The tale of the talking dog

Ken: Did I tell you about the talking dog?

Student: Not in a long time.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: Not in a long time.

Ken: Oh, well there was a guy driving around the backwoods of Tennessee and as he was driving around he went through a small town and he saw a sign on the lawn of one of the houses and it said, “Talking Dog! $10” Thought that’s interesting. So he stopped and got out and he saw this old man sitting on a rocking chair on the porch of this house. So he walked over and said, “You have a talking dog?”

“Yep.”

“Well, uh, could I see him?”

“Yep.”

“Well where is he?”

“Round back, outside his kennel.”

So he, the guy walked around and went to the backyard and there was a kennel. In front of it was a dog just lying there quietly. So he walked up and said, “Do you talk?”

And the dog pricked up his ears, looked at him and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

The guy goes, “What!?” So he sat down and said, “That’s amazing. Tell me a bit about yourself.”

“Well when I was young I realized I was a little unusual, I could talk. And my owner at that time, happened to be in the CIA so he took me into Langley and they thought they could make use of me so they shipped me all over the place. Embassies all over the country, all over the world. Sat in on a lot of meetings, nobody figured that a dog could understand human speech let alone report on it. So, we did a lot of good intelligence work; it was kind of interesting. But after a few years you know that’s a lot of travel and even though it was really interesting I was just getting tired from all travel and one place after another so I decided to settle down, and found a mate, and took a job with airport security which is more stable, and had a mess of pups, raised a family. They’re all grown. None of them talk unfortunately, and my mate died some years ago so I’ve stayed on a little bit with the airport security. It’s been kind of interesting. I mean you meet some really interesting characters and we did some good work there too. But I’m getting older and a bit tired now so basically I’m retired and I just do sometimes I get a few special requests but that’s what I do.

The guy was just sitting there shaking his head. He can’t believe this. So he comes back to the old man on the porch. He says, “That dog is amazing! It’s unbelievable! How come you only want $10 for him?”

He said, “Well he’s a liar. He never did any of that stuff.” [Laughter]

Fabricated worlds and actual experience

Ken: Now you may wonder what the hell does that have to do with the topic for the day? Well to explore this topic of There Is No Enemy I’m going to talk a bit this morning about distinguishing between two worlds which I mentioned briefly last night but I’m going to go into it a little bit more. And the two worlds, we can call them different things, and this business of two worlds shows up again and again though it’s described in very different ways in different traditions.

But the way we’re going to talk about it is the world we fabricate, or construct, whatever word you want to use there, and the world of actual experience. Now I have to throw in a caution even at this early stage because there isn’t a sharp division between these two worlds; it’s really more of a spectrum and I’ll explain why in a minute. But it can be quite useful to make this distinction for various reasons which I hope will become clear as we go forward.

The reason I say it is not a sharp distinction is that this notion of the world we actually experience is kind of an idealization and can easily gloss over the physical component of the mind-body organism. For instance take a simple example: color. Now, how many colors are there?

Kerry: 256,000. [Laughter]

Ken: Ah. Well you could have said 256 it depends on your …

Kerry: That’s my [unclear].

Ken: Yeah. You know, though for certain systems there’s only 64, or 32. This is computer talk of course. Because it depends on many digits you can use to describe a color. But that’s actually a very good example, Kerry because it’s we’re talking about the same kind of thing with respect to the body.

There are millions and millions of colors, all different forms of subtlety. But they come about through a very very complex process. None of the colors exist independently. They’re all a product of perception. In the “world” quotation marks—big quotation marks here—that actually exists there isn’t any such thing as color. There’s light of various wavelengths, though we could wind, tie ourselves up in philosophical knots pretty quickly wondering whether light actually exists but I’m not going to go there right now. There’s electromagnetic radiation of different frequencies. It so happens that the—I think it’s the cones right?— in the retina; they fire according to how much they’re stimulated by light of red, green and blue falling on them. And it is the processing of that electrical stimulation, etc. which produces in sensation of color. And even that statement is just full of all kinds of holes so don’t hold me to it.

