Student questions

Ken:

All suffering comes from wanting your own happiness.
Complete awakening arises from the intention to help others.
So, exchange completely your happiness
For the suffering of others—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Even if someone, driven by desperate want,
Steals, or make someone else steal, everything you own,
Dedicate to him your body, your wealth, and
All the good you’ve ever done or will do—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Even if you have done nothing wrong at all
And someone still tries to take your head off,
Spurred by compassion,
Take all his or her evil into you—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verses 11, 12, 13

Fairly straightforward.

Student: No problem.

Ken: Glad to hear it. As we’ve done before, any technical points, translations, things like that, you’re curious about? Joe.

Joe: In 12, the phrase driven by desparate want. In other places it was need, which is close. But what happened to me is I wondered if that was a qualification of someone or whether it was a explanation. Do you know what I—

Ken: Yes, the Tibetan for driven by desperate want is ‘dod chen dbang gyis (pron. dö chen wang gyi). ‘dod is the word for desire, to want, not in the sense of greed, or need, just to want. Chen is the word for great, so great desire. Dbang is the word for power, influence, authority. So, I chose to translate that phrase, and probably in other translations that might be said by the power of great desire. Is there anything like that in any of the other translations? Pardon?

Student: Sway of compulsive desire.

Ken: Okay. Sway of compulsive desire. So, whether you call it compulsive or desperate, great in this sense means they really want something.

Student: Is it a qualification? What if it’s not great desire? What if it’s just semi-great desire?

Ken: I see. ‘dod chen dbang gyis, it’s not really a qualification here. It’s saying, I think the idea in the Tibetan is that anybody who steals is pretty desperate. So, it’s not a qualification in that sense. Other questions? Yes.

Student: The first line of 11: All suffering comes from wanting your own happiness. I was struck by that because of the metta practice, which begins with: May I be happy. May I be healthy.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: And then I’m looking at this going, okay, this is a contradiction or is it in the word wanting?

Ken: Well, as you say, in the metta practice, as it’s taught in the Theravadan, you wish happiness for yourself. And then, from there you start wishing happiness for other beings, and so forth. And here it’s saying: All suffering comes from wanting your own happiness. Little conflict, apparently. [Pause] It’s really a difference in method. And I think it’s important when you read … let me back up a step.

Contradictory frameworks in Buddhism

Ken: The word dharma, as in the buddha dharma basically means how do you do it, instruction. Now, let’s take a very different discipline for a moment. Let’s say martial arts. There are all kinds of schools of martial arts, and what is taught in one school may be the absolute opposite of what is taught in another school, but it works in that school because it’s embedded in a system where there’s a whole bunch of other things. But if you just took it out of that and worked on it, took it by itself, it might seem to contradict something in another school. So, whenever you come across an instruction, and it’s really best to regard all Buddhist teaching as instruction in some way or other. It may be an explicit instruction or it may be implicit in that it is setting a framework in order to give you instruction.

But we even have contradictory frameworks in Buddhism because they’re leading up to instructions which work in substantially different ways. So, what happens is that people attach to, well, “It says this here and you are wrong.” And that actually is not terribly useful because, I mean … I’ve given completely opposite instructions to people at various points, and I’m just one teacher, let alone a broad tradition, which has adapted to different cultures and over very long stretches of time. So, in the metta practice, the intention there is you want to be happy, and by wishing yourself happiness, you develop a softness of attitude, a softness in mind.

And so it sort of goes, well, yeah, it’s kind of nice to be happy and I’m feeling good about that. Yeah, it’d be kind of nice if my friends were happy. Well, maybe the people, I don’t dislike them, but I don’t really like, maybe they could be happy too. Now there’s just those people I don’t like. Well, I don’t have any really good reason for them not to be happy. I’m just just causing myself unhappiness if I don’t wish them to be happy. And so it expands and expands, and that’s what I mean about the system there.

In the mind training system, and it’s fair to say, historically this is probably a later development, sometime after the Theravadan being isolated in Sri Lanka and so forth. This is probably a later development. The idea was, “I need to stop putting myself first in the world, because let’s face it, when I put myself first, everybody else suffers. And if everybody puts themselves first, we’re all going to suffer.”

There’s a workshop that I give, but one of the lines from it is: when there’s a problem in the world, we always put the problem out there. We make up a story and we’re the hero of the story. And we think, “If people would just do things differently, then everything would be fine.” We’re always looking at everybody else to change. Well, if you’re always looking at everybody else to change, what change takes place? Well, everybody’s looking at everybody else to change, so nothing happens.

So, this way: I don’t care what everybody else is doing, I’m going to stop contributing to suffering by not putting myself first. So, it’s a very different method, and that’s why even though the instructions look totally contradictory, one really has to look at them in the context of the philosophy, and the approach, and the method in each are defining.

