Manifesting Things

From:  Warrior's Solution 8
Audioclip

There are several steps here. I don't have them nicely formulated, so we'll just go through them.

The first step is to be clear about what you want.

Many years ago, I was staying with a couple of friends, husband and wife, who'd been practitioners for some time. And the wife wanted to ask me about how to work at ngondro. She'd tried the practices and just hadn't been able to complete them. And so I asked, "Why are you doing ngondro?" (Ngondro is a set of practices in the Tibetan tradition, for those of you who are not familiar with it.) And she answered and we had this discussion. And what it came down to was that she was trying to do ngondro out of a sense of obligation to a certain teacher. So I started to question her about her sense of obligation. And what it boiled down to was that she wanted to feel a closer connection with this teacher. So she didn't really want to do ngondro at all. She just wanted a closer connection with this teacher. And that kind of thing is very, very common.

We aren't in touch with what we really want. We want this because somewhere else in us we think it will bring about this. And that's what we really want. And you can't possibly manifest something that's out here if this is what you really want. Because your effort will be striving to manifest this, but it won't be based in what is actually the case in you. So it won't go anywhere.

So the first step is to be clear about what you really want.

Now, one tool is a technique called the five whys.

"Why do I want this? Because I want..." And you're going to go down to the next level. You do this five times, you'll probably get down to the core. This is not an easy exercise. And it's going to bring you, usually, into some fairly uncomfortable feelings. But you will become clear about what you want.

Second, is to check whether this want generates balance or imbalance. And part of this is, "Is this realistic from where things are now?"

I want a million dollars tomorrow. Quite unbalanced, quite unrealistic. Okay, I want a million dollars. Well, there are ways to do that. Not all of them are legal. But when I start considering that, a sense of balance or imbalance, that's important.

The next is making use of a magical technique, not for the purpose of magic, but it's a technique that's often used in magic. And that is: get a symbol of what you want. Something relatively small and durable that you can carry around with you, in your pocket or your clothes or what have you. And every time you touch it or look at it, you move into your intention. So, it's basically a way of reminding and strengthening your intention.

In my executive coaching work, most the people I work with are quite resistant to a meditation practice, but I try to give them enough information about the possibility of presence that they get some idea of how helpful it is. And then I ask them to get an object which reminds them of their intention to be present. Usually, I suggest a pen, a very brightly colored pen. So whenever they see it, it goes, boom! It works remarkably well! There they are in a meeting, somebody says something, they pick up their pen, and they remember. That's the way the object works.

Then explore possibilities. How does what you want actually come about? You are going to have to learn something here about how the world works or about how that particular world works. If you are going to buy a house, you have to understand how the real estate market works, and it works differently in different locations. If you want a particular kind of job, you've got to learn what kind of industries, what kind of companies, have that kind of job available. Or need that kind of work. What kind of people? So you explore the possibilities. This can be quite interesting, quite fun. And you end up with a list of possible ways that this could come about. You have the opportunity to be quite creative. One person wanted a particular kind of job, so he talked with some senior executives in General Motors, they said, "We don't have anything like that." But he kept talking to them. And he persuaded them that they actually needed someone to do exactly this job in their company. So they hired him. So he created his own job. That's a possible way. So you explore and develop possibilities. Get a good list. Six or seven is not too many. Some of them will be a bit far-fetched, some of them will be adventurous, some of them will be very traditional or conventional. Then look over the list. And pick three or four that interest you. More than that is often too much. It divides your energy. Pick three or four. More than that, you can’t keep track. You can’t really put your energy into them.

Watch the signs; that’s the next step. And the principle sign here is balance versus imbalance. Sign is balance versus imbalance. You remember when I talked about balance originally, the sign of balance is that doors open. The sign of imbalance is that things become progressively more difficult. So as you pursue possibility, you see what happens.

