years ago, but it’s probably worth repeating. Everybody pick an object that you really like. Now, it can be your partner, it can be some clothes, it can be a piece of music, it can be a sight, it could be a book, whatever, a flower. It doesn’t matter. Just pick something you really like, something you desire. Okay? Now, imagine the object in front of you, whatever, or whoever it is, and let yourself feel how much you want it, and just let yourself feel. Often people are a little uncomfortable about feeling that, but just for the purposes here, just let yourself feel how much you want it.

And note all of the experiences that have come with that wanting. What’s happening in your body? What are the emotions coming? Doubt about your worthiness, feelings of entitlement, all of that stuff. Maybe there’s a certain arrogance, maybe there’s a certain fear. And all of the stories: this should be mine, I’m not worthy of it. Same thing, but at level of stories. So, you’re right in the experience of wanting it. Now look right at the experience of wanting, which you’ve brought up quite vividly. And ask yourself, what is this? Don’t try to answer that question. Just ask that and look right at it. Rest into looking for a moment. Now, staying right there, look at the object and observe how you experience it now. [Pause] Okay? What was your experience here?

Student: I found myself trying to recreate the pleasurable experience. Had nothing to do anymore with the object.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else?

Student: I experienced emptiness, actually. And then I thought to myself, my gosh, maybe this is what I’ve been looking for all along.

Ken: Isabel.

Isabel: I just felt an increase of desire. I really, really want this [laughter].

Ken: Keep going.

Isabel: And in terms of visualization, it was a thing. It just got bigger, and bigger. And in my life it’s a small thing. It just got huge, it just filled my whole perception of it, and it’s like I wanted to just dive into it and sort of be it. But then I thought, now I am doing this sort of ad hoc, now I’m thinking if I dive into this and I be it, then I’d be dead. I mean, really.

Ken: Well …

Isabel: And that’s very frightening.

Ken: Yeah. But in all of the comments, you notice there’s been a shift in one’s relationship with the object, and there’s been a shift in increased attention. You play with this one over next week, keep doing it, but don’t dive into it. We’d like you to come back. [Laughs] Okay. This is a way of being able to experience attraction, or liking, and being soft at the same time. There’s that openness. You don’t actually have to act. Did anybody of you experience a heightened depreciation of the object? Okay.

Student: It’s as if I saw the object.

Ken: For the first time, yeah, as the object rather than as something that was going to fulfill you. Yeah, that’s right. Okay. I have a question about verse nine. Since nobody raised it, I’ll ask him.

Diane: I have a question.

Question on verse 9: freedom

Ken: It’s all right. I’m first! The highest level of freedom is one that never changes. Was that your question? Yeah.

Diane: Yeah, I didn’t understand it.

Ken: Okay. Well, you and I are in the same boat here, Diane. We’ll just have to rely on everybody else. What does this mean?

Student: I thought it meant the vivid and clear awareness that was in one of the other verses, that needs to increase confidence in being. Very similar.

Ken: Right. Anybody else? Robert.

Robert: To me, it felt like the open sky and having everything else just float by within it. But there we were, open.

Student: What never changes? That’s what killed me, because what never changes? It always changes and it doesn’t exist. So, that’s what I got hung up on.

Ken: Yeah, Julia

Julia: I heard about it in terms of the one taste. Freedom comes from being able to experience everything without heartbreak.

Ken: Okay. Is this helping you yet?

Diane: No, this is very weird because when I read that one, I really did get hung up on that one line, because Steve, a Buddhist teacher, once told me that everything changed. [Laughter] So, that was part of my problem, but somehow this really affected me all throughout the week. I noticed everything that was changing. So, there was just something in there, but I didn’t know how to interpret that.

Ken: So, it aroused your curiosity, did it? Well, it sounds like it. Yeah. Okay. Now, the various responses, have they helped you? Well ask for some more clarification. You can pick on anybody. Don’t be shy.

Diane: Well again, I just, what is it that doesn’t change?

Ken: Okay, Susan.

Susan: The way I thought of it was—

Ken: You’ve got to help Diane, now.

Susan: The one thing that doesn’t change is awakened mind, because it’s not subject to suffering or impermanence. And so when it’s talking, the first line was talking about, “The happiness of the three worlds disappears in a moment.” In our regular day-to-day lives, the kinds of things that we think that we’re getting happiness from don’t last. So, the only thing that does is if we keep cultivating awakened mind, and that’s not subject to those kinds of conditions.

Ken: Does that help? Sure?

Diane: Yeah. Although …

Ken: Good. [Laughter] That’s what I like. I like that “although” [laughs].

Diane: I don’t know what I think of that aspect of awakening mind. I see it changing in that it adapts to the situation. You come up with the right action for each situation. In that sense, there’s something that’s always changing.

Ken: So, do you know what your task is right now, Susan?

Susan: Help her move into her experience.

Ken: But yes, but it’s a little more specific than that. It’s a very general statement. [Pause] Okay, for you, awakening mind and not changing, those are not contradictory, right? For her, they are. So, you’ve got to elicit in her something of your experience. Go ahead.

Susan: My experience?

Ken: Yes. Because you have a certain experience and she doesn’t. So, now you’ve got to elicit in her something of your experience. That’s your task. Everybody following this? Okay, good. Good luck. [Laughter] You have five seconds. I will give you a hint. Do you want a hint? You cannot use concepts.

Susan: Okay. I thought I wasn’t allowed …

Ken: You’ve got somebody …

Student: It might be good advice.

Ken: Come on. Let her work it out.

Susan: Could you repeat the last thing you said?

