Settling

By George Draffan:

Sitting Easy, Resting in Attention

A Difficult Situation

How do you feel about dying? Are you OK with that? Right now? OK, don't worry, it's just practice:)...

A Difficult Situation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:11:25.80 - 00:13:47.70)

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How many of you would like to be able to experience what arises in you more completely without getting completely freaked out in the process?

Okay. Well let’s do a meditation. I think I’ve done this here before. We’re just going to jump straight into the deep end. Okay. Now it doesn’t have to be really, really deep and you don’t have to have giant squid in the bottom of the pool or anything like that. But what I want you to do is take something from your life--maybe it’s something you’ve got coming tomorrow when you go back to work. Maybe it’s something that happened over the holidays. But something that was a bit of a problem for you--a real problem. Maybe it’s something you felt inside you, maybe it was an interaction with somebody else. But I want you to take something you ran away from. Figuratively or literally, sometimes people run away.

So everybody got something they can use? Anybody have a shortage?

You don’t have a problem? May I give you one?

How do you feel about dying?

You okay with that? So think about it now, you okay with that? You okay with dying right now? There you are. That’s the one you can use. I have a deep bag of these. Okay. Anybody else need one?

So just think of that situation or let’s use the term situation--it covers everything. And as you think of that situation say to yourself:

Breathing in, I experience the situation. Breathing out I experience the situation.

So let’s just do that for two or three moments together.

Thanks to Ann Brown for the transcription!

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

Meditation

Resting - Listening

A feedback loop: a self-referencing system

From Janet Hathaway:

I found Ken's Monsters Under the Bed retreat (especially the first podcast) had excellent advice on meditation. It was extremely helpful for me. If you get a chance, you might enjoy listening to it, as it speaks to all of your questions, in detailed ways.


Meditation (from MUB01: Monsters Under The Bed (retreat) 00:35:07.00 - 00:48:10.00)

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Ken: Within what Claudia and George were both saying are two qualities which are extremely important in meditation. And actually in our lives, but we first begin to form a relationship with them, or many of us do, in meditation.

The first quality is resting. Claudia talked about resting in the experience of breathing. We just tried that for a few minutes. And some of you noticed that you barely start resting in the experience of breathing and the horse kicks you off its back. Just like that. What’s your your name?

Cathy: Cathy.

Ken: Cathy. I thought you were one of the Cathys! Yes, you’re the C, right? Ah. Okay.

So, you notice how what you say is your mind—I’m not quite sure what that is, so I may ask for some elaboration on this—but some thing jumps in and starts trying to control the whole process, telling you what to do. “Well, do this. Stand up. Sit down. Lean to the left. Lean to the right. Breathe a little more deeply.” And all of that stuff. How many of you in your meditation practice have this little commentary that goes on the background, “Okay, hey you’re not doing badly right now.” [Laughter]

“Now, just ease up a little bit there—you’re getting a little bit tense. Oh, cool, cool—that’s it! Just—oooh, nice move! Ah, a little dullness here, better sharpen it up. Oh, come on, you got lost in a thought! What kind of an idiot are you?” Anybody else have this?

I suppose that’s what you’re referring to as your mind. Ah, okay. Well, so you start resting in the experience of breathing, and most of us get caught up in thoughts immediately. This is where what George is saying comes in It’s very important.

We may not notice this at this point, but every one of those thoughts is actually a reaction to a physical sensation. People are looking like, “What?” It’s a physical sensation with an emotional charge, and we don’t want to touch it so what we do is we start thinking. This is why I said last night, and George reiterated this this morning, that the most reliable way to cut through the thinking process is to bring your attention to what you are experiencing in the body. And you say “Well, I came here to meditate. I came here to be quiet and peaceful. I didn’t come here to feel all the aches and pains and little stuff, you know, I just want to sit and just have a really quiet mind.” But it doesn’t work that way.

George also talked gave us some very, very useful pointers on sitting. I want to take it step further here. I said there are two important components to meditation. First is resting. The second one now comes in—listening. And this was implicit in what both Claudia and George talked about: You listen. Your body knows how to breathe. Can you listen to your body and let it breathe the way that it knows how? Or do you have some half-ass idea about how it should all be done. And you just go ahead and breathe that way?

