Practice experiences

Ken: We’re going to go through the rest of Milarepa’s interaction with Lady Paldarboom. We went over this yesterday afternoon. How many of you tried practicing this way in the evening?

What was your experience? That’s what we’re going to talk about; that’s what the next part is, it’s about your experience. What was your experience here? Mark?

Mark: Well …

Ken: Don’t look at that. Just tell me your experience. I know what’s here. This is not a case of, “Oh, the answer is here.”

Mark: Well, I’m a bit fuzzy about how it started, but when we first went through it, I didn’t really understand not being any movement or change. And then, I took it to mean that what wouldn’t move or change would be either awareness or a sense of knowing. So, I think what I focused on was a sense of knowing and everything just sort of exploded into view from there.

Ken: Exploded?

Mark: Into view.

Ken: Into view.

Mark: I felt the flattening of the visual field and everything came clear.

Ken: Okay. Then?

Mark: I was quite surprised.

Ken: Was there a then?

Mark: I was quite surprised. But it didn’t collapse, so I could keep it going for the rest of the meditation session.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Yes, John.

John: For me, this easily transitioned into a point of focus that I got out of your book: body like a mountain, mind like sky, breath like wind. And somehow for me, I become those things when I say them internally. My body gets solid and stable and because I’m here; I’m relating to some of the frames where there was a solid tree or a rock. And when I say mind like sky, I experience unlimited expansion just like I do when I look at the sky. And the breath like the wind brings me back to resting on my breath.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Thank you. Julia.

Julia: Release, an experience of release.

Ken: Pardon? The experience of release. Okay. Pam.

Pam: I found that my body was quite comfortable, as opposed to the meditation prior, which was totally uncomfortable and screaming.

Ken: Sorry. Your body was quite comfortable, but …

Pam: Contrary to what it had been up until the longer meditation.

Ken: In which it had been screaming. Yeah. Okay. So, what was different? What did you do differently here?

Pam: Well, that’s where I’m not sure. Not sure if I’m just detached …

Ken: Just detached, or …

Pam: I would kind of bounce when I came up against something that would’ve passed, or when I caught myself doing that I would kind of think, “Let go,” or “Try to release it,” and go back to a state that I’m not quite sure what it was.

Ken: But it seems that you found that you could rest in a way that you weren’t able to before. Okay, good. Anybody else?

David: I found them to be more specific examples of the Six Words of Advice of Tilopa, which are a bit more general, but the effect was the same. The complete abandon of processing and trying.

Practicing with the sky

Ken: Okay. Let’s take a look at Lady Paldarboom’s responses.

Ah, Treasured Lord,
Perfect expression of awakened form.

I was happy practicing with the sky,
But a little uneasy about bringing clouds into the practice.
Please give me instruction on practicing with clouds.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

This resonate with anybody? Sonya?

Sonya: Yeah.

Ken: So, how does it resonate with you? What was your experience that you connect with this?

Sonya: When I expand my awareness to include everything. And what you mentioned yesterday about bringing not just the sensations but the emotions into that. When that comes in, it’s harder for me to sustain that awareness.

Ken: So, you get distracted by the clouds.

Sonya: Not distracted.

Ken: How would you describe it?

Sonya: There’s a sense of not always being able to support that much.

Ken: And what happens?

Sonya: The field of awareness starts to collapse. And my body, there’s not a softening in the body. If I come back to the experience of the body, there’s a constriction versus a sense of expansion that starts to happen. There’s not just a sense of collapse, it’s also a sense of constriction.

Ken: Okay, we’ll come back to that. Anybody else resonate with, “A little uneasy about bringing clouds into the practice”? Yes, Randy.

Randy: There are times when you’re riding a bicycle, the fear of falling down may come up, and it’s kind of like that. And then what I try to do is make that part of the rebalancing. But, I guess fundamentally, it’s a fear of getting pulled off track somehow, as though there were a track.

Ken: In the trackless sky, I have to follow the track.

Randy: Exactly.

Ken: Well, there’s a famous exchange between two Chinese teachers. I can’t remember how it starts, but I remember the last line: “The clear blue sky does not obstruct the floating white cloud.” [Laughter]

Student: Could you say that again?

