Anger and compassion: a discussion

Student: I just wanted to go back to this thing where you said anger is a way of exiting from compassion, because that made sense to me except in the context that it was being talked about, about being angry, like at an injustice. But I put that in the context of in my own life. So, much of my anger is because I feel like injustice is being done to me personally. What if I’m not exiting from compassion, but I’m just acting out of self-righteousness, or ego, or insisting on someone showing up for me the way I want them to.

Ken: Thank you for moving us in the direction of making this precise. Anger isn’t always an exit from compassion, but anger can be an exit from compassion. You’ve raised a couple of very good points. Self-righteousness is a wonderful source of anger. And that is where we have adopted a view of ourselves as being a certain way and that way is intrinsically virtuous. Right?

Student: Of course.

Ken: And if anybody questions it, it blows our mind because how could they question this intrinsically virtuous approach I’ve taken to life.

Student: Or behave contrary to it?

Ken: And thus, it’s a direct attack on our sense of self, to which you react angrily. And that anger is not an exit from compassion at all. That is a classic expression of aversion to a threat to the sense of who we are. “How could you say that to me? How could you think I would do anything like that? The very idea! I don’t think we can speak again.” [Laughs] You know, it’s the kind of thing that leads to cutting off relationships, because our attachment to our idea of who we are is more important than our connection with other people. Sadly, that’s very often the case.

Now, when it comes to a reaction to a sense of injustice, there I would say very frequently, anger is an exit from compassion because justice is the social expression of compassion. I will just let that one sink in. In the same way that courtesy is the social expression of loving-kindness. What I have found very frequently—and I mention this in response to the gentleman’s question just before we took a break for lunch—is that when we ourselves hold an ideal, fairness is one for instance, and we come into a situation and we get very, very upset because it isn’t fair. Maybe we aren’t the people being hurt by the lack of fairness, but it really upsets us that other people aren’t being treated fairly.

There’s an NPR piece, which is probably just a typical journalism piece, but it made for good listening about this woman who was recounting how she learned that life wasn’t fair. And she describes when she was in Catholic school, around six or seven years old, and all of the children in the class had to draw a piece of paper out of a hat which said what they were going to give up for Lent. The boy in front of her drew pretzels, and she got television. [Laughter] And she went, “Pretzels? Television? This is not fair!” [Laughter]

Well, life isn’t fair. We seek to make society fair—or at least I would say we used to seek to make society fair—because that was the value that we held as human beings as a way of organizing society. And there’s a lot of merit in it, there’s a great deal. But people went from that organizing principle to the ideal that everything should be fair and that life should be fair. Well it isn’t. Things happen unpredictably to all of us all the time. And the refusal to accept that life isn’t fair is usually, I found, based on trying to protect some pain—usually quite deep seated in us—that we encounter when we consider life isn’ t actually fair. We’re looking for some kind of protection from the chaos and the confusion and the mystery of life itself. So, when we react to lack of fairness out of anger, it’s often coming out of that kind of hurt. So, it’s a reaction.

Now none of these are particularly helpful reactions, whether we’re exiting from compassion or exiting from various ideals. They’re still reactions. The anger doesn’t really do very much, which is why I don’t put a lot of value in many of the traditional models for social change, which seek to bring about change through opposition. And people use anger to develop power within themselves, and energy.

From a Buddhist point of view, this is almost totally unproductive. Because if you use anger to develop a sense of power it means the only way you know how to use power is by being in the hell realm, which is all about opposition. And so everything’s a fight. And you find with certain activists and certain organizers, everything is a fight.

A much better—and I’ve used this in my own consulting work, I know I’m not alone on this, I know people who’ve written on this very extensively—model for social change is not direct opposition. But to come up with a compelling vision. And gradually, through a lot of hard work, enroll people in that vision. So, you’re not offering opposition to something, you’re offering an alternative. And say, “This is the direction we go, this is what we make happen.”

If you can get that rolling, then it can be extraordinary. You can really bring about social change because you’re giving people an opportunity to create something rather than fight against something. And you’re going to get a lot more people engaged in creating something than you will in fighting against something. And there will be challenges and difficulties along the way.

