Practice intensively with little fanfare

From: A Trackless Path II 5
Full transcript (not yet available)
Audioclip

Student: I've always found it helpful to look at my practice using the three strands of willingness, knowledge, capacity, and the one that I've had the hardest time with by far has always been willingness. 

Ken: Oh!

Student: Because I find this question of how do you introduce the concepts to people who haven't had our experience, is a very germane one for me because I went back into a household that had no direct experience and was very threatened by it. It caused a lot of fear to arise. And so to me, I think as we go down into this practice, there's a lot of personal sacrifices. In some ways it brings up...it's a very difficult practice for other people who are close to me to adopt. And so I wanted to ask the question about your experience with that and how somebody deals with people that get hurt by it. 

Ken: Well, several things come to mind with that question, Rob. In no particular order the first thing was, a woman at a workshop which I did in the late 80s in Portland. And there were 20 people, a relatively small number, so I was able to ask everybody at the beginning why they were here. And everybody went around--this was second or third to the last person--to respond to this. And she said, "My husband has practiced Zen for the last 25 years. He's never talked to me about his practice. He's never suggested that I should do any kind of practice myself. He just gets up in the morning and meditates. But when I left to come here, there was a little smile on his face."  And I just found it so touching because there was such maturity in this relationship. 

And so the second thing that came to mind was one of the mind training teachings. Practice intensely with little fanfare. We do this practice, and as Kongtrul points out again and again in The Seven Points of Mind Training, The Great Path of Awakening, we're doing it for ourselves. We make use of bodhicitta and compassion, but we're the ones who benefit from it. And he goes on to say, "Don't expect thanks for doing this." Don't expect a pat on the back. You're the one who benefits from this. But I've always enjoyed, I really like that line, Practice intensely with little fanfare. In other words, don't make your practice public. Don't impose it on other people. There is no need to. 

And yes, you're quite right. One of the things I've worked with many people on is that in a couple relationship, any couple relationship, when one person gets involved in a practice and the other person doesn't, for the person who doesn't it feels like the other person is having an affair. And there's therefore a responsibility on the part of the person who is practicing to honor the relationship and not be the source of anxiety and fear. Now I had a wonderful time with a person who's now a very good friend, and he's been extraordinarily helpful to me in my own life, but he started off as a student. And he was a Fox News republican when he started with me. Very, very aggressive, hard driving business guy. But there was one great thing about him.  If I said, "Do this," he just did it. And the twelve, fourteen years I worked with him I don't think he missed more than two days of meditation. "You said to do that, okay, I meditate a half hour every day. That's it." Travel, doesn't make any difference, he just did it. So there's certain good qualities there. But when he got involved with me, his wife just went straight through the roof. And like many people, and this is what we tend to do. When we get involved in something such as practice, it's tremendously important to us and we want to share that with people who are close to us. One word of advice: don't. Because they don't understand for the same reasons that they don't have the experience, it's not there. Anyway, he wanted to talk to his wife about it and she from her point of view, he had just gotten involved in a cult and it was six of one whether their marriage was going to last or not. That was her experience. 

Student: Sometimes when we practice we're not that wise.

Ken: I agree. 

Student: My experience was taking my time away from the family. 

Ken: Ato Rinpoche who's a wonderful teacher in England, he married in England and had a daughter and he was very clear. Family always came first. If he was meditating and his daughter came up [snaps fingers], and this is what it means, Practice intensely with little fanfare.  You find a way of practicing so it isn't an imposition on your family. 

And in this case that I'm describing a few years later, I received an invitation to this person's, at that point 60th birthday party. And I was very surprised because the invitation came from his wife. So I went and hung around, chatted with people, and then as I was leaving I said goodbye to him and then went to say goodbye to her. And she just pulled me aside and said, "Ken, you know I'm never going to meditate, but I have benefitted from it." [Laughter] And this is what is the result of practicing intensely with little fanfare. There's another--I remember it was in the Shambhala Sun years and years ago--that kids were interviewed about their parents practicing. And one young girl said it all, "My daddy is a better daddy when he practices. 

Student: There's a story about a young lady who goes into Buddhism and her family is perplexed by this and she just decides to give up the practice and go home and she writes back to her instructor and says "They sure hate me when I'm a Buddhist and they sure like me when I act like a Buddhist." [Ken laughs]

Ken: Yeah, that's not my story, so thank you. So yes, I was young and stupid. Most of us were young and stupid, and so, people did get hurt by it, you're quite right. But my advice is, yes, take your practice seriously, but practice it in a way in which it is not an imposition on other people and that will require some dedication and some effort. 

