The story of tea

Ken: I guess we should start off with the story which some of you know, actually two stories on this subject. But we’ll just use one. Maybe we will use the other one. Here we are. Ah, this is better. The Story of Tea.

In ancient times tea was not known outside of China. Rumours of its existence had reached the wise and unwise of other countries, and each tried to find out what it was in accordance with what he wanted and what he thought it should be. The king of Inja (‘here’) sent an embassy to China, and they were given tea by the Chinese Emperor. But, since they saw the peasants drank it too, they concluded that it was not fit for their royal master and furthermore that the Chinese Emperor was trying to deceive them, passing off some other substance for the celestial drink.

The greatest philosopher of Anja (‘there’) collected all the information he could about tea, and concluded that it must be a substance which existed but rarely, and was of another order than anything then known. For was it not referred to as being a herb, a water, green, black, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet? In the countries of Koshish and Bebinem, for centuries the people tested all the herbs they could find. Many were poisoned, all were disappointed. For nobody had brought the tea plant to their lands and thus they could not find it. They also drank all the liquids which they could find, but to no avail.

The territory of Mazhab, which means “sectarianism”, a small bag of tea was carried in procession before the people as they went on their religious observances. Nobody thought of tasting it; indeed, nobody knew how. All were convinced that the tea itself had a magical quality. A wise man said, “Pour upon it boiling water, ye ignorant ones!” They hanged him and nailed him up, because to do this, according to their belief, would mean their destruction of their tea. This showed that he was an enemy of their religion. Before he died, he told a secret to a few, and they managed to obtain some tea and drink it secretly. When anyone said: “What are you doing?” They answered: “It is but medicine which we take for a certain disease.”

And so it was throughout the world. Tea had actually been seen growing by some who did not recognize it. It had been given to others to drink, but they thought it the beverage of the common people. It had been in the possession of others, and they worshipped it. Outside China, only a few people actually drank it, and those covertly.

Then came a man of knowledge, who said to the merchants of tea and the drinkers of tea, and to others: “He who tastes, knows. He who tastes not, knows not. Instead of talking about the celestial beverage, say nothing but offer it at your banquets. Those who like it will ask for more. Those who do not will show that they’re not fitted to be tea drinkers. Close the shop of argument and mystery. Open the tea house of experience.”

The tea was brought from one stage to another along the Silk Road and whenever a merchant carrying jade or gems or silk would pause to rest, he would make tea and offer it to such people as were near him, whether they were aware of the repute of tea or not. This was the beginning of the chaikhanas, the teahouses, which were established all the way from Peking to Bokhara and Samarkand. And those who tasted knew.

At first, mark well, it was only the great and the pretended men of wisdom who sought the celestial drink and who also exclaimed : “But this is only dried leaves!” or: “Why do you boil water, stranger, when all I want is the celestial drink?” or yet again: “How do I know what this is? Prove it to me. Besides the color of the liquid is not golden, but ochre!”

When the truth was known, then the tea was brought for all who would taste, the roles were reversed, and the only people who said things like the great and intelligent had said were the absolute fools. And such is the case to this day. Close the shop of argument and open the teahouse of experience.

The Story of Tea, Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, p. 80

Student: There was a little bit more to that. It was mystery and there was something else in the argument as well.

Ken: “Close the shop of arguments and mystery; open the teahouse of experience.” [Laughter] Okay. Now, well, don’t see anything that gives any source for that particular story. This is from Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah. This tale is from the teachings of the master Hamadani.

The wisdom experince of Ever-present Good

Ken: I’m going to read this text first, a kind of transmission. Then I’m going to go through it. “The Wisdom Experience of Ever-present Good” from The Heart Essence Great Space by Jigme Lingpa.

I bow to mindful Ever-present Good.

Mind itself is utterly without root, like space.
Just as space does not refer to the nature of space,
Nor can awareness be pointed out by examples.
Yet I use such methods to explain the key points.

Suppose the house of a poor man contains a wonderful treasure,
And although he has it, he doesn’t know it.
He continues to be a poor man.
In the same way you are tangled in the net of unaware thinking
And don’t know what you have. How heartbreaking you beings in Samsara.

When you turn your back on the path of natural being
Mistaken notions don’t stop at all.
So your aesthetics latch on to a single principle
from such flawed philosophies as order or chaos.
How confused you are by wrong ideas, you extremists!

Mind itself is originally pure like space.
As long as you use conceptual knowing to look for it,
You get stuck like a bug caught in its own spit.
Turning your back on what is, you are still ruled by wanting.
How worn out you must be, you listeners, from blocking things!

Your mind is the source of all experience patterned or free.
You awaken completely when you rest and do nothing at all.
Instead, you follow meticulously and exclusively
The cycle of teaching on ignorance, interdependence, and samsara.
How charmed you must be you self-reliant ones by your artificial awakening!

Mind itself, always complete in its natural expression,
Rests in the womb of uncontrived original nature.
Caught up in logic and analysis you sophists distort how things are
Because you believe in descriptions of the two truths.
How far you have to go you followers of the philosophy of awakening beings!

Because mind itself doesn’t take up the good or give up the bad,
A shrewd moral practice acts as an added pollutant.
The forms of dualistic fixation distort what is not two.
Ritual tantra seeks to attain a state where there’s nothing to attain.
How elegant you are, you followers of ritual philosophy!

The natural condition is not good or bad. It doesn’t grow or fade.
Even when you stop ordinary concepts with outlook, practice and behavior,
You still hold as real your activity in means and wisdom.
In behavioral tantra, you waste time doing stuff when there’s nothing to do.
How tiring your chosen discipline you followers of behavioral philosophy!

There is no outer inner or in between in the nature of attention.
Mind itself is free from any sense of manipulation.
In union tantra you use thoughts to manipulate symbols of what is profound and clear,
But to little effect, you followers of union philosophy!

By resting in a state that doesn’t rely on effort or process,
You can use the result, pure being, as the path.
Instead, you use complex practices to relieve and refresh mind, channels, and energy.
How tired you must be, you followers of supreme philosophy!

Mind itself has no heads, hands or regalia.
When you fall into the mistake of seeing what arises as the deities form
And hold mistaken ideas about sound as mantra,
You won’t see what is true is the path of great union.

Here ends the first chapter of the Wisdom Experience of Ever Present Good which presents the conceptual philosophies of the eight vehicles.

Kye ho!
My nature is great completion.
All experience, patterned and free, is complete—Nothing to discard or attain.
The essential instructions are complete—total natural releasing.
The essential views are complete—neither order nor chaos.

The paths of practice are complete—no effort to make.
The teachings on behavior are complete—no do’s or don’ts.
The essence of fruition is complete—no expectation.
And this “complete” is nothing but a concept too.

Awakening mind is the essence of all teaching.
Awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.
Awakening mind is the life of all beings.
Awakening mind is neither apparently or ultimately true.

