How to read the text

Ken: [Gong] Let’s turn to the text. Needless to say, we don’t have the time to go through every verse in every detail. What Tokmé Zongpo sets out here is a path of practice, which is heavily based in the Tibetan tradition of lamrim, which is a sequence of practices, stages in the path, if you wish. This morning we’re going to look, very briefly, at everything from verse one, or practice one, up to 11. My intention here is partially to help you understand how to read such texts. We’re faced with a small difficulty and that is: Tibetan tradition is based in the culture, which is a pre-modern culture. It’s a traditional society.

In the West we have experienced basically three revolutions. The first was the industrial revolution, which is basically the 18th, 19th century. Then there’s a productivity revolution, which took place largely in this country, and then spread elsewhere, which begins at the end of the 19th century to the early 20th century. Whereas the industrial revolution made it possible to apply energy to work and do far more work than was possible. The productivity revolution made it possible for people to produce much more and is largely responsible for the emergence of affluence on the scale that we were able to enjoy in this country. Then in the mid-20th century we had a management revolution which changed the whole way work was actually structured. Not only work, but also our education system and many, many other areas of life. The consequence of these three revolutions is that we think completely differently from how traditional cultures think. Some people talk about this being a post-industrial, post-modern society, and that’s another way of saying the same thing.

And one of our tendencies is—because of the way that our culture works and the way we’ve been trained—one of the primary ways that we relate, particularly to the written word, is we take it literally. Many, many people, it seems, have lost their relationship completely with poetry. How many of you are familiar with T. S. Eliot? Okay. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it’s a poem that he wrote, I think, in the 1920s or so.

A student of mine who is frighteningly bright, he’s been an extremely successful consultant, is able to figure out business systems just incredibly. But he is a little disconnected with himself emotionally. So I was meeting with him and he was describing how he was feeling. I said, “Oh, this sounds like J. Alfred Prufrock.”

And he went, “What?” So I hauled out the poem and I read it to him, or parts of it. He’s in his late 50s, early 60s now. And he says, “I studied that poem in college and I couldn’t understand what it was talking about. But when you explain it this way, Ken, this is exactly how I’m feeling.” So, this points to me how cut off we are from the language of symbolism, the language of emotion, in which things aren’t taken literally. The key component when you’re working with poetry and other forms of art is not the intellectual content of what’s being said, but what feelings and emotions and sensations it elicits in us as we read, or as we view, or as we are exposed to it.

So in translating this text, I really paid close attention to that, because my view of translation is that when I read a book or a text in Tibetan I have a certain experience. As a translator, I see my job as, to write something in English so that when you read it in English you have a similar experience. You can’t do this if you translate literally, it just doesn’t work.

Verse 1-4: taking stock of our lives

Ken: So the first two or three verses, first four really, are very much about taking stock of our lives.

Right now you have a good boat, fully equipped and available—hard to find.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 1

What is he talking about here? Anybody? Yes. Being a human being, this body. Exactly. That’s the boat. In Tibetan culture, the body was viewed primarily as a vehicle. We don’t see it that way in our culture. It’s primarily a vehicle for the mind and the heart. So you got to use your body. We have a rather different approach to the body. I mean, some people, I’m from Los Angeles, so it’s terrible there. The body is seen as the end of life; this is the purpose of life: the body, [laughs] a rather different view.

To free others and you, from the sea of samsara, day and night, fully alert, study, reflect, and meditate.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 1

Now, how many of you know what the meaning of life is? If you want to know what the meaning of life is, there’s a very reliable book which will tell you exactly what the meaning of life is. Anybody know it? It’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. [Laughs] The meaning of life, I’ll save you reading the book, it’s 42. What that means is another question. For that they had to construct a computer, called the planet Earth, [laughs] which is run by six mice, and so forth. It’s hilarious.

