Feel everything that is in your experience and rest there

From: Heart Sutra Workshop 1

Full transcript

Audioclip

At the same time, noble Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, was looking right at the experience of the profound perfection of wisdom and he saw the five groups to be empty of nature. 

So now we have to figure out what Avalokiteshvara was doing. Well, I'd like you to put the books down. You're never going to find this in the book.

How many of you remember the fairy tale of The Princess and the Pea? Hmm, lots of you don't know this story. What do they teach in schools these days? [Laughter] I won't go into all the details of the story, but there's a prince and he has to determine who is a suitable wife. So these various princesses are invited, and he has an old aunt or grandmother who's helping him choose the right wife. She has a bed prepared. It consists of a hundred mattresses and under the bottom mattress she places a dried pea.

One after another these princesses come in and sleep in this bed for the night and she asks, "How was your sleep?" And they all say, "It was wonderful, I had a very nice sleep." Until one woman says, "Ah! It was terrible. There was something in my bed and I just feel black and blue, and all bruised."

Grandmother says to the prince, "This is your wife."

Now there's many ways we can understand this story. I'm not going to explore that particularly. What I want you to do is be that princess. 

We're just going to sit here. I want you to rest. Now, now we'll do this up here so that everybody can see. Can I borrow a piece of paper? Thank you.

Now the way most people rest is like this. [Places a book on top of a glass]  It is a form of resting, but in resting that way you don't experience very much.

There's another way of resting and that's like that. [Places the somewhat flexible sheet of paper on top of the glass. It bends a little when placed on the glass]  It's a little more complete resting, you see these parts are resting more fully than the book was. But it's still only a partial form of resting. Can I borrow that cloth? Thank you. 

There's a third way of resting which is like this. [Places a soft silk cloth over the glass. The cloth drapes over and takes the shape of the glass] You feel everything that is there in your experience. Like the princess and the pea. That's how I want you to rest right now.

Be the princess, feel all the peas. None of the peas are an enemy, though we often think they are and so we rest like this [Rigidly] [Laughter].

And see what has to happen in you to rest that way [Like the princess]. So there will be sensations, there will be feelings, and there will be thoughts. There may be sensations in your body. There may be emotions that are connected to things that happened this week or things that you're concerned might happen next week or next year. And there may be some thoughts and stories. Don't try to get rid of any of it. Just explore "How can I rest with this?"

Now, this doesn't mean go with the flow. As one person, Jim Hightower, once said, "The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity. Even dead fish go with the flow." So this is not about being a dead fish! That's kind of like this... (sighs as he goes limp)

No, this is about opening to and resting in exactly what is there. So we'll do this for a few minutes together now.

Audioclip 

You may find the exercise we did on opening helpful to this, you may find it helpful, I don't know. 

[Silence] 

If you start to rest and something stops you, rest with that. Don't try to overcome it or go to war with it. Just rest with that too.

[Silence] 

From time to time check your body. Is it resting? Many of us meditate with our chins jutted forward, it creates tension in the jaw and the neck. Not exactly resting but we try to ignore that because we are trying to meditate "the right way."

So don't think about doing this the right way, just think about resting. 

[Silence]

Resting in the body. Resting the heart. Resting the mind. 

[Silence]

Check your shoulders...check your stomach...let yourself open to whatever is there. All of the old pains...all the monsters under the bed or in the basement. Rest completely. Allow yourself to feel what you may have never felt before, what you've held away from.

[Silence] 

If thoughts or emotions start up, don't ask, How can I get rid of these?" Instead ask, "How can I rest with these?" 

[Silence]

Now we add on more element. 

[Silence]

As you rest, look at this experience of resting. Don't start to think about it, just look at it. And rest in the looking. Look at this experience of resting and rest in the looking.

[Silence] 

Rest in your experience. Look at the experience of resting and rest in the looking. 

[Silence]

[Gong]

Listening to the body

From: A Trackless Path 2
Transcript (available soon)
Audioclip (available soon)

Janet: Some of us have health issues and other experiences that make our body not feel that reliable. So I want to know how to work with that. I mean when your body has often been sort of the central problem in your life, then how do you work with trusting it more? 

Ken: Many years ago a person came to a retreat at Mt. Baldy who had been studying dzogchen for quite awhile. And he'd memorized a poem about this mind broken and in the sea of samsara etc. And in one of our interviews he recited it. It was a beautiful poem. I said, "That's great. What I'd like you to do, make one change. I'd like you to recite that poem and wherever it says mind, say body." He got through two lines and was in tears because he could feel how he was ignoring his body pursuing this awareness and stuff. 

Okay. So your body has been in a lot of pain. And it's caused you a lot of pain. If you ask your body, how would you like to practice? What does your body say? 

Janet: It wants to rest. 