You know the most difficult people I find to teach? Yoga teachers. Not all of them. But a good number of them have got so used to controlling their breath that they can’t actually let the body breathe. And it’s fair enough because in Hinduism/Yoga, it’s a different approach. And you learn to generate experiences through working with the body and working with the breath in ways. But they come to Buddhist practice and they sometimes find it very, very difficult because they can’t actually just rest and let the body breathe. It feels like everything’s going out of control.

Now, in that sensation of everything going out of control, there are a whole bunch of physical sensations. And that’s where you start in your practice. Okay, so, I feel like things are out of control, what am I experiencing physically? I feel like I am going to sleep, what am I experiencing physically? I’m feeling angry and upset, what am I experiencing physically? We do this over and over again.

In other words, you listen to the breath. You listen to the body.Your body will tell you how to sit. It will tell you when you are straining too much. It will tell you when you are slumping too much. It will tell you what it can do. It will tell you what it can’t do.

As you sit with the body, then you’ll find all of these different sensations. You listen to them very deeply, you will know how to sit. You listen to your breath and your breath will tell you when it’s out of sync with the body. And you will know, or your body will know, how to breathe. As you listen to all of that, you’ll find that you will know how to rest.

Resting in this way may feel a little different, because as Claudia said in her comments, there isn’t this sense of control that many of us are used to. And so, the moment we start actually resting, our emotional reactions to the lack of control start to arise, and now we just go through the same cycle again. What do I experience in my body?

And so meditation practice in this way of resting and listening is a dynamic process of adjustments in our posture, in our breath, in how we’re placing our attention. But the net result of all of those adjustments is an increasing sense of both rest and balance. That’s what we mean by such terms as shamatha. It’s not a case of just holding everything still. That just produces suppression and that generates other problems.

Rather, when sitting this way, practicing this way, we’re listening to our whole experience and finding a place of balance in it and resting there. Now, as we rest there, the place of balance will naturally shift because of all of the movements that George was describing. And so we find ourselves resting in a constantly moving balance.

Now as time goes on and we gain more experience and understanding, that becomes more and more subtle. So, from the outside, it will look like we’re doing nothing. But inside, we will sense this constant movement out of balance and then the adjustment to move back towards balance. And I’ve said on other occasions, it’s a bit like riding a bicycle. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going on a bicycle, the bicycle is always moving a little bit from side to side. And you’ll find the same thing in meditation: It’s always moving a little bit. And the moment you try to hold it still, you actually stop the process. But if you just rest in this movement and keep listening and listening, you’ll find that the adjustments become smaller and smaller and you rest more and more completely.

Now, if you’re like most people, you’ll want to rest on something. And I ask you to remember, it’s turtles all the way down! [Laughter]

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)

Meditation Walkthrough

First hand experience from Ken of what goes on in him when he is meditating. Describes also the basic technique of counting the breath to ten.

Meditation Walkthrough (from TNE02: There is No Enemy (retreat) 00:36:16.00 - 00:52:50.00)

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How To Change Things

How To Change Things (from SUS05: Sutra Session (questions) 00:25:25.00 - 00:42:07.60)

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Practice

Practice, practice, practice...

Practice (from Relationships and Emotional Reactions (talk) 00:16:25.70 - 00:19:29.50)

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...

And if you want to give a sports analogy, this is like going out and hitting tennis balls against the wall. Plop, plop, plop... And that's what you do, just breathe, breathe, breathe - same thing. And that's practice. It's really helpful.

...

Releasing Emotional Reactions 5

RER Phase Five (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:39:40.00 - 00:43:16.30)

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The fifth phase happens naturally, one could say, spontaneously, and it happens when you actually join with the feeling. That is, there's no longer any separation, between the knowing and the experience. Or to put it another way, the illusion of being separate from the experience crumbles. And what happens there is that an understanding naturally arises. You understand the feeling. You understand what it is, how it arises, and you can be fully in the experience of the feeling and there is no confusion. So the fifth step is, "Breathing in, I understand this feeling. Breathing out, I understand this feeling."

