Two Nasrudin stories

Ken: The Dervishes, by Idries Shah, has got lots of good stories in it. Sufis have the best stories. So you may find it useful. And then there’s always Nasrudin, it’s always useful. But you have to be willing to look into a mirror when you read Nasrudin. A lot of the stories in Nasrudin are pointing out, in somewhat absurd ways, things that we do every day.

Nasrudin was sitting among the branches of a tree, sniffing the blossoms and sunning himself. A traveler asked him what he was doing there.

“Climbing the great pyramid,” he said.

“You are nowhere near a pyramid. There are four ways up a pyramid, one by each face—that is a tree.”

“Yes,”said the Mullah, “but it’s much more fun like this, don’t you think? Birds blossom, zephyrs, sunshine. I hardly think I could have done better.”

Pyramid Expert, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, Idries Shah, p. 139


[Laughter]

Nasrudin was riding along one day when his donkey took fright at something in its path and started to bolt.

As he sped past them at an unaccustomed pace, some countrymen called out, “Where are you going, oh Nasrudin, so fast?” “Don’t ask me,” shouted the Mullah, “ask my donkey.”

Why Ask Me?, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, Idries Shah, p. 145

As I say, if you look into a mirror … How’s the paradox? [Pause] Well, don’t all wave your hands at once. You able to get to it? Feel it? Diane? What’s it like?

Student questions: the paradox of death

Diane: It’s hard to live with.

Ken: It’s hard to live with. How? How so?

Diane: Well, as I mentioned to you earlier, I was working with “dying to the dream” aspects. And I couldn’t figure out when you actually die to the dream versus try harder.

Ken: Yes. What did you discover?

Student: You have to balance.

Ken: Anybody else with a paradox? Mark.

Mark: I found when I was looking at identity, and with “death was inevitable,” it just seemed like I could put it off.

Ken: Put death off or put the identity off?

Mark: Keep the identity, because death was inevitable. But when I brought in the “it could happen at any time,” it shifted me, it threw me into seeing that … I don’t mind that, I think. And it allowed me to open to a shift.

Ken: Okay. Janneke.

Janneke: This may seem flip, but I wore a t-shirt this afternoon that said, “Love this life,” and when you finished the walking meditation, I crossed out the “life” and it said, “Love this death.” And I know it sounds like the purest flip, but it represents experience.

Ken: Say a bit more.

Janneke: I’m not sure I can express it with any sort of clarity or eloquence, but living requires dying, and dying is living.

Ken: Okay. To live, you have to die. And when you die, you live. You’ve heard this before. That’s really the essence of some of the things that Christ says, and many other mystics and contemplatives throughout the ages. [Pause]

The fact of our physical death, the 100 percent inevitability, confronts us with the necessity of dying someday. None of us are going to avoid that. And, as some of you experienced in the exercise we did this afternoon, more problematic in many ways are our identities as this or that. As a person who does everything perfectly. As a person who upholds righteousness for the world. As a person who, doesn’t matter what they do, will never be worth anything in the eyes of anybody else. As a person who can never do anything right. As a person who has to take care of others. As a person who is the most important person in the world. These are all different identities.

And some of you have seen that without that identity, you don’t know how to engage life. It’s as if the identity tells you what to do. Letting go of that identity–any one of those, we all have a number–is a form of dying. And as several of you expressed, when you let go of the identity, even momentarily— we’re experienced at letting go, even temporarily, as some of you did—there is a sense of freedom, openness, presence, wakefulness, whatever you want to call it. It may be different aspects for different people. What this tells us is that every one of those identities obscures our experience of life. Or, we could say, since that’s actually a bit redundant, obscures experience, because that’s what life is, experience. One of the more deeply conditioned identities is the identity of being a physical being. It similarly hides or covers experience.

Student: The gender.

