Deep internal quiet

Ken: I’m going to try to build on our experience from this afternoon. At the end of our work with sky-gazing, I talked about a deep internal quiet. One way to get in touch with that, actually fairly quickly, is through sky-gazing. Some of you may well have been able to touch into it with regular meditation, and that’s good too. Getting a sense, some taste of that deep internal quiet, I think is very important.

In many of the texts that I’ve studied, there’s a heavy-duty warning because an awful lot of people apparently in the course of history, have mistaken that deep internal quiet for being awake, and they stopped making any efforts. Just to be quite technical about this for a moment, and this next two or three minutes is only for you really heavy dharma tech people.

In the Abhidharma we have the eight groups of consciousness, six associated with each of the senses—taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing, and thinking makes six—and then you have two others, which are called the emotional mind—that’s the seventh—and then basis of everything consciousness which is the eighth.

When the mind grows quiet, you begin to rest in the seventh consciousness. The other six cease to disturb, and you rest in the seventh consciousness. So, there can be a strong sense of I, you know, “I’m resting,” but there’s not much else going on. And then as the resting mind deepens, the sense of I seems to subside and now there’s just an experience of resting.

Dezhung Rinpoche, one of my teachers, said the experience is empty, clear, and neutral. One could possibly say static. This is the basis of everything consciousness, and one experiences it as empty, clear, peace. And this is what a lot of people mistake—apparently, because the texts keep warning about it—for being awake, because it’s empty and clear.

However, the reason it’s not being awake is that as soon as there is any movement, one is back in subject-object duality. If there’s any movement, the movement becomes either the experience of subject or the experience of object. This eighth consciousness is also called the store consciousness because it is where all the karmic conditioning, karmic seeds, are stored. That was the view in the Abhidharma. I’m not quite sure what that actually means, but I just include that so that if you run across this terminology, you know what’s being talked about.

As Dezhung Rinpoche explained to us, the difference between the awake mind and this eighth consciousness is the difference between ice and water. Water flows; there’s a dynamic, awake quality to it, so it’s empty, clear, and unrestricted experience. In terms of the sky-gazing practice, one way of describing it is: you have the outer sky, then the inner sky, which is that quiet mind, and then the secret sky, which is the direct awareness, or rig pa, or mind itself in the mahamudra vocabulary.

That direct awareness is always present and naturally—or as it’s usually translated, spontaneously present, I just don’t like spontaneously—naturally present when all the distortions or incidental impurities are resolved, or dissipate, or dissolved, whatever word you want to use. So, when I said this afternoon that the getting some sense of that deep internal quiet is the beginning of the process which leads to direct awareness. Once you start hitting that in your practice, whether it’s through sky-gazing or through whatever form of meditation you do, don’t do anything with it, just look into it.

It requires a certain stability of attention, which we’ve talked about various ways in the last couple of days. And what one’s doing in the looking is exercising, or developing, or bringing about, the dynamic clarity aspect of mind nature. And when that is sufficiently present, then direct awareness is naturally present.

The pros and cons of deep internal quiet

Ken: Some people, when they’re introduced to this, almost immediately have an experience of direct awareness. This has both its pros and cons. The big pro is you know what the work’s about through your own experience. That helps. The big con is you think there’s nothing to it, and a lot of people cease to make any efforts or make only minimal efforts.

The other extreme is you slave away at your practice, and you don’t have any flashes of light, or any glimpses of any kind. And there’s a big pro and con here as well. The big con is that you feel like you’ve been thrashing around in the swamp for several decades, and you still have no idea of what’s going on. The big pro is when something does open up, you do not take it for granted. You have a very, very deep appreciation of its significance. And so you nurture and foster its growth in your experience out of that appreciation. Now, you don’t get to decide which of those or where on the spectrum you fall. I’m just outlining the range of possibilities.

