Three things to cultivate

From: Unfettered Questions (UQ04)

Audio

Speaker: This question is from Rich in Buffalo, New York.

I started a daily meditation practice of twenty to thirty minutes (now thirty to forty minutes) last May. These meditations have been focused on the cultivating attention material from Wake Up To Your Life. I was about to start the impermanence and death meditations in Wake Up To Your Life, when I listened to the first podcast on the four immeasurables. After listening to the podcast, I was inspired to start meditating with the equanimity material, the four lines from the podcast. My question is, whether it is okay to stay with the four immeasurables meditations, or should I start on the death and impermanence meditations?

Ken: Well, there're many facets to this question. The first is, there are many, many different meditations in Buddhism and it can be difficult to know "Which meditation I should do now?" or "What should my practice be?" and so forth. And this is one of the reasons why it's very helpful to have someone with whom you can talk about your practice on a regular basis, a teacher who has the experience, knows what is helpful, and can guide you. 

That's not always possible. And so many people are left to their own devices, so to speak. One of the things that I've found helpful was written by a twelfth or thirteenth century teacher in the Shangpa Kagyu tradition, a person called Kyergongpa, who said that there are really only three things you need to cultivate in practice of Buddhism. Understanding of impermanence, compassion, and devotion as a way into insight. We can call these the three great doors. And we find this going right back to the very roots of Buddhism in the Theravada tradition. We have the three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering, and non-self. And these three doors correspond exactly to that. Impermanence, of course, is impermanence. There's an intimate relationship with cultivating compassion and opening to the suffering of the world, and understanding that life--ordinary existence--is suffering. It's a constant reaction to experience. And devotion, insight, non-self are all connected. It is by developing a high level of emotional energy through such practices--devotion--that we come to be able to see that there is no thing which we are. There are other approaches, of course, but that's one of them. So in this sense, those are the three important elements.

What I've also found is that, you practice any one of these deeply enough, and you find yourself cultivating the other two. So that, for instance, with impermanence, as we cultivate a deeper and deeper appreciation that there is nothing which doesn't change--that we ourselves are going to die, and we don't know when that's going to happen--we come to understand that we're not the only ones in that situation. Everybody else is in exactly the same situation. And we begin to see how much energy we and other people pour into what are really not very important things in the light of death--in the end of our lives. And as we go even deeper into that, we cultivate a natural relationship with compassion by contemplating impermanence. And if we go deeper into that, we begin to enter into the mystery of being itself. There isn't anything which is constant, and yet all of this experience keeps arising. And yet there seems to be nothing to it. So we begin to open to insight. And an appreciation, which often takes the form of devotion, begins to arise for the teachings, which lead us into this wonderful experience of the mystery of being.

Or we can start with compassion. And as we relate more and more deeply with compassion--which is what the practices of the four immeasurables naturally leads to--as we relate more deeply with compassion, we begin to see that everybody is caught up in suffering. And people are caught up in suffering because they try to hold onto what is by nature impermanent. So we see our meditation on compassion, our cultivation of compassion leads us into an understanding of impermanence. And it also leads us into an understanding of non-self. Because we come to see that the only thing to be, the only thing that we are, in the end, is an ongoing response, rather than a reaction, to the suffering that arises in the world.

And we can start with non-self or devotion. Because as we come to see that there is no thing that we are, we naturally see that everything is impermanent, everything is constantly changing. And we naturally see that people are caught up into holding onto things that they don't need to hold onto.

So these are the three great doors in Buddhism, and if you go deeply enough, any one of them will take you through all of them. So, as we've discussed a couple of times in these questions, Buddha said, we have to work out our own freedom. So we find the practices which really speak to us, which really help us to become more present, to bring more balance into our experience. And those we work very, very deeply. And that, I find, is the best way to approach things.

Tonight's work

From: A Trackless Path 9
Audioclip

Ken: There's a section in which he's [Uchiyama] commenting on Dögen's instructions: 

"When all of these matters are taken care of then the officers meet and can set the menu for the next day and prepare tomorrow's gruel." 

Uchiyama's commentary goes something like this: 

When you are preparing tomorrow's oatmeal, you're not setting up a goal for tomorrow. Because you have no idea what is going to happen. In the night there could be an earthquake, fire, riots, whatever. So you actually have no idea whether that gruel is actually going to be served or not or anybody is going to eat it.

But you prepare tomorrow's gruel as tonight's work. You do what needs to be done, not with any aim for the future, but because it is tonight's work.

Because the human condition is: there's an order to life, there's structure and so forth, and it is subject to disruption at any time because of impermanence. The order you can view as the karma element, the disruption as the impermanence element.

