A different approach to meditation practice

Ken: When we broke, we were beginning to enter into the question of why we are here, why we engage in this form of activity. One of the things that makes me very popular among Buddhist teachers, [laughter] is that every now and then when they deign to invite me to one of their confabulations, I ask little questions like, “Sociologically speaking, what’s the difference between a Zen sesshin, a Tupperware party, and a Hell’s Angels weekend?” And then I’m usually shown the door. [Laughter] But sociologically speaking, they’re identical activities. They’re a group of people who have come together to participate in something that each of them is interested in.

I always get [in a grumbling voice], “There’s a big difference!”

What is it? I’m going to throw the same sort of question out to you, and if I’m shown the door, then I’ll quite understand.

I want to do another period of meditation with you. This will be less guided than the last one, but I want to describe how to do this. No, actually I think I’ll do it as a guided meditation, because it’ll work. Okay. Now the provenance of this meditation is Thich Nhat Hanh. It comes to me through my colleague, Yvonne Rand. And it’s usually used in the context of painful or difficult feelings. We’re going to use it in a somewhat different context today, but related.

Now, I mentioned that that meditation that we did in the beginning was the four foundations of mindfulness. You may not have observed that my tongue was in my cheek when I said that. In one sense, all meditations are the four foundations of mindfulness, [laughs] you can’t get away from them. But in another sense, it’s quite different, because it’s not about focusing, it’s about including. And it leads to a qualitatively different kind of experience, one which I think has been significantly neglected in much of traditional teaching.

Student: Particularly in the West.

Ken: Particularly in the West, but I get the impression, not just in the West. More and more, I’m beginning to see some of the very big holes in the Asian traditions. And the way that I’ve been coming to that is that I’ve discovered big holes in my own practice. And then I see that the holes were in my training. And when I go to my training, and go back to … [unclear], and I say, “Oh, there’s nothing there!”

And what is happening in the West, I think is very interesting, and I have no idea where it’s going to end up. But with all of the coming together of many, many different spiritual traditions and technologies, much more complete forms and systems of practice—at least there’s the potential for those to develop—so it’s quite interesting from that point of view. There’s going to be a great deal of confusion and pain in the process, but that’s how it goes.

Anyway, what we’re going to do is use this technique to work with a question. Now, the way that the question emerged in our discussion is: What am I searching for? That may be a good formulation for you. A slightly different formulation is: What am I looking for from my practice? You could also take that as: What am I looking for from my life? That takes it to another level of depth. And you may have your own formulation of this, but do you get the idea of where I’m trying to direct you in this? How many feel comfortable with this question? Oh, you’re such liars. [Laughter] … [Unclear]

I will come back to you, Vicky, in half an hour. [Laughter] Okay, now, when we usually engage these questions—What am I searching for?—what’s the first thing we do? We start thinking! We start thinking. How useful is that?

Student: It keeps us occupied [laughs].

Ken: Yeah, it keeps us occupied, which by the way is why there’s so much logic and philosophy in Buddhism. It was the primary way they kept monks busy. Got to give them something to do: logic, philosophy, and ceremonies. Okay, so thinking doesn’t do it. So we’re going to approach this a different way.

What do you experience in your body?

Ken: When you take the question: What am I looking for? What am I searching for? what do you experience in your body? Anybody?

Student: Nothing.

Ken: Ah, nothing is a sensation. That’s a very important point. So, okay. You asked this question, and you experienced nothing in your body. What does that tell you?

Student: Equiibrium.

Ken: Not exactly.

Student: Not the right question?

Ken: Possibly.

Student: Might be just pulling away from the whole experience.

Ken: Exactly. Most of the time, it’s just pulling away from the whole experience, shutting down, which is very, very common. It can also indicate not knowing how to sense the body. And so if you ask the question and you experience nothing in the body, then the first part of this is going to be experiencing nothing, just opening to that experience.

Other people. When I ask you the question, “What are you looking for? What are you looking for in your life?”

Eleanor: It’s hard to put into words but the best word I can find is understanding.

Ken: No, I don’t want you to answer the question. I want you to tell me what you experience in your body.

Eleanor: What I experience in my body? Openness. It’s a question of looking for understanding.

Ken: Well, if I asked you the question, “What are you looking for?” How does your body react to that question?