George: Ken, how is it different to exchange happiness, your own happiness for the suffering of others? How’s that different than giving up yourself as the primary concern and being concerned with the sufferings and welfare of others? One sounds like vicarious suffering, like I’m going to take on the suffering of the world and not be concerned with my own life at all. And the other sounds like not being preoccupied with your own desires and being sensitive to all others around you. It seems like a difference. Most of the translations that I’ve been reading are: exchange your own happiness for the sufferings of others. Another one that I read which says, “Thus in exchange for our selfish desires and shameful neglect of our suffering kin, replace thoughts of self with concern for all others.

Ken: Is that Alex Berzin’s? Yeah, I thought so. He adds a few little ideas in there to make it into nice English.

George: My question is in taking and sending, as I understand it, you are taking on, you’re experiencing the suffering around you.

Ken: George, put this in two sentences.

George: Okay. How are the two different translations different or are they the same things?

Ken: That’s not your question. What bugs you here?

George: The concept of actually suffering yourself.

Ken: Ahhh, thank you. [Laughter] Much better. I thought you were talking around stuff there. You don’t like that idea?

George: Well …

Ken: No. Keep it nice and short here.

George: Yeah.

Ken: Okay, good. [Laughter] That’s all we need. Now—

George: I mean, it’s different than being—

Ken: No, no, no. [Pause] Okay. So, what I’m gathering from you is, “I can get this idea of not wanting others to suffer and not even putting myself first. But this idea of really taking on their suffering, and giving me my own happiness. I don’t like this.” Something like that?

George: I’m not quite that far. [Laughter] More like, I can see not being concerned with my own pleasure. I can see not being concerned that my own happiness is an objective of my life. I can see that participating in sufferings of others is part of being an awake person. But that doesn’t mean that I have to suffer too. [Laughter]

Ken: I don’t think we’re too far apart here. [Laughter] Okay? [Pause] The problem is not in whether you suffer or not. The problem is whether you try to avoid suffering or not.

And that’s very scary. Taking on the suffering of others, that’s very scary because it goes against the way that we feel we have to protect ourselves. But that sense of self-protection is completely associated with a sense of self. So, as long as you’re holding onto any sense of self-protection, you’re never going to let go of a sense of self.

George: So, if you no longer avoid suffering, you’re free.

The distinction between pain and suffering

Ken: Yes. Don’t forget, Buddhism says: this is the end of suffering. There is an end to suffering and here’s how you get there. But one has to look at what exactly does that end of suffering consist of? Now, it’s helpful to remember, there’s a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is a sensation. It arises. Somebody sticks a needle in your arm, or drops a brick on your toe, or you’re in a relationship and she decides to leave, or you experience pain, somebody betrays you. You experience pain, physical pain, emotional pain. Suffering is the reaction to experience. You with me?

Student: In your book, didn’t you say that it’s the reaction to not experiencing? In the taking and sending portion I think you said something along that line.

Ken: Well, you’ll have to find that reference.

Student: I got it right here.

Ken: Okay, so it’s a reaction to experience. Now [pause] you’re never going to be able to release any of those reactions into their own nature as long as you keep pushing them away. You follow?

Student: Yeah. They’re always going to be an object that you’r contending with.

Ken: Exactly. So, to disengage from that whole reactive process, you have to be willing to experience the pain that arises as part of life.

Student: Would you actually go seek it out?

Ken: I don’t see why one needs to seek it out. There are various people who have found it useful to keep something which nudges them along. Atisha and his Bengali tea boy is the famous example for that. But personally, I don’t find it’s necessary to seek it out. There’s plenty around already. And as your awareness becomes clearer, you’re able to perceive it more clearly.

Now, just in what you’re saying, “I don’t want to suffer. That’s not okay with me.” Well, you have some pain right there. There’s a struggle right there. And lately I’ve been experimenting in some contexts with translating suffering as struggle. So, [pause] all struggles come from one’s desire to be happy. Okay? Full awakening comes from desiring to help others, from the intention to help others, which basically means, well can mean, to help others be free from their own struggles. And that changes it a bit, doesn’t it? Now, what is involved when you try to help someone be free from their own struggles?

Student: You live suffering from your world and their world simultaneously.

Ken: Yeah, but what happens in the process? I know something about this. I do this almost full time.

Student: You’re involved.

Ken: You have to be present with them. Okay. Is that always a happy place to be?

Student: No, but it’s not necessarily an unhappy place either.

Ken: Yes. But if you desire happiness, how often are you going to go there?

Student: Oh, I see.

Ken: Okay?

Student: I was having almost this image of Christ bearing his cross of the world.

Ken: No, I don’t think you need to be Christ. You can work up to that.

Student: He was doing that. He was the tonglen—

Ken: But for the time being, one of the things you’re working on is your sense of how you connect with the world. Well start observing. What do you do when another person is behaving in a way which causes you disturbance? That’s what I want you to start working on explicitly. What goes on in you when you’re interacting with another person who’s causing you disturbance? Okay. John.

John: But, on that level I’m irritated, and if you’re practicing properly I assume you were saying, “Thank you very much for allowing me to have some patience.” [Laughter] Then, on the other level of searching for happiness, there’s probably very few moments in the day when I’m not trying to make myself either warmer, or more comfortable, or looking forward to what I’m going to get eat. It’s consistent search for self.

