Patterns as Personality

Notes from Ken McLeod's podcast, Awakening from Belief 5b

Topic includes: The characteristics of patterns (mechanicality, resonance, crystallization, habituation, layering, webbing), patterns, personality, presence. Meditation instruction on physical reactions when a reactive pattern begins to run.

What is a pattern? A pattern is a mechanism that functions to erode attention.

A pattern erodes attention in order to keep something from being experienced. What would you have to experience inside if you didn't move away from the pain?

Once a pattern starts to run, you have no awareness. Everything that follows is totally mechanical. You may think you're acting rationally, but you're not. You're running a tape, a computer program.

It is triggered by resonance with a pain, discomfort, or feeling, which one is threatened by or uncomfortable with. So the pattern kicks into operation so you don't experience the feeling.

Over time, the pattern crystalizes into structures, which we call our personality. Such as:
    Always putting on a pleasant face
    Or perhaps another person, their default setting is attack

Four aspects of patterns:

1. Mechnicality
2. Resonance
3. Crystallization
4. Habituation

You act this way, and the whole world and everything in you becomes configured to accord to the pattern. (Habituation) That's how things keep going on and we get less and less freedom in our lives.

Two other aspects:

1. Layering -- patterns build up in layers.
2. Linking -- one pattern triggers the operation of another pattern

This approach is an instance of the middle way. Traditional Buddhism takes the viewpoint that all actions are volitional. Freudian psychology takes the position that no actions are volitional. Well… all of us have had experiences of acting volitionally, and we've probably all had experiences of just reacting.

In life, we encounter painful situations that we couldn't experience fully. Too threatening, too shocking. It could be positive too. But we didn't have at that time in our life the capacity to experience them. They remain there in us. Central to this is the basic function of a feeling. A feeling wants to be felt. When we don't feel something, it keeps nagging at us. For instance, a friend does something that hurts us, and we say, "I don't want to deal with that." It is still there and can start poisoning the relationship, until the time comes when you can actually experience it. "I was really hurt by that." And then you can choose whether to address it with the friend and take the consequences. The more you avoid the feeling, the more in the way it becomes, and the more imbalance is in the situation.

Then, let's say, another person comes to you with a similar situation. You may react with discomfort because the discomfort is within yourself. The imbalance within you starts to manifest in the world.

Something like this is operating every time we react. A mechanism starts to operate, and the attention which was just about to experience something is eroded. And on we go with our habituated lives. So, we keep falling out of awareness and into habituation every time we encounter a situation which resonates with something that we're not willing to experience.

The purpose of our practice is to cultivate a capacity of attention. Once our capacity increases, we become more and more able to experience the undischarged emotion that's at the core of a pattern. And when we can experience that undischarged emotion, the pattern doesn't need to run.

When you have that capacity, you're staying present. You're present with what is arising in you. The reaction moves you away from whatever the resonant emotion is.

As you do this again and again, an understanding starts to arise. This heartache or pain that you've always tried to avoid is only a feeling. It's not a fact. It won't kill you if you experience it.

It hurts and it hurts and it hurts and you cry, and it hurts some more. And after a while, it stops hurting. And you say, "Huh? What happened?" You were able to experience what you were avoiding. And you've gained a dimension of experience that you didn't have before.

As you sit with the pain, you feel it, you include the sensation of the pain. You don't focus on the pain. It may take five minutes, it may take five months. But you will get at what this resonates in you, and you will be able to experience it fully. Then you won't need to react to it anymore.

The practice of Buddhism is not about transcendence. It's about the practice of experiencing what is.

Do you have any choice about what is arising, right now?
And in the next moment, right now.
No. But you have a choice to experience it or not.

Suffering is generated by incapacity to experience what is arising right now.

Notes from Q&A:

We tend to take instructions and take it to an extreme level. It's a way of rejecting the instruction.
Just start with what is in front of you and take it from there. Do what you can right now and see what comes out of there.

When I see the way I react when I'm overwhelmed, it makes me want to develop a capacity of attention so I'm not overwhelmed.

It isn't necessary to label the emotions. What IS necessary is to develop a capacity for attention.

There's no one in charge of the structure. It's an illusion that there is someone in charge, and we cling to it very strong.

Meditation Practice:

Because of linkage or webbing, while our behavior can appear very complex, most people have at most 3 or 4 major patterns that drive them, and everything else is an elaboration.

Let your attention settle for 10-15 minutes.

Take a situation in which a pattern ran.

Go through the situation step by step.

You may find it helpful and keep the meditation from turning into a mass of thoughts, by checking in with your body sensations along the way. Body, emotions, stories and associations.

At a certain point you'll identify when a reactive pattern started to run. Pay particular attention to the body sensations and emotions and stories that are running right there. Don't try to analyze them. As you feel the reactions, they may feel intimidating. Here you use your breath as a rope. Lower yourself into the feeling with the rope. You may be able to identify the undischarged feeling which is the resonance of the pattern. If so, then rest with the feeling. Don't concentrate on it. Continue to rest on the breath and let the feeling open to you.

Next week's class: additional instruction on working with reactive patterns

Friday Night Dharma Study -- 7:00 - 9:00 pm

We continue with Ken McLeod's podcast on karma, Awakening from Belief, which connects with chapter 5 of his book, Wake Up to Your Life. This week's topic: Patterns as personality.

Includes: The characteristics of patterns (mechanicality, resonance, crystallization, habituation, layering, webbing), patterns, personality, presence. Meditation instruction on physical reactions when a reactive pattern begins to run.

For more information, check out Ken's study and practice guide by clicking here.

New Class at First Unitarian Universalist Church

The Six Perfections: The Bodhisattva Path of Awakening
Class at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville
Wednesday nights, September 29 - November 3
Fireside Room (in the main building)

According to Mahayana Buddhism, awakened mind naturally manifests in our experience as the Six Perfections: generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. Practicing the perfections as path puts us in touch with our own humanity, which gives us compassion for others, allowing wisdom to arise naturally.

Join Rita Frizzell as we explore one of the perfections each week:
Sept. 29 -- Introduction & Generosity
Oct. 6 -- Ethics
Oct. 13 -- Patience
Oct. 20 -- Joyful effort
Oct. 27 -- Meditation
Nov. 3 -- Wisdom

If you want to come for dinner, join us at 6:00 in the social area near the sanctuary. $7 for dinner, no cost for class. Childcare provided.

