The medieval contract

Ken: We’re going to talk about the student teacher relationship and Jeff suggested to talk about this as it applies in modern times, right?

Jeff: Seems to be where we are.

Ken: Yes. [Laughs] Well, in traditional Tibetan Buddhism in general, and really very much of Asian Buddhism works from an essentially medieval model, how many of you are familiar with the divine right of kings? The divine right of kings—kings were special people, or the monarchy consisted of special people that had been ordained to rule by God. And one of the few surviving examples of that is actually the Saudi Arabia Kings. They support one of the more extreme radical Islamic sects Wahhabism because Wahhabism is one of the few Islamic sects which has a divine right of kings. And this is what gives the Saudi Family the legitimacy to rule. This way of thinking, ran into problems in the late medieval era in England; we’re talking about the 16th, 17th century, and resulted in one king losing his head. James 1 King of Scotland. Yeah.

And that marks the transition into modern times when there was a totally radical notion that the country didn’t belong to the king, the country actually belonged to the people and they should have a say in how things came about. And that was a long bloody process, both in England and in the rest of Europe.

America has a unique role in this, in that the American form of government— which was developed in the late 18th century—was the first time that people had government by the people, of the people, for the people. And this was a completely radical notion at that time. And this has become one of the defining characteristics of America and has been a model for much of the world since. And European countries went through a process but a very interesting thing happens along the way.

If a king or a ruler doesn’t rule by divine right, then legitimacy has to come from the people and the king becomes a citizen of the nation rather than the owner in effect of the country. Now in listening to the opening chants, that is the context or the perspective that these chants are written in, and you have Lotus Pema Kara, Wisdom Yeshe Tsogyal, etc., Tilo, Naro, Marpa, “please approach and grant your blessings,” all the power is vested there. As students we’re to approach and relate to them very much as a subject to a king, and we receive blessing and guidance etc., and it goes on to say, “protect my vajra awareness, grant your blessings so that I may realize great bliss wisdom.”

And that is essentially the medieval contract. You give loyalty and faith to the king or the ruler, and the ruler protects you and provides you with the wherewithal so that you can prosper, in this context within the spiritual practice. Now this way of looking at things in a certain sense means that you have a father-child relationship or a parent-child relationship because you had a few woman figures such as Machig Labdrön and you have this wonderful phrase, “machig labdrön .” What does the word machig mean, “ma” is the word for mother, “chig” is the word for one, so “only mother”, you have this parental model built very firmly into the vocabulary, and you had “pachig”, the ‘only father” too. You see Milarepa referring to his guru as “only father Marpa.” So this is very much a parental relationship where the parent provides resources and protection, the child offers loyalty and devotion, and through that there is spiritual growth.

A modern contract

Ken: Now in the modern age, largely through the influence of psychology, we have the opposite in a certain sense because in the medieval model, the ruler, the teacher, the guru, whatever you want to call him, could do no wrong. And any problem in the relationship was something that the student had to work with. The teacher didn’t have to do anything because the teacher was the embodiment of awakening. And so you worked on yourself to figure out what was wrong in the relationship. In modern times, you’ve almost completely reversed that due to the influence of psychology. Now, if anything goes wrong in the relationship, it’s the teacher’s fault and the student is given free reign to explore their potential and grow in whatever way feels suitable to them.

I’m being a little extreme here, but that’s basically the dynamic. And the teacher’s role is very, very different from this perspective. It’s to nurture and to grow the person, and if anything goes wrong in the relationship it’s the teacher’s fault. But what’s interesting about this, it’s still a parental relationship, except you have a very different parental model operating. From my point of view, both of these frameworks are problematic and I don’t think either one of them if taken exactly that way, works very well because it is very unbalanced. I think it is appropriate in the modern age to start with the premise that you have two adults relating—in the context of the spiritual practice that I’m talking about. I’m not talking about where you’ve got children being brought up within the framework of Buddhism. That’s a different thing.

I’m talking about an adult who goes to another person for spiritual instruction, what is that relationship? And here I have found—what I’ve based my own teaching on—is you have two adults and the one is seeking to learn and the other is seeking to help grow that potential, which involves a lot of different things. One is revealing or showing you different possibilities. One is teaching various skills and how to develop certain capacities and another is pointing out where the student’s own material is getting in the way; fixations, beliefs, patterns that they have which prevent them from growing or expressing the wisdom or understanding that they have. And in this relationship, the student is going to be presenting questions, insights, challenges that they’ve encountered through their practice. And when they do that, the teacher isn’t going to rely on pat answers and formulaic expressions, which is what a lot of people feel that you get from a traditional teacher. It’s not quite accurate but I’ll come to that in a moment, but they are going to have to relate to the person that is in front of them and they’re going to meet in that interaction.

And that’s actually what the word sutra means. The word sutra comes from the same root as the word suture, which is pulling two things together and the definition of sutra, it’s where the teachers and the students’ minds meet. And that’s what I would like to explore with you this evening. That’s why I don’t want to talk too much. Now, I said that traditional teachers, give the impression that you get these pat answers. They’re always quoting a scripture here or a verse there. What is not understood or appreciated very often is that the teacher is selecting a very particular verse for the student at that time. So there is actually an alive quality there, but given our prejudice against memorization and formulaic expressions, we’re often not able to appreciate that.