Ken: Yeah. Okay.

What is happiness?

Student: Can you define happiness?

Ken: What’s behind that?

Student: Well, in this discussion tonglen versus metta practice, it occurs to me that there might be a slight differential between the definition of happiness in the two.

Ken: What are you suggesting?

Student: But the notion of happiness in a general sense. What is happiness, what is not happiness, is it either/or?

Ken: Okay, I see what you’re driving at. I don’t know the Theravadan framework well enough to comment on that directly. But picking up from what you’re saying here, the exploration of what is happiness can be quite useful and relatively quickly lead you into a pretty straightforward Mahayana framework. The essential piece being, “Can you be happy, George, if someone close to you is suffering?” So, you don’t have any choice but to join where they are. So, if you’re constantly desiring your own happiness, you’re never going to join with them. Follow? On the other hand, it is by understanding what it means to be happy, that you do find a way to join with them. Do you see what I mean by that?

Student: In terms of sharing happiness with them?

Ken: No. In terms of being willing to help them find a way to release their struggles, which involves not protecting you yourself from what they’re experiencing.

Student: That’s what I was thinking of, because if suffering comes from looking for your own happiness at the exclusion of others. [Unclear] … in the metta you’re just wishing happiness. So, in offering this way as opposed to a selfish … [unclear].

Ken: Jessica.

Jessica: Couldn’t you almost say, or go so far as to say, all suffering comes from wanting, period?

Ken: Oh, yes, very much.

Jessica: And drop the happiness, or wanting things be other than they are, or whatever?

Ken: Yeah. I mean, they all come down to the same thing. Certain formulations are more useful to some people than others. This is written in relatively formal language, at least some of the phrases are.

Okay, there’s another in keeping with some perspectives that we talked about last time, there’s another whole way of relating to this. What is this “I” that wants to be happy? And I don’t actually mean this in an insight sense, in a non-self sense. I’m not at that level yet. What is the “I” that wants to be happy? Let me put it this way. Is it all of you? Usually it isn’t. It’s only a very particular part of you in a given moment. And by trying to make that part of you happy, a whole bunch of other parts of you get neglected, and now you start to struggle. This makes sense? Yes?

Student: But in that formulation isn’t the part that wants to be happy, by definition, always louder than the other parts? Whichever one it is at that moment?

Ken: Yes. What’s your point there?

Student: How can one do otherwise if that’s the loudest voice?

Ken: Whenever one voice dominates, you make a point of hearing all the other voices. That can be a practice. “I want this.” And immediately we collapse down to that, as you say, the loudest voice. And we neglect everything else. So, as soon as you find yourself doing that, okay, well yeah, there’s that. But what else is there, here? Well, there’s part of me saying … Another part of me saying, “No, I don’t really want that.” Or the other part saying, “We don’t care. Can we move on?” [Laughs] And I mean, there’s all kinds of things going on. And that way you move back to relating to the whole of your experience rather than just a part of it.

Because in one sense, the whole discussion of bodhichitta, and taking and sending, can be regarded as a kind of mythic approach to encouraging us to work with every aspect of our experience. When we say “all sentient beings,” well that’s like the whole universe. But from the mahayana point of view, the whole universe is nothing but our own mind. So, by working for the welfare of all beings, we are embracing the totality of our experience. And by rejecting a single sentient being, we are rejecting part of our own psyche, if you wish.

Do you follow? So, you can look at it as a mythic way of doing that. It is never translated into that in literal terms, but that’s the effect of working that way. Steve.

Steve: This thing about what Jessica said, there’s nothing here saying that we won’t ever feel happy. It’s that it’s the wanting of it. It’s the desiring it.

Ken: Yeah.

Steve: If your experience comes up, some of that will be a sensation of happiness. But if we’re not going after it, is that …?

Ken: Well, yes, and that’s right. And you can get the idea that, and here’s where I think our puritanical upbringing or conditioning comes in. Where there is laughter, the devil is not far behind. [Laughter] It’s true. One of Calvin’s sayings, and so you’re dour and serious. Buddhism doesn’t take that approach. You experience whatever’s arising. If you’re feeling good, nothing wrong with that. If you’re feeling bad, nothing wrong with that.

But that’s not how we approach it most of the time. If I’m feeling good, I usually say, “Oh, this is how I should feel all the time. I’m going to try to hold onto this ’cause this is what I want.” Right? And when you’re feeling bad, you go, “Something’s wrong. I’ve got to go to a doctor, or get a lawyer, or do something to fix it.”

So, we’re immediately struggling with experience, struggling to hold on or struggling to avoid. How different is it when, “Oh, I’m feeling good. Fine.” “I’m feeling bad. Okay. I can live with this.” And what taking and sending is—and this business of exchange—is a way of undermining our attachment to pleasure and our aversion to unpleasantness. It’s a way of undermining those basic dynamics in us. Okay, other questions?

Joe: We were talking about want and desire a second ago. Can we make a distinction in the language we’re using now between want and desire, and clinging to the result of that want and desire? I mean, can we make it okay for ourselves, the fact of want and desire? [Laughter] Can we not isolate and shun that part of our experience if we don’t cling to the results?

