Introduction to the meditation practice

Ken: … is going to hand out the meditation practices, which she very kindly put together at my request, which I only passed on to her today. My plan for this class—we have six sessions, this is the first one—over the next two weeks we’re going to work through equanimity and then loving-kindness, compassion, and joy. That will take us up to our fifth class, and then we’ll have one more class after that kind of wrap it all up.

I do want you to proceed in this order. In the Theravadan tradition, they start with loving-kindness because they’re using that to drive everything else. And the Mahayana, because it has more emphasis on space and openness, they start with equanimity. Part of the reason for this is in order to develop these emotions for everybody, Mahayana perspective is you have to get rid of prejudice and preference first.

I wrote these four lines, and they’re actually a compilation of techniques from the Theravadan, Mahayana and dzogchen and mahamudra traditions all rolled into four lines, just so you know. And many of you will be used to meditations based on aphorisms, which will be worded very similarly to this. These are not aphorisms. These aren’t even wishes, even though they’re framed in that kind of vocabulary.

Equanimity

Ken: Rather, each line is intended to put you in touch with areas in us where the particular immeasurable is either blocked or is already present. And as you say each of these lines, you’re going to feel that. You’re going to feel those areas. So the way you work here, if you take the first one: May I be free from preference and prejudice. Just take a moment and say that first line to yourself. May I be free from preference and prejudice. What happens when you say it? What happens in you? Anybody?

Now, I should put a note here before I forget: For people who are listening on the podcast, these four lines are available or this page is available in a PDF file on the website, so you can go there and get it. So what happens when you say: May I be free from preference and prejudice? Joe?

Joe: I want it to be different.

Ken: You want it to be different?

Joe: The line, yeah.

Ken: Why?

Joe: Oh, because I don’t quite understand it. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it’s going to do. I wish it was simpler. You think I have any preferences or prejudices?

Ken: And if you go below that set of reactions, what do you find?

Joe: Oh, fear that I will fail, that I will look bad, that I will not be who I think I am.

Ken: So you can hear all of this judgmental quality about yourself, right?

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Now what if you just let that be there? What happens?

Joe: It just is there.

Ken: And how do you feel?

Joe: Fine.

Ken: Okay, so this is the method of practice. You say these lines, all of this stuff comes up. As a friend of mine would say, “The monsters come out of the basement.” What do you do with them? Well, with long experience with these monsters, chasing them doesn’t work very well. Trying to get them back in the basement doesn’t work very well. They’re there. And so when you say these lines, you may become acutely aware of how prejudiced you are or how much preference actually operates, and you may be very uncomfortable with that.

Well, guess what? You just got your first reward from the practice. Now you experience it. Because that’s the point. When we don’t experience it, that’s when we exercise preference and prejudice. When we can experience it as an arising in ourself, that’s where we become free of having to express preference and prejudice. And eventually we come to know that it’s just an arising and it loses its enchantment, its ability to enthrall and enslave. Catherine, you have a microphone?

Catherine: So what if you feel release and space when you say that line.

Ken: Then you rest in the release and space.

Catherine: Does that mean later other things are going to come up?

Ken: Catherine, I have no idea. [Laughter]

Catherine: Thank you.

Ken: You’re just going to have to find out. Okay? So let’s take the second line: May I know all things without judgment. What happens there? Catherine, what happened there?

Catherine: When I say that, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

Ken: You don’t believe it?

Catherine: I feel tense.

Ken: Oh, so this must mean you view things with a certain amount of judgment now.

Catherine: The word judgment …

Ken: That rings some bells, doesn’t it?

Catherine: Yes. So I do feel tense.

Ken: So can you just experience that?

Catherine: Yes. I’m going to just experience it.

Ken: Do you like experiencing it?

Catherine: No.

Ken: Okay. You got the point. Good. Anybody else? When you say these lines. Deborah, microphone’s right here.

Deborah: I feel resistance because there are so many things that are just wrong and I know that. [Laughter]

Student: Amen.

