Events that shatter our illusions about life

Ken: One of the first aspects of an event such as the tsunami in Southeast Asia is the suddenness and the unexpectedness of it. If you read any of the accounts, for most people, there was just no warning. There was suddenly a wall of water, I think in the region of Aceh, it may have been as high as 50 or 60 feet, because it was very close to the epicenter of the earthquake. And and it just washed completely over the town. And so here we have, in one instant, everything changing drastically and tragically. And in Phuket and in Sri Lanka, the same suddenness. In some cases there was a little bit of warning in that the sea receded a hundred yards or more, and then crash. Other people were just literally sipping orange juice at their hotels.

What this recalls from our training is one of the meditations on death, that death can come at any time. And this perhaps is one of the aspects of this event, which really shakes people. I think it shakes people in every culture but I think particularly in our own culture where death is so removed from our everyday experience. We’ve come to grow used to the idea that if something or somebody dies, then something has gone wrong. And the notion of a sudden, arbitrary death, which one is powerless to prevent, contradicts, to a significant extent, the cultural conditioning, that we’ve grown up with.

And there’s a second aspect to this, and that is an underlying belief that if you live a good life and do good work, then somehow you’re going to be rewarded with a long and healthy life. Now where that idea comes from, apart from human tendency to attach to life, I don’t know. But it’s found in most of the world’s religions and a sense of balance and order to the world. I think one of the first things that hearing of an event, and we find the same thing held with 9/11, is that It shatters two illusions that we have about life.

That is, that there is some way we can be safe and assured that our life will unfold as we think it should. And secondly, that bad things don’t happen to good people. So let’s take a few moments and just reflect on those two ideas together, using the event to feel the resonance in us, of the shock of a sudden and arbitrary—doesn’t have to actually be a death—a change in our life, something completely out of control.

The purpose of practice

Ken: Remember that in Buddhism, the purpose of practice is to be able to be present with what is. It’s not actually to change the world or make ourselves into any kind of special way, but is just to be present with what actually is. And this is one aspect of experience: that things can change suddenly, and what happens to people actually has little to do in many cases with who they are as people. Things just happen.

Now, as you sit with those ideas, you may find various reactions arising in you: fear, uncertainty, anxiety, resistance of various forms. When you notice those reactions, don’t try to push them away. That’s what’s happening. So experience that, experience the resistance. Is there a tensing in the body? It may be very subtle, maybe in the torso, maybe around the jaw, neck, maybe there’s a queasiness. So as you contemplate the possibility of sudden and drastic change or the acceptance that things just happen and sometimes happen totally outside of our control, just be right in the reactions that arise first in your body, and then in the various emotions. Corresponding to the queasiness there may be fear. Corresponding to the rigidity, maybe there’s tension in your body, maybe there’s anger—at what or why may not be apparent—just there.

Just be right in the reactions. And as you stay in the reactions, then you can open to those ideas again and experience them more completely. And you may also notice various stories, associations, perhaps memories. You find that when you get lost in those, you become unaware of your body and unaware of the emotions. So stay in your body, stay in the emotions, and then include the stories and associations. Maybe they take the form of, “It isn’t fair.” I just experienced that.” [Pause]

Appreciation for life

Ken: While seemingly something painful, perhaps negative, to be contemplating, as we take in those ideas and accept them, appreciate them deeply, we find that our appreciation of life is correspondingly enriched. You may have seen some of the survivors expressing gratitude and appreciation for being alive. Notice how awake you feel when you feel that appreciation for life. You don’t take anything for granted. You bring more attention, more energy, and actually more care to everything you do and say.

So let’s sit with that for a bit longer and feel that appreciation coming from experiencing and understanding that life is fragile.

Christophe mentioned a dull pain. And in this event there has been a great deal of pain. People have lost their families, their homes, their livelihood, everything that they know. Perhaps some of you have experienced something like that. I haven’t, not anything like on that scale. And so quite naturally, there’s a kind of resistance. None of us want to experience anything like that. And if you consider, this is what we do with most of our experience, we don’t want to experience this and do want to experience that. And if you look a little more closely, you’ll see that the things that we want to experience confirm something about us or about our idea of the world. And the things that we don’t want to experience, threaten our idea of ourselves or our idea of the world. So we have this built-in editing mechanism, which as we were just discussing, prevents us from experiencing things just as they are. In other words, it prevents us from experiencing our life completely.