Ken: The gender identity does too, yes, very much so. [Pause] Now, tomorrow we’re going to direct our attention at the dying process itself. But we can start on that by observing how unwilling we are to die. And you might take a few moments right now, take any one of those identities, perhaps one you were working with this afternoon during the exercise, and feel it. Then ask yourself the question, “What am I holding on to here? What am I holding on to?” When you ask that question, you may or may not be able to say, “I’m holding on to this.” But an emotion will arise. It could be any emotion. It will be a reactive emotion—maybe anger, maybe desire, maybe a feeling of specialness, any number of descriptions. Now move into that emotion. It may have many facets to it. Don’t try to track them all down, just let them all be there, like a ball of yarn, many, many colors to it. And you find you can be the emotion, and you can still breathe. So ask yourself again, “What am I holding on to?” And you may experience an openness of freedom that wasn’t there the first time you asked that question. [Pause]

So, living consists of experiencing completely. Identities form for the purpose of not experiencing completely, hence, in order to live, you have to die.

Now, in the evening, I put this song from Milarepa, which is entitled Six Ways to Meet Death with Confidence. I don’t have the original Tibetan for this, it’s in The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. And I do suspect that there’s a mistranslation in the fifth stanza, because all of the other stanzas use an animal as a metaphor. This one doesn’t. But in this song, Milarepa is talking about meeting death, in any of the forms that we’ve been discussing.

Death is inevitable, the timing uncertain

Ken: Now this morning, the instruction was to work with these two aspects of death, that it’s inevitable, and the time is uncertain. When you do this, we observed how this was related to the idea of order versus chaos. When you do this, you come to the understanding that experience–that is, life–is both ordered and chaotic. That is things do unfold, you plant seeds that grow into flowers and trees, but not always. Sometimes things happen unexpectedly. Mountains fall, or earthquakes, and so forth. Sometimes not even such dramatic things. If you hold the view that includes both order and chaos, then you can work with whatever situation arises. Some situations require more order. Some, as you know, require that you don’t plan anything and you just meet whatever’s arising as best you can. If you’re a very ordered person, you don’t do well in those situations. And if you’re used to doing things on the fly, you don’t do very well in structured situations.

True freedom is including both. And please understand this is not a compromise. It’s not half order, half chaos. It is the freedom to respond with what’s appropriate. And the only way that you have that freedom is to be able to include both in your experience. So that’s the great freedom from extremes. It’s like, “A gallant lion lying in the snow at ease, displaying its teeth fearlessly.”

When you have that view, you aren’t putting it either into the chaos or the order, but you can include both. Then you have nothing to fear. So, by taking this aspect of death, its inevitability and its uncertainty, you find a way of approaching life. You trust that view. Death leads to the path of freedom. Death brings joy to one who holds this view. Yes.

Student: I guess the obsessive personality that I couldn’t resolve is here, but I’m compelled to ask you, what is the image of the “gallant lion lying in the snow, displaying its teeth” symbolizing?

Ken: You’ll have to ask Milarepa that. It’s grinning.

Student: I mean why snow, and–

Ken: –Oh, it’s a snow lion. This is in Tibet, they’re relatively rare. It’s not an African lion, it’s a snow lion.

Student: Okay. So, then it’s a rare beast that’s being fearless.

Ken: Yeah, the snow lion was a symbol for courage in Tibetan lore. Okay?

Student: So relaxing and the courage together?

Ken: Yeah. Yes. The thing is, when you hold this view, you can relax, because you aren’t trying to make things ordered.

Student: I was looking for the contrast and now I know the extremes.

Ken: Yes, Dave? You had a question?

Dave: Yeah, I do. I just don’t get it. [Laughter]

Ken: The point of the stanza is: If you approach death with a fixed view, you’re going to suffer. Okay? That’s what the point is. And the irony is that everything that holds about death also holds about life. If you approach life with a fixed view, you’re going to suffer. The lion is being used as a metaphor of not holding a fixed view. The freedom from extremes is–

Dave: So, the lion is the one that doesn’t have a fixed view.

