How to get precisely what you're trying to avoid

From: Awakening From Belief 1
Full transcript
Audioclip

When you begin to look at karma as a process of evolution, then what evolutionary processes are you starting when you get angry with your spouse? Is that a process you want taking place in your world of experience? Well, some of you may say yes. But I will tell you one thing and I’ve had so many illustrations of this. When a process is initiated by a reaction—that is by confusion or ignorance—it’s always an effort to avoid experiencing something. Well, the nature of the beast is that whatever process is initiated by that effort to avoid experiencing, let’s say x, guess what that reactive process delivers? It delivers precisely x every time.

Reactions have three components

From: Five Elements Five Dakinis 3
Full transcript

Audio

All reactions have three components. 

How they manifest physically in the body, which typically there’s a kind of tensing or contraction. There can be actual physical sensations in different parts of the body. Your stomach feels churned, or like it does butterflies. There can be a constriction in the throat. I mean there all kinds of possibilities— your heart can beat faster. There are always some—and sometimes some quite strong—physical components to the reaction. And most of the time we aren’t aware of them, which means we aren’t really aware of the reactive process taking place.

So in this set of practices that we’re doing, stay very much connected with your body—what is actually happening in my body. Again you don’t have to analyze it or explain it, but be aware of it and actually experience it.

Audio

The same is true at the emotional level. Maybe looking into someone’s eyes triggers fear, maybe it makes you anxious. Maybe you feel squirmy. The sense that someone is seeing you without any judgment may make you acutely aware of your own judgment. I think one of the things came up earlier is a feeling of being special. 

And I have one student in LA who’s working with that particular issue at this point. She’s very chagrined about it. Because she sees how much of the way that she relates to the world is coming from holding a feeling that she is in some way special. So it allows her to negotiate a lot of situations very easily. But at the same time there’s a certain pride and feeling of superiority. So that’s something you may watch for. Maybe a feeling of being naked, revealed, exposed. And there could be a whole other set of reactions connected with that.

Audio

And there are the stories that come up, which is the third component of reaction. This is the component of reaction that we most often notice and believe immediately. We don’t question it at all. And again someone looking at us, really seeing us and seeing us without judgment, we may say to ourselves, “Look what do they know?” Or, “What does she want?” These are what I mean by stories and they again those thoughts come up, I mean we don’t even question them—we just take them as fact.

But if we’re in touch with the physical and the emotional we may appreciate the fact that these are simply thoughts and ideas and may not have that much grounding in reality. And so now we can experience things very, very differently and experience all of that as, “Oh, this is how I’m reacting to this possibility.” You know all the discomfort, all the stuff is in me, even those intended see the projected out there.

How do you know when it's a reaction?

From: Eightfold Path 1

Full transcript

Audioclip

Student: How do you know when it's a reaction?

Ken: I think it's sometimes very difficult to tell. But one of the qualities--the couple of qualities--one is stickiness. You know, it isn't quite clean, it's like...and it's a little sticky. This is not a rational way, I'm describing a quality to it. And another way is insistence. Insistence: it has to be this way!

Whenever the internal vocabulary is: has to, must, always, never. Very, very good chance that there's a reaction, a reactive pattern operating. Well it just has to be this way!

I mean, one person I was reading recently says, "Belief is where we stop thinking." This is actually a pretty good indication of reaction. When you stop thinking and it just has to be that way, then you're in reaction. Because you've closed down, it's fixed. So insistence, fixedness, stickiness these are the qualities I use to recognize reactions. Does that help at all?

Giving up hope and fear

Hope and Fear (from ATPII05: A Trackless Path II (retreat) 0:19:39.09 - 0:23:22.20)

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Joan: I'm motivated. I put a lot of effort into my practice and my question is, when is the end of reactive emotion?

Ken: Line two, verse three, Reactions are endless. It's about hope and fear isn't it? What are hope and fear? 

Joan: One is what we grasp for, the other is what we try to avoid.