The view or outlook

Ken: So, what I want to talk about this afternoon—to the extent that I’m able to—is the view. Now, we’ve already talked about this implicitly, and a few times somewhat explicitly. But some of you do, every now and then, try to read one or more of the texts that have been translated into English. How do you deal with those texts? Are they intelligible?

Student: No.

Ken: No [laughs]. Challenging. Difficult. There are at least two reasons for that. Unlike the Theravadan system, or Theravadan tradition—though similar problems do exist in certain parts of that tradition—the Tibetan tradition didn’t start to take shape until over 1,000 years after Buddha lived. Okay? And over those 1,000 years, a huge body of teaching and experience developed in India, in which things were thought and rethought over and over again. Whole schools and tradition came into being, carried numberless people into enlightenment and then disappeared from the scene.

Why talking Buddhism is easy in the Tibetan language

Ken: So, by the time Buddhism started to spread to Tibet—which was quite late, actually, the eighth century is the first contact, and this is several hundred years after Buddhism started to enter China, which happened around the third or fourth century, if I’m correct—there were layers and layers and layers of interpretation of Buddhist teachings. And, you know what happens in any tradition? Psychoanalysis is a very good example. Medicine is another one. Particle physics is another one. You have this knowledge which arises, and one of the first things that happens is that a highly specialized vocabulary is formed, in order to describe that form of knowledge as precisely as possible.

And then somebody throws away the dictionary, and you have this highly specialized vocabulary, which only a few people know, and then you have everybody else. And it takes a very short time before people appreciate that, “Oh, well, we’re the keepers of the knowledge, and this puts us in a position of power.” And now there’s a concerted effort to keep dictionaries from coming into existence. Well, Buddhism developed very, very highly specialized vocabularies, and the Tibetan language was built on the basis of some of those highly specialized vocabularies.

So, when you want to talk about Buddhism in Tibetan, it’s extremely easy. And you can say something in a few syllables, quite literally, that require a whole paragraph to talk about even rudimentarily in English. And if you really want to talk about it precisely, you’re probably going to have to write a small paper. Example:

Your natural essence cannot be established as either samsara or nirvana.

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Eric Pema Kunsang (translator) p. 5

Anybody care to translate? Now, you have three technical terms in there, four, possibly. Yeah, let’s say four. We’ll leave out your, that’s not too technical. Natural essence, okay, that’s one technical term. We’ll leave out cannot be. We’re not quite at the Clinton thing: “It all depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” We could have a debate about that, but we’ll just leave that one aside. Established, that’s a technical term. What does that mean? As, we’ll leave that word out, and either. Samsara and nirvana are both technical terms, as I said. Does anybody care to translate?

Okay, let’s take a look at the word established. This is a logic term. It’s a term from that part of philosophy called logic, and where it also overlaps into ontology, or the study of being. Translation: There’s nothing you can point to and say it is that. That’s what cannot be established means, roughly. So, let’s take a much easier one, natural essence. Translation? Okay, I’m going to venture the translation: what I am. Natural essence makes it into this thing.

There’s a group of teachers I get together with in Los Angeles every two or three months, and one of them is very much my counterpart in the Theravadan tradition. He was a monk for some time. He’s well-versed in Pali, has his own totally idiosyncratic approach to teaching, which is actually a very good approach. And we were sitting around discussing this, and I said something like, I used some kind of term like the essence of mind. And he just leaned back and said, “Oh, you Mahayana essentialists.”

And I thought, “Oh, this is so cool. There’s as much of a straw dog there as there is on the other side.” So, when they’re talking about things like natural essence, it’s a technical term—for whatever reasons we don’t need to go into—for what am I? Okay, that’s one of the fundamental questions we have here.

So, what is samsara? Now, samsara and nirvana at this stage have become technical terms. And the way the word nirvana is used is totally different from the way the word nirvana is used in the Theravadan tradition today. It has a very, very different meaning. Nirvana, the way that it’s used in the Theravadan tradition today, is actually the equivalent of bodhi, of waking up in the Mahayana tradition.