Anyway, when my teacher was asked, “What is the meaning of life?” he would say, “To practice dharma.” This would always throw off the interviewer terribly. As I looked into this question, What is the meaning of life? I realized that the problem was one of translation. You cannot ask the question, What is the meaning of life? in Tibetan and have it carry the same sense that we associate with that question. It’s an untranslatable question. It always comes out as something else. So my teacher was hearing how I was translating it, and it came out, What is the purpose of life? which he would say is to practice the dharma. That’s what you’re meant to do in life. Another time, this is translating on a radio interview, fortunately, it was taped not live. And I said, “What is the meaning of life?” He said, “Life is the time between birth and death.” Oh, okay, that’s what life, the word life actually means.

So this is the kind of thing you have to wrestle with. But this is the perspective of a medieval culture and Tibet is a medieval culture. There’s an overarching worldview, and everybody ascribes to it, this is what life is about. You may not pay full attention to it. You may be a traitor, you may be a nomad, you may be royalty, you may be a serf, you may be a peasant. But everybody knows that the thing you actually should be doing in life is practicing. You know: study, reflect, meditate. That’s what you should be doing in your life. How many subscribe to that here? We don’t, we live in a tremendously rich and pluralistic society where we have all kinds of competing worldviews.

And so in this verse, the way to read this verse is: What brings you meaning in your life? What are your questions about life? and to sharpen it a little bit, What do you want to take care of now, that won’t be a cause of regret when you are dying? This is very important and that’s exactly what the next three verses move into.

Attraction to those close to you, catches you in its currents; Aversion to those who oppose you burns inside; Indifference that ignores what needs to be done is a black hole. Leave your homeland—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 2

How many of you struggle with your life? I’ll take that as a yes. We have this phrase in Buddhism: the end of suffering. The Sanskrit term is duhkha. In Sanskrit it means everything from mild anxiety to acute physical, or emotional anguish, or … Yeah, anguish is a good word. We don’t have a word in English that covers that range. Suffering is about over here and we can come up with other words, dissatisfaction, but they don’t get the intensity. If I meet with a group of people and say, how many of you are suffering in your lives? You know, three or four people will sort of hold up their hand a little bit.

But when I ask the question, “How many of you struggle in your lives?” you heard the response. Everybody can relate to that. So I’ve come to the conclusion that struggle is the right translation for duhkha. Now, the question I want to ask you, I want to ask two here. What is the origin of the struggles you have with your life? Okay. So anybody want to answer that one? I won’t hold you it to it. Okay.

Student: Wanting things to be different than what they are.

Ken: Wanting things to be different from what they are. Okay. Is it okay if we go a step further? Why do you want things to be different from how they are?

Student: Well, I have a very clear companion in my life, which is chronic pain. So that’s always the first thing that comes to my mind. How to live with that? And how not wanting it to be different is very difficult.

Ken: Yes, I agree. That’s very, very difficult. Okay. So right there, there is aversion and there is attraction. Right? Yeah. Okay. Anybody else?

Student: Largely the same. It’s the conviction that things aren’t okay the way that they are. And that I can’t be with the way things are right now, and so I must change them.

Ken: Things aren’t okay the way they are. And I can’t be with them the way they are. Okay. Anybody else?

Student: I’m ancient.

Ken: You’re ancient. Thank you.

Student: I’m 78, so I look at things, you know, I’m retired, I look at things differently than I did, you know, 40 years ago. And right now I don’t really expect much from life. So I came into Buddhism hoping that it would give me some spiritual or a higher level of acceptance than I currently have.

Ken: Has it?

Student: Well, yes and no, [laughs] but, well, I’m still working on it. I mean, you know, I did two ten-day retreats in Massachusetts 20 years ago.

Ken: Oh, 20 years ago. Right back at the beginning then.

Student: Yeah. Well that was back when the meetings had more men than women. I went to the first one. Then I came to the second one, which wasn’t that far apart, and there were more women than men. And that’s my experience. Wherever I go now, there’s, you know, sometimes I’m the—

Ken: I’ll do a quick count in the room now [laughs].

Student: I’m the token male sometimes at the sangha we go to [laughs]. But at any rate, I’m just hoping that, you know, I see a lot of things in the world that are wrong. And they bothers me, but I’m at the point where I don’t think I can change anything.

Ken: I understand.

Student: I’m not looking for a lot out of life at this point.

Ken: But you’re looking for this higher level of acceptance.