To say it is not, does not make it empty.
To say “it is” does not make it solid.
It is around beyond mind for experience is just there—no taking hold, no letting go.
It is a space free from all complications of thought and object.

Because I’m free from the thinking of that distorts experience,
The evolution of good and evil actions comes to a complete stop.
What are deities, mantras and absorptions meant to do?
I am not a wakefulness that comes from practice.
My nature is universal presence.How can seeing come from progressing through paths and levels?

Therefore, let go of the tangles of hope and fear.
Let the knife-edge of outlook drop away.
Come out of deep meditation’s cocoon.
Get rid of stiff or pretentious behavior.
Forget about expectations for big results.

In the state of attention that is beyond meditating or not meditating,
Evaluations of what you are doing or not doing disappear completely.
Awakening mind is beyond empty or not empty.
It is the original space where existence and non-existence drop away.

In awareness indescribable, inconceivable, inexpressible,
The center pole is no corrective—nothing that holds a position.
With simple, steady self-releasing freshness,
And the space free from complications or effort,
Rest without ebb or flow in the three times.

Herein ends the second chapter, “The Wisdom Experience of Ever Present Good”, which presents the original freedom, great completion.

Kye ho!
Awakening mind free from discarding or attaining,
Buddha nature, the essence of awareness,
Is present in you. Still. it is stuck in a cage of inventions.
All meditation just clouds the heart of the matter.

In pure being, which is without origin or essence,
What is experience has no beginning or end.
Your misconceptions twist what is formless into form.
Slipping away from what is true, you become confused and reactive.

Some people cut off the ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings
And construct an emptiness practice corrupted by goal seeking.
They are worn out from pushing a forced practice.
Big problems develop when you misdirect energy into the life channel.

Others do not see original presence.
Misled by descriptions of presence, their practice is ineffective.
Taking in intense dullness that conceals thoughts and feelings
As the essence of practice, they are very confused.

Some use their ability to know movement as mind
To mull over the traces as thoughts and feelings ebb and flow.
People who track arising and fading in stable meditation
Just spin in confusion even if they practice for a hundred years.

In general, work and effort alone just create opposition.
You aren’t happy when you practice, you stir up all sorts of pains;
When you don’t practice, you don’t know your own nature and wander in confusion.
In either case you fall away from what is natural and true.

Kye ho!
Because these mistakes stop you from going beyond ordinary human experience,
Be clear that the approach of meditation versus not meditation
Relies on an artificial distinction.
Be present right now without trying to change or control anything.

Put a complete stop to any kind of scrutiny, control.
Or goal-seeking using conditioned states of mind.
Direct awareness is no big deal. It doesn’t need any work.
Stop trying to change or adjust it. Just let it be.

Whenever conceptual thinking arises,
Don’t look at what arises. Be what knows the arising.
Like an oak stake and hard ground, stand firm in awareness that knows and go deep into the mystery.

In the nature of what is, plain and simple,
You may rest free from movement or change.
If you don’t avoid the trap of correctives based on positions,
You will get lost in the ways of the analytical approach.

All the technicalities of outlook, practice and behavior
Are, from the perspective of what is true, just intellectual chaff.
Let correctives that work on mindfulness subside int0 space.
Maintain the chosen discipline of not naming, “wandering” or “not wandering.”

Let things be, without messing around with projecting or absorbing.
Rest in space free from the complications of effort.
The Great Treasure is to be free of thought and thinking:
To know that there is originally no buddha,
To be where wanting has never been.

With this special teaching that rots the roots of samsara,
Wake up from the realm of misery. Open and relax.
In emptiness that goes beyond what is true or what is false
Is the meaning of arising and releasing, self-releasing and direct releasing.
Know this and you are no different from all the awakened ones.
You will awaken and be no different for me.

In this age of strife, these key instructions of the great mystery
Are mingled with the authoritative writings of the analytic approach.
Those knowledge holders who are not different from me
Will confirm this wisdom experience.

Masters of this teaching, the expression of the awakening beings for the three families,
And those blessed with natural talent, may you make use of it.

Herein ends the Third Chapter of “The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good,” which describes how to cut through mistakes. Now I am finished. This is a sealed text.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

Pointing out practice hang-ups

Ken: The first section is often misunderstood. It goes through what in Tibetan parlance in the Nyingma tradition is known as the nine vehicles, actually doesn’t go through the nine, it is saving that for last, it goes through the first eight. And it sounds like he’s being very critical of them. Saying this approach is no good, this approach is no good, and this approach is no good. There’s a lot of writing like this in Nyingma circles. Everybody uses this as a way of saying dzogchen, which is the ninth vehicle, is the best, the greatest. It can beat out all the other ones. [Laughter]

And you got this a lot. I mean, those of you who hung out with me and my circles know about this, right? Well, it is another manifestation of stupidity. We have to keep in mind what Frank Zappa said, paraphrasing Einstein, as I come to appreciate: “There are only two things which are universal, hydrogen and stupidity.” And then there’s another saying from the Greeks, which is very important to keep in mind. I think it’s from the Greeks: “Against stupidity, even the gods struggle in vain.” [laughter] Why do you find that funny? It’s tragic. [Laughter]

So, passages like this are very much like the Nasrudin stories. They’re pointing-out instructions and in the language of these different philosophies, etc., they were pointing to things that each of us does. So it’s not criticizing the nine vehicles or the eight vehicles or what have you. It’s pointing out what we do in our own practice and where we get hung up. So listen to these again, from that perspective.

Treasure hidden in plain sight

Ken:

Suppose the house for a poor man contains a wonderful treasure.
Although he has it, he doesn’t know it.
He continues to be a poor man.
In the same way you were tangled in the net of unaware thinking
And don’t know what you have. How heartbreaking, you beings in samsara!

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

So, we’ve been here for almost a week now. Have any of you discovered anything about yourself that you didn’t know before? Oh, this is good. Nobody has at all. Has that been useful to you? Did you know that you had it all the time? Like this man who has this treasure, but doesn’t know it? Yeah. Anybody else in this position? Okay. So this is what it’s like.

Now got to make a little bit of a jump. This is somewhat in the subject matter tomorrow. Go to the life story of Buddha. As a young man he goes out and he meets old age, illness and death. And then he has a forced meeting with a religious mendicant who is utterly at peace, and this blows his mind. He’s pretty depressed about old age, illness and death. It just tears him up. How can anybody live like this? And he sees this person who is utterly at peace in this world where there’s old age, illness, and death. And this is what inspires Buddha to push, Gautama at that point, to leave and to miss the home life and take up the spiritual life. It’s I suppose, the custom in India and those times to this day. To this day Buddhism spreads by example, not by proselytizing. The people notice that there was something different about person X. They get curious, and that’s what leads them into the spiritual path.