The context of practice

Ken: Now, a couple of other things before we go into exploring your questions. The way people approach spiritual practice today is very, very different from how it was in Asian societies and in other cultures. I was reading a short interview with an individual named David McMahan who wrote a book called The Making of Buddhist Modernism. A person practicing say a ritual in Tibet and a person doing exactly the same ritual here in say Salt Lake City or in New York or Chicago or something like that. Even though they’re working from the same text, it is very unlikely that they’re doing the practice in the same way. Why?

Because the contexts are so very, very different. For the one, it is part of their culture. They’re steeped in the mythology, they know all the symbolism and the references, etc., for the other, it is a foreign way of working with your mind and understanding. Even if they have invested the time and energy to understand all the symbolism, it’s still a fundamentally different relationship. It’s not part of their culture and it’s something that they’ve taken to explore. It doesn’t say it can’t be fruitful, but it’s unlikely to work exactly the same way. And so this raises the question, what is … how do we find our way in this? And here I’m very grateful to my friend and colleague Stephen Bachelor, who explored very deeply, looked very deeply at the word that we use in English all the time, “practice” and tried to find the equivalent in Sanskrit. Actually, it’s pretty hard to find because there isn’t any word in Sanskrit that is used the way we use the word practice. In Tibetan, for instance, you can’t say the way we talk about it, “my practice”, “my meditation.” You literally cannot form … if you say “nga rang gi sgompa”, a teacher would look at you and say, “what?” It just doesn’t make any sense.

So we have a personal relationship with practice and that’s one of the characteristics of the individualistic society in which we live. Whereas it was a much more universalistic, a universal approach in Tibetan and in Sanskrit. You can’t possibly say “my sangha.” I mean it’s like saying “my rain” or “my sky.” It’s very, very different. So what we get out of the Asian schools are paths of practice. And almost always you’ll notice in English, they take the article ‘the’. A book that I translated was The Great Path of Awakening which I would not do today. I would translate it as A Great Path of Awakening.

Because of the individualistic nature of our society, that’s a very important aspect of the context in which we practice, I think it’s very important to think in terms of a path rather than the path. But once you move away from these very well-defined and in many cases brilliantly presented paths of practice to a path, then everything is completely open and, how do you find your way? Well, one of the other aspects of the context here is that in traditional societies nobody embarked on spiritual practice in order to get ahead in life. And yet that is probably the primary reason that most people start a meditation practice today. It is so that they are less reactive, more focused, they want to heal old wounds or whatever. And it is very much a utilitarian if not a consumerist approach and we see the same thing has developed in yoga, which has been a basis for a lot of discussion.

Different stages to practice

Ken: So I want to distinguish actually three different approaches to practice, which I think one could argue form a kind of progression, because the teacher student relationship changes with each of these three stages in my opinion. The first is this utilitarian approach. Okay, I’m having trouble with life. This looks like it’s going to be helpful to me and I’ll have a better life if I do this. And that’s how many people start. Just so you’re very clear about what an odd duck I am, I never had that approach at all. That thought literally had never crossed my mind when I started.

But it’s very, very clear that that’s where most people start today. Not everybody, but most. As you develop ability and you find yourself able to rest with all the chaos in your head, and you begin to see that as one of my students said, “my thoughts are not reality.” It was so disconcerting for him, but it made a big difference in his life. Then we begin to see that there are other possibilities. And then the notion of achieving something which is not about making our life better but about being in life a different way starts to emerge. And I’m talking about things like awakening or enlightenment—if you want to use that word—being more compassionate, not because it makes your life better, but because it’s a value that you have and so forth. And so you begin to become interested in practice not because of what it’s going to do for your life, but what can be accomplished through the practice.

And so that’s the second stage. As you continue with that, and I’ll be honest, that’s the way I approached things. At the beginning I very much thought— I read DT Suzuki and other people—I thought, wow, this is very far out. I wanted to know something. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to know, but I knew I wanted to know something. And as you progress in that, you begin to find a third possibility presents itself, and it’s an inescapable possibility and a very challenging one because you see that the more that you intend to get enlightened, etc., the more you’re concerned with yourself, the more problematic things become. And you reach a point in your practice where you realize that any agenda that you set becomes an obstacle.

So how do you practice without any intention? That becomes a major challenge for people at a certain stage of practice. And here your relationship with practice is no longer what you get out of it or what can be accomplished. It becomes much more emotional I would say, it’s simply an expression of who you are, and it ceases to be a thing different from who you are.

An analogy with learning an art

Ken: Now, I think it is useful within this context to consider the analogy of art, whether it’s music, dance, poetry or painting or whatever, because you can see those same three things, three stages within that context. What I want to focus on more clearly is what kind of teacher is needed in each of those three stages.