In 1970, I was journeying overland to India with Ingrid, my wife at that time. And we had no clear direction. We arrived in Tehran, I came down with hepatitis, we got stuck there for a long time waiting for the insurance money to come, and we asked ourselves, “What the hell are we doing?” And then we decided -- we’ll go to India and learn how to meditate. We were staying at a campsite outside of Tehran, and all kinds of people came through that. Some going east and some going west. This was before the Shah fell, so the overland route was quite well-traveled. And so we started talking to people. And from one of these we learned about some kind of mission outside of Delhi which was a good place to stay. So when I was healed and we set off, and we got to Delhi, got to this mission, it turned out to be a Buddhist mission. We weren’t even aware about that when we left. It was very cheap. It was safe. It was fine. And there, there were a lot of people, westerners, interested in Buddhism, coming and going. We’d started to read a little about Buddhism, picked up some books in Tehran. And there was a monk there, and we asked him if he would give us instruction, and he said, “No, I’ve got to do traveling, and it’s important to keep progress steady, and I’m not going to be around consistently enough, so no, I’m not going to take you on as students.” Then we met another person, who was a Dutch woman who was a nun with Kongtrul Rinpoche, and we said, “Where do we go?” And she said, “Oh, why don’t you go and see Kalu Rinpoche. Well, you go to Darjeeling, but you’ll need a permit in Darjeeling, you are Canadians, right? You can get the six month permit. You go here in Calcutta.” So we went. Got the permit. Got to Darjeeling. Doors just kept opening all of the way.

Now there are other areas of my life where I tried to move something, and it’s just been block, block, block, block. So you pay attention to the signs. Yes? 

You move into things, but the key is, do you get moved out of balance? And if all of your reactivity gets stirred up so that when you get moved out of balance, then everything else is going to move further out of balance. But if your intention is clear, then even though you encounter difficulties. What I left out of this is that in Herat, Ingrid contracted appendicitis. And she had to have her appendix out in Herat. Have any of you been to Herat? It is not the place you really want to have your appendix out. But she healed fine. And all of the difficulties, you stay in balance, so you make a balanced effort. That is most likely to lead to the dissolution of them.

Obstacles arise, but the essential point is balance. Can you maintain a balanced effort? Because it is only through being in balance that balanced results can come about.

Student: What does that effort consist of?

Ken: What does that effort consist of? Exactly. Not trying to avoid it, not actually trying to get through it. Just experience it. Because trying to get through it sets up an imbalance.

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Well, it doesn’t necessarily shift right away. The big thing is can you stay in balance. If you are being pushed more and more out of balance in the effort to get what you want, or to make what you want happen, that’s the problematic sign. Some people work for years to bring something about. But they are never moved out of balance.

There was an article--I think it was in the New Yorker--about this guy who worked on the LA river. Did anybody read that? Yeah. I mean, this is nobody. He’s just this guy who wanted to, who had this idea about the LA river. And he just worked at it for the last twenty or thirty years, and it’s now becoming a political issue in LA, that they are going to possibly dismantle all of the concrete which encloses the river. All kinds of--

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Intention more than temperament. Okay? Now,I need to read my notes here. Yes, the signs of imbalance. What are you ignoring, what do you avoid feeling, seeing, or knowing? Now, key to this is that manifestation is a process. You may discover as you work to make one thing manifest that it is not what you actually wanted at all. And now you start moving in a different direction. So it is not like simple cause and effect, "I do this; this comes about." You start moving in a certain direction, and something will come out of that. But it may not be exactly correspond to where you initially started. But if you make this movement in awareness, in attention, it usually moves things in a good direction.

