Why people practice

From: Sutra Session 27
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Well, the key question possibly, is what do you want from your practice. Now, there are various possibilities.

Some people, what they want from their practice, is a way to dissipate the tension in their lives, dissipate stress Okay? If that's what a person wants from their practice, twenty minutes a day is usually enough. Once a day, maybe twice a day. But that's usually enough. And it's very very effective that way.

Other people, they want to heal old wounds with their practice. That's what they want from their practice --healing old wounds. They're probably going to need more than twenty minutes a day. But they're also probably going to need someone to talk with as well. And they are maybe able to do it just through their practice, but they're probably gonna have to learn through interaction with someone actually how to do that.

Some people what they want from their practice is to be able to function better in their lives. They want to be less distracted, more focussed, more able to face the challenges of life. For that, the benefit of practice comes because through practice you build a capacity in attention. And if that's what one wants from practice, what I found for that is you have to meditate a minimum of half an hour a day.  Twenty minutes is not enough. You don't build a capacity in attention, but with half an hour you start to.

Other people, what they want from practice is to engage some of the deep questions. Like, who am I, why are we here? Now, these kinds of things. They probably have to put more time in.

Other people, what they want from their practice is they want to change how they experience life completely. They gonna have to put quite a bit of time into that, because that's a non-trivial exercise.

So, that's the first place is what do you actually want from your practice.

Now, if you decide, let's say, you want to change fundamentally how you experience life, and this is what deep spiritual practice is about whether it's in Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism, then you're gonna put in a lot of time. For instance in both Christianity and in Buddhism there is the technique of recitation. In the Christianity you use the centering prayer, in Tibetan Buddhism you use a mantra, and it doesn't matter what mantra, it can be om mani padme hum or what have you. But you recite a mantra. Well, the way the mantra works or the centering prayer works, you recite it so much, you recite it all the time. You recite it while you're working, you recite it while you are having a shower, you recite it while you have conversations. You're not reciting it out loud while you having conversations, but you have it going inside. You recite it so much that it replaces all of that undercurrent of thoughts that's always going through. Okay? And what you end up with is a silent mind because it is being replaced by the prayer or by the mantra. But that only comes about by putting serious time into it.

And one of my teachers, Dezhung Rinpoche, he set as his goal to say a hundred million mantras, om mani padme hum. So, whenever we were talking with him, he would be sitting there saying "om mani," he'd be listening to us, "om mani," then when we finished our question he'd talk with us, and as soon as he finished "om mani." And that's what he is working on, getting rid of that subconscious gossip.

So, that's just one example of the kind of effort that one has to be prepared for.

Eight sources of disturbance

From: Chö 5

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"Beginning with our enemies that provoke anger, impediments that generate harm, conditions that cause interruptions, obsessions with mortality, local disturbances, physical disturbances, and our own parents. In short, all sentient beings whose numbers are as infinite as space will obtain the direct understanding of the Supreme Mother. Consequently, I take up the profound practice of the holy ground where obsessions are cut down." 

There are eight sources of disturbances. Let’s go through them again. Enemies that provoke anger, that’s number one. Impediments that generate harm; conditions that cause interruptions; obsessions with mortality, that’s number four; local disturbances; physical disturbances; and mother and father. That makes eight, right? 

The language of chö is all about inviting demons. But what you’re really doing is working with what is arising in you. 

When something arises and provokes anger, you move out of presence, right? So, anything which gives rise to the disturbance of anger in you is included in that “enemies that provoke anger.” 

When we encounter impediments in our practice, things that block us, then our practice goes to pieces. And all of us know what happens when our practice goes to pieces: really good things happen in our life. Okay? We experience harm, emotionally, spiritually, possibly even physically. So anything that comes up in our experience that, bang, blocks our practice—it’s an impediment—you’re also inviting here. 

Conditions that cause interruptions. This is not quite as strong as the things that block the practice, but these are things that interrupt, you know. We get a lot of business. And so we’re so involved with our business and earning lots of money that our practice goes down the tubes for a couple of months. 

Or we fall in love. I’ve found that falling in love is the worst obstacle to most people’s practice. People become totally unworkable when they’re in love. It’s not the same as loving someone. When they’re in love they become unworkable, you know. When a student comes in and says, “I just met someone.” I go, “Oh shit!” [Laughter] 

Okay, but there can be other things. Any set of conditions—the loss of someone close to you, a relative getting sick, losing your job—all of these kinds of things. These are conditions that cause interruptions in one’s practice. 

Obsessions with mortality. Actually, these “obsessions” include the four obsessions: the classical obsessions, obsessions with mortality, obsessions with reactive emotions, obsessions with peak experiences, and obsessions with physical being. But particularly obsessions with mortality, that’s something that gives rise to a great deal of anxiety and fear in us. 

Local disturbances. These are places that hold a charge for us and give rise to disturbance in mind. Because we may have associations with them. Something unpleasant may have happened, so we’re uncomfortable going to that place. In Tibet, these were regarded as local deities and things like that. But it’s anything which causes us disturbance coming from the physical environment. 