And this is very, very clear in the vinaya, the monastic discipline, that one of the many of the rules of the vinaya is about behaving in such a way that people see you as an example of what it means to be free. Or however you want to put it. So it’s useless, it’s completely useless telling people they have something that they don’t know they have if they’re unable to see. Many, many stories about that. Most people just get angry with you when you try to tell them something like that because the are highly vested in not seeing. There’s an old adage, “How do you wake somebody up? Very carefully.” [Laughter]

Latching onto single principles


Ken: Okay.

When you turn your back on the path of natural being,
Mistaken notions don’t stop at all.
So you ascetics latch onto a single principle
From such flawed philosophies as order or chaos.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

How many of you were anarchists at one time in your life? Anarchists. Hold up your hand Caroline, you still are. [laughter]

Anybody who sends me to Inland Empire is an anarchist. It’s a movie. I’ll let you decide after you’ve seen it. [laughter]

How many of you, at one time or another other set out to change the world? [Laughter] You like to do everything, do you? [Laughter] Yeah, so were you at all strident in your efforts? What was that, Cindy?

Cindy: Yes

Ken:

When you turn your back on the path of natural being,
Mistaken notions, don’t stop at all.
So you ascetics latch on to a single principle
From such flawed philosophies as order and chaos.
How confused you are by wrong ideas, you extremists!

Get one thing, that’s it? I mean, we still have problem very much in the whole philosophy of social change which was developed. I saw a landscape. It’s a very fixed idea on opposition, almost anarchist, in some ways. And it’s completely unsuccessful and yet people latch onto these things very strongly. And won’t let go. And the main reason is that it gives people an identity. People kind of like that.

Mind iself is originally pure, like space. As long as you use conceptual knowing to look for it, you get stuck like a bug caught in its own spit.

How many of you have used conceptual knowing to know mind itself? [laughs]

Student: I think I am just going to leave my hand up! [Laughter]

Ken: We do this. I’m going to understand this if it kills me.

Student: Yeah. [Laughter]

Ken: And it usually does. But what’s really strange about this next line, “Turning your back on what is you are still ruled by wanting”. We have all of these people struggling to figure this out and understand it conceptually; meanwhile, what are their sex lives like?

Student: Oh. [Laughter]

Ken: We don’t want to go there. Still ruled by wanting. You didn’t hear?

Student: You know what, I did [unclear] ears [unclear].

Purity, rigidity, and perfectionism

Ken: I’m sorry. Why don’t you come over here? Well, you have your choice there.

Your mind is the source of all experience, patterned or free.
You awaken completely when you rest and do nothing at all.
Instead, you follow meticulously and exclusively the cycle of teaching
On ignorance, interdependence and samsara.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

How many can relate to that? There is like twelve links of interdependence. You got to go in at craving. So, you withdraw from the world. Do that by sitting, reducing all things …

Student: Too much of an anarchist.

Ken: Yeah, for you! But lots of people are doing this. Anything that arises that isn’t the pure dharma is distraction.

Student: Oh yes, I have a friend who is so into that.

Ken: And you come to something, sometimes. It’s more a feeling of being awake, but the rigidity of that approach, and all of us do this in our initial attempts, we’re just really rigid about this. The rigidity of that approach actually leaves us in a very, very small narrow world. And I think that’s ignorant? There is actually there is a lot more.

“Mind itself.” So, there’s another little wrench in that one, because you were so clear about what you’re doing, how open to advice are you from other people? [Laughter] Okay. Self-Reliance.

Mind itself, always complete in its natural expression
Rests in the womb of uncontrived original nature.
Caught up in logic and analysis, you sophists distort how things are because you believe in descriptions of the two truths.

[Laughter] How many of you have studied the two truths? Yes. How many of you have done the whole Tibetan logic course. How helpful was it, Franca?

Franca: It was fun. Arguing was really fun. That was the best part of it.

Ken: How helpful was it?

Franca: [Sighs]

Ken: Thank you. I’ll take you on any time. I haven’t taken the course.

Franca: No contest. Fighting comes naturally to me, but its’s logic and analysis that’s nuts

Ken: How useful is it to, how useful are descriptions of the two truths?

Franca: What are the two truths?

Ken: The truth of what is apparently true and the truth of what is ultimately true? I really don’t like the second translation anymore. I really would like to say, what is true mystically or something like that. So, basically it boils down to compassion and emptiness. Things appear and things are empty.

Okay. So this is a very long route and it was a very well established one in Tibetan Buddhism. You study these texts. You study them over and over again, you got totally versed in it but it got refined, refined and refined and then geshe studies, 20 years of this stuff, and then you started meditating. How far you have to go.

Because mind itself doesn’t take up the good or the bad,
the shrewd moral practice acts as an added pollutant.

How many of you got hung up on morality at one point or another in practice, trying to be just right, perfect in every way? Yeah. “A shrewd moral practice acts as another pollutant.” How? What did it do for letting your mind relax and be open and clear? Bobby?

Bobby: Not much help.

Ken: Not much help, or was it an added pollutant?

Bobby: Oh, it’s terrible.

Ken: Spend all the time figuring out what’s the right thing to do. Beating yourself up. All kinds of good stuff.

“The forms of dualistic fixation distort what is not two.” The forms means here ritual. Ritual tantra, which is the first level of tantra, you’ll know it as kriya tantra but I decided it as kriya, I decided to translate these into English. “Seeks to attain a state where there’s nothing to attain, seeks to attain the state of purity.” Is there a state of purity? How many of you at one point or other felt it was a state of purity? It just goes on and on doesn’t it? “How elegant you are!”

Student: No thank you! [laughter]

Ken: Well it is very interesting. You have a question?

Student: Okay. Did you just read “mind itself is originally pure?

Ken: I am on the second to last stanza on page 37.

Student: When there’s language like “mind itself is originally pure,” doesn’t that make things confusing? Oh, my god, that smile. [Laughter]

Ken: I might be something wrong or I might be doing something to elicit projections above and beyond what is normal. I’ve had so many during this retreat. What’s wrong with me smiling now?

Student: There is something about cats and mice and then rifles and bears [laughter]

Ken: How many of you have been eaten? Well, I’m not full yet. [laughter] Well, yes. I can understand why you might [pause], this is, can be confusing.

Student: It is full of contradictions, isn’t it?

Ken: Well, no. [Pause] If you try to understand this, these writings, by relying on interpreting the meaning of the words, then, yes. You would get quite confused. And Tantra takes this to an extreme. Hevajra Tantra, I think, kill your teacher, kill the Buddha, kill your parents. Now. And create division in the sangha. Now in conventional or classical Buddhism, those are known as the five evil actions of immediate results. They’re so bad that as soon as you die, bang, you don’t even go into the bardo, you go into the next realm. And here’s the Hevajra Tantra saying do these things. Well, obviously, if you take this literally, you’re going to have some big problems. So you don’t take it literally. It’s pointing to something. Seung Sahn said this to Stephen Mitchell once: “First kill the Buddha, then kill your parents, then kill your teacher.” What’s that pointing to?