Taking and sending

Ken: So I want to introduce another practice, which many of you’re familiar with, and that is the practice of taking and sending. In taking and sending we take in everything we don’t want to experience, the suffering and pain of the world. And we give our own joy, happiness, wellbeing, and everything that makes us feel good and happy, to others. In other words, we reverse the way that we usually relate to experience. This is, of course, a compassion method of practice. And its intention is to undermine that very basic attitude in us, which is always trying to make things right for us. It is a way into being present.

So we’re going to practice this for a few minutes together. And imagine taking first all of the suffering of all beings throughout the world, imagining that their suffering and pain, negativity comes in the form of like heavy black smoke or thick black smoke into our right nostril and into our heart where we experience it. And as you breathe out your own joy, happiness, wellbeing, intelligence, strength so forth, takes the form of white moonlight. It goes out your left nostril from your heart out your left nostril and goes to all beings everywhere.

And after doing that for a few minutes, then think particularly of all the victims of this tragedy, the tsunami, and breathe in all of their pain. Since that’s quite specific, you may find various forms of discomfort and resistance arising within you. Don’t push those away. Just as we are doing, experience them as completely as possible and continue to do the practice. And when you send your wellbeing and happiness, and imagine sending your wealth and livelihood to all of these people who have lost theirs, then again, you may notice some resistance, some attachment. “I don’t want to let this go, I want this for me.” And again, just experience that, but do the practice anyway. Do the sending anyway.

It’s very important when you do this practice that you do the taking and sending on each breath. Don’t just take and take and take and then for several breaths send and send and send. In each breath, take and send. You may say, “Well, my mind doesn’t switch that fast.” But you’d be surprised, things can arise in just a flash, so that in each moment you’re working with both. Okay, let’s do that for a few minutes together. [Bell]

Now, as Leslie pointed out, when we open to the fullness of life, whether it’s the fullness of loss and tragedy, or on the other hand the fullness of joy and wellbeing. In either case, something may happen inside, which blocks or stops us from going into the experience or really experiencing it. Here’s where there’s a very, very important point in practice. When you experience a block like that or when you encounter a block, then experience it. That’s what is happening. Don’t try to get rid of it, saying, “Oh, well get out of here so I can experience the real stuff.” No, that’s what’s happening right there. So that’s what you get to experience.

Now it may seem like a very simple thing, but it’s something that we constantly forget over and over again. I read a book a short time ago on working with writer’s block. And although this person has no background in meditation that I can detect, it came to exactly the same conclusion. Oh, you’re experiencing writer’s block? Then write about the writer’s block [laughter]. And things open up, because you are relating to what is, not what you want to be.

Another point is the experience of compassion. When we experience compassion, we are present with the pain of the world. And that pain may be in us, it may be in others, but we are present with it. So we experience it and it can be like a dull pain, reaching and grabbing the heart or a needle sharp pain thrusting into us like a dagger. Now our first impulse is to push that away, but if we don’t, we just are right with it. We find that our heart opens, and we don’t die. The pain doesn’t kill us, but we find a much deeper capacity to be present with what is because we are not blocking what is arising in our own experience.

And I think any of the aid workers who work in these kinds of situations necessarily have that capacity to just experience sometimes very deep pain that arises because we are present for the pain in the world. Compassion has that kind of intensity. It isn’t a lovely feeling, but it is very meaningful and very important because through compassion, through being present with the pain of others, we’re able to be truly present ourselves.

And the reason that’s important is that whatever comes from that will probably be helpful. If we’re not able to be present with the pain of others, then what we do will come from trying to get rid of the pain so that we don’t have to feel it. And that’s not compassion. That’s serving our own agenda, our own patent agenda. When we can just be with the pain of someone who is dying, someone who’s experienced a great loss and not have to change or fix or do anything, then something else opens up and whatever response arises then is much more likely to be helpful.

When we practice taking and sending deeply, we begin to sense that experience doesn’t consist of a me here and a them there. That’s a framework that we use to describe experience, but it isn’t what experience is. There are two aspects to experience. There’s the knowing and then there’s the what is known. Ordinarily we identify with the knowing and become a subject. And then the what is known becomes an object. And that’s how we separate the world and we become separate from it.