Ken: Thank you. [Laughs] Yeah, I understand.

Deborah: I don’t want to let go of it.

Ken: Yes. What determines whether something’s wrong?

Deborah: It depends on what it is, but to an extent, how much pain or suffering it causes.

Ken: That’s one possible factor. But does that always …

Deborah: Well, no. Me, I would be the other thing that always determines.

Ken: Yeah, basically it’s our idea of the world, right? What would it be like to be experiencing the world without having any preconceived idea about it?

Deborah: It would be very relaxing, like just stepping into a flow.

Ken: Okay. Interested in the possibility?

Deborah: Maybe. But there are so many things that are wrong.

Ken: There you go. So knowing, “these things are wrong and these things are right,” that’s kind of a comfort for you, isn’t it? Yeah. Just experiencing things, that’s like, don’t know how to navigate that. And for many people that’s the case. So when you’re stepping into an immeasurable, you’re stepping into a very, very different world. Now, I want to make clear, this doesn’t mean that we just say, “Oh well, mass murder, that’s just fine.” It doesn’t mean that.

Thich Nhat Hanh in a poem, I think it’s called Remember my name, the last line is particularly … he’s writing about the boat people in Vietnam after the fall of Vietnam, in this one line anyway. It says, “I’m the 10-year-old girl who was raped by a sea pirate, and I am the sea pirate who is so blind, he did not know what he was doing.”

Student: I couldn’t hear.

Ken: “I’m the 10-year-old girl who was raped by a sea pirate, and I am the sea pirate who’s so blind, he did not know what he was doing.” That’s along the lines of: without judgment. It doesn’t make it right. But it opens the possibility of seeing the other person, even though they were doing something totally heinous, as a human being. Okay? It runs straight into those categories we have inside, just as you’re describing. Okay, let’s try the third line: May I experience the world knowing me just as I am. Rory?

Rory: Sigh.

Ken: Well, there’s a little more than a sigh there.

Rory: Initially when I read it, it just made me feel warm inside. But listening to some of the comments about the first two lines, it almost balances out the first two.

Ken: Anybody find this terrifying? Okay, few people find that. So again, it’s going to bring up material where there’s resistance to this kind of complete openness and equanimity. Or, it’ll move you into where you feel a resonance with that openness and equanimity.

May I see things just as they are. Now, we all say that we want to do that. How many of you actually want to do that? As I like to say, most people don’t want to be aware. They just want to feel that they are aware. Because when we are aware, we have no choice about what we are aware of. We are just aware. Most people don’t want that. May I see things just as they are is declaring an intention to be that aware.

So the way that you work here is—for the first week at least—in your meditation period, just rest for about 10 or 15 minutes with your breath. And then say these four lines, one by one slowly. And with each one you’re going to feel stuff. You’re going to feel a shift of some kind, and you just experience that shift. And this is where we go back to stuff that we’ve discussed before. What do you experience in your body? Always start with your body. Sometimes there will be a tensing, sometimes there will be a relaxing. People have commented on that already.

And then note the emotional ones. And you may have to say the same line again. You may say the first line several times. And the point is you keep saying it so that you are able to note and be right in all of the reactions and responses to that line. And then you say the second line, go through the same process. And then the third line, and go through the same process. And then the fourth line, and go through the same process.

Now, it may be that things get a little bit hot in there, in which case just rest with the breath for a while, allowing those … all of that stuff just to be there and experiencing it to the extent that you can. I want to emphasize that if you find yourself hardening against the experience, let everything go. That’s not doing you any good. If you’re experiencing it and you’re hardening it and it’s like this, just let it go. Rest with the breath and then bring it back. One needs to have a firmness, but also a suppleness or a softness. If you’re hardening or tensing up against it, that’s not so helpful.