I used this approach to change the culture in an organization. Top management never knew what we were doing [laughs] and we changed the culture, because we knew that if they knew they would shut it down. So, we created a vision. And a very small group with a robust culture—which actually turned out to be self perpetuating, which was kind of a miracle in itself—and it gradually filtered out and infiltrated all the other segments in this particular office. And five or six years later, it had become completely assimilated into the main culture, and it changed it.

The six perfections

Ken: All right, the six perfections. Someone once said, “Buddhism is a religion of lists.” You have two of this, and two of that; you have the two truths. Then you have the three poisons, and the three jewels, and the three realms, all kinds of threes. And then you have four immeasurables, and four elements, and the five skandas. I mean, there’s so many of so many. I used to keep a book of all the lists, beause so many of the texts in Tibetan Buddhism, they just mention the list. So, we would spend all this time tracking them. It was this thick. I gave it to a friend of mine when I left France.

You can go online and type in “Buddhist lists'” and you get all these websites which are just all of these lists [laughs]. What we forget in our culture—because we have a printing press and we have books—is that these lists were very, very important because they made memorization easier. And not only did they make memorization easier, they were a way of compressing and storing a great deal of wisdom and experience.

And the six perfections is definitely one of those lists, as is the four noble truths, as is any number of the others. And you’ll find in the Tibetan tradition that they don’t want you just to know the list. They want you to know the order of the list, because often the order of the list is a clue to unpacking a good deal of the wisdom and understanding and experience that’s in it.

So, we’re going take a look at the six perfections. Now, right away we have a huge translation problem. We use this word in English, perfection, but it’s a complete misrepresentation of what the word means in Sanskrit and Tibetan. I’m going to work from the Tibetan etymology, which is very close to the Sanskrit, because I’m more familiar with Tibetan. The word in Tibetan is pha rol tu phyin pa (pron. pha rol tu chin pa). Pha rol means over there, like if you were standing on the bank of a river, and there was somebody standing on the bank, you’d say, “He’s over there.” Phyin pa means to go or to come, it can mean either. So, it’s to go over there.

It’s very similar to the word in Sanskrit, paramita. Now, that word para is exactly the same word that comes up in parachute, parasol, paragon, paradigm, etc. It’s a prefix in English but it means something different. Mita means the same thing, sent, or something along those lines. So, again, it has a sense of going over there. Now, what does this mean? There’s a sense of otherness in this word.

Now, how many of you—and I made reference to this on Friday evening—have had the experience of sitting down with someone, who may be close to you, who has experienced a significant loss? And you don’t know where the words come from, but you have this conversation and something in you, or somehow, you say the right thing. But this conversation has a quality of something magical, possibly even mystical. It seems there isn’t any real sense of self, but there is just this extraordinary feeling of presence, of intimacy, and you’re able to be with this person in that way. How many of you had something like that? Okay, so most of you, all right.

Now, when people experience that, it feels other; it feels different from the ordinary. And it’s that quality that perfection is referring to. It’s where you aren’t acting out of the habituated normal sense of self. It isn’t between you and me and we’re going back and forth. It’s this other quality of where you’re just in this world of experience and things happen. It’s very difficult to say, well, I said this and I said that, because yes, the words came out of your mouth, but you don’t really have the feeling that you said it. Do you know what I mean? Okay, so just for a moment, to the extent that you can, imagine that you’ve lived your whole life that way. How would your life be? Anybody?

Student: Paranormal.

Ken: Ah, there’s one in every crowd. [Laughter] Paranormal, very good play on words. Okay. Anybody else?

Student: It would be peaceful.

Ken: It would be peaceful. Yes, anything else?

Student: Be full of surprises because whatever you meet is just whatever you’re working with.

Ken: Yeah, you wouldn’t know what was going to happen next.

Student: It might be personally peaceful. But if this kind of complete honesty comes out of your mouth a lot of times you’re going to astonish a lot of people and probably anger a lot of people as well.

Ken: Where did this idea of complete honesty come from?

Student: In the sense of like, you’re not really mediating what you’re saying. It’s what’s coming out as appropriate to the situation. That’s what I’m thinking.

Ken: That’s right, that’s what I said. It’s appropriate to the situation. But if it’s really appropriate to the situation, would it necessarily ruffle feathers?