Now, when that understanding arises, often it will take some cognitive form. You say, "Oh, it's this and this and this. I've had this insight etc." Don't hang onto the insight. When you go to the insight, you actually fall into distraction. It arises, rest in the understanding, not the formulation. The understanding or the knowing is like a quality of knowing there. Rest in that. It will feel, most of the time, like you have no reference. But that knowing is the union of experience. Now you are no longer separate from what you experience.

So this technique uses the breath as a way of coming into the union of knowing in experience. Go through these five steps, or five phrases. Let them unfold naturally. Thich Nhat Hahn uses the image of holding a flower, but the flower hasn't opened, and your attention is like the sun. And just being in the breathing, letting your attention be with this flower, then the flower, in it's own time, opens in the warmth of your attention.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 4

RER Phase Four (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:34:39.40 - 00:39:37.70)

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The fourth phase begins with the discovery that in that calm, we can actually relax. We discover, sometimes to our surprise, a sense of ease. So here's this difficult feeling which we are experiencing. But our experience now has a basis of calmness and we begin to relax into the feeling. And this is the beginning of a very important point in practice. Resting in the experience. By this point in this process we have a pretty full experience of the feeling and everything that's going on in it. And we have discovered the calm and now we begin to rest in the experience, with that sense of ease or relaxation. As Gunaratana says, "When your mind joins with the object of attention, the body and the mind both relax."

So we just do this for a few moments together, but go back to that sense of calm and then just rest in the calm. Letting the feeling and all of the reactions be there. But resting in the calm at the same time. "Breathing in I experience ease in the feeling. Breathing out, I experience ease in the feeling."

Now you may find, that when you start relaxing, you suddenly experience the feeling more completely, and you tense up again. Push it away. So this takes you back to phase one, but now you're working at a deeper level. And the way this particular practice works, there is a constant cycling going through phase one, phase two, sometimes back to phase one, right there. Phase three, phase four, you begin to relax, you experience more of the feeling, and now you are able to bring the feeling closer to you, and everything becomes more vivid, more awake, and so you work again with phase one. So there is a constant cycling back. But each time you cycle back, you are moving into a deeper and deeper experience of the feeling. You are moving closer to the feeling and experience the feeling itself. And that process goes on and on.

Depending on the nature of the feeling, the degree of conditioning, how it's arising, that process can take anywhere from five seconds to five decades. So there's no specific time frame. You may find at certain points, when you begin to relax, that feeling disolves and just seems to vanish and there's something else there. And if that's the case, then you begin working with that. Because you see that the original feeling was actually a layer which is obscuring something else underneath. Now you start working with what's underneath. Either of these ways you are moving deeper and deeper into your own experience.

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 3

RER Phase Three (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:31:27.10 - 00:33:23.90)

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Phase three begins with a discovery that even though we're in the presence of a uncomfortable or difficult pain or feeling, we can actually be in that experience and quiet, calm. That is, we can be experiencing the pain and all of the reactions to the pain, and that can all be going on and yet there is a capacity to have a sense of calm in all of that. So the third phase is, "Breathing in I experience calm with this pain. Breathing out I experience calm with this pain."

Now, I'm doing this, taking you through this, you may or may not be there with your particular pain, but the possibility is there. And if you have it at an appropriate distance from you, and just working with the right fraction of it, then you can experience "Oh, yes, I can experience this and be calm. I don't have to be fighting against it." So let's just do this for a minute. "Breathing in I experience calm with the feeling. Breathing out I experience calm with the feeling."

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 2

RER Phase Two (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:26:13.80 - 00:30:22.70)

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Now as you do that, phase two starts almost immediately.