In the course of 15 or 20 minutes of this, you may go through these once, twice, maybe three times. If you’re going through it more than that, you’re probably going a bit too quickly, but you can tell me how it goes. The point here is actually to feel the resonances with each of the lines. So at the end of 15 or 20 minutes, then just let everything go and rest. If you know how to rest in open awareness, do that. If you’re not familiar with that form of practice, then just rest with the breath and allow all of the emotional stuff that may have been stirred up just to be there and allow it to dissipate, disperse in its own way. Don’t try to control it, just rest with the breath and let it be there. So that should be about a 30 to 40 minute period. Realistically, you should be aiming for 40 to 45 minutes rather than 30 minutes. If you want to use this practice fruitfully, 10 or 15 minutes to allow the attention to rest. 15 to 20 minutes working with the actual meditation. And then about 10, 15 minutes just resting again at the end. That kind of sandwich approach is very effective.

In the beginning you’re going to work with yourself. It’s: May I be free from preference and prejudice. You’re going to experience all of these things. Two weeks is a relatively short time to work on this, but after about a week or 10 days, then I’d like you to start extending it. So you’re going to replace the I with: May those close to me be free of preference and prejudice. May those close to me see things without judgment. And you’re going to notice, it’s a very, very different feeling because now you’re developing this aspiration or this intention with respect to others.

And you may find yourself feeling things like Shantideva. He says “Well, it was fine as long as it was focused on me, but as soon as it focused on others, I’m not interested.” We have these little quirks in us. See what that experience is. When you’re doing this as a complete practice, you would start off with those that feel close to you, that you like. Then you’d move it to people you feel indifferent about, and then you’d move it to people you really don’t like. May those people … people you really have trouble with. And this is how we actually establish the quality of equanimity within ourselves, and with respect to everything that we experience.

Working with uncomfortable material

Ken: Now, are you going to be able to do all of that in two weeks? Probably not, but I want to give you the framework for this so that you know where the practice is headed. Any questions about the practice? Kate, then Michelle, and then Carol. Carolyn, sorry, with some people, I’m just terrible with names.

Kate: When I read these lines, for instance: May I know all things without judgment. I mean, I obviously know that I have judgment, more judgment about some things than other things. So would it be helpful to bring up in my mind the things that I have more judgment about and sit with that?

Ken: Is that necessary? When you say those lines don’t they just pop up?

Kate: Well, in the very beginning it all sounded good to me, until I started thinking about the things that I have more judgment about.

Ken: And so there it is.

Kate: Okay.

Ken: And now the next time you say those lines, there they are. And you got to experience not only having judgment about those things, but having judgment about you having judgment.

Kate: So it’ll all come up anyway.

Ken: That’s my experience here, yeah. Michelle?

Michelle: I think I already know the answer to this one.

Ken: Good.

Michelle: But what about the opposite of Shantideva’s reaction? May those close to me be free from preference and prejudice, because then of course they’ll see things my way. [Laughter]

Ken: Yes, you’re quite right. Some of us go one way and some of us go the other. But what’s your way?

Michelle: Whatever I think is right at the moment, of course.

Ken: Yes. Is that free from judgment?

Michelle: Well, that of course would depend on whether my ego or something else was speaking.

Ken: Yes. But that’s why we start with us. Because if we started with others, we could actually go there. But when we start with us, first we have to be free of it and just letting some of that stuff go, that’s really uncomfortable. Right? So that’s why we start with us. Okay? Carolyn.

Carolyn: You said we should start with ourselves and then after how long?

Ken: I would like you to spend at least a week working just with these four lines with respect to yourselves, and then experiment with expanding it to include others.

Carolyn: Okay. And when we do that, we shouldn’t probably go through those four lines more than two or three times in a session. I mean, that’s about the speed you’re recommending.

Ken: Yeah, three or four times, I think. You may find it goes faster than that because there’s a lot of variation between people. But it’s not the case of just saying the line, “Okay, I feel that,” going on to the next line. The purpose of Buddhist practice is to experience whatever arises. So we say that, and at least in my experience, I say something like this, it arises and I’m in the experience for about two or three seconds, and then I check out. Something takes me off. When a pattern releases, it’s a very different thing because then when it arises, there’s a shift, and then you find yourself just present. And if that happens, just rest there, that’s fine.