Well, in the first stage, all you need is an instructor, how do you do it? And someone who shows you how to meditate gets you through the initial obstacles and gives you the necessary information because basically you’re just learning a skill. And once you get better with that skill, then you get out of it what you wanted. So all you need is an instructor. You don’t have to have a deep personal relationship with a teacher, you just need a competent instructor.

In the second stage, it’s a different relationship, a different kind of teacher because here you’re looking to come to live life a different way. To live awake, and there’s all kinds of material in you that wants to keep you asleep, so to speak. So you’re going to need someone who knows what that means, who has some experience in it. So here is where you begin to get into a teacher who inspires you, someone who embodies the quality of life, the quality of presence you yourself are seeking to cultivate. And if that person doesn’t embody that why on earth would you be studying with him. And if that person does embody it you are naturally going to feel a kind of respect, appreciation and much devotion.

When your practice matures to the point that it simply could be becoming an expression of who you are then it’s a different kind of teacher again. It’s a teacher who has found a way to be, to express themselves fully. And it’s a palpable quality that you can sense and the relationship is different with that teacher. Here I like to draw on a teacher that I never met, but I’ve read a few of his books. I really feel a close connection with him. His name is Uchiyama Roshi, he is a 20th century Zen teacher. I did meet a person who actually met him in Japan and it was very nice to hear what he was like in person.

Uchiyama Roshi’s teacher was Sawaki Roshi. Sawaki Roshi was a university professor, a big, very powerful man with a big booming voice. And early in his training, Uchiyama Roshi said to him, “do you think … ” and he had such great admiration for him. So Uchiyama wasn’t looking how to improve his life. He was very much in the second stage of practice right from the beginning. And he said to Sawaki Roshi “Do you think if I study with you 25, 30 years, I could be a little more like you?” That’s what he wanted. Sawaki Roshi said, “No! zazen …”—japanese word for meditation—”Zazen is useless, zazen does nothing, you won’t accomplish anything through zazen.” Well, you can feel in Sawaki Roshi’s words, he’s not talking about the first two stages of practice at all. He’s talking about something completely different. Uchiyama himself says it took him years and years to understand what Sawaki Roshi was talking about. And the way that Uchiyama put it, likes to express it, as he does very often in his books, “If you’re a violet, you cannot bloom as a rose, and if you’re a rose, you cannot bloom as a violet.”

And what Sawaki Roshi was telling him is, “You are going to mature in your own way and that’s that.” No one can predict that. And that challenge is up to you and the teacher is a guide, a support, a help, an inspiration, a source of energy and all of these things, but is not prescribing how the student should be. And this requires a great deal of maturity on the part of the teacher and student. A maturity which is often absent, I sadly have to say, both in teacher and student. Because many teachers want to produce carbon copies of themselves and many students want to be carbon copies of their teachers.

So with that as a framework, and I hope I haven’t talked too much, I’d really like to hear some of your questions and we can have a discussion about this. And we can do this in one of two ways, but I want to hear from everybody so I think we’ll do it differently from the way we did it last time. We’re just going to start [laughs].

The challenge of finding a teacher

Student: [Unclear] … supply of teachers in our culture that I’ve noticed.

Ken: Well. can I just keep it for the time being because I may be asking you some questions here. It’s possible. [Laughter] I’m going to pull rank on you here.

Student: Okay.

Ken: How do you think things were 40 years ago?

Student: Oh, even more so. [Ken laughs] I don’t know. I mean I can see a lot of things as being teachers and …

Ken: Then you get into a whole other thing.

Student: A lot of people …

Ken: Yeah

Student: … but especially on a personal level, there’s a lot of reading that can be done.

Ken: Well, you’re exactly right because when I started, it was difficult to get a hold of a copy of DT Suzuki’s Studies in Mahayana Buddhism, which is one of the big checks. The Blue Cliff Record was printed but where could you get it? As for Tibetan Buddhism, there was Evans-Wentz and that was it. Unless you thought Lobsang Rampa had something to say. But that’s a whole other thing. [Laughs] So there was so little available. Now you go on the web, you have access to every teaching of every major tradition, including many of the secret teachings. And where do you start? What’s important? How do you work this out? I mean, even on my little website, I get complaints because people say, well, there’s so many podcasts, where do you start? We’ve tried to organize it that way, but we haven’t found a way to do it.

Again, your question goes to the way that a teacher is going to work in a very different way because there is so much information available. Now, I don’t have the answers to this. I don’t know, I think this is very much being worked out. One of the things I’ve experimented with—I did a couple of retreats and you can listen to the retreats on my website under A Trackless Path, Trackless Path 1 and Trackless Path 2. In those retreats, I’m not teaching. I would interview people every day about their practice or every other day I think. And then I’d have a talk and discussion in the evening about whatever seemed to come up. So we didn’t follow any curriculum and I worked with people in the practice and if I thought their practice was stale, I would say, “don’t meditate this afternoon, go for a walk up the mountain, just don’t get bit by any rattlesnakes please and just relax” and things like that. And the retreats were extremely productive because people related to their practice in very different ways. So it was experimenting with a different approach.