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. Why?

Student: Well, I don’t wanna go downhill.

Ken: Well, I’m not sure where going downhill came into the picture. But why do you want this higher level of acceptance?

Student: Because I’d like to feel that I’m accomplishing something in my life.

Ken: Well, I’m going to push you here a little bit, if that’s okay. So what would you have accomplished if you have a higher level of acceptance?

Student: I would accomplish the fact that I’m doing more in life. You know, I’m getting more out of it.

Ken: I’m curious now. How does having a higher level of acceptance give you more out of life?

Student: I’m not so judgmental of people and myself. When I go into meditation, my mind is just a super train full of garbage that comes up. All kinds of things from my past, you know, from my childhood and young adult and all that. It’s hard to get rid of those. That would make me feel really great, you know, if I could get rid of all that and just think about the present.

Ken: Okay. I think I get the drift. Thank you. So if I understand you correctly, you’re looking for peace.

Student: Yes.

Ken: Okay. How many others are looking for peace here? Oh, okay. Well, really, the second verse is then very important.

Attraction to those catches you in its currents; Aversion to those who oppose you … (And you can think of it, not just those, but things that you feel in opposition to.) Indifference that ignores what needs to be done is a black hole. Leave your homeland—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 2

Now, in ancient times a verse such as this would be taken somewhat literally. The Indian renunciate model was such that at a certain point in your life when you became ancient, you left the world. You entered a religious order. You left all of the affairs of the world behind. You left your homeland. In our day and age, that is not part of our cultural norm, for a start. It is also actually quite impractical for most of us. But there’s an interior interpretation here, and that is to let go of, just as this gentleman put it, these things from the past that nag at us, that pull us.

And there may be things in the present, as you were describing, chronic pain or an intransigent close relative of ours, things like that, that easily draw our attention and consume our energy, and through which we know no peace. The challenge here is to find a relationship with just those elements of our lives in a way that we don’t struggle with them. Now, perhaps easier said than done.

But one of the things I want to just plant in you for your consideration comes from a professor of religious studies. He’s now retired out of New York University, a person called James Carse. He says, “We define ourselves by what we oppose, because we say, ‘I am not that.’ But by saying, ‘I am not that,’ we’re saying what we are.” One of the ideas I would like you to explore a little bit is, What would it be like to live without having to oppose anything internally or externally? I’m not saying this is particularly easy. I’m not saying it’s even practical in all circumstances, but just as an idea, What would it be like to live without opposing anything? And I’m gonna come back to that in a few minutes. I just want to touch on the next few verses here.

Don’t engage disturbances and reactive emotions gradually fade away; Don’t engage distractions and spiritual practice naturally grows; Keep awareness clear and vivid, and confidence in the way arises. Rely on silence—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 3

I can’t tell you how much wisdom is in these four lines. Things come up internally all the time, just as you were describing. And when you’re dealing with intense and chronic pain, stuff is coming up all the time. Not to engage them does not mean ignore them. Ignore them means that we put up a wall and we pretend they’re not there. When we do that, we actually shut off a part of ourselves. That goes back into the theme I was just exploring about opposition. They don’t go away. We’ve walled off part of ourselves and we feel incomplete in the process. Not to engage them means—and this is what is tricky—means to experience them, but not be consumed or fall into reaction. So in somewhat psychological parlance: not to suppress and not to express.

Don’t engage distractions and spiritual practice naturally grows. When we don’t engage distractions—and it’s the same meaning—it doesn’t mean we just ignore them. We experience them, but don’t engage them. We find ourselves relating to life differently. You can say, quite reasonably, that the practice of meditation is very much about this line. That is, how do you form a relationship with all the stuff that’s going on, which normally distracts us and fragments our attention? How do we learn how to experience those without getting lost all the time? That’s what we actually learn in meditation. When you do nothing else, even if you do nothing else, you’ll find just from the peace and understanding that comes when your attention isn’t constantly fragmented, you start forming a different relationship with yourself, a relationship that’s unmediated by any third party. And you discover that you have a quiet inside you. You have peace. You have insight. You have all of these qualities. And you could never recognize them before.