Location: 1808 Woodmont Blvd near the intersection of Woodmont and Hillsboro in the Green Hills area of Nashville. The entrance is on the rear side of the church, near the top of the hill (on the northwest side). To get to the Fireside Room, enter the door on the left and continue down the hall and to the right. For questions, call Rita at 615-463-2374

Awakening from Belief Podcast #2

Notes from the podcast

Topics in this podcast: Karma as the evolution of action
Living life without a belief system, the four conditions that generate karma and their four results, Q&A

We have a question on the table. How do you function without a belief system?

How do you know what to do?

When we operate out of beliefs, we're carrying an idea of how we think the world is. And everything takes place in that idea of the world. When we drop beliefs, then we just have what we experience.

This shift is referred to by numerous teachers in different ways.

Thich Nhat Hanh: When you're going from A to B, put your attention on going, not on B.

Uchiyama Roshi: Commenting on the instruction, "Prepare the gruel for tomorrow as tonight's work." He said, this is the point. Where belief operates is that you might actually serve the gruel. You have no idea whether that will happen or not. Everytime you go to sleep, you don't know whether you'll wake up, have a war, a riot, or might even die.

So to engage in activity as though you're going to experience the result of that activity, you're already in a belief system. But you can't NOT prepare because you may have 200 monks the next day to feed.

This fundamental paradox of human experience… no idea what's going to happen in the next moment, yet we have to live as if things will unfold. We know we're going to die. And we have no idea when.

To orient everything in life to retirement is to miss what is happening now.

So how do you live in this paradox?

Uchiyama's point is that you respond to what arises without any expectation or attachment to the results of the activity.

In one way that might sound depressing, but it's actually extraordinarily freeing. It means you can pour your heart and soul into your activity. If you're around to experience the results, fine. But the activity was meaningful in itself. It's appropriate. It's what needs to happen in the moment.

The actual application gets a little more involved than that, and if we have the opportunity we'll go into it.


But now I want to return to the idea of karma as an evolution from action into experienced results.

This is from Wake Up to Your Life, the 9th meditation from Chapter 5: Habituation or Enslavement

The four results which come from an action.

There are four conditions that have to be met in order for an action to initiate a process of evolution, and there are four results that come from that process.

The four conditions that have to be met:
1. You have to intend the action.
2. You have to do the action or cause it to be done.
3. There has to be an actual object in your experience on which the action is acted.
4. You have to experience the completion of the action.

1. If I say something that isn't true and I didn't know it isn't true, there isn't the karma of lying. I have to intend to deceive.

2. I can think about deceiving someone all I want, but if I don't actually do it, that doesn't go into my speech patterns.

3. If I'm in a dream and I lie with the intention of deceiving someone, there's no karma. There's no object.

4. You experience the result of your action.

When those four conditions are met, something in your world changes.


1. The solidification of the realm created by the emotional projection.

So whenever you lie out of greed, you are solidifying that way of looking at things in your own experience. How do you look at things in terms of greed? "There isn't enough to go around, so I'm justified in doing whatever I need in order to get what I want." This is the hungry ghost realm. And every time you act in that way, you are solidifying it more.

Thinking alone can set forth its own evolutionary process. It's not full action because it's not acted on. When we think we're creating effects that make it easier to do things, but when we act, we actually change our experience of the world.

The problem with subscription to belief is that they can be used to justify anything.

Various societies at various times have participated in mass delusion. The Christians invading the Middle East during the Crusades.

Some very eminent Zen teachers fully supported the war in Japan. Suzuki Roshi was not one of those.

What is the quality that prevents you from being confused or swept up by the prevailing social ethic?

It's not insight. It's compassion.

Compassion is the one quality that enables you to see suffering as it is. So it penetrates the world view and reveals the suffering that is in the inequities of whatever social system you're living in.

We are cultivating a sufficient level of understanding, especially in the area of compassion, where ordinary people do horrible things because of their belief system.

There were experiments done where the subjects of the experiment were told to give electric shocks to someone (who was actually an actor). The shocks would increase in intensity. The people who ran the experiment were surprised at how far people would inflict pain on the other simply because someone told them to.

In another experiment, they took people and divided them into two groups and said, "You're the prisoners, you're the guards." It took no time for the guards to start acting in a sadistic way.

Beliefs.

Buddhism was never intended as a social system. Buddhism is a-social. It's not anti-social; it's a-social. Look how Buddhism started. Siddhartha grew up as a prince in a modest kingdom. When exposed to the vissitudes of life, he was thrown into turmoil, which led him to investigate the core question: "How do you live in this world of suffering?"

On the basis of that question, he came to the understanding that the basis of suffering is belief in our own existence. And that's why, when he came to that understanding (not theoretical but a direct experience), that he thought, "No one is going to believe me."

When we engage in Buddhist practice, it's about being awake and aware and present as an individual. For some it may mean retreat from the world. For some it may mean being present in the world. And compassion is what cuts through the tendency of social belief systems, which we're immersed in, to skew our perception of things.

As Buddhist institutions become part of society, as they are in Asia, the vast numbers of people who live in society do operate under belief systems. Some are benign; some are not. The essential goal of practice is to step out of that. Are there beliefs that generate good results in the world? Yes. But that's not the same kind of work we're doing here.

This practice isn't about being good. It's about waking up. And there's a big difference. Being good is a helpful condition for waking up, but at some points the two roads diverge.

Why do bodhisattvas have infinite compassion for no sentient beings.
Because there are no sentient beings.
(Lankavatara Sutra)

Going back to lying…

2. When we lie, we have the experience of deceiving someone. That gives us a little kick of power. Lying once creates the pre-disposition to lie again.

Anytime you reproduce a pattern three times, you're stuck in a reactive pattern. So the third time you catch yourself lying about something, take note. The evolutionary process is already well under way. It's in you, it's part of the way you relate to the world. And of course it continues to accelerate…

3. The third result: the way your world of experience reacts with you. When you lie, what is the effect on other people? How do they regard you? With suspicion. If so, how will they relate to you? Guarded, etc. So what does that cause you to do? Lie even more. @2 and #3 interact with each other so lying seems to be logical.

You reinforce the projection, you create more and more experience where it feels you MUST lie, and the beat goes on.

Student: As long as you lie, you live in a world of lies. If you are compassionate, you live in a world of compassion.