Ken: Yes. What would your practice be like if you let go of hope and fear?

Joan: Probably blissful.

Ken: Maybe.

Ken:  Try again. If I may, I'll just up the ante a little bit. Okay? Nothing is ever going to change in your practice for the next 20 years. Do you still practice?

Joan: Knowing me, yes. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Ken: There you go. You just gave up hope and fear. It's actually a really, really important point. And always come back to that. It's the only thing that makes sense right now. So what happens in the future is actually inconsequential. It's a very, very tough instruction, but you arrived at it yourself, so you're stuck with it! It's not an easy one, but it's a very, very useful one. Okay?

Pride and other reactive emotions

Reactive emotion (from GDP05 00:00:00.00 - 00:04:43.02)

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Ken: Let's begin with any questions about the practice. No questions?

Student: A case of clear directions.

Ken: Pardon?

Student: A case of clear directions.

Ken: Oh dear, I'll have to muddy it up next time. John?

John: Is pride an attribute?

Ken: Pride isn't. Pride is usually regarded as an emotion. Why?

John: I'm just trying to figure it in a more positive way, it's almost like arrogance.

Ken: Yeah pride, arrogance.

John: But you're not really suffering from it. [Laughter]

Ken: Most of the people I know who are proud aren't suffering from it at all.

John: That's what I'm saying.

Ken: Most of the people I know who get angry don't suffer from it. Everybody else does. That's the characteristic of a reactive emotion. You're discharging the energy so that you don't get to feel it--everybody else does. That's why you're expressing it, so you don't have to feel it. So what's the question behind all this?

John: Well, I got totally thrown off this morning when I came in for an interview and...

Ken: Well who, who did that? [Laughter]

John: That's because you turned it around a bit.

Ken: Yes.

John: Something that was more, that I [unclear]

Ken: No, keep going: this is important.

John: I'm trying to think of what I can...how I started out because I...you ended up saying you wouldn't deem to even consider that those people were effecting you.

Ken: That's right.

John: And deem that your own self-interest that's provoking it or your own "self-betteration".

Ken: Yeah, if you're proud, right, and some little pip-squeak takes issue with something that you've done, does this affect you?

John: Yes.

Ken: I mean if you're really, really proud and even if someone has the temerity to speak to you, which they shouldn't, of course.

John: Yeah, I get that.

Ken: What's the awakened quality here?

Student 1: Vajra pride.

Ken: Yes, but what's the specific quality?

John: Dignity?

Ken: Close.

Student 2: Equanimity.

Ken: Yes. You're not disturbed by anything. Good. Bad. You sail through it all. Everything's the same. So live proud.

Hurt and Harm

Hurt - Harm (from FI 01: The Four Immeasurables 00:29:36.00 - 00:32:00.00)

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This is probably a little more arbitrary distinction, but I also like to distinguish between hurt and harm. Hurt occurs in relationships whenever two people interact in a way that doesn't fulfil the expectations or wishes or hopes or aspirations of the other person. They're hurt. Harm is when they're damaged in some way. So in this world of interaction, it's probably, I won't say absolutely, but it's probably difficult to avoid hurting people from time to time. But I think we take as something very fundamental in our practice to live our lives in such a way that we don't actually harm people. Because when we harm people, what we're actually doing, or one way of thinking about what we're doing, is that we are affecting them in such a way that we're increasing their reactive tendencies and so increasing their suffering. You follow?

Okay. So, out of this very brief discussion we come to this point. We're here to end suffering or we're here to learn how to interact without harming people.

How the "steps" of the five-step mindfulness practice evolve

Ken has encouraged me to use the five-step mindfulness practice in conjunction with the primary or central practice, and this has been very helpful, particularly when strong resistance, aversion and anger arise in daily life. Recently I've been listening to the audiofiles from A Trackless Path II  and found this advice from Ken to a student who asked about whether it was important to do all the steps sequentially.....