But I find that when we’re working with uncomfortable material, it’s very easy to get distracted. The body sensations rise and we say, “Yeah, stay with the body sensations.” And then we immediately start thinking, “Well, you know, if I just did this, that would feel better,” and we’re already out of it. Just like that. Do you know what I mean? So this is very much working with the experience. Okay? Susan.

Susan: I could sort of anticipate particular lines giving rise to perhaps strong ideas or emotions. Is it kind of a dzogchen instruction: just rest in awareness and do nothing? Or is there something …

Ken: [Chuckles] And what would you like to do?

Susan: Well, there’s ways to work with it. You can move into it and try and experience it fully.

Ken: What’s the difference between that and dzogchen?

Susan: Sometimes it just dissolves and nothing happens.

Ken: Sometimes it just dissolves. Sometimes when you move into it, it just dissolves. What’s the difference?

Susan: Well, sometimes when you move into it, you get dragged into a whole thing.

Ken: And sometimes when you just sit with it open, you get completely distracted. What’s the difference?

Susan: What if you just open and then you move on to the next line?

Ken: Ah, it sounds like you’re moving too quickly. Slow down. [Laughter]

Susan: Okay.

Ken: Okay? Any other questions? Lynea, then we need to close for the evening.

Lynea: Is there any reason not to work with these off the cushion?

Ken: Pardon?

Lynea: Is there any reason not to work with these off the cushion?

Ken: Oh no. It’s great to work with these in your daily life. Thank you for raising that. If you memorize these and just go around saying them all the time—thank you very much for bringing that point up—and just learn them by heart. That’s really good. And so that way you keep the practice going through the day.

Student questions: equanimity

Ken: This is our second class in this six session course. And we’re going to spend one class on each of the four immeasurables. So let’s begin with your experience of working with the four lines on equanimity. If we could have the microphones. Okay. So how was this? You have the wonderful group phenomenon. The more people there are in the room, the less likely it is that anybody will step forward. Joe.

Joe: Alright, I’ll bite. I found that I don’t want the people close to me to be free of preference and prejudice. I want them to like me above all other things. I’m afraid they won’t if they become free.

Ken: Well, what does that say about how you feel about yourself?

Joe: It says that I still want my emotional needs met, for one thing.

Ken: It says a bit more than that.

Joe: It says, I haven’t finished the first part of the meditation yet.

Ken: Keep going. I appreciate your volunteering like this, Joe. What Joe is touching on—though, he doesn’t know it yet, but he will very soon—is probably the most important point in an intimate relationship. [Laughs]

Joe: Which is?

Ken: What does it say about you? You don’t want these people, those close to you, to be free of preference and prejudice because you—

Joe: Well, they’re serving as objects in my universe.

Ken: I don’t know whether they are. There’s nothing in that which implies that. Well, a little bit, but I think you’re being too harsh on yourself.

Joe: Good.

Ken: But you get to try again.

Joe: Well, it means—

Ken: May I ask you a question?

Joe: Yes, you may.

Ken: If they were free from preference and prejudice, how would that affect how they feel about you?

Joe: Well, they would feel differently, I would think.

Ken: And what do you think they might feel?

Joe: Ahh …

Ken: Or should I ask, what are you afraid they might feel?

Joe: I’m afraid that they will see me just as I am.

Ken: Oh, I don’t think so.

Joe: Just as I think I am.

Ken: Ah. And if they see you just as you think you are, what’s going to happen?

Joe: They’ll drop me like a hot potato.

Ken: So what does this mean about how you think of yourself?

Joe: That I’m droppable like a hot potato.

Ken: Yes. You’re quite droppable. Okay. And the reason I say this is very important in terms of intimate or close relationships—and this is a little bit getting into loving-kindness, but we’re really more in the area of love—in that in order to be in a relationship in which love is present, we have to have the confidence in ourselves that the other person can love us just as we are. You follow?

