People work in different ways

From: A Trackless Path 12
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People work in different ways.  

Our retreat director--when I was in the three-year retreat--Lama Tenpa, mahamudra was his practice. He didn't do anything else. And he'd come over to the retreat sometimes, he'd say, "You know I really should offer a few tormas to Mahakala. Oh, I'm too lazy." And by lazy he meant that he sat about 20 hours a day and he slept for about four hours sitting up. So a very lazy person. And in the second retreat he didn't teach the four immeasurables at all. AndmI worked with him. When he got to taking and sending he didn't even teach taking and sending--just a very little bit--he had them doing something else.

I had a real knock-down, drag-em-out argument with him about that because it had been a really important part of my training in the first retreat. And finally after listening to me basically yelling at him for half an hour, he just looked at me and said, "Ken that worked for you. It doesn't work for me." Mahamudra really, really worked for him.

And four immeasurables was a very important part of my own practice, which is one of the reasons I teach it, because I think it's very, very important. For other people it's  Avalokiteshvara. Other people, it's resting with the breath. There are many, many practices and the important thing is to find a way of practice that speaks to you. 

That's really what I hope, you can move in that direction. And then it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing because you have something that speaks to you, and brings about change in you when you do it. And that's what's really, really important.

Once you get into a center...institutional thing and people are doing this practice and that practice you get into this comparison game: who's getting ahead of whom, etc., etc.

One of my students at a retreat many years ago...it was an insight retreat and I  gave them a couple of options. One was to do the traditional insight practices and the other one was to work with Nasrudin stories. So, she was a pretty good practitioner and was working on her third Nasrudin story in this particular retreat, and at the end of the retreat she said, "How many other people got to three?" And I said, "You're never going to know." [Laughs] It was the comparison game again. And this stuff comes up all the time and it's worse than useless. It's counterproductive. It works in the wrong direction, and so to the extent that it's possible I'm trying to create a way of practice where none of you are in competition with anybody else.

On samadhi

From: Eightfold Path 2
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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

How the meaning of a meditation instruction is revealed

From: Pointing Out Instructions 3
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Ken: A lot of instruction in Buddhism is expressed in mythic language. I'll give you one example. It happens to be a mahamudra instruction--I thought I'd keep it on topic.  

Body like a mountain, Breath like the wind, Mind like the sky.

Now, I think this is quite a good example. If I say body like a mountain, what do most of you think of immediately?

Student: Rigid. 

Ken: Yeah. Okay, now what's it's like meditating like that?

Student: Tiring.

Ken: Does it work? No. So, is this what it means?

Student: No. 

Ken: No. So, what does it mean? Nick? 

Nick: You become very stable. 

Ken: How do you become very stable? Can you just say "I'm going to be stable."? Does that work? 

Nick: To relax your body. 

Ken: What does that have to do with a mountain? 

Nick: Mountains don't make any effort to sit there like that. 

Ken: Exactly. Say it again loudly. 

Nick: Sorry. I said mountains don't make any effort to sit like that.

Ken: Yeah. So this phrase body like a mountain means to sit without any effort whatsoever. And you come at this by actually just taking it in and letting it speak to you, not trying to analyse it and figure out exactly what it means, etc., etc. Okay.  

This is the language of poetry. And it's similar things with Breath like the wind, Mind like the sky. So, in what we work with in these days that we're here together let the instructions sit in you. Let them reveal their meaning. You'll know when they've revealed their meaning by what happens in your practice.

Don't miss the point

Don't miss the point (from Mind Training Santa Fe (MTSF02) 00:38:33.90 - 00:40:18.40)

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The key principle in all Buddhist practice is to move into the experience of whatever is arising, right in the present. In the Theravadan tradition this is characterized as the courage to endure what arises. Mahayana, we cheat. Everything's a dream. Vajrayana, or direct awareness techniques, sit and be with everything. Never lose attention for a moment. Don't try to make anything different. The mahamudra instructions: no distraction, no control, no work. Means you're not distracted by anything. You don't try to control your experience in any way. And you don't work at to make some kind of experience happen, or some kind of ability happen. You're just right in what is. It's the same right across all Buddhism. Move right into the experience and be there. The whole point of all of these different techniques is to develop that ability. Whether it's Soto Zen, Theravadan, Vipashyana, visualization meditations, Six Yogas of Naropa, dzogchen. It all comes down to that point.