In phase two, we become aware of our reactions to that pain. Basically there are three kinds of reactions that arise. There are reactions in the body, in some cases we may flinch or tense against the pain. A defensive posture or something. Or maybe there's a feeling of nausea or discomforts in parts of our body. But there are actually physical reactions to the pain or the feeling. And secondly, there are emotional reactions, with the pain or the feeling. When you start holding it, you may feel some fear or some anxiety. Or maybe there's some anger or sadness. Maybe jealousy comes in, or grief, or wanting. There are all of these different possibilities, and those are the emotional reactions. And then there are the stories and associations: "Oh this is always happening to me. I always get into this kind of mess" or "This has never happened to me before. I don't understand how this has possibly happened." Or "This is all my fault" or "This is terrible what people did to me, how could they treat me like that!" There are all of these different stories. So the second phase is "Breathing in I experience the reactions to the pain, breathing out, I experience the reactions to the pain."

And start with the physical, and when you can be in the physical reactions, then include the emotional. And when you can be in the physical and the emotional, then include stories and associations and the cognitive reactions. And as you do this you'll find yourself moving into the full experience of the pain or feeling itself.

So phase two builds on phase one and actually enriches it. So let's do that for a minute together. "Breathing in I feel the reactions to the pain, breathing out I feel the reactions to the pain." And just as you hold the initial pain or feeling, tenderly, so also hold all of the reactions, the reactions in the body, the emotional reactions and the stories, tenderly in attention. Don't try to make them one way or the other, don't try to get rid of the physical discomforts. Just hold them tenderly in attention and let them be experienced.

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 1

This clip was selected and transcribed by Tracy Ormond!

This is the first step of a Five-Step Mindfulness Practice.

RER Phase One (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:22:49.60 - 00:26:00.10)

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So the first phase is, "Breathing in I experience this," and I am going to use the word feeling, but it could be emotion, it could be pain, it could be problems, and you just fill in the blank. So let's just do that.

You take this and you say, "Breathing in I feel this pain." Breathe in. "Breathing out I feel this pain." With each breath, "Breathing in I feel this pain, breathing out I feel this pain."

Now, in the beginning, depending what you have chosen, that may be a bit like a hot potato. So there are two methods I've found that can at least get us in touch with it to some extend. The first is: "Okay, that's too hot, too difficult, too much for my capacity of attention at this point." So experience one tenth of it, or one hundredth, or one thousandth. And that approach works for some people. For other people, they find it more helpful to think, "Well that's too close, if I put it on the other side of the room, well, maybe on the other side of town." So it's a safe distance away, but still in one's awareness.

So the first step is just to bring it into awareness, either a small piece of it or at a proximity that you can handle. And that's for you to determine in your own practice. So set it up that way, whatever is appropriate for you, we go back to phase one. "Breathing in, I experience this pain, breathing out..." and imagine holding the pain tenderly in your attention. Which means that you're not going to do anything to it. And you're not trying to get anything from it. You're just holding it, and you are holding it very, very gently.

Some background info--the following is a comment made by Ken in response to a question asked by Michael, who was working on translating this practice into German:

"The crucial point is in Michael's last comment: 'To use these meditation instructions it is not necessary to feel pain. It can be an emotion or a problem which may be experienced as a kind of imbalance for example, rather than pain. And even an imbalance can make patterns run.'

This meditation is for working with reactions, those seemingly automatic processes that just run and throw us into confusion and lead us to do things we wouldn't do if we were clearer and more responsive. Reactions can be blissful or painful, though usually the latter. Think of falling in love (a blissful reaction, frequently) or the anger that arises when love is not returned.

The aim is to experience what is arising as completely as possible. In English, to give an idea of the range of experiences, I use "reaction, pain, problem, issue, difficulty, etc.". Basically, it covers anything that we can't experience for any reason."
...
In teaching people, I give them this meditation whenever people are encountering something that prevents them from resting. If one can rest, then one rests and lets the resting deepen on its own. When one encounters something difficult, then more specific effort and attention, as in this practice, can help.

Resting

This is an important one, for the basics. Not only does it go in detail into how to sit and breathe, but it has actually three different methods (including the one focusing on the breath). So you can alternate or choose what is easiest for you, or bring some variety into the game (and it is also interesting to compare and experience how they work differently (or not) and what kind of result they each yield). If you are interested in any of this, but it still seems to be too difficult at first, you might actually begin with this even more basic method.