Now the other side of your question is also very relevant. I think this is somewhat true of the nature of the pluralistic society as opposed to societies where everybody is a Buddhist or everybody is this or everybody is that. As one develops a relationship with attention and awareness and compassion, or any of a number of themes in Buddhism, it's human nature that you want to talk about it with somebody. That would be really nice. And it can be difficult to find people with whom to have those conversations. And so yes, there is a loneliness that can arise. That's part of the practice. If you live in a place like the Bay area, it's not like that because there are Buddhist coming out of the woodwork, Buddhist teachers coming out of the woodwork. But when I first came to Los Angeles there was relatively little Buddhists active. There's far, far more now, and it's been that way in town after town in America that people have found themselves the only practicing Buddhist in 500 miles or something. And that has changed very signficantly. It is good to find people with whom you can have those kinds of conversations. The internet makes it much easier than it used to be to do that. But it is an aspect of practice that most of us have to deal with. 

Student: Thank you.

Note: Another take on this here in Pointing Out Instructions. 

The reliable witness

From: A Trackless Path 13
Full transcript
Audioclip

Ken: Let's start with a simple question. How many of you have expectations about your practice? What it should be like and how you should be in the world as a result of this practice? Well, one of the more relieving and one of the more troubling instructions in The Great Path of Awakening is, Rely on the principal witness.  

And the commentary says, as you practice mind training, people may come to you and say, "Oh, you're a much nicer person than you used to be. You're much easier to get along with. You must be making great progress in your practice." And so you think, "Oh, I'm getting somewhere." But that's regarded in mind training as an unreliable witness because people don't know what's actually going on inside you. All they're doing is basing it on behavior. 

And this certainly has happened to me. In the first three-year retreat I got a note from my wife, who was in the women's retreat saying, "From what the other guys are saying you're making great progress in your practice because you're much easier to live with now." And this was further confirmed many years later when I was in Vancouver helping to establish a center there. I was visiting with some old friends, and we were chatting in the kitchen. She came up, put her arm around me and said, "I think I can say this now, Ken, you really were an asshole." [Laughter]  

So, what do you do with that? So that's the unreliable witness.  

And Kontrul goes on in his commentary to say...I'm going to experiment with getting rid of the word mind for awhile and see what that's like.

When you are clear inside and not experiencing regrets or shame about your actions, that's the reliable witness 

Student: Could you repeat that?

Ken: When you are clear inside and have no regrets or shame about your actions, that's the reliable witness. What he's saying is the reliable witness is mind itself.

Taking and Sending and the Four Immeasurables

From: Four Immeasurables 6
Full Transcript
Audioclip (NOTE: this is a long clip with the quote below starting about 15 minutes into the audio)

One way of looking at taking and sending--Mahayana mind training--is that it combines all the four immeasurables into a very simple breath-based practice. And so that’s what we’re going to be looking at in taking and sending.

And it’s very simple to describe. You practice equanimity by doing taking and sending with all sentient beings—not just a preferred group. When you’re giving away your own happiness and joy and goodness and everything, that’s the practice of loving-kindness. When you’re taking in their pain and suffering, and negativity, and fears, and hatred, and so forth, that’s the practice of compassion. You’re being present with that. And taking joy in this process of exchange is the practice of joy. So there are all four just right in the practice. And so it’s a very wonderful practice.

I practiced taking and sending quite a bit before doing the three-year retreat, but in the three-year retreat we had two months on taking and sending, which was a very long time given the program. And I spent the first month just doing loving-kindness and compassion because Kongtrul said you really need this as a basis. So I thought, okay, let me do two weeks on loving-kindness and two weeks on compassion.

And I found that it really changed everything—changed a tremendous amount. And it certainly changed my whole relationship with taking and sending. So I’ve always felt it’s a very, very important preparation for taking and sending as well as being a very potent practice in its own right—four immeasurables.

Drive all blame into one

From: Mind Training Santa Fe 3
Full transcript
Audioclip

Ken: Whatever happens, you experience it as completely as you can. Now, there are a number of instructions here which help you do this. And you can see that they fall into three categories. The first two pertain to how we interact with others. And the first one is wonderful: 

Drive all blame into one. 

Basically what this means is that you are responsible for everything that’s gone wrong in the world. Each one of you. You know, in your life, in the life of every being on this planet, you’re responsible for everything that’s gone wrong. How does that feel? 

Student: Power. [Laughter] 

Ken: Either you’re very clever, or you've just walked into my trap. [Laughs] Say more.
Student: Well, if I’m responsible for everything, then I can have that power to change things. 

Ken: Exactly. What happens to guilt? 

Student: It goes. 

Ken: Exactly. So if you’re responsible for everything, you’re to blame for everything--guilt’s gone. You don’t have that luxury anymore. Okay? 

Student: Life is [unclear]. 