Physical disturbances refers to things happening in our body which causes disturbance. Which can be illness; it can be pains, arthritis, you know, things like that. They can be actual physical illnesses or psychosomatic stuff, doesn’t make any difference. Anything that’s happening in the body that causes disturbance. 

And most of us have a little bit of baggage connected with our parents which causes us some anxiety or some frustration or some irritation. And then there’s the rest of humanity, which can be an absolute pain in the neck sometimes too. 

So these are the eight demons or eight sources of disturbance. And this what we are working with in chö. But the point is, in effect, what we’re working to cut through is the disturbance that arises in us.

Practice deeply with little fanfare

From: Pointing Out Instructions 9
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In his commentary on Seven Points of Mind Training, Kongtrul said: Practice deeply with little fanfare. This is a very, very old tradition.

Some of you may have heard the story about Shantideva who was regarded by his fellow monks as a complete wastrel who ate, slept and shat. And did nothing else. Little did they know that he was practicing very deeply all the time. Only when they tried to make of fun him by asking him to deliver an annual lecture that they learned as they listened to him recite the Bodhicaryavatara which was his own composition, “Oh, he’s not who we thought he was.”

So there’s no need to make any kind of display or tell anybody. I mean the very worst kind of thing—and this is a dharma center disease—“I’m going to be so compassionate, I’m going to give you the opportunity of being patient first.”

Pairing practices

From: Awakening from Belief 5a
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Ken: Jamgon Kongtrul once said, When you're studying, study everything under the sun. When you are reflecting, keep a really open mind. When you practice, do one thing.

That's very good advice, because to practice we need to go deep and you can't go deep if you're doing a lot of different things. I'm trained in the Tibetan tradition. What that means is that I'm trained in anywhere from a hundred and fifty to two hundred meditation techniques. You know, you can't practice them all. And I'm not even counting individual deities as separate meditation techniques. You add those then it gets up into the thousands. Well, you can't practice them all and it's absolutely not necessary.

When I work with students and in my own work, I always say, "You study and you practice and at a certain point you hit a practice that speaks to you." You may not like it, you don't always like the one that speaks to you, but that doesn't matter. When you find one that speaks to you--that's it.

And the other thing, just since we're discussing this, is that usually I'll have people do two practices. One which the emphasis is going to be on the wisdom or awareness side, and one which is going to be on the compassion side.

Student: Why?

Ken: Well, take two practices, very simply. Say resting in attention, mahamudra or dzogchen on the one hand, and taking and sending on the other, which is a compassion practice. That would be one example of pairing, but there are so many practices you can choose different pairs. Deity meditation, which is a visualization practice which has to do with form and manifestation, and a direct awareness practice.

When people are doing things like the death meditation or the karma meditation, I'll often--people are pretty busy and often can only practice once a day--I'll have them do one day just resting with the breath and then one day a reflective practice. so that it has that kind of alternation.

It's good to have those two parts, those two components. But very definitely, when you find a practice that speaks to you, mine it, and just keep going with it.

Note:  You'll find more on going deeply into practice in this clip and quote from Four Immeasurables 6 

The big scheme of the practice

From: Awakening from Belief 6b

Ken: I want you to go through situations where reactions come up and feel where the reaction arises. And you'll notice that by all of the sensations that arise in your body, and emotions and things like that. If you suddenly get lost in thinking it's a very good indication you've hit reactive material because everybody uses the intellect to get away from feeling. If you go to sleep that's also a good indication you're hitting reactive material because that's a great way of checking out: "I don't have to feel anything." 

Student: What if you've forgotten what you were reacting to? 

Ken: Well, you've gotta go back and do it again, and the way practice works here it's exactly the same way that shamatha works. You sit down in shamatha, you breathe, get lost in a thought, after a while you go, "Oh yeah, that's right I got lost in a thought," and you come back and you breathe again, breathe, breathe, breathe, get lost in another thought, "Oh yeah." But as you do this over a period of time, you begin to move back until a time comes when you're sitting there resting with the breath, and a thought comes up and you realize, "Oh there's a thought." But you don't get lost. You're just, "Oh." And it goes up and it goes poof, and you go, "Hmm," and you're just there the whole time. 

And that's actually developing a capacity of attention so you can experience a little reactive process, because a thought is a little reactive process. So we're doing this on a larger scale now. You just keep coming back, keep coming back, keep going through the same situation. You're going to get lost, confused and all kinds of uncomfortable feelings will come up, etc., etc. You keep going through it, and this way gradually you're going to hit whatever that reactive process is based on, which is some kind of uncomfortable feeling.
If you hit that--and you may or may not--just rest in that feeling, because at this point you don't know that it's a feeling. It feels like a fact to you. That's why you run away from it. That's why the reactive patterns kick up, just to get away from it. 