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Because if we don’t have that confidence, we can never trust that what we’re receiving from them is really there. That makes the relationship kind of difficult.

Joe: Yes.

Ken: Is this striking any chords in anybody? Okay. Thank you, Joe. So there’s a person you’re leaving out of this meditation.

Joe: Yeah?

Ken: Who might that be?

Joe: That I’m leaving out of this meditation?

Ken: Yeah.

Joe: I’m not sure in what sense I’ve covered me. I’ve covered those close to me. I’ve covered those I’m indifferent towards.

Ken: You’ve covered you, have you?

Joe: Well, as I said, not as well as I should have before moving on. But we only have two weeks, so I kind of rushed it.

Ken: Do you view yourself with equanimity?

Joe: At this point?

Ken: Yes.

Joe: No.

Ken: No. You’re droppable.

Joe: Oh yeah. I drop me all the time.

Ken: Yeah. You’re droppable. That’s how you view yourself. You’re very prejudiced with respect to you.

Joe: Oh, yes. Oh, indeed.

Ken: So that’s where you start. You can’t possibly view others with equanimity.

Joe: This I know. Yes.

Ken: Okay, good. We will continue. Who else? Please. What’s your name?

Sarah: Sarah.

Ken: Oh, you’re Sarah. Okay.

Sarah: Well, I told Julia this. After the first night that I really focused on: May I be free of preference and prejudice, and I really, really got it. And I had oceans of equanimity, just oceans of it. But the next morning around 10 o’clock, I got a phone call and somebody really pissed me off and I lost it totally. [Laughter]

Ken: Never happened to me.

Sarah: Not one drop.

Ken: Yes?

Sarah: So, there are two things that really bother me, somebody who’s greedy and stupid. And this person was both greedy and stupid. So that was my judgment and I was really annoyed. And then I got annoyed at myself for being annoyed. And then, where’s my equanimity? And it’s gone, and you know, like that.

Ken: Okay. So what did you do with all that?

Sarah: I laughed at it. I thought it was really funny.

Ken: What did you learn?

Sarah: That, because I think of something, that doesn’t really mean that it’s really there. If that makes any sense to you.

Ken: Oh, yes, that makes sense. And where do you go from there?

Sarah: Just sitting down and doing it again. And then trying to find this spot where I get hooked or find where the button is that I get pushed.

Ken: Yeah. Chinese say, if you want to learn something, do it 10,000 times. Have you done this 10,000 times yet?

Sarah: No. And that’s only the first part of it. I mean, honestly, I didn’t really get to people that really bothered me a lot.

Ken: It’s a very short period of time. And the point of this course is to become acquainted with these practices, not to master them. You get some practical experience so you understand them not only intellectually, but you also understand how they actually work. And then you do them over months or years, depending on how far you want to go. When we first encounter something, yes, it’s like falling in love, just all of these wonderful feelings. But to train so that this is how we actually experience and relate to the world, this is a very, very different matter and requires consistent practice over a period of time.

You say you want to catch the buttons, find the buttons that catch you. Well, those are actually pretty easy to find. The disconcerting piece is that, once you find the buttons, well you know exactly why you’re being caught and you still get caught. In a class that I did last fall, I talked about three qualities that we need to develop here: willingness, willingness to engage this kind of work, knowhow, that is knowing how to engage it skillfully, call it skill building if you want, and capacity. It is the last one that most people don’t appreciate. It takes time to build capacity. It’s work.

I did a short course in rock climbing last year. And in rock climbing, you’ve got to have the willingness. You’ve got to climb up this wall, or whatever. I wasn’t doing it outside. So you’ve got the heights and things like that. So you’ve got to be willing to at least fall. You’re going to fall onto a rope. It’s okay, but you got to be willing. And there’s a certain amount of skill. You learn how to use the core muscles and the muscles in your legs. But you can know all of that and you can be willing. But there’s a simple matter of sheer strength that you need and a certain amount of arm strength—not as much as one ordinarily thinks, but some—and a certain amount of stamina in the body and things like that.

