A vision of the way we want to experience life

Ken: Against the Stream, Santa Monica. I’m very grateful to Matthew for inviting me. I haven’t given a talk to such a large group of people for a very long time. And my preferred way of proceeding is through questions. So I’m just going to say a few words and then I’m going to pick up one question that I’ve already received, and I know at least one other person has some questions, right? Good. And then we’ll go from there.

A few years ago, I attended a panel discussion on the role of religion in a global society at USC. And, a professor of Islam, from Loyola, Marymount, was on the panel, and his mentor in theology was a Presbyterian minister in Toronto, Ontario. On one occasion that minister’s son, and he was a prominent theologian, came to him and said, “I’m leaving the church”. This father didn’t try to persuade him not to, which under the circumstances was a little remarkable. What he said was, “When you, if you leave, if you do, you will lose the vocabulary with which to talk with your friends about the things that are most important to you.”

“You will lose the vocabulary with which to talk with your friends about the things that are most important to you.” I thought that was very intriguing. Now it may not be apparent, but in that sentence you have—perhaps a little buried—the three jewels, buddha, dharma, and the sangha.

What is buddha? Well, one way to consider buddha is that it is our vision of how we’d like to be. It’s our vision of the way we want to experience life. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find a different way of experiencing life? Because there’s some problem in the way you’re experiencing it right now? I think that’s what brings us all here. So that’s one way to consider buddha. It’s our vision for the possibility of a different way of experiencing life.

The vocabulary that we have for talking about that, well, that’s the dharma—the teachings, the words, the vocabulary. And we don’t do this alone. We don’t do it in dependence on others, but there’s a shared intention.

This is something which each of us in our own way is intensely interested in. Interested enough to come here this evening. Interested enough to spend some time each day just sitting quietly, finding our way, whatever that is.

And we come together because it is helpful to meet with like-minded people, some of whom have more experience, some of whom have less, that each has something to contribute to that conversation. So, that’s one way of looking at why we are here this evening.

What can you expect from practice?

Ken: Now, what can you expect from practice? A friend of mine, a good friend, was asked a very similar question after he had completed a three year retreat. Now, three year retreat is a certain form of training in the Tibetan tradition. And he was asked, what was it like? Well, it’s a little hard to sum up three years in a simple sentence.

He said it was the most wonderful and the most disappointing experience he had had in his life. The most wonderful and the most disappointing. Little difficult to put those two together, isn’t it? How many of you have experienced some disappointment in your practice? That’s the majority of people in the room. And how many of you have discovered the possibility of something wonderful in your practice? Similar number. So, you know what this person was talking about—something wonderful and something intensely disappointing at the same time. And that’s actually how it is. For me, if I speak personally, the wonderful part is you actually discover the possibility of experiencing life differently. It starts by forming a different relationship with these things we call thoughts, and then a little later on these things we call emotions and so forth.

And through our practice, we get glimpses now and then that we don’t have to struggle with all of it all the time. We can just let it be, and somehow it takes care of itself. Not quite sure how, we could go into that, that takes us into some deep waters, but it does take care of itself. And then there’s the disappointing part. We glimpse that possibility, we may even experience it, but we keep falling out of it for some reason or another, over and over again, and we don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

The four horses

Ken: In my own training and my own practice, probably like some of you, I’ve have had immense difficulties, which can be summed up in a simple phrase, a pain that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. One of the great helps for that was a passage from Suzuki Roshi’s book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. He talks about one of the sutras. I think this is one of the Middle Length Discourses, but I’m not a Pali scholar, so I don’t really know. But in this, Buddha is describing four horses. The first horse gallops at the indication of its rider—just goes. The second horse gallops when it sees the whip being raised. The third horse gallops when it feels the whip on its skin. And the fourth horse doesn’t gallop until it feels the pain in the marrow of its bones. Which of the four horses would you like to be?

As Suzuki Roshi says, when we hear this, we all want to be the first horse. And if we can’t be the first horse, well we’ll settle for the second. But then he says something very interesting, this is what I like about Suzuki Roshi, he says, which horse do you think Buddha will have the greatest compassion for? The first, second, the third or the fourth? He goes further. He says, in your practice, you’re going to find that the fourth horse is probably the most useful.

