The Warrior's Solution

From: The Warrior's Solution 8
Audioclip

Ken: Now to complete the warriors solution. We've talked about intend, sacrifice and die. One way to look at this is, this is the effort one makes, or the steps one takes in addressing imbalance.  

Through the perception of imbalance an intention forms, and emotional material arises. Contrary to that intention you sacrifice, and when you move  right into that it feels like you are going to die. You just die and you're able to do. And some of you experienced this yesterday in the exercises. The other side of the coin can be described as resting in the experience of life. So it's what follows; you die. Now the question that I gave you for your awareness practice is, "Who dies?"  What do you experience when you ask that question. Linda?

Linda: [Unclear]

Ken: So what do you experience when you ask that?

Linda: Relief.

Ken: Okay you experience, relief. Deborah?

Deborah: A sense of resting.  

Ken: Uh-huh, so one way of describing this, and all of these are your descriptions, is that there's a sense of rest. One can just rest. Okay, now, just rest right now and go through intend, sacrifice, die. Who dies? You rest. Now what happens in that rest? Art?

Art: [Unclear]

Ken: But as you just rest there what happens?

Art: Things start to come up.

Ken: Mmm-hmm, yeah, things start to arise, right? Maybe we just rest here a little longer and see.   

[Silence]   

What are you experiencing right now?  Linda?

Linda: [Unclear]

Ken: Okay, anybody else?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Any emotion connected with that? When we rest emotion begins to rise. It can be all kinds of things, what you are talking about is a sweetness, a joy, a sense of happiness, but it's not always that. Sometimes it's other emotions. If we sat here a bit longer it might be anxiety, uncertainty. If we sat here a bit longer it might be anger. 

Ken: A lot of the replies that people were giving me were ways of not feeling that discomfort, and so that happens, I mean, maybe a couple of people here, not me certainly, haven't cut through all of that reactivity. It arises. There it is. Now whatever arises, move into the experience completely. If it's a sense of sweetness move into that. Anxiety: move into that. Irritation: move into that. Happiness: move into that. And experience all of the reactive tendencies associated with it. So you're in your experience as raw as you can be. 

Now associated with any reactive tendency is a projected world. With irritation the projected world is having to oppose something. With anxiety the projected world is having to run away. With sweetness the projected world might be, "have to hold on to this, have to maintain." So note the projected world that arises, and interrupt the projection by experiencing completely the reactive tendencies that give rise to it. 

Now you come into presence. And in presence you have a sense of balance, and in that you can perceive imbalance. And when you perceive imbalance then you intend, sacrifice, die. Look at who dies, rest, emotional projection, move into presence, balance. 

Now initially these are two different processes, but as you gain facility it will become one continuous effort. That's the warrior's solution. 

Compassion and Insight

From: Awakening From Belief 6a
Full transcript (Available soon)
Audioclip

Student: This stems from yesterday from a question about the practice of shamatha leading to insight as different from that leading to compassion To my experience, the two seem so intertwined. I was unable to catch where it separated and how they are not almost one and the same. 

Ken: Compassion and insight? Well, they're quite different. 

Student: But don't they arise almost co-emergently? 

Ken: [Laughter] That's a big word. Where'd you get that one? [Laughter] Where's my dictionary? Ah, the lhan cig skyes pa'i ye shes  (pron. lhenchik kyé pe yé shé), co-emergent or co-natural awareness,  I guess. Okay, how much do you want on this? 

Student: I'm asking the question because it's-- 

Ken: I can give you a three- or four-sentence answer or I can give you two hours. 

Student: Make it two hours. [Laughter] 

Student: Middle way. 

Ken: Ah, there we go. What's behind your question?: What's the practice experience? 

Student: Again from my own experience, it's that compassion has continued to grow as I've been involved more and more in practice, and that the insight that develops from the practice reveals the relationship to all sentient beings. Maybe I am using or hearing the word insight incorrectly.

Ken: Compassion is the ability to be present with suffering. It's necessary if you're actually going to help somebody. If you can't be present with the suffering, then you will try to change the situation so that you don't feel the suffering. That's not helping the person. So, the number one requisite in compassion is to be able to be present with the pain in the situation. To do that you have to let go of control, which for some people is a bit challenging. 

 Now, when we use the term insight in Buddhism we are pointing to something that's quite different from the way the word is used in ordinary English. And even within Buddhism there are significant distinctions in how the word is used.