Eleanor: With expectation.

Ken: How do you experience expectation in the body?

Eleanor: It’s pleasant?

Ken: How do you experience it in the body? What physical experiences tell you it’s pleasant.

Eleanor: I can’t answer that question.

Ken: That’s what I want you to explore. This again is the four foundations of mindfulness. Pleasure, is it warm? Is it fuzzy?

Eleanor: No, it’s not fuzzy. It could be warm, but it’s definitely not fuzzy.

Ken: Okay. Where is it warm? Okay. So a warm feeling in the chest. That’s the physical sensation.

Eleanor: Okay.

Ken: That’s the kind of thing I’m pointing to. Okay? That’s very good. And that was very helpful for a lot of people. So, thank you. Sophie.

Sophie: When you asked the question, what I experienced immediately was a tightening in my throat.

Ken: Okay. Tightening in the throat. So that’s the physical sensation. Very good. Anybody else? Yes. Back here.

Student: Surprisingly, I experienced immediate constriction in my head, kind of a headache. And then I sat for moment; what’s going on? And I just then experienced it as an emotional feeling of fear.

Ken: Yeah. So there’ll be emotions connected with this and I’m just going through this right now, so you can get a feel of the territory we’re going to be negotiating. Okay. So, you got the feel?

All right. So, just take a few minutes to let the body and mind to settle. [Pause] And then take the question: What am I searching for? And open to whatever you experience there. [Pause] And this is called experiencing the question. So, just take the question, What am I searching for? Ask the question, and open to whatever experience arises.

Now, there are a lot of different possibilities. One of the things that can happen is that there can be a whole flood of thoughts and ideas and stories. What I’d like you to do first is let all of that go and come to, What do I experience in my body when I ask this question? So, as you breathe in, ask the question, What am I searching for? And then as you breathe out, ask the question, What am I searching for?

Some of you have mentioned a constriction in the throat, pressure in the head, those may be fleeting, or they may be steady experiences. Ask the question gently, and experience what happens in your body. [Pause] What happens in your stomach when you ask the question, “What am I searching for?” Does anything happen in the solar plexus area? What about the heart? What about the throat? What about the head or your brain? Is there any muscular shift anywhere in your body?

These may be very faint. They may be a ephemeral. Don’t try to hold on to them, just open to the experience. Equally, don’t focus on them. Stay aware of your whole body, and include that sensation in your awareness of the whole body. What am I searching for? What am I looking for? As you do this, various words may pop into mind: freedom, liberation, enlightenment. If any of those words or anything else pops into your mind—maybe it’s truth, happiness—if any of those words pop into mind, feel what happens in your body in association with that word.

And also feel the emotions associated with that word, or elicited by that word. Maybe there’s a sense of relaxation. Maybe there’s a sense of hope. Maybe there’s a sense of uneasiness. But to the best of your ability, rest in the experience of the question, with what is happening in your body, or what is happening emotionally, and all of the stories.

Maybe a very clear answer comes to you. If that’s the case, then rest in that experience of clarity. Maybe there isn’t any clear answer. If that’s the case, rest in that experience, that lack of clarity. There’s a certain amount of mental confusion. How do you experience that in your body? Maybe the body’s quite happy resting there, but you still experience the confusion.

What emotions are associated with that or arise in connection with it? And then again, how do you experience those emotions in your body? And if there are any of these feelings or confusion, don’t try to resolve any of this. Open to that experience. You may feel parts of you, maybe actual parts of your body, or just other parts of your psyche, or whatever you want to call it, resisting this, or uneasy with it, or curioius about it, intrigued. Again, don’t try to sort out all of those parts. Just rest in the experience of all of them, and all the emotions connected with them, and all the physical sensations connected with the emotions.

And if you lose track, then just come back to the question, “What am I looking for?” And see what comes up. I put hours into my practice; I go to workshops; I listen to teachers. What am I looking for? [Pause] And as you do this, keep opening to the experience until you can rest in the experience. [Pause] You rest in the experience of the question. Rest in the experience of whatever that question does to you in your life. What am I looking for? [Pause]

And as you discover the ability to rest in the question, you may also discover the ability to rest and relax in the question. Now, an interesting thing happens when you start to relax. You actually feel all of the physical and emotional sensations more completely. So then you go back, and you just open to those. And through this cycling process, you find a way of opening, resting, and relaxing in the experience of this question. [Pause]

[Gong]

Okay. How was your experience with this? What was your experience?