And we live in this absolute paradox, which in traditional terms is, we're definitely going to die and we have no idea when.

Or in more everyday things, "Yes, I need to plan to do this, and yet I have no idea whether I will experience the results of my efforts."

This is quite different from clinging to an aim and the result and being aimless and having no result. You follow?

So, whether it's in family, or in our work, we think about what is necessary to take care, wife, family and so forth, or our responsibilities at work, but we do so, without any expectation of experiencing those results.

And that becomes quite powerful. Because when we're not attached to the experience of those results, which most people, that's the direction most people go,
then we find we are much freer to see, what really needs to be done. If you see what I mean?!

OK, did this help? OK, Gary, could you have the mic?

Student: Not to be contrary, Ken, but one of your four points last night was about every action has a consequence?

Ken: Yes exactly, and that's why we have to plan and do things. Because if we don't, then, you know, you don't put money in your 401k, then, that has a consequence.

Student: But you are saying at the same time let go of your expectation and any results.

Ken: Yes, you put money in your 401k and you may never got to use it!

Student: So why worry about one's actions?

Ken: Because not doing an action is an action and it has its consequences.

If we don't care of the body, we get sick. If we are mean to people, we end up isolated and alone. If we steal from people, nobody will trust us.

Now, actions have consequences.

Change and Impermanence

From: Monsters Under the Bed 2 (retreat)

Full transcript
Audioclip

Ken: This morning, we talked about basic meditation, and as Claudia said, “Basic in the sense that it’s fundamental.” Because any kind of internal work requires a certain ability or capacity for clear, stable attention. And in some respects you can regard resting meditation like scales in music: You never actually play scales in a concert, but the more you practice scales, the better your musicianship becomes. And it’s very, very much about building capacity.

This afternoon, we now begin the content topic of the retreat, Monsters Under the Bed. And we’re going to use a certain framework for this which actually comes from the four noble truths: what’s the problem, what’s the genesis of the problem, what’s the solution, and how do you do it? So, this afternoon we’re going to be focusing on the problem, and George is going to start off with that.

George: Yeah, I was going to say it’s amazing how we think alike, but maybe it has more to do with the fact that you trained me. I was going to start with the four noble truths too since that’s where the Buddha started. Why not?

What is it that causes the confusion and struggle in our lives? It’s separating ourselves from experience and then reacting against it or reacting to it. So the second noble truth is that the cause of suffering, of struggle is thirst, tanha, craving. That thirst that can’t be satisfied. I think that’s really short-hand for thirst or pushing. It’s either grasping or pushing something away or ignoring, you know. Those are the three ways of reacting. There’s infinite varieties in those three ways. But going back to the body again, it starts with sensations.

We’re sitting here. We’re sitting in our bodies. We can feel the weight of our body on our cushion. We can feel the movements and sensations of breathing. We feel warmth or cold. We feel hungry or full. We feel tired or jumpy. Whatever it is. There’s a cluster of sensations, movements of energy in the body.

One or more of those sensations, we suddenly decide, we don’t like. We feel it’s happening to us. Or, we like it and we want to keep it going. So the first sign of the struggle is an impulse to grasp something or to push something away. Or if it’s not one of those, it’s, “Ah, it doesn’t matter.” Or, "I didn’t even notice it in the first place, cause I’ve just got tunnel vision." So, the emotional drama, the stories, the beliefs, the character stuff that we kind of cement down comes afterwards.

At first there’s an impulse. There’s a physical impulse coming out of the body or moving in the body, a movement of energy. And you can call it attachment and aversion and delusion. Or you can call it craving and ill-will and ignoring. But I like to get even underneath those words. What does it feel like to see something, to feel something that you like? And there’s just that impulse to reach out and grab it, to keep it, to bring it, control it. Or something arises you don’t like. Before you even think about it, way before there’s stories and thoughts or emotional dramas about it, there’s a impulse to push it away or to back up, to get away.

Ignoring, the impulse to ignore, is a little harder to notice, but it too has a physical sensation to it. It has a energetic movement to it. It’s the movement of collapsing in. Losing the sense of space in the room or the sense of space and movement--the vastness of my body, the fact that the kink in my neck can hurt over here. And yet my legs are pretty relaxed today 'cause there’s a lot going on. There’s a vastness. When we ignore something, we close down to something, and everything else disappears.

So one way of working with this, rather than wrestling with the emotional dramas and the thoughts and the beliefs and all the stuff that gets built on those impulses, is to notice the impulse itself when it arises. In a sense, you’re not doing it. It’s certainly nothing you decide to do. It’s something that arises inside. It’s something that happens, a movement of energy. Again, it’s reaching out to grasping something you like, pushing something away you don’t like, or ignoring.