And this is capacity. And you’ve got to have all three. It’s very, very clear. Rock climbing is very good for that. It makes it very clear. But the comparable capacity in meditation is attention. And you got to build that and you build that by doing it again and again and again and again and again. You’re building it. That’s why we practice. And without consistency, it doesn’t matter how well you understand the stuff intellectually, you can understand it totally precisely. If you don’t actually have the capacity, it’s not going to be there when you need it.

Student: When I read the verse, the third line was the one that made me the most nervous: May I experience the world knowing me just as I am. And I also, before I start my comment, I found it most interesting as you repeated it, went through it once and then, May I see things just as they are. And then going back to the beginning again, the repetition of the verse I found really useful because each time it kind of layered on itself. I liked that part about it, but I kind of fell apart a little bit. I really can’t say I had a lot of fun. I began to feel really uncomfortable. And I can’t tell you exactly why, but a few things came to me. And one day I left. And that feeling that I had was how I used disdain. First of all, how it was used in my family and aimed at me. And I just touched on my own disdain for myself, but went on from there to how I use disdain in my relationships with other people. Like with my girlfriends, how I may look at others and use that as a way to distance myself or whatever. But the most interesting thing that I found about my behavior was that when I might comment on someone’s character defect to a friend of mine, I feel like I’m doing them a favor.

Ken: That reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon.

Student: And when I caught myself there, I told a friend of mine what I actually feel like when I tell you this about people, I’m doing that other person a favor by saying something behind their back. Never mind the imprint that I’m leaving on my own brain by saying it. It was just an observation that I had and it’s just a lot of observations. And I think the last time I went to bed at night and wanted to revise things I said and did during the day was when I was a teenager. And yet I found myself doing that several times in this two week period at the end of the day going, “Why did I say that?”

Ken: Well, this is very good. I don’t think anybody ever promised you that this was going to be fun, did they?

Student: I had no expectations, honestly.

Ken: Good. But it sounds from what you’re saying, that it has brought a higher level of attention to how you conduct yourself in the world. That’s a good thing. Very good. Keep going, if you wish. Your comment about telling people stuff that’s doing them a favor, Lucy says to Charlie Brown, “I’m going to do you a favor, Charlie Brown. I’m going to tell you all your faults. Get a sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle. On second thought, get two sheets of paper.” [Laughter] Okay, one more comment, somebody about the practice. Raquel?

Raquel: The last two lines I felt like on the cushion, just saying the words brought me really present and there. But the first two lines I felt like were really helpful off the cushion. I had all these experiences where I was having judgment, prejudice, preference. And every time it happened, I could quickly recall the line and kind of rest there. So I hate flying and I was on the plane and I always think I’m going to die. So I often look to the person who I’m sitting next to and think, “Great, do I want to die next to this person?” [Laughter]

Ken: What difference does it make?

Raquel: Well, because most of the time, well all the times I think I’m going to die, I haven’t yet. So I need to grab them. And I don’t know them. Anyway, it’s this whole thing. So I looked to the person. I didn’t think I had anything in common. I just thought, “Oh God, this is not the person I wanted to sit next to and die with.” And so I recalled the line and rested and felt a little bit better. Then in a few minutes she turned to me and just gave me this smile. This smile of, well, we’re in a lot of turbulence in the storm, but she just gave me this smile of like, “Yeah, doesn’t this suck?” But it was just so, it just turned on me.

And with the very first line about prejudice, I actually felt like in the last Tuesday’s class. I sort of learned that there’s almost another step. We had a situation where we were all sitting here and as always, the janitor, a Latino man, came in and he does his vacuuming and he’s trusted amongst all the people in the building with computers and equipment. But several of us had the thought, “Is our stuff okay?” And then we kind of talked about that afterwards and recalling the line. But I think with the issue of prejudice, there has to be sort of an extra step because we often have excuses or think that it’s justified. So we don’t recognize it as prejudice. So we kind of went through that anyway …

Ken: Good.