Student: I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Ken: It could, but I don’t think it follows necessarily. Because if it’s really appropriate to the situation, it’s a way of saying it so it actually doesn’t ruffle feathers. Or, if it ruffles feathers, it ruffles them in exactly the right way, which is what Aristotle said. “It’s very easy to get angry,” he said. “But it’s very difficult to get angry at the right person at the right time, in the right way, for the right reason.” [Laughs]

So, okay, anybody else? What would it be like to live with that intimate, intuitive, where you couldn’t actually use your intellect because you didn’t need to?

Student: It would be like you were connected to everything. If you were always doing the right thing, you were connecting to this knowledge that is not normally available when you’re in your head and in your mind in a normal way.

Ken: Okay, one more comment. Did you have one?

Student: It would have the experience of our first set with little struggle, a lot less struggle.

Ken: So, this is what the bodhisattva path is aiming at, is precisely this. Now is it possible always to live this way? I have my doubts, but it’s something certainly that we can aspire to. And the practice of the six perfections is a way of bringing that possibility into our lives. Now, the six perfections go back very far in Buddhist teaching. They are: generosity, morality—or it’s almost debatable whether it should be translated morality or ethics—patience, effort—which needs some qualification because we have translation problems there—meditative stability, and what is usually translated as wisdom—which is more accurately a kind of intelligence. Now the sequence here is somewhat important.

What is the essential gesture of generosity? So, if I’m holding this and I give it to you, what do I have to do in order to give it to you? Yeah, I have to open my hand. That is why we start with generosity, because it’s essential gesture is opening, opening to new possibilities. And by practicing generosity, you’re actually opening to life. It goes very, very deep. And with that opening to life, then we find we aren’t quite sure how to act.

That’s where morality or ethics comes in. They’re guidelines, standards, if you wish. Now those standards become increasingly subtle as we move further on in spiritual practice. When we start, one of the essential features in many forms of morality is this issue of restraint, the idea that you restrain from doing things you would just normally do out of reaction.

The practice of restraint gives rise to the development of patience which is the third: being able to tolerate discomfort without falling into reactivity. When we’re able to tolerate discomfort without falling into reactivity, then another possibility opens up. And that is for us to be able to pour our energy into something that is really important to us.

Now, I’ve said that the fourth of the perfections was effort. The synonym for this is enthusiasm. And you know when we feel enthusiastic about something, even if it’s really, really difficult, we just do it and we don’t think about the difficulties. And so this isn’t nose to the grindstone effort, though a lot of people with a Victorian background interpret it that way. It isn’t, “I’m just gonna [unclear] my way through this, push through it.” It’s not that kind of effort. It’s the flow of energy that goes in when we feel enthusiastic about something. And so, we will endure quite difficult hardship and make extraordinary efforts because this is something that’s important to us.

As we become capable of that, that opens up still another possibility: the possibility of stable attention. Now how many of you have suffered a little bit in your meditation? Okay. Why do you put up with it?

Student: For the reward.

Ken: What’s the reward? I’m still waiting for that [laughs]. It’s because it’s something important. As we pour our effort into it, little by little—and some of you probably noticed this—you become less reactive. Your attention is more stable, not only during your meditation period, but usually you notice it more in actual life. And so the ability to pour our effort into something that’s difficult opens up the possibility of developing meditative stability or stable attention, which should be a perfectly reasonable translation here.

When your attention becomes stable, then all kinds of other possibilities open up, the possibility of experiencing life and the world in a very different way. We’ve been touching on some of those in the course of our two days together. And that’s what gives rise to wisdom or this kind of intelligence.So, you see things and understand things more deeply than you were able to before.

Yogi Berra was full of these great quotes, “You can tell a lot about something just by looking,” was one. You know, everything is already in front of us, but we don’t know how to see it. But when our attention is more stable and isn’t confused by our own reactions, then we just see things more clearly.

So that’s the idea behind the six perfections and that’s why they’re in that sequence. Each one opens up the possibilities for the next until we’re completely in our experience of life. Generosity, morality, patience, effort, stable attention or meditative stability—either way you want to go with that— and wisdom—which I said is really a different kind of intelligence rather than wisdom.

