Mindfulness is not some mystical magical quality

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 9

Full transcript
Audioclip

Now as I said a few moments ago one is never actually in balance. Instead what happens is you become more and more adept at detecting imbalances, and are able to address them earlier and earlier. So there’s more continuity and less huge fluctuation. And it feels like you’re doing very little, but a great deal is being accomplished. 

So we rely on awareness for the detection of imbalance. In particular, meditation, we have two components of attention. The first, and here I’m using the Mahayana definitions which are different from the Theravadan definitions. Two components of attention are mindfulness and awareness. Not the big awareness, the direct awareness, just awareness. 

Mindfulness here is defined as being present with the object of attention. So if that’s your breath you’re present with your breath. If it’s a book your attention is resting on the book. If it’s nature of mind you’re experiencing nature of mind. 

Mindfulness is the quality that you always start with. And basically you establish a connection with mindfulness when you are able to rest on the breath for three or more breaths in a row. You have then experienced mindfulness. So it’s not some mystical magical quality. Very ordinary quality, just a certain steadiness in attention.

The water reaction

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis
Full transcript
Audioclip

Become aware of all the ways that you react in water: the way that you gently evade a question, or deflect a question, or encompass what the other person is saying or doing so it becomes part of your world. They’ve moved into your world, you don’t have to go into theirs. Other words you dissipate any energy, anything which may disturb or disrupt the way you want to experience the world.

And as you feel that quality of dissipating, or deflecting, or evading, encompassing, you become aware that part of you at least is feeling threatened, possibly even attacked, so you feel that. Maybe there are physical, emotional, conceptual components associated with that.

And underneath that feeling of being threatened or attacked, you’re feeling that if you don’t do this [dissipation etc.] you’re just going to be engulfed, you’re going to be swept away, overtaken. It’s like you’re standing right at the edge of a fast flowing river and your feet are in the water and you can feel the current pulling at you and you don’t do something you’re just going to be swept away. Or maybe you’re in the surf, and like the wave is just about to pick you up and carry you, or the tide, or the current—so you feel that fear.

And as you touch that fear, there is a surge like, "Gotta dissipate this energy, get it out of here."  So you start to wriggle away from it, or deflect it, or try and do something. But as your efforts become more and more extreme you find you’ve run out of room, you can’t do any more. And you feel frozen and you can’t avoid it.

So now you try even harder to evade, deflect.

These are the components of the water reaction.

How dakinis transform experience

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 1

Full transcript

Audioclip

Now let’s talk a little bit about dakinis. Dakinis, the origin of dakinis, these were the aspects of experience ascribed to supernatural entities, that were called dakinis.

Mingyur Dorje, one of the karmapas, wrote a very nice composition about dakinis, in which he describes the origins of a group of four dakinis, which corresponded to the first four of the elements; earth, water, fire, and air. The water element, for instance, corresponds to the dakini whose name is Changeling. And Changeling was this spirit or demon that would appear to you in different forms and seduce you into doing things that were really bad for you.

And another one was called the Murderess. These were regarded as female entities. There were in Indian lore also male entities. They were called dakas, and dakini was the female form. And they were originally supernatural spirits. What happens in Vajrayana is that these elements of folklore—the way that experience is interpreted—then became symbols for the way mind works. Does anyone here have a copy of my book, who can loan it to me? Thanks very much. Oh actually, it’s in here.

And I included this song by Khyungpo Naljor, who’s probably known here as Tsultrim. He describes what the crucial element is. The ordinary dakini represents these unruly aspects of our mind, the wild, untamed, reactive mind which just take over. So he says:

When wanting and grasping hold sway, the dakini has you in her power. Wanting nothing from outside, taking things as they come. Know the dakini to be your own mind

What’s being expressed here is, whatever arises in experience, when we regard it as something other, then attraction, aversion, all of the reactive emotions operate. And we are in the thrall of dualistic fixation and dualistic interpretation. And alienated from our own nature, our own knowing. And just react to things. That’s what it means when he says that the dakini has us in her power.

Audioclip 

Then he says:

Wanting nothing from outside, taking things as they come.