I had the same thing after I came to LA at Rinpoche’s behest. Well, I meant to start a center or revive the center ,which was pretty well in ashes. And I did that for a couple of years, and really didn’t enjoy it. And then Rinpoche asked a number of senior students to come over to initiate a major translation project. So I left LA for three months and naturally closed down the center because there wasn’t going to be any income at that point. No point in paying rent, etc. And while I was over there, in India, I spent a long time doing just this, "What do I want?" Clarifying it, going through it again and again. We were in Bodhgaya, so I could spend time going around the Mahabodhi Temple there, where Buddha achieved enlightenment walking through the fields, and so forth. It was very nice. I spent a great deal of time reflecting, What do I want to do when I get back to LA? And little by little it became clear. I want to work with students in a way in which I'm getting regular feedback from them about their practice so that I can guide them, so they don’t get stuck in particular points. That was the main thing I was aiming it. So I thought, "Okay, what does this look like? Okay, I need to meet with them on a regular basis. And what models do we have for this? We already have the consultant model; we have the therapy model,"  and so forth. And that’s what gave rise to working with people individually. And once I made that decision, it was amazing what happened. I came back to LA met with the old group of students, told them what I was doing, they all disappeared, they just left. That was that. What they wanted was something else. And then people just started calling. I don’t know how they knew about me or anything like that. But Unfettered Mind is the result of that.

So you become very, very clear about what you want. And if you bring your attention to it in a balanced way, and you stay in balance in the process...I mean, this business about setting intention, when you really set intention--and this is the point of the symbol--it changes how you see things. So when I say here “doors open,” it’s a little bit more than that actually. Because of your intention, you see things a little differently. And whether it is on a conscious level or on an intuitive level, you sense possibilities and you start pursuing them. Naturally. And they start opening up. But it all comes from being clearly grounded in your attention and staying, as much as you are able to, in awareness in the process. Tenacity helps. Okay.

Note: See related material in Making Things Happen

Engagement and Intention

From: What to do about Christmas?
Full Transcript
Audioclip

Ken: When you are fully engaged in a situation, how conscious are you of yourself?

Student: No, I’m not.

Ken: Okay. When you're not fully engaged, how conscious are you? And a wonderful example of this is, "I’m bored."

Student: Is what?

Ken: "I’m bored." Because boredom is all about self-consciousness.

So, I want you to take some of the situations you are likely to encounter in the next three or four weeks, you know, this wonderful holiday season. And imagine engaging them completely, whatever they may be.

Now there’s an important piece in engaging something completely: you have to have an intention. And what many people do is go into situations without a clear intention. And when you go into a situation without a clear intention you get carried away in the currents of whatever reactivity that situation provokes in you, because that’s where you’ll end up going. And that’s how you get lost in your own feelings in your own reactions.

But if you have a clear intention then you can fully engage the experience. You may or may not be able to affect or make much progress with your intention but then that calls into question what are you actually doing there? Should you be there at all in that situation?

So imagine going into these various situations. And I would like you to pick one, one that you may think will be challenging and take a few minutes to become clear about your intention and then imagine going into the situation and engaging it completely. And that’s what will do together now.

Katherine: Can you sort of give an example of that? Say your intention is to buy your mother a present?

Ken: Well lets say your intention is to visit your mother, okay?

Katherine: That’s so complicated! [Laughter]

Ken: That one is so complicated? Well, no, I think that’s the important one, because buying a present is just part of that, isn’t it?

Now what’s one’s intention in visiting one’s mother in the holiday season? And that’s a very good example. What is your intention here? Why are you doing it? That’s what to think about and reflect on.

And when I say think about it, that’s really a bad use of language on my part. You have this situation in front of you, feel it and feel what your intention is and see what comes up. Why am I actually going here?

And you can ask yourself why again and again. Well I’m going because I have to. Well, why do I feel that I have to? That takes you to the next level and so you just keep cutting into those levels. And at some point you are going to hit a feeling which you may or may not be able to put into words but it will be really clear. Okay?

[Pause]

Ken: Okay. What was your experience here? Let’s hear from some people we haven’t heard from to this point.

Helena: I am well aware of the fact that I have done many things in my life... a sense of obligation [unclear].

Ken: So one point there is, when we are coming out of a sense of obligation it feels like something is being imposed on us. But when we become clear about our intention, then there’s a sense, “Oh I’m doing this” and do you feel as separate from the situation then?

Helena: No, not really, no. It’s just part of me.

Ken: So rather than something being imposed on us from outside, we discover our own connection with the situation and what we intend to do with it.

My apologies, Katherine, because your first example would have been fine to take: What is my intention in buying my mother a present? What am I intending to do here? You could have worked with that just as well. Okay.