But if you look deeply, the knowing and the what is known are not two separate things. They are one and the same. So through a practice such as taking and sending you open the possibility of being the knowing and being the what is known at the same time.

Six-armed Mahakala: standing in the face of death, tragedy and loss

Ken: Now I want to look at what we do in the face of death. And for this, I’m going to draw on the Vajrayana tradition. When we stand in the face of death, most of us feel helpless. We want to be able to do something. And yet there is nothing to do. Nothing that can be done.

In the province of Aceh, estimates are that 27,000 people were swept to their death in the first wave. That’s an extraordinary number of people. And faced with that, who doesn’t feel helpless? We can meet that helplessness in one of two ways. We can succumb to despair or we can be in the experience itself. We succumb to despair when we carry in ourselves the idea that we should be able to do something.

And there’s a story which I’ve told before—it comes from the Shangpa tradition—it describes the origin of one of the deities or protectors of this particular lineage. It’s known as the Six-armed Mahakala. It’s very fierce. A short description:

Six-Armed Mahakala, which means the Great Black One. Lord of Pristine Awareness is blue-black in color. His first pair of hands hold a chopper and skull cup filled with blood, the second pair a rosary of human heads and a trident, and the last a hand-drum and noose. He wears a tiger-skin skirt, a necklace of heads, bone and snake jewelry and sets of bells on his arms and legs. His two legs support him in the balanced posture, and crushes the demon Obstacle-Maker. He has three eyes and bared fangs. His beard, eyebrows and hair flare upwards. He is crowned by Buddha Unshakable and bears a cinnabar drop on his forehead. He stands, his back against the trunk of a sandalwood tree, in the center of a blazing mass of fire.

The story begins with Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of awakened compassion. Early in his career, he takes the bodhisattva vow from Buddha Amitabha, the buddha of boundless light, who’s the embodiment of awakened compassion, or manifestation of awakened compassion at the Buddha level. And in his bodhisattva vow, Avalokiteshvara promises to work for the welfare of beings without break. And if he should ever stop or succumb to despair, may his head burst into a thousand pieces. So he works for the welfare of beings—teaching, providing them with what they need, helping them in all the ways that he can think of—for three immeasurably long eons.

And at the end of this period of time, he takes a break, wants to see how he’s doing. And he looks over the vast realm of samsara, and he sees now that there are even more beings suffering than when he started. And not only are there more being suffering, they’re suffering from poverty, their reactive emotions are stronger, and they all need help very, very quickly. And he looks at this and he can’t understand; things are worse off than they were before. And he sits down saying, “What’s the use?” And, of course, his head bursts into a thousand pieces.

His guru Buddha Amitabha appears and goes, “Well, you broke your vow. What are you going to do now?” And Avalokiteshvara—it’s not recorded how he’s able to talk with his head in pieces [laughter]—says, “Well, we’ve gotta do something.” So Amitabha heals him and the thousand pieces of his head become a thousand arms, each with an eye looking at compassion, looking at suffering. And this is the origin of the thousand-armed form of Avalokiteshvara, who has 13 heads actually, looking in all directions at all times. But Avalokiteshvara is not content because he’s seen how vast and extensive the suffering of the world is. And in contemplating that, a blue-black hūm (pron. hung) takes form in his heart. The syllable hūm is a symbol of pristine awareness. And this blue-black hūm manifests as the Six-armed Mahakala.

So the Six-armed Mahakala is the manifestation of compassion. The compassion that is beyond despair, where if you look at the story, when we begin to touch into compassion, think, “Oh, well, I’ll help a few people and I’ll do what I can.” One’s experience is always, as you start to help people, you see how actually very difficult it is. And when you start to open to the suffering of the world and you stop blocking it out, you see more and more how much suffering there is. And this was exactly Avalokiteshvara’s experience. When he really got into the work, he saw that it was far more pervasive. He had the impression that things were worse than they were when he started. But it’s more that he sees things more and more deeply.