Ken: “The clear blue sky does not obstruct the floating white cloud.” Why do you laugh Franca?

Franca: That’s great. It’s the reversal. The sort of more traditional thing is that the clouds don’t obstruct the sky. And you just turned it right around and leads me to laugh.

Ken: It’s actually more accurate than the other one. It points—much more accurately, in my opinion—to what one does in meditation practice: stuff arises and you don’t do anything with it. You like this Sonya?

Sonya: I like this. [Laughs]

Practicing with the sun and moon

Ken:

I was happy when practicing with the sun and moon,
But a little uneasy about bringing stars and planets into the practice. Please give me instruction on practicing with stars and planets.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

What on earth is she talking about? Amanda.

Amanda: I’m laughing because he’s laughing behind me.

Ken: That’s all right. I didn’t see that, so I got you.

Amanda: Well, I have no idea.

Ken: So, ask him.

Amanda: What’s so funny? [Laughter]

Student: Somebody does that and suddenly planets and stars emerge in their head. I wonder what they’re smoking. I just took it as, you practice seeing luminosity, light. That’s what moon and sun is. I didn’t see any planets or stars.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? David.

David: I sort of took planets and stars to be much less bright than sun and moon. It made me think of finding specifically, in terms of my experience last night, one thing that would not stop were the little sort of back-here sonar pings, sort of like you were saying, how’s it going? What’s going on? And they’re dark and they’re kind of lurking back there, but they’re there.

Ken: Okay, so that’s the question. What do you do with all of it?

David: In terms of, I suppose where I thought I was with method last night, which actually is pretty much anarchy and total chaos, but was just to say, “Okay, okay, that’s there. It’s there.”

Practicing with the mountain

Ken: Okay. Now:

I was happy to practice with the mountain,
But a little uneasy about bringing in grass and trees.
Please give me instruction on practicing with grass and trees.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

What’s she talking about here? [Pause] Don’t all speak at once. Jean.

Jean: Sometimes I was feeling like I’m overwhelmed with too much information at once, and too many thoughts. Too much, too much going on and not able to back up. It’s like for me, with the planets and stars, that’s very opening and exciting and expansive. I could just go and go and go until I’m gone there. And then if I bring myself back to mountain with grasses and trees, like we were practicing yesterday, seeing all the grass, every blade of grass and every leaf. And if I’m there and thinking all I want to do is shut down my occipital lobe and be done with it. It’s just too much.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else?

Student: Well, seems that she’s having trouble with the fact that trees and grass are part of a mountain. And they grow on a mountain, and it somehow does feel like it’s too much to add anything into being part of this picture or practicing like a mountain. In other words, being inclusive of all the experience.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Mark?

Mark: I think the way I read it is, the mountain stays put and doesn’t go anywhere. The trees and the grass might also be there, but they’re always moving and changing.

Ken: Yes. So, here you’re practicing not moving, but all of the stuff is moving anyway. So, what do you do with it?

Mark: Go with it. Go with it.

Ken: Go with it. But I think that’s your question. Okay. “Here I was, quite happy sitting perfectly still, but I noticed all of this other stuff just kept moving.”

Practicing with the ocean

Ken:

I was happy practicing with the ocean,
But a little uneasy about bringing waves into the practice.
Please give me instruction on practicing with waves.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

Franca?

Franca: Looks like your kayaking story.

Ken: Which one?

Franca: When you say that you can be just a grand kayaker on a nice flat ocean, you can just zip along and feel like a real pro. Then when there are waves, it’s a whole other story.

Ken: Okay. When you’re exerting all your effort just to stay upright in the boat. Okay, anybody else? Does this resonate with anybody’s experience? Let’s hear how. Mark?

Mark: Well, it’s not enough to be engulfed by water. You have to get pushed about too.

Ken: Okay. Margaret?

Margaret: If you look at waves, particularly big waves, surface and depth are changing places all the time.

Ken: Again, there’s a theme running through all her questions: she seems to be pretty happy with a stillness aspect, but she’s not quite sure how to relate to the movement aspect.

