Outlook, practice, and now … behavior

Ken: Tonight, we’re going to talk about the third topic of practice: conduct or behavior. Conduct, behavior, whichever you want to call it, serves two functions. One is creating the conditions for fruitful practice, and the other is to enhance or deepen your practice. The literal Tibetan is to derive profit from your practice—which is actually pretty close—usually translated as enhancement.

One of the main challenges I find of working with material in the Tibetan tradition—and it doesn’t really matter whether it is the excruciatingly detailed logic of the Gelugpa, or the formal language in the Kagyu, or the very sophisticated but abstruse language in the Nyingma—it’s actually quite a bit of work to translate any of them into English and to really get a sense, in ways that we’re used to understanding things, of what they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, very few translators make that effort as far as I can tell. I think the Padmakara Group doesn’t do a bad job. There’s an awful lot of good stuff in here. While Richard Barron hasn’t done a bad job translating, it still can be very difficult to really appreciate what’s being said. You’ve got several layers of formalism to wade through. So you get things like—and this is conduct stuff or behavior:

The key point of conduct is to renounce nonvirtuous, physical and verbal activities as if they were poison, not overemphasizing view at the expense of conduct by thinking that since everything is emptiness, you will not be sullied by flaws no matter how you behave. You must be calm, restrained, and careful, like someone has been brought before the highest judge.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (translator), p. 161

Though I think it should be, “brought before the king who is the judge,” I think is how the Tibetan actually works. Because that’s what Kings did they, they judged, until they got too busy then they passed it off to somebody else.

“Not overemphasizing view,” and on the other hand, not overemphasizing conduct. What does this actually mean? Well, as you may recall from our work earlier in this retreat, everything is just experience, experience is empty. It’s very easy—and a lot of people have done this—to go from there into, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I do.”

Now in traditional presentations, this is countered by karma: actions still have results. And this is why the fox abbot got into trouble. He said actions don’t have results if you have the realization of emptiness. But that’s like saying gravity doesn’t exert a pull on you if you know your body is just a bunch of sensations. Anybody want to try that one?

So a lot of people think, “Oh, it just doesn’t matter what I do,” and they become very careless about things. And then on the other hand, people become scrupulously careful about their actions and have no flexibility to meet situations without consulting the rule book, so to speak, captured yesterday when we were looking at Wisdom of Ever-present Good:

Instead you follow meticulously and exclusively
The cycle of teaching on ignorance, interdependence and samsara.

The forms of dualistic fixation distort what is not two.

What is not shrewd moral practice acts as an added pollutant.

The Wisdom Experience of Ever-present Good

The middle way

Ken: And so forth. The area of conduct we’re talking about here is, how do you conduct yourself in your life in a way which helps to create the conditions for practice? Well, one of the things that is important—we touched on this a couple of months ago—is that you act in such a way that you weren’t always thinking and rethinking what you’ve done. Now, what I suggested at that time, was that the basis of Buddhist ethics, in this context, is acting in a way which leaves you at peace.

Ken: People could say, “That could be very selfish.” But in practice, it doesn’t really work like that. If you just ignored other people, thinking, “I can just ignore them and be at total peace.” But it doesn’t quite work that way because they keep knocking on your door.

Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story of let’s say Mrs. Fu, who was, in her village, known and feared because she was such a bad tempered woman. She snapped at everybody, was intolerant, had no patience for anything. She also was a very devout devotee of Amitabha. And she would sit in her house and say her prayers in an extremely loud voice which everybody in the village could hear. So it didn’t make the village a peaceful place, and nobody wanted to talk to her about it because she had such a bad temper. And eventually this became such a problem in the village that the village elders met to discuss what to do. And one of the elders said, “I’ll take care of it.”

The next day he waited until Mrs. Fu was in the middle of her devotions, and saying nam myoho renge kyo—which is the ode to the Lotus Sutra—and wrapping her rosary mala. And he knocked on the door quite loudly to make himself heard above her voice. There was no response whatsoever, she just continued her prayers.

And so he knocked somewhat more loudly and said, “Mrs. Fu I know you’re in there. I need to speak with you.” And the only response was an increase in the volume of the prayers and more rattling sounds from the beads, drums beaten even louder. So he knocked on the door very loudly and said, “Mrs. Fu, it is elder so-and-so coming to speak with you. Please come down and open the door!”