Evolution of 5 Step Practice (from ATPII02: A Trackless Path II (retreat) 00:01:05.00 - 00:07:35.60) (download into iTunes)

It's called five-step mindfulness practice and there may be a better word in English rather than step because step is the idea that I take one step and then another step, or climbing a set of stairs, and you deliberately move from one to two to three to four and five. This practice doesn't really work that way. The steps evolve out of each other. So the first step is: "Breathing in, I experience this reaction; breathing out, I experience this reaction," or pain or difficulty or problem. And as you do that you naturally evolve into the second step which is: "Breathing in, I experience my reactions to this problem; breathing out, I experience my reactions to this problem." And those reactions are, at the physical level, how the body's reacting; at the emotional level, all the emotions that are coming up and at the cognitive or mental level, all the stories and associations and memories and distractions that come up. And you just experience those.

And what's happening there is one is moving into a fuller and fuller experience of the problem, the reaction, whatever. And in that you find yourself just experiencing all of that. And now rather than reacting to all of that you're just experiencing it, which is actually the start of the third step, which is: "Breathing in, I experience calm in the reaction," or in the problem. And that's something that evolves out of opening to the experience of the problem itself and all the reactions to it. You follow? So you may find yourself naturally moving into step three without actually deciding to.

Now when you hit step three and particularly step four, as you rest in all of that stuff, okay, "Breathing in I experience calm in this reaction; breathing out I experience calm in that reaction. " That calm gradually evolves into ease or relaxation. So now you're sitting with this problem and you're actually relaxed. And as soon as we start to relax, then attention opens up and we experience the problem more deeply. And often that puts us right back into step one again. But now we're operating at a different level. And it continues to cycle around this way. And can, over decades actually. [laughing] Maybe none of you are as screwed up as me, but it really can be like that because you are actually able to experience something progressively deeper.

And all of this time you think, "It's just a mess," but that's the subjective experience that it's a mess. What is actually happening is one is experiencing more and more completely what's really going on in you. And the more we're able to experience the less we have to react. So though we may feel like it's a total mess inside. Other people may think, "How can you be so calm?" Because we're dealing with all the reactions inside rather than spewing them out into the world. You follow?

And through this then step five isn't something you decide. "Oh, I understand this now," or "I'm going to understand this now. It's something that evolves out of being in that experience and what happens is that you find the clarity in the experience and the understanding of the experience, of the reaction, of the problem, arises spontaneously out of the calmness and clarity. And you realize, "Oh, I was looking at it this way, but now I see it this way." And one's whole relationship with it will have shifted. But none of the steps are something that you decide: "Oh, I'm going to do this now. I'm going to do this now. I'm going to do this now." It's not those kinds of steps. You just start off just breathing in, experiencing it, and then you become aware of the physical reactions, become aware of the emotional reactions, you become aware of the cognitive reactions.

Where people get tripped up a lot is that as they sit with the problem their level of attention is often swept away by the stories that come up. And so they start spinning the stories, but once you start spinning the stories you're no longer experiencing the reaction or the problem. You're in the world of the stories. And this is why I consistently emphasize coming to the body. And becoming clear about the physical reactions that are arising, because that grounds you in your present experience and you don't spin off in the stories. When you're able to stay in the body and the emotions then you can experience the stories as stories and not get distracted by them. They're just stuff that is flying around all over the place.

Balance in a Relationship

Balance in a Relationship (from Relationships and Emotional Reactions (talk) 00:04:59.00 - 00:10:01.00)

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And I'm making a distinction between knowing and understanding. Knowing is a mystery. And if you think about it, we can take any object, a stone, a flower, anything. To know it is to experience it completely, whatever it is. And that's a mystery. We can go into that in infinite depth. And as soon as we say, "I understand this," it's like applying a label, and you may observe that as soon as you apply a label to something you actually stop knowing it. Now you just relate to the label.

So here you are in the relationship; know your experience completely. And when we know our experience completely, certain things happen. One is that we know it's an experience, that it just arises seemingly out of nothing. It's there. Secondly, we know that it's an experience, it's not what we actually are, it's just something that arises. So there's a certain "Oh this is like everything else," in a very simplistic way. And when you know it, you know everything about about in all its particulars, how it's different from everything else.