And when we open to that, really open to that, we find in ourselves that blue-black hūm , that natural knowing, which in some takes the form of a quiet determination, or perhaps one might even say a fierce determination. Because that determination brooks no obstacle; nothing stops it from doing what needs to be done in any situation. It has a clarity which cuts right through things, cuts through all the red tape of bureaucracies, the inhibitions of individuals, the conditioning of our culture, which teaches us to ignore suffering in certain sectors, saying these people don’t count.

And that’s what the Six-armed Mahakala represents. So, in Vajrayana one uses these symbols to touch those depths in ourselves, so that we can actually be present in the face of death, suffering, disease, tragedy and loss. Those situations where we can be very likely to block things, numb out, our resistance overtakes us and we just push them away.

So here’s a meditation, which comes from, I think about 17th century, a teacher who’s a very prolific writer. He wrote a large volume about this thick called Mountain Instructions. If any of you are serious about doing retreat, you can push me to translate it. It’s just filled with absolutely every instruction you can imagine for meditation. It’s really quite wonderful, and he draws on Kagyu and Nyingma and all kinds of things. So everything from basic meditation to very, very sophisticated practices.

And this is a short excerpt from it. So I’d just like you to follow this, and as I read this, I’ll also explain how to work with each part of it.

First sentence:

I appear vividly in my deity’s form.

Mountain Dharma, Karma Chakmé

Now the idea here is: this isn’t some external deity. Each of you has inherently an understanding of what it is to be awake. And so maybe it’s not totally explicit in your mind, but it’s there. And so you take your own idea of being awake and that’s your deitiy’s form. So move into that right now. That’s what it means to be vividly in the deity’s form.

My heart sends out rays of light shaped like iron hooks.

That’s a very vivid image. So you imagine those rays of light going out from your heart, and you’re going to draw on the energy of the whole world, of the whole universe, which is yours to draw on.

I see the Six-armed Lord standing at the base of the trunk of the sandalwood tree in the cool grove charnel ground in the southeast.

And this is the energy you’re going to draw on, that fierce determination and clarity that I spoke about a few moments ago.

The iron hooks reach out and draw him. Responding to my invitation, he comes and stands in front of me with a buddha undisturbed crowning his head. He is naturally present in magnetization regalia.

Magnetization is one of the four forms of awakened activity in which you use your personal energy to power what needs to happen. And the color associated with this is red, red of magnetization. So you can imagine this fierce determination, this black monster in front of you, clothed and shining with that vital energy, able to, through immense power, do what needs to be done. And remember that all of this, all of these things are symbols to connect to those own potentials in you.

I see his body sending out rays of blue light that clear away the bad actions and obscurations of those who have died.

What prevents us from being awake—and according to tradition, what prevents us from experiencing awakening—is the conditioning effect of our bad karma. Of all of the actions that we’ve done and the way those actions have evolved into set ideas about the world, values, beliefs, behaviors, which prevent us from knowing and seeing things as they are. So imagine blue light—and blue is the color associated with destruction, it’s also the color associated with healing—clearing away all of that negativity, all of that confusion, all of those impediments.

And now keeping in mind the over a hundred thousand people that died, we evoke that fierce and clear determination in us with the following words:

Guru and Lord inseparable, these deceased earnestly take refuge in you. Pray close the doors to birth in the six realms for all the deceased who were connected with me. Lead them to the land of bliss.

In this, one is seeing that this fierce and clear determination is no different from your teacher. And you think of all of those people, all of the confusion they experienced, and you imagine them taking refuge in the clear open awareness, which is our human heritage. The doors to the six realms are the realms projected by the various emotions, the ways that we see and experience the world when we’re in the grip of the emotions. In the face of death, reactive emotions arise very strongly and can propel us into those realms very easily. So we invoke that clarity to close those doors for everyone, particularly those who’ve died who are connected with us. And the form of connection here can be just thinking of people, doesn’t mean that we actually have to know them.

“The land of bliss” is a metaphor of course, for those conditions which are conducive to our awakening, the understanding of emptiness and compassion that places us beyond the reach of confusion.

Guru and Lord inseparable, these deceased earnestly take refuge in you. Pray close the doors to birth in the six realms for all the deceased who are connected to me. Lead them to the land of bliss.

Guru and Lord inseparable, these deceased earnestly take refuge in you. Pray close the doors to birth in the six realms for all the deceased who are connected to me. Lead them to the land of bliss.