By this point in the evolution of Buddhism in India, the way that practice was regarded is you had these two poles of experience. One was being lost in the confusion of patterned existence, of conditioned experience, and the other was being free of all conditioning. And this described the range of experience, the range of human experience, and so the whole spectrum. So, when you hear people talking about samsara and nirvana, all the phenomena of samsara and nirvana is a common phrase in Tibetan vocabulary. The way that I would translate that into actual English is: the whole range of all human experience, potential or actual.

Okay, now we’re ready for a translation.

There is nothing in the whole range of human experience that you can point to and say, “That is what I am.”

How does that sit with you? Now, was that comprehensible? Was it more comprehensible? Yeah. Okay. [Laughter] We’re moving in the right direction. Okay.

There’s nothing in the range of human experience, the whole range of human experience that one can point to and say, “that’s what I am.”

Nothing to do or be

Ken: What do you make of that? Or to put it a different way, when you hear that, what happens in you? Randy?

Randy: Phew. What a relief. [Laughter]

Ken: You experience this as a relief?

Randy: Sure.

Ken: Can you say a bit more about that?

Randy: It’s kind of like there’s so many different ways you could say it.

Ken: Well, pick one.

Randy: There’s nothing you have to do. I don’t have to be anything. Those will do for starters.

Ken: Those are very good. Thank you. Okay. Nothing I have to do. Nothing I have to be. Okay. Anybody else? What happens in you when you hear these words? Oh, that wasn’t a hand, that was your foot, Julia. Well, since you’re wiggling your foot, what happens to you when you hear this? In the whole range of human experience there’s nothing you can point to and say, “That’s what I am.”

Julia: I give up.

Ken: In what way do you give up? Do you give up in the way that you curl up into a little ball and crawl into a cave?

Julia: No, I’ve just got almost like a whole web. All stuff just goes.

Ken: Okay, so you find it freeing?

Julia: Yes.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else? Carolyn.

Carolyn: I felt very sad. [Laughter]

Ken: You felt very sad. How many others feel a bit sad about that? See, you’re not alone. So, what’s sad about this? Carolyn, David, John, what’s sad about this?

Student: Not so much that it’s sad, but when we first look at the sentence and don’t hear other explanations, which are actually quite releasing, the first thing you think is, you mean there’s not something I can touch that’s going to give me the answer to everything, and it’s going to be so easy? There’s nothing going to be concrete that I can grab onto that’s going to give me the answer. That’s sad.

Ken: Okay. So, there’s no easy answer.

Student: There’s not even a difficult answer. [Laughter]

Ken: There’s no easy answer. There’s no difficult answer. Damn. There’s no answer. Okay?

David: Not only do I give up trying to find something to which I’m equivalent, I give up looking for the original thing in the first place. And there’s a tone of, yeah, a little bit of sadness. I don’t know why.

Ken: Okay. All right, John.

John: It just felt like I vaporized in a puff of smoke and I mourned there.

Ken: Oh, okay. Carolyn. What’s sad about it for you?

Carolyn: There’s such a strong desire to know, or to hold onto something, and such a strong compulsion to keep grinding away.

Ken: Until you found out what you actually are.

Carolyn: No, but the realization is that you can be so driven to do all this stuff, and even though you know it’s not going to get you anywhere, but it doesn’t stop you from wanting to have that.

Ken: Ah, okay.

Carolyn: Or from having that.

Ken: So, there’s a poignant irony here.

Carolyn: I find that I can’t just sort of go right to relief because it’s not the way I’m made.

Ken: You’re still grinding away.

Carolyn: So, it’s like the two have to exist together somehow.

Ken: Okay, thank you. Jean, did you have a comment?

Jean: Well, is it possible that it’s something besides human experience?

Ken: Okay, so we say: outside human experience, it’s possible to point to, and say that’s what I am.

Jean: And that there’s not a natural essence.