4. Perceptual distortion -- how we actually perceive the world.
If you lie a lot, how do you perceive things? Everything is skewed, threatening, you don't think there's enough to go around. It moves you into the hungry ghost realm.

Once the process is started, it tends to be self-reinforcing. As time goes on, you seem to have less choice about it. That's why the choice moments are important to take note of.

Karma isn't life's balancing act to make a just world. It describes how things evolve. You have about as much room to move as a violin in a violin case. Fortunately, it's enough.

The choice points are few and fleeing. That's why mindfulness and the cultivation of attention are so very important. So you can start to act from intention rather that reactive process.

A tool of mindfulness: "What is my intention for doing this?"

Stop for a moment and there's the possibility of coming into presence.

Choice points only come when you're awake to some degree.

Homework: Choose one of the ten unwholesome actions

Stealing: taking that which is not given. Material objects are one thing. But there are other things we do which are more subtle.

Have you taken trust that wasn't given? Affection?

How many times have you killed someone's creativity? How many relationships have you killed?

Inappropriate sexual relations are those that cause suffering to yourself or others.

Let your mind settle for 15 or 20 minutes.
Then take one of these three... killing, stealing, inappropriate sexual relations. Go through your life and see these actions and the effects of these actions on you in your experience.

The point here isn't to beat yourself up. The point is to appreciate what you're doing to yourself by acting in these ways. What you're doing to your world of experience. So when you deceive someone intentionally, you are introducing something into the world of your experience that is going to create mow and more imbalance. And that what karma describes… imbalance. And that imbalance requires more and more imbalance to keep itself going.

By seeing for yourself, looking at the effects of these actions on you, and what you experience… you may think, "Hmmmm, maybe I don't want to do this anymore." That's why it's not belief system; it's direct seeing.

Do you know where the word "outlaw" came from? In tribal Scandanavian society, if you killed someone, then you killed someone. If you went for a job and had to tell what you did, then you did. If you didn't, you were an outlaw. In that society, you had to know who you were dealing with. You couldn't deceive people or you had no protection.

Q&A

Are we trying to move back to a primordial knowing?

Answer: Do we have a choice? We have a choice one way: to continue to ignore the primordial knowing. Do you have a choice about ignoring the experience of being a symbolic individual? There is no choice there. We either ignore or we open to the totality of things, which includes that. In Buddhism, this is referred to as what is ultimately true and what is apparently true.

Ultmately true: experience
Apparently: that we exist as individuals

In Mahayana Buddhism, we learn to live in both.

What we experience as other people are just experiences. That's why there are no sentient beings. If there are no sentient beings, that includes us!

Who's the mind? That's the question, isn't it?

Solipsism says, "I am the world?"
Buddhism says, "Who are you? What are you?" And there's no one there.

We are the experience and the experiencer, experiencing other experiences. Our challenge is to know that directly. To do that you have to develop a level of attention that can experience not existing.

We all come into practice with certain ideas.
"I'm going to get enlightened and bring an end of suffering."
"I'm going to join with the universal self."
"I'm going to become one with that which is beyond death."

But as you practice, one begins to appreciate that those actual ideas are part of the problem. And you begin to see that any kind of holding to a fixed idea is part of the problem. So you end up making more and more effort to achieve less and less. Not "nose to the grindstone" effort. Not "force." It does take attention.

Focus
Field
Internal material
Presence

Ken gives the example: "Unbeknownst to you, I previously planted several bombs underneath our room tonight. They are set to go off in 20 seconds. This is it."

How hard was it to become totally present?

"Awakening From Belief" -- Podcast Retreat with Ken McLeod

We are beginning to listen to Ken's 12-part podcast, "Awakening from Belief," which covers the same territory as Chapter Five of his book, Wake Up to Your Life. When I was at retreat with Ken in August, he suggested that we listen to the podcast as a way of working with the principles in Chapter Five.

Here are notes from the first session, taken on the fly:

Awakening from Belief
Podcast 1

AFB 01: Awakening From Belief (retreat)
Opening talk of retreat, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, June 2004
Karma as instruction vs. karma as belief, meditation as building a capacity of attention, resting in the experience of breathing, Q&A
Duration 00:50:21

Karma as instruction vs. karma as belief

Nothing exists in its own right. Everything is interdependent. Which is different from saying everything is relative.

We're happy to go along with the idea of interdependence until it comes to one thing… our sense of self. "I'm here, how can you say that?" But is that true?

If we don't exist independently, it invites questions.
Do we exist dependently, and if so, what does that mean?
Or more fundamentally, do we exist?

Dejun Rinpoche, a Sakya lama and one of Ken's teachers: An early teacher asked, "Do you believe in karma?" "Yes, of course!" Teacher: "You're really lucky; I find it very difficult."

One of the big sources of confusion around karma is for some people it is a belief, and one gets into all kinds of problems when you approach it that way. On the other hand, you have what so many teachers have sais, "When you understand emptiness, your understanding of karma becomes very precise." (Milarepa)

The teaching of karma is a giant injunction about mindfulness.

Kalu Rinpoche taught karma like a tree… starting with a seed.
The translation "cause and effect" is misleading.
Does an acorn "cause" an oak tree? Yes, but it's not the way we normally use the word "cause."
Karma is much more a process of evolution.

The actions that we do now are like the acorn. Something we've done, and in doing that action, we've started a process, and that process evolves in a number of different ways, into an experienced result. It creates conditions so that other things happen, and it goes on and on and on.

When you begin to look at karma as a process of evolution, what processes are you starting when you get angry with your spouse? Is that a process you want taking place in your world of experience?

When a process is initiated by a reaction… a reaction is always an effort to avoid experiencing something. Whatever process is initiated by the effort to avoid x, it delivers the result x.

Being aware of what we're actually doing in each moment. Every moment that we're not, that we're checking out and avoiding something, we're starting an evolutionary process that will eventually deliver what we're trying to avoid. You can pay for it up front or you can pay for it at the end, and it's a lot more expensive at the end.


Meditation is building a capacity of attention.
The fundamental effort in Buddhist practice is to develop a sufficient capacity in attention so that you can experience your own non-existence. That's exactly what Buddha did under the bodhi tree. Such a relief! You don't have to BE anybody.