Ken: Yes. Okay. Now, most of these songs were quite spontaneous, so they aren’t, you know, extremely precise poetry. They are more images which were to evoke an idea. And so, as some people said this morning, when they tried to move into that view which holds both simultaneously, they felt disoriented and confused. That’s the emotional reactions coming up, because it wants things to be a certain way. Well, the lion is a symbol of that, of the fearlessness, which doesn’t need things to be a certain way, can deal with things just as they are. This make sense? It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better [Laughter]

The stag, dignified and calm, displays the many pronged antlers of one taste.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator), p. 607

Now, when you practice contemplating the proximity of death, what happens to all your likes and dislikes? Pat?

Pat: No preference.

One taste

Ken: Right. Everything you experience has one taste, it’s experience, even though they’re very, very different experiences. And that’s what the antlers are intended to symbolize, all of these different experiences, but they’re all the same thing. Now, what are they, what are experiences? Or what is the one taste all experience has? I was going to say emptiness, but we’ll split the difference and say empty awareness. Okay. There’s that knowing quality. And when that knowing quality, that knowing which is no thing, is present, well, there’s an unpleasant experience, but that’s just what it is, an unpleasant experience. And there’s a pleasant experience. And that’s just what it is, there’s a pleasant experience, and it doesn’t incite the same—gotta have, can’t have. It’s experience. And this is what gives rise to equanimity and, hence, the decrease of reactivity when one knows experience this intimately.

“He sleeps at ease on the plane of bliss and light,” which is code for some of the essential practices in the Kagyu tradition, in which you used energy transformation exercises or methods to give rise to intense experiences of bliss and light which echo the nature of mind. And you’re resting in the nature of mind, bliss, and light—what is there to be concerned about? So “sleeps at ease.”

In this practice do I trust.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator). p.607

That is approaching everything as experience. That’s the practice, something we’ve talked about in many different ways, whatever arises, move into the experience. That is the practice.

“In this practice do I trust.” This leads to freedom. And what do you experience, when you move into whatever’s arising, and you actually move into it? What do you experience there? Yeah. You always experience joy, even if it’s a painful or unpleasant experience, because you’re moving into what is, there’s no longer any separation.

And in my work with individuals, not infrequently in our discussion, something will come up which the person doesn’t want to acknowledge, or it’s difficult for them to acknowledge. And so we’ll work with it, and they will either see something they didn’t see before or experience something they didn’t experience before. But whenever they do, they always relax. When we experience what is, we relax. When we see what is, even if we don’t want to see it, but when we see it and we see that it is true, we relax.

This is the effect of practice, that as you develop the capacity to move into the experience of what is, you actually relax more and more, because you’re not having to defend yourself against what is, you’re not having to separate from what is.

Dropping identities

Student: But Ken, you’ve got to get rid of all of these identities to do that, right?

Ken: Yes. Get to work. [Laughs]

Students: [Laughter]

Student: That’s what we’re doing. It’s a large task.

Ken: Well, yes and no. I mean, it is, and it also isn’t. How long does it take to drop an identity? [Snaps fingers] Yes, that’s actually how long it takes.

Student: How long?

Ken: [Snaps fingers] However, what happens? [Laughter] Okay. It reasserts itself very quickly. And the essence of practice is actually, you keep dropping it, and as you keep dropping it, then you are able to rest in it being dropped for a little bit longer, and things start to open up as a consequence. But simply keep dropping it. Now, that’s hard, because we believe, incorrectly, that our viability and functionality depends on that identity. Not true. In fact, in most cases, the identity hinders functionality, but it’s the fear that we will lose functionality which keeps us holding onto it. But you keep dropping it. And we start with little things. Drop the identity when you walk. Sometimes, when you see people walk, you can see who they are simply by the way they walk. You know, all these different things.

There’s an exercise in acting classes. You’re told to come on stage and do nothing. It’s regarded as one of the most difficult exercises.