Then the third one: Keep awareness clear and vivid, and confidence in the way arises. This particular line, keep awareness clear and vivid was the one, if you boiled all of my teacher’s teaching down to one line, that would be it. He wrote a small text of his own, a summary, essential points of the dharma. What he says three or four times in this very short text is, “Just recognize. Just rest in recognizing what’s happening, and don’t do anything more.”

In the three-year retreat, at one point in the retreat, the head of our order, the 16th Karmapa, visited us. Now the 16th Karmapa was a very, very interesting person, a person of extraordinary power. When you’re in the same room as him, it was just like, what’s going on here? When I was married, my wife—who also did the three-year retreat—and I were visiting in London. We met with Karmapa and he was very unhappy about what was happening in the English centers at that time. My wife ended up taking care of his apartment, and she said being in the same room when he was angry, it was like being in the same room as a thunderstorm. This gives you an idea.

Anyway, he came to visit us in the three-year retreat, and he gave us his own instruction. And it consisted of this: “Look, as soon as the thought arises, relax. Then look again. As soon as the thought arises, relax.” Now, I’m just doing it like this. When he was doing it, it was like you were being picked up by the scruff of your neck and thrown against a wall. And he did this for half an hour [laughs]. So this business about keeping your attention clear and vivid. Now, how do you do that? This is a really important point about meditation instruction. After this I want to move back to a bit of meditation so we can explore some of these ideas in practice.

You don’t do it by trying to maintain clarity and vividness in your awareness. There’s a lovely expression I came across some time ago: You can’t wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. Well, this has many applications. You cannot make your awareness clear and vivid because it is clear and vivid. You cannot make it clear and vivid. People are trying to do the impossible. When it comes to meditation practice, if this is the experience of breathing, this is attention. This is what meditation practice looks like.

There’s a small problem that comes up. Your attention falls off. When that happens there’s nothing you can do about it. Nobody can do anything about it. Why? Because there isn’t any attention. It’s gone. However, it doesn’t last that way very long. There’s a moment of recognition, “Oh.” How many of you experienced that “Oh”? Okay. At that moment, your attention is clear and vivid. You’ve returned to natural awareness and the only thing to do is this.

So most people relate to meditation practice as this. [Sound of metal tap, pause, laughter] Something is pulling me away! No! How many of you practice meditation this way? [Laughter] Okay, it doesn’t work. Maybe it works for you. It doesn’t work for me. Return attention and rest. It falls off. When you recognize, return attention and rest. It will fall off. So it’s gonna look like this over and over again. Now, you know why people don’t like meditating that way? Because they don’t get to do anything. They don’t get to concentrate. They don’t get to focus. They don’t get to do anything. This is very frustrating, particularly if you’re a doer.

So these three lines are about learning a relationship with silence. Don’t engage disturbances: which means that when disturbances arise, you’re just there and you don’t get to do anything. Engaging them is doing something. Ignoring them is doing something. Pushing them away is doing something. Manipulating, remedying, all of that is doing something. No, you don’t engage them. You do nothing. And you think that’s impossible. Well, almost but not quite.

Don’t engage distractions: same thing. And keep returning to the natural clarity and vividness of awareness. So we’re going to practice just for a few minutes with these ideas. I want you to experiment in your meditation over the next few minutes. I want you to experiment with not opposing anything. That is, if pain arises, rest in the experience of pain. Now, if the pain is such that it is drawing all your attention, then you may need to adjust your posture. If an itch arises, don’t oppose the itch, just experience it. If distractions arise, don’t try to do anything with them. Rest in the experience of breathing. If you lose track of it as you probably will many times, as soon as you recognize it, just come back and rest. Don’t indulge yourself by chastising, saying, “No, no, you gotta meditate better than this.” You just come back and rest.

What you’re doing here is practicing a relationship with silence in which you are the silence. Now, silence is very interesting. Here we are in this room, so I’m going to make a noise right now, and I want you to tell me what happens to the silence when I make this noise. [Gong] What happened to the silence? Let’s try this again. Very little noise in this room. I’m going to make a big noise now, relatively speaking. Tell me what happens to the silence. [Gong]

Student: The silence stays there.