And when you know something completely you also know what to do. That's a knowing that arises not usually through a conceptual process, but it just arises. And all of you had this experience where you were struggling, "What do I do in this situation, what do I do, what do I do?" And you sort of let go and there it is. And in that letting go, you've actually joined with the problem so you've moved into a closer [unintelligible] and there it is.

So this is the essence. It's at the heart of your question, I believe. That by knowing your own experience, the experience which gives rise to that question: "How do I maintain boundaries?" It's pointing to an experience that you're having. And when you know that experience completely then you will know what to do. Because there isn't a rule here, say "This is how you maintain boundaries."

Every relationship--I don't have anything handy for this--but imagine there's a ruler balanced on my finger. Okay? Now does that ruler stay still? No, it's constantly moving up and down. That's a relationship and the relationship is never actually in balance. It's constantly moving. So you correct the imbalances in the relationship and then it moves a little bit the other way and so it moves back and forth. That's what makes it alive and dynamic. What happens is sometimes the ruler gets stuck like that--a seesaw. Now it is stagnant in an unbalanced way. And that's where disdain and resentment and all of these kinds of things come about.

So there isn't a rule about how to maintain boundaries in a relationship. When that question arises it points to an experience in you which is a manifestation of imbalance in the relationship. So by knowing that imbalance and by moving into the experience of that imbalance completely you know what needs to be done to balance it, and that's what you do. And then the next moment it's something else. Okay.

About Intention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         Student: [Unclear]

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

Student: [Unclear]

         Ken: Umm-hmm.

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

Student: [Unclear]

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

Student: [Unclear] 

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

Student: [Unclear]

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

Student: [Unclear]

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

Student: [Unclear] 

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

Student: [Unclear]

Ken: Yes.  

Student: [Unclear] 

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

A Nation of Zombies

This clip from Then and Now, session 7, mentions zombies, but reminded me of Dr. Spock's species, the Vulcans! Since our human emotions are here to stay, is there a middle ground between suppression and being engulfed and overwhelmed by them?

Zombies (from TAN07: Then and Now (class) 00:47:15.05 - 00:51:03.06)

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Kyle: I can understand the benefit of experiencing the emptiness and the emotion at the same time, but is the ultimate goal of the practice to ultimately go without the emotion? Because it seems that if the emotion doesn't really exist, and things like anger and other emotions like that can cause so many problems. Wouldn't it just be easier just to--

Ken: Get rid of them?

Kyle: Yeah.

Ken: Oh yeah, easier said than done isn’t it?

Kyle: Yeah. Well, obviously you'd have to approach it in a very careful way. Would there be a way of doing that without ultimately--maybe I don't want to use the word suppress, but--

Ken: Well we might become a nation of zombies. They don't have any emotions. That's not the point. We live. We breathe. We have thoughts, we have emotions. Very broadly speaking there are two kinds of emotions: there are reactive emotions and emotions which are responses. The reactive emotions are organized around a sense of self. There are things like attraction, aversion, preference, indifference, pride, jealousy, greed and things like that.

They arise and when they arise, because we don’t have the sufficient capacity of attention, they swallow us, so we get angry or we get proud, or what have you. But as you practice and you develop a greater capacity in attention then you are able to experience the arising of the emotions without being distracted, without being swallowed by them and then they just become an experience and that’s where what I was talking about comes in--one experiences them as just being no thing, just being a movement. And it's very, very different because you’re not confused by it,

So saying, "Okay, let’s get rid of the emotion" it's a little bit like saying,"Well, you know, it would be nice if the ocean was always calm without any waves on it." Because one way of looking at the emotions is that they are simply mind waves. But it’s the nature of the ocean to have waves. It’s the nature for mind, to move, to have waves.