Ken: Well, that’s what it’s saying. There isn’t anything to point to and say, “That’s what I am.” And when we talk about human experience, it includes both ordinary and transcendent human experience, all possibilities. It’s a very powerful statement, a big statement.

Jean: So, it’s the transcendent part as well.

Ken: As well, yes. Now it gets really depressing, doesn’t it? Pardon?

Student: I would think you’d feel like you just didn’t matter anymore.

Ken: Well, that’s another point; that makes it a bit sad. But just referring back to Jean’s comment for a moment, you may recall a verse in the mahamudra prayer: “It doesn’t exist: even buddhas do not see it.” David?

David: That’s nice, but …

Ken: I love it. “That’s nice but…” [Laughter]

A categorical statement

David: Where does this come from? Is this 2,500 years of people meditating and saying, “Well, no, we haven’t come up with anything.” [Laughter]

Ken: Well, certainly that, but it’s a bit worse than that. I mean, if it was 2,500 years of meditating and coming up with nothing, then it at least holds out the possibility that in the 2,501st year, you might find something tomorrow. No, this is not a scientific statement in the sense that, this is the current status of our research. [Laughter]

Student: Okay, I believe you, now.

Ken: This is what Kant might call a categorical statement:

There is nothing in the range of human experience to which you can point to and say, “That is what I am.”

Now, here we’ve just taken one sentence and we’ve translated it into something resembling English. Is this making more sense to you now, Mark? Okay. Unfortunately, most people who read these books are at the mercy of the translator. And that’s something I’m trying to correct, but they pop up faster that I can bash them down.

Student: Can we repeat the translation in the book again?

Ken: Yeah. The translation in the book:

Your natural essence cannot be established as either samsara or nirvana.

Established refers to a whole logical process, a reasoning process by which you establish the existence of things, and appeals to a certain form of dialectic that operates in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. And when that dialectic is employed, no result comes from this. Or when you employ that dialectic, you show that there is no result. So, it’s a very philosophical term, and appeals to that whole tradition, which is irrelevant as far as practice is concerned. But it’s carried on anyway. And then natural essence and samsara and nirvana are technical terms in the way I described. But this is what it means.

Now, when you hear this, it has an effect. And the range of effects was: it’s releasing, it brings about a kind of relaxation and letting go for some. And for some it’s kind of like, “Oh, really?” There’s a sadness, maybe a certain puzzlement or bewilderment. But whatever the effect is, it’s moving you into a different relationship with experience, with what you experience, with your sense of who you are or what you are, and so forth. And this is the function of that class of teachings that comes under the rubric, view or outlook, just how we look at things.

Outlook shapes experience

Ken: Now, how we look at things shapes how we experience things. If the statement was: There is something in the range of human existence that is what you actually are. I’m taking the opposite view here. If that was the statement and you practiced meditation and you couldn’t find that something, how would you understand your meditation practice?

Student: Big waste of time.

Ken: Yeah, you’re doing something wrong, right? However, if you have the statement: In the range of human experience, there’s nothing you can point to and say, “that is what I am.” And you practice meditation and you don’t find anything. Now, how do you understand your meditation?

Student: I’ve been succeeding all along. [Laughter]

Ken: Not quite.[Laughter] It’s not enough just to practice a few times and not find anything.

Student: It’s a work in progress. It’ll never end!

Practice till you know through experience

Ken: No. What I said is it’s not enough just to practice a few times. Okay? No, I can’t find anything. Okay, I guess I’m doing okay. That’s not enough. You have to practice until you yourself know, through your own experience, that this is true. That’s a little different, isn’t it? Franca.

Franca: I’m on the right track! [Laughter] What if you find something?

Ken: Well, people find something all the time. You know what happens then?

Franca: They start a new religion.

Ken: Well, actually that happens a lot. But if they’re practicing with a teacher, what do they do when they find something? They go to their teacher and they say, “Look what I found!” Have any of you had that experience? What happens then?