Resting (from MAH01: Mahamudra 01:12:35.00 - 01:33:21.00) (download into iTunes)

On a personal note, I have always found meditation practice extremely difficult. And, Kalu Rinpoche, my teacher, always encouraged us to go right to the heart of the matter. He was not interested in getting lost in some of the complexities of meditation practice, or different kinds of meditation practice. He always just went straight for the heart, straight for the essence.

But, I wasn't able to do that. And part of me really wanted to meditate resting on the breath. Whenever I asked Rinpoche, if I could just meditate resting on the breath. He would always say to me: There is no breath in the bardo. There is no breath after you die. So why are you waisting your time? And he was quite right.

But, in all honesty, it wasn't the most helpful thing to me. Because I did not have the capacity. So I meditated on the breath anyway. Felt terribly guilty in doing so. Because it was all I could do. I had my own difficulties. It was all I could do.

So, do what you actually can do.

...

Pith instructions:

Don't pursue the past,
don't entertain the future,
dont think about the present,
just rest.

And:

Body like a mountain,
breath like the wind,
mind like the sky.

WKC: Willingness, Know-how and Capacity

Willingness, Know-how and Capacity -- this is a framework that Ken McLeod presents over and over again in classes and retreats.

WKC (TAN34) (from TAN34 00.50.35.9 - 00.54.31.3)
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"Now how this happens in practice--it takes time. One has to work at it over and over again usually best done for relatively short periods. So you really practice that clarity aspect and that's why I had you over the last couple of weeks just dropping into that clarity because we live in the world the way we do we're not monastics, we don't live in monasteries, we don't live in secluded environments. The way we approach practice of this type isn't developing states of attention and trying to hold onto them or stabilize them that way but developing the facility of returning, returning, returning, returning and resting. And you know that that's the way I've taught you in meditation, rest in the experience of breathing whenever you find yourself distracted. Return to the experience and just rest there. So it's resting in the experience of everything. And it's the same with this clear mind. When you can, know that clarity, then you just drop into it and rest there. Whether you're washing dishes, gardening or talking with someone or actually practicing meditation. You just drop into it and rest and when it dissipates it dissipates you let it go. And then you drop into it again. So there isn't any sense of trying to hold onto something or work at something. You just drop into it and rest. And that's where you get don't be distracted, don't fall into distraction, or like I've said, no wandering, no control, no work. And you do that and if you have the opportunity to do retreats then you can do this for like ten days at a time or three weeks at a time. We did a Dzogchen retreat which is what people do. You just keep doing this all the time and you build up a momentum. It becomes cumulative and you begin to let go of things more and more deeply and things can really open up.

But it all depends on three qualities which you've heard me talk about before. One is you have to be willing to drop into that clarity and it's not the way, it's not the mind from which we ordinarily function and being willing to drop into that clarity involves letting go all kinds of conditioning and habituated ways of doing things and ways that we're very, very comfortable with.

The second quality that you need is to have the know-how to do this. There's a skill involved so you aren't falling into this kind of self-delusion. A lot of people think they're doing something when they're really just thinking. So that is something I have been trying to teach you through this whole course and through the retreats.

And then the third thing is developing capacity and that is what I was referring to a few moments ago, where you actually build up the level of attention that enables you to do this first in relatively simple situations like meditation or doing routine manual tasks and then gradually in more involved situations where there are strong reactive emotions are parading or you're having conversations or interactions with people and you still have that same ability to drop into that clarity, rest and actually function from there. And that takes years and years of training to do that. But that's basically what were involved in. Okay, how is this for you? Is this making sense? Somewhat helpful?"

Repetition

Repetition (from MMT06: Mahayana Mind Training (retreat) 00:17:51.00 - 00:28:20.00)

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This clip was pointed out and located by Valerie. Thanks.

Basic skills

Basic Skills (from DFF06: Death: Friend or Foe (retreat) 00:46:20.20 - 00:51:03.00)

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Ken: This morning—during the breakfast break—I was thinking, “You know, I really haven’t done a very good job teaching people.” I realized if I was going to start all over again, I’d do it very, very differently. So, now I’m going to tell you the right way. [Laughs]

Jean: Oh boy!