I was going to write a book called The Fourth Horse, ’cause I can relate to this very well. And then he says, and this is what I want to pass on to you, “Through your very imperfections you’ll find your firm way-seeking mind.”

“Through your very imperfections, you will find your firm way-seeking mind.”

Student: I didn’t get that. Can you repeat it?

Ken: Thank you for speaking up. I don’t mind saying it three times either. “Through your very imperfections, you will find your firm way-seeking mind.” That’s Suzuki Roshi’s English, but way hyphen seeking, that may be the parts you are missing. Now, it took me a very long time to appreciate what he was talking about. I could relate to this fourth horse business really well, but I didn’t really understand, I don’t think I understood what he meant. And if I did, I didn’t like it.

We hear things about enlightenment. We hear rumors that there is this thing called enlightenment or awakening or what have you. I don’t believe them anymore, but we want, whatever it is it sounds really good, and we want it. But actually that’s somewhat irrelevant. And I can explain why in a few moments. What is relevant, what is very, very important, is what we bring to that quest. Because in that quest we are acting on a clarity, a knowing, whatever you want to call it, but you probably can’t put into words, then you probably can’t communicate to anybody else. But it tells you, I need to go this way. Does anybody know what I’m talking about here? Okay.

And, and I don’t say this lightly at all, our connection with that clarity and knowing is actually brought out through the difficulties that we face in this path. And that was about the last thing I wanted to understand. But here today I can say to you, it is true. You will come to know what you know, through how you meet the difficulties in your life. And thus one is counseled over and over again in Buddhist practice to welcome the difficulties. And I just have a big problem with that, but it’s true. How big a problem did I have with that? There’s a poem by Stephen Crane:

I met a creature in the desert, naked, bestial. Holding his heart in his hands, and eating of it. “Is it good friend?” I asked. “It is bitter,” he said, “but I like it because it is bitter. And because it is my heart.

In the Desert, Stephen Crane

That’s a poem I could really relate to. And through all of this, and virtually everybody I know who’s practiced and has some solidity in the practice, has experienced something pretty similar. Maybe I just hang out with the wrong people, but that’s another story. In the depths of your doubt and despair, you have nothing but your knowing. And then you realize that you don’t need anything else. And the whole practice is about getting rid of all of the stuff that prevents us from knowing our own knowing.

Functioning properly in our lives

Ken: Now, I said that enlightenment, I didn’t believe in it anymore. This was brought home to me by a short piece, by a Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn, who wrote that as lay people it’s not our job to get enlightened. We leave this for the pros, the monks, the nuns. They’re practicing all the time. That’s their job. As lay people, our job is to function properly in our lives. And then in the last paragraph of this article he slips in, “Mind you, the purpose of getting enlightened is to be able to function properly.” So, that’s all I’m going to say.

Q&A

Ken: I’m going to open it up for questions at this point. Questions about your practice. Not theoretical questions, but questions about how are things for you? Don’t be shy. My bite is far worse than my bark. Yes.

What do I get out of meditation?

Student: What am I supposed to get out of meditation? I guess it’s kind of asking.

Ken: What are you supposed to get out of meditation?

Student: What am I supposed to get out of meditation? Because I don’t seem to get a lot.

Ken: You don’t seem to get a lot. Yeah, I know that. I mean, not you, me. May I ask a question here?

Student: Go for it.

Ken: Why do you practice at all?

Student: I don’t I’ve only been here about 12 times, and I come more for the for the speech. Like
for people talking and for for friends rather than the meditation.

Ken: Okay. And what interests you about that? It’s a pretty esoteric subject. So something catches your attention, I guess.

Student: I guess it makes me look at things in different way.

Ken: And why is that of interest to you?

Student: I don’t know. Uh-huh.

Ken: You do know? Okay. Just before you said, “I don’t know.” What were you experiencing?

Student: Getting at my own head.

Ken: Okay. What was that like?

Student: I don’t know. Maybe kind of like a relief, in a way. Uh-huh.