Ken: Okay. Ask your body, do you know how to rest? 

Janet: It knows how to rest. 

Ken: Then, are you willing to let your body rest? 

Janet: I fight it. I fight it. 

Ken: So, is the problem the body or you? 

Janet: I get it. [Very softly.] Yeah. [sighs] 

Ken: You see it's--listening to the body that way--it's very inconvenient because we've developed this whole way of relating to the world that ignores it. And now we're beginning to see that that's somewhat problematic. But your body seemed to know what to do here. 

Forming a relationship with walled-off material

From: A Trackless Path 2
Transcript
Audioclip

Gary: Just curious Ken, about how chö could be possibly--I mean, I know this is all individual, but in terms of dealing with the walled-off material and looking at the primary practice and the steps you've talked especially about--you know, opening your heart--I'm wondering if there's any way someone can incorporate that practice.

Ken: In chö? 

Gary: Well, chö and in a certain step in the primary practice if that's possible.

Ken: Well, take a step back. One way to view taking and sending, or tonglen is, it's a way of forming a relationship with elements of our experience from which we are alienated. 

Student: Can you say that again? 

Ken: It's a way of forming a relationship with elements of our experience from which we're alienated. So, for instance, we don't really like our anger so with taking and sending we take in the anger of all sentient beings and give joy to them. It's a way of forming a relationship with anger. You follow? 

Chö is a dramatic enactment of taking and sending. So those parts of our experience from which we're extremely alienated, usually described as the "karmic debt collectors," we invite and we give them what we're most attached to--our own body. So it's a way of forming a relationship with those aspects of our experience from which we're most alienated. Follow? 

Now if one looks at the cultivation of attention as the sort of central trunk of practice we may find, and often do, that we run into things in us--and sometimes very large portions--which we don't have any way of accessing or working with directly. And then we use special techniques such as taking and sending or chö or yidam practice or four immeasurables or whatever to work on things quite explicitly so that certain qualities and certain abilities develop so that we can open to those experiences. 

And for some people, those practices just speak to them more powerfully so they go with it. They work with those. 

Gary: So the idea is to be able to stay relaxed and rest while your doing those practices? 

Ken: Very definitely. Very definitely. The power of resting is extraordinary. Tense your hand and touch the table. And if you then relax your hand and touch the table you'll have two different experiences. And which of those do you have the more complete experience of the table? It's the same principle applies. And so whenever you find yourself hardening that actually is something to pay attention to. Okay? Because you're hardening against something. One always hardens in order to avoid experiencing something. 

Gary: Even while doing taking and sending and power chö. Right? 

Ken: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, if you're hardening doing taking and sending there's something over there you don't want to experience. Yep.

On samadhi

From: Eightfold Path 2
Full transcript
Audioclip

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

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

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

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

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

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

The princess and the pea

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

(download into iTunes)

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

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

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

Mind and body relax

Mind and body relax (from TAN33: Then and Now (class) 00:59:34.00 - 01:04:05.00)

(download into iTunes)

Now we come to the three kinds of meditation: abiding in bliss, accumulating good qualities, and benefiting sentient beings. And again, I want you to think of this as stable attention, not as meditative concentration.

Now, the phrase that I'm grateful for here comes from Gunaratana--who's a Theravadin teacher; I think he's in Virginia. He's written a couple of books. The one I know better is Mindfulness in Plain English. And he's a wonderful meditation teacher. And he summed up this aspect of meditation practice with these words:

When the mind joins with the object of attention, mind and body relax.

It's said so simply and so clearly, I could even understand it, which is very nice. This is why I emphasize resting in the experience of breathing, because what I'm trying to do is through the instruction create the conditions so that mind joins with the experience of breathing. When that happens mind and body relax. What you're experiencing, Helena, is you relax and things open, and you just aren't quite used to that yet. But there's nothing really wrong in that, it's just different from what you're used to experiencing.

And that relaxation, when we allow it, can be quite profound. It can be so profound that any sense of self drops away which gets a little strange. In that resting, then--and this varies a great deal from person to person--you'll start to experience pleasant sensations, which can be quite explicit or quite subtle, usually first in the body and then in the mind. And people who are really able to rest experience a very, very high degree of pleasure (hence bliss) in body and mind together.

As Dezhung Rinpoche described it when he was teaching this stuff many years ago, he said, "You feel like your spine is made of gold coins stacked one on the other." You know, expressions, descriptions like that, so it can be quite dramatic. This isn't something that I have an intimate connection with, because I have certain physical problems which have made meditation difficult. This kind of stability and just deep, deep resting actually, is the major aspect of meditation that I've worked in. I've learned a lot from having to work with it.