Student: Don’t rely on the outside.

Ken: Yeah. How do you kill Buddha?

Student: Kill the idea of buddha.

Ken: Yeah. Or put it in different words: be no different from Buddha. So, it’s no idea, but you just look out right there. How do you kill your parents? Step out of the family system. Can you see the world clearly as long as you’re in the family system? Tell your parents, you stepped out of the family system. Kill your teacher.

Student: Rely on your own nature.

Ken: Yeah. You come to know yourself. So when it says “Mind is Originally Pure” what happens when you hear that phrase?

Student: Stop struggling to make it different.

Ken: Stop struggling to make it different. So that’s what that’s pointing to. Now, if we go down to “trying to be really pure.” I use that term “as a shrewd moral practice acts as an added pollutant.” So if you’re trying to be really pure —do it this way—if I say to you, “Your mind is originally pure”, you have a certain experience, right? If I say to you, or you say to yourself, “I have to be pure in everything that I do,” what’s the feeling?

Student: Oh shit. [Laughter]

Ken: So it has a very different effect. This is how you read these texts, because they’re all pointing to things. Eugene.

Eugene: After the conversation we had this has made a lot more sense. I have substituted experience for mind.

Ken: Yeah, that’s right. Because mind is experience. Yup.

Appreciation for tradition

Ken: So I’m just going to say on the, “How elegant you are, you followers of ritual philosophy,” many years ago Yvonne Rand went to Japan to receive ordination as a Zen priest, which consisted almost entirely of going to various temples and making a certain amount of offerings and getting the abbot of that temple to sign a paper. And she just went around to all of these things and got them all signed. And then you can have the actual ordination ceremony. There they were, considering where Zen or Chan started from and were extended, and now they were there in their absolutely immaculate silk robes following all kinds of really ornate rituals etc. in the ordination ceremony, beautiful, but it was complete theatre, complete ritual. So, you see how things just move in cycles. “How elegant,” so whenever I read these lines, “How elegant you are,” I think that, and you can see the same thing in many, many different religious traditions.

Now, it isn’t that the elegance is bad a thing. It’s not. The elegance and the beauty and the care that is taken is, I think at bottom, an expression of the appreciation and value that is placed on the tradition and what it teaches and the forms that have carried it through generations. So I think it comes from a very positive place, but people get trapped in being pure and doing it just right. And this does not serve or help the mind become awake and free. So, and this is what he’s referring to, is how we tend to get all caught up in these things. And we’re going to be very pure and very beautiful, very elegant, just so and that becomes what we do instead of waking up. I mean, anybody relate to this?

Student: Yes.

Taking symbols as real

Ken:

The natural condition is not good or bad. It doesn’t grow, or fade. Even when you stop ordinary concepts with outlook, practice, and behavior, you still hold as real your activity in means and wisdom.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

This refers to things like the six perfections, but also the first two behavioral tantras, which is charya tantra. You’ve moved beyond just ritual in terms of doing everything right to how you actually act in your lives as translated from the world of ritual, into how you live your life in all kinds of ways you’re meant to live your life. It extends it into your life, but you do everything as a part of your practice.

Now, how many of you tried to do this? For when you’re sweeping, you’re sweeping away all of the obscurations of your mind. And when you’re washing the dishes, you’re washing away all your impure karma. Everything you do becomes invested with meaning. This is the path of practice and tantra and the intent of it, of course, is to bring the meaning of your practice into every aspect of your life—but you hold all of this stuff as real. In behavioral tantra, you waste time doing stuff when there is nothing to do. “How tiresome, your chosen disciplines, your behavioral philosophy.”

The next one is a yoga tantra:

There is no outer, inner or in-between in the nature of attention. Mind itself is free from any sense of manipulation. In union tantra, you use thoughts to manipulate symbols of what is profound and clear.

In that you work with symbols, vajras, bells and other things like that. The attributes of the various deities which symbolize things like emptiness, compassion, and awareness and cutting through. And there is, again, there’s a very valid practice here, but what people get caught up in is the reality of the symbols. They take the symbols to be real and think that juggling these symbols is what amounts to practice.

For some reason, he gets out of order here. He goes straight to anuyoga.

By resting in a state that doesn’t rely on effort or practice you can use the result, pure being, as the path.

That’s the essence of Vajrayana, you use the results as the path. He says, “Resting in a state that does not rely on effort or process.” In other words, “Don’t do anything.” Heard that before.

Instead you use the complex practices to relieve and refresh mind channels and energy.”

Here he is talking about energy transformation which generates energy, transforming the energy of the body into attention. So it increases vitality, if it’s done properly it does all sorts of things. There’s a lot of work to develop all of that stuff. And people get caught up in generating and projecting and moving energy around. How many of you know somebody like that? A lot of yoga teachers who do pranayama get really caught up in this kind of thing. So that’s what he’s pointing to and he’s saying there’s a tendency you can get caught up in working all of this energy without understanding what you’re really doing, what you’re meant to do with it.

Then he turns to mahatantra. “Mind itself has no heads, hands or regalia.” This is a creation phase practice imagining the yidam deity. “But you fall into the mistake of seeing what arises as the deities form and hold mistaken ideas about sound as mantra.” And it’s wonderful, you know, because when you’re doing deity practice, you say, “See all form as the deity form and hear all sound as the mantra,” right?

Standard instruction, you think? When you fall into the mistake of seeing this, you won’t see what is the truth of the path of great union. Here you are attaching to the reality of the deity and you think the deity is the answer to everything. Instead of the deity as a means that was pointing you or helping you towards just this. So this whole section is about pointing to various very human tendencies and ways that all of us approach practice and ways that we have to mature through a deeper understanding. So don’t take it as a criticism of the lower vehicles and take it as pointing to the tendencies in ourselves.

Being awake

Ken: Okay. Then the next section:

My nature is great completion.
All experience patterned and free is complete—nothing to discard or attain.
The essential instructions are complete—total natural releasing.
The essential views are complete—neither order nor chaos.

The paths of practice are complete—no effort to make.
The teachings on behavior are complete—no do’s or don’ts.
The essence of fruition is complete—no expectation.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

So what do you get out of all of this?

Larry: Nothing.

Ken: Nothing will come of nothing. Say it, more, speak again. Sorry, it came later. It’s been more than that, Larry. Anybody?

Ann: A little bit like the bears.

Ken: How do you see that, Ann?

Ann: Well, if I look at it I could probably sort of pick one out where I seem to have a real issue. And then if that kind of dissolved after a while, when the next one would come up and so it feels …

Ken: Okay. So you’re going to see it, the moving into each other.