Ken: Okay. Would you like to explore that?

Student: Not tonight.

Ken: That was enough, was it?

Student: You know, it’s like tonight for the half hour, I guess I got a little meditation, a little tiny glimpse of all my … I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe not being aware. Is that maybe a good way of explaining it?

Ken: You became aware of not being aware?

Student: Or I was not aware of being aware. I don’t know which one it is.

Ken: We can go with that. Okay. And how was that for you?

Student: It felt pretty good.

Ken: Okay. And just what you’re saying. You’re saying in your own words what I was trying—in my words—to say earlier: the possibility of experiencing life a different way. Do you follow? Yeah. Okay. Now. Here’s the good news. And here’s the bad news. I’m going to follow in Matthew’s footsteps. But I’ll give the good news first. The good news is meditation is one way to explore that. The bad news. You don’t get that out of meditation. Ball’s in your court.

Student: I was just trying to process that.

Ken: Fair enough. By that, I mean. We sit and we sit and we sit and it’s really sitting. Meditation, in many ways, is a bit like … what sports do you play?

Student: Rock climbing and surfing.

Ken: Okay. You take rock climbing seriously? Yeah. Okay, so, uh, those little hand grips, you have strong hands. You can pull yourself up by the first knuckle of each hand or the first joint.

Student: Not quite there, but. yeah.

Ken: What do you do to develop that ability? Practice? Yeah, that’s what meditation is. That’s what meditation is. It’s practicing. You do this again and again and again and it makes other things possible. And you’re doing it in your rock climbing because you work at this, and work at this. And as you say, you’re not quite there yet , but if you keep doing this, then one day you’re going to be able to put just the first joint over a ledge and be able to pull yourself up. But you don’t get there by wishing it or anything like that. You get there by just practicing and practicing and practicing. And then one day it becomes possible.

Student: The shortcut to all this. Can we do it, though?

Ken: Is there a shortcut to to to that ability in rock climbing?

Student: No, no.

Ken: Okay. So we’re on the same playing field here.

Student: Thank you. Thank you so much.’

Ken: Okay. The woman up front. One second. You’re being recorded for posterity.

The four horses and spiritual talent

Student: Can we talk about four horses again? I understand that it was a metaphor, and that the fourth one is the most useful because when we’re in pain, we grow more than when we’re not. But what about the other three?

Ken: That we just had to go through them to get to the fourth?

Student: Okay. That’s it.

Ken: Well, I helped set up one of the first dharma centers in Vancouver in the early 70s, and at that time there was a lot of emphasis on learning the Tibetan tradition. And there was one young man in the who was just very, very bright, particularly with language. And he picked up Tibetan in no time at all. Wasn’t difficult for him. And so everybody asked him to teach. And he was hopeless at teaching because it was just so easy for him. Benny Goodman, who was a great clarinetist in the 30s and 40s, his daughter says he would just drive her mad because she would work at the piano and he would say, “Just do this. It’s so easy.” And she’d say, “It’s not so easy for me.” So very, very talented people. And there’s such a thing as spiritual talent as there is physical talent and mathematical talent and musical talent and things like that. Things just come to them. And in some ways they’re blessed. And in some ways they’re cursed. Because, like our friend here with rock climbing—and most of us with our meditation and our practice—when we put all of that time and effort in it—and it is difficult and it’s hard—when something does start to form in, possibilities start to open. We don’t take them for granted because we know what it took and we don’t toss them off lightly. And when other people struggle in the same way, we can really understand and relate to that because we know what that is in ourselves. So that’s why the fourth horse. But there are lots of people who have the first and the second and the third, and they have their own paths. But I can only talk about the one I know.

Student: Okay.

Ken: Other questions over here. Straight down this row.