If you want a teacher, you’ll find one, you may have to step out of your life to do it. When people say, there are very few teachers available, the underlying assumption there is, “I want to find a teacher and not step out of my life.” And that wasn’t an option 40 years ago. If you wanted to study, you stepped out of your life, that was it. So right there, you see we have a different relationship with life and that’s very important. One of my friends, who’s a teacher, likes to quote the Zen story of this person who came to a teacher and said, “I’d like to study with you.” He said, “why do you want to study with me?” “I want to get enlightened.” He said, “Come with me.” And they went for a walk and they came to the river and without any warning whatsoever, the teacher just threw the guy in the river. And when he came splattering up, he pushed his head down and held it underwater and the guy struggled and struggled and struggled and he was just about drowning. The teacher let go and the guy came up gasping for air. The teacher says, “When you want to get enlightened as much as you wanted air right now, then we can start work.” [Laughter]

Ken: Okay, so this is not going to go over in today’s world very well.

Student: He’ll be accused of waterboarding.

Ken: So there’s very little concrete that I can give you. First, this has to become so important to you, you’re going to do it whatever it takes and then it’s the usual process. You go and you talk with people, you hear various teachers speak, and as I say in Wake Up to Your Life, your teacher is a person to whom you will listen to, even when you are completely crazy. That’s your teacher. It’s someone who can cut through or the relationship is such that you’ll wake up no matter how crazy you are with them, that’s your teacher. And how you find that person, I don’t know. You look and when I was journeying over land, I started looking for my teacher in Iran and started asking questions and lots of people were on the road then it was when you could travel through the Middle East rather safely, and one thing just led to another and that was that. That’s about all I can tell you. Okay, good.

Practice questions

Student: I really don’t have a question.

Ken: Why are you here?

Student: I come to practice here because I enjoy the company of others while I’m sitting. I like the energy in the room. I’m just trying to be a more compassionate person. So where I’m at right now this works for me so I don’t have a burning question. In fact, I don’t like to have those question and answer sessions about my practice because I don’t have a burning question about my practice.

Ken: Is that why you don’t like to have question and answer? [Laughter]

Student: No I don’t think so. I don’t feel like I need to have a burning question about my practice.

Ken: Okay, so may I ask you a question? Thank you. What gets in the way of compassion for you?

Student: Well, I just tend to be judgmental about myself and others.

Ken: Would you like to do anything about that?

Student: Yeah.

Ken: Okay. [Laughter]

Student: That seems like a good idea.

Ken: Okay, when you’re being judgmental, what do you experience in your body?

Student: It’s not a good feeling in my stomach.

Ken: Can you describe the feeling in your stomach?

Student: I guess it’s just kind of a … I can imagine it, but I can’t describe it very well. It’s a hardening, I guess I would almost say., so what I’m looking for is a softening of that.

Ken: If that feeling, if that hard feeling in your stomach isn’t there, what difference does it make in the way you relate to people?

Student: Well, I mean I’m not always like that. [Laughter] Mostly when I relate to people it’s pleasant and all that. So it’s like that.

Ken: Okay, do you have any idea of what triggers that hardening?

Student: No, not yet.

Ken: Okay. So I’m going to give you a suggestion if it’s okay. Whenever you notice that hardening is there, don’t say anything, just breathe and experience it. Be a little bit curious about, “How is this here?” and just actually feel that hardening before you do anything, okay.

Student: I will. Thank you.

Ken: Yes.

Student: I took refuge in 1991 with Lama Lodru in San Francisco.

Ken: I haven’t seen Lama Lodru for many years, but I know him and knew him back in 1971. [Laughs]

Student: And I have a path, a journey, circuitous routes and I have a teacher who I met about three years ago. I don’t see her very often. I speak with her probably every few months and that’s just how it is right now. I’m not really certain if there … well, change is always happening so something will happen, but I don’t have any specific goal at the moment. I’m not really sure I ever did. I don’t think I jumped into Buddhist practice to be a better person. I’m a midwife and so it’s been a long road of … and a mom, raised two kids to college and all those things provide plenty of opportunity … lessons of learning. I have a daily practice and I study, sometimes I lose it altogether, the thread. I have those reactive moments and feel pissed off and then, and then the dharma is there. So I’m not really sure what next if any … I mean it’s not so much … even “What next?” is not quite the right question I wanna ask. It seems like this precious human life is rather short and so …

Ken: Well, if you were to die tomorrow, how would you feel?

Student: Okay, as long as it was quick. [Laughter] I think we all wish for that— silently into the night.

Ken: So this is one of the most important aspects of practice I think: to be able to die. It sounds negative, but it isn’t, to be able to die with no regrets.

Student: I’m sorry, what did you …

Ken: To be able to die with no regrets. And that’s actually not a bad way to approach practice, so that that can die with no regrets. It’s going to bring you in touch with a lot of stuff. TS Eliot in Four Quartets, I’m not sure I can remember it, but it’s the second or third gift of old age:

The rending pain of reenactment, of all that you have done and been; the shame of things ill done and done to others’ harm, which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Four Quartets, T.S.Eliot, 1943

Sorry, should I say that again?
Things ill done and done to others’ harm, which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Student: It is hard to hear that.

