Feel everything that is in your experience and rest there

From: Heart Sutra Workshop 1

Full transcript

Audioclip

At the same time, noble Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, was looking right at the experience of the profound perfection of wisdom and he saw the five groups to be empty of nature. 

So now we have to figure out what Avalokiteshvara was doing. Well, I'd like you to put the books down. You're never going to find this in the book.

How many of you remember the fairy tale of The Princess and the Pea? Hmm, lots of you don't know this story. What do they teach in schools these days? [Laughter] I won't go into all the details of the story, but there's a prince and he has to determine who is a suitable wife. So these various princesses are invited, and he has an old aunt or grandmother who's helping him choose the right wife. She has a bed prepared. It consists of a hundred mattresses and under the bottom mattress she places a dried pea.

One after another these princesses come in and sleep in this bed for the night and she asks, "How was your sleep?" And they all say, "It was wonderful, I had a very nice sleep." Until one woman says, "Ah! It was terrible. There was something in my bed and I just feel black and blue, and all bruised."

Grandmother says to the prince, "This is your wife."

Now there's many ways we can understand this story. I'm not going to explore that particularly. What I want you to do is be that princess. 

We're just going to sit here. I want you to rest. Now, now we'll do this up here so that everybody can see. Can I borrow a piece of paper? Thank you.

Now the way most people rest is like this. [Places a book on top of a glass]  It is a form of resting, but in resting that way you don't experience very much.

There's another way of resting and that's like that. [Places the somewhat flexible sheet of paper on top of the glass. It bends a little when placed on the glass]  It's a little more complete resting, you see these parts are resting more fully than the book was. But it's still only a partial form of resting. Can I borrow that cloth? Thank you. 

There's a third way of resting which is like this. [Places a soft silk cloth over the glass. The cloth drapes over and takes the shape of the glass] You feel everything that is there in your experience. Like the princess and the pea. That's how I want you to rest right now.

Be the princess, feel all the peas. None of the peas are an enemy, though we often think they are and so we rest like this [Rigidly] [Laughter].

And see what has to happen in you to rest that way [Like the princess]. So there will be sensations, there will be feelings, and there will be thoughts. There may be sensations in your body. There may be emotions that are connected to things that happened this week or things that you're concerned might happen next week or next year. And there may be some thoughts and stories. Don't try to get rid of any of it. Just explore "How can I rest with this?"

Now, this doesn't mean go with the flow. As one person, Jim Hightower, once said, "The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity. Even dead fish go with the flow." So this is not about being a dead fish! That's kind of like this... (sighs as he goes limp)

No, this is about opening to and resting in exactly what is there. So we'll do this for a few minutes together now.

Audioclip 

You may find the exercise we did on opening helpful to this, you may find it helpful, I don't know. 

[Silence] 

If you start to rest and something stops you, rest with that. Don't try to overcome it or go to war with it. Just rest with that too.

[Silence] 

From time to time check your body. Is it resting? Many of us meditate with our chins jutted forward, it creates tension in the jaw and the neck. Not exactly resting but we try to ignore that because we are trying to meditate "the right way."

So don't think about doing this the right way, just think about resting. 

[Silence]

Resting in the body. Resting the heart. Resting the mind. 

[Silence]

Check your shoulders...check your stomach...let yourself open to whatever is there. All of the old pains...all the monsters under the bed or in the basement. Rest completely. Allow yourself to feel what you may have never felt before, what you've held away from.

[Silence] 

If thoughts or emotions start up, don't ask, How can I get rid of these?" Instead ask, "How can I rest with these?" 

[Silence]

Now we add on more element. 

[Silence]

As you rest, look at this experience of resting. Don't start to think about it, just look at it. And rest in the looking. Look at this experience of resting and rest in the looking.

[Silence] 

Rest in your experience. Look at the experience of resting and rest in the looking. 