But as you walk, be no one. As you eat, be no one. Those are activities that you can work on. They don’t involve any other people. Next one’s a little bit harder. As you listen, be no one. It’s amazing how much more you hear. Then, now it gets significantly harder, when you talk, be no one. That’s very interesting. But this is what you actually practice, doing this. And if you drop into this frequently during the day, and all of you here have enough knowledge and capacity to be able to do that. I know that, because I know most of you here, I know all of you, all of you have that ability. You do that consistently during the day, you’re going to find that your practice changes, because you’re making an active effort in your practice. You’re not just living your life blindly. Start with things like walking and eating, work into the activities that involve interaction with others. Life becomes very interesting. Okay?

The fish of ten virtues
With rolling golden eyes,
Swims in the river of continuous experience.
In this behavior do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who acts this way.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator), p. 607

The ten virtues

Ken: Now, the ten virtues are: not taking life, or protecting life–

Student: Rather than expressed in the negative?

Ken: Yes. The ten virtues are: protecting life; being generous; observing appropriate sexual relationships—

Student: What does that mean? [Laughter]

Ken: It means you aren’t carrying on with a mistress while your wife is worrying about where you are. Okay? It means you aren’t playing two people off against each other. Things like that. Saying what is true; speaking appropriately and gently with others–

Student: What was that?

Ken: Appropriately and gently. Speaking well of others; saying only what is meaningful or relevant. So that leaves all small talk out. [Laughter]

Student: Not necessarily.

Ken: No, sometimes small talk is relevant. Have I got some dirt for you. [Laughter] Contentment. Wishing others well, which is to say loving kindness. And faith.

Student: Is that the faith that you defined earlier, in your email?

Ken: Yes. So, those are the ten virtues. Now, the image of a fish, and I don’t know what the “rolling golden eyes” are, except it’s like carp or koi, they have those large eyes. But the image here is of a fish swimming. Now, how much resistance does the fish encounter in water?

Student: Not much.

Ken: No. So, we use these ten virtues to swim through the experience of life without effort. It works. Now, this is a particular form of discipline, which is known in the Vajrayana as the discipline of pure conduct, which is observing the ten virtuous actions. Perfections, the second one is the perfection of morality. One of the class assignments was to do something immoral and to observe if you could stay awake and present when you did something immoral. You know, deceive somebody. We didn’t ask people to go out and kill anybody, but take something which wasn’t given, what have you. To say something nasty about somebody, you know, slander. And everybody observed that to do something immoral, they had to check out of presence at some point. They couldn’t stay there and do it. So, Milarepa says, “In this behavior do I trust,” and when you live this way, do you have any regrets about dying? Pardon?

Student: You shouldn’t have.

Ken: No. So, death brings joy to one who acts this way.

The tigress of knowing mind itself is adorned with vivid stripes. She is the glory of effortless good, moving confidently in the woods.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator), p. 607

An exercise: look at your mind, then act

Ken: Now, when you look at your own mind, what do you see? Right. You don’t see anything. Now take a situation in your life, a situation that creates some tension in you. Maybe an argument with a co-worker or a boss, maybe a disagreement with a family member, something like that, maybe a disappointment in your personal or professional life, whatever. And you know how you’re inclined to react to that. But take that situation, look directly at what experiences it. And you may feel a shift. Now, open to the situation again. What action arises? It changes, doesn’t it? How much effort is involved when you first look at the mind and then act? How much effort goes into the action? You follow? Effortless good. That’s what’s being talked about here. Effortless good. When you went through that little mind experiment, what action arose? Pardon?

Student: I missed what you said.

Ken: Okay. I’ll go through it again. Take an instance which causes tension, which is something that would normally provoke a reaction in you. You get angry, you get upset, you get frustrated, you know, you’d walk away, tell somebody where to go. You know, something like that. Now, bring up the situation, so you feel what’s going on, and now look directly at what experiences the situation, which is to say, you look at mind itself. Okay? Just look at it. Just look at it. What experiences the situation? Okay?