There was a crash as she puts her beads down. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk as she was approaching the door. The door was flung open. Mrs. Fu said, [shouting in a loud, angry voice] “Can’t you see I’m praying to Amitabha?”

And the elder looked at her and said, “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I’ve only been knocking on your door for two or three minutes. Can you imagine how Buddha Amitabha must feel?” So here’s the elder bringing attention to this person who is locked into being really pure in her conduct.

Now, we can get stuck either way. Either it doesn’t matter what we do or everything we do is a matter of life and death. Those of you who’ve been brought up in the Jewish or Catholic tradition know this one very well where guilt is a very significant factor. Here we apply the principle of the middle way.

The meaning of karma

Ken: What we do is very important. How we act is very important. Every action that we do initiates an evolutionary process, which matures into how we experience the world, and what we are predisposed to do in the future. This is the fundamental meaning of karma. It describes the evolution of actions into these kinds of results. So, what we do is very important.

At the same time, whatever arises is just experience. It’s a manifestation of arising, as it were. If we fall down in our observance of appropriate conduct or behavior, it doesn’t actually mean the end of the world. It doesn’t mean that the universe stands in judgment of our action. This is how some people approach things. It does mean we’re going to have to deal with the consequences of that action and the habituation it may have initiated in us. So, this is how we work. Everything is experience—or just an experience, that’s appealing to the empty side—and everything we do has consequences. That’s the first bit on this. Any questions before we go any further? This is clear so far? Okay.

I’m going to go into it in a little more detail. In Wake Up to Your Life on the chapter on the basic meditation practice, there is a description of the six supports for practice, which are all descriptions about actions, things we do. And they’re things like: find conducive time and location to practice, basic needs, learn to know contentment, manageable life, ethical conduct, and letting go of the drama. People tend to make a lot of drama out of things when they can be quite straightforward. Yes, Franca?

Franca: What? [in high pitched incredulous tone]

Ken: Take it easy. [Laughter]

Franca: This is where in the book?

Ken: Chapter three. I’ll even give you a page reference. Sometimes I can’t find things in this book, but this one I think, here we are, page 60 following. Now, on a more general note, all of those six things have to do with renunciation. It is good to keep in mind the origins of Buddhism. Buddhism developed in Indian society, where a not insignificant percentage of people at various stages of life left the world of civil society, and devoted themselves to spiritual practice. This continues to this day. Did I talk about the Kumbh Mela or is that last retreat?

Student: You did it in the break.

Ken: In the break? The Kumbh Mela is a Shiva festival, which takes place once every 11 years. It’s the only occasion in which you can enter into the Shiva order. One of my clients at HBO, his assistant for a time was a young Indian woman whose film project was a short documentary on the Kumbh Mela. The scale of these gatherings is quite incredible. In the two week period, 10 million people visit this place. We think it’s a big deal when the Pope pulls out a million people. 10 million people in two weeks, everybody’s fed, etc., etc., all kinds of things going on. And there are thousands of men of all ages from all different areas of Indian society who are being initiated into the Shaivite order. And they are all wearing nothing but ashes, in that particular order, and they’re walking down to take their first bath in the the holy river. It’s the Ganges and something else that come together at that point.

And you see the old Shaivites listening as the young Shaivites hold forth on one aspect of teaching or another, and they’re just listening in to see how they’re doing. And when they get into trouble, they poke their head up and say, “Why not try saying this?” And there’s a man whose practice has been to hold his arm up. He hasn’t lowered his arm for 25 years. You look in his eyes and he’s right there. Can you imagine?

Student: What kind of shape is his arm in?

Ken: Oh, it’s probably totally calcified, etc., etc., etc. But he’s right there. Why are these people doing this? I think this is the nature of all religions and probably all philosophies. They’re entering this to find peace, pure and simple, to know peace. And they find this in the words of Buddha. Whenever he was asked about his teaching, he said, “I teach suffering and the end of suffering.” It’s not a big translation to go from the end of suffering to peace. And this is exactly what motivated Buddha.

As I’ve mentioned, I think yesterday, he encountered this mendicant. How can he be at peace in this world? Religious mendicant, very much like one of these sadhus. And so, the origin of Buddhism is a search for peace. Now, it’s not a trivial search. It’s very deep, no nonsense, not being satisfied with anything other than true peace.