Wisdom is a very interesting word. Let me ask you this: How many of you’re promiscuous? Sex, of course [laughter] but for our purposes, we’ll just keep it down to the basics. How many of you are promiscuous? I don’t see any hands. How many of you know somebody who’s promiscuous? See, all kinds of hands go up. So, this raises a question, what does promiscuous actually mean? Does it mean simply someone who sleeps with more people than you do? [Laughter]

We have exactly the same word dynamic with respect to wisdom. How many of you are wise? I see a wonderful array of hands. How many of you know somebody who is wise? See, [laughs] so there’s a problem with wisdom that way. Anyway, I just like that one, that was my entertainment for this afternoon [laughter]. You can see how desperate I am.

Okay now, here’s Tokmé Zongpo on the six perfections:

If those who want to be awake have to give even their own bodies,
(And here he’s appealing to this dramatic story of Buddha offering his body to the tigress)
What need is there to talk about things that you simply own?
Be generous, not looking
For any return or result—this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva,Tokmé Zongpo, verse 25

The last two lines are really important: “Be generous, not looking for any return or result.” If you’re looking for a return or result, you’re engaging in a transaction, you’re not really giving anything. If you ever give anything and there’s a string attached, you’re not giving anything. You’re trying to control somebody else’s behavior. You’re not giving. Real giving is, you give it, and that’s it.

Many years ago I organized, with two colleagues—a very well-respected Theravadan monk and a Zen teacher—a week-long training for teachers. This was back in the late 90s, and we had a good time. We hosted this at a Zen center where I hosted many events in Southern California. The staff there gets almost no money. I mean they get the smallest, like $25 a month or something with which to buy essentials, and that’s it. They get their room and board, of course, but they don’t get paid any salary or anything.

So, when I host events there, we make donations to the staff, so they can go and do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do or buy things they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to. And on this occasion, we ended up with an extra $500. The three of us agreed that we would donate this $500 to the staff. And then the Theravadan monk said, “Can we ask them not to buy any alcohol with that?” [Laughter] And the Zen teacher and I sort of looked at him, and he said, “Yeah. I know, forget it.” Because he could feel that as long as there was the slightest restriction on it—and very understandable, in the Theravadan tradition, alcohol is a big no-no—it wasn’t true giving. He got it right away. It was very sweet.

So, when you give something, are you hoping for a result? Can you let go of that hope? Even if you don’t verbalize it, can you let go? There’s this wonderful character in Tibetan tradition called Geshe Ben, who really must have been quite a character, because he was doing all of these really strange things. And on one occasion, this has to do with generosity, he was sitting in the temple. And the way that food was distributed in the monasteries is that you brought a bowl to the noontime prayer service and the monks came in with huge vats of soup and they would just ladle it out.So, the monks are all ladling the soup out to all of those who are seated in turn. And Geshe Ben starts yelling, “Thief, thief!”

And everybody stops, and someone said, “What? What’s going on?”

And they eventually tracked down that it’s Geshe Ben who’s yelling and they said, “What are you doing?”

And he said, “I’m yelling thief because I was hoping that when they get to me, they’re going to dip down to the very bottom of the ladle and get the really thick stuff. And then I realized other people wouldn’t get it so I’m stealing from other people.”So, he was very, very much in tune with what was going on in him. There’s all kinds of stories like that about him. So, in the act of giving and how you transform ordinary giving into the perfection of giving, is you bring your attention into the experience of giving.

Now, we already saw an example of that when you’re talking about desire. When you bring your attention into the experience of desire, everything changes and the desire kind of fractures and you’re just left with an appreciation. We do the same kind of thing with giving. And when you bring your attention to that, you’ll notice all of the little stuff that’s coming up with you. And you let it go. And it changes how you give, because now in that moment of actually giving, you’re letting it go and there are no conditions at all.

What does that feel like? Just take a moment and feel that. There’s no hope for a certain result. You’re not trying to get anything in return. There are no restrictions, no conditions of any kind. It’s in your hand, your hand opens, and it’s given to the other person. Can you feel the difference in that? Because when you’re really completely in your experience of giving, you move out of the world into your world. And in that world, there is no I and there is no other. There is just experience.