Communication amongst the divided

Student: Hopefully I can. I’m still formulating this. This is definitely fourth horse. It’s about communications and amongst the divided. So I was talking to you about your no enemies dharma talk. And at the part where you were discussing about how there won’t be a revolution but more of an evolution. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Ken: This is deeply important, I think. But I was saying in that talk—you may recall—is that when we have a vision for a different world, we’ll call that world B, and we have our world A—in fact, I was having exactly this conversation with somebody this afternoon—then we want to go straight to B and set up B, which involves fomenting a revolution against A. But this is to say, when we do that, we necessarily are saying A isn’t valid. And everybody who is in world A, well, they may not go along with that because that’s the world they know. So rather than trying to stage a revolution. And history shows that not in all cases, but in many cases, what happens after a revolution is often worse than what was
before. Then how? How can society a evolve or world A evolve into world B? And most people don’t want to look at that because it is much more work. It takes much longer and it never works out as you think it’s going to anyway, because evolution never does. It always has its own course. But you start doing that and other and other possibilities emerge.

And in my corporate work, I had the opportunity to do exactly that, that we I was brought in to help change the culture of a corporation. But we did not have a grassroots basis. We didn’t have any support from senior management. We are few people right in the middle, and we quietly set up a subculture which embodied the changes that we wanted to see. And through a lot of difficult work and a few mistakes. We managed to make that culture sufficiently robust that it was not only self-
perpetuating, but capable of spreading. And in the end it became assimilated into the main culture and there was never any revolution. So I feel kind of good about that. But, uh, and, and the people that I worked with, they really did it. I just opened up possibilities for them. But they we didn’t know where we were going to go when we started. We didn’t know what it was going to look like. We just started exploring.

And so when you feel something deeply in your heart and you see things could be different, then rather than campaigning and pushing against and all of that stuff, find people who think the same way you do. Build up momentum and enroll them and let things evolve out of that movement, rather than trying to stage a revolution or foment a revolution. Personally, I think you’ll be more successful
in the long run, though you may not be around to see the results.

Student: How did they assimilate that? How did the team that wanted to stay in the way they were doing their business, how did they …

Ken: No, not everybody wanted world B, but we created world B within world A, and as one person said, “This is the most interesting thing that I’ve come across in 20 years in working in this company.” So it met the needs of many, many people, but it never formed an antagonistic relationship with the other culture. And they they worked together. And now world A appreciates that culture. And the people who wanted that culture, they have a place to go to.

Student: Was there still in that a division, or were those lines now more blurred?

Ken: It’s more become a spectrum. There are people who are still very much one way, but there’s a whole range in between now which wasn’t there before. All right. Other questions. We have time for a few more. Yes. One here and then one right behind you. Yeah. You first, and then behind you.

Finding the practice that speaks to you

Student: I’m a dabbler in a number of different kinds of meditation, including TM, Zen, and I’ve just been studying Vipassana recently. And when you asked us in the beginning about if we had any questions about what we were about to do, I wondered if we were all doing different kinds of meditation what your expectations were there? And if you advocate one kind?

Ken: “Is there anybody doing something different from what I was doing?” What are you really asking here?

Student: I guess I’m asking you if you advocate one technique to move down the road more efficiently.

Ken: In Tibet, one of the great teachers of the 19th century once said: “When you study or when you’re
learning, learn everything under the sun. Everything that you can. When you reflect. Keep your mind open like the sky. When you practice. Pick one thing and go deep.” Now, I have no idea what that one thing should be for you. And from the sound of it, you don’t know at this point either. But in your exploring, it’s possible that one day you’ll meet a teacher, or a practice, or a tradition, or out of all of your exploring, something is going to come to you and you say, “This is it.: And then you just do it.

Back in the pioneering days a person didn’t need a bunch of different tools to build a cabin. They could do it all with an ax. They could chop down the tree, hew the logs, cut the notches, do everything. They could do everything with an ax. They really knew how to use an ax. And something happens when we take one technique and really, really come to know it very, very deeply. The Tibetans had
an expression for this: “In India they practiced one deity and saw hundreds. We practiced hundreds and seen none.” And it reflects what I’m trying to say here. You’ll know when the time is right. It
has to speak to you, and it will be your practice for a period of time. And that period of time may be the rest of your life, or it may be five years or whatever.