Ken: Yes, I know, move up, I’ve got a very soft voice. The more thoroughly we relate to our mortality, the fuller we live our lives. That’s why I think this bucket list thing is really a very strange phenomenon. It was very much on my teacher’s mind. I remember—and this is almost 20 years before he died—I was sitting in his room once and he said, “Ken, what they say in the sutras is true.” Now the sutras consists of about a hundred volumes. [laughter] I’m going like “what?, I say “Rimpoche what do they say in the sutras?” “Old age is a drag” [laughter] Life is something that happens to us, in a certain sense we didn’t choose it, we just found ourselves here. And I think one way of looking at practice is, “how do we live our lives without struggling with what we experience?”

And you’ve certainly learned something about that through the challenges being a midwife in this culture, which I know from talking with other midwives is somewhat non-trivial. And you’ve done that successfully to the point that you’ve been able to raise two kids and put them through college. That’s no small achievement. So there have been many struggles in that I’m sure, but basically you’ve found a way to do all of that. And you have a practice now, which just from the way you talk about it is very, very much part of your life and you have a person with whom you check in periodically. And so I would encourage you just to continue in that and look at the ways in which you struggle with what arises in your life and see what you can do about that. And that’s about it. How does this sound?

Student: It sounds really close. It made me think of another question, but I don’t want to take up to much …

Ken: That’s okay, go ahead.

Student: I think it’s very true that my life has been around a lot of struggle, maybe like many people. And so how do you stop that?

Ken: It’s not a case of stopping the … we can’t control what happens in our lives. Anything can happen. I was in Alabama for six months over the summer. Now people are struggling with snow there. They’re not well prepared for that. Okay, so here you are in the deep south and they’re dealing with a snow and ice storm. Now snow and ice storm causes a certain amount of inconvenience here, but everybody here knows how to deal with, they don’t. When was the last time they drove with snow on the road? Never. So this is just an example of how unpredictable life is and things can change at any point.

So it isn’t about making our lives nice and smooth etc., because you can’t, but when good things happen, people can struggle with those. When bad things happen, people can struggle with those. And from my perspective, I feel that what practice is about is learning how to meet whatever life presents us and do so in a way in which we aren’t struggling, which is quite nontrivial.

And this is why it says in the sutras that bodhisattvas welcome adversity, [laughs] which I’ve always found a very, very difficult thing to relate to. But it is actually true. When we encounter really, really difficult situations, then we discover or understand at a much deeper level how we struggle and we can bring attention and awareness to that so that we can find a way to be with those very difficult situations and not struggle. In fact, there’s a book that I’ve brought here, Reflections on Silver River. There are six verses in which Tokme Zongpo describes really difficult situations and how to be with them so that you aren’t struggling.

Student: And that’s the goal?

Ken: Well, it is a goal for some people. Going back to the framework for this conversation, I think each of us has to define our own goal or our own reason for practicing. And so I don’t want to say it is the goal, it is a goal. It may or may not be your goal. And again here I’ll refer to my friend Stephen Bachelor because I’m paraphrasing this, but this is the sentiment in the opening paragraph of one of his books:

Buddhism in its institutional forms provides very powerful answers to questions of the spirit, but sometimes the power of the answers overwhelms the stammering voice, which is asking the questions.

The Faith to Doubt, Stephen Batchelor

Student: That’s nice.

Ken: And I’ve always, in my work with people, I want them to be able to hear the stammering voice and that’s where the conversation starts. So I don’t …pardon?… ahh, that is The Faith to Doubt I believe. Okay. It’s a very uneven book, but the opening paragraph is great. [laughter] Okay. Does that help?

On having no teacher

Student: So I was also curious about your ideas on how to find a teacher, but another thought came up, what would you say would be the limitations of not having a teacher? I mean, in today’s world, we have, as you said, so many sources and books and podcasts and groups like these, which in some sense you have a lot of teachers. But not having a one-on-one teacher, which I don’t, I’d like to, but I don’t.

Ken: So do you play a musical instrument?

Student: Yes.

Ken: What do you play?

Student: I play the guitar.

Ken: Guitar. Have you ever had a guitar teacher?

Student: Yes.

Ken: How did you find them?

Student: I think I got a recommendation from the first teacher and then another teacher. Yeah.

Ken: You’ve got all of this material on guitars, you’ve got all the podcasts now you can even get apps which teach you. So why’d you bother with a teacher?

Student: Well, for me it’s more about motivation.

Ken: Okay.

Student: The teacher, I think there’s people that teach themselves guitar and do a fine job, but for me, having a teacher was good.

Ken: Yeah, it provides motivation but I imagine you learned other things rather than just staying motivated.

Student: Yeah, absolutely.