Student experiences

Student: It was a combination of physical sensations and words that would come from time to time, and different ideas. And then opening, expanding to that, you know, I’d get fixated on the word and then expand out from that. That kind of thing.

Ken: What are you looking for?

Student: You know, one of the things, one of the words was, It’s a waste of time searching, in a sense. And then the words peace, and freedom, and this is it, keeps coming up [laughs].

Ken: Okay, this is what I’m looking for. Okay. All right. Person in front of you.

Student: I was switching from relief of grasping to mentally remembering the questions. And so when we focused, it was like a relief, it was like let go.

Ken: Let go of the grasping, okay. Sophie?

Sophie: Well, I found it very helpful using the sensations, because in the first exercise I got really conceptual. But with this one, I felt my heart constrict and my throat, and then it was like, what am I looking for or searching for? And it was acceptance. And then with acceptance came this enormous sadness. I literally felt tears just running down my face. It was like, this is it! And that just felt like an opening in a sense, because if this is all of it, I don’t know, I felt that sense of, what is the capacity? And the limitations of my own capacity were very apparent to me.

Ken: Okay. Janet.

Janet: I also felt that by attending to my physical sensations, I’ve learned something different about what I had come here for. Sort of sounds like Monty Python, but I thought I’d come here for truth. And what I found as I asked that question was that no, that isn’t it. What I found at first was a hollowness when the question was asked, and then this feeling in my heart, like it just ached to open up, it just ached. And then it was just so clear: I’m here to open my heart. And then, not just my heart, I’m here to open up, open up. But the whole front of me felt like it just wants to open up to everything. Like almost want to burst, like unfurl.

Ken: Okay. The truth fell by the wayside.

Janet: So not about truth.

Seeking truth or peace

Ken: Okay. Well, last summer I was reading a book called Straw Dogs, by a philosopher at the London School of Economics. He’s written quite a bit about modernism and has some very interesting perspectives on modernism and terrorism and where we’re going as a society, etc. He’s written quite a few books. Very interesting critique of a lot of religious pursuits. And about two thirds of the way through the book I guess, there was the sentence, “Philosophers claim that they are seeking truth, when actually they are seeking peace.” [Pause] “Philosophers claim that they are seeking truth, when actually they are seeking peace.” [Pause]

Now, before the Age of Enlightenment—if anything was ever misnamed, it was that—that was the basis for all philosophical, spiritual, religious practice. That’s what people spent their lives pursuing. You look into Tibetan tradition, Longchenpa, Milarepa, and all of these people, what did they actually do with their lives? They explored levels of peace which are really quite astonishing. I think last time I was here I mentioned this, but it may be worth mentioning it again, in 2003 I did a dzogchen retreat in Colorado.

I will give you the meditation instruction that we received. I will give you the sum total of the meditation instruction that we received at that retreat. Are you ready with your pens and paper? This won’t take terribly long, but it’s very important. Do nothing. That was it. It was a three week retreat. I lasted 14 days. I didn’t leave the retreat, but after 14 days something started to get itchy in me. I had a very nice accommodation at that retreat, it was a little cabin that sat on the side of the hill overlooking a valley, and hills, and things like that. It was very nice. You could watch the thunderstorms rolling through the sky, etc. And I would sit out on the deck there in the evenings.

And it occurred to me that doing nothing is actually a little difficult. I mean, doing nothing for a minute, most people can handle that. A few type A personalities probably have a little difficulty with it. Most of us can handle doing nothing for a minute. How about doing nothing for an hour? Well, everybody here is trained in meditation and can handle that. Doing nothing for three or four days, a week, that’s getting a little tricky. I mean, we’re all right if we’re going to a meditation retreat. But actually, we’ve already missed the boat there, because by going to a meditation retreat, we’re pretty sure we’re going to be doing something. As I said, 14 days, and then I started to get itchy. What would it be like to do nothing for a month? Six months. A year. Three years. Six years. What would that be like?

Student: Like being dead.

Ken: Like being dead. [Laughter] Interesting. I don’t think Milarepa felt that. Jim?

Jim: It really begs the question of the difference between doing nothing and doing something.