So you need to develop your capacity of attention just to experience it, just to rest in the experience of it. That may take  anywhere from five minutes to ten years, and when know--and I don't mean intellectually, I mean experientially--when you know it to be a feeling, then everything changes. 

So that's the big scheme of the practice.

Guru Yoga prayer and Four Instructions of Gampopa

In this clip, Ken McLeod translates the Guru Yoga prayer as he recites it in Tibetan. His translation in the talk is a bit different than the translation published here.

For instance, the second line "Give me energy to be free of need" could also be "Give me energy to be free of the pointlessness of life.

The third line "Give me energy to stop ordinary thinking" could also be "Give me energy to let materialistic thoughts go."

The clip ends with the Four Instructions of Gampopa.


Prayer (from Sutra Session 7 00:32:58.00 - 00:36:22.00)

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Different doors in practice

From: Death: Friend or Foe 1
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When I was in the three-year retreat, we learned probably 150 different meditation practices. I’ve never gone through and actually counted them. But I remember very distinctly reading a small section at the end of one book that was full of quite advanced practices. And there’s a series of quotations from different teachers in this particular tradition--the Shangpa tradition--and one of them has just stayed with me, really made an impression. It’s by a person called Kyergongpa Chökyi Senge, who lived in the 12th century in Tibet. And this is not an exact quote, but it's to the effect that there are three doors in practice. One is death and impermanence, the second door is compassion, and the third door is devotion/insight. They end up being the same door. And then he said a little bit about each one of those. And I found that, over the years, to be very true. If you look in the Theravadan texts, they explain that death and impermanence is the door for certain kinds of people and compassion is the door for other kinds of people, and devotion is the door for other kinds of people.

Rhythms of practice

From the second of Ken's talks on the Eightfold Path...

Rhythms (from 8FP02 01:07:35.01 - 01:11:30.01)

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Very much connected with effort is our capacity. And we build capacity by exerting ourselves and stretching ourselves in our exertion, and then resting. If we just push all the time we wear things out, we wear out, and we break down. And that doesn't matter whether it's physical, emotional, or mental, or spiritual.

I was listening to a report, on I think it was NPR. It was actually BBC World News, about the Colonel who heads the bomb disposal unit in the British Army who's retiring or quitting his job. And he said that in earlier times people could do this because they weren't meeting that many bombs to dispose of. But now they would be disarming or disposing of fifteen to thirty devices a day! And every one of these is a life-threatening situation.

He says when people do this, they can only do this for a certain period of time, and then they need a break. [Laughter] And apparently it takes six to eight years to train somebody with a sufficient level of experience that they can do this work. Can you imagine having to bring that quality of attention to something of that frequency when your life is on the line over and over again? So where it's really costly, they recognize the importance of taking a break.

And I found this in my own practice certainly. You can push, but at a certain point something sets in, and if you push now you break something in you, and that is not helpful at all. It's never helpful. That's when you step back and you learn to work with the rhythms of practice.

And the last point I will make on effort, in terms of capacity--I came across this in a book I was reading--there are four dimensions to capacity. One is strength: how much effort you can actually make. Second is endurance: how long can you make the effort. Then there's flexibility: how many different ways can you make the effort; how many different situations. Because some people can be very very good here and just hopeless over there. And the fourth is resilience: how quickly do you recover.

And all of these are best trained by stretching yourself and then resting. Stretching yourself, and sometimes the periods of stretching may be several days or something like that or several hours. Depending--that you'll work out. But it's that rhythm of pushing and then stepping back, pushing and then stepping back that builds your capacity and builds your ability to make greater and greater efforts.

So again, you can feel in all of that, or see in all of that how much to bring attention into the experience of making an effort. And see, you know, is energy flowing into this naturally and joyfully? Then it's good.

Dying Practice

Below is the third from a series of practices on death and impermanence in the Death: Friend or Foe retreat. The preceding practices used the following two mantras (pith instructions):

1. Everything changes, nothing stays the same.

2. I am going to die, and I don't know when.

The following third practice is a guided meditation on the dying process:

Dying Practice (from DFF05: Death: Friend or Foe (retreat) 00:06:26.00 - 00:20:53.00)

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Here is the commentary for this practice:

Dying Practice Comment (from DFF05: Death: Friend or Foe (retreat) 00:20:40.00 - 00:41:19.00)

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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.

Living Compassion

Recently saw the movie Groundhog Day again, and the following reminded me of how Phil started turning around, after he had hit rock bottom. Everything else had failed when focusing on himself, what he wanted to get or was missing in himself. After he had given up all hope for himself, he had "nothing better" to do than helping others, even thought it's kind of all in vain, as it is only for one day. He also had to learn to accept, that he couldn't save e.g. the old man.

Living Compassion (from TAN03: Then and Now (class) 00:55:50.70 - 01:00:56.40)

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Most people come to spiritual practice--while initially they may say they want to benefit others--because they’ve heard that rhetoric, that’s not actually true. And they just want to find some inner peace. And often they have to let go of that idea of helping others because it’s more of an identity initially. And they start, "Okay, yeah, I want--need to work on what’s going on in me." And as they do that, then the process that I described earlier takes place. As they develop their meditation practice, and through the meditation practice primarily, they begin to understand the process of suffering.