Ken: I think it’s an appropriate analogy There are many pitfalls in spiritual practice, many ways we can fool ourselves, many ways we can get going in the wrong way and having someone who knows the territory can be very, very helpful, really helpful. And one of the reasons I developed one-on-one work with people is I found that people would struggle for six months or a year with an aspect of practice that I could clear up in a five minute conversation or less. And so I wanted to know what was going on so that they didn’t spend all of that time struggling in a way which wasn’t really helpful to them. So that’s why a teacher can be helpful. But as I was saying to this gentleman here, that comes when you want a teacher, you wanted to learn guitar badly enough that you talked to some friends, got a recommendation, you found that someone, and you’ve continued to work with them all of these years. So obviously it’s someone who works for you. And I think spiritual practice is very analogous to developing artistic ability because when you play guitar, it doesn’t really produce anything useful in the world, nor does our practice. [Laughs]

But at the same time it’s extremely important to us. It’s really vital to us and you love the music and I think that as people mature in their practice, they love practice. Not in a selfish or self-absorbed way, but it’s something that they have an emotional connection with that’s an expression of who they are, very much the way artistic ability and talent is. And just as artistic talent and ability can be greatly enhanced with a good teacher. So I think it is the same for spiritual practice. Okay.

Student: Thank you.

Ken: You don’t have to grimace.

Vicky: I don’t. [laughter] Smiling in grimace. I’ve trying to figure out, to figure out what I want to ask. It has been such a good conversation I think regarding this topic of the teacher—students, how to put it into words. So recently in the Shambhala tradition we have meditation instructors and I’ve been practicing in the tradition since the early nineties and took refuge with Pema Chodron initially, but never had a one-on-one relationship with her.

Ken: That’s not how she works.

Vicky: As beautiful as we can learn from her and a large group of people. And it feels like she’s speaking to you personally. Her writing is that way. I love, I love her. I have a deep devotion for her and I think that she’s sort of been a guiding light on the Buddhist path for me. When I was in the Bay Area living there, I felt like I had so many teachers and really smart, wonderful people steeped in the dharma and really smart and compassionate and I felt well guided. And then moving to Boise and then to Salt Lake City, it’s like, wow, we’re just struggling to create something, some semblance of a sangha. And I finally finding my peeps here and feeling like we do have a nice energy as small as we are, so blah, blah, blah. What I’m trying to get to is recently my meditation instructor who lives in Berkeley, we were talking about how to make sure I get the steps done in order to take the next major training in the Shambala lineage.

Anything that we do essentially we have to travel to do. And so I went on this sort of complaint, rant for about five minutes about it with him and he said, “whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Vicky, be careful of the poverty mentality when looking for and considering the next step or who your teacher is, if you’ve got a complaint, if you have suggestions, have a conversation with someone and talk with someone about that.” I got that I think.

So I’ve been thinking about, I have been struggling for quite a while with this vacillating between a poverty mentality. There’s no one here, I can’t quite get to the Sakyong and what do I do in the meantime. And then stepping back and recognizing what I do have, which is a very rich relationship with my meditation instructor. Very regular meetings and richness. And I wonder about that thing in me. And it kind of points back to what you were saying earlier about that consumer kind of … it’s not that what I have isn’t enough, that I need more or I need the next best Tibetan teacher. Or why is it that Tibetan equals wiser than a Ken McLeod, than a Russell Delman, than a whoever else is around teaching. It gets confusing sometimes and I have to go … just step back and look at what I do have and rest with that and it feels so rich.

Ken: Well, this is quite a non-trivial question you’re raising in my opinion. And I think it speaks to many aspects of practice that aren’t often talked about. So I appreciate you posing it the way that you have. There is within the context of Tibetan buddhism in general, and it’s very understandable, the idea that the source people are the Tibetans, that’s the real thing, and everybody else is a pale limitation. [Laughs] It’s amazingly hard for people to overcome that prejudice.[Laughs] And the fact is that there are now Westerners who have trained and practiced very, very deeply and many of them you’ll never have heard of because they’re living alone and living quietly. But they’re very, very good, very good. This is part of the maturation that is taking place. I was extremely fortunate to have met Kalu Rinpoche who is one of the last teachers of the last generation to have lived and practiced in Tibet, the old school, Dilgo Khyentse, the 16th Karmapa and so forth.

Now as David Chapman puts it, people over 50—now he wrote this about 10 years ago, he said 40, and it was a few years ago— so I’m going to change it to 50. “This was the last generation in the world to have contact with intact traditions before they were frayed by the onslaught of modernism.” And now we’re in a very, very different world. And I think all of us are learning how to live and operate and practice and learn, in this world. I think there are many, many unknown questions which is why I think Jeff suggested this topic to begin with.

Three functions of a teacher

Ken: One of the things I would like to pick up on, what you said, that may help to clarify. Earlier I said there were basically three functions of a teacher. Reveal possibilities, help you develop the skills and abilities that you need in order to practice, and point out your own material that gets in the way. Those three functions don’t necessarily need to be in the same person.

Vicky: And they haven’t been.

Ken: For you, yeah, but for many people they look to have them in the same person and sometimes that creates an impossible situation. In Tibet, they were very rarely in the same person. You would have people like his holiness the Dalai Lama or the Karmapa who acted as inspiration and revealed possibilities and there might be occasional interaction with them. Then you had instructors and you had someone you worked with very closely who pointed things out to you. So these were all different possibilities. And as you pointed out, just now for you Pema Chodron is a person who inspired and was very helpful in that way. And you have a very rich relationship with your meditation instructor and you can appreciate that. And I think that’s a very good model on which to build.