My point here is that color is actually something we fabricate. Now we don’t fabricate it intentionally, but the way that perception takes place filters our experience so that we see the world in terms of color. Unless our cones check out and there’re some people who do see only black and white. There’s also anthropological evidence that shows color is a learned capacity. There are tribes which see or used to see only in black and white. There are tribes which saw in black, white and red. There are tribes which saw in black, white, red and blue. You know, you wonder why white, red and blue are always the colors of flags. There’s a reason. And then the next color is green. Once you get up to seven colors then all of the colors become available.

So even as such a basic thing as color is in some sense a processed experience. So when people talk about what they actually experienced they’re really talking about something pretty mythical. When I talk about the world we fabricate primarily it’s fabricated through language. So, didn’t bring enough of these. Okay.

What’s this? Those who’ve been here before I was just going to ask to quietly keep shut, but we’re not going in that direction today. What is this?

Student: Paper.

Student: [Unclear]

Student: Piece of …

Student: A square.

Student: Square.

Ken: Yeah so what you see is a white square, shape and color. At this distance I doubt that any of you can pick up much texture. But through association, memory, what you’ve learned, you know, okay it’s a napkin. A paper napkin. And so paper napkin is what we fabricate that’s part of the world we fabricate through language. White square is closer to what we actually experience directly through our senses. That’s the distinction that I’m making. Now why is this important?

Well, if you say, “Okay that’s a napkin.” You can say to me, “Could I have that napkin?” And I can give it to you. Right? And if you have a napkin, or a red piece of paper or you have any number of other of things I can ask you to give that to me. And we even have developed medium of exchange for this so we don’t have to trundle all of this stuff, we call it money. So that you give me a certain amount of money, I can go and buy whatever I want. And we have this world or trading, and exchange and so forth.

But if we go to the world of experience and you say I experience white square I would say, “Well give me that experience.” What happens now? Can you give it to me? I had a girlfriend many many years ago and we were at a diner somewhere or other, and she was taking great issue with this point of view. So I said, “Okay, give me the experience of the pie you’re eating right now.” Then she got really upset with me because you can’t. We can’t trade experience. We’d like to think that when we hear, or see things, or taste things or what have you, we have the same experience. But we don’t. We each have our individual experience and we may agree on terms to talk about it and if you’ve ever listened to these professional tasters talk about things they’ve developed a whole language for talking about that kind of thing. But it’s always individual experience.

But because we fabricate ideas about this, because we want to feel that we’re having the same experience, then we say, “Well, this is beautiful,” and “This is the truth” and so forth, and we come up with even more abstract things. And this is where we begin to get into really serious trouble.

Now, just to give another example: how many of you’ve read Stranger in a Strange Land? It’s compulsory reading you know. There are three or four books you have to read if you’re going to practice Buddhism. Alice in Wonderland, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Stranger in a Strange Land and I think The Tempest by Shakespeare.

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: No, that’s not essential for…I think it’s a great book but it’s not essential for Buddhism. The other ones are essential. Found compulsory reading list–I should put that out for people who attend retreats with me.

Well in a Stranger in a Strange Land it’s where the word grok comes from. How many have heard that word? Okay, you know. And I can’t remember the term for it the faithful observer or something like that? No, the witness right? These professionals who can …

Student: They wear all white.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: Yeah.

Ken: What were they called?

Student: The witness.

Ken: Yeah, the witness, yeah. So if you said to a witness, “What color is that house over there?” The witness would say, “The wall facing us is white.” Cause they described only what they actually saw. And we’ve done this as an exercise in other retreats. I mean I have people pair up, look at each other right in the face and say what do you see? And first take I always get is, “I see a wise person,” or, “I see a person in pain,” or, “I see someone who’s happy,” or something like that. And say, “Is that what you see?” “Yeah, that’s what I see.” Well, that’s not what you see. All of that’s inference, All of that’s fabrication. What you see is two eyes, a nose, lips, cheeks etc. That’s what you actually see.