And that’s how you move from ordinary giving into the perfection of giving. It’s fairly easy to understand and to get a sense of that with giving. It’s little more difficult with morality and the others, but you get the idea. Now, in the verse on morality, the first two lines, I enjoy:

If you can’t tend to your needs because you have no moral discipline, then taking care of the needs of others is simply a joke.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 26

You have people who are working for the welfare of others and their lives are a complete mess. Well, their lives are a complete mess because they don’t have any internal discipline. They may be able to help others, but they’re not able to take care of themselves. And usually their caring for others causes them problems and their families problems and everything is out of balance in this way. So, moral discipline and discipline of any sort always starts with ourselves and bringing our own life into some kind of order.

And there’s the simplest way, and really probably the only way to do that, is you just bring attention to how you do things. Now, how many of you have run into financial problems at one point or another? The simplest way to start attacking financial problems is just to bring attention to how you are spending money, i.e. you start tracking it, and you start accounting for every cent.

Now, there are several people that I’ve worked with that’ve come to me and said, “I’m deeply in debt. I don’t want to live this way. Can you help? And I don’t want go to a debt counselor, and all that stuff. I want do this from a meditative point of view.”

I said, “Okay, the first thing you do is you start tracking every cent that you spend.” And a strange thing happens. Just by tracking it, their spending habits change. You know, “Well, do I need this chocolate bar? Nah, I don’t think so.” They really don’t wanna write down “$1.00 for a chocolate bar,” you see. And, “Do I really need that scarf? Nah, I can get by without it.” And it’s an application of a very deep principle: If you want to change something, bring your attention to it. And the simple act of bringing your attention to it changes your relationship with it. You no longer do it automatically and things just start to change right there.

So if you want to change how you live, just start bringing attention to very, very specific things you do in your life, and you’ll find that those things change. Don’t take the big ones to start with. Take simple ones. You know, do you make your bed in the morning? Okay, some people do, some people don’t. If you don’t make your bed, you bring attention and you look at your room and, it’s a mess, well, good place to start is just making the bed.

You know, I’ve always been somewhat chaotic in my life, and I can absolutely tell my state of mind by just looking at my living room or any room. And if it’s a mess, I know that I’m a mess inside. Because when I’m more ordered inside, then that order just manifests in my world. It’s very, very straightforward. So, the principle in the first two lines is just to bring attention to how you are living. And that leads you into living a way which supports the cultivation of attention and supports the quality of presence in your life.

Then the next two lines:

Observe ethical behavior without concern for conventional existence.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 26

This is challenging, because what it’s saying is that your own sense of morality outweighs your allegiance to society. And from a spiritual point of view, that’s true. And people say, “Well, that just means you can do anything you want.” No, you can’t do anything you want because you’re following a spiritual discipline and it’s probably a lot more restrictive on what is ethically okay than what is in the laws of society. But this is a very individual choice. Some people, they will never go for those two lines, because what is of primary importance to them is being a member of society and going along with whatever the accepted norms and practices are.

Other people say, “No, this is just wrong, I don’t go along with that. I can’t go along with it, personally. And even if I have to take a personal hit because I’m not going along, I would rather live that way than go along with it.”So, this is personal choice and your relationship to your own set of ethics becomes very important.

For bodhisattvas who want be rich in virtue,
A person who hurts you is a precious treasure.
(I hate this one.)
Cultivate patience for everyone,
Completely free of irritation or resentment—this is the practice of a bodhisattva

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 27

This is really tough. And there are all kinds of stories about people having people around them that were irritating so they would have an opportunity to practice patience. I don’t have to have anybody special around me. I find life irritating enough just on its own. I’ll be honest with you, I have never looked at someone who is irritating me and said, “Oh, you’re a special treasure.” [Laughter] I’ve never done that. I can barely imagine doing that. I mean, conceivably, if I was around for about 500 years, I might get to that point, but that’s not going to happen so I don’t have to worry about that. This is very, very much about using the exigencies of life to deepen our relationship with life.

We become alive and awake and we dig deep into our bag of resources in difficult situations, far more than in good situations. And if you ask people, “When did you feel most creative, most alive, most challenged, where did you feel you were exerting yourself to the utmost?”

They’ll never say, “When I was on a vacation in Maui.” No, they’re difficult circumstances and this is where we discover what we’re capable of. It’s difficult to appreciate that in the moment; we’re usually too involved in just meeting the challenge. But if we can accept what comes to us and just move into whatever it brings us in terms of experience, rarely will we regret it.