[Silence]

[Gong]

Things aren't what they seem

Santa Fe Radio Cafe host, Mary-Charlotte interviews Ken McLeod 

Audio

A snippet from the interview:

Form is emptiness is basically a statement that things aren't what they seem. We have this experience. Now we experience a table, a wall, light,  When we actually ask, "What is this we experience?" whether you look at from a scientific point of view or a philosophical point of view, the substantiality runs out like sand running through your fingers. What is this that we experience?  It's very, very difficult to describe.  And that's what form is emptiness refers to.  Experience when examined, is ineffable, you can't say what it is. 

The Buddha is always present

A  meaningful moment during a retreat with Ken McLeod:

I just returned from the Ken McLeod weekend retreat on the Heart Sutra. We were studying the “longer” version where the Buddha is present. Ken asked, “What is the Buddha doing there?” The Buddha doesn’t do anything in the sutra other than sit there and listen to the conversation between Avalokiteśvara and Shariputra. So he invited two people up to the front to re-enact the scene. My friend Laurie volunteered to play the part of Avalokiteśvara, and a woman volunteered to play the part of Shariputra. “Ok,” said Ken, “Shariputra, ask a practice question to Avalokiteśvara.”

“Do I have sit formally every day or can I just be mindful in everyday life?” asked Shariputra.

Avalokiteśvara answered somewhat flippantly, “If you can remain mindful throughout your life, then you don't need to sit. But I haven’t been able to do that.”

Next Ken invited someone up to play the part of the Buddha to sit there serenely between them, slightly off to the side.

“Now go through it again, ask the same question and give your answer.” said Ken.

The Shariputra character asked the same question again, but it was phrased more deeply this time.

Avalokiteśvara bowed to Shariputra and started to answer, “Thank you for your question. If you can remain mindful throughout your life…” and stopped.

Ken turned to him and asked, “You don’t want to give the same answer anymore, do you?”

“No.” answered Avalokiteśvara.

“Give the answer that you want to give.”

“If you can remain mindful throughout your life, you may not need to sit, but if you do not sit, you may not be able to remain mindful throughout your life.”

There was a audible murmur in the room and a palpable relaxing.

“Shariputra, how did you experience that?”

“With the first answer, I felt like even though it was what I wanted to hear, I didn’t feel good about it. The second answer I felt a relaxing that it was the truth, even though it’s not what I wanted to hear.”

It was clear that the presence of the “Buddha,” even though simply represented by a practitioner sitting there serenely, changed the interaction to be more honest and real. 

Everyone went to sit down again, and Ken drove home the point:

“And by the way, Buddha is always present.”

Source: No One Can Give You Wisdom
Note:  Here's a similar interaction from a workshop on the Heart Sutra given by Ken McLeod in Los Angeles in 2008.
An interview on the Heart Sutra (Santa Fe Radio Cafe)

Two qualities to develop: resting and looking

Two qualities to develop; resting and looking (from Heart Sutra 04) 00:00:00.00 - 00:13:35.50)

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This morning I talked about two qualities in meditation, resting and looking. They’re intimately related, and they’re both very important. Resting doesn’t mean sitting still. It doesn’t mean holding a posture. It means resting. It’s fine to work hard at your practice and to push yourself very, very hard. But only if there’s an element of softness in your practice. Once you become hard there is no quality of resting. And the consequence of that will be that something breaks. It’s not terribly good for things to break in practice. They’re quite hard, often impossible to repair. I know because I’ve seen enough of it.Kalu Rinpoche used to talk about how they stored liquids in Tibet. Store them in leather bags. Fill a bag with water and over time it would become hard. And when it started to become hard it was in danger of cracking, thus leaking. So when the leather became stiff and hard, before it cracked, it was reworked and became soft. Then you could carry water in it again without fear. Other leather bags were used for carrying butter. The oil and the grease from the butter gradually impregnated the leather, and the leather became very hard and very stiff. But no amount of kneading made it soft. When the bags came to that point they had to be thrown away. And he said, “Never let your mind become like that.” It’s very, very important. 