We are so steeped in this world that we fabricate through concept, and ideas, and interpretations that most of us have little connection with the world that we actually experience. And because we live in that world of … I go, there we are … fabricated by mind. I mean they’re very important reasons. It’s the world of relationship. In the world we actually experience there is no relationship, there’s just experience. A friend is simply a set of experiences and associations which you apply the term friend to.

So in certain sense the world of actual experience would be pretty lonely except for one small thing. There isn’t any “I” in the world of actual experience either because “I” is simply another experience. Which is a useful thing to remember. So it’s a very different way of experiencing things. And then there’s a world of relationship and interaction and as we discussed last night where there’s a relationship and interaction there’s inevitably conflict. And particularly in today’s world ideally—ideally I should get rid of that word too—when you live in both worlds, when you’re open to the experience of both worlds things are very, very rich. When you live primarily only in one of those worlds then things get a bit strange and out of balance.

Living fully in both worlds

Ken: Now, when you live only in the world of experience then there’s no such thing as relationship, there’s no such thing as giving and exchanging ’cause you can’t ’cause you’re right in the world of experience. It’s very alive, it’s very immediate but it’s possibly not very functional.

On the other hand if you live only in the world of interaction, of fabrication, then in a certain sense you lose touch with your own personal experience. And this has to a large extent happened in our society. Consumerism is based on having people live only in the world of interaction. And certain things happen here: love becomes reduced to sex, and an interaction between two people because you lose that emotional quality. And there are a lot of other shifts that take place.

There’s a school of psychology that developed in the Seventies I guess. Transactional analysis. Anybody remember that stuff? Okay, this is horrible stuff because it reduced the richness of interaction between two people with all the complexity of that experience to a series of transactions. So it thus reduced relationships based on love and connection to mutual benefit relationships. There was another example which just slipped my mind. So to live fully is to be able to live and function in both worlds. And what we do in retreat and meditation is we are building a capacity, in a certain sense, to form a relationship with the world of our own experience, which in many cases has been neglected. And I think that’s why there’s actually a lot of interest in meditation and spiritual practice in some form or another because it is correcting in a certain sense the imbalance created by the movement to a world just of interaction.

Now, yeah I think I’m in the right place here. I did number these and obviously not the right way. Okay, yeah, now why do we fabricate this world? We fabricate this world in order to negotiate our lives. And what this fabrication consists of is making up stories about everything that we don’t know what to do with. Now over the centuries these stories have become very much more refined and so they become increasingly functional. And one of the biggest manufacturer of stories is the whole discipline of science but science has developed a method for developing very very precise stories about objects, about experiences which are extremely useful. But the mere tendency to make stories introduces some other problems.

When spirits inhabited the world

Ken: But I want to go in a slightly different direction right now and give some examples of other areas. In earlier societies if you go back to Greek society the time of Homer for instance you had all of these spirits that inhabited the world. You had Neptune … Neptune was the Roman one wasn’t it?

Student: Poseidon.

Ken: Poseidon. Thank you. Poseidon was the god of the sea. Then you had Aeolus, I think the god of the wind; Apollo, the sun and so forth. And how did the sun rise? Well Apollo drove this chariot with seven horses, drove it across the heavens. Because people didn’t understand how this sun went across the sky so they made up a story about it. So, you had all of these spirits which infested the world or inhabited the world. How many know the phrase “knock on wood”? Okay, you know. Now when do you use that phrase?

Students: When you don’t want something bad to happen.

Ken: When you don’t want something bad to happen. It’s a little more precise than that. You know, you use that phrase when you said, “That’s never going to happen,” or “I’ll be able to do this,” or something like that. You use that phrase when you have exhibited pride. The origin of “knock on wood” goes back to Greek mythology. That when you exhibited pride, which is Hubris, then it attracted retribution from Nemesis who, you know, deflated the pride. Nemesis is a wood spirit. So when you “knock on wood” you’re paying homage to Nemesis for being possessed by Hubris. And you’re saying, “Please just because Hubris got a hold of me please don’t knock me down.” That’s why you would say “knock on wood”.