We will see that in those difficult times, we’ve learned something about ourselves, something about the world, something about our abilities or developed abilities that we didn’t know were there. And once they’ve been brought out that way, then they’re ours and we can use them wherever we want in our lives. We don’t have to wait for other difficult circumstances. Once they’ve been brought out, they become part of our repertoire, part of how we can relate to the world.

There’s an interesting piece of advice from the Taoist tradition here, which I hope I can quote correctly. I think it’s from Chuang Tzu. It’s to the effect of: “When you encounter something heavy, regard it as light as a feather. And when you encounter something light, regard it as heavy as a stone.” It sounds like rather strange advice. But what I take this to mean is that when you encounter a really difficult circumstance, don’t make it a big deal. Because in the end, it is like anything else. It’s an experience and we are just bringing our attention to that experience. That’s what one way of understanding, “When you encounter something heavy, treat it like a feather.” Okay, it’s another experience and we just do what’s possible. “When you encounter something light, treat it like a heavy stone.” Other times in our lives, something comes along and we think, oh that’s no big deal and we don’t pay any attention to it. And then because we don’t pay any attention to it or don’t give it the weight that it really needs, then it comes back to cause problems later. So, “When you encounter something light, treat it like a heavy stone,” is a way of saying don’t ignore anything that comes at you. Give it the same kind of attention. And both of these I see as expressions of this practice of patience.

Listeners and solitary buddhas, working only for their welfare,
Are seen to practice as if their heads were on fire.
To help all beings, pour your energy into practice:
It’s the source of all abilities.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 28

Now, listeners and solitary buddhas refers to two classes of spiritual attainment which were made up by the Mahayanists so they could beat up on other traditions [laughs]. And the idea is that these were people who were just practicing for their own good, not really interested in helping others.

Realistically, I think it’s a stage of practice that most of us go through. And we all have that tendency, you know. We find that after a while, after enough struggles, we find meditation actually feels peaceful. It’s restorative and things like that, and we like practicing because we benefit from it. We’re clear, we’re more relaxed, we’re present in our lives. And so we think, “Oh, this is good. I think that I will spend the rest of my days in the monastery in tranquility. That’ll be very nice. Don’t worry about the world.” It’s that tendency in us that “listeners and solitary buddhas” are referring to.

And when people are engaged in something that is in their own self-interest, boy can they ever pour energy into that. And they can just really work at that. But the moment it’s for somebody else, ah, it’s amazing. When I was building the three-year retreat, I had a wonderful example of this. It’s a really wonderful lesson for me.

For many months we’d been building the women’s and the men’s retreat sites. It was about a month and a half before the retreat was to start. All the rooms were more or less finished and the main structures. There were still a lot of things like the kitchens and the bathrooms and things which needed work. And Rinpoche went around and put names on all the doors to show us which room we were going to occupy for the next three years.

And as soon as those names went up, the way the work was done shifted. Some of the people started putting effort into their own room because they knew which room was their room. And in their spare time did work on the communal projects that still needed finishing. Others worked on the communal projects and when they had time, tried to fix up their own rooms a little bit. I was in the latter group, but as I said, I’m motivated by anger with everything.

And so I was complaining about this to somebody who was helping us, this was an Englishman who’s a really nice guy and just as strong as an ox, big guy. His name was Stacey. He and I were walking out and I was complaining about how people were being so selfish because they were working on their rooms first and not doing their communal areas, right? Aren’t I more nice, morally self-righteous here? Impeccable ground? How can anybody assail me? Well, Stacey was great. He just put his arm around me as we walked out and said, “Ken, they’re working on their own rooms for the same reason you’re working on the communal areas.”

I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

He said, “Because it’s easier.”

And I went, “Damn!” And so I dropped a little bit of self-judgment there, or judgment of others.

For some of us, it is easier to help others than to take care of our own lives. That’s an imbalance, just as taking care of our own lives to the neglect of others is an imbalance. So, when we pour energy into practice, it’s pouring energy completely into practice. And if you approach your life in terms of my world, the amazing thing is you actually do everything in more balance. When you approach it in terms of the world, you get into all kinds of difficulties trying to figure things out, what to do. But when you approach it in terms of my world, you have just what you experience.