Ken: Yeah, the silence stays there. Okay, so I want everybody to try this: when I make this noise, continue to hear the silence. [Gong] What happens? Anybody else? “It surrounds the noise” was said. Anybody else? Yes. Okay. “It’s underneath the noise”. “The noise is on top of it”. “It’s around.” “It’s there constantly”. Okay. You are the silence, which means that anything can arise and you do not need to be disturbed. Do you follow? Don’t try to be the silence. You can’t be because you already are. You can’t wake up a person who’s pretending to sleep. Very important that one. So this may be a very different approach to meditation practice.

Student feedback on a meditation

Ken: So I’d just like us to explore this for a few minutes together. Then we’re going to take a short break. [Gong]

Very quickly before we take our break. What was this like for you? Anybody?

Student: I went from a sense of having substance and being here in this room to having no substance at all. I found that when I had a thought, I came back to it right here. And when my thoughts just dissipated back into silence, it was like I didn’t have any form. It was really wonderful.

Ken: Well, let’s go to the operative area. More or less struggle, say a bit more about that please.

Student: It just felt like more a sense of just being instead of trying.

Ken: Very good. Anybody else?

Student: When I just noticed that when I noticed something I immediately wanted to change it. If I was happy, I wanted to be happier. If I was thirsty, I wanted a drink. If I was hot, I wanted to take … So I tried just not wanting to take my sweater off, and it went away. Then it was completely gone. I wasn’t thirsty, it went away on its own. I didn’t realize that the minute I notice something, I wanted to do something about it. That’s my human nature, I guess.

Ken: Any control issues in your life? [Laughter] This is very good, a different way of relating to experience. Okay. One more.

Student: I think I must have a multiple personality disorder. I’m always—

Ken: Most of us do.

Student: I’m aware of my breathing. Maybe that’s an illusion, but I think I’m aware of my breathing. I feel it here and there are like three or four voices all having different conversations about different things all at the same time.

Ken: You only have three or four, piece of cake [laughs].

Student: That I can count. Does that eventually go away? I mean, three-year retreats, at some point, do they kind of just stop?

Ken: Yeah, I think I’ve moved from 100 down to about 40 [laughs].

Student: That’s just the way it is?

Ken: Well, yes, we all have multiple selves. I can give you a long explanation of why that is, and every one of them is grabbing for the microphone all the time, as you’ve probably noticed. Okay? Now, that’s how it is. I think one person said, “We’re a bus full of our relatives and ancestors, and every one of them is grabbing for the steering wheel while yelling out directions.” [Laughter]

Student: So when you were demonstrating with the bowl and the striker, and holding it down. Is that the act of trying to get rid of all those other voices?

Ken: Yeah, that’s concentration, right?

Student: Trying to hold it down?

Ken: And it’s hopeless.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: Okay. There are two aspects to meditation practice. One of them has been unduly emphasized, and that’s the idea of directing attention. And that’s what everybody thinks you’re meant to do. But the other aspect is just opening and letting be. Eventually these two can come together. But I have found so many people, including myself, benefit from just not trying so hard. Just resting, and then discovering that there’s a natural awareness that is there and can just come out on its own. As long as we’re trying, as this woman was saying, “Okay, this is how things are. I want them to be better now. I want them to be better”.

There’s always this pushing. There’s never any rest there. The only way you can rest is to let things be. If you have minor control issues in your life then just letting things be is really difficult. So that’s another skill to learn. You mentioned earlier, chronic pain. That’s very, very difficult. It’s difficult because it drains energy from the system. There’s a constant energy drain. But if we start looking at it, it’s because in some way we’re always struggling against it, which is totally natural.

But when we start saying, “Okay, I can’t do anything about this, but I can just experience the sensations of the pain.” Because pain is actually a sensation, it may not diminish it at all, but we start to find a different relationship with it. And then it isn’t quite such an energy drain. So there are possibilities there. I’m not saying that they’re particularly easy and they may not make things any better in a certain sense. But we can change our relationship with the way we experience things, even if we can’t change the experience itself.