Ken: What are you trying to protect here? Joe?

Joe: I want desire.

Ken: You want desire?

Joe: Well, I want desire. I want to desire bodhicitta. I want to desire to be a bodhisattva. I desire more mundane things too. I want to desire good food. I want to desire sensual gratification.

Ken: Well, the language gets very slippery here. Both just the way we use language rather. It’s not really dependent on the language, Tibetan or English, but one can tie oneself up in philosophical knots very easily around here. It’s a way of undermining those basic dynamics in us.

[Repetition of approx. 2 mins. of audio]

Ken: Why do you want to desire?

Joe: I misspoke actually. I do desire.

Ken: Yes. So, what’s the problem?

Joe: You were just speaking about desire being a problem, want and desire.

Ken: Okay. In the early formulations of Buddhism, if you look at the 12 links of interdependent origination, and you still find this, I mean very much in the Theravadan. And you also find it quite extensively in Hinduism, TM for instance. Wanting is seen as the source of struggle, suffering, in life. And so the most direct route would seem to be, to decrease wanting. That naturally, or logically, I’m not sure if naturally, but logically leads to a life of withdrawal, away from sensory stimulation because that stimulates desire. And so that gives rise to the monastic Anchorite hermitage, which is exactly where Buddhism started.

Over time—and the reasons for this are rather obscure and one can develop a number of theories, but I’m not going to go into those this evening—it became clear that desire comes from holding a sense of self. And holding a sense of self comes from not knowing how things actually are. So, a second way of breaking the cycle arose, and that was going straight to the ignorance, which sets the whole thing in motion. And that is the basis of the Mahayana approach, and doesn’t imply a life of withdrawal or seclusion, because you aren’t really concerned with reducing desire as a path so much as coming to know how things are as a path.

So, there’s a very definite difference in flavor there. And Mahayana actually makes use of desire to undermine the desire that is organized around the sense of self. And that’s exactly what taking and sending is about. Let me desire the unhappiness of others, let me have that. And it generates friction with the conditioned desire. And the idea is that when enough friction is generated, both burn up. But practically speaking, well in the way that we train here, we don’t train in not desiring, we train in knowing. And so we can make use of these techniques to generate that friction that I’m describing. But to do that you adopt the framework that yes, desiring my own happiness creates a sense of separation from the world and that’s what produces suffering. Okay?

Did we do this last week? We did. We talked about experiencing desire itself. We went into a little exercise. Yeah. When you experience desire itself—again, the problem here is believing—you believe the desire. And you believe that the desire is a fact, and so you always act on it, and that’s what creates problems. You enjoy good food. Does that mean you have to have good food all the time?

But if you take it as a fact, then you have to have good food all the time, and that’s what generates suffering. But if you can experience not only the object of the desire, but the desire itself as simply an arising in mind, then it ceases to be a fact and one is free. So, it isn’t so much not desiring that we’re aiming for, but not getting caught in the apparent reality, the way it arises to us as, “Now I have to have this.” Yes.

Student feedback on opening to all experience

Student: Is this all about opening, so to speak, the difference between let’s say looking at life through a keyhole as opposed to opening the door?

Ken: In many respects, yeah, because whenever we desire something, we collapse down to the keyhole, and we miss everything else. Let’s hear a bit about your experiences with this, in terms of reflecting and thinking about it. Yes.

Student: Thirteen.

Ken: Thirteen.

Student: Even if you have done nothing at all and someone still tries to take your head off, spurred by compassion.

Ken: Spurred by compassion is you. It’s not—

Student: In your translation, that wasn’t clear.

Ken: Yeah, I suppose you’re right.

Student: And so the first time I read that I thought, hmm …

Ken: [Unclear]

Student: So, this person is going to take off my head before I have the chance to do something wrong. So, in a sense they’re doing me a favor. Well, that’s an interesting perspective. And then I went back and looked at it elsewhere and saw: Out of compassion, take all of his mistakes, which then made it clear. But it was a way of maybe unintentionally shifting me into a completely different angle.

Ken: Right. I’m not quite sure how to address that in the English, but I can see the ambiguity. Yeah

Student: A semicolon.

Ken: No. I think if it’s going to be anything, it’s going to be a dash, but it’s still not correct.

Student: Anyway, how about put it at the end? Take all of his …

Ken: Well then you get a whole bunch of other troubles. Julia.

Julia: Put a period after off, and start a new sentence.

Student: In these two verses, I have a real problem with the boundaries and limits.

Ken: [Laughs] Yeah. Tonglen kind of makes nonsense of modern concepts of boundaries. So, what was your problem?

Student: Well, earlier we were talking about bad friends, people who use you. So, is there a distinction here between “I know exactly what I’m resisting” [laughter] …

Ken: And what would that be? [Laughs]

Student: Well, having somebody kind of devalue me in some way by taking my money or taking my head off, or …

Ken: Well, I think we discussed this last week, or maybe it was the week before. You can only do these practices if you can stay soft in the experience. If you harden up, then you’re engaging in suppression and you’re actually generating something counterproductive in you because of that. Now, if you’re able to stay soft—and I don’t mean by that being wimpy, I think you understand that—it’s soft in the mind. You know what I mean?