Anybody else? This give you any clues as to how to approach things?

Student: Yes.

Ken: What were some of the clues?

Student: Well I found my lack of clarity over a Thanksgiving where I felt trapped for a few days. Literally trapped. I really wasn’t, but inside I just felt trapped and this whole exercise is giving me that awareness that had I had this intention, those days would have been less trapped, I would have been less trapped.

Ken: Well not only would you have been less trapped but you might have actually enjoyed them! [Laughter]

Student: Oh what a change!

Ken: Yes and both your point and Helena’s point. When we feel something is done to us, we feel separate from. But by being clear about our intention the only way we can become clear about our intention is dissolving the sense of separation from the situation: I’m in it, what am I doing here? And then we can engage it. Then we lose that sense of self by being clear about our relationship with the situation.

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.

Criticism and Intention

From: What to Do about Christmas?
Full Transcript
Audioclip

Student: How about when something really is imposed from the outside, such as judgments and criticisms are going to be coming my way, and I’m not really sure about how to have an intention about that. 

Ken: Ah, when judgments and criticisms come your way. Well I think one can have an intention. It can vary. One very common intention is, I’m going to disregard this.

But another, possibly more fruitful one, is: what can I learn here? In my own experience, whenever somebody fires some criticism or judgment at me, which happens quite frequently, one of the things that I’ve found very useful is: there must be something I have done that has led this criticism to come.

Now it doesn’t mean to say that I’m a hundred percent responsible. I don’t mean that for an instant. In some cases I may well be. But that’s not an a priori assumption. But there’s some reason that this person is focusing their criticism on me. And it may be because at one time I spoke in a certain voice which reminded them of their critical father. Something like that. It maybe a very small bit on my part.

And so what I try to do in situations where I am being criticized is, what can I learn from this? What was my part in it? And I look at it that way. And that way, whenever criticism comes I don’t regard it as a negative. Now I don’t know whether that applies to you or not, but possibly.

Student: It’s from my mother and I don’t understand where it comes from except that maybe I’m an extension of her and her self-criticism.

Ken: Now instead of trying to figure it all out, why don’t you make your intention to be in the experience of being criticized. Just to be right in that experience. Because it sounds like this has happened a few times before. Right? And you are still buying into it. I mean — you know who you are. Are you this terrible person?

Student: [Unclear]

[Laughter]

Ken: That’s up to you! You know. So, just work with what we were discussing at the beginning. You know, just be right in the experience.

Student: Okay.

Ken: And see what happens there.

Student: I can make that the intent.

Ken: You can make that the intention, yes.

Student: Okay that will work.

Ken: Okay, very good.

No Choice

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

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

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

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

Student: [unclear]

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

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

Levels of training

In this session Ken talks about levels of training, or the process of maturation in practice.

Levels of training (from ATPII04: A Trackless Path II (retreat) 00:15:54.10 - 00:19:10.80)

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When we start to practice we learn various techniques or methods of practice. Some traditions train you in just one, and then you learn how to apply that in everything. In others, and I’m thinking of my own training in the Tibetan tradition, you’re trained in hundreds, so you always have these arrows in your quiver and you pull them out.

So the first step is to learn the techniques and learn them well enough so that you really know how they work and you develop facility with them. The second level of training is to train in a fewer number of techniques to the point that they just happen when you encounter certain things--that is, they become second nature. The third level of training is to remove everything inside you that prevents that technique from manifesting when it needs to.

Now as you train in these, you develop a great deal of knowledge about yourself, about how the technique works in you, what works and doesn’t work, and there’s a kind of evolution of what this works means. So as you mature in your practice, it becomes increasingly important to be clear about your intention, because intention itself evolves. And I don’t mean you’ll always have a good reason, “I am doing this because...” That’s at the rational level. As one’s experience of practice matures, it can become much more intuitive in a felt sense rather than the conceptual sense. So there’s “Oh, I need to go in this direction.”'