Let’s suppose your brother’s nagging at you, because you won’t lend him your car. Just something like that. And you’re feeling irritated and annoyed with him, because you think it’s an unreasonable request. Okay? Now look at what experiences that? Just look at it. Now, open to the situation again. There’s your brother, bugging you to borrow your car, what action arises? Now, you may give it to him, you may not. But it doesn’t come from anger or irritation. Effortless good. And there’s no effort in that. That’s what Milarepa is referring to here: “The tigress of knowing mind itself is adorned with vivid stripes.” And Milarepa is using this very striking animal imagery to get the sense of power and energy.

Student: So, Ken, what you’re basically saying is if we have time or we’re awake enough, if you do just this each time when something like this arises, it would be effortless good.

Ken: Exactly. And the first part of your premise is false. You always have the time.

Student: You always have the time. If you take it.

Ken: Yes. You always have the time.

Student: If you’re awake enough.

Ken: That’s right.

Student: I hate to be redundant, but this is the first time I really got a clear understanding of that story, you know with the monk, the one monk who takes him across on a ferry and he slaps him with the oar and knocks him across, And as the monk got really angry at him, he goes, “What did you do that for?” and he tells him, “Where is your mind?”

Ken: Yes. Good. Now this next stanza, I strongly suspect a mis-translation. I haven’t been able to make a great deal of sense out of it, maybe somebody here can.

On the paper of positive and negative forms, I wrote an essay with my knowing mind. In the state of non-duality, I watch and contemplate.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator), p. 607

There’s a number of problems for me in the way it’s translated, but what I think it may be referring to is—you remember, I talked yesterday about false dualities? So, you have positive and negative. And when you just experience, you know–on the paper of positive and negative forms, we have all of these different values, this is good, and this is bad—but if you just know, all of those dualities subside. So, “In the state of non-duality, I watch and contemplate.” And I think I mentioned earlier how one of the ways that Buddhism has taken expression in the political scene, both in Asian countries and in international politics, is moving people out of duality, out of good versus evil and so forth. That’s the essence of the dharma. That is the essence of the dharma. So, “In this dharma do I trust.”

The purified essence of dynamic energy is like a great eagle flying on the wings of means and wisdom to the castle of non-being.

p. 607

Student: Ken I’m sorry. You’re too fast. I just want to get a little bit on “I watch and contemplate.” I think there’s a lot in there, but … I watch and contemplate.

Ken: Well, I was skipping over that, because I don’t agree with it. I think there’s–

Student: That’s good enough.

Ken: Because there’s a sense of separation there. And that’s why I suspect the translation. I think, “In the state of non-duality, I am present with what arises,” would be–

Student: Rather than being a watcher.

Ken: Rather than being a watcher.

Student: Got it, thanks.

Generating energy

Ken:

The purified essence of dynamic energy is like a great eagle flying on the wings of means and wisdom to the castle of non-being.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator). p.607

Now, many of you, maybe all of you, may have noticed that when we sit, there’s an energy. When we sit together, there’s an energy, and that energy enables each of us to make more of an effort in our practice than we often are able to when we’re just meditating on our own. Even when we meditate on our own, or when we practice on our own, and just practice coming into attention, we generate energy. We get a group of us together, it becomes more palpable, but it’s a phenomenon that is taking place with all of you in your own practice. As your practice matures and stabilizes, the presence of that energy, which is actually a form of attention, or attention is a form of that energy, begins to permeate your experience.

And it also often has an effect on people around. For example, I was doing some work at a company, and I met with the management group of a department, and one of the people after the meeting said, “It’s amazing, Ken, everybody behaves so much better when you’re around.” And it’s largely because there is less reactive energy in the room. And so, people do behave better, because they’re being less reactive. And this is a capacity that each of you is actually developing. And the more effort you make in your own practice, so the more you are resting in a nonreactive state, then the more momentum there is in your own practice, and it does have an effect on the world around. But in terms of this particular verse, that energy begins to set in, it begins to acquire momentum. And as it acquires momentum, that’s where it becomes like a great eagle. Now, when you watch an eagle flying, how often does it flap its wings?

Student: Not very much.