So as long as there’s an element of softness, of resilience, not just hardness, then it’s fine to push in your practice. But when things become hard inside and outside then it’s a time to stop. Take a break. Rest. Yes? 

Student: How do people see that themselves? 

Ken: It’s a very important—how do people see that themselves—it’s a very important skill to learn. It’s very important to tell when you’re pushing too hard and to learn how to back off. And if you have ambition and little things like that in you, those parts of you can continue to run even when you’ve backed off, so it can get a little tricky. That’s why I’m mentioning it. Because I’ve seen enough of the harm which comes from this and it’s pretty serious. Resting also doesn’t mean just going [Ken gestures/acts]. There’s an awake quality in resting, and that form of resting is a more complete rest than being asleep. Quite literally, it’s more restful. So cultivating this relationship with resting is very important. But by itself it’s not enough. 

We also have to learn to look. Because there’s an element of seeing, and you simply can’t see if you don’t look. Unfortunately, the way most people look falls into two categories so they’re somewhat related. One is to step back and look. Become the observer. This is not conducive at all. In mahamudra tradition in which I was trained, we make no use of the observer at all. We regard it as a distraction. I know in other traditions such as the Gelugpa and the Theravadan it’s regarded as very important. We regard it as a distraction. You have to learn how to look while you are in the experience. You aren’t looking at the experience; you are looking in the experience. That’s a little different. 

The other problem that many people fall into with looking, we can call the attorney problem. No offence to any attorneys who may be here. I have several in retreat. They regularly take offence [unclear]…it works out…and among my students. Inexperienced and unskilled attorneys do not know when to stop asking questions. They ask too many questions. And that’s what often happens with people who look. Because we develop the quality of looking by asking questions. I asked a few questions today; they caused you to look in certain ways. But once you’re looking, the question doesn’t help you do any more. You rest in the looking. That’s very important. 

So, I asked this morning, “What experiences all of this?” And you look. And it’s just like asking, “What’s that up there?” And people don’t go, “I wonder what that is up there? Hmmm?” You don’t think about it, you look. And that’s the quality that you want in the practice. You look; and then you rest in the looking. Putting those two things together is very, very important. When you can rest in the looking and look in the resting, then you’re practicing the perfection of wisdom. Because what do you see when you look? Anybody. What do you…what do you say there? Kent. 

Kent: Yeah, not much. 

Ken: Well, I think you have to go a little further than that. What do you see when you look? Not much. 

Kent: I mean there’s nothing you can really identify. So just to look in itself… 

Ken: What do you see when you look? I don’t think it is “not much.” What do you see? 

Kent: I see you. [Laughter] 

Ken: Look at your mind. What do you see? Anybody? 

Students: Nothing. 

Ken: Nothing. You see nothing whatsoever. How long can you look at nothing whatsoever?

A way to know peace

Peace (from HSW03 01:14:36.00 - 01:32:13.05)

Therefore, Shariputra, because, for bodhisattvas, there is no attainment, they rest, trusting the perfection of wisdom. With nothing clouding their minds, they have no fear. They leave delusion behind and come to the end of nirvana. [An Arrow to the Heart, p. 3]

This is the last step. And its very interesting, in tradition after tradition of Buddhism you find these same four steps are repeated in different ways. In the mahamudra tradition you have experience is empty, no, experience is mind, mind is empty, emptiness is freedom, freedom is natural presence. That's the basic paradigm of the Kagyu tradition of mahamudra.

In the teachings of Maitreya you have the wise come to know that there is nothing other than mind. And then they come to know that mind itself is not a thing, letting go of even these two knowings. And then they come to know that these two knowings are not things, and letting go of even of this knowing they rest in totality. So another four steps. You find the same thing in dzogchen tradition, over and over again you find this.

Here in the Heart Sutra: Because there is no attainment, they rest trusting the perfection of wisdom. You have to read the Heart Sutra or any of these texts very carefully.

Therefore Shariputra, because for bodhisattvas there is no attainment, they rest, trusting in the perfection of wisdom.