Five Mysteries

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

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

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

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

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Power is the ability to be present in intentional action.

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

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

The definition of truth is what is.

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

Anything, Not Everything

Any Not Everything (from SUS05: Sutra Session (questions) 00:50:56.00 - 00:54:51.80)

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We can do anything we want in our lives, we just can't do everything. So, part of being really clear about your intention here, is being clear about what you can do and what you can't do. And that way you stop taking on too much.

Intention In Practice

What is your intention? Do you know what you want?

Intention In Practice 1 (from Lives 03: Khyungpo Naljor 00:17:58.00 - 00:20:05.00)

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So he got all this teaching, a tremendous amount of teaching and mastered it. But because he didn't listen to that voice, none of the teaching hit the mark. This is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to each of you again and again: what is your intention in your practice? What do you want from the practice? It is so important. Because here's a person who, from the age of 13 to 50, was steeped in this stuff and it still didn't hit the mark. And the only way is for you to be clear about why you're practicing and not listen to all of the reasons why you should be practicing that other people are telling you. You have to come to your own.

When you do come to your own it's extraordinary how similar they are, as we hear Khyungpo Naljor describing. But you have to make them your own, and the only way you do that is by--you can't read about it and say, "Oh yes, that makes sense to me. I'll do that." That's very feeble. That doesn't work. You have to sit down and you think, "Am I doing to die?" Well, the evidence is pretty good. "Do I care about that?" And you may find that you don't. And if you don't care about it, you don't have any basis for practice.

Intention In Practice 2 (from Lives 03: Khyungpo Naljor 00:22:46.00 - 00:26:27.00)

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The point here is, it's not enough to hear it from somebody else. You can take in those teachings, but you've got to think about them, and think about them, and think about them, 'til "Right, I am going to die, and if I die like I am now, I'm not going to feel very good about it. I feel I won't have really done anything meaningful in my life, and I have these questions I haven't answered, and I will die with regret." And that has to become very, very strong.

And the shade and flavor of it is actually a little different for everybody. It can be expressed in general terms, but it really has to become one's own experience and motivation. You can not adopt that as a motivation without having gone through the process of making it your motivation. And you make it your motivation by really thinking about what is important, deeply, deeply important to you in your life. You follow? Ant it's absolutely essential. And then you come to what you want from your practice.

And I ask people this, and sometimes I get different answers and that's fine because each person has their own answer. Some people say, "I want clarity." Okay. And other people say, "I want peace." That's fine. And other people say, "I just want to understand how things are," and that's fine. And one person said, "I just want to feel that I know something before I die," which, if you think about it, it's a pretty profound thing.

So, through that reflection on death, you're going to come to what's important for you. And that's where your intention's going to be, and when you have that intention then you're going to be clear about your practice. And one of the reasons it's very important to do this is that different practices do different things. So you meditate on death and impermanence, that does one thing. You meditate on compassion, that does something else. You meditate on the four immeasurables, that does something. You meditate on insight, that does something. Each of these practices has a different intention.

What Khyungpo Naljor did for the first part of his life, like the first 40 years of it, his spiritual life, was to engage in practices that did not touch his own intention in practice. He had such extraordinary abilities that he mastered them anyway, but because they did not touch his intention, he never fulfilled his intention.

About Intention

Thanks to Janet Hathaway for her transcript notes, which have been tapped for this post.

About Intention (from WS02: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00:47:33.00 - 01:03:00.00)

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This is about intention. There are many ways to interpret this story, but one is about intention. And part of intention is how to make things manifest in the world. Now, in the short amount of time remaining, there are various ways of looking at intention. I’m going to give you three or four.

These are all in groups of three. Bring attention, when you bring attention to something, your relationship with it changes. It starts to reorganize. And when you maintain consistency in that, things start to happen. So that’s the first step. Attention, reorganization, and consistency.

Another formulation -- see clearly. When you see clearly, you can know what is. When you know what is, act without hesitation. Because anything else, when you know what is, is thinking is distraction, is movement out of presence.