Then they come to the understanding that the process of suffering works in them in exactly the same way as it works in everybody else. And then there’s a natural movement into compassion and a different motivation for practice. That process may take anywhere from a year or two to five or six years to mature. It usually doesn’t take longer than five or six years, and it can be faster, of course.

But this doesn’t say anything about how they’re living. They live as computer programmers, they live as cinematographers, they live as attorneys, housewives, advertising accountants—whatever—massage therapists, psychologists. And the process of maturation doesn’t necessarily take expression as social activism. In fact it very often doesn’t take expression as social activism, because what people often see, or frequently see, is that to truly help other people is a very, very non-trivial task. And it’s something that starts to radiate naturally in their lives rather than just adopting something, a form of life, which is actively helping people.

And it varies tremendously from individual to individual. Some people find that they’re in professions or in situations in which they can make slight shifts in how they’re doing their work, and it suddenly will produce far more benefit for people. And that’s something that they may choose to do.

Other people feel that they cannot be true to themselves if they’re continuing—I see this particularly in terms of financial analysts and so forth. They frequently come to a point in their careers where they know that they’re going to die internally or they have to be of service to others, and they do either one or the other. And then other people find that the way that they’re going to live their spiritual potential is living relatively isolated lives, but not with the intention of finding inner peace but of just deepening themselves, and whoever they run into they will teach or guide or whatever, but they aren’t trying to do it as such.

And so, from this point of view, I think it’s very, very much a matter of what’s appropriate for the individual. I don’t think there’s any way it should be. But it’s how one’s spiritual potential actually matures and finds expression in you and in your life.

And I really don’t think there are any rules or guidelines for you to say it should be this way or it should be that.

Settling

By George Draffan:

Sitting Easy, Resting in Attention

A Difficult Situation

How do you feel about dying? Are you OK with that? Right now? OK, don't worry, it's just practice:)...

A Difficult Situation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:11:25.80 - 00:13:47.70)

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How many of you would like to be able to experience what arises in you more completely without getting completely freaked out in the process?

Okay. Well let’s do a meditation. I think I’ve done this here before. We’re just going to jump straight into the deep end. Okay. Now it doesn’t have to be really, really deep and you don’t have to have giant squid in the bottom of the pool or anything like that. But what I want you to do is take something from your life--maybe it’s something you’ve got coming tomorrow when you go back to work. Maybe it’s something that happened over the holidays. But something that was a bit of a problem for you--a real problem. Maybe it’s something you felt inside you, maybe it was an interaction with somebody else. But I want you to take something you ran away from. Figuratively or literally, sometimes people run away.

So everybody got something they can use? Anybody have a shortage?

You don’t have a problem? May I give you one?

How do you feel about dying?

You okay with that? So think about it now, you okay with that? You okay with dying right now? There you are. That’s the one you can use. I have a deep bag of these. Okay. Anybody else need one?

So just think of that situation or let’s use the term situation--it covers everything. And as you think of that situation say to yourself:

Breathing in, I experience the situation. Breathing out I experience the situation.

So let’s just do that for two or three moments together.

Thanks to Ann Brown for the transcription!

Daydreaming and Practice

Daydreaming (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:15:37.90 - 00:21:22.00)

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Ken: Okay. One more person. What happened when you did this? No takers? Yes.

Student: I started just daydreaming about a peripheral neutral ...

Ken: Ah, okay. You’re very good at running away. [Laughs] I should study with you. [Laughs] Okay.

So, now we have three different things going on. We’re going to do this again; we’re going to spend a little more time with it.

Breathing in, I experience the situation.
Breathing out, I experience the situation.

Now you’re not trying to change the situation or do anything about it. Just experience it. And one person starts daydreaming. Well when you start daydreaming, you’re not practicing. Now there’s nothing you can do about the daydream as long as you’re in the daydream. You’re in another world, but the daydream doesn’t last forever. It usually lasts for only a few seconds. And there’s this moment of recognition like “Oh, I’m daydreaming.” What you do at that moment is the most important thing in practice. At that moment when you say “Oh,” you come back to your practice, or you go on with the daydreaming; those are the two options. If you go back to the daydream you’re not practicing. If you come back to the practice you are. That’s it.

And so what practice consists of is making that choice each time. I come back, I come back, I come back." Now we’re working with an uncomfortable situation so this requires that you actually have the intention and are willing to experience that discomfort. And the reason that most of us are willing to do this is because we know that avoiding the discomfort creates even more discomfort later. So, we come back and at least we’re going to explore--experiment--experiencing the discomfort right now. So that’s what we do in this case.

