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]

On samadhi

From: Eightfold Path 2
Full transcript
Audioclip

The Sanskrit word, samadhi, is a very difficult word to translate. And it has actually a wide range of meanings, but in this context the meaning is actually fairly precise. With some reservations I use the word absorption. I haven’t found anything better yet. There are lots of problems with that word but samadhi is active attention and it is composed or comprised of the union of stability and clarity. In just the resting mind there are those two aspects of the mindfulness and awareness and they come together to form active attention. But then that evolves into the stability or the resting quality and then the insight quality which is basic clarity quality. So when those two come together then you’re experiencing absorption or samadhi.

And the way that I’ve find very helpful in regarding this from the mahamudra perspective, it’s from a book called, Clarifying the Natural State. As you develop the ability to rest you naturally find that you begin to look at experience. So the way that you deepen the resting is to start looking in the resting. Now as soon as you start looking it brings an active quality into the attention which tends to destabilize the resting.

So by working at this and being sensitive to the balance, you’re not only able to look in the resting but rest in the looking. And that’s the two-liner that I find very helpful. Rest in the looking and look in the resting. Those two lines will take you a very, very long way in your meditation practice. The key thing here is to be sensitive to imbalance. When you are just resting the mind tends to grow a bit dull. When there is too much emphasis on the looking, the resting quality destabilizes.

People talk about balance. I find it’s much more useful to talk about imbalance. Because when things are in balance, we don’t experience anything, we are just there. Chuang-Tzu says, When the shoe fits you forget the feet. When the belt fits you forget the waist.

In terms of developing our skill and abilities in meditation practice, rather than trying to maintain balance become adept at detecting imbalance. And so this involves being in touch with your body, in touch with emotions, in touch with quality of attention and as imbalances arise you can quietly correct them. And there’s constant period of adjustment but the net result is that the quality of attention becomes progressively deeper and more stable. That’s the way I found most useful and most effective for working with this last one. So you are bringing attention to the quality of your attention, if you wish.

Note: Another commentary on samadhi: A Trackless Path II 5