All forms of meditation practice are developing attention… sometimes very directly, sometimes getting rid of the blocks to attention, sometimes developing energy that you're going to use to power attention (guru yoga, lovingkindness), and esoteric methods. It's all about developing attention so you can experience what is.

Many people think attention is an intellectual activity. It's not; it's emotional energy. Sanskrit chitta, Tibetan "sem", you could translate it as heart. Heart/mind. Thoughts, feelings, all that.

And we use the breath as a base. Rather than focusing attention ON the breath, which is how a lot of people think about meditation, rest in the experience of breathing. If you're going to rest in the experience of breathing, where do you have to be? In your body. Your body's doing the breathing. So you sit. And you're in the body. And the body is breathing. And you rest in that experience. Just let the body breathe naturally, no fancy tricks. And rest in the experience of breathing.

Now, what happens when you practice meditation?

We place our attention in the experience of breathing, and it falls off. One of the great miracles of our being is that the mind always returns to itself.

Saraha: Just as a bird flying from a ship in the middle of the ocean has nowhere else to return but the ship, so a thought must return to the mind.

"Oh, I'm supposed to be meditating."

The "oh" is the important point.

Then go back in the experience of attention.

Place the attention.
Rest.
Fall off.
Recognition happens.
Return.
Rest.
Fall off.

And it continues… return and rest. This quality of resting is so important in your practice. It's where the power really develops.

Ken tells the story of seeing the Karmapa meditating in a movie: absolute rest.

In your meditation practice, be at rest. That's how the practice deepens, by being at rest, not pushing or forcing. Whenever we force, we ignore. If you tense your arm and have someone touch it, it's hard to feel it.

One of the effects of belief is that they prevent you from seeing what actually is.

Our experience may tell us something is true. But it may be an experience which is based on a belief.

Some mystery has brought us to this, which is quite wonderful, and what we do with it from here is up to us.

Retreat Speaker Blogs from Retreat

I'm so happy to be able to share my good friend, Greg Bender, with our community next week. He is spending two weeks in solitary retreat in NE New Mexico before coming here, and he is blogging from retreat. His thoughts can be read here.

The blog is on Ken McLeod's Ning site, which is a great resource to explore. I invite you to explore while you're there, and perhaps sign up. If you do, "friend" me!

Final Arrangements for Joy, Grace & Awareness Retreat

We've outgrown my living room and our retreat next weekend will now be held at Scarritt Bennett Center. We'll be meeting in a spacious venue, The Raintree Room, located on the second floor of Bennett Hall.

A lunch buffet is available for those who register by next Monday for only $11.50 each including tax. The meal will include meats, vegetarian options, vegetables, salad, desserts, tea and water. If you've already registered and want to opt out, please email me and I'll take you off the lunch list.

Friday night the room will open at 6:15 for registration, meditation, and... yes... shopping! We will have a small amount of dharma items available to benefit Luminous Mind and our ability to host events such as this.

Overnight accommodations are also available at Scarritt Bennett for a very reasonable rate.

Volunteers are needed for easy functions such as setting up and tending a simple shrine, teacher care, etc. If you can help, please email me.

Helpful tips, downloadable pdfs, and complete information are availble at our website. This is going to be a beautiful time. I look forward to seeing you, in a spirit of joy, grace, and awareness.

Interfaith Prayer Service for the Middle Tennessee Community

One of my brothers in Interfaith Dialogue is organizing this event and asked me to participate. I'd like to invite all our friends to attend.
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The African Methodist Episcopal Church (13th District) will host an Interfaith Prayer Service at Greater Bethel AME Church on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. In light of the recent devastation brought on by the flood in Middle Tennessee, the purpose of the Prayer Service is to strengthen relationships and foster unity among people of all faiths for the good of the community.

“Middle Tennessee has suffered the effects of a flood of epic proportions. Currently, over 20,000 people are without electricity while countless others are displaced from their homes and unable to return to salvage precious belongings. It is estimated that 90% of persons whose homes have been damaged are without flood insurance. President Obama has approved federal disaster assistance, but it will be communities of faiths that will provide assistance in rebuilding lives and restoring hope,” stated Bishop Vashti McKenzie, presiding Bishop of the 13th Episcopal AME District.

A number of African Methodist Episcopal churches and related organizations immediately became involved in the clean-up effort and in providing resource centers for Middle Tennessee communities. “It is clear, more Middle Tennesseans will have to come together in unity to rebuild homes, businesses, institutions and places of worship and, in so doing, build a greater Nashville,” stated Bishop McKenzie.
The Interfaith Prayer Service has been created - for community leaders, pastors, activist, and citizens - to help bring the community together for healing and restoration. The service will begin at 7:00 p.m. at Greater Bethel AME Church, 1300 South Street, Nashville, TN.

For more information contact Rev. Roderick Belin or Rev. Anica Howard at 615-242-6814.

Join Us for Retreat May 21-22

Registration is now open for our retreat with Greg Bender May 21-22. For full information and to register, click here.

Greg is in solitary retreat in New Mexico for the two weeks prior to his visit, so we will be fortunate to catch the fresh rays of his experience. While in retreat, he is taking the opportunity to blog sparingly at Ken McLeod's ning site. You can get a good sense of where he comes from by reading his musings.  Read Greg's retreat blog here.

Greg is one of my two oldest friends in the dharma. We met in 1995 or 6 via the AOL Buddhist Boards and quickly became close friends over many long dharma telephone calls and emails. He has visited Nashville for retreat two times and I have visited Tucson, where he brought me in as graphic designer for a conference with HH the Dalai Lama. We are the holders of each others' life stories and he has helped me in my own spiritual path many times over the years. I am thrilled to be able to share Greg with our small community.

The Great Flood and Great Nashvillians

Middle Tennessee was hit with a devastating flood May 1-3. This is a slideshow of the affected areas in Nashville, from our landmarks to our business district to our biggest tourist spots and the neighborhoods that were underwater.

From The Tennessean: "Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said the cost to residential, commercial and industrial property has soared to around $1.5 billion and would continue to climb. Estimates do not include the unknown cost to rebuild roadways, sidewalks, bridges and government buildings damaged in the flooding. Dean said Friday that Metro inspectors still had about 20 percent of the city to assess.
Initial reports showed flood damaged 9,300 land parcels and about 2,000 residential properties, according to information provided by Metro."