Ann: Yeah

Ken: Yeah, okay. “The teachings on behavior are complete. No do’s or don’ts.” Now if any of you have taken the long version of the bodhisattva vow there are the 18 qualities of vajra king, minister and ordinary person. And then there are the 46 guidelines for this. And there are the four black dharmas, the four white dharmas and a couple of other lists. In other words, there’s a whole bunch of do’s and don’ts, you know, and you can also take the mind-training teaching, in which you have the commitments and the guidelines at the end. There’s about, I think, 16 or 19 do’s and don’ts in there, a bit of a large number. The majority of the instructions, 35 or so out of the 57 instructions there.

“Here the teachings on behavior are complete. No do’s or don’ts.” It’s not exactly about resting, Larry, what is it about?

Student: What was question?

Ken: It’s not exactly about resting? What is it about? “The teachings on behavior are complete. No do’s or don’ts.”

Larry: Natural being.

Ken: What’s that?

Larry: Not trying to control yourself.

Ken: Mm-hmm .So how do you do this?

Student: Similar to what we were discussing last night in terms of responding to the situation as it is.

Ken: Yeah. So there’s nothing which, there isn’t a saying you can’t do this or you should do this. None of that. Okay. So “The essential Instructions are complete. Total natural releasing.” What’s that?

Student: Thoughts.

Ken: But what’s the instructions, “think?”

Student: No.

Ken: What is the instruction? “Total natural releasing.”

Student: Release thoughts as they arise, don’t block them.

Ken: How do you do that?

Student: It is further on in the text. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, we had the instruction yesterday or the day before.

Student: By being, I don’t remember exactly, by being the awareness.

Ken: By being what knows the arising. But I was looking at is just recognize, just recognize brings release. So in this he’s describing how it is to be awake. “Know all experience patterned and free is complete”. It’s all experience. So you don’t have to get rid of anything; you don’t have to get anything and so forth.

Then the last line of this section it says, “And this complete is nothing but a concept too”, which is very important. Then he takes another tack: “Awakening mind is the essence of all teaching.” This is awakening mind in the deep sense. Not the intention to help others but awakening to every aspect of your own experience, which includes, of course, everything you were taught, all your experience of others, those are aspects of your experience.

The awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.
Awakening mind is the life of all beings.
Awakening mind is neither, apparently nor ultimately true.

Now big debates about awakening mind. Partly because you have the two kinds of awakened mind: awakening mind that is apparently true, awakening mind of what is ultimately true. And then awakening mind that is apparently true has awakening mind of attention, awakening mind of will, etc.

And he’s cutting through all of this: “To say it is not, does not make it empty. To say it is, does not make it solid.” Why not?

Student: Can we go back to apparent awakening mind is neither apparent nor ultimately true?

Ken: Okay. Awakening mind is neither apparent … Yeah, sure.

Marsha: What does that mean? Because I get confused because I hear it as awakening mind doesn’t exist in apparent reality. Or awaking mind doesn’t exist in ultimately reality [unclear] that’s how I read that.

Ken: What’s apparent reality?

Marsha: See this.

Ken: Yes. [Laughter] I see a piece of paper. What are you saying?

Marsha: I’m saying it’s apparently true that you see it.

Ken: No. I see it. What do you mean it is apparently true?

Marsha: Ultimately there’s nothing here but space.

Ken: No, I see a piece of paper. What are you talking about? I see a piece of paper.

Marsha: Who’s the “I”? [Laughter]

Ken: I am afraid you are ganging up. [Laughter]

Student: We are ganging up. [Unclear}

Ken: But I do see it, I don’t understand why you said it.

Marsha: Apparently true.

Ken: No, it’s just, I just see it. What do you mean, “It is apparently true?”

Marsha: Well, even from a physical point of view, if you start looking at it under a microscope, you’ll see a web of fibers.

Ken: I’m not going to be under a microscope. You hold up a piece of paper. I see a piece of paper. What’s the big deal?

Marsha: It’s not a big deal. It’s just not there.

Ken: What do you mean it is not there? You’re holding a piece of paper in your head?

Marsha: Both apparently true and not true.

Ken: I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Marsha.

Marsha: You are a big fat liar. [Laughter]

Ken: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Marsha: Okay, you have to help me out here. [Laughter]

Student: Projection attractor. [Unclear]

Ken: What is that?

Student: You are doing your drama so you can be more tasty.[ Laughter]

Ken: Yeah. So what’s your point here? What do you want to understand here, Marsha? “Awakening mind is neither, apparently nor ultimately true.” What’s your question? You have a question here? So ask it.

Marsha: I just don’t understand what that means.

Ken: What don’t you understand?

Marsha: I don’t understand. If it’s neither apparently true, nor ultimately true, how can it exist?

Ken: The terms apparently true and ultimately true, do they correspond to anything in actual experience?

Marsha: Well, for me they are concepts?

Ken: Yes. Do they correspond to anything in actual experience?

Marsha: They correspond to my conceptual mind?

Ken: Yeah. We’ve agreed that they’re concepts, but do they correspond to anything you actually experience? Smack you with this book! You actually experienced that right?

Marsha: Yes I do. It’s apparently true.

Ken: No, that’s not apparently true. You sure people would not say you are apparently smacking me, right? You would say, “You’re hitting me Ken and I don’t like it.” Right?

But this is his point. You’ve attached the notion that anything that appears to the senses is apparently true. And anything that doesn’t appear to the senses is ultimately true. So now you’ve made these two concepts into things which don’t exist at all, except as projections of your mind. There’s no such thing as “apparently true.” There’s no such thing as “ultimately true.” They’re words that were developed to help point people to the nature of experience. But there isn’t such a thing as “apparent truth “or “ultimate truth.” And so if I smack you with a book, don’t say that that’s apparently true. No, you’re hitting me! Okay? And he saying awakening mind, isn’t, what he’s referring to as awakening mind is something that is alive and doesn’t fit into these categories. And what he’s negating here is the tendency to take these two categories as being true. This makes sense to you?

Marsha: Are the next two lines a further explanation of that?

Ken: Yeah. “To say it is not, does not make it empty.” Okay. So awakening mind, it doesn’t exist. I say it doesn’t exist. Does that affect awakening mind or let’s not even take awakening mind. Your mind. Okay. Your mind. We’re going to talk about your mind. Okay. “It doesn’t exist.”

Marsha: It certainly does. [Laughter]

Ken: Okay. So, “Your mind is a thing!”

Marsha: What makes you say that, Ken?

Ken: So, it doesn’t make it solid.

Marsha: That was easy.

Ken: That’s what he’s saying here. He can say whatever we want about things. Doesn’t make any difference. They’re just words. What we say about things doesn’t affect how they are. They just are.