In the Theravadan tradition, the word mindfulness refers to what in the Mahayana tradition we refer to as the union of shamatha and vipashyana. It's quite different usage. Even within the Mahayana, in the Gelugpa tradition, insight is used to refer to working with such questions as what is the nature of mind, what is the color of your mind, where is your mind, all that kind of stuff--you know what I'm talking about. 

In the Kagyu tradition, those questions are viewed as the preparation for insight, and insight actually refers to seeing into mind nature. That's insight.

Now, it's quite possible to be able to stand and be present in the presence of pain and suffering and have no insight. And it's quite possible to see into the nature of mind and have difficulty being present with suffering. It's possible and, unfortunately, that happens.

In the Mahayana tradition, emptiness--which is the result of seeing and compassion--are regarded as...well, the phrase that my teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, always used was stong nyid snying rje snying po can (pron. tongnyi nyingjé nyingpo chen). stong nyid  is the Tibetan word for emptiness, and sngying rje is the word for compassion, snying po  is the word for heart and can is the word to have. To have the heart or the essence which is the union of compassion and emptiness. And this is, I think, one of the aspects of the genius of the Mahayana, is the recognition that you need both. 

In terms of practice, as you cultivate compassion--that is, as you become more and more able to be in the presence of suffering--then you can open to more and more experience. You can open to the experience of everyone you encounter. You can open to the totality of your experience because you can be present with the pain in others and you can be present with the pain in you. So, you open to the totality of your experience, and this provides you with a stability of attention, which is awfully useful when it comes to developing insight.

At the same time, when you really see into how things work--and we're talking about mind, but it's the same in other areas of knowledge--compassion arises quite naturally, unless there's an emotional block against it. So, for instance, if you have mastered a body of knowledge--you know, carpentry, psychotherapy, linguistics, it doesn't matter--but you really know it, you understand it very deeply, what do you experience when you see someone fumbling around and making mistakes in the area of knowledge that you know so well?

Student: You help them.

Ken: Yeah, you feel compassionate. So that's why I say compassion arises naturally from deep knowing, unless there is an emotional block. And there are all kinds of people who have very deep knowledge of a particular area and aren't particularly noted for their compassion.

So, yes the two work with each other and can and do enhance each other, but it's not a given. It's not a given, and that's why one is encouraged to cultivate both.

Practice deeply

From: Four Immeasurables 6
Full Trancript
Audioclip (This is a long clip. The quote below begins at about min. 13)

There are many, many methods of practice in Buddhism—hundreds, if not thousands. It’s what happens when you hang around for twenty-five hundred years. What’s important is for you to find the methods and practices that really speak to you and then you practice them until they completely permeate or they become the way you relate to the world.

Obviously you can’t do that with every tool—there’s just not enough time. Our retreat teacher, his tool was mahamudra. And that’s just what he did. And after he taught a third three-year retreat he was then given permission to go and I think he’s been in retreat for the last twenty years. Probably just practicing mahamudra. And he was pretty good at it, way back twenty years ago. So I have no idea what he’s like now.

And four immeasurables just didn’t work for him at all. I got into a big argument with him about that. He just looked at me and said finally, ”Ken, they don’t work for me.“ ”Oh, okay.“ And different practices work for different people. That’s why we have many different practices.

Even within the four immeasurables you may find one speaks more to you than the others. I think it is important to develop a gesture with all four. You’ll find in the end that compassion has a special place. Because compassion more than any of the others brings us into presence and as I was saying earlier radiates presence into the world.

The principle of balance

The principle of balance (from Warrior's Solution 03 00:19:53.30 - 00:21:44.20)

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Balance and imbalance are both indicated by the direction of increase. A sign of imbalance is that things become increasingly harder and require more effort. A sign of balance is that doors just open. Another way this is often talked about is being in tune with things. Balance facilitates opening. Imbalance produces suffering.

Balance is the optimum condition for presence to arise. Imbalance requires you to exert more and more effort to experience things as they are. The implications of that are internally you resort more and more to compensating behaviors and suppression, and externally the world becomes more and more problematic. People and the environment take the hit.

Kinds of meditation practices

Meditation practices (from MMT01 0:01:38.05 - 0:08:22.00)

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Meditation practices can be divided into various kinds. Among the breakdowns the one I find probably most useful is: there are those practices which are concerned with the practice of presence or being awake and present in your life. Then there are practices which transform energy and build a capacity and energy in attention. And then there are practices which we can call purification, but in a very, very broad sense of that term. That is they get rid of the stuff or change our relationship with the stuff that gets in the way of being present. Some examples may be useful.