Now there are many many other things in our language like that, and I haven’t by any means traced all of them but they go back to this age in our society when we explained emotional disturbances through being possessed by demons or spirits. That was the story. And in my own training in the Tibetan tradition there is a very precise demonology. And so when you have certain dreams you look them up in the book and, “Oh yeah. That’s that demon and you use these meditation practices to remedy it.” And it’s actually a pretty good psychology. It’s a different map, but you can recognize many psychological disturbances, and the meditations actually are appropriate ways to deal with those particular emotional disturbances.

But this is how it was viewed. You were possessed by a demon and you had to get rid of that demon somehow or form a relationship with it to regain emotional balance. The term in Tibetan for demon is basically the term for eruption. It’s something that goes [sound of a flare up]. You know how many of you have experienced being taken over by something emotionally it feels like a little eruption inside.

And it’s similar for gods, many many levels of gods. You had the local deities, and then the regional deities and then the bigger ones. And there’s a natural convergence to a god. The emergence of monotheism, and Judaism and the Abrahamic traditions. These are all stories. Stories to explain our experience.

Buddhist stories

Ken: Buddhism has its own stories. Here I get into serious trouble. In the Mahayana you have such stories as buddha nature, and awakened mind, and transcendent awareness and so forth. Because one of the primary aims of all religions up to the modern times has been to transcend the human condition. And because in people’s experience sometimes people experience really horrific things and that was relegated to being taken over by a demon. And sometimes they would experience extraordinary states of clarity, of bliss like which was just like, “How is this possible?” And the only way they could explain it was to make up a story. And as time evolved these stories became more and more sophisticated and many of the religions said, “Okay, we like those experiences and they feel more real. They feel truer so they must be truth.” And so everything was developed to somehow reproduce or attain those experiences so we get these very very exacting disciplines in many many traditions all of which are designed to create the conditions so that you have these kinds of experiences and transcend the human condition.

What we’ve come to realize over the last few centuries is we can’t transcend the human condition. It’s not possible. And this is actually quite explicitly presented in Buddhism as those of you, who’ve done the meditations on death and impermanence, know. One of the reminders here is that all of the great spiritual masters die. You know, you don’t get immortal life even though there’s a whole school or thing in Taoism that talks about immortal life, it’s basically a metaphor for something else.

So here we are. We are in this situation of human experience and we manufacture or fabricate such ideals as truth, beauty, freedom and in doing so we set up a world of pain for ourselves because by setting up those ideals, and we have Plato to thank for this, we necessarily set up a world of opposites. Truth versus false, beauty versus ugly, and freedom versus confinement or restriction and so forth. And now we want one half of the pie and not the other half. And these are the kinds of things we’ve struggled with and continue to struggle with over and over again.

A soon as we divide the world in half in any way whatsoever we create the potential for pain and suffering for ourselves and others. This is nicely expressed in the Chinese poem On Trust in the Heart. Towards the beginning, the opening lines are [paraphrasing]:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preference.
Like and dislike are the disease of the mind.
A hair’s breadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart.

This is what we’re talking about here.

So, yeah, okay. So among the many problems is that when we fabricate these ideals and then try to move towards them we necessarily start excluding all kinds of things from our experience and this creates a kind of imbalance. And I’ll give you one example of this.

Hui Tzu said to Chuang:
I have a big tree, the kind they call a “stinktree.”
The trunk is so distorted,
Wo full of knots, no one can get a straight plank
Out of it. The branches are so crooked
You cannot cut them up in any way that makes sense.

There it stands beside the road.
No carpenter will even look at it.

Such is your teaching—big and useless.”

Chuang Tzu replied:
Have you ever watched the wildcat
Crouching, watching his prey—
This way it leaps, and that way.
High and low, and at last
Lands in the trap.

But have you seen the Yak?
Great as a thundercloud
He stands in his might.

Big? Sure,
He can’t catch mice!”

So for your big tree, no use?
Then plant it in the wasteland
In emptiness.
Walk idly around,
Rest under its shadow;
No axe or bill prepares its end.
No one will ever cut it down.

Useless? You should worry!

The Way of Chuang Tzu, The Useless Tree, Thomas Merton, p. 35

So when we don’t create this world of ideals, of this and that then we’re able to see things in a different light. And here is this big useless tree and it’s perfect as a shade tree. No one will ever cut it down.