Buddha in his life, after he left the palace and embarked on the renunciate’s life, received instruction in contemplation from some very, very skilled teachers. And because of his natural talent, mastered the practices in a very short period of time. And so he could sit absolutely quietly for indefinite periods of time. But for him that wasn’t peace. So what did he do next? He did what the traditional thing was in those days, mortification of the flesh and ascetic practice for six years. No peace there. And then he gave that up, took food until he was healthy again.

And then he did exactly the practice that we’ve been talking about these 10 days. He sat down and did nothing. And what happened—and many of you know this from your own experience in this retreat—all of his internal material erupted: desire, which is in the myth presented as being three daughters of Mara, anger, which is the army of Mara, and he just experienced it. And this was his awakening. And then he experienced not existing as a thing, which is the third, the fear of not existing corresponds to stupidity. Just there. And this can be now referred to as his awakening. Then he knew peace.

To be at peace

Ken: And the way of life that he encouraged his followers to pursue was the life of a renunciate. And this is why renunciation is so fundamental to Buddhism. The formal definition is, one’s own desire to be free of suffering, or to put it in the terminology I’m using right now, to be at peace. And that leads you to look at and change the way we live. Which is why we have those six supports for practice. Most people, if they do start to change their lives, do so drastically. They say, “I’ll just get rid of this. I’ll get rid of that. I’ll get rid of this, then I’ll be at peace.” It doesn’t work that way.

What I encourage people to do is first tighten up their lives. So they actually create the time for practice. And then as their practice develops and matures, you come to know through your experience what brings or fosters peace and what creates disturbance. And it’s going to be different things for different people at different stages of their lives. And I think that has to be considered and respected. It’s certainly not one size fits all. And it’s not necessarily one size fits you for your whole life. It’s going to be different things at different stages.

The important thing from my perspective is that you keep your intention clear, what you’re actually trying to create. And as I think all of you know, this cannot be created directly. You create the conditions in which this can arise. A relatively recent teacher in the Tibetan tradition, Tsele Natsok Rangdröl—who is also know as Shan Gyar—as far as I know, described conduct in these terms. This is from a Mahamudra text he wrote, but I took these five metaphors and talked about them in less formal terms.

Metaphors for outlook, practice, and behavior

Ken: The first is a wounded deer. When a deer is wounded from an attack by a lion or a leopard or something, she retreats into the forest or into the mountains and finds a place where she will be safe. So the point here—and for those of you who want a page references it’s 431 in Wake Up to Your Life—the first thing we do is we create a space for our practice. All of us have chosen not to live the life of the formal renunciate like the ordained monk or nun in the Buddhist tradition. But we still create a space, which means both physically and temporally in our lives for practice. And we organize our life, bit by bit, to support that effort. And that’s why I mentioned the six supports earlier.

Then the second metaphor is a lion playing in the mountains. This describes outlook or view. The view here is all experience is emptiness, the play of awareness. One of the traditional metaphors is you have one of those crystal balls and you shine a light on it. And you see all of these spectrums dancing all over the room. Well, that’s how we regard our experiences of things. All of this is the diffraction of awareness, just experience [unclear].

From this perspective, what is there to fear? What is there to worry about? And this is why you can be like a lion playing because the lion being the most powerful beast, fears nothing, just plays. So you open to the play of experience. Just enjoy it, free from fear, anxiety, trepidation, etc.

Difficulties in practice

Ken: A special note here: what is a difficulty in practice? What kind of beast is a difficulty in practice? It’s an experience. Difficulty in practice is an experience. I encountered in my own practice and still do, really, really great difficulties. And there was at that point, no way to regard them as just as an experience. It was overwhelmingly difficult. Physically and emotionally I was just crushed. And just to sit there and go, “This is just an experience,” that just didn’t work for me at all. They were sufficiently challenging, should I say, that I felt that there was no possibility—this was a bit over 20 years ago now—of ever making progress again, that the doors were forever closed.

One of the consequences of that was a bitterness in my heart, whose depths I could not even begin to plumb. They were just there. I was wrong on all accounts, but that took a lot of time before that was revealed. I bring this up for two reasons. One, when I say difficulty in practice is an experience I don’t mean this in any trivial or glib way. Even the harshest and most devastating of difficulties is, in the end, an experience. And the second reason I bring it up is that, even when you don’t know it at the time, this is where the practice of view comes in. Hold it out as a possibility so that things don’t completely close down in you.