Mahamudra, dzogchen in the Tibetan tradition, bare attention in the Theravadan tradition, shikentaza in the Zen tradtion are all examples of practice of presence. These meditations are usually very, very simple. You can say that basic shamatha, which is resting with the breath, also falls into this category. They're usually very simple, very little to do, very little to them and one quickly finds that simple does not equal easy. And if you're not actually doing the practice then you're doing nothing, you're just wandering. So that's important.

And the energy transformation practices vary tremendously. In the Theravadan tradtion you have techniques of body scanning, even noting practice can be used as an energy transformation practice. The cultivation of loving kindness is in some respects an energy transformation practice. In the Mayayana one usually relies more on compassion or the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In the Vajrayana there's a whole host of energy transformation practices including most of the yidam practices and then the advanced techniques known as the six yogas of Naropa, for example. And there are a large number of other techniques which can be used to transform energy. All energy transformation practices are inherently dangerous because when you start moving things this way you never know exactly what you're going to run into. And you you can really run into blocks in yourself and it's good to know how to work with those blocks.

A third category is probably the largest category of meditation practices: purification practices. This includes again such practices as the four immeasurables but particularly things like meditation on suffering, meditation on impermanence in which you're using these practices to dismantle the operation of various reactive patterns. One of the simplest ways to understand the reactive patterns is from the Theravadan tradition, the three marks of existence which are, probably most of you know, impermanence: everything that's made of other things eventually falls apart. It passes, it's transient. The presence of suffering, all emotional reaction is by nature suffering. And you can say emotional reaction is the reaction we have to experience when we aren't able to stay present with it.

And then the third is non-self. That is there is nothing that we actually are. We are not a thing, even though we tend to go through our lives and operate as if not only we were a thing, we regard ourselves as being the center of the world.

A friend of mine puts it: "You're not going to survive life." Impermanence. "You're never going to get your emotional needs met," and "There's no one to be."

This runs so counter to most of western and American culture--you don't know whether to laugh or cry--which is based in ignoring death until you can't. If you're suffering somebody has done something wrong, so sue them. "What do you mean? I'm special, I'm unique" and you then we get into wonderful things like self-esteem etc., etc., which are endlessly problematic. I almost had a chance to have dinner with a person who started this California Comission on Self-Esteem and I was really looking forward to it. But it didn't come about.

Now, those are examples of purification practices.

Five Mysteries

From the Warrior's Solution retreat, which is about how to live in power without being controlled by it.

Below are the definitions of the five mysteries examined in the retreat:

1. Power
2. Balance
3. Presence
4. Truth
5. Freedom

Definitions of five mysteries (from WS01: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00:10:29.00 - 00:17:18.00)

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Power is the ability to be present in intentional action.

Balance is the union of knowing, being, and acting at the point at which experience arises.

Presence: being in the full experience of what is arising: internal, external, and awareness.

The definition of truth is what is.

Freedom is the ongoing release of constraints (or being nothing as experience arises).

Attention and Emotional Reaction

Attention and ER (from ATP02: A Trackless Path (retreat) 01:07:05.00 - 01:10:42.00)

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There's one other piece I want to touch on here. I even made notes.

Bringing attention to precisely what we're experiencing in each moment does three things ... One thing it does, it frees us from emotional reaction. Emotional reaction is always dependent on a sense of past and future, hopes and fears about the future, disappointments and longings or aversions from the past. When we bring attention to precisely what we're experiencing now, the past and the future disappear, and so we're free from emotional reaction and can relate to what is arrising right now.

Second thing is that bringing attention to the present moment brings the freedom to act. If you look at situations in which you couldn't act, you're inhibited in some way, I think you'll see that there was always some sense of the past or the future again. But when you're right in the present moment, by bringing it down to that you make it, in a certain sense, so small that you can actually do anything with it. It's quite interesting, that.

This technique is used in psychotherapy sometimes. Bringing the attention closer and closer to what people are experiencing they discover a freedeom in that because they're letting go of all the associations, fears, consequences and so forth.

Short Meditation

 Short Meditation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:04:17.80 - 00:08:40.50)

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Very short periods of meditation. And I want to put the emphasis on very short. So what does this look like? One breath meditation, that's about as short as you can get, right?.