Estimates also don't count loss of tourism, loss of jobs, loss of industry. And the greatest loss, 31 human lives in the region to date.

Throughout this whole experience, Nashvillians have responded with spontaneous kindness and compassion, standing together in this time of great need. No looting or violence. People helping complete strangers. The Buddhist teachings would say this is an expression of our basic good heart, our innate bodhichitta (Sanskrit: "mind of enlightenment"). I say… I'm proud to be a Nashvillian.

To donate to Red Cross flood relief, click here.

Buddha's Birthday Celebration Posponed

The Buddha's Birthday Celebration scheduled this morning at First Unitarian Universalist Nashville has been posponed due to the weather emergency. The surrounding streets and the lower parking lot are flooding and driving conditions are just too dangerous. Please stay home and stay safe. I'll let you know when it's rescheduled.

Releasing Emotional Reactions – Method Three, Direct Awarness

RER6
Notes from a talk by Ken McLeod
Podcast available for downloading here

This method is from the Vajrayana school of Buddhism, known as Dzogchen or Mahamudra. In the Tibetan tradition, this method is shrouded in secrecy. Yet at the same time Ken found that lamas often found a way to slip these instructions into the first meeting with a student, though it may go right over the student’s head. (Ken translated for Kalu Rinpoche at many such meetings.)

In a sense, these instructions are “self-secret,” in that when you hear these instructions they don’t sound like very much, unless you already have some level of experience or understanding of context. Then they can truly open the door to you.

This was vividly illustrated to Ken during his 3-year retreat when the head of the Kagyu order came to visit and gave some teachings. His instructions felt powerful and intense, like being picked up by the back of your neck and thrown against the wall. And say, “Did you get it?” And then he would pick you up and throw you again. Although we were actually just sitting around. Later, I thought, what did he actually SAY? It could be boiled down to,  “Thoughts come, thoughts go.”

This is deep? I mean, of course, thoughts come and thoughts go. But how many of you are wrestling wth thoughts in meditation? Or think that thoughts come but don’t go? And yet, in that simple sentence, there is the key to freedom. A thought comes -- “I’m angry” -- and when that thought arises, frequently we don’t recognize it as a thought. It becomes a fact. So now, WE’RE ANGRY. And a lot of unhelpful things can unfold from that. If it is recognized as a thought, it comes, it goes. Just let it arise and do absolutely nothing. It wanders around and it goes.

So... thoughts come, thoughts go... is one of the doors to freedom IF you live it. It’s not enough to understand it intellectually.

So this method of practice is very much about living the direct experience of mind just as it is. The three traditions of this form of training are the Great Middle Way (Madhyamaka), the Great Seal (Mahamudra), and the Great Perfection (Dzogchen).

If you look in our chant booklets and see the Aspiration for Mahamudra prayer, you see these three approaches are characterized in one sentence each:

Free from mental constructions, it is called the great seal.

Free from extremes, it is called the great middle way.

Because everything is complete here, it is also called the great completion.

May I gain the confidence that, in understanding one, I know them all.

There’s a great deal of confusion rampant about these practices. You can't just do this practice alone. It is still necessary to generate goodness and clear away unwholesome actions. So many people get pointing out instructions and think they can “do Dzogchen” and don’t need any of that stuff.

The fact is, in order to practice with mind directly, you need to be pretty clear, and really have a pretty solid basis in resting attention and other things, such as assimilating death and karma deeply. In other words, you have to clear out a lot of the underbrush.

So I know that for some of you this is your first retreat experience, and I respect your courage and willingness to jump into something like this. But when you work with the techniques I’m going to describe today, you may find yourself a little bit lost in confusion. That’s fine, that happens to everybody.

My hope is that through our work you can get some appreciation for what the whole thing is really about, which now can help inform practice of resting in attention, resting with the breath.

In Buddhism, we have a wonderful array of approaches and practices. These methods are very powerful. Every effective method has its pitfall. And this is why it’s important to understand the method, the intention of the method, and one’s own intention, so these can all be in alignment. The truth is, some people work better with some practice than with others. We have notable examples of this in Tibetan history.

So we shouldn’t be concerned about getting the highest or most secret teaching, but to  seek out and practice a method that answers YOUR spiritual questions. It should be a method you can actually use.

Various Buddhist Approaches:

The observation of ethics leaves your mind clear. If you encounter a situation and you know what the right thing to do is, and it’s going to cost you something to do it, but you do it anyway, how long do you think about it afterwards? What if you don’t do it? This is the fundamental reason why ethics is important. It leaves the mind clear. However, the human tendency is to make a “thing” out of anything, so some people get really uptight about their own interpretation of “pure morality” and fall into a trap right there. We miss the actual point.

Another pitfall is we come up with a way of doing things and it becomes a formulaic approach to practice. It appears through Zen koans, the Tibetan graded path, and so on.

Then we have logic, reasoning, and philosophy. Being able to reason clearly and analyze things is very helpful for cutting through a lot of confusion, where we tend to wrap ourselves up in concept. But people make a “thing” out of it and we end up with horribly abstruse philosophies that are irrelevant to practice.

And then there’s the approach that everything can be solved through ritual. Ritual is a powerful method for training attention, but people make a “thing” out of it.

The same thing with behavior. I’ve run into a number of people who think if they can just behave the right way, everything will turn out the right way. The problem with this is figuring out what the right way to behave is.

Another approach is the use of symbol. They can be extraordinarily powerful by cutting through the operation of the intellect so that something can just happen. But making the symbol into a “thing” -- taking it as an object of worship or fixation -- misses the point.

Another very powerful technique is identification with an ideal. It’s a way of inspiring and evoking, coming from a deeper place. But once again, this can become a “thing” and induce a fixation.

Finally, there are energy transformation techniques, transforming the energies of the body into states of bliss or attention. The purpose of the energy is to drive attention so you can be more present, but people become fixated on blissing out.

These are all legitimate methods, but when they become an object of fixation, it works against what we are trying to do.

The key with the method we are exploring today is no fixation. Jamgon Kongtrul put it very succinctly when he said, “Where there is fixation, there is error.” So the technique we’re going to do today is about no fixation. And there’s only one way to do that... do absolutely nothing. Which is not as easy as it sounds, so I’m going to give you a method.

Ken attended a three-week retreat where the only meditation instruction was, “Go and do nothing.”

This is a five-step process for breaking up a reactive pattern.

