When we approach practice, we almost always come to it, at least in the beginning, that we’re going to get something from it. While that is inevitable, it’s also a bit of a problem. Because right from the start, it’s very easy to have this constant appraisal, “How am I doing? Am I getting there? Is this right?” And so forth.
Buddhism has always placed a great deal of emphasis on this quality of knowing and trusting knowing. That’s really the heart and essence. There are many different paths in Buddhism to that knowing, such as:
- Contemplating impermanence, which helps us see how we grasp.
- Compassion, which helps us come to know the ways in which we hang on and protect a sense of “I.”
- Devotion, in which we come to find the ways we don’t trust and can’t trust.
This knowing isn’t what we ordinarily understand as knowing. It’s not “knowing ABOUT.” Which is dependent on a sense of separation. There are other kinds of knowing, like “knowing how to do.”
In Buddhism, we go for a knowing which is not separate from the experience itself. It is something we touch into many times a day and don’t notice. There are many times when we’re just there, and there’s a response, and the response doesn’t come from thinking or habituation, but from a knowing which isn’t separate from experience.
(Ken tells the story of how Ananda was enlightened.)
The union of knowing and experience... This is how we actually are. We function under the illusion that we’re separate from what we experience. And that natural knowing is what we seek to uncover and live from in our lives. Every tradition of Buddhism has its own way of approaching that.
The first method we will explore is based on the most ancient method. We use the breath as the basis on which to move into the union of knowing and experience. It is based on the Full Awareness of Breathing Sutra. (Together with the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Sutra, they are the primary sutras of Theravada and Zen.)
The original instruction has 16 steps, this condenses it to 5. They are not so much steps as phases, each maturing into the next. It is iImportant to allow the maturation to take place naturally rather than trying to force it.
How to hold something in attention:
Like holding your own newborn child tenderly.
Tenderness implies gentleness, but it’s not just soft. There has to be something behind that tenderness. So when you’re holding a baby, you can’t be completely relaxed because you actually have to support it. At the same time, you can’t be holding with tension or you’ll hurt the child.
There are many parts of our experiences to which we are alienated to a greater or lesser extent. This technique is about holding those elements of our experience where there is a real sense of separation.
Guided Meditation Instruction
Choose a painful experience, a difficult feeling, maybe a situation or interaction that is painful for you. Positive experiences can also be difficult. It can be a problem, emotion or some actual physical or emotional pain.
Just bringing it to mind, you might notice already, “I’m here and that’s there.”
And we don’t want to deal with it. It’s how we all are. We’d be much happier if it would just go away.
But it’s part of our experience and because we’re ultimately not separate from our experience, sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with it. By pushing it away or erecting a wall or not dealing with it, we’re actually creating an imbalance in our world of experience which manifests as imbalance in our lives and can lead to disruption or even dissolution of relationships which we value. So this is quite important.
Phase One – Experience the Feeling
The first phase is…
BREATHING IN, I FEEL THIS FEELING. (emotion, pain, problem)
BREATHING OUT, I EXPERIENCE THIS FEELING.
In the beginning, it might be like a hot potato. Ouch.
In that case, there are two methods to help get in touch with the feeling without overwhelm:
1. Experience a Fraction — 1/10th of it. Or 1/100th. Or 1/1000th.
2. Proximity — put it a safe distance away.
“That’s too close.” If I put it on the other side of the room. Or the other side of town.
How far away from you does it need to be before you can be with it?
BREATHING IN, I EXPERIENCE THIS PAIN..
BREATHING OUT, I EXPERIENCE THIS PAIN.
BREATHING IN, I FEEL THIS FEELING.
BREATHING OUT, I FEEL THIS FEELING.
And imagine holding the pain tenderly in your attention. You’re not trying to do anything to it and you’re not going to get anything from it. You’re just holding it there in your attention very, very gently.
As you do that, Phase 2 starts almost immediately.
Phase Two – Experience the Reactions to the Feeling
In Phase 2, we become aware of our reactions to that pain. Basically, there are three kinds of reaction that arise:
- Body (flinch, tense, defensive, discomfort, nausea, “disembodied”)
- Emotional (fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, jealousy, grief, wanting)
- Mental (stories and associations)
The second phase is:
BREATHING IN, I EXPERIENCE THE REACTIONS TO THE FEELING.
BREATHING OUT, I EXPERIENCE THE REACTIONS TO THE PAIN.
Start with the physical. When you can be in the physical, include the emotional. When you can be in the emotional, include the mental. As you do this, you will find yourself moving into a fuller experience of the pain itself.
So Phase 2 builds on Phase 1 and enriches it. Let’s do that for a few minutes together.
BREATHING IN, I FEEL THE REACTIONS TO THE PAIN.
BREATHING OUT, I FEEL THE REACTIONS TO THE PAIN.
Just as you hold the initial pain or feeling tenderly, hold all the reactions tenderly— the reactions in your body, the emotions, the stories. Don’t try to get rid of the discomfort. Just hold them tenderly in attention and let them be experienced.
Phase Three – Experience the Calm with this Feeling
Phase 3 begins with the story that even though we are in the presence of an uncomfortable or difficult pain or feeling, we can actually be in that experience and quite, calm. We can be experiencing the pain and all of the reactions to the pain, and all of that can be going on, and yet there is the capacity to have a sense of calm in all of that.