Meditation: opening to what you actually experience

Ken: So in terms of practice … my goodness I’m actually going to finish close to on time, the world will come to an end. This morning what I want you to do in meditation is practice opening to what you actually experience. Now how to do this. Some of you will be familiar with this already. I’m going to talk about this in the context of meditation, but I also want you to do it between meditation sessions because it’s a way of working with attention which is you can do in any situation. And the more it becomes just part of the that you function in your life the more you’ll actually come into your life.

So we’re gonna go to the zendo, we sit and the one thing we’re going to do when we sit is we’re going to breathe. Anybody not going to breathe when you sit? Okay. So that’s the experience we’re going to open to is the experience of breathing. So if I sit here right now, and we come into the experience of breathing. The first thing I usually notice is the sensation of breath through my nostrils. But I’ll also notice a little movement almost, a bit of a sensation of pressure almost in the chest. That my vary for some of you I’m just describing my experience. Then I notice that my stomach moves in and out a bit. Okay. Then I notice that when I breathe in there’s a cool sensation at the back of my throat but when I breathe out that cool sensation isn’t there. I can feel a bit of constriction of my belt, my stomach as it breathe’s pushes against that a bit. There’s some tightness across the upper shoulders, probably residual from too much computer work. It’s just there. I notice that as I breathe that the breath is flowing pretty evenly through both nostrils. Sometimes when I’ve done this I notice it’s going through one nostril more than the other. But I notice as the chest expands my back straightens up a little bit. Not very much, you know, maybe 1/4 inch movement, probably less more like an 1/8 inch and then I breathe out, back bends forward very slightly. I don’t try to supress that very slight movement I just experience it. And then I notice there’s a very slight movement of the chin that compensates for that and the head just tilting very very slightly as I breathe. And as I breathe in I feel a feel a little fuller, I feel a little straighter, there’s just a hint of pride going along with that. You know? What bullfrogs do. And when I breathe out there’s just a sense, a little sensation of loss, “Oh,” and resting. As I let myself rest more completely in the experience of breathing then I become aware of my legs and the position of my feet. Sensation of the clothes. All of this is part of the experience of breathing.

Now, I’m resting sufficiently that I can feel the sensation of breath through the trachea. And then there’s all the visual and audio sensations that arise. And various sounds, various sights, but when I’m resting with breathing I’m not really labeling this is this, and this is that, and this is this, but there’s all of that color, and light, and shadow, and shape, and sounds, and sometimes the sounds are very quiet in the background. Sometimes they jump out. Like the sound of an engine across the way. There’s also The Sound of Silence to borrow a line from Simon and Garfunkel, but you can listen to silence. So all of that’s there.

So to rest in the experience of breathing is to open to the tactile, the kinesthetic sensations in the body. The emotional sensations that are arising, all of the sensate sensations that are arising. And the way you do this is not by focusing on one, and focusing on this, and focusing on that. You just rest, and little by little as you rest you find you can include more and more of what you’re actually experiencing.

Now inevitably something’s going to happen and that quality of resting and opening is just going to go [whistling sound]. So maybe I get an itch right here, and what happens there is that suddenly all my attention just goes shoop, and following the theme of this retreat, I’ve just experienced an enemy. You follow?

Well, when that happens what I want you to do is rather than, “Oh, I’m going to make this go away.” Is okay you notice that you’re attention has just collapsed down to this one thing: itch in my shoulder. Well from there just start expanding back to everything else. Itch in shoulder, no itch in the surrounding skin, “Oh, now I can feel my lungs breathing again.” So the itch may still be there but you’re no longer, it’s no longer absorbing all of your attention. You just go back and include it along with everything else.

And then you remember what your boyfriend said about what you were wearing yesterday. “Err!” [sound of exasperation] same drill. You know, some emotional issue comes up, some idea about the future. Usually we call these distracting thoughts. All that’s happening is something’s coming up in our experience and suddenly all our attention goes there.