Those meditation instructions—wanting nothing from outside—now how much of our lives do we go around trying to get something from the world to make us feel better? Relationships, money, possessions. You know, the list just goes on and on. Trying to get these things from outside to make us feel good in some way. It doesn’t work. Well, no it doesn’t work. It never works. It’s temporary at best. Does that stop us from doing it? No, you keep doing it.

Taking things as they come.

This again is a meditation instruction. All too often, most of the time, we don’t take things as they come. Something arises and we want it to be a little bit different. [Chuckles] It’s not quite right. Many years ago I had a girlfriend who was just exactly right. I was never quite right. [Laughter] Never quite fit. Life was tortuous. It was very difficult.

Audioclip

Know the dakini to be your own mind.

That is, know that what arises in experience is not something other. Now, when we know that, and this is not an intellectual knowing, this is an experiential knowing, then everything changes. The way that we experience the world changes. And so rather than being fixed in this dualistic I/other framework; when we know what arises in experience to be your own mind. You know there is no difference—there is just experience. And you’re awake in that experience. So he goes on to say:

Know that the crystal is the non-thought of mind itself.

And,

Crystal dakini guards against interruptions.

This is a very deep instruction. The crystal—this is the water dakini.

Crystal is the non-thought of mind itself.

So when you have a level of attention in which you can rest. And there is no conceptual process taking place in the mind. There’s no thought. Then things can arise. And it doesn’t matter what arises. It doesn’t disturb. You follow? And thus nothing can interrupt the quality of your attention and the quality of your presence.

Audioclip

Know that the source of wealth is contentment and the jewel dakini fills all wants and needs.

There’s a story from the life of Buddha in which a poor person, a very poor person comes across this wish-fulfilling jewel and he recognizes what he’s found. And he says, “Wow, this is so important and valuable. I don’t know what to do with this. The Buddha will know what to do with it.” So he went to Buddha and said, “I found this wish-fulfilling jewel. I don’t know what to do with it but you’ll know the person who needs this the most so I’m going to give it to you. The Buddha said, ”Thank you.“

Later that day there was a big festival and sponsored by the local ruler, the king. And in middle of this festival, Buddha called the king and said, ”Here’s this wish-fulfilling jewel. I was told to give it to the person who needs it most and I’m giving it to you.“ The king said, ”Why?“ ”Because you have more want than anybody else in this community.“ [Chuckles]

So, no contentment. When there’s no contentment it does not matter how wealthy we are—and we can think of wealth in terms of financial wealth or possessions. But it doesn’t really matter. It applies to other kinds of wealth, some people are greedy for knowledge, some people are greedy for connections, some people are greedy for power. It doesn’t make any difference.

When there’s no contentment, then the jewel dakini has us in her power. When we know contentment, then we are the richest person in the world. Because we don’t need anything. So, this is how the dakinis transform experience. 

Notes:
Guided meditations on the five dakinis
Dakini song
Spanish translation of the dakini song

Reactions have three components

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 3
Full transcript

Audio

All reactions have three components. 

How they manifest physically in the body, which typically there’s a kind of tensing or contraction. There can be actual physical sensations in different parts of the body. Your stomach feels churned, or like it does butterflies. There can be a constriction in the throat. I mean there all kinds of possibilities— your heart can beat faster. There are always some—and sometimes some quite strong—physical components to the reaction. And most of the time we aren’t aware of them, which means we aren’t really aware of the reactive process taking place.

So in this set of practices that we’re doing, stay very much connected with your body—what is actually happening in my body. Again you don’t have to analyze it or explain it, but be aware of it and actually experience it.

Audio

The same is true at the emotional level. Maybe looking into someone’s eyes triggers fear, maybe it makes you anxious. Maybe you feel squirmy. The sense that someone is seeing you without any judgment may make you acutely aware of your own judgment. I think one of the things came up earlier is a feeling of being special. 

And I have one student in LA who’s working with that particular issue at this point. She’s very chagrined about it. Because she sees how much of the way that she relates to the world is coming from holding a feeling that she is in some way special. So it allows her to negotiate a lot of situations very easily. But at the same time there’s a certain pride and feeling of superiority. So that’s something you may watch for. Maybe a feeling of being naked, revealed, exposed. And there could be a whole other set of reactions connected with that.