Student: Maybe open is a better word.

Ken: It’s not quite … there’s another quality.

Student: Relaxed?

Ken: Yeah, relaxed. Definitely. Yes, but you’re not necessarily full relaxed. There has to be some give in you.

Student: The opposite of holding on? Supple?

Ken: Yeah, supple is good. Let’s take a somewhat concrete situation. If a person insults you, let’s say, and you harden up inside, so there’s no movements. You know what I mean by that? I’m not being very articulate this evening, but okay, and you try and do taking and sending there. Well, your anger is already so set.

Student: You’re just forcing

Ken: You’re forcing something. That’s counterproductive.

Student: And it’s unreal. It’s superficial.

Ken: Exactly. That’s why I said you start suppressing stuff, and people make this mistake all the time. In order to do taking and sending, when somebody insults you, you have to be able to experience your own pain, and for that to be okay. And because that’s okay, you can now take in the pain that the other person must be feeling to cause them to insult you.

Student: He said it before, including.

Ken: Yeah, but if you can’t be in your own pain, and that’s what I mean by the softness, you have that suppleness, then when you try to take in the other person’s pain, you’re just going to be suppressing yours, which means you’re shutting down on your own experience. That’s counterproductive.

Now, there are various ways of keeping that softness of suppleness in the mind. One of them is actually regarding everything as a dream, but that’s a fairly sophisticated one. Before one gets to that one, however, if you’re able to be aware and be, “Okay, that hurt. I didn’t like that.” If you’re acknowledging that experience in yourself, and you’re able to be with it, you’re not going to be devoured. And so the boundary problem doesn’t arise, because you’re sufficiently awake to your own pain that you don’t drop out of the picture, which is what happens when you’re devoured is you’re consumed by the other. So, you have both your pain and the other person’s pain, the anger that they’re obviously expressing, and you use taking and sending to open to that, which further decreases the tendency to react.

And don’t forget the other part of taking and sending, which is you give in that moment: your own sense of presence, clarity, peace, suppleness of mind, and by giving that, you are connecting with where you are. And so you don’t take the insult personally. It is simply an arising, which again is moving us towards the dream instruction a bit. I don’t feel I’m explaining this very succinctly, but are you getting the idea, Julia?

Julia: Yes.

Ken: Yeah, but it is a very important point because a priori, or at first glance, not apriori, it looks like taking and sending is like, “Okay, just walk all over me.”

Student: Exactly.

Ken: A key point in here is your own intention. My intention is to use what arises in experience to wake up. But you can only use what arises in experience to wake up if your mind is supple. If it’s hardened up, you can’t use it, so it’s not the appropriate thing to be doing. Okay? Joe.

Joe: I just realized one of the problems I was having was a basic misunderstanding—and it comes out of the Christian tradition, probably—I was recognizing as making the other not equal, but more real.

Ken: Yes, that’s right.

Joe: And that the bondary was broken down and that’s not the point.

Ken: No, that’s right. Yeah. Neither of you are real.

Joe: Yeah.

Student: I kind of got stuck on the idea of the thief.

Ken: The idea of the thief. Yes.

Student: In the Dalai Lama’s commentary he told a story about Tokmé Zongpo. He said that he was heading back to the monastery with many offerings and he was robbed. As the robber was leaving, he was heading back towards where Tokmé Zongpo received the offerings. He warned the robber to go a different route as he might be captured. [Laughter] I sat with that and it actually seemed to me to be contrary to compassion, because as it’s been said compassion is not free. And it seemed more compassionate to actually see to it that he gets caught, so that he has an opportunity to reconsider his career choices, and doesn’t continue to incur more bad karma. It’s like aiding and abetting, and on an inner level—

Ken: Such a Protestant attitude. [Laughter]

Student: What if he got caught, and the people who were going to catch him were going to beat him to death. What about the karma they would incur by having done that?

Ken: Okay, now this is a very good point, and we get caught in this because of cultural influences in our culture. Now, compassion is being present with the pain or suffering of another. Okay? It’s not about trying to control the situation.

Student: I thought compassion was doing the right thing in the moment.

Ken: No. Well, you should fire him or her, whoever it may be.

Student: He’s given different instructions at different times. [Laughter]

Ken: Yeah. [Pause] The notion, the right thing—I may have used the word appropriate. I’m not sure I would’ve used the word right.

Student: I don’t mean right in a sense of right and wrong. It’s right in, what is the correct action at that moment?

Ken: Yes. Okay, let’s take a look at Tokmé Zongpo. Here’s the thief. He just took his wallet, and he sees the thief heading off towards town, and he knows what’s going to happen there.

Student: It just isn’t that he’s captured.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: He’s going to be beheaded.