And then the second gentleman, he said, “Oh that leads to this problem, which leads to this problem which leads to this problem.” And suddenly you’re seeing this whole situation in a very different light, right? Now, that can bring us a lot of understanding and insight that may very well be useful, but it’s a more subtle way of actually avoiding things. So what I would like you to experiment with is, “Oh, okay there’s that situation, yeah and there’s that one." And rather than keep following them she noticed that that’s happening. Just say, “What am I experiencing in my body when I open to this situation or open to all of these situations? What do I experience in my body?” I’d like you to explore that. Is that okay? Do you have a follow up question here.

Student: I think there’s a realization sometimes that the problem isn't really--there's not intensity to it but the intensity is coming from somewhere else.

Ken: Okay, so you go to where the intensity is and then go to the body. Okay. So what’s very important is that you end up in the body. Okay.

And then we have the third comment: this person is actually feeling the physical reactions associated with the situation. That was your experience, right? Okay because now we’re going to introduce the second step. The first step is:

Breathing in, I experience the situation.
Breathing out, I experience the situation.

The second step which evolves quite naturally out of the first one is:

Breathing in, I experience my reactions to the situation.
Breathing out, I experience my reactions to the situation.

Our reactions may be daydreaming. It may be following the sequence. It may be physical reactions. For other people there’ll be a whole bunch of emotional reactions.

What I’ve found here is if we’re going to work with this in the way that’s most fruitful, the best place to start is in the body. So we’re going to do this again. I want you to take the same situation that you worked with. We’ll do it a little bit longer. Last time we only did three breaths; we’ll take it up to five or eight. And what I want you to pay attention to is, how your body reacts. What happens in your body when you allow yourself to open to this situation. Any questions before we try this? You game for this? Okay. So let’s do this together.

Approaching Meditation

Approaching Meditation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:56:53.00 - 01:02:54.00)

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A lot of people approach meditation as a place to recharge batteries and get calm, clear, feel good etc. etc. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's very, very helpful that way. But what I've tried to show you today is another possibility. And that is a way to actually practice living. We're actually practicing living by experiencing what is arising--not trying to do anything about it immediately, but actually experiencing it.

One of the other things I do alot--or do some of--is business consulting and you have no idea how often I have to say, "You're trying to implement a solution before you've figured out what the problem is." Something comes up and they just start doing something without taking a look at what the real problem is.

And so one of the things you can use this practice for is actually experiencing what's going on in you and you may have a much better idea of what the real problem is. And we heard that from many people when they said their relationship with the situation changed. And some said, "Oh this is just something--that's the way it is and I can experience it and I don't have to do anything about it." That's a very significant change in the relationship. And sometimes you actually see, "Oh, yes there is something I can do." So that's a second aspect to meditation--it's a way of practicing how to live and how to be in our lives.

There's a small danger here and I want you to pay careful attention to this. If we start using our meditation practice to work through problems, that's going to work for a while and then it's going to start to become a problem in our practice because we're going to be bringing this expectation of working through something. [sound of horn blowing] Oh, more distraction!

And eventually--and I'm trying to give you just a head start on this right now--we'll see that bringing that expectation of working through also creates a problem. It won't hurt at all for you to explore just opening to the situation without any expectation of working through it or changing things or figuring something out. That feels a little uncomfortable very often at the beginning, because there are a lot of things in our lives that we'd just like to solve and get rid of so we don't have to deal with them. But a lot of those things we can't and we may discover some very, very deep feelings in ourselves about--anger about why doesn't the world conform to my expecations more often. At least that's what I have, maybe nobody else has that one.

And through this we begin to come to another aspect of what mediation practice does. And again it's--one can put it as--it's a practice for living--it's about how to meet whatever arises with awareness and openness. So that we can actgually experience it because it's part of our life. What we're doing is practicing experiencing things completely. That may make very significant changes in our lives, but we can say that one way to approach this kind of practice is, "How do I experience my life completely?"

And in this sense we're very much like that NBA forward that I was telling you about, who's practicing, "How do I shoot this shot from here? How do I shoot this shot from here?" And you can go through all these situations in your life and actually practice, "How do I experience this completely? How do I experience this completely? How do I experience this completely?"

And then you may find that when you're going about your day something pops up and you know, because it's in your body, how to experience it completely. Because like that NBA player, when you've got two guys doing a double press on you and you've got one second or less to take the shot, you can't think, "How am I going to take the shot, do I remember?" It has to be so in your body that it just happens. And that's basically what we're doing in the meditation practice. We are practing this and experiencing this stuff over and over again so that When we encounter in our lives it just happens. It's not somthing that we have to remember or think, "Now what do I do here?" or that we've figured out what to do. We practice it so much that it just happens and that's the real purpose of doing this practice. Okay?

Thanks to Ann Braun for this transcription!

Short Meditation

 Short Meditation (from SUS07: Sutra Session (questions) 00:04:17.80 - 00:08:40.50)

(download into iTunes)

Very short periods of meditation. And I want to put the emphasis on very short. So what does this look like? One breath meditation, that's about as short as you can get, right?.