Thinking distorts experience

Ken:

It is the realm beyond mind where experience is just there—no taking hold, no letting go.
It is space, free from all complications of thought and object.

Because I am free from the thinking that distorts experience,
The evolution of good and evil actions comes to a complete stop.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

It’s a very important point here. The process of evolution of actions is karma and this is samsara karma. What he’s saying here is it depends on ongoing conceptual process.

Student: Samsaric karma depends on ongoing conceptual process. Is that what he’s saying? It’s very interesting.

Ken: He says, “When I’m free from the thinking that distorts experience, the evolution of good and evil actions comes to a complete stop.” Good and evil actions refers to samsaric karma. Okay. The evolution that’s karma depends on the thinking that distorts experience.

Marsha: Does this imply that there’s some other kind of karma?

Ken: Yeah. Well, I’m implying that implicitly in what I’m saying. There’s the karma of awakening which is creating the conditions of the awakening mind, from dzogchen point of view, that’s moved because you’re working from the result point of view. So now, we have to take note here of the the Fox Abbot.

Marsha: Fox as in animal, with the bushy tail?

The koan of the fox abbot

Ken: Yes. Abbot. And I’m not sure I can remember all the details of this koan. It is the very important koan in the Zen tradition.

One day an abbot of the monastery tells everybody that they have to have to form a full blown funeral with all of the honors, the kind of thing that would be done for an abbot. And the end up burying a fox. All the monks thought, “Why are we doing this full blown abbot funeral for a fox?”

And the abbott who’s said they have to do this said he had a dream. And this other abbot who was asked about karma, and I can’t remember exactly the question he is asked about karma, and he replied in the negative. I think it was “When you were are enlightened does karma apply?” He says, “No.” And as a result of that, he was born as a fox for 500 lifetimes. And this was his last lifetime being the fox. And so the abbot went out and found the dead fox to perform the funeral. Oh yeah, in the dream the abbott said, “I’d like to be buried properly.” So he went out and found the fox and buried him.

Harada Roshi taught this koan at a program I was at. It raises all kinds of questions, which is exactly what a koan is meant to do. And I was there with Yvonne because she taken me there and I leaned over to her and said, “Why did the abbot want to be buried with full honors? Why did the fox abbot want to be buried with full honors?” My point was, “No, that was clinging to an identity, not just being in the nature of things.” And she sort of gave, she gave me this really dirty look. “Is that a thing I’ll have to ask Roshi?”

“Roshi, why did the fox abbot want to be buried as an abbot?” It’s not like this. And he just looked at me and laughed and said, “You’ll have to ask him.” [Laughter]

Student: Why did the fox abbot want to be buried with full honors?

Ken: I’ll tell you when I spoken to him. Why do you want to know? [Laughs]

Student: I’m curious.

Ken: Good.

Larry: [Unclear] other aspect is that happened because he’s had the karma.

Ken: It doesn’t apply to awakened beings. So, does karma apply to the awakened beings? Careful what you say, Larry. “It is a realm beyond mind, their experience just there.” Oh, sorry. We’ve done that.

Because I am free from the thinking that the distorts experience,
the evolution of good and evil actions comes to a complete stop.
What are deities, mantras and absorptions meant to do?

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

Because that’s exactly what deities, mantras and absorptions are meant to do. They’re meant to stop the thinking that distorts experience. Well, if you already are free from the thinking that distorts experience, what are deities, mantras, and absorptions meant to do? This is really result-path stuff.

Larry: You don’t have a utility.

Ken: From this approach. Yeah.

Expectations and evaluations

Ken:

I am not a wakefulness that comes from practice.
(Wakefulness is already there.)
My nature is universal presence:
How can seeing come from progressing through paths and levels?

Therefore, let go of the tangles of hope and fear.
Let the knife-edge of outlook drop away.
Use outlook to cut into how you see things.
Come out of deep meditation’s cocoon.
Get rid of stiff or pretentious behavior.
Forget about expectations for big results.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

Anybody relate to any of this?

In a state of attention that is beyond meditating or not meditating, Evaluations of what you were doing or not doing disappear completely.

So I’ve been encouraging you to do nothing. How many of you have still been evaluating what you were doing or not doing?

Marsha: I am doing it every day.

Ken: Pardon?

Marsha: You didn’t hear that?

Ken: What did you say? .

Marsha: I said how much nothing we were doing in a day?

Ken: That’s right. It’s wonderful. I did nothing for three hours. I did nothing for four. Does that make you better or worse?

Marsha: Does meditating count as nothing?

Ken: Oh no, no. This is, as it says, “In a state of attention that is beyond meditating or not meditating.” Have you been meditating? [Laughter] And awakening mind is beyond empty or not empty. Marsha, what do you think of that?

Marsha: I don’t know. I work so hard to understand apparently true … [laughter]

Ken:

It is the original space for existence and non-existence to drop away.

In awareness, indescribable, inconceivable, inexpressible,
The center pole is no corrective—nothing that holds position.

That’s very important.

With a simple, steady self-releasing freshness in a space free from complications or effort, rest without ebb or flow in the three times.

Pardon? “Nothing that holds a position” So you rest. And do nothing. Where’s the position? Okay.

Marsha: What about “rest without ebb or flow”?

Ken: “Rest without ebb or flow in the three times.”

Student: [unclear]

Marsha: Okay. I get it. Where he put the emphasis on it.

Ken:

Kye ho!
Awakening mind free from discarding or attaining.
Buddha Nature, the essence of awareness is present in you.

We went through this the other night. Do you remember that? Okay. Just wanted to check.

Still, it is stuck in a cage of inventions. All meditation just clouds the heart of the matter.

Got that Donna?

Donna: [Unclear] [Laughter]

Ken: And you thought this retreat was going to help, didn’t you? In pure being, Caroline, what do you have to say about that? Pure being.

Caroline: Well, I don’t really, you know, read these literally. [Laughter]

Ken: So Good. So tell me about pure being.

Caroline: I don’t know.

Ken: For those of you who are technically inclined this is my translation of dharmata:

Student: Dharmata?

Ken: Dharmata.

Student: Pure being?

Yes. It always elicits interesting responses because some people will say, they translated this as “the suchness of phenomena.” It’s just a really helpful translation. And then I ask them, “Why don’t you try pure being?” and they go, “Oh, it’s not that.”

When you use like pure experience or guru yoga, is it the same thing?

Ken: Yeah. Just what it is in itself. It’s not the idea that there is a being which is pure. Okay. So words are used in different ways. “Which is without origin or essence.” You connect with that Eugene?