Audio

And there are the stories that come up, which is the third component of reaction. This is the component of reaction that we most often notice and believe immediately. We don’t question it at all. And again someone looking at us, really seeing us and seeing us without judgment, we may say to ourselves, “Look what do they know?” Or, “What does she want?” These are what I mean by stories and they again those thoughts come up, I mean we don’t even question them—we just take them as fact.

But if we’re in touch with the physical and the emotional we may appreciate the fact that these are simply thoughts and ideas and may not have that much grounding in reality. And so now we can experience things very, very differently and experience all of that as, “Oh, this is how I’m reacting to this possibility.” You know all the discomfort, all the stuff is in me, even those intended see the projected out there.

The earth reaction

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 2
Full transcript

Audioclip

For instance can you recall something over the past week where you were rigid? Can any of you think of anything like that? Okay, check.

Okay. Just go back to that feeling of being rigid. And let your attention go beneath the rigidity. What do you find there?

Most of the time, and actually I’d probably say all of the time, you find that that rigidity is a kind of hardness which is covering a sense of hollowness or uncertainty. And that’s why you’re rigid because inside there’s this uncertainty. If you’re really confident about something you’d never get rigid. You always stay very relaxed. But it is that little lack of confidence which causes you to clamp down. “I’m not sure it should be this way,” so you clamp down. You become rigid.

Audioclip

Now if you go a little bit further than that, you get in touch with an internal feeling that things are actually pretty unsteady inside. The ground is shaking and this is the earthquake and you’re not sure if you’re going to keep your footing, or you’re going to keep your balance. And there’s a very definite fear here.

Now in the ordinary course of our lives this stuff usually goes by so quickly we don’t even notice it. And what we’re doing in this practice is actually slowing the whole process down so we actually feel each component of this.

And I think if you review situations in which you react rigidly—you just dug your heels in and became very stubborn and stiff. You’ll see that there’s an underlying fear of losing your position or losing your balance. And that’s what’s provoking you actually.

So here I’ve described the movement from form which is this rigidity and stiffness. To emptiness, which is this open space when it feels like the ground is shaking, in which there’s a fear. A fear of losing balance.

Now when we hit that fear, it’s very predictable. What happens?

You know if you stand somebody on a table or something like that and then you start shaking the table that’s like the ground is shaking. What’s the first thing that a person does? They grab something, just like that. That’s what we do. That’s the reflex reaction. And so we grab anything in order to keep our balance

Now, once we grab that thing and because we think I need this to hold onto my balance, now we hold on to it. And then something very interesting happens. We’re holding onto this so tightly, like this. We can’t move. We’re stuck. We’re in imprisoned. And you see this in people all the time. That they are so, holding so tightly to certain principles or certain ideals or certain aspects of their life that there’s no flexibility there and they themselves are imprisoned by their perspective. So that describes the movement from emptiness to form.

And the reaction chain is, it just cycles around and around and around. We become rigid as a reaction to fear. We grab something. It imprisons us. And because it imprisons us we become very, very inflexible. And any kind of movement puts us in touch with the underlying shakiness again, and so it just keeps cycling around becomes more and more intense.

Detecting imbalance

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 9

Full transcript

Audioclip

Now as I said a few moments ago one is never actually in balance. Instead what happens is you become more and more adept at detecting imbalances, and are able to address them earlier and earlier. So there’s more continuity and less huge fluctuation. And it feels like you’re doing very little, but a great deal is being accomplished. 

So we rely on awareness for the detection of imbalance. In particular, meditation, we have two components of attention. The first, and here I’m using the Mahayana definitions which are different from the Theravadan definitions. Two components of attention are: mindfulness and awareness. Not the big awareness, the direct awareness, just awareness. 

Mindfulness here is defined as being present with the object of attention. So if that’s your breath you’re present with your breath. If it’s a book your attention is resting on the book. If it’s nature of mind you’re experiencing nature of mind. 

Mindfulness is the quality that you always start with. And basically you establish a connection with mindfulness when you are able to rest on the breath for three or more breaths in a row. You have then experienced mindfulness. So it’s not some mystical magical quality. Very ordinary quality just a certain steadiness in attention.