The deeper question you’re asking, okay, looking for something more. [laughs] Well, I think we all go through a period like that. Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind talks about the four horses, which comes from one of the Theravadan sutras and the sutra says:

The best horse gallops as soon as you ask it to. And the second best horse gallops, as soon as you raise the whip. The third horse doesn’t gallop up until it feels the pain of the whip on the skin. But the fourth horse doesn’t gallop until it feels the pain of the whip in the marrow of its bones.

Zen Mind Beginners Mind, Suzuki Roshi, 1970

Ken: Which horse do you want to be? [Laughter] Well, most of us want to be the best horse, the first horse. And if we can’t be the first maybe the second horse. Then Suzuki Roshi— who I never met, but I think is quite wonderful—points out that the fourth horse is the most useful and he has this wonderful line. “It is through your own imperfections that you’ll find your firm way seeking mind.” And that’s what’s really important. We want the very best of the highest vehicle or the most powerful meditation technique or the very best teacher and things like that. That isn’t actually what’s important, even though it seems to be very important. What’s important is understanding what we’re doing and it being really important to us to do it. It sounds like you are moving in that direction and you can go on studying and at a certain point— and this is a very important point in people’s practice—you have to move from looking out there, to making what you’ve learned your own.

And that’s a transition which many people find quite challenging. And I think it’s a transition that a good teacher can be very helpful with, so that whether it’s taking and sending or tonglen or mahamudra or any of these things, you say, “okay, I know this practice, this practice means something to me, now I’m just going to go with it.” And you stop looking. Kongtrul the Great, put it this way, “When you are studying, study everything under the sun, when you reflect keep an open mind, when you practice pick one thing and go deeply.” And when is that appropriate in a particular person’s practice? That’s hard to tell. But it comes about and then you just go and things change from there. And then other people go and get Shambhala level 16, 18, 20, a hundred, but you know where you are in your practice.

Vicky: I appreciate that.

Ken: Okay, Jeff?

Jeff: We’re conveniently out of time. [laughter]

Ken: Really, wow that went quickly.

Jeff: So we’re inconveniently out of time, but if someone has a burning question that they need to put out before we finish, I’d be happy to hand the mic over.

Ken: Please anybody? Yes.

Student: Well, I’d like to follow up on what Vicky said because much of what she said is my experience in some way. I have been at the Shambhala thing for 44 years and I’ve met Trungpa Rinpoche and the whole thing, and I have a practice right now and I’m struggling with it, Because part of it is the isolation here in terms of other people doing the same practice that I’m doing, and so I don’t have that connection, which to me feels really important. And so I keep saying we’re moving, we are moving to the Bay area this year, next year, whatever. [Laughter] And it’s like, well, okay, so then I go through this, well, this is a nice community here and maybe we’ll have some teachers and Ken’s here and blah, blah.

But I’m basically really stuck in this practice, which is not a good thing, to be doing a practice that I don’t feel I’m connecting to. So I’m not sitting down every day and doing this practice, which takes hours and hours and hours to do, and two months have gone by now and I could have had another 200,000 mantras done. [laughter] But I haven’t because I don’t have the motivation because my teachers are in New York or in San Francisco. I mean, sure I have thousands of books I could pick up and read and all of that. But what it comes down to is I ask myself when I get to Santa Rosa or wherever, is that really going to do it? I mean, just because I’m doing this practice with 30 other people, but this is my process that I’ve been going through.

Trusting your own journey

Ken: Well I’m going to put both feet very firmly in my mouth. As I was saying to this person here, listen to the stammering voice that is asking the questions. I’ve worked with any number of people whose practice has gone flat or stale and there are various reasons that that can happen, but they described their experience in very similar terms to yours and they look for community or something to revitalize their practice.

In my own experience, that’s not the problem. And this is where I put my feet in my mouth. The problem is that you’re practicing on somebody else’s agenda. Now, there are many good reasons to practice on somebody else’s agenda in the beginning, because we don’t know what we’re doing and people have a certain amount of experience and guidance. They say do this, and we go, oh, and we discover lots of possibilities. We discover lots of possibilities and things that we didn’t know were possible at all. Whole new worlds are revealed to us, and I’m sure you’ve experienced that. But over time, as our own understanding and capabilities develop, that stammering voice is inside us and it’s saying, this is not what I’m interested in. But because we’ve trained in a certain tradition and we feel a devotion and loyalty to that tradition, we don’t hear that stammering voice. And that often, it’s not the only reason, but it’s often why, our practice goes flat.

Student: Oh, I hear that stammering voice.

Ken: Okay, so what are the questions the stammering voice is asking? Please throw the microphone up. If you’re comfortable saying so here?

Student: Not quite sure how to put it, but in some sense, on one level I’m very comfortable where I am, and this seems like, kind of like blasphemy to me.