The question is, is that all organized down to the sense of self, with all the destructiveness of that, or can it be experienced openly and freely so it doesn’t cause the locking or the reactivity that is the basis of suffering?

So what we’re doing in Buddhism is actually not trying to get rid of emotions but trying to develop the ability to experience them completely, so we’re never confused by them.

Attention and Emotional Reaction

Attention and ER (from ATP02: A Trackless Path (retreat) 01:07:05.00 - 01:10:42.00)

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There's one other piece I want to touch on here. I even made notes.

Bringing attention to precisely what we're experiencing in each moment does three things ... One thing it does, it frees us from emotional reaction. Emotional reaction is always dependent on a sense of past and future, hopes and fears about the future, disappointments and longings or aversions from the past. When we bring attention to precisely what we're experiencing now, the past and the future disappear, and so we're free from emotional reaction and can relate to what is arrising right now.

Second thing is that bringing attention to the present moment brings the freedom to act. If you look at situations in which you couldn't act, you're inhibited in some way, I think you'll see that there was always some sense of the past or the future again. But when you're right in the present moment, by bringing it down to that you make it, in a certain sense, so small that you can actually do anything with it. It's quite interesting, that.

This technique is used in psychotherapy sometimes. Bringing the attention closer and closer to what people are experiencing they discover a freedeom in that because they're letting go of all the associations, fears, consequences and so forth.

Five-Step Practice (Seeing from the Inside)

In teaching people, I give them this meditation whenever they're encountering something that prevents them from resting. If one can rest, then one rests and lets the resting deepen on its own. When one encounters something difficult, then more specific effort and attention, as in this practice, can help.--Ken McLeod

Five-step mindfulness practice:

1.
Breathing in I feel this emotion/pain/problem
Breathing out I feel this emotion
(detailed guidance) 

2.
Breathing in I feel the reactions to this emotion
Breathing out I feel the reactions to this emotion
(detailed guidance) 

3.
Breathing in I feel calm in this emotion
Breathing out I feel calm in this emotion
(detailed guidance) 

4.
Breathing in I feel at ease in this emotion
Breathing out I feel at ease in this emotion
(detailed guidance) 

5.
Breathing in I understand/know how this emotion arises
Breathing out I understand how this arises
(detailed guidance)

Related Material:
Working with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Fom A Trackless Path II, a clip on how the five steps evolve.

Ken often calls the five-step practice Seeing from the Inside.

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.

Completing the Process

Completing the Process (from TAN01: Then and Now (class) 00:59:40.95 - 01:02:40.10)

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Jessica: Why is it that when you practice for a while and then you stop practicing, the energy that you’ve built up in the practice then goes back into that cycle even worse?

Ken: Well, electricity is a good example. You put a lightning rod on top of your house to lead the electricity down into the ground. And practice, in a certain sense, is a way of grounding us very profoundly. Okay? Now suppose you leave that nice iron spike on top of your house but you break the connection with the ground. Now what happens?

Jessica: I don’t know, but it’s not good.

Ken: Well, lightning is far more likely to strike your house and kaboom! So when you build up some energy, but are no longer making an effort in attention, that energy’s going to go somewhere. And it’s going to flow where there are habituated patterns; but because there’s more energy in the system, the habituated patterns are going to be stronger. You follow?

And your question is quite relevant here because Gampopa’s just said samsara doesn’t dissolve itself, so we start working on it. And it becomes important once you start working on it to complete the process because otherwise you end up worse than before.

Jessica: What does that mean, really: “completing the process?”

Ken: Well I think there are different stages of completion, but at the very least, come to a point where there is a self-sustaining shift in the system.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 5

RER Phase Five (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:39:40.00 - 00:43:16.30)

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The fifth phase happens naturally, one could say, spontaneously, and it happens when you actually join with the feeling. That is, there's no longer any separation, between the knowing and the experience. Or to put it another way, the illusion of being separate from the experience crumbles. And what happens there is that an understanding naturally arises. You understand the feeling. You understand what it is, how it arises, and you can be fully in the experience of the feeling and there is no confusion. So the fifth step is, "Breathing in, I understand this feeling. Breathing out, I understand this feeling."