That closing down is actually quite problematic. I’ve seen it in a lot of people who’ve also encountered some difficulties. It’s good to keep the door open, even if it’s only a crack, and it may only be a crack. And that’s why view or outlook is very important. During this retreat I’ve done what I’ve been able to, to give you some experience of life, or what have you, that way. As Dudjom Lingpa writes in here:

There are those who, once they have been directly introduced to and are aware of the key points in fundamental nature of view and meditation just as they are, arrive at the decision that this introduction alone is sufficient. Still fixated on the need to do things in samsara they squander their human lives engaging in various kinds of behavior based on attachment and aversion. All of their view and meditation is overwhelmed by the plans and actions of samsara.

Buddhahood Without Meditation, Dudjom Lingpa, Richard Barron (translator), p. 161

So this is like a person who experiences a moment of relaxation and peace and says, “I understand now,” and goes back and leads his completely stress filled life. Many of you in the course of this retreat have some actual experience—this is what it means to rest, this is what it means to let go—ways of experiencing the world and experiencing things that you didn’t have before.

In the first metaphor, that of the wounded deer, you create the conditions so that could be nurtured. In the second metaphor, you exercise that experience in your life which boils down to a very simple thing. It doesn’t matter what happens, don’t take it all that seriously. It isn’t to say that serious things don’t happen. They do require attention, but nothing is actually the end of the world. That’s a kind of arrogance almost: something we experience is actually the end of the world. Follow?

Just recognize

Ken: Third metaphor: The wind in the sky. This has to do with practice. Wind in the sky, the wind blows, you know that from around here. The wind blows all the time. Have you ever seen the wind or experienced the wind lingering? Anybody? It touches and moves on. Okay? This is practice. Whatever arises, you touch it with awareness and move on. It’s this, just recognize.

Life consists of experience. Experience consists of three things: thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Recognize and move on, like the wind. There’s no ignoring this. That’s really, really important. You experience everything. A lot of people interpret this to mean you just ignore what you don’t want to experience. No, you actually experience everything. That’s one of the reasons why I gave you the primary practice. It’s training in experiencing everything, without editing, without blocking, etc., but you are also light like the wind.

Kalu Rinpoche in his pointing out instruction says exactly the same thing. The phrase that he used over and over again: ngo shes tsam gyi ngang la bzhag (pron. ngo shey tsam gyi ngang la zhag) or ngo shes tsam gyi ngang la lhod (pron. lhö). ngo shes is to recognize or to know, just like, “Oh.” tsam is the word just; ngang is the Wylie transliteration that’s usually translated as state, and bzhag is to place, skyong (pron. kyong) is to preserve, lhod is to relax. Either place in the state of just recognizing, or rest in the state of just recognizing, or maintain the state of just recognizing. I’ve discussed subtleties there, but they all have basically the same meaning. And you find this again and again, voiced in various ways, in different vocabularies. And that’s like the wind in the sky, just recognize it. Everything that arises you touch with awareness and move on.

So, question?

Student: I think I’ve heard you talk about your teacher, maybe read about others that have at times given descriptions of how they have both experienced and maybe sometimes expressed intense emotions in the short range, depending on circumstances that came up. Is this what you’re talking about?

Ken: No. Other questions?

Student: You are saying how to regard these intense emotions in reference to the wind, or just touching?

Ken: That’s a good point. Touch an intense emotion, experience all of it, otherwise you’re engaged in ignoring. It doesn’t mean that your practice is just [makes sound effect] like skipping stones across the pond, that you don’t stick on things. What we tend to do is something is like, “Oh, this is so painful!” And clamp around it. Or we get attached to bliss experience or something like that. “Oh, this is so good, I want this to go on forever.” [Laughter]

Student: There’s a lot of music to that effect.

Ken: Oh yes, all those pop songs, right? But even when it’s very painful—in one of the ways that I seek to work with this for myself, and it’s another reason why I’ve been emphasizing this quality of inclusive attention—even when attention collapses down onto some thought, feeling or sensation, as soon as you become aware of that, you expand to include it and the larger field. Some of you mentioned pains and sensations in your body, which just pulled you right in, and they can and do that. At some level it’s a survival mechanism.