This is one of the meditations we did this morning. When you rest that way, bit by bit your mind becomes clear. With nothing clouding their minds. You leave delusion behind, you even leave the idea of nirvana behind. What is the point of practicing Buddhism? Buddha was asked this during his life. He always replied, "I teach two things. Suffering and the end of suffering." This practice despite some of the vocabulary, is not about truth. We use terms like awakening, freedom but those obscure what it's really about. It's about peace. The end of suffering is peace.

People think and many people practice because they think they're going to get something. I can assure you if you practice properly you're going to get nothing what so ever. But you may conceivably find some peace. Thich Nhat Hahn says this quite well, "If you want to be peaceful, you have to enjoy peace."

There are many parts to this that don't enjoy peace. These are the night visitors, the monsters under the bed, the creatures in the basement. You can't kill them, you can't make them go away, you can't transform them. If you could do any of that stuff you would have taken care if it already. But you can learn how to be with them. In a way that you are at peace. There are very significant things that flow from this. In the words of the Heart Sutra:

All the buddhas of the three times, by trusting this perfection of wisdom, fully awaken in unsurpassable, true, complete awakening.[An Arrow to the Heart, p. 3]

The young boy looked at the emperorAnd cried out, "Is he insane?"
It's one thing to see things as they are
It's another to start a campaign.
[An Arrow to the Heart, p. 104]

With all these fancy, high-sounding words you'd think something special had happened. Or is this a case of my buddhahood is better than your buddhahood?

Does awakening stop you from dying? You can still be shot, poisoned, and if not, you then have to face the inevitable outcome of old age. Does it make you more intelligent? You don't suddenly understand molecular biology, micro-economics, or systems theory. Does it stop you from being harmed? You aren't immune to cancer, strokes, or flu bugs. Does it help you save the world? Good question. The world may pay attention to you or what you have to say- or not. It's unsurpassable because there is nowhere to go. It's true because there is nowhere to hide mistake or error. It's complete because it includes everything you experience. So this complete awakening is simply a way of being fully and completely in our experience. In order to do that, we have to be completely at rest. Which is why you rest trusting the perfection of wisdom. There is only one way to be completely at rest and that is to trust nothing whatsoever. You just rest. And if you rest this deeply, you will perhaps find a way to know peace.

Emptiness is not other than form, Form is not other than emptiness.

Although this a long clip, stay with it.  Here Ken elicits experiences from his students as he unravels the last two lines of the classic four sentences of the Heart Sutra: Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.Emptiness is not other than form. Form is not other than emptiness.  It is not only Ken's teachings but the students' hesitant and sometimes halting descriptions of their experiences of these last two lines that I appreciated.

Emptiness is not other than form. Form is not other than emptiness. (from HSW03 00:49:17.0 - 01:02:55.)

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Emptiness is form. So whether it's full or empty, it's still an experience. So now this is good, we're all clear here. We have form and we have emptiness.

On this Hakuin says:

Rubbish! A useless collection of junk. Don't be trying to teach apes to climb trees. These goods have been gathering dust on the shelves for two- thousand years.

He goes on:

A bush warbler pipes tentatively in the spring breeze, by the peach tree a thin mist hovers in the warm sun. A group of young girls, cicada heads and mock eyebrows with blossom sprays one over each brocade shoulder.

So we have form which is experience and emptiness which is the space in which experience arises. We can't say what it is, but there's this space in which experience arises.

And when we hear form is emptiness we say, "Okay, form doesn't mean these solid things, it means that what arises in experience arises in this space. And it's there but it's not there at the same time."

And when we hear emptiness is form, we go, "That's fine, there is this space that allows everything to be. Makes it possible."

Emptiness is not other than form. Well we started off with things are not what they seem, which is form is emptiness. Now we come to emptiness is not form, which means emptiness is not what it seems.That is it is actually a fullness rather than an emptiness. But now we get emptiness is not other than form. Well if you've looked at what happened, we started off with thinking that experience was very solid. And then we heard, form is emptiness, so now we think that we've come to see that experience isn't a solid as we thought it was. So we're inclined to think probably that, you know, experience just doesn't really exist. Then we get the next line, emptiness is form, which actually says, "No you really do experience things." And you do experience lots of things. So we're cool, there's emptiness and there's experience. That's nice. We have these two, we're clear about that.