Now, when that understanding arises, often it will take some cognitive form. You say, "Oh, it's this and this and this. I've had this insight etc." Don't hang onto the insight. When you go to the insight, you actually fall into distraction. It arises, rest in the understanding, not the formulation. The understanding or the knowing is like a quality of knowing there. Rest in that. It will feel, most of the time, like you have no reference. But that knowing is the union of experience. Now you are no longer separate from what you experience.

So this technique uses the breath as a way of coming into the union of knowing in experience. Go through these five steps, or five phrases. Let them unfold naturally. Thich Nhat Hahn uses the image of holding a flower, but the flower hasn't opened, and your attention is like the sun. And just being in the breathing, letting your attention be with this flower, then the flower, in it's own time, opens in the warmth of your attention.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 4

RER Phase Four (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:34:39.40 - 00:39:37.70)

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The fourth phase begins with the discovery that in that calm, we can actually relax. We discover, sometimes to our surprise, a sense of ease. So here's this difficult feeling which we are experiencing. But our experience now has a basis of calmness and we begin to relax into the feeling. And this is the beginning of a very important point in practice. Resting in the experience. By this point in this process we have a pretty full experience of the feeling and everything that's going on in it. And we have discovered the calm and now we begin to rest in the experience, with that sense of ease or relaxation. As Gunaratana says, "When your mind joins with the object of attention, the body and the mind both relax."

So we just do this for a few moments together, but go back to that sense of calm and then just rest in the calm. Letting the feeling and all of the reactions be there. But resting in the calm at the same time. "Breathing in I experience ease in the feeling. Breathing out, I experience ease in the feeling."

Now you may find, that when you start relaxing, you suddenly experience the feeling more completely, and you tense up again. Push it away. So this takes you back to phase one, but now you're working at a deeper level. And the way this particular practice works, there is a constant cycling going through phase one, phase two, sometimes back to phase one, right there. Phase three, phase four, you begin to relax, you experience more of the feeling, and now you are able to bring the feeling closer to you, and everything becomes more vivid, more awake, and so you work again with phase one. So there is a constant cycling back. But each time you cycle back, you are moving into a deeper and deeper experience of the feeling. You are moving closer to the feeling and experience the feeling itself. And that process goes on and on.

Depending on the nature of the feeling, the degree of conditioning, how it's arising, that process can take anywhere from five seconds to five decades. So there's no specific time frame. You may find at certain points, when you begin to relax, that feeling disolves and just seems to vanish and there's something else there. And if that's the case, then you begin working with that. Because you see that the original feeling was actually a layer which is obscuring something else underneath. Now you start working with what's underneath. Either of these ways you are moving deeper and deeper into your own experience.

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 3

RER Phase Three (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:31:27.10 - 00:33:23.90)

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Phase three begins with a discovery that even though we're in the presence of a uncomfortable or difficult pain or feeling, we can actually be in that experience and quiet, calm. That is, we can be experiencing the pain and all of the reactions to the pain, and that can all be going on and yet there is a capacity to have a sense of calm in all of that. So the third phase is, "Breathing in I experience calm with this pain. Breathing out I experience calm with this pain."

Now, I'm doing this, taking you through this, you may or may not be there with your particular pain, but the possibility is there. And if you have it at an appropriate distance from you, and just working with the right fraction of it, then you can experience "Oh, yes, I can experience this and be calm. I don't have to be fighting against it." So let's just do this for a minute. "Breathing in I experience calm with the feeling. Breathing out I experience calm with the feeling."

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 2

RER Phase Two (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:26:13.80 - 00:30:22.70)

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Now as you do that, phase two starts almost immediately.

