Why people practice

From: Sutra Session 27
Full transcript (not available)
Audioclip

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.

After retreat

From: Death: Friend or Foe 7
Full transcript
Audioclip

Ken: Now, as I said the tendency is to try and take the peace and clarity into your regular life. Well, there are many problems with this, we'll just start with the first one, we don't need to go any further. To do that, it means you have to be holding onto the peace and clarity. Peace and clarity can be a little bit like a cat. How many of you have tried to hold onto a cat? What happens?

Student: Their claws, right?

Ken: Soon as the cat doesn't want to be there, it's either out of your arms, or things get extremely unpleasant. Very quickly. So, you can't hold onto this.

Now, where does the peace and clarity go? Let me ask this a different way. It's quite quiet in here. Sometimes in the early morning in the zendo before the cars start running up the hill, the highway, it's completely quiet. A noise arises. Maybe it's the sound of the birds. Maybe it's the wind. Maybe it's a motorcycle. Maybe it's a bomb. Maybe it's a boombox. Where does the silence go? What happens to it?

Student: It's still there.

Ken: Yes, what happens to it is we stop listening to it. The silence is present in all sound. Peace and clarity are present in every experience. Now, I've had some experiences which is pretty damn difficult to find that peace and clarity. And maybe some of you had some of those too. And that's the purpose of practice. It isn't to hold onto the peace and clarity and try to take it everywhere with us. It's to develop the ability to experience the peace and clarity in every situation. It's a very different kettle of fish, and it involves a qualitatively different kind of effort.

Now we've already touched on this, particularly this afternoon in the fire circle. A couple of the coaching points that I did going around were, "Just be with what you're experiencing, or open to what you're experiencing, and something shifts." And there it is. Sometimes in a way that the various parts of us never considered possible.

It's not unreasonable to define awakening as being able to experience what arises, whatever arises, as an expression of peace and clarity. If you look at the moment of Buddha Shakyamuni's awakening, there's a wonderful genre of thangkas in the Tibetan tradition which show Buddha at the moment of his awakening, and there he is sitting like this. And around him is Mara's army, these hordes of demons brandishing and hurling all kinds of weapons, whole universes, cogs, bows, arrows. If someone were to draw this, paint this today, it would be AK-47s, and nuclear bombs, and missiles and tanks, you know. Buddha's sitting there like this, but as these weapons rain down on him they're transformed into a rain of flowers. That's what it says in the text, he transformed the attacks of Mara into a rain of flowers.

Now, in keeping with what I was suggesting yesterday, what experience is this depicting? Well, many of you, if not all of you know exactly what experience this is depicting. You sit in these turgid, visceral, horrific, overwhelming, painful experiences and you open to them and you find you can just be there. And all you're experiencing is the extraordinary dynamism and energy of experience, of mind. And that's what it means to find peace and clarity in experience. And the only way is to open to the experience, not to try to bring something to it, because as soon as you do that, you're engaged in a war. And it's a war between the forces of peace and clarity and confusion and turmoil on the other hand. Well, we all know who wins that war. You find peace and clarity in experience.

So what you take from this retreat is your experience of that possibility and the experience of having done it a few times. Now life being what it is, how you did it here may not work there. That's just how it is. But you know the principle. Now in daily life, it can be very difficult to do this.