Ken: Well, I put my foot in my mouth, now it’s your turn. [laughter]

Student: I don’t want to do this. I don’t need to do this. Why am I doing this? I just don’t …

Ken: Yeah, I’ve got that …

Student: But I mean I’m perfectly happy with … I mean that seems kinda … but this is not my ego speaking …

Ken: No, it’s not.

Student: Without saying what?

Ken: No, it’s not …

Student: Really?

Ken: No, it’s not. Let’s use the analogy of art again. You study with the teacher. This teacher has a certain theory about color or maybe about form, and you learn a lot about color or about form. Things about color and form that you didn’t even know were possible. And you develop a certain skill and you enjoy painting. And then at a certain point you have your own relationship with painting and this person is continuing to talk about color and form, but it doesn’t mean anything to you now, is this your ego? Does this possibly reflect that you have developed a certain understanding yourself and now something in you is taking you in a different direction. And this is a very difficult point for people, partially because of the way Tibetan buddhism is presented to us, that, to go your own way or whatever, is your own ego, as you just said. Well, I’m sorry, it isn’t.

Atisha, one of the great figures of Tibetan Buddhism started off in India as a red hot yogin. Brilliant. Studied with his teacher for many years, learned massive things from him and a certain point realized he couldn’t learn anymore. So he went to his teacher and said, “Thank you.” His teacher got really angry with him.

But Atisha made offerings and thanked him for what he’d received. Went on his own way and from there studied bodhicitta . Eventually he came to Tibet and, established a whole lamrim tradition through his things and had tremendous influence. And in India himself, he became kind of a Pope. He was the holder of the seat at Bodhgaya but he recognized that at a certain point he had completed the relationship with that teacher, that he couldn’t learn anything more from that particular teacher.

Student: Or from that particular practice?

Ken: Or from that particular practice.

Student: I’m learning to play the cello.

Ken: Wonderful. [Laughter]

Student: And I practice two or three hours a day and I love it. There you go. So there’s my practice.

Ken: This is how it is, and you will continue, it’s very likely you’ll continue some form of meditation, but it may not be the path that has been laid out for you by various traditions. And this is the case. I mean, there’s so many different traditions and they all lay out paths and there’s great value in all of those paths, but at a certain point the practice is yours, not anybody else’s.

Student: So maybe you just answered my question, but it’s like my investment, 44 years of my investment in this thing. Am I going to just give it up now when I’m right … besides … I don’t know.

I have to read you a poem, I’m going to close with a poem, which will take me a second to find, but I think, i think is appropriate, and I know we have to close. [laughter]

Jeff: Ken, while you’re looking for that, can I throw two things out?

Ken: mmm …

Jeff: They both come from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. One was he taught a thing called the Rigden Weekend, which is all about the king figure in the Shambhala lineage. So this ties back to where Ken began and he made a comment, he said, among the senior Shambala teachers, they’re always asking him for another practice, “Give me another practice, what’s next?” And he said, “I’ve told them, I’ve already taught you enough, teach yourself.”

Ken: Yeah

Jeff: From here you must teach yourself. And if you read the Shambhala, his book, The Shambhala Principle, he says:

Everything is a ceremony.
Everything in life is a ceremony.
And it’s incumbent upon each of us as individuals to understand whether we are taking part in someone else’s ceremony.

The Shambhala Principle, Sakyong Mipham, 2014

Jeff: And I thought that was a very generous way to put it and very useful. So yeah, I think your cello practice is your practice. I think my photography is my practice. It is a dharma practice, no question.

Ken: Here is this poem. Now, this was given to me because I was exploring the possibility of moving to Ithaca, New York. And Ithaca of course is from the Odyssey, which is an accurate analogy for the stage of my life. I don’t know where I’m going, but I keep going places.

As you set out on your journey to Ithaka, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge. The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops, the angry Poseidon—do not fear them: You will never find such as these on your path, if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine emotion touches your spirit and your body. The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops, the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter, if you do not carry them within your soul, if your soul does not set them up before you. Pray that the road is long. That the summer mornings are many, when, with such pleasure, with such joy, you will enter ports seen for the first time; stop at Phoenician markets, and purchase fine merchandise, mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony, and sensual perfumes of all kinds—as many sensual perfumes as you can; visit many Egyptian cities, to learn and learn from scholars. Always keep Ithaka in your mind. To arrive there is your ultimate goal. But do not hurry the voyage at all. It is better to let it last for many years; and to anchor at the island when you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way, not expecting that Ithaka will offer you riches. Ithaka has given you the marvelous voyage. Without her, you would never have set out on the road. She has nothing more to give you. And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you. Wise as you have become, with so much experience, you must already have understood what Ithaka means.

Ithaka, C.P. Cavafy, 1911

Okay, thank you very much for this time. I’m sorry we didn’t get to everybody, but this kind of conversation is, I think, so much better than just me blabbing. So thank you for participating.

Jeff: Would you be kind enough to dedicate the merit on our behalf?

Ken: Sure. Goodness comes from this work we have done. Let not hold it just in me, let it spread to all that is known and awaken good throughout the world. [3 sounds of bell] Thank you.