Then you stop. And you check, "Oh am I still sitting upright, have I gone to sleep. No. OK, that’s good. Let’s do another session of meditation."

And start. OK. So far, so good. And you do that and you may think I’m completely nuts here, but you actually do it this way so that you have the experience of being completely awake and in attention for that one breath. Okay.

Then you do that 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 times--it’s up to you--but do it more rather than less. This can also help you. Then, when you really feel that you can do one breath, you do two breaths.

Then you stop. You don’t have to get up or anything. You just stop, look around, refresh your body and then you do two breaths again. And you gradually build up.

And the point here is, you never give yourself a chance to fall asleep. Because when we do that repeatedly in our meditation, what we’re actually practicing is not meditating--we’re practicing being dull. And that is just as problematic as being carried away by your thoughts—the other sign of the coin. But we actually have to practice this.

I was hearing about this young NBA basketball player. I can’t remember his name. Plays for Oklahoma. He’s one of the top draft picks, but he’s playing in the bottom of the league because that’s how it works. But he’s working really hard--this is his rookie year

And after practice his coach came in and he saw this guy shooting hoops. And he would be standing on one place on the floor and shooting hoops. And he would just shoot from that one position until he could sink every one. And then he would move six inches to the right and do the same thing.

And what he was doing was making sure that his body knew how to shoot from every conceivable point on the floor. He was really working at his game and he’s already a really, really good basketball player. Okay.

That’s what it takes. If we want to practice meditation, it isn’t just sitting down and having a nice thing like that. It’s actually practicing attention. So you practice it. And it’s not enough simply to put in the time. Putting in the time’s very important but in addition to putting in the time we have to be getting the feedback.

Now for the basketball player it’s very easy to get feedback--did the ball go in the hoop or not--very easy. Meditation--it’s a little more difficult getting feedback. That’s why we have to do it very, very short so that "Okay, yes I was there." And then we do it again.

And people think, “Why would I do this?” So that’s my question for you. Why would you do this?

NOTE:  More on one breath meditation here

The Basics

Meditation / Practice

Motivation (Willingness)

• Practice (3:04)
• How To Change Things (16:43)
• Primary Practice Benefits (15:33)
• Practice Daily (0:56)
• Mantra (0:33)
• Repetition (10:29)
• Confident Faith (3:50)
• Completing the Process (2:59)
• The Breath (4:48)

Resting (Breathing)

• Basic Skills (4:43)
• Short Meditation (4:23)
• Resting (20:46)Body like a mountain,
  breath like the wind,
  mind like the sky.
  Don't pursue the past,
  don't entertain the future,
  don't think about the present,
  just rest.
• Meditation Walkthrough (16:34)
• Meditation (13:03)

The Body

• The Body (4:46)
• The Full Body Experience (19:01)

The Central Practice

• To Be In One Thing (1:58)
• The Central Practice (17:38 + 8:30)
• The Primary Practice (7:25 + 7:38)

Meditation Walkthrough

First hand experience from Ken of what goes on in him when he is meditating. Describes also the basic technique of counting the breath to ten.

Meditation Walkthrough (from TNE02: There is No Enemy (retreat) 00:36:16.00 - 00:52:50.00)

(download into iTunes)

Primary Practice Benefits

Primary Practice Benefits (from BWM09: Buddhahood Without Meditation 00:33:28.00 - 00:49:01.00)

(download into iTunes)

It has certain practical benefits. ... So you tend to notice a lot more.

Of course, the practice Ken is talking about is this one. It has also the benefit of being very simple and easy.

P.S. Test Your Awareness: Do The Test

The Primary or Central Practice

Ken presents this meditation practice in many retreat talks calling it either the primary or the central practice. You'll also find a longish version posted here, presented in the context of a workshop on the Heart Sutra.

Here's a version of the instructions for the primary practice that I like very much :).

The Primary Practice (from WS01: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00:22:28.00 - 00:29:53.00)
(download into iTunes)


The clip has a low sound volume and a high noise level. Below is another version with a noise filter applied.  It has less noise, but a higher volume. 

The Primary Practice (from WS01: Warrior's Solution (retreat) (revised) 00:22:28.00 - 00:29:53.00)
(download into iTunes)

The awareness practice I will also introduce this evening. Many of you have had this before. It goes by the name, the primary practice and it is a method of coming into awareness. There are four steps: focus, field, internal material, presence.

So right now, pick a focus for your attention, it can be anything. It can be your breath. It can be an external object. It can be an internal sensation, it doesn't matter. It's simply a focus. And when you move into focus, you'll feel a shift in your energy.

Now, let the focus, or your attention rather, expand to the field, the whole field of sensory experience: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, all of them. And you'll probably experience another shift in energy.

And resting in that experience, now include all of the stories, feelings, evaluations, beliefs, and perceptual frameworks in you, all of your internal material, all that you can be aware of in the moment. Just include it all.

And now, drop any sense of inside or outside, there is simply the totality of experience that arises in the moment.

And you rest there.