And then the reaction builds on that. It cascades. There’s additional reactions. Like, something you don’t like--impulse to push it away. A belief that you ought to get used to it or you ought to learn to like it, so then you start reacting against the impulse to push it away. And then you’re kind of simultaneously feeling guilty and resentful that the whole thing’s happening. And then you've got to deal with it and that’s where we get lost in it.

But if you can go back to that original impulse to grasp or push away, it’s kind of the counterpart in action to returning to the body. Feeling the sensations and movements of breathing rather than arguing with yourself or worrying about emotions and drama and thoughts. Just going back to the body. Going back to the sensations and movements that are driving those thoughts and emotions.

So, confusion, struggle is caused by the impulse to react to what we experience. What is it that we’re trying to do? What is it we’re trying to get by reacting? Something happens we don’t like, we want to get rid of it. Something happens we do like, we want to hang onto it. We try to hang onto something, we’re ignoring the fact that everything changes. Some things change faster than others, but everything changes. Sensations, feelings, thoughts arise. They pass away. Some of them don’t pass away fast enough for us, so we’re basically fighting the fact that everything changes.

It also works the other way: The things we like, we want to keep them around. So we’re fighting the fact that everything changes. We want that sunset to last forever. Or we go on retreat and at first it’s horrible. And we just want to get out of here. But by the end of the weekend, we’re sort of liking the simplicity of it. And the fact that we don’t have to answer the phone and suddenly now we want it to keep going. So, we’re fighting the passage of time, the arising and subsiding of feelings, sensations, events.

Another thing that we’re struggling with is to get our emotional needs met. Whatever they are or whatever we think they are. Another reaction is to survive, to build a sense of self in relation to meditation practice or to a relationship. So, Ken and Claudia will be talking about trying to get our emotional needs met. And trying to hang onto things, make things solid. But I’d like to focus on the change.

Change and impermanence is in traditional Buddhism--it’s not very popular in Western culture--but in traditional Buddhism, probably the number one form of practice is contemplation on death and impermanence. You need some basic stability of attention, some basic mindfulness to be able to do that. So you learn--as Ken said--you build some capacity in that first.

But then often the first practice that you do for a period of time is on change and impermanence. And of course the big one for humans is the impermanence of our lives. If everything depended on the moment of death as some Buddhists have it--I have trouble with that myself, because I have a hard time being inspired and focused and maintaining motivation for some theoretical moment that’s going to happen in the future.

But change is happening constantly. Happening in our bodies, happening in our emotional experience, happening in our thoughts, happening in the world around us. We tend not to notice it. We grasp after what we like, try to hang onto that. We push away what we don’t like, try to get rid of it as quickly as possible. And we ignore the basic fact of change--constant but irregular change that’s actually taking place. That our experience arises due to causes and conditions, a few of which we have some influence over. And it subsides for the same reason--causes and conditions fall apart.

You can approach it philosophically like that and then go through your life systematically trying to find things. What actually lasts in my life? Some things last longer than others. But what is actually dependable, reliable—it’s going to be there forever. Try to find something. That’s kind of a contemplative or philosophical approach.

But a more immediate way and one that might be more useful in the context of the practices for this retreat is to notice those reactive impulses as they arise, at the moment they arise in the body. The actual sensation, the movement in the body, of pushing away or grasping. Start with those. Begin to notice those. How they happen moment after moment with practically everything that arises in experience. We like it and we grasp it. Or we don’t like it, we push it away. Or it doesn’t mean anything to me, so I’m going to ignore it.

Watch those impulses. And see how many of them are an impulse to do away with time. The passage of time, the flow of things, whether slow or fast. Whatever the causes and conditions of things arising, occurring at the moment. See how many of those impulses are to try to fight that.

And for now just notice the impulse rather than go to philosophy or try to change the impulse. But since my theme is usually the body--to actually notice, acquaint yourself with that process. And keep it as visceral and physical and--not concrete--but real in the sense that it’s actually something arising.

I have an impulse to continue talking, but I think I won’t. [Laughter]

Making the big decisions of life

From: Eightfold Path 1
Full Transcript
Audioclip

Ken: Other questions? Joe.

Joe: So in these terms, what would be a suitable basis for making life decisions? [Laughter]

Ken: Oh dear!