The princess and the pea

Princess and pea (from POI01: Pointing Out Instructions (retreat) 00:24:05.08 - 00:26:23.04)

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Now how many of you know the story of The Princess and the Pea? Okay. Anybody not familiar with that story? Well, it's a fairy tale, I can't remember all the details but the prince is looking for a princess to marry and he's told by a wise old woman that the only way to find out who a proper princess is, is to put a pea under a hundred mattresses. And so he invites one woman over after another and they sleep on this bed. Eventually one woman says, "I couldn't sleep at all last night. Just black and blue. That was the lumpiest bed I've ever had." So, this is the true princess because she can feel a pea under a hundred mattresses.

Now there are additional elements to that story but the main point here is that when you actually rest then you feel all the stuff that prevents you from resting more deeply. And it just brings you right into connection with it.

This is often not comfortable. You're like the princess, you get black and blue. But mahamudra practice and the direct awareness practice, in general, consists primarily of learning how to rest deeply at first with, and eventually in one's internal material. And this is found also in the Theravadan tradition in the four foundations of mindfulness and particularly in the Full Awareness of Breathing Sutra, in which the breath is used as a way of coming to that deep resting.

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.

Resting

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

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

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

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

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

So, do what you actually can do.

...

Pith instructions:

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

And:

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

Progression

Progression (from TAN16 Then and Now (class) 00:57:47.50 - 01:03:52.00) (download into iTunes)

Ken: Most of you here, and I know you have, Susan, have been exposed to teachings of mahamudra and dzogchen. These are advanced teachings, even they're given out to all kinds of people. But a lot of people who receive them don’t appreciate their subtlety or where they fit in the progression that I'm describing.

I can describe the progression in another way and that is in terms of attachment to ideas about the world.

So, we start off, think, well, you know, life isn’t bad, but I'm having a certain kind of difficulty and if I could just learn a few skills then everything would just be great, you know. If I could learn not to react so much, then my life would be great. So, sit down and learn how to meditate. And it's true. I learn how not to react so much. But in the process of learning how not to react which is basically letting go of thoughts and feelings as facts and just experience them as thoughts and feelings.

In developing that ability we become aware of a much deeper problem. That all of that reactivity is organized around a sense of self, and serves to protect that sense of self. And so we go, "Ah, there's more of a bigger problem here, didn't realize this. Well if I could just let go of the sense of self, you know, then I wouldn't react at all. That'd be so cool."

So, now meditation and one's practice takes on a different tenor. And you begin to develop not just a calm mind, a mind which is less reactive, but you also develop a certain ability to see into the nature of things because an intellectual understanding that there is no self doesn't change anything as you well know. It has to be a direct experience. So you're beginning to move into the realm of direct experience and direct awareness, which is a beginning to approach rigpa and awareness and all of those things. And so, you come to a point where you go, “Wow, I don’t exist as a thing.” Then, that’s a very definite experience. Some people say, “That’s totally cool,” some people say, "This freaks me out.” People have different reactions to that experience. But, it opens up more possibilities.

But again, it reveals a deeper problem. And that is "Well, if I don’t exist as a thing, then what is all this? And where does confusion arise? And where does being awake arise? If there's no entity which is me what do all of these things mean?" That's a really difficult question. This leads to another level of exploration which is basically what bodhicitta, and mahamudra, and dzogchen, middle way is more bodhicitta, are about is: there is just this experience which is simultaneously vivid and empty. When one can actually experience that moment to moment in a completely non-conceptual awareness that's what you're calling rigpa. That's what mahamudra and dzogchen. Now, that's the progression as a progressive letting go of more and more.

This Gampopa's writing when you get The Perfection of Wisdom you'll see he does write about mahamudra and matyamaka. He doesn't write explicitly about dzogchen. It's implicit in this approach but here this is a path, a graded path, a step-by-step path where the dzogchen and mahamudra teachings in the vadjrayana take the perspective this is present in us right now. It doesn't have to be grown, you don't have to go through a process, you can relate to it right now. That’s a different approach. It's a very effective approach. And usually in the Tibetan tradition one worked with both approaches simultaneously because there were abilities that needed to be cultivated, as you well know, one has to have a certain ability in attention otherwise one simply can't practice dzogchen. One can think one's practicing dzogchen but you're not. That's where a lot of people are today. Does this answer your question?