Practicing with mind

Ken: And then the last one:

I was happy to practice with mind,
but a little uneasy about bringing thoughts into the practice.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

Anybody have this problem? [Laughter] No. Okay, we can move on. So, what is Milarepa saying? Now:

Milarepa thought her practice was productive and was delighted. (So, from Milarepa’s point of view, she’s got something going on in her practice and so he feels that he can take the next step with her.)

Ah, Lady Paldarboom.
Listen, fortunate and devoted student,

If you are happy practicing with the sky,
Clouds are the sky’s magical creations.
Be the sky itself.

What do you understand by this?

Student: That she’s not separate from her experience?

Ken: What’s he telling her to do? She’s not doing this yet. And this is instruction. What’s he telling her to do?

Student: Accept all of her experience.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: Accept all of her experience.

Ken: Okay, anybody else? Experience all of her experience. Veronica?

Veronica: The comment that you made quoting the Chinese sage: the sky does not obstruct the clouds. Be the sky itself.

Ken: Okay. What does this mean in practice? We can say, “Accept all experience, be the sky itself.” What does it mean in practice? Now for this, I want you to look at your own experience. When you’re sitting and everything is nice and peaceful, and let’s use Sonya’s example, you sense an emotion arising. What do you usually do? Meditation’s going well, and you sense this emotion arising. What do you do? Yes?

Student: You interfere with it in some way.

Ken: Okay, anybody else?

Student: Resist.

Student: You observe it.

Ken: Okay, so we interfere, resist, observe. Peggy?

Peggy: Experience the emotion.

Ken: I’m interested in the first instance that you detect it.

Student: You get distracted by it.

Ken: Yeah, distracted. But I’m actually laying this out very carefully. Your meditation’s going really well. It’s really going nicely, and a little bit of pride comes up. You think, “Oh, this is going well.” [Laughter] And you just start to notice that. What do you do? David.

David: At a minimum, because of course I progressed to the point where I don’t fight them anymore [laughter], blank them. I don’t know what else to say, but there’s a blanking.

Ken: Okay, Pam?

Pam: Suppress them.

Ken: Suppress them. Jean?

Jean: Well, if I’m the sky, then it’s like a lightning bolt, and then I—

Ken: Oh, we’re in a thunderstorm just like that. [Laughter] Sue?

Sue: You react with various forms of aversion.

Ken: Okay. David?

David: Frustrated or disappointed.

Offer no resistance to movement in mind

Ken: Okay, so you’re getting my point here. There you are, things are going nicely and something starts to move, and there is a reaction to it. “What’s that doing here? Things were going nicely.” And it’s very, very fast. What would it be like— just explore this for a moment—to offer absolutely no resistance to any movement in the mind?

“The clear blue sky doesn’t obstruct the floating white cloud.” So, that thought or emotion starts to move, and you do nothing. You do absolutely nothing about it. What would that be like? The look of consternation on everybody, this is a new possibility. Okay, how many feel good about doing that? How many of you feel frightened about doing that? What’s frightening about that? Mike?

Mike: There’s a danger of getting pulled into it.

Ken: That’s what we fear, isn’t it? Jean, what do you find frightening?

Jean: I hesitate to say this. I usually like to be in control.

Ken: Thank you so much for saying that because I’m sure there’s nobody else in this room who feels the same way. [Laughter] Doug.

Doug: Isn’t doing nothing, doing something?

Ken: I ran into this problem with a few attorneys at a retreat a while ago. They took the opposite view, “Well, you didn’t tell us that doing nothing was doing something.” Taking the position of doing nothing is definitely doing something. I’m talking about actually doing nothing. [Laughter]

Student: You should change it, instead of “doing nothing,” you should say, “Do nothing, not even that.”

Ken: I could try that. It is interesting you bring this point up, Doug, because in Buddhism, two different forms of negation are recognized. One is negation by replacement, and the other is absolute negation. Negation by replacement is the one that we’re both used to: that isn’t a black dog, it’s a white dog, or that isn’t a dog, that’s a cat. But what we actually practice in Buddhism is absolute negation: no dog, nothing.