Become aware of your whole body

Ken: One of the things I’ve advised some here to do, is when you have something that is that vivid and painful and difficult—because often there’s really strong emotional material connected with it too, so it’s quite, quite difficult—is you become aware of the soles of your feet and the crown of your head.

If you just do that right now, you feel the soles of your feet and the crown of your head. What happens is you immediately become aware of your whole body. And there’s almost an energetic shift into a different kind of experience of your body. And now you include the sensation of the pain in that field. So the body becomes the field and the pain is the sensation which arises in it. That changes the relationship with the sensation. And this way of practicing is very much like the wind in the sky, because now awareness moves, or the energy can move and it can touch, but it doesn’t stagnate or collapse down.

A couple of years ago, I was in Canada and two things occurred simultaneously: interaction with a person—the person did something which was not really appropriate, shall we say—and I think I got food poisoning from my mother’s cooking. She’s very old, so I don’t think she keeps all the food properly. I’m quite sure she won’t be listening to this. [Laughter] So I had this emotional issue and this physical issue going on simultaneously.

It made life quite interesting. I wasn’t sure whether one was causing the other, or the other was causing the one, or whether there were two, or whether there was just one. It was just a big mess. And so I found myself just doing exactly what I’ve suggested to you: just the crown of the head, the soles of my feet, and all these horrible sensations. There’s the physical pain, we’ve got some chaos, and all the emotional stuff arising from that. And of course the stories were just raging. What happens with the stories? Well, I don’t know whether you’re like me, but when the stories are raging with that kind of intensity, I tend to get sucked into them now and then. Now and then being like about every four or five seconds. [Laughter]

Student: For three or four seconds? [Laughter]

Ken: Yeah, usually 10 to 15 seconds, I’ve gone back into this story again, and then back to the bottom. I was quite pleased actually because I managed to maintain some kind of sanity through the whole process. But that’s what this means in terms of practice, you keep touching what’s there and not getting stuck. And even when you get sucked in, you return, open up and be with it. Questions?

Being happy and at peace?

Ken: Fourth one is a madman, lunatic, theme song is Dark Side of the Moon. So conventional notions of success: happy, wealthy, famous, and respected. If you are concerned with peace and being completely at peace, you’ll probably find that, trying to be happy, wealthy, famous, and respected are probably not terribly conducive. If you’re going to be wealthy you’re going to have to work hard and there’s a lot of stress in that. Fame brings its own rewards, not all of them pleasant. If we’re concerned with being respected, you gotta be thinking constantly of how other people are viewing your actions. So you already got a lot of thinking to do. And of course, if you’re really concerned with being respected, you’ve just handed over your life to other people.

Yes?

Donna: I don’t understand why happy is in there. Can’t you be happy and at peace at the same time?

Ken: Well, I’m just coming to happy there. If you’re trying to be happy, you’ve already made an assumption: you’re not happy now. You’re just trying to be happy. And so many people don’t know actually when they are happy. Our economy is based on the premise that more things equals happiness. That’s the basis of the American economy, that philosophical position. Europe, the philosophical position is different. It is, happiness equals time to do what you want. And that’s why it’s very different in economic things. You have people in France and Germany, they have six to eight weeks vacation a year; a very different premise. So, in our culture, you can’t possibly be happy living simpler. That doesn’t compute. So accept notions of happiness coming here as well. You follow, Dona? So if you live your life in a way that doesn’t correspond to those—I like to call them social agendas—you will be regarded as a lunatic.

The more deeply attention penetrates …

Ken: Fifth one: A spear stabbing into empty space, into the sky. What do you hit? This is not a difficult question. [Laughter]

Student: Maybe a very unlucky bird. [Laughter]

Ken: Then it wouldn’t be an empty sky. Art says, “Nothing.” That sound like anything we’ve talked about at this retreat? You direct your attention at what?

Student: Nothing.

Ken: Nothing, exactly. And how many times have you done this? When you look at awareness, what do you see? Altogether, now. [Laughter]

Student: One, two, three …

All Students: Nothing!

Ken: Stabbing a spear into empty space.

Student: Stabbing a spear is pretty active. What’s that part about? [Laughter]

Ken: Correcting your attention. You already have the spear: attention. Some of you anyway. [Laughter] And so you correct it into your experience. Nothing there. You follow? The more deeply attention penetrates what arises in experience, the more completely you know that thoughts, feelings and sensations simply arise. And there is nothing there.