And now we've got this third line, emptiness is not other than form. Well, this is very troubling because now it says that these two things, experience and emptiness, they're really not different. How do you feel about that? Anybody? I mean having experience and emptiness, that's okay, we can sort of play with that. But experience and emptiness, they're really not different, how does that feel? Anybody? Yes?

Student: Well, it seems sort of expansive if you're going from the sense of emptiness is all this fullness.

Ken: Could you hand the microphone, please. Please say that again.

Student: It seems kind of expansive in the...if you're going from the sense that emptiness is a really all this fullness and...well, all right I don't know, now I forgot what I was going. Is it on ?

Ken: Yes.

Student: That then you have this sense that experience is related whatever you said to emptiness. Then it's huge and also chaotic and full and it's really pretty exciting.

Ken: Okay, so it opens up possibilities. Yeah, okay. Right, anybody else? All the way up here.

Student: It feels like another nail in the coffin. [Laughter]

Ken: Yours or mine?

Student: Mine.

Ken: That's fine, I don't worry about that. Say more.

Student: Well, you know the emptiness is form--hello--form is emptiness pulls the rug out for me, the solidity that I assign to my experience of things.

Ken: Okay. Student: Then emptiness is form; what does that do for me? It allows me to relax, it allows me to relax in what it is I am experiencing. And then when it says, form is not other than emptiness, it--

Ken: Actually it's emptiness is not other than form, some dif...

Student: Okay, all right. If ever I thought there was an alternative that I was going to escape from, this whole conversation. It's [quietly] no. [Ken laughs]Student: There's no escape, it's sort of taking my head. I feel a hand taking my head and going, "There."And then I get that, "No, no, no" there.

Ken: So it's pointing you very, very precisely. Okay, so big fullness, many possibilities, pointing right at it. Anybody else?

Student: So it took me a long time to sort get to the point where I could actually say it was a bit of a relief, you know thinking about it at all. Because in the beginning, very honestly it was absolutely terrifying. When I first encountered this emptiness is form, form is emptiness, I just thought "What?" [Ken laughs softly] It undid me completely, it was just like, you know, the Zen koan that stops you dead in your tracks and you don't even know how to think at all. And then it was really rather terrifying. Actually. I mean I worked with it for a very long time and I went--because I have a tendencies of fear and anxiety about my world in general--I went into this completely nihilistic place where my world became undone for me completely, whenever I tried to think about emptiness.

Ken: Okay.

Student: I really went down to a terrifying space where the world dissolved and I couldn't have a sense of matter, at all. Myself or the validity of anything else. And it became a very painful space. It's taken a very long time where I have now gotten to the place where the two...the possibility of, that word emptiness really bothers me. I don't know there has to be a different word, translation for the word, shunyata than emptiness because the word implying less than something took, was where I went. And as I said I have this tendency to fall into nihilism and it was very frightening and I got very depressed and really freaked out. And it took a bit a very long time to come up to a warmer space where I just threw the word emptiness out all together. To the point of the possibilities of it being something else other than what I thought it was.

Ken: Okay.

Student: And that was very meaningful for me and I didn't even want to share that because I know that , he didn't even come today there was a friend of mine who was gonna come today who went down into that fairly recently and I told him it was long process but it was worth working with, because its one of those practitioner's down falls that happens to some people, depending on the type of your mind. And that you know you can get to this possibility where the fullness that it has these incredible possibilities that it wasn't meaning what my interpretation of the word emptiness meant at all. And then I felt like I was that ll these possibilities came up and it was really very, you know very. I feel like I can work with something and I got more stable. [Laughs]

Ken: Okay. So emptiness is form or emptiness is not other than form. We have these two opposites, seeming opposites, emptiness and experience. A lot of people take issue with the word emptiness. It's actually the right translation, in both Sanskrit and Tibetan. Tibetan is stong-pa-nyid. If you have an empty box you say gong-stong-pa-nyid. Same in Sanskrit, I don't know Sanskrit but it's wonderful whoever came up with the word was also a genius. I like him, or her or whoever it was.