Joe: You’re going to take advantage of me now I think. I can see it coming. [Laughter]

Ken: Well, I’m tempted to answer this easily for me but I am not sure that it's helpful for you. And the easy answer for me, which is no help to you, is there is no basis for making life decisions, but that’s not terribly helpful to you. So that’s why I was pausing because I didn't think that would be helpful.

Knowing your experience as completely as you are capable of in each moment.

Does this guarantee that everything is going to work out? No. But, particularly if there's any important decision, you really make the effort to experience everything connected with it and every possible ramification as deeply as you are capable of, then whatever you decide...let me construct this better. Whatever the result is of your action you’ll know you've given it your best shot. And that’s about all you can really do, because we can’t know what the results or the consequences of any action are going to be.

There's a story--which is usually told to illustrate the working of impermanence--about this farmer who has one horse. And one day the horse escapes from his corral. And all the neighbors say, "Oh, that's a tragedy." And the farmer says, "Well, we'll see." And a couple of weeks later the horse comes back with another horse. It's found a mate in the wild and it's come back. So now the farmer has two horses and the neighbors say, "Well, that's wonderful." And the farmer says, "Well, we'll see." A week later the farmer's son is breaking in the new horse and he's thrown and his hip is broken, and the neighbor's all say, "Ah, that's too bad, that's really bad for your son." And the farmer says, "We'll see." And a month later an army moves through conscripting all able young men. Well the farmer's young son can't because his hip's broken. So we just don't know. Circumstances change. So all we can do is bring our attention to what our experience is right now as completely and as deeply as we're capable of. And then we decide.

Now one of the ways that I do that sometimes when people come to me with a difficult decision. I will ask them to describe what the worst case scenario is for each of the avenues. What's the worse thing that can happen if you take path A, what's the worse thing that could happen if you take path B? They usually look at me and ask, "Why are you asking me this?" I say, "Just bear with me." So they'll describe what the worst case is. "Okay, which of those two worse cases can you live with?" Oh! That can be a basis for making a decision. But that's only one way. Does this help?

Kinds of meditation practices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, those are examples of purification practices.

Motivation for practice

I'm going to die (TAN10) (from TAN10 00.27.05.5 - 00.31.40.8)

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"And he goes to concentration on death -- the signs thereof; on life as it draws to an end; and on separation. So this is one way you can meditate on impermanence. That the first thing is: “I’m going to die.”

And this is Rinpoche’s favorite way of starting off talks with new people. I remember once in Hawaii, we were staying with a couple. She, the woman was very sweet. They were retired. And he was a hard-nosed engineer businessman, from aerospace, I think. And over dinner, he kept asking Rinpoche, you know, “Why is it necessary to practice religion? Why is it necessary? Well, what’s the point? Isn’t it all hocus-pocus?” So that evening in a public talk attended by about 400 people Rinpoche started it off by saying, "Well, some of you are probably wondering why you're here. So let me start off by saying that there are three kinds of people who don’t need to be here tonight. First, all of those, all of you know who you are not going to die, there is no point in you being here. So you might as well leave. Secondly, all of those who you know that when you die, nothing is going to happen. And if you know that’s the case, then you might as well leave, because I don’t have anything to say to you. And the third kind, the people here who know that when they die, if they're going to be reborn, it's going to be in something better than they have now. If you know that, that’s fine. But if you don’t know one of those three things, then maybe you want to stick around.” 

And then another time, we were in Vancouver. And we had this wonderful dinner in a very nice home. And it was a typical Vancouver winter night, it was just cold and rainy and miserable. And so after dinner the...the husband of this couple said to Rinpoche, “So Why...why is it important to practice?” And Rinpoche said, “Well, right now we’ve just had this lovely meal. And here we are sitting around. We have a nice fire, and it’s all warm. Imagine what it would be like if you had to take off all your clothes, go out into that cold, dark, stormy night and you know that you could never come back here. Well, death is much worse that that.”

And there is the case of -- who is it in Minnesota, the Zen teacher starts with a K? I can’t remember. Anyway, had this huge fundraising...fund-raiser put on. And so all of this...all of the glitterati of Minneapolis were gathered here. And they -- you know, the usual things -- they had been wined and dined. And now here comes the Zen master that they're all there to give money to. And so he comes downstairs, looks at everybody and says, “You know that you are all going to die, don’t you?”

And it is the probably the single most important thing to take in about your life -- that it is going to come to an end. And it is why teachers talk about it again and again. Because when you really take it in, you begin to relate to your life as your life. Not -- as we were discussing before -- as the life which society has conditioned you for. So, and it takes a lot of work to over...overcome all of that conditioning.

Then the second thing is attention to the signs of death. And the third here is to be conscious that life is passing moment to moment."

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.”