Now this is not so easy. And that’s why the instruction is: “Be the sky.” With that instruction one is relinquishing any attempt to control what arises in experience. Between those who find that good, and those who find it frightening, I’m definitely on the frightened side. I don’t get to have any say in this whatsoever?

And one of the reasons this form of practice, or this approach to practice, is challenging, is if there is an insufficient capacity in attention, then exactly what Mike talked about is going to happen. You’re just going to get carried off by this and carried off by that, which is why people spend quite literally years doing all kinds of practices, which clear away various sorts of distortion and confusion and build a capacity in attention so they actually can just let things happen and not fall into confusion.

Practice doing nothing for very short periods

Ken: When you practice this in the meditation period, do this for very, very short periods of time. And when I say short, I mean anywhere from 15 seconds to 120 seconds, a quarter of a minute to two minutes. The reason for approaching the practice this way is that to open like that, and then get carried off by something, and just jumble around in it for a while, runs the danger of conditioning yourself to confused and bewildered experience, thinking that you’re actually doing some form of practice when you’re not. You’re just messing around with confusion.

So, for instance, if you just sit for a moment, and we can do this a slightly different way. Let your breath settle, and then breathe in and breathe out a little more slowly than you usually do. Not greatly elongating the breath just a little bit. And let the breath go out completely. Don’t force it out or anything like that. And you find the breath comes to an end. Just rest there. [Pause]

Do it again. When the breath comes to an end, there is an experience of openness or space. Be the space. Be the sky. And then rest. That’s what I mean. That’s how long you do it for, very short periods. That’s how you build capacity. You are disturbing me, sir. You’re taking down far too many notes.

The magical creations of the sun and moon

Ken:

If you are happy practicing with the sun and moon,
Planets and stars are their magical creations.
Be the sun and moon.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

What do you understand from this instruction? Randy?

Randy: That you can be as happy with thought as with no thought.

Ken: How did you get there?

Randy: He speaks about happiness practicing with the sun and moon. The stars and planets are simply manifestations of that. So, how could you be unhappy with that?

Ken: Interesting. What is the sun and moon here?

Randy: It’s hard to find a word that’s not somewhat jargon-ish, but knowing, knowing itself, awareness itself.

Ken: What are the stars and planets?

Randy: If I really probe that to the bottom, once again, I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a clue. Truly, however, drawing a focus back a little bit, stars and the planets are without a self. Again, that’s another piece of jargon of course, but that expresses something very important about what they are.

Ken: Yes, what you say is true, but it’s not helpful for us in practice. So, let’s go back to being the sky for a moment, or being space. Randy has already pointed to this quality. Ordinarily when we consider space, there’s nothing. It’s just space. In fact, we often refer to space as the absence of anything. When you rest with mind like sky, mind like space, is there nothing there like space? Is that how it is? How many you say yes? How many say no? Okay. What’s the difference? Mark?

Mark: There’s still the knowing.

Ken: That’s exactly right. There’s still the knowing. So, I want to shift now. Again, let your breath run out. At the end of the breath, there’s that opening into the sky, into space, and in that space there’s a knowing. Be the knowing. So, just try that. [Pause] What’s that like? Meg.

Meg: Steady.

Ken: Okay, steady. Anybody else? David?

David: I’ll ask it as a question. Is there a sense in which the knowing has an energy?

Ken: That’s what your experience is, is it? Okay, so there’s the sense of energy. Anybody else?

Sonya: There’s a sense of confidence.

Ken: Say a bit more, Sonya.

Sonya: There’s a place where the knowing and the understanding, they separate the two, but they come together in that space.

Ken: Tell me about the understanding.

Sonya: Intellectual understanding or understanding from experience come together with the knowing and it’s not—

Ken: Okay, so intellectual understanding and understanding from experience. How do you experience those understandings?

Sonya: In that place? In the empty space?

Ken: Yeah. How does that arise? I’m going to ask, are there little flashes, like oh, oh?

Sonya: They’re little, little sparks.

Ken: Yeah. Okay. Those are the stars and planets. Okay? What do you do with those? Now what do we ordinarily do with those?

Student: Name the constellations. Create an astrology. Yeah, we name them. What’s your sign? [Laughter]

Ken: Yeah, we grab onto them, right? And what happens to that knowing quality as soon as we grab onto them?