And it teaches in a strange way the value of nothing. Nothing is what makes everything possible. You can't fill a glass that is already full. So if it's already full you can't use it.

So we have this emptiness and this experience and it seems that we have these two poles but now we have this emptiness is not other than form, that says these two poles are not two poles they're one and the same. In other words this opposition we thought was there isn't what it seems. And as someone said earlier, when you allow the experience and the no thingness of experience just to be there, then all kinds of possibilities open up. Don't have to make things one way or the other. Okay, that seems like a very good place to stop at this point. But Avalokiteshvara doesn't shut up at this point. He says, "Form is not other than emptiness." Now what happens? What's your experience when you hear those lines? My sense is that something in you goes, tilt!

It's just like what? Or huh? Anybody have that experience? Yeah. And this is exactly what those lines are designed to do. They lead you through this process. Things are not what they seem, okay we can live with that? Emptiness is not what it seems. Well that's good because I didn't really like that anyway. Opposition is not what it seems, hmm okay, that's all right. Nothing is not what it seems and now there is nothing left to stand on. Nothing to hold on to. That's why I think these lines are so brilliant because they leave you with absolutely nothing to hold on to. How is that for you? Yes?

Student: It feels like I have no feet.

Ken: Exactly, no feet, no ground, nothing. Yes?

Student: It's like walking through a doorway that's dark on the other side.

Ken: Doorway that's dark on the other side. Hmm for you it's walking

Student: I mean I don't even know if there is a floor.

Ken: You don't even know if there is a floor. Yes, I've been in rooms like that. Anybody else? It kind of stops everything doesn't it? And that's really the point of these lines. It doesn't matter if hear them for the first time or the thousandth time. They always stop the mind. And open the possibility of just experiencing what's there, which is the point of practice? Hakuin has this to say about it. (page 59)

A nice hot kettle of stew.
He ruins it by dropping a couple of rat turds in.(The rat turds are form and emptiness.)
It's no good pushing delicacies at a man with a full belly.
Striking aside waves to look for water when the waves are water.
Forms don't hinder emptiness, emptiness is the tissue of form.
Emptiness isn't the destruction of form.
Form is the flesh of emptiness.
Inside the Dharma gates where form and emptiness are not two.
A lone turtle with painted eyebrows stands in the evening breeze.

Yeah it's typical Zen.

Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.

On page 37, WUTYL, "The three aspects of mind-emptiness, clarity, and unimpeded experience-are the real mystery of being. Well I don't know about you but the lines-Form is emptiness and emptiness is form have been part of that mystery of being. Here Ken gives us a glimpse of what these lines are referring to.

Form and Emptiness (from HSW03 00:42:36.06 - 00:49:13.02)

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So Form is emptiness. I have an experience of form, seeing things. We'll use seeing for now, we could use hearing things, we could thinking wouldn't make any difference. So what is this experience of seeing? Goes back to our friend, now this morning we went through this and everybody I thought was on the same page. Now wasn't that clever! Though there is the experience of seeing, this seeing doesn't take place anywhere, it doesn't come from anywhere and it doesn't go anywhere. We all recall that from this morning.

So here we have a very interesting situation, you have this experience of seeing and everybody does see a page here, right? We're all on the same ...okay. And when you look at the experience of seeing it doesn't seem to exist anywhere, right? That's what form is emptiness means. It seems like there's something very solid there but when we really look at it, there's nothing there. So now look around this room and look at it the same way. Look at other people or what you think are other people, anyway. What's that like? If I'm not mistaken or maybe I'm completely alone in this department, every thing takes on a kind of dream like quality, doesn't it? That's how things are in a dream, we experience all this stuff vividly but there's nothing there. This is what Form is emptiness means. Now, stay right there.