1. Identify a reactive behavior and ask, “Why do I do this?”
You’ll have to ask why repeatedly.
“Because I’m angry with him.”
Why are you angry with him?
And you keep going.
“Why” questions are tricky.

Keep asking the question and at some point, you will say, “I don’t know.” You won’t know why you’re doing it. That’s the nature of reactive patterns. There’s no intention in reactive patterns; they’re just a reaction.

At that point, there’s going to be a feeling, right there. You may or may not be able to name it. It doesn’t matter. At first it will be there only fleetingly, and you’ll suppress it in the body or blank out.

But if you do it repeatedly, you’ll start to be able to recognize it.

2. You have this reactive behavior. Just imagine not doing it.
The reactive behavior exists in order to take you away from THAT feeling.
So when you imagine not doing it, that feeling will be there again.
Enter into the feeling completely.
BE the feeling. No separation whatsoever.
When you do this, you’ll find that the feeling is like a multicolored display, with threads and images and all kinds of facets. The first impulse will be to try to sort it out, understand it, explain it. Don’t do any of that. Just experience it.

Be in all the reactions – body, emotional, mental.

As you do this, the feeling will become more distinct and easier to identify because you’re progressively moving into a closer relationship with it.

3. Bring up the feeling deliberately.
Emotions don’t like this. They run and hide. So you evoke the feeling and it goes.
In order for the reactive pattern to work, you’re supposed to be asleep.
But if you’re at attention, it’s like, “NOPE!”
So you have to do it repeatedly.
At first it’s just a little flash.
Then sometime later, evoke it again.

Little by little, you’ll find you can evoke it at will.

Already, your relationship with this feeling has changed, significantly.
“You and me... this town’s not big enough for the two of us.”
It’s been running and hiding, and you tracked it down in the saloon and the brothel,
“We’re going to have this out”

4. Experience the world through the feeling, in awareness.
Don’t get lost in it.
But experience how the feeling presents the world to you.
This is very disturbing.
There may be times when you think, “They’re all out to get me.”
And at the same time, you know it isn’t true.

You’re actually seeing how the feeling projects a certain world. Relax in the movement of the emotion. (the world that the emotion projects)

When you can hold the feeling and the world it projects, you’re experiencing it but you’re not asleep in it, then:

5. Look at what experiences all of this — the feeling and the world.
Everything will go empty.
Because when you look at that, you see nothing. (STORY of teacher who asked three potential students to go away for a week and report back what color their mind is.)

Then... open to the totality of your experience.

You cut through the pattern of subject/object fixation and experience no separation from experience. So rest right there.

No separation = Emotion, emptiness, and what experiences are not different.

The emotion will continue to arise… continue to hold them all, emotion, experience, and what experiences it.

Ask the question, direct your attention, and rest in that shift. Don’t keep asking the question because that just churns up the mind.

The problem with this kind of instruction is that it all sounds – perhaps challenging – but neat. But when you do it, it’s NOT neat. It’s a mess.

This is a very profound method. It won’t work magically as soon as you try it. Each of these steps is likely to present its own challenge. And that’s what you work with.

At this level of practice, the instructions always sound very simple. Kalu Rinpoche: “Thoughts come, thoughts go. Look as soon as a thought arises, relax. When another thought arises, look, then relax.”

Much of our practice is about clearing stuff out of the way so that the simplicity of mind itself — which is our heritage and present in all of us — can simply express itself. Then things become quite natural.

Progress can be noticed when you see that in situations which formerly were difficult for you, you see directly what to do. As your practice matures, you’re able to do that, and it’s very natural... the obvious thing to do. As you move deeper, things become more and more natural. You don’t even notice it.

Chinese saying: When the shoe fits, you aren’t aware of it.

What you WILL notice is when you don’t know what to do or when your perception wasn’t accurate.

Trungpa: Dharma practice is one insult after another.

When you try this technique or any technique, you will run into bumps.

Each bump will point you to the right effort. For this reason, make very deep effort. But don’t fight experience either. Understanding how to do that is the mystery of practice.

The point is to break up a reactive pattern, which will take weeks or months.
You will know when it breaks up because the situations that triggered that reactive pattern won’t trigger it anymore. You’ll feel open and able to move in a way you couldn’t before.

If at any point everything suddenly opens up and falls away and you’re just there, then just rest right there.

What we do in practice is develop attention and momentum. Once there is some attention, increasingly whatever we encounter fuels the attention.

The key is to open wider and wider gaps between thoughts, between emotions, and between our perceptual framework. At some point these three will all line up and WHAM, we see directly.

Note: This method was also taught by Ken in an article which first appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Spring 2002, available here. 

Releasing Emotional Reactions – Method Two, Taking & Sending

Transcript of a podcast talk by Ken McLeod, RER04, accessible here.
Studied by Luminous Mind Friday night, March 12, 2010.

Mahayana is characterized by two themes: emptiness and compassion.

Theravada—3 Marks: impermanence, suffering, non-self
The experiences that arise through coming to know experience.

1. The arising and falling of phenomena shows transitoriness.
2. In the presence of emotional reactions, all experience is suffering.
3. What we think of as ourselves, there is nothing we can point to and say, “I am that.”

These are all realizations that come from a clear perception of experience.
It challenged the basis of the caste system in India.

Mahayana—3 Gates: no characteristics, no aspiration, emptiness
1. No characteristics is connected with impermanence. When you observe things coming and going, there is nothing you can hold onto which makes it the thing itself. It derives its “thingness” from its relationship with other things (interdependent origination)

2. No aspiration – connected with suffering. It’s just not going to get any better.
Dilgo Khyentse, why do we practice? “To make the best of a bad situation.”
Chogyam Trungpa: “It’s hopeless.” which he repeated with various pauses for the next 20 minutes.
When you stop wanting or trying to gain something, it creates the possibility of being present in what is arising right now.

3. Emptiness (relates to non-self)
While the original formulation was that there is no thing that corresponds to the pronoun “I”, it’s not a long step to say that you can’t say what a cup or bell or light is. What it is is always in relation to something else. Everything is empty of independent existence. Which is simultaneously liberating and terrifying.

Yesterday we worked with ways to use the breath to come into the union of knowing and experience.

We’re still going to use the breath, but the approach we’ll use today works much more with our emotional reactions to experience.

The basis for this is found in the four immeasurables (Four Brahmaviharas): where a noble person hangs out.