Eugene: Yes. [laughter]

Ken: You’re just going to say, ” Yes” and hope to get out of here in one piece. [Laughs]

Twisting what is formless into form

Ken:

What is experienced has no beginning or end. (This is not a categorical statement. This is a description of experience.)
Your misconceptions twist what is formless into form.
Slipping, away from what is true, you become confused and reactive.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

This is actually what happens when you sit down and you don’t do anything and you can’t stay there. For a moment or two it’s just completely open, no beginning, no end, just there. And then something is trying to understand it and then put a whole bunch of ideas about it. That’s the formless into form. And we slide away from what is true. And now we’re just a mass of confusion. Anybody have that experience?

Student: Mm-hmm

Ken:

Some people cut off the ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings and construct an emptiness practice corrupted by goal seeking.

That is, okay I’m going to get to emptiness. They work really hard at it and they have no thoughts, no feelings, nothing to say, “This is emptiness”. I’ve never been able to do that but other people I know do.

Pushing a forced practice and spinning in confusion

Ken:

They are worn out from pushing a forced practice.
Big problems develop when you misdirect energy into the life channel.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

This also refers to energy transformation practices, which is they don’t evolve naturally cause really serious physical and mental problems.

Others do not see original presence.
Misled by descriptions of presence, their practice is ineffective.

In other words, they’re constantly practicing on the basis of the picture. Oh, it’s like this. It’s like this. And they try to “be” like the picture. How many of you have tried to do that? Okay.

Taking an intense dullness that conceals, thoughts and feelings
As the essence of practice, they are very confused.

This is known as marmot or woodchuck meditation. [laughter] A marmot is a rodent which sleeps all the time. It’s totally still and things like that. Woodchuck meditation. Okay. You gotta translate this stuff otherwise it loses …

Some use their ability to know movement as mind,
To mull over traces of thoughts’ and feelings’ ebb and flow.

So there you are and you can sit and just experience mind moving. And you thought “Oh, that was interesting.” “Oh, that means that!” “Oh now I understand!” [laughter] Anybody do this?

People who track arising, fading and stable meditation, just spin in confusion even if they practice for a hundred years.

So you’ve got a little way to go yet. “In general, work and effort alone just create opposition.” Okay? If you just work at something and work at something and work at something, all you do is end up pushing. And eventually you find opposition and you keep pushing ’cause now you’re pushing against something and now you feel like you’re doing something ’cause now you’re pushing against the opposition. Then the opposition get stronger. So you feel like you’re doing more. So you work harder at it. Doesn’t actually lead to anything. You get very tired though.

“You aren’t happy when you practice and you stir up all sorts of things” because you’re now pushing on resistance and as you push on the resistance the resistance gets stronger. So you push on it harder and things like that. And eventually it starts to hurt. I know all about that one.

“When you don’t practice, you don’t know your own nature and wander in confusion.” Probably described as strategic, such as don’t push, don’t do anything. “Duh, what do I do now?”

An artificial distinction

Ken:

In either case you fall away from what is natural and true.

Because these mistakes stop you from going beyond ordinary human experience.
Be clear that the approach of meditation versus not meditation relies on an artificial distinction.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

Donna, what’s the artificial distinction?.

Donna: That somehow they are different.

Ken: Okay. Do others go along with that?

Donna: I guess you just go to the place that you substitute “being” for “meditation”.

Ken: Can you do that?

Donna: Can I personally? No.

Ken: Why can’t you? What prevents you?

Donna: Well, just sitting here going through all this. I mean productivity in doing, it was such a survival strategy for me. That when I am not being productive, I am going to stay here. So, It’s a whole [unclear] independent that prevents me from doing it.

Ken: Yeah. This is something you share with lot of people, have to be productive. So this opens up some new possibilities for you.

Student: It’s not saying action or non-action, no artificial distinction I make, “I’m doing it or I’m not doing it.” and that can be in an action or in meditation.

Ken: Exactly “Be present right now without trying to change or control anything. Put a complete stop to any kind of scrutiny, control or goal-seeking using conditioned states of mind.” I can sort of type up the next two lines and put it on your refrigerator. “Direct awareness is no big deal. It doesn’t need any work.” [Laughter]

Donna: You can always say that in the text.

Ken: I translated it. So I presume, it must have, yes.

Student: It didn’t say the refrigerator part.

Ken: Yeah. I actually have the text here. I can look it up. “Stop trying to change or adjust it. Just let it be”. “Whenever conceptual thinking arises, don’t look at what arises but be what knows the arising.” We covered this earlier. “Like an oak stake in hard ground, stand firm in awareness that knows and go deep into the mystery.”

Eugene, the other day you said, this sounds like you’re doing something but you know, an oak stake stuck in hard ground is actually not doing very much at all.

Eugene: You’re standing firm.

Ken: Yeah. Like an oak stake in hard ground. It’s just there. That’s what it is referring to. And so it’s like saying, “Be there.” Now, what happens if you stand firm with the bit of rigidity, which I think you’re confusing here, is you immediately start resisting things, right? That becomes a problem. As soon as you start resisting things, you’re no longer in experience.

Eugene: That’s a pretty tricky process to stand firm.

Ken: Yeah. This is the other book that has all the answers.

Student: So many of them.

Ken: There are, aren’t there? Here we are. This is commentary on All the Buddhas of the Three Times by Trusting this Perfection of Wisdom.

At the edge of the universe,
At the limits of the world you know,
A leap perhaps or is it only a step?

Stand where is no place to stand.
Rest where is no place to rest.

An Arrow to the Heart, Ken McLeod, p. 116

Okay. [Laughter]

Student: Do nothing.

Ken: Good. You got the point.

In the nature of what is, plain and simple,
You may rest free from movement or change.
If you don’t avoid the trap of correctives based on positions,
You will get lost in the ways of the analytic approach.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

In other words, you’ll always be trying to figure out what to do, “Now, is this right? No I need to do this. Now, is this right, no I need to do this.” You can’t possibly rest completely that way. See, the scary thing here, and the difficult thing is, it really does come down to trust in the mind. Sure you’re going to fall into distraction. The mind is going to come back. As it always does. And you’re going to fall into distraction again. And the mind is going to come back. And in this process, all kinds of things are going to come up. “Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Am I being productive? Am I getting anywhere? Is this a total waste of time?” All of this stuff is going to come up. And there are going to be very, very significant emotional eruptions and doubts. And heaven knows what else. And you just keep sitting there.

And as I read the other night from Rangjung Dorje’s single bit of advice. Did I do that the other night?

Student: No

Ken: Oh, that was the other retreat.

Okay. At some point you realize that all this stuff is just stuff. And this isn’t a conceptual understanding. You know it’s all just stuff. And now you can actually rest. And, there is no more any notion of distraction or non-distraction because you’ve moved into a completely intimate relationship with experience instead of standing one step away from that. This takes time, which is why people spend long periods doing it. It’s very, very difficult because you have to let go all your ideas about who you are in the world. Which most of us are quite attached to.

All the technicalities of outlook, practice and behavior
Are, from the perspective of what is true, just intellectual chaff.