Ken: Close as you can.

Diane: Yeah. Awakening mind, to me, seems like there’s a changing aspect to it in that in the state of awakened mind you approach, you come up with the right action for each circumstance. It’s very adaptive, and … [unclear].

Susan: I get the concept, but I can’t move it into …

Ken: Okay. Can I give you another hint?

Susan: Yeah.

Ken: Don’t think. [Laughter]

Susan: Don’t think of that elephant.

Ken: I am serious. Stop thinking.

Susan: I have to take in what she said.

Ken: Yeah. Don’t think. You don’t need to think to take in what she said.

Susan: Okay. So, what is adapting to what?

Diane: [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: Very good. Next question. You okay, Kate? Okay. Other questions?

Student: Did you answer that question at all?

Ken: About freedom?

Student: That it is unchangeable? Are you agreeing or disagreeing? [Laughter]

Ken: I hate to say this.

Student: It doesn’t matter.

Ken: It’s irrelevant. What do you experience?

Student: Well, I just looked at the Dalai Lama and he gave me the answer, so that’s easy. And he said it is unchangeable. So, I believed him.

Ken: Ah, your comment, Dave.

Dave: I couldn’t help it. Big mistake came across my mind. Because of the belief, “I believed him.”

Student: I did believe him.

Ken: Yeah. Well, in Jewel Ornament of Liberation, in reference to awakening mind, it talks about four levels. I can’t remember all four. But the first is, we find out about it through the intimations of others. That arouses our curiosity, it may even inspire us, but because it comes from others, it is necessarily weak. And the kind of understanding that we’re seeking to cultivate, all of this material is not from the words of others, even though many of us are conditioned to absorbing the words of others.

And this is why we engage in the process of reflection, because it is through the process of reflection that we move out of belief. It makes sense to us. And so if there’s a point in here that you’re not comprehending, or you can’t take in, and you may find inspiration in thinking of the Dalai Lama, you said, “Okay, yeah, well, that’s the sense I get.” What actually is being pointed to there is there’s something in you that does understand it, or feels it, or some way.

And that’s the thing to bring out until it becomes quite explicit in you, and then you won’t be believing it anymore. It’ll make sense to you in your own terms. And that is the purpose of the second stage, is to get to that point where it makes sense to us on our own terms, not because it’s coming from anybody outside. And that’s really important in all of this stuff. Follow? Okay.

Student feedback verses 8, 9 and 10

Ken: Okay. We just have a couple of minutes left. “For time without beginning ,” eight, nine, and ten, “mothers have lovingly cared for you. If they are still suffering, how can you be happy?” What came up for you with these lines, Julia?

Julia: Well, I choked on it, [laughter] so I spent some time on that. I reflected on it, and two things came up to me. One was that there were many times when my mother didn’t lovingly care for me even though there were many times she did. And the second thing that came up for me is how many people in the world have given me kindness and care, have acted as a mother in my life.

Ken: Yeah.

Julia: So, I sort of reflected through it. If you like.

Ken: That’s good. If they’re still suffering, how can you be happy? What came up for you there? I mean, very clearly there appear to be large numbers of people in this country who feel they can be quite happy, even when there are a lot of other people suffering.

Clint: I had experience where when I thought of it globally, I felt that. So, then I brought it to my own mother, and then I went, no, I could not. And then I realized that it’s making the connection.

Ken: That’s right.

Clint: I couldn’t feel it first until I made it really specific.

Ken: Okay. And again, Clint, going back to your question of last week, that’s another technique when you’re working with these phrases is—we’ve run into it already—there’s a line, make it into a very, very specific situation. And is it true here? How do I experience it there? It’s a very good technique for making these lines come alive. Okay. Anybody else on this? Susan,

Susan: How do you explain Theravada or Hinayana?

Ken: Well, I can explain Hinayana. Hinayana is a straw man set up by the Mahayanists to knock down. [Laughter] Okay? So, when they say the Pratyekabuddists don’t have highly developed compassion, that was a way of being able to make the Mahayana look good. And the Hinayana as a reflection of Theravadan practice is a bit distorted. I mean, there’s some very interesting points, and I’ve had some good discussions, but when you probe beneath the surface, the differences that you read about in the sutras just aren’t there.

And the other side, because I have a teacher’s group and there’s a person who’s just really, really knowledgeable about Theravaden in it. And he’s a very good and very knowledgeable person. And we were looking at the first verse of the Dhammapada, and I brought in a Mahayana translation of the Tibetan tradition, which translated quite differently. And I made a comment and he said, “Oh, you Mahayana essentialists!” [Laughter] And I just had to laugh because it’s the first time I realized that the Theravadens have set the Mahayanists up as a straw man too. Because they think about buddha nature, which is when you really think about it—very, very close to positing a self. And so they say, “Oh, you think there’s an essence do you?” No, no, no.[Laughs]

Isabel: Can I interrupt?

Ken: Sure.

Isabel: Last time you were talking about, this is off the topic, some very advanced practitioner’s way of looking at taking refuge in the buddha, and there were three aspects. One was clearing, what were the other two?

Ken: And these are up actually on the website, in the refuge section. But to take refuge in the buddha means to know the emptiness of mind. To take refuge in the dharma is to know the clarity of mind. To take refuge in the sangha is to be … [break in recording] … a path developed the way it is in the Mahayana. They use loving kindness, or some of the traditions use loving kindness to power practice in the same way that the Mahayanists use compassion to power practice. But the characterizations, which you find in the Mahayana texts, don’t apply to the practice of Theravadan. It’s quite amusing, actually. Okay.