Lovingkindness, compassion, joy, equanimity

Unlike ordinary reactive emotions  jealousy, etc – organized around a sense of self,
the four immeasurables are not organized around a sense of self. Not defensive emotional reactions.

Shakespeare: “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

This is different from the emotional reactions.
When you feel anger, it HURTS you and the other person. When you move into compassion, you are present with the other person’s pain, but there is no reaction taking place in you. The consequence is a quality of presence. It “opens a field.” And in that field, the person who is in pain is more able to be with their pain.

Similary dyanmics happen with equanimity, lovingkindness, and joy.

What prevents us from being present in our lives? There are many different patterns of emotional reaction and behaviors that arise. At the core of all of them is an identity, an image of ourselves which stands apart from experience. That self-image we tend to think of as consistent – in fact, it is not. Different self images arise in different situations.... But it always stands apart from experience.

So in certain situations, we may hold onto the image of being the authority. In other situations, we may hold onto the image of being the helpless one. Some people get attached to the role of scapegoat, or the person who doesn’t need any help from anybody.

And most of the time we don’t even know which we’re operating.

But the identity profoundly influences the way we interpret experience, and the way we interpret experience is always in such a way as to reinforce that particular self-image.
So this way of relating to the world which reinforces our sense of who we are, we call “self cherishing.”
Everything that confirms that self image, we like and are attracted to.
Anything that threatens it, we try to push away.

Example: How many are uncomfortable with compliments? It doesn’t fit the self-image.

One of the more profound methods of undermining that tendency to interpret experience to reinforce the sense of self, is to turn the thing around. So we take IN exactly what we’re trying to avoid, and give away what we’re trying to hold onto.

Most of us at some level are pretty selfish. Taking care of me first. This practice reverses that.

One of the main practices of Mahayana is exchanging oneself for others. You imagine taking in the pain and suffering that others experience, then breathing out and giving all the happiness, joy, and wellbeing that you experience so that they can have that themselves.

5-Step Technique

All of this is about working with emotional reactions.
Emotional reactions arise when we encounter something we don’t want to experience.

1. Take in the pain. (your own or someone else’s)

2. Open to your own reactions to the pain.
This in essence is a practice of compassion. By being open and willing to experience our own reactions to pain, we discover the ability to be present with pain. We don’t have to shrink or hide or change the world. When you do this, you may feel a little sad. So in the midst of that...

3. Touch your own happiness and send it out to others.
This is the practice of lovingkindness: wanting others to be happy. What do I give? Anything that makes you feel good. An intellectual: give away your intelligence. What happiness? If you have enough to eat, shelter, able to walk, healthy, that’s enough. Or you can use the word wellbeing.

4. Take joy in the process of this exchange. 
Why would I take joy in this? A student of Kalu Rinpoche said, “Why would I commit emotional suicide?” Kalu Rinpoche: “If you could actually take away all the pain of the world in a single breath, would you hesitate?”

It is our attachment to our idea of who we are which separates us from experience. And we’re so conditioned to protecting that, that the idea of opening and having this actual exchange threatens that sense of self. But that’s exactly why we’re here.

So... what has your sense of self done for you lately?
When we grasp onto it, maybe it’s not such a useful thing.

If you open to another person’s pain and suffering and wish them well, something begins to change. There is a sense of connection. One is no longer separate and apart from the world. Something good is happening. When that takes place, there is a natural joy that arises. Stepping out of our cocoon of self-focus and being part of the world, in whatever way that takes us, there is joy in that.

5. Rest in no separation.
As you rest in the joy — joy is the emotion which is connected with the exercise of power — so in this process, you will feel simultaneously more present and less separated from experience, so experience no separation. And in doing that, continue to take in the suffering of the world and give your own happiness, because now you are no longer separate... there is just a flow of energy back and forth.
In a certain sense, restoring balance in the scheme of things.

In your meditation, it is recommended to go through the steps relatively slowly, 2-3 minutes on each one, so you can feel them. Once you’ve done that, you can move to the practice of taking and sending...

Take in the suffering in the form of thick black smoke coming in through your right nostril  to your heart so you experience it...

and your own happiness and wellbeing — everything you appreciate about your own life — taking the form of white moonlight going out from your heart through your left nostril, to everyone in the world.

With each breath you do both. With the in-breath you take in the suffering, with the outbreath you send out your own happiness.

In this practice, you are practicing every one of the four immeasurables.

Sending out your own happiness = lovingkindness
Taking in the suffering of others - compassion
Feeling joyful about the exchange - joy
Doing this without any prejudice or limitation - equanimity

While doing this, at some point you may notice that you are just present in experience.
So continue taking and sending but really rest in that sense of no separation, just presence.

This is what all the meditation techniques are designed to lead you to: to dissolve that boundary between the false duality of self and other.

For some, you may find there are elements of your own experience that you are alienated from. Maybe certain reactive emotions or patterns or physical things.
You can do taking and sending with those too, to dissolve the sense of I and other.

For seemingly positive emotions that you cling to...
Work with the painful part of the emotion.

Work as deeply as you can without losing your attention. If the emotions are so powerful that you lose your attention, use one of the methods from last week: experience a fraction, proximity. Work the edge. If you only work within your comfort zone, you will just reinforce your patterns. If you work beyond your capacity, you will recondition your defensive mechanism. Neither of these is helpful. It’s important to go to the edge and be willing to... bring the appropriate energy and effort to the practice.

You can get more from 30 minutes of sitting with a powerful emotion than 5 years of resting in equanimity.

If it doesn’t manifest in how we actually interact with others, what good is it?

Work with objects that are easy first. Then people who are more neutral or easily elicit lovingkindness (the sick or poor). Then people who are more difficult.

There is no point in working any situation in which you cannot maintain your attention.
If you don’t push the edge of the envelope, your practice never progresses.

There you are face to face with a reactive emotion. And you find that you can actually be there. What do you experience? Joy. You’ve exercised power. You went straight through.

The underlying theme: Can I experience this?


Eight Thoughts of Great Individuals
Composed by Karma Rangjung Kunchab (Kalu Rinpoche), translated by Ken McLeod

By the power of the truth of compassion of all the supreme refuges, these seeds of virtue and this pure noble motivation

May all the suffering of sentient beings who are as extensive as space be cleared away through my own efforts.