Bees and swallows

Ken: [Pause] Here the metaphors are, “As a beginner, use the bee-like conduct.” Like a bee [sound effect], integrating numerous dharma teachings. So, we learn lots. You go around like a bee from flower to flower, and you collect lots of pollen.

Then the next one is, like a swallow entering its nest. You ever seen a swallow fly into those little things? [Sound effect] Straight in. They never miss. You never see any miss. [Laughter] So cut through all the misconceptions about our instructions. So you get very, very precise.

Next one is the conduct of a wounded deer, which is the same. Fourth is, conduct of a mute. You “refrain from engaging in flattery or slander.”

Student: Can I ask you something?

Ken: You have number one: bee, number two: swallow.

Student: Are we on a different list?

Ken: Yes. We have list of five and now we’re on seven. It’s another seven types of conduct. This is Tsele Natsok Rangdröl.

Student: Again? He just decided to …

Ken: Yes. The first one is a mahamudra list. This is a dzogchen list. But it could be a mahamudra list and the other one a dzogchen list. [Laughter]

Student: Can you read them over?

Ken: First one is like a bee. Second one is like a swallow entering its nest. You fly around from flower to flower and you pick up lots of stuff. And swallow you get really precise. And third one is like the wounded deer. Create circumstances in life where this can be nurtured. Fourth one was like a mute. You refrain from flattery or slander in your life, which operates both ways. You don’t say anything about others and you don’t let what others say about you have any effect. It’s just an experience. Advice that I generally give students when they ask, “What do you do when somebody insults you?”

I say, “Agree with them.”

“You’re the meanest person I ever met.”

“That may be true. Maybe you should remember that.” [Laughter]

Student: Epicurus says, “You must not know me very well because you haven’t mentioned my other faults”. [Laughter]

Ken: “How could you do something so stupid?”

“Well, actually, it’s pretty easy.” [Laughter]

Where’s the person going to go from there?

It’s more like Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy says to Charlie Brown, “Charlie Brown, I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to tell you everything that’s wrong with you. Get a sheet of foolscap, draw a line down the center. On second thought, get two sheets.” [Laughter]

Fifth one, like a madman, our friend the lunatic again. Slightly different: “Cast away prejudice and attachment, like, dislike, and indifference towards friends and enemies.” Treat everybody the same.

One of my students works in a stock brokerage house. And one time, one of the other brokers in the office was just obnoxious. Everybody felt he was an obnoxious guy. He was always trying to horn in on conversations. Nobody would ever say anything to him. Nobody would listen to anything he had to say. We were in the compassion class, and he brought this up. The four immeasurables. And I said, “So, talk to him.” And so next day he went to work, just treated this guy as an ordinary person. And the guy just opened up. Something to remember about bullies: what do bullies want?

Student: Attention? Power?

Ken: Nope. A little bit more.

Student: To be acknowledged.

Ken: They want connection. And if you connect with them, it’s gone.

Student: Has anyone had that experience where you do that and the person does it even more?

Ken: They haven’t felt the connection.

Student: You can’t do it in order to make them stop. It’s a motivation thing.

Ken: Yeah. If you’re doing it to make them stop, you’re not connecting with them. You’re trying to manipulate them.

Student: Like if the person is talking and you actually listen to them, then they talk even more sometimes.

Ken: Yes, they may talk even more until they feel that you’re actually listening. They may have not had the experience of anybody listening. So it may take them a little while for them to recognize that you’re actually listening.

I have a guy who’s a friend of mine, he’s from New York and he’s a typical pushy New Yorker. And one day I was in my office, and it was Columbus Day or one of these sort of holidays, and I had come in just to catch up on stuff. And he called, and he was expecting to leave a message, got me and said, “What are you doing in your office?!” I said [mumbles], and so we talked for a little bit and took care of stuff and it was clear that he was also in his office working. So I said, “And what are you doing in your office?!” And he said, “That’s what I like, somebody who can just come back at me.” And it’s a very minor example, but it’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about. So, be like a madman. Everybody’s the same to you.

Whatever it is, that’s how it is

Ken: Next one: the conduct of pigs and dogs. “Be content with whatever happens and take whatever is experienced as your companion.” Without ideas about how it should be, or shouldn’t be. Whatever it is, that’s how it is.