One of the great teachers of the 11th century, a person called Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, fantastic scholar. I mean, just feats of memory that you would just leave your jaw dropping, well versed in all of the intricacies of very subtle and advanced techniques. And then he came across this technique called taking and sending, which consists of imagining taking in all of the suffering of others and giving your own happiness and joy to them, synchronizing that with the coming and going of the breath. And that was his practice. That’s what he did for the rest of his life. That’s what spoke to him. And I could give you other stories of other people I know who have found that one thing. And so you keep looking and you practice. You find what speaks to you, and then you know what to do.

Student: What was the name of that practice again?

Ken: Taking and sending. In Tibetan it’s called lojong.

Right behind you.
Student: Actually, you already answered my question. Go ahead.

Ken: Anyway. It may be a different answer. You never know.

Student: I was actually going to ask about technique. And I sometimes find myself swaying and sometimes kind of spiraling very, very micro movements.

Ken: Just like this when you’re meditating?

Student: Yeah. And even even even smaller.

Ken: Yeah. I was doing that so you could see my hand. Because I could say, “Like this?” Go on.

Student: And so I’m wondering. When I realize that I’m doing it. I sometimes don’t know if I should stop or if I should go with it. And, then it’s a two part question. And the same thing happens sometimes when I’m flooded with an emotion and I feel, you know, maybe a trembling tremor of tears in my brow, not in my eyes, but in my brow. And then at that point, when I realize it’s happening, I purposefully stop. Sometimes what I don’t know is how far do I go with it? How far do I stop it?

Ken: Okay. I’m so glad you asked this question. One of my teachers. Uh Dezhung Rinpoche very kindly took on a group of us, and we drove down from Vancouver to see him. In the early 70s he lived in Seattle and e was teaching us. He taught us a lot, but he was teaching us basic meditation at this point, and he was describing how he was trained. He said, as a monk in the monastery, when they were learning meditation, they were all led into the temple. And they sat down on a bench and a string was strung down, and they were positioned so that their noses just touched the string. And they
were to sit like that for two hours at a time. Every time the string moved, they all got beaten up. And then he leaned forward and he said, “This is not how you learn to meditate. This is how you learn to sit still.”

Now. I’m just going to excise that part. I’m going to be good this evening. It’s an effort. But. We have the idea, or we get the idea sometimes that we should be sitting really still. But there’s a little bit of danger there. And that is we can become rigid. And we lock up energy in our body and prevent it from moving. And that can be really problematic. One of my students very much encourages people as they’re sitting—those little movements that arise, just let them happen rather than trying to hold still. And the consequence of that is the people he works with are much more relaxed when they sit
because they aren’t trying to hold themselves still. And because they’re more relaxed, they actually experience a deeper stillness. You follow? And so there can be a little bit of exploration here. So if there’s little movement like this and it’s not disturbing, why stop it?

Now, the second part of your question suggests there’s some kind of energy moving in your system. This is not the appropriate time and place to go into that, but it sounds like when there’s a kind
of build up, you stop and let it disperse, which is probably a good thing, but it might be good to
explore that a little further with someone who’s knowledgeable about such things. But the but basically, if you allow the body to move a little bit when you’re sitting, I don’t mean like this, but just okay. Sometimes people aren’t aware, but when we sit, as you breathe in the chest expands. As the chest expands, the chin tends to move down a little bit and the back of the neck opens up and all the reverse
happens when you breathe out. And those are all totally natural movements. And if you’re really deeply in the experience of breathing, you find that the body is extremely alive and moving in many, many subtle and little ways. And we don’t try to hold all of that. That would be like trying to hold a cat. So we just let the body breathe in its own way. One of the instructions, which comes from the mountains of Tibet:

Body like a mountain.
Breath like the wind.
Mind like the sky.

And when people hear, “Body like a mountain,” they think, “Oh, mountain.” But I have to ask them, “How much effort does a mountain exert?” It exerts no effort at all. It just sits there. So when we sit in practice, don’t hold your body stiff and make it rigid like a rock. Be like a mountain. Just be there, and let the stillness come from within rather than being imposed from without. That help?

Student: Thank you. yes.

Ken: Yes. Okay. Well, the magic hour has arrived. Matthew.

Matthew: It was great to practice together and wonderful to have Ken.