Student: Damn teacher.

Ken: I love it. Damn teacher. Okay, that about says it all. Teacher takes it away from you, right? Takes it away from you in a way that you can’t argue with.

Student: Hasn’t stopped any of us yet.

Ken: No, no. What I mean by this is, it’s not like you have something, a teacher takes it away from you. You think, “Oh, he just took that away from me, and he’s bigger and stronger,” and you can’t get it back. It’s like, “Oh, damn, she’s right.” That’s what I mean. You can’t argue, because you see it yourself. So, there’s another bit of seeing that comes with it. And what is happening here is that your understanding of the view is being corroborated by your own experience. And so it’s another step.

And one keeps interacting, in your meditation, with your teacher, and with your life, actually, all three, until something happens, and you know that this is true. But when that happens, exactly the same range of experience that we heard people describing initially arises. Some people say, “Oh, phew, I’m glad that’s over with.” Other people, it’s like, “Wow, would never have guessed it.” Other people, it’s like, “That’s it? That’s what all this fuss is about? Gee.” And other people, it’s like, “I want myself back. I wasn’t ready to lose it. Can somebody please give it back to me?” Which you may find strange, but that’s how people react.

Assimilating the knowing

Ken: And so there’s a whole range of reactions to that. And that’s part of the next process, actually assimilating this knowing into one’s experience. So, with that as an example, let me read a second sentence.

Not confined by any one extreme, free from the limitations of exaggeration and denigration, it is neither tainted nor spoiled by such designations as pleasant or unpleasant, being or not being, existent or not existent, permanent or annihilated, self or other, and so forth

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Eric Pema Kunsang (translator) p. 5

How intelligible is that? Anybody want to translate here?

Student: I’ll do “and so forth.” [Laughter]

Ken: Well, there are numerous problems here. But rather than to try to translate this, I’ll try to explain this. We have to start with the first sentence:

There is nothing in the range of human experience that I can point to and say, “That is what I am.”

Okay? Now I want to use the phrase what I am. I’m going to use that rather than natural essence or pure being or some other technical thing. Just keep it simple, what I am.

If there’s nothing that I can point to and say, “That is what I am” …

Student: Then I don’t have to be anything.

Ken: Well, that’s very true, but that’s not quite what he’s saying here. Okay? If there is nothing I can point to and say, “That is what I am,” what can I say about what I am? Sonya?

Sonya: Not a whole lot. [Laughter]

Ken: That’s right. You can’t say anything.

Sonya: You can say that you can’t point to it.

Ken: Okay? That’s basically what the sentence is saying.

Sonya: Can you read the first version, the gibberish version?

Ken: Please. Erik Schmidt will be most upset.

Not confined by any one extreme, free from the limitations of exaggeration and denigration, it is neither tainted nor spoiled by such designations as pleasant or unpleasant, being or not being, existence or non-existence, permanent or annihilated, self or other, and so forth.

p. 5

Sonya: Holy crap.

Ken: Okay, so let’s go—

Student: Say your sentence again.

Ken: Well actually Sonya’s sentence. And that is: “Whatever I am, I can’t say anything about it.” You see, suppose I said, “What I am is really, really good!” What significance does that have? I mean, it’s wonderful. It’s so good, what I am. Pardon?

Student: Good for what?

Ken: It’s great; it’s wonderful; it’s noble; it’s stupendous. Now, if there’s nothing you can point to, I’m talking about nothing, right? Now, is nothing great, good, stupendous, awesome?

Student: Sure.

Ken: But what if we say it the other way? What I am is really terrible. It’s horrible. It’s the worst of the worst. You get the drift? Now to bring this a little closer to home, what do you say about yourself?