Ken: Well in Indian or Tibetan or Muslim society, in Muslim society, the punishment for theft was your hand was cut off. That was the punishment. I think in Sharia, they’re trying to reinstate that.

Student: Was it ever that way in Tibet?

Ken: Absolutely. Sure. You know, in Britain, if you were caught, you were put in stocks.

Student: You were hanged trying to steal the sheep and … [unclear].

Ken: Yeah. I mean theft was taken quite seriously. So, you know what’s going to happen to this person. Now I may be completely corrupt here, but I can relate to Tokmé Zongpo here. There’s the thief. He’s got my wallet. You’re going to get caught if you go that way.

Student: Yeah. I’m thinking more in terms of it just doesn’t seem right to let him continue on his path. Of aiding and abetting him in his bad karma.

Ken: This is where it goes into control. You’re trying to control his path. You have a picture of what he should be doing and how he should be progressing. And once we get a picture in our mind, we’ve stepped out of the kind of immediate response which characterizes compassion.

Student: But isn’t telling him he’s going to get caught also exercising control?

Ken: No. “You’re going to get caught.” Leave the decision up to him.

Student: Now, this brings up another one of my favorite stories that you’ve told, whether it was Buddha, or another teacher—

Ken: I’m getting hungry. [Laughter]

Student: —who was traveling with a caravan through the mountains, and the mountains were full of bandits. And the caravan settles down for the night. Buddha, or whoever the teacher was, takes a walk. He’s over a rise, sees the camp with bandits, and hears them talking about getting up before dawn to murder everyone in the caravan. He waits til they go to sleep. He sneaks into the camp. He kills the bandit leader himself. Next morning, the bandits awake, confused and terrified they run away. Everyone is safe. The reason that he did it was to prevent them later accruing all the bad karma of killing everyone in the caravan. He was willing to take on the bad karma of the bandits.

Ken: Yes. Okay, now apply that principle to the Tokmé Zongpo.

Student: In your terms … [unclear].

Ken: Just a second. What are you—you’re Tokmé Zongpo now you’ve just been robbed—what are you willing to do so that the thief doesn’t experience the results of his actions? [Pause] To me, he says, “Look, you’re obviously hard up. You didn’t get all of my money. Here, take it all, and if anybody asked you, you tell them that I gave it to you, because I don’t want you to get caught as a thief.”

Student: [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: Only if you are willing to take on all of that karma. Are you?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Yeah. Next time we’re in a difficult situation, I’ll hold you to it. [Laughter] [laughter]. The story there is one of the Jataka tales, stories from Buddha’s previous lives, and they are examples of compassion. But look at the cost; look at what Buddha was taking. I mean, it’s a very powerful example of taking and sending. I’m going to take this on so that this person doesn’t. It’s very different from saying, “Oh, you’ve robbed me. I’ll just let you go and you’re going to get caught.” Very, very different situation. But on the other hand, you turn around and say, “No, you take everything and you tell everybody that I gave it to you. And I will back you up.” That’s very different. And that kind of thing is the kind of kindness or openness that might change a person’s heart way more than getting caught and punished will. Follow? Okay. Susan?

Susan: It also seems to involve not being attached to what was taken and to not take personally being robbed.

Ken: Yes.

Susan: Makes it easier to see the situation more clearly because you … [unclear].

Ken: I’ll give you a different example. When I was studying martial arts, we were being instructed in what to do if somebody pulled a gun on us. And one of Larry’s senior students was his assistant instructor, this had actually happened. And the instructions were, you stay absolutely calm and you do exactly what the people say. But the big thing is to stay absolutely calm no matter what the hell’s going on inside you. And he described a situation in which a couple of young guys pulled a gun on him and, “Give us your wallet.” He pulled out his wallet, and he was just completely calm because those people are really, really on edge. And if you get on edge, that’s when they pull the trigger. But if you stay calm, you increase not only your chance of survival, but the chance that they won’t commit a murder. It becomes really important.

Susan: Is that because they feel your calmness?

Ken: They feel your calmness. And so, “Hey, this is going okay. Nothing’s happening. What’s happening? We’re out of here.” And that’s right. But if you get upset, things like that, then that throws them off. That’s when bad things happen. That’s not a particularly easy thing to do. That’s how you increase your likelihood of getting out of those situations alive.

Student: I was held up in New York with a gun once and not intentionally, but I became extremely calm and I became so calm that I got conversational. I said, “Is it okay if I keep the guitar and you guys take everything else? I need it to teach.” So, conversational. And it all was just like, “Yeah, yeah, okay, keep the guitar, we’ll take the …” It just changed things so much because there was no … they were tenser …

Ken: They were tenser than you.

Student: Tenser than me. And they saw it wasn’t really a threatening situation, wasn’t going to become that, and it became just almost a strange normal transaction. But it also was, I’m thinking about this because, I wasn’t feeling like I was getting robbed. I wasn’t having a reaction like, “You’re stealing from me. You’re doing something bad to me.” It became something else, something like this. You just reminded me that, somehow it was more. There was something else going on. It was something like this.

Ken: Shock, maybe?