So the third phase is,
BREATHING IN, I EXPERIENCE CALM WITH THIS FEELING.
BREATHING OUT, I EXPERIENCE CALM WITH THIS FEELING.
Going through it like this, you may not completely be there in experience, but the possibility is there. That behind all experience, permeating all experience is a fundamental spaciousness that is always, already there.
Phase Four – Experience Ease in the Feeling
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’re experiencing, But our experience has a basis of calmness. And we can 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, we have a pretty full experience. We’ve discovered the calm. Now we can rest in the experience. With a sense of ease and relaxation.
When your mind joins with the object of attention, body and mind both relax. So let’s do this one as well, resting in the calm.
BREATHING IN, I EXPERIENCE EASE IN THE FEELING.
BREATHING OUT, I EXPERIENCE EASE IN THE FEELING.
You may find that when you start relaxing in the feeling, you suddenly experience the feeling more fully, And you tense up again, and want to push it away. So that takes you back to Phase 1 again, but now you’re working at a deeper level. And the way this practice works, there is a constant cycling.
Everything becomes more vivid, more awake. Each time you cycle back, you are moving closer to the full experience of the feeling itself.
This goes on and on, and the process takes from five seconds to five decades. So there’s no specific timeframe.
You may find at certain times that the feeling you’ve been working with seems to dissolve and there is something else there. If that happens, you begin working with that. The original feeling was a layer obscuring something underneath, so now you start working with what’s underneath.
Phase Five – Understanding the Feeling
The fifth phase happens naturally, spontaneously, when you actually join with the feeling. There is no longer any separation between the knowing and the experience. The illusion of being separate from the experience crumbles.
Then understanding naturally arises. You understand what it is and how it arises. And you can fully experience the feeling and there is no confusion.
So the fifth step is:
BREATHING IN, I UNDERSTAND THIS FEELING.
BREATHING OUT, I UNDERSTAND THIS FEELING.
When that understanding arises, if an insight arises, don’t hang onto it. You will fall into distraction. Rest in the knowing. It will feel, perhaps, like you have no reference. That knowing is the union of knowing and experience. Now you’re no longer separate from what you experience.
So this technique uses the breath as a way of knowing your experience. Go through these steps. Let them unfold naturally. Holding the feeling tenderly in attention.
Another image: Imagine holding a flower that hasn’t opened. Your attention is like the sun. Being in the breathing, letting your attention be with the flower, the flower in its own time, opens in the warmth of your attention.
........
Q&A
As you experience these things, be right in it. How do you experience the turmoil? Agitation? How do you experience it in your body? A pounding heart? Then that’s your experience. Don’t make anything other than it is. Heart is pounding, so sit with a pounding heart. As you do this, you’re going to discover the capacity to just experience a pounding heart. And that’s not suppression. Now you’re moving into the actual experience.
Once you experience the pounding heart, you may find you also have a contracted stomach. So you include that in your practice:
BREATHING IN, I EXPERIENCE THE STOMACH...
Whatever is arising, don’t try to make it into something else. Or “I meant to experience something else.” This is a sequence of experiences which arise as you are completely in whatever is arising and you’re experiencing at the time. You’re not trying to make something into something else. It’s how your relationship to the experience changes as you’re in the experience.
When you are able to experience A, B arises. Don’t drop A for B. Include both. Rest in the whole experience… all the reactions.
Don’t get caught up in labelling. It’s not a labelling practice.
It is recommended to start with the body. You may feel tension, you don’t even have to call it tension. Just be aware there is sensation there. If you say, “There is this sensation, that sensation,” then you step back from the feeling. You don’t have to label something in order to experience it. Labeling is in the conceptual mode. Come back to the body, come back to the body, come back to the body.
Usually when we have a difficult feeling, we start with the stories and we’re not connected at all. Start with how you’re reacting physically. That will cut through the preoccupation with the stories.
I’m feeling agitated in my body,
“Well, he shouldn’t have said that.”
Agitation. Body.
Sick feeling in stomach.
The stories will start up again. Come back to what you’re feeling in the body. It may have shifted.
As you stay in the physical experience, you will gradually become aware of emotional responses...
sad, glad, betrayal, longing, feel bad about yourself. All of those will spark stories. Just keep coming back until you can stay in all the physical and emotional reactions.
Then you can start to include the stories. Now they’ll just be stories. Now you experience the totality of that feeling.
Then Phase 3 starts to click in. The function of a feeling is to be felt. As long as it’s not felt, it keeps calling for our attention. More and more insistently. Once we completely feel it, it has fulfilled its reason for existence, so it releases.
As you do this again and again, you move into a deeper understanding of your own behavior and all the processes that are active within you. From that direct knowing, your behavior will change quite naturally.
We don’t have to “understand” it in the analytical sense for that change to occur.
A great deal of understanding comes from knowing your experience completely. You realize, “Oh! I don’t have to do this anymore.” Then that particular situation ceases to arise because you’re not doing your part anymore. That’s knowing.
Clarity is personal. All it takes is for you to be clear. It doesn’t require anything of the other person. That’s up to them. You can’t control anyone else’s experience.
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