In Tibetan tradition, the height of the cushion you sit on is very important. And the story is told of Chagdud Rinpoche, who was a Nyingma lama and a very, very highly respected and capable teacher, and master of many, many aspects of practice. He had a monastery, a few miles from Kalu Rinpoche’s monastery. And one day there’s this big convocation of the Nyingma lamas and I think at that point Dudjom Rinpoche was the head of the Nyingma order. And so there was a throne set up for him in the center of the temple. And he was sitting there. And Chagdud Rinpoche was at this point informally or implicitly regarded as a candidate for the number two spot. And he sits down on the cushion beside the door, way down on the floor. So all the other lamas had to sit outside, because they cared about things like that. They weren’t exactly practicing pigs and dogs.

Cast away the fetters of hope and fear

Ken: The lion-like conduct of the king of beasts is number seven. “Free from anxiety”, this is rather like lion playing in the mountains. “Free from anxiety about events and completely cast away all fetters of hope and fear. Practice so that you can endure heat and cold and good and bad equally, without falling into the power of circumstances.” These guys are fairly serious. Cold is an experience. Heat is an experience. That’s it. Okay, you get the picture?

This is supporting the practice and actually translating your practice into how you live. The other side of conduct is where you derive benefit or profit from your practice or enhancement. And this is where you engage deliberately. The term I liked that I used for this, is the translation of the Tibetan brtul zhugs (pron. tul zhūg) is #chosen behavior#. And you deliberately choose to do something, so you can experience being present in the reactions which will inevitably arise. Not other people’s reactions, your reactions.

One form I do with students here is alternation. So if someone is working with pride, for example—and pride can either be the form they think they’re superior to everybody else or they think they are inferior to everybody else, both are forms of pride—the alternation will be: one day, everything you do, everything you say, you act as if you are God’s gift to mankind. And everybody should be grateful that they’re in the room with you, and that they speak to you. The fact that you would even deign to listen to them is a favor beyond the bounty that most people experience in their lives. Get the picture, Caroline?

Caroline: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. Then the next day, you act like you were the servant of everybody. This is a chosen behavior. It produces results very, very quickly. If they’re working with greed, one day they act as if everything that they encounter is theirs. And the next day they just give everything away to everybody. Go back and forth like this. Now what this practice does, is it sets the patterns screaming. And that’s the point of the practice. They start to scream like crazy. Can you be present?

There are lots of other ones. But basically, one embarks on these kinds of chosen behaviors when you have a certain degree of stability in your practice, and you want to extend, i.e. enhance that ability in actual situations. And the result of it is that if you take the alternations on pride—by going back and forth and experiencing the patterns screaming, etc.—you come to the point where you aren’t concerned with how people treat you at all. They make a fuss over you, okay, they make a fuss over you. And if they treat you like dirt, they treat you like dirt. And both are just experiences. That’s the aim of the practice. You’re smiling Caroline.

Caroline: Yeah. I’m having a strong reaction to a memory.

Ken: A few years ago here?

Caroline: I remember that. [Laughter] This for me is even funnier, because it’s not personal, so I can laugh. I’ve forgotten his name, one of the young Rinpoches, I think he’s Kagyu, talked about having set this task for himself without explaining what it was or giving us any background. And he was in London and he promised himself that he would walk down the street and the first person who asked him to take a flyer on anything, he would take the whole stack of flyers and he would hand out the rest of them himself. And it turned out it was a massage parlor [laughter] and he was in robes. He was horrfied. He did it, but he was horrified.

Ken: It’s a very good example because you just got to let it all go. Don’t try this at home [laughter]. Just as Caroline said, he was horrified. But you have to be prepared for how loudly the patterns are going to scream.

Caroline: He said he spent a lot of time in doorways looking around to make sure there was no one was he knew for the next flyer. [Laughter]

Ken: There you are. Good example. Franca.

Engage at your own risk

Franca: I have two questions actually. So this chosen behavior called brtul zhugs (pron. tool zhook) . It’s a Tibetan practice? It’s a traditional practice called alternation?

Ken: No. That was just an example of one kind of brtul zhugs. brtul zhugs means chosen behavior. Taking ordination as a monk is a form of brtul zhugs.