Ken: Finally! Well—pardon?

Student: This just came over breakfast?

Ken: This just came over breakfast, yes. You have to do something to fill the time, you know.

So, the first things one needs if you’re going to learn to do anything well are the basic skills. For instance, how do you learn how to write? You make the shapes of the letters over and over again. How do you learn arithmetic? Well, you practice addition and subtraction. So, it seemed to me, that probably the first thing you should learn when you’re meditating is how to pay attention to one breath. So, screw this 30 minutes of practice every day.

I’ve got a new client who wants to learn to meditate, so I think I’m going to try this on him. Say—[Laughter] “Poor guy,” says Jim, but maybe he’s lucky! So, forget about meditating for half an hour at a time. The first thing you do is--every morning--you get up and you practice a hundred one-breath meditations.

[Ken models doing one breath.] Finished. [Ken models another one-breath meditation.] Basic skill, right? Being present with one breath.

So, move onto death and impermanence. Same kind of thing. You really want to learn this stuff? Practice it. Take in one thing that changes every day. Doesn’t really matter what. It may be the movement of shadow as the sun goes. You go, “Oh.” And what this is going to do is bring attention to some minutiae in your life, and you see change. And you’re practicing exposing yourself to change. Basic skills. I don’t have all of the levels worked out, but you get the idea.

Just for interest, what would it be like if you’d learned meditation that way? Really basic skills. So, I’m gonna try that. I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, this is not theoretical stuff. This is not philosophy. This is learning, practicing, doing. And they can be broken down into really basic skills that we can learn. So that’s something I encourage you to do is, “Look, okay, how can I really take this in?” And don’t deal with the abstract; don’t deal with the philosophical. “How can I really take this in?”

Another practice that I’ve sometimes given people when they’re doing death and impermanence meditation is that every day—all the time they’re doing meditation—they have to buy a cut flower and put it in a vase where they meditate and not give it any water. So every day they sit down, they see the plants change. And eventually it shrivels up and dies, and then they get another flower and do the same thing. It’s like, “There is change.”

The Breath

From Claudia Hansson:

The Breath (from MUB01: Monsters Under The Bed (retreat) 00:00:00.00 - 00:04:48.50)

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Claudia: I’m going to start by talking about the breath. Everything that you read about meditation, certainly in all the Buddhist literature, you see the focus on the breath, and for shamatha practice this is what we’re doing. We are moving into the experience of breathing. The breath can seem like a very ordinary process. It’s something that, if we don’t direct our attention to it, the body does it anyway. The body knows how to breathe. We don’t have to control it. We don’t have to regulate it. And if we let ourselves just move into that very deep experience of just feeling the breath, everything else tends to follow along.

Sometimes, I know I’ve gone there myself, we sit for a while, and we think, “This is kind of a boring thing, paying attention to my breath, what’s the big deal about this?” But I think if you reflect on it a little bit, you can move into an experience where breath is pretty amazing.

Any of you have children, in the room? Okay, I wonder if you can remember what that experience was like when you first heard your child take that breath. Anybody want to share what that felt like?

Student: One second.

Student: The interesting thing for me is that I kept waking up at night and checking on him to make sure that he was still breathing.

Claudia: Yes.

Student: And then later when I talked to other mothers, they had all had similar experiences with their children.

Claudia: And monitors make it even worse now because they’re sitting right there, and every breath is coming at you. Anyone else?

I remember it very, very clearly, and very distinctly. I don’t remember much about the pain. I don’t remember much about the process. It’s kind of faded over the years, but I don’t think I will ever forget those first breaths that my children took.

About a year and a half ago, my father passed away. He was 86, and he was out hiking. He simply collapsed in the mountains. Fortunately I happened to be on an airplane, on my way to San Diego, to go and visit him so I was there when he was airlifted to the hospital.