Ken: I’m talking about doing nothing.

Jim: And I would have to repeat the problem of that statement, because even if there’s no intention, there’s often activity.

Ken: You know, you have food, and go to the restroom.

Jim: Some of us would say that’s doing something.

Ken: Yes. But if you leave aside all of that stuff. When you’ve taken care of the necessities of life, etc.—and we’ll just assume you have an infinite supply of food, and your toilet never backs up, and you have water, okay, so you’ve got those three things—and the rest of the time, what would that be like?

Jim: I can only imagine. And I can only imagine that it might be interesting [laughter] but I’m sure there would be difficulties.

Ken: Just a second. What are you experiencing in your body when you engage that question?

Jim: Well actually just now as I engaged it, there was like a whole lot of energy that came up.

Ken: Yeah! Okay. So answer it from there, not from here. You’re really going to do nothing.

Jim: Oh, okay, so the anticipation of spending that time trying to do nothing is nerve wracking.

Ken: Ah, thank you.

Jim: Yeah, because I imagine that there’s going to be so many physiologic mind pieces that will be wanting to do something. That’s my usual state.

Ken: Yeah. Now, for how many others of you would that be the case? Okay. So when we talk about doing nothing, and the ability to do that, you have to have a phenomenal relationship with peace. This is exactly what people like Longchenpa, who sat in a cave outside Lhasa, and did nothing for 12 years. Milarepa, he just sat in his cave. If people came to him, he taught them, and if they didn’t, that’s what he did.

My own teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, was quite happy doing nothing on the north face of a mountain in the middle of winter in Tibet, and only left that life under extreme pressure from his own teacher. As he told me himself, “I was quite happy, just in mountain retreat and then I got a letter from Situ Rinpoche,”—that would be the previous Situ Rinpoche—”saying, ‘Come down and teach the three-year retreat.’ So I just ignored that. And then I got a letter from”—I can’t remember, but the number two hierarch at Palpung Monastery in Eastern Tibet—”asking me to do the same thing, so I just ignored that. And then I got a letter from my guru,” which is Lama Norbu, the person he did the three three-year retreat with. “And that letter said, ‘You can stay in the mountains if you wish. But if you do, never darken my doorstep again.’ So I had to come down.” Engaged all his activity, good for me, but it’s not what he actually wanted to do. He was completely at peace with his world.

A meditation: be at peace with your world

Ken: How many of you would like to be completely at peace with your world? [Pause] Okay. This is what we’re really concerned with in spiritual practice. So again, we’re just going to do a shorter period of meditation. And I want you to take that, and say, “I’m doing this practice to learn how to be completely at peace with my world.” I just want you to sit with that in exactly the same way: sit with the body reactions, the emotional, all the stories, etc. Just keep coming back, and breathing, and taking in that experience. Okay?

[Gong] Let body and mind settle. And I am here, and I engage this kind of practice and these interests because I want to be completely at peace in my world, or in the life I experience. [Pause] What happens in the body? What are the emotions? Even if you can’t name them, just open to the feelings. [Pause] What are the stories? As you rest in your experience of the body, you’re more likely to be able to just experience the stories as stories and not get caught by them. So just rest in the whole mess. [Pause]

[Gong] Okay. So what was this like? Back there.

Student experience

Student: My experience was surprising to me. The first experience I had was of enormous resistance, a constriction. And then an experience of there would be a lot of tears, if I let them come. And then the only thought was a very strong no! And then I just sat with the no, and it was like in an echo chamber.

Ken: So something in you was just yelling, “No!”

Student: Yes, that’s true. And then I did it again, and I had the same answer. And I just sat with the no. Actually, then I did a third time and this time the answer was yes, which is the one I would have expected.

Ken: Was there a difference in the physical sensations in each of these three?

Student: I tried to pay attention to them. I wasn’t able to do that a lot. I was most able to experience it the third time, because that was a great relaxation when the answer was yes in the body. And certainly the first time there was a great constriction.

Errors in the English translation of Freud’s concept of the self

Ken: Mm-hmm. I have my flip chart. This may be useful. You’ve all heard about non-self, right? There’s the person. I like to do things in systems thinking so I just always draw circles. The sense of self, or the notion that there is a self, is the idea that this is one thing. There’s one thing that I am. And this is how we relate to our world. I mean even when we use such phrases as, “I’ve changed a lot since I was five years old,” contains within it the statement, “There is something that was there when I was five, that is there now, and that is me.”