Student: It goes right through your fingers, or it’s clenched in a fist.

Ken: Yeah, it’s gone, right? And now you grab.

This actually is one way of understanding, the Garden of Eden story. Something arises and we grab onto it. And in traditional Buddhist terminology, the pristine awareness, or primordial awareness, is forgotten and one falls into ordinary consciousness. What is another way of relating to those little sparks?

Last year we did a mind training retreat here, and one of the instructions in the ultimate awakening mind section was: “Let even the remedy subside naturally.” Those little flashes are like “Everything’s empty,” or “There’s nothing here,” those kinds of things. And those are like the stars and planets. They’re reflections of the knowing. As soon as we grab onto them, we move away from the knowing. The instruction is you just look at them.

In mahamudra you don’t even do that. As Randy was just saying, you just rest in the knowing. And there are these sparks and flashes and stars and planets, and it is not necessary to do anything with them. Now, this requires practice. I mean, what we’re doing here is at a very, very deep level: practicing not reacting to anything, even insights and understandings.

The magical creations of the mountain

Ken:

If you are happy practicing with a mountain,
Grass and trees are the mountain’s magical creations.
Be the mountain itself.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

Now if you’re in Afghanistan, I can imagine being a mountain without any grass or trees, because I’ve seen them, just rock, nothing else. But most mountains have grass and trees growing on them. It’s part of being a mountain. And the grass and trees go through their own life cycle. They grow in the spring, and they put forth flowers and leaves and dry up in the fall, and are there in the winter, or they die in the winter. And that’s just a natural cycle of things.

Here we sit and things still go on in the body. The cells still burn, the breath comes and goes, the blood circulates. All of these things still happen, and you don’t try to do anything with that or stop that. I mean there are practices—some of the yoga practices in Hinduism—where you actually develop the ability to influence the autonomous functions of the body, that is control your heartbeat. But then you’ve got to remember to keep the heart beating. That is possible, usually not advised.

And so within the movement there is a stillness. And one finds the stillness within the movement. One doesn’t try to bring the stillness about by stopping the movement.

The magical creations of the ocean

Ken: This is even more explicit in the next one:

If you are happy practicing with the ocean,
Waves are the ocean’s magical creations.
Be the ocean itself.

Milarepa’s Song to Lady Paldarboom

I’ll give you a secret instruction on this. Learn to breathe underwater. What do I mean by that? Pam?

Pam: Have faith. [Laughter]

Ken: Well, it’s certainly one interpretation of it. Actually, I mean something slightly different. Yes.

Student: I was going to say learn to come up to get the air when you need to.

Ken: No, it’s about learning to breathe underwater, but you’re on the right track. How many of you feel occasionally engulfed by emotion? When you’re feeling engulfed by emotion, what do you struggle to do?

Student: Breathe. Struggle to breathe.

Ken: Yeah. I mean just like Carolyn was saying, [hyperventilating] ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay, now we can relate to that.

Student: Someone told me I could just lower myself down very gently on a rope and come back up if I needed to.

Ken: I think I may have told you that you could lower yourself gently down by rope, but I don’t think I said anything about coming up. [Laughter]

Student: We have it on tape. That’s a different practice.

Ken: Okay, so imagine breathing when you’re right in the thick of it. I love this. I say, “Imagine breathing when you’re right in the thick of it.” And everybody writes something down; they don’t actually do it. Let’s try that one again.

Student: That one I can relate to.

Ken: Okay. Imagine breathing when you’re right in the thick of it. So, right now, take some totally overwhelming emotion. [Laughter] And if anybody is short, I have a very, very good supply. Now, it’s like the movement of the ocean. There are all of the waves. And this is a very, very powerful storm. You go down ten feet and there’s very, very little motion. In a very, very powerful storm, maybe you have to go down 20 or 30 feet. So, you’re not trying to control this at all. It may be intensely painful; it may be profoundly energizing. But let yourself feel the emotion, and to the extent that you’re able to, just breathe in it. What was that like?

Student: For me I feel it as my heart opening. And so that continues. So, initially it’s more painful, but once the heart kind of opens fully, all of the suffering is stopped.