Franca: So Tibetans aren’t sitting there going, “I know I have this a pattern like this, I am going to do this.”

Ken: Oh no. I don’t think so. Only a few Tibetans would actually do that. It’s in the mahamudra and dzogchen. You have brtul zhugs, chosen behavior, with respect to monastic ordination, because you’re adopting that. You have it with respect to bodhisattva conduct. Any practice which is a chosen behavior is an example of brtul zhugs. And I was just giving this as one, which this connected with this kind of practice where you are deliberately raising your own level of reactivity with the intention of experiencing it as just being experience.

Franca: So are you saying that it is a tradition of that?

Ken: Oh, sure, yeah. You read about mahamudra guys who had meditated in the mountains for like five, 10 years. They come down, they go into the bar, have a couple of drinks, and they pick a fight. “Am I getting angry here? Yeah. I got a little angry there. Back to the mountains”. [Laughter] “I experienced that without any anger, cool. Okay, yeah, I got it.”

It actually happened to me in retreat. One of the guys in the retreat got really, really angry with me one day, over nothing. He was a bit insane. He punched me and when he punched me my mind went just completely clear. There wasn’t a scrap of anger. I was just cool. [Laughter] He took one look at my face and ran to his room because he could see there was no anger, there was nothing, totally cool. And that didn’t come from mahamudra practice. It all came from taking and sending practice. One of the other students said, “Why didn’t you get up and hit him?!” [Laughter] He had his own hell. He really did. He really had his own hell. Yes, second question.

Franca: The other question was, does this enhance or deepen your practice, which you are presenting as a paraphrase of derive profit from your practice?

Ken: Here’s how I’ve come to understand it. And many of you I know, from working with me in other context have experienced this. You work at your practice and you have certain experience or you think you have certain experience, something like that. And then a real life situation comes up and what you’ve been practicing actually happens in life. And it’s like, wow. And so it’s no longer just confined to your practice. It’s really alive in your life and you go, “Oh yeah, that’s enhancement.”

Student: It happens all the time.

Ken: If you’re practicing. Yeah. But you actually experience it. And a lot of people, if they just meditate all the time, they don’t actually experience it happen.

Student: When you say enhance your practice, that implies to me that you’re enhancing your practice, which is over here. You’re somehow making them better. And it sounds more like you’re talking about expanding it beyond the boundaries of that.

Ken: This is how it’s usually translated. We had a lot of messing around with that term translating it. It enhances it because now you realize you can actually do it. And for a lot of people, it was just on the meditation cushions. A lot of people have little or no experience of actually doing this in life. At the last teacher training, remember that with Jeff and Sue? We did this role play with two people. And Jeff had this experience of how the transformation of the elements worked in an actual situation. It just opened up totally new doors for him. That’s why I like doing the role plays because it creates that kind of opportunity. Yes?

Student: The alternating of the roles, you don’t necessarily contrive it to see what it would be like. I feel a little bit confused about how it would arise. You just let it comes up and then do that role …

Ken: I don’t recommend you do this unless you’re working with a teacher, because all kinds of things can go all over the place. Because it needs to be appropriate for where you are in your practice. If you try such an exercise and you don’t have the level of attention and intention, both, to maintain it, then you’re just going to get swamped by a whole bunch of reactivity. In the case of pride, you may get carried away by the pride and actually believe you’re entitled to everything or on the other days you’ll just experience being abused and victimized. And that’ll just shut a whole bunch of stuff down here. So unless you have an appropriate level of attention and intention, these kinds of enhancement practice can be damaging. So then you need to approach them quite cautiously.

Student: It seems like if you do get into the very thing that you’re trying avoid—but you’re protecting by being the opposite—that by becoming more familiar with what you’re trying to avoid, you become less fearful.

Ken: Yeah, you’re quite right. But you have to be able to experience it. Franca.

Franca: I think one of the difficulties with this practice is that, if you’re not careful, is that they may be regarded as simply a personality reform, which is not the intention. You said specifically the intention is to evoke the reactions deliberately and experience them in order to—

Ken: Not to make yourself a better person. Yeah. We’re not interested in becoming better people here. [Laughter] Just want that on the record.

Student: I could see where it might create less reactivity.

Ken: It could. I’ve said what I’ve said. Everything else is: you engage this at your own risk. Okay, let’s close here, unless there are any other questions.