Another way, and this is very useful for working with difficult situations, either internally or externally. Follow the gesture. This is a way of knowing what is happening. When you follow the gesture, and you know what is happening, then go another way. Do something different. It doesn’t really matter what you do as long as it is different. When you do that you will experience everything that tries to constrain you to the original way the system operates. So you have to cut. Cut. Cut. So follow the gesture, go another way, cut.

And finally learn the technique, get it in to your body so it’s just there and remove all of the material that gets in the way of its operation so it can happen.

These are all different approaches to the same principle and that is being able to implement intention. This takes place on your meditation mat and it takes place in your life. The way you strengthen intention is that you intend to do something and then do it. You intend to do something, and then do it. This is the primary practice - or the principle practice you should be doing during the time between meditation periods. Intend to walk somewhere and then walk somewhere. Intend to put something in your bowl at lunch, and then put it in your bowl. Intend to have a rest after lunch, have the rest. Or go for a walk -- intend to go for a walk.

And whatever you do, be in the one thing you are doing. Okay. Questions? Carolyn.

 Follow the gesture means, whatever is arising, you are right with it. That’s the first stage. This is how you get to know it. It’s comparable to attention. As you do this, as you follow the gesture in attention, your capacity -- your understanding of what it is develops. Your capacity in attention develops. And you reach a point where you can go another way. When you can, you do. Because you know what the results are if you don’t. All too well probably. Okay? Other questions. Yes.

         Student: [Unclear]

Ken: I’m not sure that there is a set answer to that. That -- it really has to do with the way that physical challenge arises, and the pattern associated with them. You will find probably that one of these works better than the others. Because they all come from different ways of working. So what I suggest you do is you experiment. And one will make sense. But it may be that with one physical challenge one will make sense, but for another another may make sense. Other questions? Yes.

Student: [Unclear]

         Ken: Umm-hmm.

         Student: [Unclear]
   
         Ken: No, it’s the internal material that keeps us from doing what we need to do. Yes?

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Well, it’s a simple matter. Who is going to live your life, you or the ogre? How often has the ogre lived your life for you? Do you want to change that? It goes back to that old saying from the west, “This town ain’t big enough for the two of us.” [Laughter.] And that’s how it is, that’s what we’ll be working with. That’s exactly -- unable to face that ogre. It lives your life. And tomorrow we’ll be talking about that very explicitly. 

Student: [Unclear] 

Ken: No, the story is a manifestation of the internal material. 

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Well, as I say the story is simply a manifestation of the internal material. So you come into a situation, and you feel uncomfortable in it. You know what you need to do, but you aren’t comfortable. Then the stories start up -- well, this is not a good idea to do this because X Y and Z is going to happen. that’s a story, right? But it’s a manifestation of the internal material.

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: It can be any of the emotional reactions. You are going to have physical manifestations, you are going to have emotional manifestations, all of the different emotions that arise, and you are going to have cognitive manifestations. That’s all of the different stories and associations and memories. I can’t do this because -- If I do this, this is going to happen etc. And when you are seduced or enchanted by the stories, then you fall out of attention, and you cannot do what you intended to do. So in the primary practice, you include all of that internal material, but you are in attention. You are not consumed by it. It’s a way of developing what we call free attention, attention which is at a sufficiently high level that the energy of the attention isn’t consumed by the stories and other stuff. You don’t need a lot. All you need is that much. But you have to have that much. Yes.

Student: [Unclear] 

Ken: A good point. At this phase, I recommend that you do what you originally intended, and regard anything that arises contrary to your attention as the operation of patterned material. Intended to go here, fine. Something may come up next practice session, you may want to go that way. Whatever you intended in this practice session, you do that. Okay? Yes.

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Yes.  

Student: [Unclear] 

Ken: Yes. And you just do the action. Now, if when you are doing this you find, “I can’t do it,” there’s a definite experience right there. It’s a very explicit experience. Be right in that. Because is the internal material that prevents you from doing what you intend right there. So experience that. And then tomorrow I’ll be introducing some other -- an extension of this practice which will take you further into it. But be right in that. And if you really can’t do it, then pick something else you can do so you have the experience of doing it. Okay? But if you can, work with this one. It would be fruitful.