And when the sense of presence diminishes, return to focus, and field and internal material and dropping inside and outside.

In this work, do not try to hold states. That is a form of practice, but in a certain sense in which we live and practice, it doesn't seem to be the best form of practice.  The better form is when you feel the quality of presence or awareness fading, diminishing, being lost in confusion or cloudiness--however you experience it--then move into that experience through the primary practice, through the four steps. So there's a constant returning and resting rather than a sense of establishing and holding.

Return and rest, and then return and rest.

And return and rest.

Another version:

Primary Practice (from ATP10: A Trackless Path (retreat) 00:23:22.2 - 00:30:00.2) (download into iTunes)

Well, I think I'm going to just spend a few minutes on Pat's question to Tom to start off with, and then do something a little different this evening. I think we did this in Montreal at some point during the weekend,  what we're calling the primary practice. This is the name a very good friend of mine gives it. It's a way initially of coming into the experience of attention. As it matures it's coming into the experience of awareness, and eventually is a way of coming into the experience of presence.

The method is the same for all three essentially. And as Tom was saying we begin by opening to everything we experience through our senses. And there are a couple of different ways you can do that. One is to select a visual object and rest in the experience of that object and gradually expand the visual field until you're including everything in your visual field. And then add hearing and touch, smelling and tasting. There's no particular order there. You could also start with sound.

Another way, which I've often done, is to start with the sensation of breathing which is primarily a kinesthetic sensation. And expand from that to include all sensory sensations. That's the first step. Then one opens to all internal the material which is what Tom was referring to as all the thoughts and emotions and stuff like that. They'll be beliefs and attitudes. All kinds of things. Many of them disagreeing with each other but you don't worry about that. You just open to all of them.

And then the third step;  as you work both those steps you begin to get the sense of a field of experience, some of which we generally call internal and some of which we generally call external. But it's all experience. And there's a field of experience and so we open to that field. And then we open our hearts to everything that is experienced in that field.

And many people find the notion of opening one's heart to things a little strange. But more than once I've asked a person who says, you know, "How do you do that?" So I'll take a meditation cushion being a nice, you know, endearing object. And say, you know, "Think of your husband or your wife. Open your heart." They usually have no problem with that. If they have a problem with that then I'm in trouble. But they open that. I say "Okay, now, here's this meditation cushion. Do exactly the same thing with that." And they go, "Huh." But that's what you do.

And so there's a shift into a different kind of experience at that point because you're very explicitly including an emotional component of attention, not just an intellectual or conceptual or mental component. And you can feel that because there's a deeper level of engagement.

When you can rest in that then you pose the question, "What experiences all this?" And when you pose that question, you'll experience a shift, and that shift is into the experience of awareness itself. What a lot of people will do is try to answer that question and that just plunges them straight back into conceptual thinking. You just ask this question. Experience the shift, and rest in the shift.

Now one can work these four steps slowly, building up stability in each one. And as you practice this over a period of time, it progressively deepens because one is building a capacity in attention through this practice. And one is also transforming the energy of experience of each of these levels into attention. So there's two different things going on. It's a very simple and yet very, very effective practice. Okay?

And another: 

This Clip (from TNE07: There is No Enemy (retreat) 00:00:50.00 - 00:02:48.00) (download into iTunes)


And here's a version with a slightly different twist and excellent sound quality.

Opening Practice (from SUS05: Sutra Session (questions) 00:12:46.00 - 00:20:24.00) (download into iTunes)


And here are portions of a transcript from session 8 of the Five Elements Five Dakinis retreat where Ken talks about the initial steps of the primary practice in quite some detail: 

Audio

Last night I talked briefly about the three kinds of meditation practices: the practice of presence or direct awareness, purification practices and energy transformation practices. Up to this point, the principle way we've been working with the dakinis, is as a purification practice. That is, developing a relationship with the dakinis, as a way of transforming the reaction chains associated with each element into the experience of presence. Particular emphasis on the aspect of pristine awareness associated with each element. And yesterday we moved from working with each dakini separately, to working through all of them and touching each of the centers in the body. 

So today, I want to shift the emphasis of the practice from purification, that is undoing the reactive patterns, to transformation of energy and from there movement into practice of direct awareness. Now some of you who have worked with me before are familiar with the practice we call ecstatic practice. But I think it's probably worthwhile to go over it again, particularly for people who haven't had that opportunity. So, if you just sit for a few moments. 

Audio 

What ecstatic practice consists of is a way of opening to experience. And it can be done in a variety of ways. For today, just pick an object that's in your natural line of vision or something that's when you look straight ahead is just there. So you can pick the book besides Dick's knee. Let your attention rest on that. That step's called focus. You don't do anything with it, just let your attention rest there. 

And then, without moving your eyes, include in your awareness progressively more, expanding from that book. In my case, to include the floor, carpet, other objects around it, people, all the different clothes they wear, out to the walls and ceiling, windows, everybody in the room. So you see everything, all at once. 