And if there’s an imbalance over there, then your energy naturally moves over there. And if there’s imbalance in here, then your energy naturally moves in here. It’s totally counter-intuitive. But when you really regard everything just as, this is the world I experience, then you’re aware of where the imbalances are, and then your energy naturally goes there. So, that’s the way that I found best to work with making an effort.

Understanding that reactive emotions are dismantled
By insights supported by stillness,
(That’s technical language.)
Cultivate meditative stability that passes right by
The four formless states.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 29

That’s also technical language. What’s being said here is very simple. Don’t be concerned with making your mind totally quiet. The essence of practice in the tradition that I trained could be summed up in two sentences. Look in the resting; rest in the looking. That’s all you need to know about meditation. Look in the resting; rest in the looking.

Now, earlier I talked about this balance of stability and clarity. The first effort, at least the way I approach practice, is you rest, you rest in the experience of breathing. As you begin to develop an ability just to rest in that experience, then you look. And the looking can be done in different ways, It doesn’t really matter.

One way to look is just, what is this experience? Don’t try to answer the question, but you just raise the question and it brings this quality of looking. Now, as soon as you bring that quality of looking, it tends to destabilize. That’s where the second line comes in. You have to rest in the looking. So: look in the resting; rest in the looking.

Now, if some of you prefer to work with a different metaphor, you can put it this way. Listen in the resting; rest in the listening. Because listening is to sound in the same way that looking is to sight. And so you can sit and then you just listen to your whole experience: your experience in your body, experience of the emotions, experience, all the thoughts, whatever. And you listen. Not in the sense of trying to understand or decipher, but just opening and listening very, very deeply.

But that activates the mind. It brings out the clarity aspect of awareness. And so as you are listening that way, you learn to rest in the looking. If you just do either of those—look in the resting; rest in the looking. Listen in the resting; rest in the listening—your meditation practice will be fine. You don’t need any other meditation instruction. So, you’re finished now.

Without wisdom, the five perfections
Are not enough to attain full awakening.
Cultivate wisdom endowed with skill
And free from the three domains.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Tokmé Zongpo, verse 30

This is a horrible one to give a commentary on because it’s so technical. I referred earlier to the practice of generosity where you just gave, and it’s just a movement in your world. And if you think of generosity as a movement in your world, there is no one you’re giving to, there’s nothing being given, it’s just something is changing in your world. That’s what this phrase “free from the three domains” refers to, that kind of quality.

And what he’s saying is, whenever possible, move into that sense of otherness, where it’s just different from how you ordinarily do things, which is back and forth, you know, you and me, etc. Now, as you practice more, it becomes possible to move into that way of experiencing the world intentionally. It’s not something that is necessarily available immediately. But as you become quieter inside and are able to rest in that quiet—because often the quiet inside is unnerving—you open to a kind of mystery.

And as you become more and more conversant with just moving into that mystery, then it becomes possible in your ordinary life just to move there and start interacting from that place. Then life becomes something very, very different because you’re not working against anything. Life simply becomes movement in your world. I can’t really say much more than that. I hope that communicates something. Okay. So, this is the Six Perfections, a very cursory job.

Another version of the six perfections

Ken: I’m going to give you another version of the six perfections. You’ll find this on my website. This is from Milarepa, one of his songs. For generosity, when you let go of self-fixation, there’s nothing else to do. For morality, when you stop deceiving yourself, there’s nothing else to do. For patience, when you can experience your own fear, there’s nothing else to do. Or I think you may say you don’t have to react, there’s nothing else to do. For effort, when attention is active in your life, that is you’re bringing attention into your experience of your life, there’s nothing else to do. Oh, have I jumped one? Yes, sorry that was for meditative stability. For effort, when you’re working at something all the time, there’s nothing else to do. You’re bringing attention to whatever’s next, there’s nothing else to do. What’s the one for wisdom? For wisdom, when there’s no fixation, there’s nothing else to do.

I’ve been translating those out of my head. I have my careful translation up on the website under Milarepa and the six perfections or something like that, so you should find it. But it’s a different kind of summary to the same topic. So, that’s a lot of material in the very short period of time.