But the feeling, that quality of pleasure or bliss just permeating mind and body, something that many, many people have described to me. And all that is, is an indication of a quiet mind. It means that your attention is stable. And that's good because it's creating the conditions, the internal conditions, for you to be able to practice. It's not an end in itself. That's very important. Some people will think, "Oh, this is great." And there's many, many stories of people confusing the quiet, blissful mind for enlightenment or being awake. And they aren?t the same at all.

Meditation

Resting - Listening

A feedback loop: a self-referencing system

From Janet Hathaway:

I found Ken's Monsters Under the Bed retreat (especially the first podcast) had excellent advice on meditation. It was extremely helpful for me. If you get a chance, you might enjoy listening to it, as it speaks to all of your questions, in detailed ways.


Meditation (from MUB01: Monsters Under The Bed (retreat) 00:35:07.00 - 00:48:10.00)

(download into iTunes)

Ken: Within what Claudia and George were both saying are two qualities which are extremely important in meditation. And actually in our lives, but we first begin to form a relationship with them, or many of us do, in meditation.

The first quality is resting. Claudia talked about resting in the experience of breathing. We just tried that for a few minutes. And some of you noticed that you barely start resting in the experience of breathing and the horse kicks you off its back. Just like that. What’s your your name?

Cathy: Cathy.

Ken: Cathy. I thought you were one of the Cathys! Yes, you’re the C, right? Ah. Okay.

So, you notice how what you say is your mind—I’m not quite sure what that is, so I may ask for some elaboration on this—but some thing jumps in and starts trying to control the whole process, telling you what to do. “Well, do this. Stand up. Sit down. Lean to the left. Lean to the right. Breathe a little more deeply.” And all of that stuff. How many of you in your meditation practice have this little commentary that goes on the background, “Okay, hey you’re not doing badly right now.” [Laughter]

“Now, just ease up a little bit there—you’re getting a little bit tense. Oh, cool, cool—that’s it! Just—oooh, nice move! Ah, a little dullness here, better sharpen it up. Oh, come on, you got lost in a thought! What kind of an idiot are you?” Anybody else have this?

I suppose that’s what you’re referring to as your mind. Ah, okay. Well, so you start resting in the experience of breathing, and most of us get caught up in thoughts immediately. This is where what George is saying comes in It’s very important.

We may not notice this at this point, but every one of those thoughts is actually a reaction to a physical sensation. People are looking like, “What?” It’s a physical sensation with an emotional charge, and we don’t want to touch it so what we do is we start thinking. This is why I said last night, and George reiterated this this morning, that the most reliable way to cut through the thinking process is to bring your attention to what you are experiencing in the body. And you say “Well, I came here to meditate. I came here to be quiet and peaceful. I didn’t come here to feel all the aches and pains and little stuff, you know, I just want to sit and just have a really quiet mind.” But it doesn’t work that way.

George also talked gave us some very, very useful pointers on sitting. I want to take it step further here. I said there are two important components to meditation. First is resting. The second one now comes in—listening. And this was implicit in what both Claudia and George talked about: You listen. Your body knows how to breathe. Can you listen to your body and let it breathe the way that it knows how? Or do you have some half-ass idea about how it should all be done. And you just go ahead and breathe that way?

You know the most difficult people I find to teach? Yoga teachers. Not all of them. But a good number of them have got so used to controlling their breath that they can’t actually let the body breathe. And it’s fair enough because in Hinduism/Yoga, it’s a different approach. And you learn to generate experiences through working with the body and working with the breath in ways. But they come to Buddhist practice and they sometimes find it very, very difficult because they can’t actually just rest and let the body breathe. It feels like everything’s going out of control.

Now, in that sensation of everything going out of control, there are a whole bunch of physical sensations. And that’s where you start in your practice. Okay, so, I feel like things are out of control, what am I experiencing physically? I feel like I am going to sleep, what am I experiencing physically? I’m feeling angry and upset, what am I experiencing physically? We do this over and over again.

In other words, you listen to the breath. You listen to the body.Your body will tell you how to sit. It will tell you when you are straining too much. It will tell you when you are slumping too much. It will tell you what it can do. It will tell you what it can’t do.

As you sit with the body, then you’ll find all of these different sensations. You listen to them very deeply, you will know how to sit. You listen to your breath and your breath will tell you when it’s out of sync with the body. And you will know, or your body will know, how to breathe. As you listen to all of that, you’ll find that you will know how to rest.

Resting in this way may feel a little different, because as Claudia said in her comments, there isn’t this sense of control that many of us are used to. And so, the moment we start actually resting, our emotional reactions to the lack of control start to arise, and now we just go through the same cycle again. What do I experience in my body?

And so meditation practice in this way of resting and listening is a dynamic process of adjustments in our posture, in our breath, in how we’re placing our attention. But the net result of all of those adjustments is an increasing sense of both rest and balance. That’s what we mean by such terms as shamatha. It’s not a case of just holding everything still. That just produces suppression and that generates other problems.