When you do this you may find your attention grabbed by a particular object, maybe the color of somebody's shirt. That's equivalent of being distracted by a thought. What we do here is a little bit different. If you find yourself looking at something like that, then just begin again, expanding from that object to your whole field of vision. 

And as you become used to seeing everything in your field of vision at one time, at the same time, slowly move your head and your eyes so you can look around the room. But all the time, you're seeing everything. You're seeing both everything and every detail. So take it all in. 

Okay, relax your efforts. 

Now this is something you can practice when you're walking around. You can look at the river, see the whole river and every swirl and ripple and eddy. You can look at a tree and see every branch and leaf. You can look at a field, and see every blade of grass. And you can look at the road, and see every pebble. If you live in a city--a very good place to practice this, shopping malls. See everything. Go into a glassware store, so you see every glass and the reflection of every glass in every glass. 

Audio 

One can take this a little bit further. So again, pick an object. Let your attention rest there, that's the focus. Let your field of vision expand to include everything. But now include everything you hear also. Sound of the river, sound of birds, sound of my voice, as well as everything in your visual field. And you can also include all the sensations you experience in your body. Sitting where you do, texture of your clothes, pressure of your body against whatever you're sitting on. You may find your attention just goes to that, in that case just expand back to include all the visual, all the sound. So you sit in the totality of your sensory experience. One can also include taste and smell. There is no editing here. One just includes everything. 

And now as you rest in your sensory fields, include all the internal material. All of the emotions, all of the stories, all of the beliefs, all the values, all the memories of the past, all the anticipations of the future, everything you're concerned about right now. Include it all as you rest in the field of sensations, for all your senses. Don't move from one to the other. You stay present in the sensations and the senses and include all of the internal material.

And there may be stuff pulling here and pulling there. Whenever you feel any of those tugs, expand from there to include everything. And we usually begin with the sense of inside and outside. Sensory sensations are out there, internal material is in here. But all of it's just experience, so drop any sense of inside or outside. There's just experience. 

As you include more and more, you may find your body tenses a bit. If you find that, just include the sensations of the tension. Maybe it relaxes, maybe it doesn't. But just include those sensations. Maybe there's fear or relief--other feelings come. Just include those. No inside, no outside. Just experience. 

And then pose this question, but don't try to answer it. Just experience the shift and ask, "What experiences all this?" There is a shift. Rest in the shift, including everything. 

Audio

The version I just gave you here is sometimes known as the primary practice. Because it actually works from the ecstatic practice but it actually includes the essential points of both mahamudra and dzogchen all in one very simple practice. 

Full transcript


And from session 2 of  A Trackless Path:

Now, the steps in the primary practice are four just to make it nice. The first one is, open to the experience of all sensory sensations. What we see, and the experience of seeing; what we hear, and the experience of hearing; what we touch, and the experience of touching. One can include smell and taste but those are usually fairly ephemeral. So unless one's sitting beside a garbage dump or a flower bed or something like that, then it would become quite vivid. That's the first step. And there are a couple of different ways of doing that, which I'll come back to in a moment.

The second step is to open to all of the emotions, all of the internal material: emotions, feelings and so forth. Stories, as well.

The third step is to open your heart to everything you're experiencing. Now it's very interesting--a little digression here--frequently when I say that people go, "Huh? How do you open your heart to experience?" And rather than give a long-winded explanation I usually ask them if they're in a relationship. And they say, "Yes." So can you open your heart to partner, your husband, spouse, whomever? They say, "Yes." I say, "Do that." And they go, "Okay." So now you see that cushion there, do the same thing. And almost everybody gets it. There is a way of just opening--and I'm not quite sure how to put it into words--emotionally, heartfelt way or something like that. But it isn't actually dependent on the object though ordinarily we think it's dependent on the object. You follow?

So people get that quite quickly. What this reminds me of is a passage I read in a book called Against Essentialism, which is a 200 pages of high level sociological theory, which is a sustained argument for non-self. And one of the things he [Stephan Fuchs] points out--and I just love this--we ordinarily think, you know, this is a thing. And it's glass or this gong or book and you are people. But what he points out is that peopleness and thingness doesn't reside in the object, it resides in the relationship.

How many of you know people who relate to, say, a flower or a garden or a car or even a rock possibly, as a person? You all know people like that? And how many of you have been treated by someone or other as a thing. So it's actually the quality in the relationship that determines peopleness and thingness. And this applies very much to this business of opening our heart to what we experience. Ordinarily we say, okay, we open our heart to people. Maybe pets too. But beyond that we don't go. But it's actually possible to open our heart to everything we experience. And it changes things. So that's the third step.

And the fourth step is to open to the experience of awareness itself. That is usually done by asking the question, "What experiences this?" When that question is asked a shift takes place and one rests in the shift. One doesn't seek to answer the question. One simply rests in the shift.

Among all these different versions of instructions for this practice, I hope you'll find one that speaks to you, as this is one of Ken's tried and true work horse practices for building capacity in attention.