The way that I want you to explore working is whenever you notice that your attention’s gone to something, from there expand back to everything that you’re experiencing. Because the experience of breathing includes the experience of the body, all those tactile kinesthetic sensations, the experience of what we see, the experience of what we hear, the experience of what we feel, the experience of what we think. You know, all the stuff that just bubbles up, and we’re just going to sit in that experience. All of it. And inevitably stuff will catch our attention, take us this way or that way, and whenever we recognize that then we just expand back to the whole thing.

Now you may find certain ways you just get so jumbled up that the better thing to do is just, “Okay,” just relax, let everything go and start all over again. And that’s fine. And just as I demonstrated yesterday that returning and resting, returning and resting. Here you start all over again and expand—that’s fine.

A meditation story

Ken: Many years ago when I was translating for Rinpoche we stayed at the person in Santa Fe who had studied Zen in Japan. He’s very interesting guy, and he told me that his Zen teacher went for a walk with him one day and the Zen teacher said, “You know this guy from Hungary?”

And this person said, “Yeah.”

His teacher said, “He keeps coming to me with his meditation question and I just can’t understand what his problem is. I’ve told him that when he meditates he counts his breaths up to ten and then starts again at one. So ten breaths, start again at one. And he keeps coming to me and says he never gets past five before he gets … and then he starts again one. And he says he has a problem but I don’t understand what his problem is.”

Now, how many of you understand what the Hungarian’s problem is? [Laughter] Nobody? Only one person understands? How many of you understand what the Hungarian’s problem in his meditation is? Okay. How many of you understand the Zen teacher’s problem in not being able to understand? Okay. See, from the Zen teacher’s point of view he’s told him, “Whenever you lose track start again at one. If you get up to ten fine, you start again at one.” The Hungarian thinks it’s absolutely essential to get to ten. That’s the criteria for success. It’s not! [Laughs]

Your starting over again is the practice, whenever you think. So I tell you the story because the objective here isn’t to rest in open experience all the time [chuckles] because it’s not going to happen. It is, whenever you’ve noticed you’ve collapsed down to something, expand again. So starting again, and again, and again doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Can I make that point clear or has everybody got it? Okay.

So this is our first step just opening to what you experience and resting in it. And you start with the experience of breathing and so just explore resting in it. And I want to emphasize this quality of resting.

How many of you think meditation means concentrate? But I know you’re all going to be very good and nobody’s going to show up their hands because they know I’m going to jump all over you if you do. But that being said how many of you think meditation means concentrate?

Student: [Unclear].

Ken: Yeah okay. It’s an association that has come in and there is an effort to be made in practice but it isn’t this. So what I want you to do during this retreat is to explore the possibility of just resting in your experience. And resting in your experience doesn’t mean finding a way to be comfortable. That’s something different.

Laura’s got a certain expression on her face, “Rrr,” no? [Laughs] Yeah it’s not about finding a way to be comfortable. It’s about resting in whatever you are experiencing.

Now some of you may experience pain in your legs or else where in your body. And what I suggest there is that when that pain is consuming all of your attention then shift your body. You know, otherwise you’re just fighting yourself and that’s not helpful. If you find yourself hardening against something then that’s not particularly helpful either. So, let go of that, start again. But don’t seek necessarily to be comfortable because things are liable to come up which or quite possibly can come up which aren’t particularly comfortable. Explore the possibility of just resting in the experience of em. Say, “Okay.”

In the Theravadan tradition, certain schools, their meditation practice boils down to one instruction: “Can I experience this?” Moment to moment. “Can I experience this?” “Can I experience this?” And when you develop or uncover the possibility of experiencing it—whatever that is—that’s where you become free. Because now you don’t have to react. And the experience itself doesn’t become an enemy. Okay. Questions? About anything? Yes, Kris.

Walking meditation

Kris: I just have a [unclear] first can I walk from the second session?