Audioclip 

The second quality, awareness, is defined as knowing what’s going on. And all of you have experienced this in your meditation. Attention becomes steady and there you are resting say with the breath. At the same time you are aware of all that other stuff which is very useful, because it is in that broader awareness that you’re able to detect whether things are in balance or not. “Am I going to sleep. Am I thinking?” etc.

In our practice we get more and more adept at detecting when we’re moving away from clear stable attention. We can move away in one direction, lapsing into dullness; in the other directions lapsing into busyness.

The five elements allow us to bring a higher level of attention to the whole matter of balance. So here the steadiness of attention would be like the earth element. Clarity is the water element. Knowing is the fire element. The dynamic quality is the air element. And the indefinable open quality is the void element.

Now it’s not particularly helpful to sit while you meditate analyzing the quality of your attention like crazy. It takes you out of the practice basically. A lot of us have this problem. We sit there and we have this running commentary on how we’re doing. Anybody else know that one? “You’re doing fine now, just keep going, yep, good [laughter]. Not! You’re getting a little dull, yep. No, don’t follow that thought. That’s it! Good!” [Laughter]. It’s just thought.

We can do the same thing in all areas of our lives. In our relationships the support of nurturing quality is earth. The flow of emotional energy back and forth: water. The passion interest, etc: fire. The ideals that you aspire to: air. And the space in which all this takes place: void.

Five Dakinis

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. This the sixth and final meditation of the series:

Five Dakinis Meditation (from FEFD07: Five Elements | Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:31:40.00 - 00:55:05.00)

(download into iTunes)

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final

Void Dakini

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. The fifth is the void dakini meditation:

Void Dakini Meditation (from FEFD06: Five Elements | Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:49:22.63 - 00:58:40.00)

(download into iTunes)

Void is about space, the sky, the still point of the turning world, the space which allows things to move, take form, come into being. Too strong and it's the end of the world, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes and hurricanes, one on top of the other. Too weak and it's like death, the dissolution of any form of being, dull, blank, nothing. In reaction, it manifests as confusion and bewilderment. In response, it is presence, the indescribable experience of things just being what they are.

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final

Air Dakini

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. The  fourth is the air dakini meditation:

Air Dakini Meditation (from FEFD05: Five Elements | Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:30:02.20 - 00:41:50.00)

(download into iTunes)

Air is about activity, movement, ideas, and strategies. Too strong and it becomes movement for movement's sake, tearing things apart in a whirlwind. Too weak, and it becomes lack of movement, disconnection, loss of identity, loss of meaning. In reaction, it's all over the place, movement without connection. In response, it is effective action, just what is needed.

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final

Fire Dakini

Photo by Clemens Lee

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. The third is the fire dakini meditation:

Fire Dakini Meditation (from FEFD04: Five Elements | Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:27:55.00 - 00:43:00.00)

(download into iTunes)

Fire is about heat, warmth, light, passion, and knowing. Too strong and it burns, consuming everything it touches. Too weak, and nothing happens, and all is desolate. In reaction, it turns everything to ash. In response, it warms, motivates, provides the energy for things to happen.

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final

Water Dakini

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. The second is the water dakini meditation:

Water Dakini Meditation (from FEFD03: Five Elements | Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:13:50.00 - 00:27:52.00)

(download into iTunes)

Water is about flow, fluidity, emotions, adapting. Too strong and it feels like a threat, a wave or current that will carry you away. Too weak, and there is no sense of connection or flow: things are frozen. In reaction, water is evasive, wishy-washy, difficult to pin down. In response, water is clear and transparent.

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final

Earth Dakini

Photo by Carolyn Bremer

We've clipped six guided meditations from the Five Elements | Five Dakinis retreat podcasts. The first is the earth dakini meditation:

Earth Dakini Meditation (from FEFD02: Five Elements / Five Dakinis (retreat) 00:47:00.00 - 01:00:10.00)

(download into iTunes)

Earth is shape, form, substance, support, and structure. Too strong and it leads to rigidity, which imprisons. Too weak and it leads to instability or lack of substance, and things never take shape. In reaction, rigidity is often a cover for uncertainty. In response, earth is nurturing, supportive, and free from judgement.

Access the other dakini meditations: Earth | Water | Fire | Air | Void | Final