Right Time, Right Place

Right Time, Right Place (from WS02: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00:40:21.00 - 00:47:52.00)

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... It is all a question of the right time, the right place, and the right conditions.

This is about intention, there are many ways to interpret this story, but one is about intention, and part of intention is how to make things manifest in the world.

To Get Out Of Debt

How to get out of debt? Bring attention to your spending!

I'm really enjoying the Eightfold Path (8FP) podcast and it relates very much to a lovely quote from the very end of TAN14:

So people sometimes think they have to exert great efforts to change. No. Most of the time you just have to change one little bit there, and an awful lot of other things will just follow from that. The difficulty may be in finding that one little bit to change, but we'll talk about as we go forward.

So continuing in this vein, in the first session of 8FP Ken talks about the confusion that results when people try to practice the 8FP as it is usually presented, with the large number of injunctions related to each of the eight branches. The very complex elaboration of this actually makes it impossible to practice. He suggests that a more fruitful approach to practicing the 8FP might be to bring attention to how we are viewing things, our intentions, how we speak, how we behave, earn our living and so on. And he points out that what people often do is take what is actually a description of the results of practice as the method of practice (see pg 58-60 of Wake Up To Your Life for more about this).

Ken then goes on to give a number of examples about bringing attention to how one views things and to one's intentions. One of these examples is about the experience of couple of people who came to him for advice about how to apply mindfulness as an approach to getting out of debt. Here's the clip and transcript of that example.

To Get Out Of Debt (from 8FP01: Eightfold Path (class) 00:25:50.00 - 00:28:46.00)

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Now when we start bringing our attention to our intention in each moment that we live, very interesting things are going to happen. Several years ago I had two people who came to me because they had built up sizeable debt and they wanted to get out of debt using mindfulness. Okay. Well, I'm not a debt counsellor but it's not rocket science either. The first thing you do is you start tracking expenses, tracking everything that you buy. That's the very first thing you do if you want to get out of debt. And one person just started to do that right away. The other person, it took them hmmm, four months of constant encouragement and reinforcement and me threatening to quit until they started tracking. They just started bringing attention to the action of shopping. And as soon as they did, their shopping patterns changed because they started to get in touch with the intention that was operating. And they would go, "Oh, I don't really need this right now." And just tracking what they were expending stuff on reduced the amount that they were spending to the point that they were pretty well breaking even. That wasn't getting them out of debt but it was stopping them getting further into debt, which is good. We'll get to those efforts later.

Now the next thing, the next effort was to push that intention even further, or that attention further, so they started to look at what were their priorities in their life as evidenced by what they were buying. And when they started to look at that again, their patterns changed. And they found whole areas that they didn't need to spend money on anymore and that moved them to the point of being able to generate a surplus and hence moving out of debt. And both of them successfully moved out of debt, completely out of debt, in about a year and a half, two years.

Then they had a real problem. They suddenly had much more money and they didn't know what to do with it. But that's another story.

Step Out of the Conceptual Mind

I sometimes feel that my practice is going nowhere -- therefore part of me says I must not "really" be practicing. I happened on the following clip one morning when I was feeling this way and it seemed a serendipitous answer to my feeling, leaving me with renewed resolve.

Ken's comments in the clip come at the close of a discussion of ngondro. The discussion and questions have turned to whether or not to do ngongdro, or whether or not to count the prostrations. Ken talks about the question "why do I practice" and how "understanding is cheap." After the clip, he clarifies that the understanding he is referring to is intellectual understanding.


A Trackless Path 12 01:34:34 - 01:36:50

(from ATP12: A Trackless Path (retreat) 01:34:34.00 - 01:36:50.00)

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Addiction

From George Draffan:

Addiction (from MUB04: Monsters Under The Bed (retreat) 00:03:36.00 - 00:18:00.00)

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To Be In One Thing

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

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

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

So this is being in one thing completely.

So that's your exercise!