Student: My nothing’s better than your nothing. [Laughter]

Ken: Something along those lines. If it’s not that, then it’s, my nothing is worse than your nothing. Right? In fact, my nothing is so bad it’s worse than everybody else’s nothing. See, that’s what we do. So, “Free from the limitations,” and it is very unfortunate to use this term limitation. Free from the extremes would be better, “of exaggeration and denigration.” So, it doesn’t matter what we say about, it just doesn’t apply to anything. It doesn’t matter how much we praise it. We’re not praising anything. It doesn’t matter how much we vilify it, we’re not vilifying anything.

If you turn to page seven, the fifth stanza:

If one says, “It is this,” nothing has been posited. (You haven’t made something come into existence just because you’ve said, “It is this.”)

If one says, “It is not this,” nothing has been denied.

Aspirations for Mahamudra

That’s basically what this sentence is saying. In particular, he’s running through one expression of what’s called The Great Middle Way.

Pleasant or unpleasant, being or not being, existent or non-existent, permanent or annihilated.

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Eric Pema Kunsang (translator) p. 5

This is I think, a misleading translation. I would translate this as order or chaos, self or other, other ones that are thrown in here are, one and many.

So, there are those who, for various reasons, want to look at the self, or what we are, as being something that establishes order. Well, we know that isn’t true because there’s chaos in the world. And then there are other philosophers who say, well, it’s all chaotic. We know that isn’t true because there’s order in the world.

And The Great Middle Way is described as not falling into an extreme. The word limitation is really not the right translation. Now, when you don’t fall into an extreme, you have to include both poles, because if you’re not including one pole, then you’ve fallen into the other. You follow?

Both order and chaos

Ken: So, let’s take order and chaos. If you say “everything is ordered,” you leave aside chaos and you ignore one aspect of how the world functions. And if you say “everything is chaotic,” well, that’s not true because every time I flip a switch, almost every time, the light bulb goes on, except when the light bulb’s burned out. But there is an order to things. When you say, “Okay, I’m not going to fall into either extreme,” then you approach the world as being both ordered and chaotic. How do you live in that part?

Student: Openly?

Ken: Yes?

Student: Moment to moment.

Ken: I’d like something a little more substantial in the form of a response here.

Student: In balance.

Ken: Well, yes, that’s very similar. Carolyn?

Carolyn: You used a word the other day that I really like. You used the word falling into.

Ken: Yeah, that’s true. David?

David: I was going to say by the situation, which may sort of just be by moment by moment, that seems a bit different.

Ken: Okay, let’s explore this a little bit because you’re all in the general area, what does it mean to live moment by moment, or by the situation, or by falling, or in balance? Amanda?

Amanda: Not attached or not grasping.

Ken: To what?

Amanda: I want to say, fixed views or opinions.

Ken: I think you can make it a little more concrete than that. David?

David: I was going to say without effort to control.

Ken: That’s the result of living this way.

Student: Feel present.

Ken: Again, that’s the method. What I want to offer here is a consideration. If the world is ordered, then when you do something, you expect a certain kind of result. Right? If the world is chaotic, when you do something, you don’t expect anything, all reaction becomes meaningless. Okay? How are you going to live if the world is both ordered and chaotic?

Student: Without expectation.

Ken: Without expectation. So, you do the action. Pardon?

Student: With intention.

Living without expectation; acting with intention

Ken: Exactly. Without expectation. With intention. That is, you undertake an action because it is the appropriate thing to do now. But you have no expectation of being around for the result. Do you follow?

Student: Tell the story.

Ken: Which story?

Student: The cook. It’s a very good story. It helped me a lot, when you told it to me.

Following the direction of the present

Ken: Okay. This particular formulation comes from a book which has been published under three different titles. The latest title is How to Cook Your Life. The root text is by Dogen. The commentary is by a 20th-century Japanese teacher called Uchiyama. You may find it under the title From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment or Refining Your Life. Those were the other two titles. Don’t confuse it with Bernie Glassman’s book, How to Cook Your Life of the same title, which is on the same commentary, on the same text. It’s just not the same book at all. And this perspective comes from Uchiyama commenting on the lines in Dogen’s instruction to the head cook of the monastery.