Ken: Yes. If your body has difficulty sitting for those three half-hour sessions then please feel free to do walking meditation. I would ask you not to come and go during the half-hours of sitting, but at the qi gong times then, and you can walk around the fire circle. There’s a path there and it’s usually pretty clear, and it’s a very good thing. And then you just do the same thing. You can walk at natural pace, timing your walking with your breathing, and so you’re resting in attention. Or you can practice the walking meditation as one breath, one step which is a slower form of walking meditation but can be very powerful in terms of really coming into the experience of walking. And then you do exactly the same thing as we’re doing in sitting. You are in the experience of walking and breathing rather than just in the experience of sitting and breathing. So you take care of yourselves in terms of developing this capacity to be in your experience. Okay. Other question? Yes, Roger.

How to rest

Roger: I think I’m having a problem with the word “rest”.

Ken: Yeah I did too for about 25 years. What’s your problem???

Roger: Oh, I keep thinking about kindergarten. [Laughter]

Ken: I’m sorry to bring up those traumatic memories of yours.

Roger: You know rest period was my favorite thing in kindergarten and when you say, you could rest in an experience that was unpleasant, that doesn’t compute for me.

Ken: [Takes breath] Well I don’t really have the equipment to do it right now but I’ll tell you the experience. Several years ago I did a couple years of work on free form dance and in one of the sessions the instructor put on this industrial metal. It was just it was just sheer rage in the music. I mean it started off at like 500 decibels and it was so loud you could not distinguish guitar from percussion. That’s what it was like. And she had us lying down on the floor at this point and she puts this on [unpleasant sound]. Now I knew exactly what she was doing [laughs]. The other people lashed and went, “What?”and started screaming at her, and she said, “Listen to it.”

And her point was, “Okay here is something that is very very unpleasant,” and it was cacophony but it was also a really angry cacophony so you had not only the noise of it but you also had that emotional tone which was very unpleasant too. I mean she made a very, very good choice.

And there it is, you just experience it. You rest in that experience. Now what do you have going on there, “I hate this!” Okay, well that’s going on. Can you rest in that?

Now, I don’t have much unpleasant music on here and we could probably pipe it through the thing but you know we could try something like that if you want. Let me see what I got here.

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Pardon? Well we could do but you know … no that’s much too nice that won’t work.

Student: I can probably help.

Ken: You can probably help Cara. Do you get my point Roger? Because what does resting consist of? This reaction comes up, you let it go. That reaction comes up, you let it go. That reaction comes up, you let it go. That reaction comes up, you let it go. That reaction comes up, you let it go.

Roger: That was very helpful. But I guess where I run into problems it’s like when you were describing the breath and how that expands I kept wanting to say, “Well when do you get to the good part?” [Laughter]

Ken: [Laughing] Thank you for being so honest. That’s lovely. “When do you get to the good part?” What’s the good part? [Laughs]

Roger: Well for me the good part would be this idea of rest which to me has become this ideal. It’s kind of like, “Oh, I’m going to be sitting and I won’t feel any pain.”

Ken: Yes that’s an idea. Now you’ve fabricated something, and you’re right back in the problem.

Roger: Right so it almost sounds like you have to kind of leap into this non-dualistic …

Ken: Oh, we didn’t say anything about non-dualism.

Roger: Well, I’m having trouble with the word “rest.”

Ken: Yes. [Laughter] Well you know I guess you’re going to have to rest with that. [Laughter]

Yeah, I mean for you it has certain associations. Let us go back to sound because sound is a really easy way to work with this. So, and I think you’ve done this with me before. Here it’s pretty quiet here right now okay. So it’s easy to rest in the silence alright. Now ordinarily in our language when there’s a loud noise we say, “It shattered the silence,” as if silence is a thing which could be broken. But really that’s a metaphor and it describes an experience. Where we’re this way, this loud noise comes in, something happens to us, and we say, “It shattered the silence.” But suppose that loud noise comes and continues likes this industrial heavy metal I was talking about. Where does the silence go? What happens to the silence when it’s shattered?

Roger: Well it’s still there.

Ken: Okay. Can you still listen to it?

Roger: I mean probably, intermittently.

Ken: Well Okay. So say you get one second you can listen to it.

When you listen to the silence what happens in you? The noise is going on but you’re able to hear and listen to the silence. What happens?

Roger: Well there’s an I mean I experience and opening or relaxation.

