How to get precisely what you're trying to avoid

From: Awakening From Belief 1
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When you begin to look at karma as a process of evolution, then what evolutionary processes are you starting when you get angry with your spouse? Is that a process you want taking place in your world of experience? Well, some of you may say yes. But I will tell you one thing and I’ve had so many illustrations of this. When a process is initiated by a reaction—that is by confusion or ignorance—it’s always an effort to avoid experiencing something. Well, the nature of the beast is that whatever process is initiated by that effort to avoid experiencing, let’s say x, guess what that reactive process delivers? It delivers precisely x every time.

Recognizing Reactive Patterns

From: Awakening From Belief 7
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Ken: Several people have asked how you recognize a reactive pattern. Well, one of the features of a reactive pattern is, as I mentioned, that they're mechanical in nature. What's one of the characteristics of a mechanical system?

Student: No variation.

Ken: No variation. It just runs one way. So, a way to identify a reactive pattern--and it's very useful to do this--is, "Must be this way, can't be that. Have to have this, can't have that. Must have this, can't have that." Any time you have that going in you, chances are you're running a reactive pattern. We run into this all the time. The retreat that I did recently in Santa Fe, there was a little confusion the first day, and there was no coffee at breakfast. [Laughter]

Student: Not a good move.

Student: Ah, love it.

Ken: See, there we are, right there. "Must be this way, can't have that."

Student: I have it on good authority that they have coffee in the bardo.

Ken: Yeah, so a nobleman once asked a dervish, "I've been a student of the path for many years but I feel I have gained no understanding at all." And the dervish replied, "That is because you are too arrogant." And the nobleman said, "If you weren't a holy man I would take offense at that remark; however, I am willing to listen. I will do whatever you say." And the dervish replied, "The situation is beyond hope. You will not do what I say, and so you cannot learn anything on this path." And the nobleman said, "I don't accept that. Give me your instruction." And the dervish said, "I want you to take off your fine clothes, put on some rags, wear a horse's feedbag full of oats in front of you and a sign saying 'Kick me' on the back." "I can't do that." "Exactly," said the dervish, "so you cannot learn."

We run into this all the time--when you hear yourself say, and we have many ways of saying it, "Has to be this way." Some of the examples that were given in earlier conversations: "Have to be peaceful, can't have conflict." Reactive pattern. You know, "It's against the rules." Other people, their conversations can't be peaceful, have to be conflict. Same thing. It's just the reactive pattern running in a different direction. So anytime you run into that kind of inflexibility--black and white, this way or that--you're dealing with a reactive pattern. 

Like an acorn

From: Awakening from Belief 1
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When I studied with Kalu Rinpoche in India in the early seventies, Rinpoche taught us about karma, which as you well know is usually translated as the law of cause and effect. He would always draw a diagram of a tree. We have a seed which grows into a shoot, and grows into a tree, and it has branches, and then it has leaves, and then it has fruit, and then the whole thing starts up again.

The translation as cause and effect is, I think, quite wrong, quite misleading. And I've had the discussion with a number of translators, and the first thing they do is they laugh me out of the room. I had one person said, "Well, if this word in Tibetan isn't cause, then this isn't a book!" And he held up a book. He just thought it was the most ridiculous thing.

But I want to pose a question to you: does an acorn cause an oak tree? Is the acorn a cause of an oak tree? Well, in a certain philosophical sense yes, but it's not how we normally use the word cause. Karma is much more a process of evolution. That's what happens with an acorn. You put it into the ground, and water soaks into it, and things start happening inside it. And after it goes through all of these changes, and roots starts to go down, stuff starts to come up, and then breaks above the ground, and then it starts getting stuff from the sun. And it evolves stage by stage into an oak tree, which then evolves into leaves, and flowers, and things happen to them and they eventually become other acorns. But in the process, the original acorn is long since gone.

So, the idea that actions that we do now cause things to happen in the future--which is often how people think about karma--that's not how I've come to understand it. It's that the actions that we do now are like the acorn. That's something we've done and in doing that action we've started a process and that process evolves in a number of different ways--and if we have time over the next few days, I'll try and sketch that out--but it evolves into an experienced result. It doesn't cause an experienced result. The action itself evolves into an experienced result, because it creates conditions so that other things happen--and just goes on, and on, and on.

Compassion and Insight

From: Awakening From Belief 6a
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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.

Pairing practices

From: Awakening from Belief 5a
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Ken: Jamgon Kongtrul once said, When you're studying, study everything under the sun. When you are reflecting, keep a really open mind. When you practice, do one thing.