Ken: Mmm-hmm. But now it’s just become the law of the world. You’re you’re to blame for everything. You’re the universal screw-up. [Laughter] Everything that goes on in the world--your fault. That’s it. Now, when you really sit with that, how does it feel? Does it feel heavy? 

Student: No. 

Ken: No. Yeah, very freeing. That’s transformation. Now, it’s very easy to do it right now. We’re just doing it, like, theoretically. Okay? So, you leave this retreat, you go to work, and your boss says, “Where the hell have you been? Do you know that we lost these contracts, and so-and-so’s left, and all this stuff is falling apart. This is the last time you can go on vacation.” You didn’t know this was a vacation, right? [Laughter] Okay, now do this instruction. What do you do? How do you respond? [Laughs] 

Student: Yeah, I know. 

Ken: Shauna? [Laughs] 

Shauna: What? [Laughs] 

Ken: A little too close to home? [Laughs] How do you respond? 

Student: Well, it actually might help... 

Ken: Yeah, but if your boss is there it’s probably not a good idea just to go, “Yeah.” [Laughter] So? [Laughs] Right. What do you do? 

Student: You agree with him. 

Ken:  Yeah, Say it again. 

Student: You agree with him. 

Ken: Yeah.

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.

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.”'

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.

Education, Learning and Teaching: Then and Now

Education, learning and teaching (from MMT02 00:02:41.08 - 00:08:42.80)

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And I think a good place to start is with the source. Where does this teaching come from? Now even with this we start right into what I think is a very significant difference between the way that we regard education, learning and training in our culture and the way that learning, education and training was done in other cultures, notably Tibetan culture, which changed very, very little from well certainly 1100, but probably as far back as 800, until the 20th century when the Chinese invaded. And none of us have the experience of living in a culture which doesn't change appreciably for a thousand years. 

It is far easier for me to read a Tibetan text that was written in eight or 900 AD than it is for me to read a text in English such as Beowulf or Canterbury Tales in its original form, which is extremely difficult. Actually you really have to learn Old English in order to be able to read that. But many of the texts that we study go back a thousand years. They're easy to read. That's how little change there was. 

There are a few other things that come up here. Kongtrul in writing his commentary on The Seven Points of Mind Training often copied almost verbatim what Chekawa had said in the 12th century, and without any attribution or acknowledgement. Today that would be regarded as plagiarism. It gets worse than that. Ingrid, my ex-wife, has been engaged in translating an encyclopedia that Kongtrul wrote, and she found that whole sections of the dzogchen teachings were literally word-for-word repetitions of stuff that Longchenpa had written in the 13th, 14th century, like five, 600 years earlier. Again, without any attribution whatsoever. 

So this is an example of the difference between the way that we regard education and training and learning and the way they did. There was no question of plagiarism. The reason was that in traditional cultures one's development as a human being--development of your potential--was based on the emulation of past examples of perfection. So you always looked to the past, say, "How did they do it?", and then you tried to do it that way. Whereas in our culture, our basis for developing our potential is individual exploration and experimentation. And finding out what works for us. So it's constant experimentation going on and it's very much future oriented. 

And the reason I bring this up, and some of you have heard me talk about this before, it is this difference in perspective, looking to the past, looking to the future, that is at the basis of much of the conflict that is experienced in the world today. Significantly between modernist and fundamentalist approaches. Fundamentalists primarily look to the past. Modernists look to the future. And these are very, very different perspectives and to some extent, irreconcilable. 

So if somebody had said it well before, you didn't try to say it any better. You just took what they said. They'd said it well. That's it! But if we write something and it's well written and somebody takes it and just puts it in their book then we file a lawsuit thing, "You copied us." And we don't usually take it as a compliment. We take it as theft. So we're going to find that again and again as we go through this. This is very much building on what people in earlier times had done.

Note:  I found this passage on education, learning and teaching very powerful. With so little change for such a long period of time, it's not surprising that the recycling of old materials and methods by Tibetan teachers was both common and effective. The other side of the coin is the importance of translating Buddhist teachings so that they become accessible and can be practiced in our modern context, which is so very far removed from the culture where Siddhartha Gautama taught and where Buddhism subsequently developed.

Interestingly, the Buddha lived and taught during the Axial Age, a concept coined by the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers. Jaspers claimed that the spiritual foundations of society were laid simultaneously and independently by individuals who lived during this time, including Plato and Socrates in Greece, Mahavira and Siddhartha Gautama in India, Lao Tzu and Confucious in China and Zarathustra in Persia. Karen Armstrong paints the Axial age as one of profound and rapid change and as the early stage of the evolution of a different type of society. She suggests that we are experiencing another Axial Age today.