Ken: What’s there instead?

Student: I guess I would call it compassion or acceptance. Complete.

Ken: Does the emotion go away?

Student: Yes. Well, I would say the suffering goes away. The energy of it remains.

Ken: Very important point. The emotion doesn’t necessarily go away, but one experiences it differently. And as you say, suffering goes away. The sense of struggle goes away. Very, very important principle here. Many people, even people who’ve practiced a long time, feel that the approach to practice is to find calm, peace, clarity, etc., and then bring that to their experience. And they’ll be able to experience everything calmly, peacefully, clearly. As long as you’re taking that approach, there’s a kind of artificiality. And there’s also a separation from experience, because experience is there, and you’re coming with these wonderful qualities to experience.

What Milarepa is talking about, what mahamudra practice is about, is finding peace, ease, clarity in experience. Not bringing it to experience; finding it in experience. I won’t pretend that this is easy and straightforward. It is doable, and what I’ve been trying to give you in these comments. Learning how to breathe underwater is really helpful. It’s just, you give up the struggle. And I think, as someone said, it’s also trusting. To use Suzuki Roshi’s words: “Having absolute confidence in our fundamental nature.”

Now, in the next meditation period, we can work with these. I encourage you to do these for very short periods of time, just the way I was demonstrating earlier, quarter of a minute, half a minute to a minute, and then just rest for a while and then come back and do it again. So, you have these periods of just being really awake and present, then you let it go, and then you come back. If you approach it this way, you won’t build up a lot of bad habits. You also won’t engage in struggle. Mahamudra practice is the practice of not struggling, in a certain sense. Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything else to say. Any questions before we close?

Finding peace, ease and clarity in experience

Student: Could you say a little more about finding peace, ease, clarity in an emotional experience? What I’m thinking about are situations where I encounter another person and it’s a very emotional encounter, laced with anger, fear, tension, outrage. I can generate, I can create and bring into that some level of ease and love, compassion, on a good day. I can’t imagine finding that in the experience.

Ken: Yes, exactly. So, one thing you might explore during the meditation period is recalling an incident when you were very upset, very angry, and experiencing it more and more completely, and see what happens. And to do this, you are going to find that a good place to start is how that experience, that emotion, manifests in your body. And so we get very, very clear about that. And then when you can actually stay in those bodily sensations, which may be a work in itself, then start including the emotional sensations.

And, say you’re working with really being extremely hurt by something somebody said or did. There are going to be physical sensations associated to that. And then there’s the emotional sensation of hurt. But you also may find there are a whole bunch of other emotional sensations. There may be anger, shame, pride, which you know because your pride feels wounded. So, all of these other emotions are there. You’re now in all of the physical sensations and all of these emotions. Another one that may be there is just bewilderment. “How could they do this?”

Then, when you can stay in all of that, you start including the stories. “This isn’t right. Everybody’s always doing this kind of thing to me. How dare they? Don’t they know who I am?” We all have our various sets of stories. Probably each fragment of emotion has its own story. The stories are usually a big jumble. But when you’re doing this, you must build from the body. If you start with the stories, you’ll just get lost. But being really clear about the physical sensations provides a grounding.

And so, you have the physical sensations, then the emotional sensations, but that includes those, just as we are doing in the ecstatic practice, and then all the stories, but it’s also including the physical and the emotional. When you get to that point you tell me what you find. Okay? Now this is why we practice. Because, for me to give you that instruction, I expect you to go out and do it at your next business meeting when somebody’s just offended one of your major clients or something like that. The account’s being canceled, it’s probably not going to happen right now.

So, this is why we practice, so that as we become used to this process and familiarize, then it creates the possibility of us actually being able to do it in those situations. It’s very different from coming to the situation with a sense of calm and ease, and things like that, and trying to bring that to the situation, experience all that upset. There’s almost an inevitable conflict there. It’s a very different approach, which actually does not involve any kind of suppression. Is that clear enough? Any other questions? Everybody clear about how to practice? All too clear? Okay, lovely. Okay, go for it. Let’s take a break and we’ll meet for meditation.