Student: No, I wasn’t in shock. I really wasn’t. It was just some sort of combination of something deeper, I think.

Ken: The shock comes afterwards; it’s not at the time. Sometimes you go through a situation like that and then sometime later you’ll go into shock about it. Now, when you were contemplating this, that’s what was going through your mind. What were you actually experiencing, Deborah?

Deborah: It was confusing because I didn’t feel like he has compassion for the robber.

Ken: Yes, but what do you feel about the robber? It’s not this person. Even if someone, driven by desperate want, steals or makes someone else steal everything you own. What do you feel about the robber?

Deborah: Oh, actually I felt sorry for him.

Ken: Really?

Deborah: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. No, it makes me curious because it doesn’t jibe with the confusion. So, why is the person stealing?

Deborah: Because he needs.

Ken: Okay, how’s him going to jail, going to help him?

Deborah: Because as I said, it just brings him up short with reality and maybe makes him reconsider his choices rather than helping him along his life of crime. And also on the inner level, the Buddha said that unwholesome thought is the most dangerous. Virtue is the most precious. So, it also seemed like you wouldn’t want to encourage that either, unwholesome thoughts.

Ken: There’s the robber, he’s just taken your wallet, your jewelry, whatever.

Deborah: That happened to me.

Ken: What were you feeling at that time?

Deborah: Fear.

Ken: Yeah.

Deborah: Even though he took it and left.

Ken: You were still in fear. Yeah, that’s the shock coming afterwards. But at the time, what did you feel? Okay. Now, understandably, you want him to stop robbing. I can understand how you’re looking at it, and I’m not quite sure how to articulate it, but it feels to me as if there’s an idea about how things should be.

Student: Is everything [unclear] Protestant?

Ken: Yes. [Laughter]

Student: [Unclear] Puritan.

Ken: Yeah. I used the word Protestant there. No, Puritan was back here. And we have these ideas of how the world should work. So, he goes to jail. He has time to reconsider things. It’s not what actually happens in practice, but I don’t want to get into a discussion of our penal system. Yeah, it’s more about what you do to ease his suffering right at that moment? [Pause] Well, what’s he going to be experiencing? He’s going to be experiencing fear about getting caught. So, what can you do to ease his suffering? You don’t like it, do you? But you get my point?

Deborah: Yes.

Ken: Good. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else? These are good. I mean, this is reflection, is pushing things to this level. This is where it starts to bite inside, and that’s the purpose of reflection. So, this is good. Chuck.

Chuck: Well, my first reaction was go after him, and get it back, a tightening up inside, and it really sort of rubbed me the wrong way, the whole thing. And then thinking about, well, now he not only got my wallet, but let’s give him a little bit more money now to let him go. Just sort of, I could see where everything’s coming from, but it was sort of like not the way I usually do things.

Ken: That’s right. Yeah. So, you felt it rubbing again stuff? Good. Glen?

Glen: I never got past the first line of: All suffering comes from … It’s when the bottom fell out. [Laughter] I was sideways, upside down, and for two days, and I didn’t look at it as a taking and—

Ken: Sending.

Glen: So, it was an opening and closing.

Ken: Go on.

Glen: Just if I let that go, I just felt this expansiveness, and then I got so scared. And felt the sense of security just gone, because you got to be happy. It’s not internally, it’s externally too. And then all of sudden—

Ken: You’ve got to have all of these things?

Glen: Well, no, not material things, but emotionally or, I mean, I’m not talking about money in the bank, or the job or anything like that, but just a sense of wellbeing, of security.

Ken: Okay. Security, I think you’ll agree, is an illusion. It doesn’t exist. Let’s talk about a sense of well-being. Where does the sense of well-being come from? How does the sense of well-being arise?

Glen: I think that was the dichotomy or juxtaposition within me. If I close, it came from what I feel is a support network from within my own structures, holding myself erect. And if I let that go and it all fell down, I almost felt more secure. It was scarier, but I felt more secure.

Ken: Okay. Yes. Say a bit more about that. I think it’ll be helpful to people.

Glen: I guess it’s almost like to reach the stage of being able to take and send, you have to let the rest of it go to get there.

Ken: And what’s the rest of it?

Glen: The feelings of the illusion of safety and security.

Ken: Trying to take care of yourself. And when you open that way, what do you experience? Is it scarier?

Glen: Oh, fear. Fear. Absolute fear

Ken: Yeah. But what else besides the fear, it’s not the only thing you experience.

Glen: Curiousness.

Changing our relationship with the world

Ken: I’m going to suggest that there may have been another element, also. A different kind of balance in your relationship with the world. Does that ring any bells? If you look … What? Okay, sorry, I thought you said something. Ordinarily, our relationship with the world is me here, the world there. Okay? Take it all here. Okay? Taking and sending, you look at it this way, and that irritates the hell out of us, also frightens the hell out us.

But by doing this, we’re actually correcting this. And we find this. I’m not going to say we find this because that doesn’t exist. We find this, there’s an ongoing play that goes on. And so sometimes, yes, we need to eat, we eat and we enjoy things, but we recognize those as comings and goings. And we don’t try to just keep them coming and holding onto them, because they don’t last. And then they go, and we can let them go somewhere else, which is—those of you have read Shantideva—it’s all about appreciating the joys that other people experience.