Ann

Self and Separation

Self and Separation (from What to Do about Christmas? 00:25:33.70 - 00:27:16.60)

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This specific form of Mind Training is aimed at undoing what is called self-cherishing or to put it in more modern language, taking care of ourselves first. And that’s ordinarily how we approach situations.

What do I need here? What do I want here? How can I get it? We get a fair amount of reinforcement from our culture to approach things this way. But when we do that — and there’s also a very deeply conditioned thing, you know, about survival and all of that thing, to focus on ourselves first.

But when we do that — when we focus on ourselves first we immediately create a separation based on the sense of self from experience. And that introduces an imbalance and the more that we function under that imbalance, the more out of balance it gets.

When we open to the totality of feelings in a situation, not only our own but also everybody else’s, and I want to emphasize this doesn’t mean excluding our own but including everything, then as Karen was saying, “well, we know where to go. We know what to do.” But now it’s not based on a sense of an I separate from experience, but based on a sense of being in experience. This makes sense to you?

Note:  The "specific form of Mind Training"mentioned in this clip and quote is this Taking and Sending exercise.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (from AP02: Anything's Possible (pt 2) 00:36:14.50 - 00:41:15.80)

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Taking and Sending

Ken explains and introduces Taking and Sending in several podcasts with different degrees of detail. Here's an introduction from What to Do about Christmas.

Taking and Sending (from What to Do about Christmas? (00:18:53.00 - 00:24:27.30)

Ken: One of the more powerful techniques that I know which I think is particularly appropriate for this time of year is the technique of taking and sending. Now taking and sending is a specific technique from the genre of mind training in the Tibetan tradition.

The way mind training techniques work is that they bring a particular perspective and approach to the world into friction with our habituated way of approaching the world, and that friction generates heat and if you can stay in the heat that fuels your attention and you can experience things completely.

So our next meditation together will build on what we’ve just done.

As you breathe in, take in all of the feelings of regret, shame, guilt, criminality, negativity, you know the whole bit from all other beings. Now if you want to make this a bit more specific--because all other beings is a bit big for most of us--start with your family, say. Because there’s a lot of family stuff that goes around at this time.

Take in all of their feelings of shame and regret and experience them for them. Experience those feelings for them. So that they are free of it. Just as some of you found out when you experience it completely it’s freed.

So you are going to experience their feelings completely. And everything that you feel good about, that you feel you’ve accomplished, that you feel good about yourself over the last year as you are now, this is what you give to other people so that they experience it completely.

Now we make this a little easier for ourselves by imagining that all of those negative and painful and difficult feelings take the form of black smoke and come in as we breath in through our right nostril and into our heart.

And all of those good feelings things that we enjoy and feel good about and makes you feel warm and open and clear, have a place in the world etc., all of those take the form of moonlight coming out of our heart and going to them out through the left nostril and going to them.

So you don’t have to do a lot of thinking here and that’s one of the things that many people fall into in taking and sending. They do a lot of thinking. Just take a couple of feelings and use that breath coming in to feel what is painful or difficult or disturbing completely. And the light going out so that you feel what is positive and joyful and happy and spacious and all of that.

And what’s very important here that I’ve found is do both with each breath. Don’t concentrate on the one because those of you who are more comfortable feeling bad will just go, [heavily] “Uh! Uh! Uh!” and those who are more comfortable feeling good will go, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” and it gets totally out of balance. So you do each one with each breath.

Any questions? Trudy.

Trudy: When you say taking in all their shame and bad feelings and negativity, you mean as you imagine they feel it?

Ken: Well, what else are you going to work with?

Trudy: Your own.

Ken: Pardon?

Trudy: You could work with your feelings generated by the difficulties you’re having and you know try to...

Ken: No, you’re taking their feelings. And the result of that is you are going to feel your own more completely, okay? And also in the other direction as you give away your own happiness and joy you actually have to experience it. Causes a lot of trouble for some people.

Student: And they’ll get happy.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: They’ll experience their own [unclear], too.

Ken: Well that’s more of the joy aspect. Because this exchange is taking place you feel really good about it.

Okay? Any other questions? Okay. Let’s do this together. Yes?

Student: My right nostril... at the moment--does that matter? Cause at the moment my dominant nostril is the left.

Ken: Just imagine it; whether the breath actually goes through that nostril or not doesn’t matter.

Student: Then you imagine it coming out through the heart?

Ken: The black comes in through the right [nostril] and the light goes out through the left [nostril].

Student: Did you mention heart?

Ken: Yes both, one comes into your heart and the other comes out of your heart.

Student: But you don’t transform it?

Ken: It’s not a transformation of one into the other. No, you get, you know, it’s just the old thing we have in L.A., in with the bad air and out with the good air! [Laughter]

[Meditation]