That's very good advice, because to practice we need to go deep and you can't go deep if you're doing a lot of different things. I'm trained in the Tibetan tradition. What that means is that I'm trained in anywhere from a hundred and fifty to two hundred meditation techniques. You know, you can't practice them all. And I'm not even counting individual deities as separate meditation techniques. You add those then it gets up into the thousands. Well, you can't practice them all and it's absolutely not necessary.

When I work with students and in my own work, I always say, "You study and you practice and at a certain point you hit a practice that speaks to you." You may not like it, you don't always like the one that speaks to you, but that doesn't matter. When you find one that speaks to you--that's it.

And the other thing, just since we're discussing this, is that usually I'll have people do two practices. One which the emphasis is going to be on the wisdom or awareness side, and one which is going to be on the compassion side.

Student: Why?

Ken: Well, take two practices, very simply. Say resting in attention, mahamudra or dzogchen on the one hand, and taking and sending on the other, which is a compassion practice. That would be one example of pairing, but there are so many practices you can choose different pairs. Deity meditation, which is a visualization practice which has to do with form and manifestation, and a direct awareness practice.

When people are doing things like the death meditation or the karma meditation, I'll often--people are pretty busy and often can only practice once a day--I'll have them do one day just resting with the breath and then one day a reflective practice. so that it has that kind of alternation.

It's good to have those two parts, those two components. But very definitely, when you find a practice that speaks to you, mine it, and just keep going with it.

Note:  You'll find more on going deeply into practice in this clip and quote from Four Immeasurables 6 

The Purpose of Meditation

From: Awakening from Belief 1
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Ken: The purpose of meditation, or one way to regard meditation, is building a capacity of attention. I don't know whether you've had it explained that way to you before, but you're building a capacity of attention. Why is it important to have a capacity of attention? Well, arguably, a reasonable translation of the term samadhi, which I imagine some of you have heard, is attention.

Now, those of you who are familiar with such esoteric teachings as the five paths, and the ten stages, and all of that stuff, may recall that at the end of the tenth stage the bodhisattva enters vajra-like or diamond-like samadhi and becomes enlightened or awakened--becomes buddha. Let's put this into English. The fundamental effort in Buddhist practice is to develop a sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence.

Student: Could you repeat that?

Ken: That's fine. The essence of Buddhist practice is to develop sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence. That's exactly what Buddha did under the bodhi tree. Such a relief--don't have to be anybody. It's a little counter-intuitive.

So, all forms of mediation practice--and it doesn't matter what--they're developing attention. Sometimes they develop attention very directly, as shamatha does. Sometimes they're getting rid of the blocks in the way of developing attention--things like death and impermanence. Many of the purification practices in the Vajrayana, sometimes they're developing energy, which you're going to use to power attention. Guru yoga is an example of that, loving kindness, compassion are examples of that. And there are also esoteric methods of developing states of attention, states of energy--but it's all about developing attention so you can actually experience what is.

Note:  Click here to read about the Awakening From Belief retreat

The big scheme of the practice

From: Awakening from Belief 6b

Ken: I want you to go through situations where reactions come up and feel where the reaction arises. And you'll notice that by all of the sensations that arise in your body, and emotions and things like that. If you suddenly get lost in thinking it's a very good indication you've hit reactive material because everybody uses the intellect to get away from feeling. If you go to sleep that's also a good indication you're hitting reactive material because that's a great way of checking out: "I don't have to feel anything." 

Student: What if you've forgotten what you were reacting to? 

Ken: Well, you've gotta go back and do it again, and the way practice works here it's exactly the same way that shamatha works. You sit down in shamatha, you breathe, get lost in a thought, after a while you go, "Oh yeah, that's right I got lost in a thought," and you come back and you breathe again, breathe, breathe, breathe, get lost in another thought, "Oh yeah." But as you do this over a period of time, you begin to move back until a time comes when you're sitting there resting with the breath, and a thought comes up and you realize, "Oh there's a thought." But you don't get lost. You're just, "Oh." And it goes up and it goes poof, and you go, "Hmm," and you're just there the whole time. 