Then you stop. And you check, "Oh am I still sitting upright, have I gone to sleep. No. OK, that’s good. Let’s do another session of meditation."

And start. OK. So far, so good. And you do that and you may think I’m completely nuts here, but you actually do it this way so that you have the experience of being completely awake and in attention for that one breath. Okay.

Then you do that 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 times--it’s up to you--but do it more rather than less. This can also help you. Then, when you really feel that you can do one breath, you do two breaths.

Then you stop. You don’t have to get up or anything. You just stop, look around, refresh your body and then you do two breaths again. And you gradually build up.

And the point here is, you never give yourself a chance to fall asleep. Because when we do that repeatedly in our meditation, what we’re actually practicing is not meditating--we’re practicing being dull. And that is just as problematic as being carried away by your thoughts—the other sign of the coin. But we actually have to practice this.

I was hearing about this young NBA basketball player. I can’t remember his name. Plays for Oklahoma. He’s one of the top draft picks, but he’s playing in the bottom of the league because that’s how it works. But he’s working really hard--this is his rookie year

And after practice his coach came in and he saw this guy shooting hoops. And he would be standing on one place on the floor and shooting hoops. And he would just shoot from that one position until he could sink every one. And then he would move six inches to the right and do the same thing.

And what he was doing was making sure that his body knew how to shoot from every conceivable point on the floor. He was really working at his game and he’s already a really, really good basketball player. Okay.

That’s what it takes. If we want to practice meditation, it isn’t just sitting down and having a nice thing like that. It’s actually practicing attention. So you practice it. And it’s not enough simply to put in the time. Putting in the time’s very important but in addition to putting in the time we have to be getting the feedback.

Now for the basketball player it’s very easy to get feedback--did the ball go in the hoop or not--very easy. Meditation--it’s a little more difficult getting feedback. That’s why we have to do it very, very short so that "Okay, yes I was there." And then we do it again.

And people think, “Why would I do this?” So that’s my question for you. Why would you do this?

NOTE:  More on one breath meditation here

The Basics

Meditation / Practice

Motivation (Willingness)

• Practice (3:04)
• How To Change Things (16:43)
• Primary Practice Benefits (15:33)
• Practice Daily (0:56)
• Mantra (0:33)
• Repetition (10:29)
• Confident Faith (3:50)
• Completing the Process (2:59)
• The Breath (4:48)

Resting (Breathing)

• Basic Skills (4:43)
• Short Meditation (4:23)
• Resting (20:46)Body like a mountain,
  breath like the wind,
  mind like the sky.
  Don't pursue the past,
  don't entertain the future,
  don't think about the present,
  just rest.
• Meditation Walkthrough (16:34)
• Meditation (13:03)

The Body

• The Body (4:46)
• The Full Body Experience (19:01)

The Central Practice

• To Be In One Thing (1:58)
• The Central Practice (17:38 + 8:30)
• The Primary Practice (7:25 + 7:38)

Receive The Result

Receive The Result (from PAP10: Power and Presence (retreat) 00:00:43.00 - 00:06:45.00)

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"A Way of Living"

The Teacher

Important (impressive) section not only for me...

The Teacher (from TNE04: There is No Enemy (retreat) 00:49:44.00 - 01:01:46.00)

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Now, the usual sources of refuge are the three jewels, buddha, dharma, and sangha and I'll come to those in a minute.

In the Tibetan tradition great emphasis is placed on the teacher. And I've come to feel that's very very important, for a very unfortunate reason.

It doesn't matter what discipline, when you study with somebody, that person represents your aspirations in that discipline--is a symbol for your aspirations.

I worked for a very short time with a concert violinist. And he studied with a teacher who was a brilliant brilliant violinist. And he learned a lot from him. But he learned a few other things too. ...

...

He represents your own spiritual aspirations to you. So, our teacher is, like it or not, how we experience awakened mind. ...

...

To Be In One Thing

To Be In One Thing (WS01) (from WS01: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00.20.30.00 - 00.22.28.00)

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In terms of exercise, from this moment on, form the intention to be in one thing, whatever you are doing.

So, if you are walking from here to your room, form the intention to be in the experience of walking. If you are brushing your teeth, form the intention to be in the experience of brushing your teeth and do it. If you are going to sleep, form the intention of going to sleep. And go to sleep.

So this is being in one thing completely.

So that's your exercise!