Rather, when sitting this way, practicing this way, we’re listening to our whole experience and finding a place of balance in it and resting there. Now, as we rest there, the place of balance will naturally shift because of all of the movements that George was describing. And so we find ourselves resting in a constantly moving balance.

Now as time goes on and we gain more experience and understanding, that becomes more and more subtle. So, from the outside, it will look like we’re doing nothing. But inside, we will sense this constant movement out of balance and then the adjustment to move back towards balance. And I’ve said on other occasions, it’s a bit like riding a bicycle. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going on a bicycle, the bicycle is always moving a little bit from side to side. And you’ll find the same thing in meditation: It’s always moving a little bit. And the moment you try to hold it still, you actually stop the process. But if you just rest in this movement and keep listening and listening, you’ll find that the adjustments become smaller and smaller and you rest more and more completely.

Now, if you’re like most people, you’ll want to rest on something. And I ask you to remember, it’s turtles all the way down! [Laughter]

Releasing Emotional Reactions 5

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

(download into iTunes)

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)

(download into iTunes)

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)

(download into iTunes)

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)

(download into iTunes)

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)

(download into iTunes)

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.

Rest - Refresh

Energy Drain - Rest - Refreshment

Rest - Refresh (from ATP10: A Trackless Path (retreat) 00:45:23.00 - 00:57:22.00)

(download into iTunes)

...

Larry: It depends on what you call resting.

Ken: Thank you Bill Clinton!

...

LOL

...

Larry: ... I mean, I can rest on a cushion, I can rest going out for a walk, I can rest reading a book...

Ken: That's not the same, the last one.

Larry: Or listening to music?

Ken: Maybe the same.

Larry: Maybe? Because, a book is too linear and analytical?

Ken: There is an engagement.

Larry: And not with music?

Ken: As I said, it depends.

Larry: On me or the music? [Laughter] I am sorry! [Laughter]

Ken: I was going to just say both. Now...

...

Ken: No, I see it's refreshing body and mind is the end result. Refreshment.

Larry: Refreshment... OK. Thank you.

Ken: Yeah, because, this has a lot to do with what I was talking about the other night in terms of the rhythms of practice. We need to respect the rhythms of practice. ...

...

WKC: Willingness, Know-how and Capacity

Willingness, Know-how and Capacity -- this is a framework that Ken McLeod presents over and over again in classes and retreats.

WKC (TAN34) (from TAN34 00.50.35.9 - 00.54.31.3)
(download into iTunes)

"Now how this happens in practice--it takes time. One has to work at it over and over again usually best done for relatively short periods. So you really practice that clarity aspect and that's why I had you over the last couple of weeks just dropping into that clarity because we live in the world the way we do we're not monastics, we don't live in monasteries, we don't live in secluded environments. The way we approach practice of this type isn't developing states of attention and trying to hold onto them or stabilize them that way but developing the facility of returning, returning, returning, returning and resting. And you know that that's the way I've taught you in meditation, rest in the experience of breathing whenever you find yourself distracted. Return to the experience and just rest there. So it's resting in the experience of everything. And it's the same with this clear mind. When you can, know that clarity, then you just drop into it and rest there. Whether you're washing dishes, gardening or talking with someone or actually practicing meditation. You just drop into it and rest and when it dissipates it dissipates you let it go. And then you drop into it again. So there isn't any sense of trying to hold onto something or work at something. You just drop into it and rest. And that's where you get don't be distracted, don't fall into distraction, or like I've said, no wandering, no control, no work. And you do that and if you have the opportunity to do retreats then you can do this for like ten days at a time or three weeks at a time. We did a Dzogchen retreat which is what people do. You just keep doing this all the time and you build up a momentum. It becomes cumulative and you begin to let go of things more and more deeply and things can really open up.

But it all depends on three qualities which you've heard me talk about before. One is you have to be willing to drop into that clarity and it's not the way, it's not the mind from which we ordinarily function and being willing to drop into that clarity involves letting go all kinds of conditioning and habituated ways of doing things and ways that we're very, very comfortable with.

The second quality that you need is to have the know-how to do this. There's a skill involved so you aren't falling into this kind of self-delusion. A lot of people think they're doing something when they're really just thinking. So that is something I have been trying to teach you through this whole course and through the retreats.

And then the third thing is developing capacity and that is what I was referring to a few moments ago, where you actually build up the level of attention that enables you to do this first in relatively simple situations like meditation or doing routine manual tasks and then gradually in more involved situations where there are strong reactive emotions are parading or you're having conversations or interactions with people and you still have that same ability to drop into that clarity, rest and actually function from there. And that takes years and years of training to do that. But that's basically what were involved in. Okay, how is this for you? Is this making sense? Somewhat helpful?"