We come to the next line: Emptiness is form. Well, you look at this room or this dream of a room that we're having right now and there's a certain amount of space here, isn't there? Like all this space, all this space. Suppose we were to fill this room completely with people. Stacked up on top of each other right up to the ceiling. You know, five or six layers. Would that effect the amount of space in the room?

Student: No.

Ken: No. And if we look at it from this point of view this is just an experience, just imagine this room is filled. It doesn't have to be with people, you can think of objects. We can have cars sitting on top of us or flowers, it doesn't matter. But it absolutely full of things. And you are experiencing this. Emptiness is form. You follow?

Emptiness is form. So whether it's full or empty, it's still an experience. So now this is good, we're all clear here. We have form and we have emptiness.

On this Hakuin says,

Rubbish! A useless collection of junk.
Don't be trying to teach apes to climb trees
These goods have been gathering dust on the shelves for two- thousand years.

He goes on:

A bush warbler pipes tentatively in the spring breeze,
By the peach tree a thin mist hovers in the warm sun.
A group of young girls, cicada heads and mock eyebrows
With blossom sprays one over each brocade shoulder.

So we have form which is experience and emptiness which is the space in which experience arises. We can't say what it is, but there's this space in which experience arises. And then we hear, Form is emptiness. We say, "Okay, form doesn't mean these solid things, it means that what arises in experience arises in this space. And it's there but it's not there at the same time." And when we hear Emptiness is form, we go, " That's fine." There is this space that allows everything to be. Makes it possible.

Subject-object

The experiencer, the watcher, the self. When we separate from experience all sorts of disconnects happen. Stories abound. A short discourse by Ken on subject-object.

Heart Sutra Workshop02 (from  HSW02 1:01:25.7 - 1:03:57:8)

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So we have this experience of seeing and at the same time--we'll come back to this again this afternoon--we don't know where it comes from. We can't say where it comes from. We can't say where it is and we can't say where it goes. Which ordinarily we say doesn't exist. But I want to point out one particular thing.

When you focus on the experience of seeing, what happens to subject-object? 

Student: Dissolves, unite?

Ken: Dissolves, unites, either way sense of subject-object just disappears right? It's like what subject, what object, okay?

The twelve sense fields was a map developed by the Sarvastivadins to eliminate the notion of the self as the experiencer. Or as you say the objective pole of experience; that's what the self is. And you see when you actually look at experience itself, that sense of being an experiencer that somehow stands outside of experience just vanishes.

In simple terms, to talk about an experiencer and an experienced makes as much sense as talking about the two ends of a pencil without talking about a pencil.

We actually have a far more intimate relationship with experience. You know, everything that we experience we're intimately connected. As connected as the two ends of the pencil. But we ordinarily ignore this. So we have the experience of separation.

So that's what this particular map is about.

Opening to all elements, skill building

As you listen to this guided meditation by Ken, which builds one's capacity to open to all elements, may you also know that this meditation is what Buddha was doing himself during the Heart Sutra discussion.

This clip is from the Heart Sutra workshop (session 1), a wonderful complement to Ken's book, An Arrow to the Heart.

Guided Meditation by Ken, Opening to all elements, skill building (from Heart Sutra Workshop 1 00:18:47:2 - 00:35:13:6)

(download into iTunes)

So here's Buddha...he's meditating. And you notice the situation; they're perched on top of a mountaintop, which is a place which exactly exists in India. I've been there. And he's surrounded by monastics and bodhisattvas. We'll talk a bit more about that in a few minutes. And he entered an absorption, called Profound Illumination or Profound Radiance--it's translated in different ways--in which all elements of experience are present.

How many of you know this absorption? How many of you would like to know this absorption? Oh you know this absorption, do you? Oh good, so let's spend a few minutes.