Moved by this request, the Lord closes the doors to the six realms with his six arms and sends out countless duplicates. Their yells of hūm and pāt and the rattle of their hand drums sends all avengers, karmic debt seekers, and parasitic demons fleeing deep into the dark between the worlds.

So imagine that you make this invocation and from the form of Mahakala the Six-armed one in front of you, he reaches out, closes the doors to the six realms, and then sends out thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of duplicates of himself like snowflakes in the snowstorm. And all of them go and scare away, annihilate all the negativity of conditioning, reactivity and confusion. Hūm and pāt are syllables of wisdom, that cut through ignorance and confusion. And so all of the forces which seek to avenge death, all of that anger, all of that attachment, the karmic debt seekers, they’re saying, “I want this, I want that.” And the parasitic demons, whenever there’s turbulence and turmoil, lots of people, just lots of forces just come and try to take advantage of everything, try to feed off it. All of those forces are sent fleeing deep into the dark between the worlds.

With their left hands, (each of the Six-armed Mahakalas holds a noose in the left hand,) they slip loops around the necks of all the deceased and draw them together. Then the throng of Lords carries away the deceased who are connected with me. Like a flock of birds taking wing from an alpine meadow, they go to the land of bliss.

Let me read that again:

With their left hands, they slip loops around the necks of all the deceased connected to me and draw them together. Then the throng of Lords carries away the deceased who are connected with me. Like a flock of birds taking wing from an alpine meadow, they all go to the land of bliss.

om vajra mahakala kching chetra vighana vinayaka hūm hūm pāt

All who’ve died who are connected with me

om padma padma padmasambhave sukhavate gatcham tu svaha

So, it’s human nature to mark these events in some way. So I’ve also brought with me a prayer from another text by the same author, Karma Chakmé, which is a prayer for all of those who have died. I’d like to repeat this with you and join me in these thoughts.

The land of bliss, Buddha Amitabha, Avalokiteshvara, all of these are connected with the lineage of compassion. And where this came into Buddhism is not clear, comes into Buddhism exactly the same time as the ethic of compassion came into Judaism and gave rise to Christianity. And my suspicion is that it comes from Persia where there was a sun god with the universal vow of redemption. However, it’s become a very important facet of the Northern schools of Buddhism.

And the idea of a symbol of a place called Sukhavati—which means the land of bliss or the realm of joy—in which can be attained, purely through the power of faith, through the vow of universal redemption, that all who call upon my name will be saved. And so this is what is being invoked. That faith, the willingness to open to what is, can bring one into the situation where you can wake up and be present completely. And for those who have died, we pray that whatever happens to their minds, their consciousnesses, that they also find their way into the same situations, to be able to wake up and be present.

In this holy and joyful setting, Realm of Joy, this our family has gathered, joined by noble wishes made before.

Here we have presented beautiful offerings, real and imagined, and added to them our profound thoughts of goodwill and wellbeing.

Great good and understanding come from these thoughts and give power to these wishes I make.

When those close to me die and they see the bewildering projections of confusion in the intermediate state, may experience and awareness, the mother and son clear light be recognized.

May they find the path free from fear, panic, and alarm, and be received by the Lord Limitless Light with his retinue of bodhisattvas.

Free from the threats and distress of ordinary existence, may they be born in the lotus bud and meet the Buddha in the lotus land of the Realm of Joy.

Receiving guidance, may they complete all stages, come to full awakening, and develop the capability of helping all beings without discrimination become free of pain.

May this light which shines with the brilliance of intelligence and awareness, clear away the darkness of conditioning, disturbing emotions and the two obscurations.

May it illumine the path of total purity and show the way to never fading joy.

Wonderful Buddha Limitless Radiance with Great Compassion on his right and Great Power on his left, all surrounded by innumerable buddhas and bodhisattvas in the happy and joyous realm called Realm of Joy.

May all who have died, without the interruption of other lives, be born and see the face of Limitless Radiance.

Thus simply by my giving voice to this wish, may the buddhas of the ten directions inspire me in its fulfillment free from impediments and obstacles.

tadyathā panchendriya avabodhanāye svāhā

Prayer of Guidance, Karma Chakmé