When I got there, he was on a respirator, which they removed later. I had the deep honor and privilege of sitting with him while he took those last breaths. I will tell you that it moved me so deeply that it actually shifted my practice when I was resting with the breath, because the breath is our life. It means we’re here. It means we’re alive. We have this wonderful opportunity to practice.

The thing about the breath is, to be in that experience, not to be trying to control it or move it or change it. As the breath settles, the entire physiology of the body also starts to change. George is going to be talking about the body when we sit, but everything is carried with the breath.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (from AP02: Anything's Possible (pt 2) 00:36:14.50 - 00:41:15.80)

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Taking and Sending

Ken explains and introduces Taking and Sending in several podcasts with different degrees of detail. Here's an introduction from What to Do about Christmas.

Taking and Sending (from What to Do about Christmas? (00:18:53.00 - 00:24:27.30)

Ken: One of the more powerful techniques that I know which I think is particularly appropriate for this time of year is the technique of taking and sending. Now taking and sending is a specific technique from the genre of mind training in the Tibetan tradition.

The way mind training techniques work is that they bring a particular perspective and approach to the world into friction with our habituated way of approaching the world, and that friction generates heat and if you can stay in the heat that fuels your attention and you can experience things completely.

So our next meditation together will build on what we’ve just done.

As you breathe in, take in all of the feelings of regret, shame, guilt, criminality, negativity, you know the whole bit from all other beings. Now if you want to make this a bit more specific--because all other beings is a bit big for most of us--start with your family, say. Because there’s a lot of family stuff that goes around at this time.

Take in all of their feelings of shame and regret and experience them for them. Experience those feelings for them. So that they are free of it. Just as some of you found out when you experience it completely it’s freed.

So you are going to experience their feelings completely. And everything that you feel good about, that you feel you’ve accomplished, that you feel good about yourself over the last year as you are now, this is what you give to other people so that they experience it completely.

Now we make this a little easier for ourselves by imagining that all of those negative and painful and difficult feelings take the form of black smoke and come in as we breath in through our right nostril and into our heart.

And all of those good feelings things that we enjoy and feel good about and makes you feel warm and open and clear, have a place in the world etc., all of those take the form of moonlight coming out of our heart and going to them out through the left nostril and going to them.

So you don’t have to do a lot of thinking here and that’s one of the things that many people fall into in taking and sending. They do a lot of thinking. Just take a couple of feelings and use that breath coming in to feel what is painful or difficult or disturbing completely. And the light going out so that you feel what is positive and joyful and happy and spacious and all of that.

And what’s very important here that I’ve found is do both with each breath. Don’t concentrate on the one because those of you who are more comfortable feeling bad will just go, [heavily] “Uh! Uh! Uh!” and those who are more comfortable feeling good will go, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” and it gets totally out of balance. So you do each one with each breath.

Any questions? Trudy.

Trudy: When you say taking in all their shame and bad feelings and negativity, you mean as you imagine they feel it?

Ken: Well, what else are you going to work with?

Trudy: Your own.

Ken: Pardon?

Trudy: You could work with your feelings generated by the difficulties you’re having and you know try to...

Ken: No, you’re taking their feelings. And the result of that is you are going to feel your own more completely, okay? And also in the other direction as you give away your own happiness and joy you actually have to experience it. Causes a lot of trouble for some people.

Student: And they’ll get happy.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: They’ll experience their own [unclear], too.

Ken: Well that’s more of the joy aspect. Because this exchange is taking place you feel really good about it.

Okay? Any other questions? Okay. Let’s do this together. Yes?

Student: My right nostril... at the moment--does that matter? Cause at the moment my dominant nostril is the left.

Ken: Just imagine it; whether the breath actually goes through that nostril or not doesn’t matter.

Student: Then you imagine it coming out through the heart?

Ken: The black comes in through the right [nostril] and the light goes out through the left [nostril].

Student: Did you mention heart?

Ken: Yes both, one comes into your heart and the other comes out of your heart.

Student: But you don’t transform it?

Ken: It’s not a transformation of one into the other. No, you get, you know, it’s just the old thing we have in L.A., in with the bad air and out with the good air! [Laughter]

[Meditation]