Ken: It soars, you know, and as that energy develops, so your practice just keeps moving. And it always has two aspects. When you’re present, there’s the one aspect, which is understanding how things are. That’s the wisdom aspect. And then the other aspect is doing what’s appropriate. That’s the means aspect. It’s an expression of compassion. Now, it doesn’t do good, do much good, to understand how things are, if it’s never translated into action. And it doesn’t do much good acting if you don’t know how things are. And that’s why Buddhism emphasizes again and again and again means and wisdom, as being like the two wings of a bird— birds can’t fly with just one wing, but with the two, then it can be present in the world. And the last line, “To the castle of non-being.” When you’re present in the world and you’re doing what’s appropriate in each situation as it arises, how much of you is involved?

Student: Not very much.

Ken: Right. That’s non-being. Yeah. [Laughter] I know you don’t like that, Chris. That’s, that’s how it is.

Chris: Well, no I missed the whole poem.

Ken: Well, I’m sorry, we have to go to dinner now.

Chris: All right.

A review: how you meet death

Ken: Okay? Now, this is how you meet death, by: trusting in the view, which is free of extremes; trusting in the practice, which brings you into one taste; trusting in the behavior, which is doing what is virtuous; trusting in the discipline, which is letting your actions come out of knowing mind itself, rather than thinking, “Oh, what should I do, what should I do?”; trusting the dharma, which is always pointing to non-duality, and trusting the ability, which develops through your own practice. Those are the six ways Milarepa is talking about here.

Peter: I don’t see that in the text.

Ken: Yeah. I mean, I just picked them out, yeah. Do you see, Peter?

Peter: I will, eventually.

Ken: Well, if you look at the last line of each stanza: view, practice, action, that’s behavior, discipline, dharma, ability. You follow? Okay. Curtis?

Curtis: So, if you could change the fourth line in the fifth stanza, which is, “I watch and contemplate” to “I’m present with what arises,” you would be fairly pleased with that stanza.

Ken: Yeah, but I still suspect something, because of the change.

Student: I was going to suggest that, you know, you talked about active attention being mindfulness and awareness. And I was thinking maybe awareness being watching.

Ken: Yeah, but you’re using awareness in two different ways there. There are two different awarenesses. I mean, there’s a relationship between the two, but the awareness in mindfulness awareness and the awareness in things like dzogchen and mahamudra, they’re not the same. And this is really referring to awareness in a mahamudra and dzogchen sense. Okay, so, let’s close here, repeating this. How long did you tell them to delay?

Student: I said hopefully less than 10 minutes but probably would be 10 minutes.

Ken: Oh, ye of little faith!

Student: Well at the end of it I said, you know, this is ridiculous, you can put the food out whenever you want. [Laughter] So, we’re eating at 6:30.

Ken: 6:30? Oh, okay. Now, as for practice this evening, I want you to continue to go into that paradox in the way that I described this morning—experiencing the inevitability of death, experiencing the uncertainty of death, and then experiencing the two together and resting in what arises when you experience the two together. Okay? So, let’s go through this together.

The great freedom from extremes
Is like a gallant lion lying in the snow at ease,
Displaying its teeth fearlessly.
In this view do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who holds this view.

The stag, dignified and calm,
Displays the many-pronged antlers of one taste.
He sleeps at ease on the plane of bliss and light.
In this practice do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who practices.

The fish of ten virtues
With rolling golden eyes
Swims in the river of continuous experience.
In this behavior do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one who acts this way.

The tigress of knowing mind itself
Is adorned with vivid stripes.
She is the glory of effortless good,
Moving confidently in the woods.
In this discipline do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one with discipline.

On the paper of positive and negative forms,
I wrote an essay with my knowing mind.
In this state of non-duality,
I watch and contemplate.
In this dharma do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one with dharma.

The purified essence of dynamic energy
Is like a great eagle flying
On the wings of means and wisdom
To the castle of non-being.
In this ability do I trust.

Death leads to the path of freedom.
Death brings joy to one with this ability.

The Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa, vol. 2, Garma C.C. Chang (Translator), p. 607