Ken: Rest? [Laughter]

Roger: That’s the good part.

Ken: Well then the good part’s always there.

Roger: Ah, ah. It’s always available. Okay

Ken: It’s always a possibility and that’s what I’m inviting you to explore.

Roger: Oh, thank you.

Ken: Okay. Mikey right? You have no idea what an accomplishment that was for me.

Mikey: Thank you. When someone sees that they’re going to be smashing into a rock, or a car or something, it’s a good idea to be open to the experience. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s restful but I would kind of parallel that to the kind of rest that you talk about meaning that, “Can I experience this?”

Ken: Yeah.

Mikey: And there’s a sense of well I would say equanimity in that, you know, just open. Can I be there for this? So I thought I would just get a different take on the thing.

Ken: I mean what you say is true and there’s a certain situation in my life where I could see something was going to happen actually approached it that way, but in terms of meditation practice I don’t really want to encourage that because it gets into anticipation. So just whatever arises kind of rest. Okay. Yes over here.

Student: What about sleep? When you rest so much you fall asleep?

Ken: You’re not really resting then.

Student: I understand that, but do you have any clues about how to avoid it?

Ken: Well there are a couple of things. For many people, particularly in adjusting to the retreat environment they’re going to fall asleep a little bit the first day or two. And it goes something like this. [Nodding off] That’s how it is! Now, you fall asleep, you wake up, rest right there because now you’re really awake.

A person I think went to Munindra, who is a Theravadan teacher, and said, “I keep falling asleep when I meditate”

He said, “So.”

“Well isn’t that a problem?”

“No.”

And so the student was very confused and started to get up and Munindra said to him, “When you fall asleep is there more breath going through your left nostril or your right nostril?”

And the student said, “I don’t know.”

“Oh! Now I understand your problem.” [Laughter]

Okay? So can you be right in the experience of going to sleep. And so there we are. Cause you see from this that to do that there’s going to have to be a certain wakeful quality in the attention. It’s just not, “Hmm, groovy, grooving along.” [Laughter] No. [Laughter] No. [Laughter] What are you laughing at? No, you’re really awake and present and resting. Okay? And that wakeful quality—thank you for asking this question—is really important because you’ll find after a relatively short time it is more restful to be awake and relaxed than it is to be drowsy and relaxed.

Buddha nature: a fabrication?

Student: You’re going to have fun with this one.

Ken: I had fun with the other one. [Laughter]

Student: I’m really disappointed to find out that buddha nature is fabricated.

Ken: Yes. Well, it’s a story, isn’t it, about our experience? You know the old koan from the Zen tradition, “Does a dog have buddha nature? Mu!”

Student: What? [Unclear]

Ken: Does a dog have buddha nature? Joshu was asked, “Does a dog have buddha nature?” And Joshu, a Zen Master, said, “Mu!” M-U which in Japanese apparently doesn’t exactly mean no, but it is a negation. And here is one of the central tenets of Mahayana Buddhism being negated. And this is like, “What the hell did he mean here!?” And it’s become a first-level koan in Zen tradition. It’s very, very important.

I remember Aitken Roshi saying to Maezumi Roshi, “You know I never passed mu.” And Maezumi Roshi was like, “Neither did I.” [Laughter] So …

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Pardon?

Student: But.

Ken: Well, so what have you lost?

Student: Well I lost this thing I used to sort of hang on to when I was in really bad chaotic state or emotional. It kind of went along with finding spaciousness for me. Opening to what is, and I guess I somewhere along the way was taught, probably with my prior teacher, cause those words were used a lot cause it’s very traditional Tibetan Buddhism.

Ken: Okay.

Student: I learned that that was a greater space that was with me all the time.

Ken: Okay.

Student: Like it was my given right.

Ken: Ah! So I’ve just taken away your birthright. Oh.

Student: Something like that.

Ken: That could be really upsetting. Okay then, let’s go back. That sense of space in your experience. Does it depend on the concept of buddha nature?

Student: No.

Ken: Well what have you lost?

Student: Nothing.

Ken: Good. [Laughing] What’s your problem? Do you see what I’m pointing to? Okay.