Now if you're going to have all elements of experience it's probably better if you have your eyes open so you aren't shutting things out. So start just by sitting and resting with something we all know, resting in the experience of breathing. 

[Silence]

Now generally when we rest in the experience of breathing the first thing we become aware of is the sensation of the breath through the nostrils. But that's only part of the experience of breathing. We might also notice that the breath flows through one or other of the nostrils more than the other, maybe the temperature is slightly different. You may also notice a sensation, a cool sensation at the back of your throat when you breathe in. [Silence]

Movement of the lungs and the chest. Movement in the diaphragm and stomach. So just experience all of that. 

[Silence]

You may also experience your back moving, a little bit. When you breathe in the body straightens up, a little bit. When you breathe out it bends forward, a little bit. It may only be a couple of millimeters. 

[Silence]

You may notice that your head moves accordingly, the chin moves very slightly up and down. Whoever said that meditation was actually sitting still? 

[Silence]

There may be other sensations taking place in your body connected with breathing. Experience all of them. You may find your attention moving from one sensation to the other. You don't need to do that, you can experience them all at the same time.

[Silence]

So experience all the tactile and kinesthetic sensations associated with breathing.

[Silence]

Then include a bit more all the tactile and kinesthetic sensations associated with the body. Sensation of clothes touching your body, the sensation of your body sitting, sensations of your hands and feet touching or interacting with each other. In addition to that ll of the sensations connected with breathing. Just experience all of it. All at the same time.

You may find that your attention collapses down on one or other thing and as soon as you notice that, just expand from that thing you are focusing on to include everything connected with breathing and your body. Just sit there for a few moments in the experience of breathing. 

[Silence]

But our sense of the organ of the body is only one of the five senses, there is also sight. So as you sit there in the experience of breathing you could also include everything that is in your field of vision. From where I sit that's the faces and bodies and clothes of all of you. All of the details of the thangkas and the glittering of the brocade that frames the thangkas, the lights, the ceiling, the floor, the windows, the walls. That's all part of the experience of breathing it's all part of what we experience right now.

[Silence]

Also include the sound of my voice and the sound of the traffic, just include everything. The feelings of your body when you breathe and all of the other sensations that arise in any of the senses.

You sit in a field of sensory experience.

And you may notice as you sit in this field that there are other elements of experience. Maybe some thought arises because of the honking outside, "I wish it would go away." And there are feelings of dislike or displeasure. Maybe there are other thoughts, other emotions. In other words there is all this internal stuff that goes on too. So just include that: the sensations of the body, all the other senses, thoughts, feelings, sensory sensations, emotional sensations, cognitive sensations--we call those thoughts. Don't push any of it away, don't organize or understand any of it; just experience it all. And whenever you find yourself collapsing down on any one thing, just expand back and include everything.

You don't have to actually sit still to do this, you can let your eyes move gently and slowly around the room; taking in all the visuals but including the body sensations included in that.

So here we are in a field of experience: sensations, thoughts and feelings. You sit in this way long enough and you begin to wonder what outside and inside mean. So maybe we could just let those go and have this field of experience. 

[Silence]

Now, open your heart to this field of experience. Some of you may say what does that mean? But you know what it is to open your heart to your spouse, or your partner or your child. So you just do the same thing with what you are experiencing. Just open your heart. [Silence]

So you have all of the physical sensations and all of the sensory sensations and all of the internal material: the thoughts and feelings and so forth and you have an open heart. [Silence]

Now in a moment I am going to suggest a question. I don't want you to answer the question, I simply want you to pose the question to yourself. When you do this, you'll probably experience some kind of shift. When you experience that shift just include that experience, too, with everything else.

So physical sensations are breathing, all the sensation with the body, all the other sensory sensations: sight and sound, taste and smell. All the mental and emotional sensations: thoughts and feelings. The whole field of experience which we experience with an open heart. The question is, what experiences all this?

As I say don't try to answer the question, just experience the shift and then include the experience of the shift with everything else.

What experiences all this? 

[Silence]

[Gong sounds to end meditation]