But this is not how we are. Now, if you look at Freudian analysis—I’m no fan of Freud but this is a little bit useful—he divided this up into three things, which were translated into English as ego, super ego, and id. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about translation recently. This is one of the more egregious translation errors in the history of the modern world because the German doesn’t use these terms at all. The German uses Ich, which is the word for I.

I got up this morning, had a shower, put on my clothes, had a nice chat with Palden, had breakfast with a friend, came here. I’m talking with you now, and I’m going to do some other things this afternoon, and fly back to LA tomorrow. Is there any problem with that use of the word I? No. And this is what Freud was pointing to, the ordinary functioning of I. And ego is a bad word in our culture, I’m not quite sure how that happened. Now, how many of you have the experience of this little voice which says, “You should be doing this now?” [Laughter]

Okay? And one of the best places to experience that little voice? Meditation. You know, “just tighten up a little bit right there. He’s off. Doing good. Keep going.” How many of you have had this constant commentary on your meditation practice? And all of this stuff which is telling you what you should and shouldn’t do in your life, etc. Sensorially, where do you feel that voice comes from? If you were to point to it with your hand. But where? Is it in your head? To me it’s just about right here, you know? And so that’s the German you see: Über-Ich, the Over-I.

Now, how many of you are fans of Calvin and Hobbes? [Laughter] Okay. When Calvin’s mother is taking Calvin to task over something, what does Calvin always say? “It was Hobbes! I didn’t to it. It was Hobbes.” So how many of you have had the experience of something just taking over, and doing something you would never ordinarily do? Like, you know, having sex with someone that you really have broken up with. You know, getting drunk some night. Saying something which you never really intended to say.

Anybody else have that experience? Okay. It’s like something just takes over. Am I speaking Greek here? No. Oh, okay. So it’s like this it right? That’s what the word it is. Now, what’s very interesting here is that Freud in the original German is very experiential. There are these three parts, and we all have this experience. It’s the normal I, just go about your life, fine. And then there’s this Over-I, which says this and this and this. And there’s this it which comes in, and basically it takes over, and we get to clean up the mess. Right? When this was translated—I have no idea who translated Freud, the idiot—it was a colossal translation error. He used Latin terms and now he created a priestly jargon.

And so we have this caste of priests in our society called psychoanalysts, by the way, are there any psychoanalysts here? I’m sorry. [Laughter] I’m quite happy to have this conversation with them. And, how do you say, join, in psychoanalytic language? Cathect. Okay. Cathection: it’s the fancy word for joining. I don’t even know where it comes from. I have to look up the etymology, but there’s a whole jargon and it’s completely removed from experience. But the main reason I’m bringing this up is that even in basic psychoanalysis you have the self broken up into three.

Well, that’s not how it works. There I am. Here’s what I actually look like [drawing]. [Laughter] Now, every one of these little selves is very, very specific. So, if we take one of these and blow it up, here’s what it looks like. Right at the center, there’s an experience which we happen to open to. So it could be an experience of shame, embarrassment, fear, an experience of, joy or pleasure. So there was some experience, which at some points in our lives occurred, but we couldn’t experience at the time, because to experience it felt like we were going to die. And usually a lot of stuff happens in the first six months when our mother turns away from us, instead of feeding us, and it’s like being totally abandoned, and we just shut that down.

And so we develop a way to handle that experience and that’s the first layer. And then there’s another layer, another layer, another layer, another layer. And these layers are composed of different stories, different ways of acting, different ways of behaving, etc. And there’s a whole personality associated with each one. And that’s what each one of these looks like. Here’s what the wonderful part is. I’m here because somebody says something and this one pops up, but then something else happens, and so that one pops up. And then that one pops up. And then that one pops up.

The self as a narrative

Ken: Now each of those have a totally different way of experiencing the world, of reacting to the world, etc. Now, I know this very vividly from my own experience because people think that I’m a reasonable person, except those people who have the misfortune to be on the other end of the phone when I make a tech support call. They do not think I’m a reasonable person. I don’t think I’m a reasonable person; I become another person on tech support. And I won’t give you the stories, they’re not pretty. So it bounced there, there, there, there, there. How many times do we do this a day?