And that's actually developing a capacity of attention so you can experience a little reactive process, because a thought is a little reactive process. So we're doing this on a larger scale now. You just keep coming back, keep coming back, keep going through the same situation. You're going to get lost, confused and all kinds of uncomfortable feelings will come up, etc., etc. You keep going through it, and this way gradually you're going to hit whatever that reactive process is based on, which is some kind of uncomfortable feeling.
If you hit that--and you may or may not--just rest in that feeling, because at this point you don't know that it's a feeling. It feels like a fact to you. That's why you run away from it. That's why the reactive patterns kick up, just to get away from it. 

So you need to develop your capacity of attention just to experience it, just to rest in the experience of it. That may take  anywhere from five minutes to ten years, and when know--and I don't mean intellectually, I mean experientially--when you know it to be a feeling, then everything changes. 

So that's the big scheme of the practice.

The violin case

Excerpt (49:41 – 50:49)

From Awakening From Belief 02  — Ken McLeod, Unfettered Mind.

For instance, a lot of people think of karma as a balancing mechanism in the universe. It's what makes the universe just. Well, that's just a projection of the human value of justice on the world. It's nonsense. It's totally unjust. When you really appreciate how karma operates, how this process operates, you realize you have about as much room to move as a violin in a violin case. Fortunately, it's enough. So the choice points, to go to your point that you're raising, are few and fleeting. That’s why mindfulness is so very very important. Because through the practice of attention, through the cultivation of attention in the practice of mindfulness, you actually create more and more choice points.

No Choice

No choice (from Awakening From Belief (AFB08) 00:03:35.70 - 00:10:07.80)

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You're in a situation and you can see into it, and I'm inferring from what you said that the more you saw into it, the more it bugged you, irritated you, the angrier you felt. And like many people who practice, you tried to counteract that anger with compassion. We have to be very careful, that kind of direct countering, and there's a number of methods in Buddhism for that: you counter desire with revulsion, you counter anger with compassion or loving-kindness, and so forth. Unless they're practiced properly--there are some subtleties there--they almost always end up in suppression, and from what you described, it sounds like it could be going in that direction. When you think about engaging the situation it's all up again, so I'd like to ask you, and you don't have to answer this outloud, but it's something for you to consider: What are you trying to get in this situation? And one of the ways that I've worked with a number of people in difficult situations is, What are you trying to get from it? And you have to get really clear about that.

Now sometimes what you're trying to get is to satisfy a pattern, which is hopeless, but it's operating anyway... But you have to include that in the awareness. and sometimes it's a very deep yearning-- what have you. So that's the first step, What am I trying to get here? What do I really want? And that involves a level of examination internally. And sometimes it's very hard to admit.

For instance, I had a woman in my office the other day who's in a kind of messy family situation and she has a stepdaughter, there's some alienation taking place, and she was going on and an about this, and finally I looked at her and said, "It stikes me that you miss her." And of course she just fell apart because that's what was actually going on inside, but that was so hard for her to admit to herself. So that's difficult, and once you identify what you really want from a situaiton then you take a look. Is it possible? And sometimes you look and you see, "This is what I want but it's never going to happen." Then you have a chance.

Student: [unclear]

Ken: Am I better off? Yes you are, From a buddhist perspective you're better off because now you know where the edge of your practice is. And here's a situation, you see you're not going to be able to get what you actually want and you can't accept that. Well, there's something in you that can't meet this reality, so that tells you there's something quite deep stuck in you. It's a very good diagnostic tool and now that you're aware that there's something going on in you, you can start to work with that.

You see everybody says they want to be aware, but most people only want to feel aware. It's not the same. When you're aware, you have no choice about what you're aware of; you're aware of everything. So the possibility of orchestrating the world to suit your needs--it's gone. You have to deal with what is. And that can be difficult sometimes.

The nesting bird

Ken uses many teaching stories. This is one of my favourites...

Bird teacher (from AFB09a 00:20:24.03 - 00:22:35.05)

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I encourage you not to analyze. The understanding that we develop or uncover with this practice is a direct knowing. It is not a deductive knowing, which is always a product of the intellect. You can't trust it.

Uchiyama Roshi talks about a bird sitting on her nest. And the bird sits on the eggs, and every now and then she gets up, turns all the eggs over with her beak. [Unclear] Amazing. It's created a question in science. How does she know when to turn the eggs over? What kind of biological clock mechanism is there? Well, after a few investigations they discovered there was no biological clock. She just gets too hot. So she turns the eggs over. Now she's cool. The result is that the eggs are evenly warmed and they hatch properly.

That's the kind of sensitivity that we develop here. You're so in touch with your own experience, so totally in touch with your own experience, that by responding to that, you actually respond with what is appropriate in the world.