There’s plenty of good stuff in there, but they’re all just ideas and ways of working and tools and things like that, and as we noted earlier, direct awareness is just fine for what it is is by itself. It doesn’t need messing with.

Let correctives that work on the mind from this subside into space.
Maintain the chosen discipline of not naming, “wandering “or “not wandering.”

It’s exactly what I was saying a few moments ago.

Let things be, without messing around with projecting or absorbing.

This is the basic practice in yidam meditation where you radiate out and absorb stuff. And there are all kinds of subtleties to translate into energy practices, etc.

Rest in space free from the complications of effort.
The great treasure is to be free of thought and thinking:

Please don’t misinterpret this line. It’s to be free of thoughts and thinking; it doesn’t mean that thoughts and thinking don’t arise.

To know that there is originally no buddha,
To be where wanting has never been.

To know that there’s originally no buddha. This is killing the Buddha. We started off this evening, “To be where wanting has never been.” Isn’t that a neat idea?

With this special teaching that rots the roots of samsara,
Wake up from the realm of misery. Open and relax
In emptiness that goes beyond what is true or what is false (
because true and false are simply categories to be applied to experience)
Is the meaning of arising, releasing, self-releasing and direct releasing.


These are three forms of releasing. First one is thoughts arise, like a snowflake landing on a hot stone. Ah, just know as soon as it lands on the stone, it’s gone and in your meditation practice, some of you may know this already. You’re just sitting there and thoughts come up and as soon as they arise, they’re gone. So that’s the arising and releasing. Self-releasing, the analogy is of tying a knot in the snake. You throw it into the air and just unwinds itself, unties itself. And so you can have that experience where you’re sitting and the thought arises and just disappears, just unties itself. And the direct releasing is the analogy there is a thief who comes into an empty house, comes in and rummages all around and cannot find anything and leaves.

Know this and you are no different from all the awakened ones.
You will awaken and be no different from me.

One of the things that’s happened, especially in the Tibetan tradition, really more in the Tibetan tradition because of the medieval structure is that buddhahood has been made to feel so remote. It isn’t remote because it’s how our mind is. And you can know it at any time. That may or may not be stable, probably won’t be stable, but even if you know it for a short moment, then everything changes. And as is said in all of the texts, the experience of the first thought of bodhisattva is exactly the same as the experience of a buddha. No difference. The only difference is the degree to which it is integrated into life. To the extent it is present in all experience, but the actual experience of just being present. First level bodhisattva, buddhahood, exactly the same.

So when he says, “Know this and you are no different from all the awakened ones.” And when you said, “and thoughts just arise and go, arise and go.” And you had this experience of a timeless, infinite awareness, which is beyond any kind of conceptualization, and there’s no sense of “I”, rather, that’s your mind. That’s it. And you trust it. It’s just what is being talked about in Perfection of Wisdom. You trust the perfection of wisdom. And this whole practice that, this text I’m taking you through right now, it’s all about just trusting them. Trusting it, of course, involves letting go of all the things we currently trust. They are, as we all know quite unreliable, but still it’s very difficult to do that.

“In this age of strife, these instructions”, and this shouldn’t be in small text, I’m not quite sure how it got into small text,

In this age of strife, these key instructions, the great mystery,
Are mingled with the authoritative writings of the analytical approach.

Very important point, they’ve been deliberately mingled. So that only those who recognize them can see them.

Student: They have been deliberately what?

Ken: They’ve been deliberately mingled with other kinds of teachings as a way of ensuring their transmission without revealing them. And so: “Those knowledge holders who are not different from me will confirm this wisdom experience.” So this is the Sherlock Holmes method of “hiding something in plain sight”. You want to hide something from somebody, you put it so obviously they would never look there.

And the reason for these teachings being hidden in this way is because, and I think all of you have more than sufficient experience to appreciate this, these teachings are so easily misconstrued and people will think that they understand and practice the wrong way for their lives. And there are hundreds of hundreds of people doing this. They think, “Oh, I don’t need to do anything.”

Milarepa had this problem. Before he met Marpa, he met a dzogchen teacher who gave him instructions on buddhahood without meditation. It wasn’t this text, but it was that line of teaching, you know: buddhahood without meditation. “Great. I’m all for it!” And some teachings which nowadays is, “If you meditate during the night, you wake up at night; if you meditate during the day, you wake up in the day”, and this a secret language that has a whole other level of meaning that Milarepa took literally and went off to meditate. “Just meditate in the evening and I’ll wake up in the evening, but meditate tomorrow. So I don’t really need to do anything now.” He just made some tea and having a nice old time. Fiddled the way the time and a week later, his meditation teacher comes to him and says, “How’s your meditation going?” “So I’m done, I think it’s not necessary.” And the teacher said, “Ah, you really don’t understand how this works, do you? You better go and see Marpa.”

Student: And we all know how that went!

Ken: Exactly. So all this points to is that very subtle and sophisticated teaching such as these, have been misconstrued for thousands of years.

Sealed texts

Student: Why was this a sealed text?

Ken: For this reason, so that it wouldn’t be given to people who wouldn’t appreciate it.

Student: So only certain people with permissions could have access to it?

Ken: Yeah. Right. Kilung Rinpoche gave it to me, translated, and I asked him if I could teach it, and he said, “fine”. He’s actually given me permission to publish it, which is why I have it up on the website and I’ll be putting it in. It’s already been translated into English. In the modern era, there aren’t any secrets. There aren’t any sealed texts. To try to maintain sealed texts simply becomes a way of exercising power. And doesn’t actually to serve any purpose.

One of the problems in modern times is that the symbolic meaning and the true meaning of these texts is lost for many, many people. And they take them, literally, they take them and do all kinds of messy things with them and create all kinds of problems for themselves and other people. But that’s the problem with the modern age for us. In the traditional cultures, only a very select few have had access to them and everybody else wandering around in confusion. The mind-training teachings were sealed texts for seven generations. And it was actually passed only to one individual in each generation for a while. Then they were regarded as so precious. And that was the nature of the whole idea that these things could be and should be practiced by everybody is a very modern idea. It’s not how traditional societies were set up.

Apprenticed with a teacher, if you have potential when you might be given this. And so they culled people for talents and ability all the way through. If you didn’t have it together, that was that. Very different backgrounds. Both have their good points and their bad points.

Those knowledge holders who are not different from me
Will confirm this wisdom experience.

Masters of this teaching with expression to the awakening beings of the three families,
And those blessed with natural talent, may you make use of it.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-Present Good

See, there it is, “Those with natural talent.”

Okay. Any questions? This helpful? Okay. It is five to nine. I figured we’d go a little late. We spent two and a half weeks, two weeks on that text. Three years ago, we went through it much more slowly. You have to do everything faster, faster is better. [Laughter]