Student: Probably a million or so.

Ken: Okay. You know what the official Buddhist term for this is? Samsara. Because each one of these is a different world, and we move around all over the place.

Student: And it feels real!

Ken: Not only does it feel real, we feel we are the same person in all of them, right? Therefore, what can we say about the sense of self, or the self? The self is a narrative that is constructed in order to give the semblance of rational consistency to a chaotic process.

Student: Say that again.

Ken: The self is a narrative that is constructed to give the semblance of rational consistency to a chaotic process. Janet. And I’m going to come back to your point before we break for lunch, this is all to set the stage for that.

Janet: So is that outer circle that narrative that you’re talking about?

Ken: Well I haven’t thought of it that far, but you could say so, yeah.

Janet: Because there’s no other reason to have that integrating outer circle. What else would it be? I mean, they’re just all those individual selves.

Ken: Popping up all over the place, right? Okay. Now let’s go back to this gentleman’s experience. Okay? So when we develop the capacity to open to that core experience, then we can experience all of that, and are no longer limited to the way it sees the world. It becomes just another experience. That’s freedom. And so one way to interpret your experience here is, this peace business, “No!” Different part, the part comes on and says, “No, I don’t want any of that.” So one of these parts is screaming, “No!” And I commend your efforts and practice here, you just opened to it. Okay. That’s there. And it was totally the appropriate thing to do from a practice perspective. And the more you experienced it, the less insistent or rigid it became, and you discovered there’s a whole other possibility. And then there was a “yes” and a relaxation that went on with that.

So, this I found is a very useful way to work with stuff that comes up in meditation. Because when you use the term I—”I am angry,” “I am upset,” “I can’t do this”—you’re in the big monolithic thing, just as Janet was suggesting. And it feels huge. But what if you just changed the vocabulary and say, “Part of me”? “Part of me is angry.” “Part of me is upset.” Now there are all kinds of possibilities. And so there you are, and you’re sitting saying, “Okay, I just want to be at peace with my world.” And part of you goes, “No!” Well, that gets very curious, doesn’t it? There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to be at peace with my world. Any ideas why that might be? Yes. Okay.

Student: Actually the next thought after the resounding “No!” was, which also surprised me, and I’m glad you mentioned it, because I forgot, was, “I want more.”

Ken: Wonderful. Which of the six realms are you in now? [Laughter] But that’s perfect because that’s how it operates.

“No, I don’t want just peace, I want more.”

“Well, what more do you want?”

“I don’t know, I just want more!”

Hungry ghost realm. There we are. And we bounce around like that. Another one is peace. “I want to feel special.” God realm. There are all of these kinds of possibilities.

The three gates to freedom

Ken: Somebody else’s experience with this and then we’re going to take a break for lunch. What was it like? Let’s hear from somebody we haven’t heard so much from. We haven’t heard anything from you.

Student: You could ask me another question at another time.

Ken: Sounds like I’m right on target. [Laughter]

Student: What’s the question again?

Ken: What was your experience of “I want to be at peace with my world.” What was that like for you?

Student: Very nice.

Ken: Can you say anything more?

Student: I was just being able to be very present. It seemed like it took the sense of aspiration and striving and expectation out of the actual experience.

Ken: Oh, this is so wonderful. Thank you. I love it when people do my work for me. Anybody remember what the three gates to freedom are? What do they teach in Buddhist school these days? Okay. We have the three marks of existence, which are: impermanence, change, struggle (I find a better word)—and non-self, which I have another thing for, but we won’t worry about it now.

So, in the Mahayana, they take a little different form: no characteristics—and I’ve got to come up with a better term, that’s the technical term—no aspiration, and emptiness is the one here [writing]. So, these are the three gates to freedom. And if you think about it carefully—and we can go more into this after lunch—freedom is an experience of a particular kind of peace. And so there you are, and you find, okay, this is it. I can relax. I don’t have to aspire. It’s exactly one of the gates of freedom. Thank you. Okay. We’re going to take a break for lunch here.

Just a quick check-in—how was this for you? Are you getting anything out of this? Okay. Just yes will be sufficient. [Laughing] “We don’t like any of those big words.” [Laughter]