In phase two, we become aware of our reactions to that pain. Basically there are three kinds of reactions that arise. There are reactions in the body, in some cases we may flinch or tense against the pain. A defensive posture or something. Or maybe there's a feeling of nausea or discomforts in parts of our body. But there are actually physical reactions to the pain or the feeling. And secondly, there are emotional reactions, with the pain or the feeling. When you start holding it, you may feel some fear or some anxiety. Or maybe there's some anger or sadness. Maybe jealousy comes in, or grief, or wanting. There are all of these different possibilities, and those are the emotional reactions. And then there are the stories and associations: "Oh this is always happening to me. I always get into this kind of mess" or "This has never happened to me before. I don't understand how this has possibly happened." Or "This is all my fault" or "This is terrible what people did to me, how could they treat me like that!" There are all of these different stories. So the second phase is "Breathing in I experience the reactions to the pain, breathing out, I experience the reactions to the pain."

And start with the physical, and when you can be in the physical reactions, then include the emotional. And when you can be in the physical and the emotional, then include stories and associations and the cognitive reactions. And as you do this you'll find yourself moving into the full experience of the pain or feeling itself.

So phase two builds on phase one and actually enriches it. So let's do that for a minute together. "Breathing in I feel the reactions to the pain, breathing out I feel the reactions to the pain." And just as you hold the initial pain or feeling, tenderly, so also hold all of the reactions, the reactions in the body, the emotional reactions and the stories, tenderly in attention. Don't try to make them one way or the other, don't try to get rid of the physical discomforts. Just hold them tenderly in attention and let them be experienced.

Clip and transcription by Tracy Ormond.

Releasing Emotional Reactions 1

This clip was selected and transcribed by Tracy Ormond!

This is the first step of a Five-Step Mindfulness Practice.

RER Phase One (from RER 02: Releasing Emotional Reactions (retreat) 00:22:49.60 - 00:26:00.10)

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So the first phase is, "Breathing in I experience this," and I am going to use the word feeling, but it could be emotion, it could be pain, it could be problems, and you just fill in the blank. So let's just do that.

You take this and you say, "Breathing in I feel this pain." Breathe in. "Breathing out I feel this pain." With each breath, "Breathing in I feel this pain, breathing out I feel this pain."

Now, in the beginning, depending what you have chosen, that may be a bit like a hot potato. So there are two methods I've found that can at least get us in touch with it to some extend. The first is: "Okay, that's too hot, too difficult, too much for my capacity of attention at this point." So experience one tenth of it, or one hundredth, or one thousandth. And that approach works for some people. For other people, they find it more helpful to think, "Well that's too close, if I put it on the other side of the room, well, maybe on the other side of town." So it's a safe distance away, but still in one's awareness.

So the first step is just to bring it into awareness, either a small piece of it or at a proximity that you can handle. And that's for you to determine in your own practice. So set it up that way, whatever is appropriate for you, we go back to phase one. "Breathing in, I experience this pain, breathing out..." and imagine holding the pain tenderly in your attention. Which means that you're not going to do anything to it. And you're not trying to get anything from it. You're just holding it, and you are holding it very, very gently.

Some background info--the following is a comment made by Ken in response to a question asked by Michael, who was working on translating this practice into German:

"The crucial point is in Michael's last comment: 'To use these meditation instructions it is not necessary to feel pain. It can be an emotion or a problem which may be experienced as a kind of imbalance for example, rather than pain. And even an imbalance can make patterns run.'

This meditation is for working with reactions, those seemingly automatic processes that just run and throw us into confusion and lead us to do things we wouldn't do if we were clearer and more responsive. Reactions can be blissful or painful, though usually the latter. Think of falling in love (a blissful reaction, frequently) or the anger that arises when love is not returned.

The aim is to experience what is arising as completely as possible. In English, to give an idea of the range of experiences, I use "reaction, pain, problem, issue, difficulty, etc.". Basically, it covers anything that we can't experience for any reason."
...
In teaching people, I give them this meditation whenever people are encountering something that prevents them from resting. If one can rest, then one rests and lets the resting deepen on its own. When one encounters something difficult, then more specific effort and attention, as in this practice, can help.