[Paraphrasing from How to Cook Your Life] When all of this has been done, the officers should meet and decide on tomorrow’s menu. Then the cook should prepare tomorrow’s gruel. And Uchiyama says in this line of preparing tomorrow’s gruel, the secret of life is being expressed: one prepares tomorrow’s gruel as tonight’s work. But in doing it as tonight’s work, there is no expectation being set up of actually serving or eating the gruel the next day because we have no idea what may happen in the night. There could be a flood, there could be a fire, there could be an earthquake. We relate to this very well in California. There could be a riot, there could be a war. You could actually die.

But in doing it as tonight’s work, you are following the direction of the present. It is only in this way that one reconciles the absolute contradiction in human life between the certainty of death, and the evolution of our actions into experienced results, or the law of karma, that each and every action we undertake is meaningful in and of itself because it is the direction of the present. And we set up no attachment to the experience of the results. That’s not an exact quote, but it is roughly. Okay?

You are not your feelings

Ken: Now, this one is interesting. It says,

It’s neither tainted nor spoiled by any such designations as pleasant or unpleasant.

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Eric Pema Kunsang (translator) p. 5

I suspect that the Tibetan is happy, unhappy. It could easily be. So, we can take it either way. What you are is neither happy nor unhappy. What you are is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. In fact, such designations are meaningless. How does that strike you? Randy?

Randy: Limited.

Ken: Limited. How?

Randy: Because it leaves up in the middle.

Ken: Okay. Anybody else?

Mark: I can be both. Or, I can experience them both.

Ken: Well, it’s interesting what you’re referring there to there, Mark. What you’re saying is, “How I feel and what I am are not the same.” That’s a very powerful statement. Most of the time we think we are our feelings, right?

Mark: I don’t think I said that.

Ken: No, that’s exactly what you said. I’m just translating. I do that. Very good at it. [Laughter] What did you say? What were your precise words?

Mark: “I can be both.”

Student: “I can be both,” and then he said, “I can experience both.”

Ken: Right. And so the implication of that—”I can be both”—that means that you are neither happiness or unhappiness. You are not what you feel. Doesn’t it?

Student: This is too perfectly logical. Why can you only feel one thing? You could say I’m many feelings.

Ken: Yes, but you are not your feelings. That’s the point here. It’s not that you can’t feel them. Yes you can. There’s a whole spectrum.

Student: No, no. I was just getting on your logic because it was, never mind. I understand what you’re saying.

Ken: Doug.

Doug: What If you feel nothing?

Ken: Well, as you said this morning, feeling nothing is an experience. It’s a feeling, right? You know, “I feel nothing.” Now, there are two ways that you can understand that. One is, “I feel nothing”—it’s kind of blank and dull. And the other is, “I feel nothing,” like with a capital N on Nothing. What’s that experience like? Carolyn.

Carolyn: I was just recollecting an experience I had. It’s very difficult to talk about actually because I don’t exactly know what feeling nothing with a capital N is. But this particular experience was, everything was coming in but there were no different values attached to anything.

Ken: So, in one way, feeling nothing is a very specific experience. It’s a feeling of dullness, neutrality, blandness, anything along those lines. Or feeling nothing is like an extraordinary opening. Which did you have in mind Doug?

Doug: The latter. [Laughter]

Ken: There were some rolling eyes up here in the front of the room. [Laughter]

Okay, so here we’ve gone through two sentences.

Student: If you had translated it, it would probably be about four sentences long.

Ken: There are eight pages of the description of the view. We’re not going to get through them all. But I hope this has given you a flavor of what view is about. Okay? And I also hope that in doing this, it may be easier for you to discern what’s actually being talked about.

If we turn to the mahamudra prayer, which we’re going to do together this evening.

Student: What page?

Ken: Page six. Stanzas two, three, four, five, six and seven comprise a succinct formulation of view. Maybe tomorrow we can go through some of that.