But that’s how the world actually is, though we don’t usually live in it that way. And that’s what you mean about a different kind of balance, where things move and everything is in motion. But within that, there’s a different kind of balance, which isn’t static at all. But we can’t hold onto a sense of self in the same way, that’s the frightening part. But we find that we can be in that world and it’s okay. In fact, actually it’s more than okay. It’s actually quite freeing That fit with your experience? Good. Very good. Gosh, how time goes when you’re having fun.

Let’s turn to verse 13. Very few people commented on that, except from the translation point.

Even if you have done nothing at all and someone still tries to take your head off, spurred by compassion, take all his or her evil into you.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found one of the more difficult situations is to be being blamed for something I didn’t do. Anybody else have a problem with that one? Now, when somebody’s blaming you for something you didn’t do, what’s going on in that other person?

Student: Rejection.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: Rejection

Ken: Yeah. You know you didn’t do it. So, they have to be hurting, a lot. Maybe they’re operating under ignorance. Maybe somebody told them you did it. I got caught in that one big time many years ago, when my teacher was told that I had done something that I hadn’t done. And Rinpoche believed the other person. That was a real fun situation. I didn’t like that one at all. And Rinpoche was such that, if you were in his system, that was that. You didn’t get to argue your point at all.

So, now, what was happening is that this other person was defending his territory like mad, and was willing to sacrifice my relationship with my teacher, in order to defend his thing. That’s pretty heavy duty stuff. In Vajrayana that’s about approximately the same level as murder. If you’re willing to destroy the relationship between the teacher and student, he didn’t, but that person was willing to do that. So, how equanimous and how at ease are you if you’re willing to commit murder?

Student: If you are willing to commit what?

Ken: Commit murder. No, you’re not. You’re really, really churned up. So, when you have a person who’s that churned up, what’s the appropriate response? Yeah, it’s really hard. I will admit I did not feel much compassion for this person. [Laughter]I felt quite bitter about it for a long time.

But in what we’re aspiring to here, in both of these, and we’ve got three or four more verses along the same lines. One of the things that I have found really helpful—and I know that those of you I’ve done this one-on-one with, many of you at one point or another—when somebody does something which infringes on your territory, boundary or whatever, or just doesn’t make any sense, ask yourself, where would I have to be in order to do that? I found this an extremely useful technique. And people say, “Well, I’d never do that!”

And I say, “That’s fine. I know you’d never do that, but where would you have to be if you actually did that?” And it doesn’t take very long for most people to understand. They would have to be pretty churned up to do some of these kinds of things. And that changes everything right there. You begin to see what must be going on in the other person, because we are not that dissimilar. Okay. Joe

Joe: I just want to ask this before we finish, about putting these three together. May I ask that?

Ken: Okay.

Joe: If verse 11 is describing tonglen, exchange completely your happiness for the suffering of others. Are the directions in 12 and 13, one of which is dedicate, the other one is take evil into you. Are those the two sides of taking and sending, or are they something separate?

Ken: No. What’s really going on here is verse 11 is general taking and sending; 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, those six verses, are all how to respond to different expressions of anger, which is—

Student: Conduct.

Ken: Yeah, what other people … But if you look at them, all of these things are motivated by anger.

Joe: What exactly does it mean when you say … I know how to do tonglen, sort of. What does it mean when it says dedicate to somebody your body, your wealth, and all the good you have ever done?

Ken: The thief has taken a whole bunch of things from you, or maybe they’ve just tried to, you still have it. Then, in your practice you think, “Okay, this person’s in need. May he have everything that I have.”

Joe: Okay, got it.

Ken: And when this person blames you, you think, “Oh, this person did something horrible, something evil. He blamed me for something that I didn’t do. He made up lies, he did this, he did that. That’s really bad karma for this person. May all that bad karma come into me, so may he be free of it, because that’s going to cause him a tremendous amount of suffering. I’m willing to experience that suffering.” Okay. Now, what nobody’s made a comment on, or maybe one person made a comment on this, but I want you to keep this in mind over the next week, does any part of your psyche steal from you?

Student: What?

Ken: Does any part of your psyche steal from you? Does any part of your psyche blame you for things that you haven’t done?

So, I’ll leave the other ones to you, but you might think about this. Now, usually when that happens, we shut those parts of our mind off. Does this help them when we put them in jail? Does this help them Deborah? [Laughter] Do they? No, they don’t usually do that. So, how do you work with that? That’s something I’d like you to think about and reflect on over the next couple of weeks, the next week. Okay.

Student: Which verses?

Ken: We’re going to do the next four verses, which will be 14, 15, 16, and 17. That completes that unit. I didn’t want to give the whole unit out for one week, but those four will be fine. And as I say, they’re all different ways, which would normally incite anger in you. So, it’s about really how to work with anger. You get a pretty good picture of Tibetan society from here too.