By excellent virtue, both ordinary and transcendent, may the hopes and wants of beings be fulfilled.

May the flesh, blood, skin, and other parts of my body be useful to any sentient being who has need of them.

May the suffering of all beings, my grandmothers, be absorbed by me. May they all receive my virtue and happiness.

As long as I dwell in the world, may not a single thought of harming others arise in my mind.

May I strive energetically for the welfare of beings, not faltering even for a moment from discouragement or fatigue.

For all beings who are poor, hungry, or thirsty, may I be able to give them whatever they want effortlessly.

All the great burdens of intolerable suffering such as the hell realms may I take on myself. May those beings be free of them.

Releasing Emotional Reactions – Method One, Bare Attention (Part 2)

Transcript of a podcast talk by Ken McLeod, RER03, accessible here.
Studied at Luminous Mind Friday night, March 5


We all start off with gaining ideas. But as our practice matures, we see it’s not so much about getting something from the practice, but that the more we are in the experience of what is, the less suffering arises for ourselves and other people.

Our tendency is to postpone experiencing unpleasant things. We would prefer to postpone them forever. (“Does never work for you?”)

It’s that attitude that creates imbalance in the world of our experience. The effect of that imbalance, especially if it persists over time, is the creation of patterns of behavior that create suffering for ourselves and others.

This is a technique which allows you to move into a more full experience of what is arising.

This morning I spoke of two metaphors of working with this:
1. Experience a fraction of the feeling.
2. Use distance as a way of experiencing the feeling.

A third way to think of this is:
3. Your breath is a rope. It gives you something to hold onto as you lower yourself into the feeling. If you can’t go further, stop there and experience it.

As your capacity to experience that increases, you can move deeper and not lose attention. When we join with the feeling, the feeling completes its reason for being and releases, and we find ourselves just present in a way we may not have experienced before.

The irony is, if you approach this practice with the intention to work through or dispel the feeling, you won’t get anywhere, because you have brought expectation into the experience.

Story of Milarepa

Milarepa saw 5 demons in his cave going through his stuff. He thought, “Well, I’ll have to get rid of these. They are probably manifestations of the local spirits. I haven’t been paying enough attention to them." So he sang them a song of praise. They ignored him completely.

"Hmmm. These are tougher demons than I thought. Well, demons are manifestations of disturbed states of mind, so I should meditate on compassion." And he sang another song to them, this time about compassion. They looked up from their activities and glowered at him.

"Okay, these are really tough demons." So he invoked a wrathful yidam to cut through things. The demons looked at him and laughed.

"Hmmm. Something’s not working here. Oh! My teacher said that whatever arises is simply a manifestation of my own mind. So I can engage them. Fully. Okay, guys, let’s get it on!" So he rushed into the mouth of the first demon. And it disappeared.

That’s how it is with our feelings. As long as we’re trying to get rid of them, they’re going to be there. So you say, Okay, this is what I’m experiencing. Let me experience it.
Then they let go because they’ve fulfilled their function.

But there’s an extraordinary human tendency to avoid feeling anything. So bring the feeling close enough that you begin to feel the disturbance of the feeling in you. That’s where you rest.

Q&A

What you’re looking for is the edge. If you go beyond the edge, you fall into chaos. If you don’t go to the edge, nothing changes.

You go the edge and rest your attention right there, with whatever is arising. As you develop more and more capacity, you can move deeper into the feeling without getting lost. But you have to find where your edge is for you.

If it all goes away, then rest right there. If it arises again, work with it again. Work with whatever arises.

We’re working with these difficult feelings so we can rest, present and open.

Key: Don’t try to make it into anything else.

The question isn’t, “Can I let go of this.” It’s “Can I experience this?” It’s a disturbance in your life because you keep pushing it away.

Think of your feelings as really hurt children.

Two qualities are needed:
Courage: to endure what arises in experience
Faith: the willingness to open to whatever arises.

Faith is also described as faith in our fundamental nature, which is no thing at all.
We can trust whatever arises in experience because there is nothing to defend.

It is a practice of learning to be in the uncontrollability of experience.

We’re developing the capacity to know or experience completely -- because this is all we can ever know.

Repeat, Part Deux

Things keeps getting curiouser and curiouser!

Another week, and we didn't get to Part 3 of Releasing Emotional Reactions. That's because this Friday night we had seven new folks show up for study group. Some were brand new to these ideas, so the rest of us regulars decided we should drop back and punt. In other words, we listened again to Ken McLeod's instructions on Releasing Emotional Reactions through Bare Attention (transcript below).

There's always a certain perfection arising, so we were happy to go with the flow. Thank you, Dee and Gerald, for your generosity! We'll move on to Part 3 next Friday (I think!).

In the meantime, the extra practice time on this particular method is a boon... bare attention is foundational to knowing one's own experience as it arises. Let's keep practicing!

Repeat Week

Hi friends!

If you had miss this past Friday, no worries! We'll repeat Friday's session the next time we meet, February 26.

For varied and sundry reasons, most of our group had to miss last Friday. We thought about cancelling, but those who showed up can't be here on the 26th, so we went ahead and listened and discussed the second half of Releasing Emotional Reactions through Bare Attention.

It's really good material and we'll all go through it together on the 26th. Remember, we're off this Friday, the 19th, because I have a family obligation. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Many thanks and love,
Rita

Releasing Emotional Reactions – Method One, Bare Attention

Transcript of a podcast talk by Ken McLeod, RER02, accessible here.

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:

1. Body (flinch, tense, defensive, discomfort, nausea, “disembodied”)
2. Emotional (fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, jealousy, grief, wanting)
3. 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.

Releasing Emotional Reactions – Introduction

This is a near-transcript of Friday night's talk by Ken McLeod. To link to the full podcast and read more about this series, go to the class page on our website.

It could be said that the purpose of practice is fully knowing one’s experience without the projection of thoughts or emotions.

Ken tells a story:

Nasradin wanted to steal some fruit from a stall. But the stallholder had a fox which kept watch. He overheard the man say to his fox, “Foxes are craftier than dogs, and I want you to guard the stall with cunning. There are always thieves about. When you see anyone doing anything, ask yourself why he is doing it, and whether it could be related to the security of the stall."

When the man had gone away, the fox came to the front of the stall and looked at Nasradin lurking on the lawn opposite. Nasradin at once laid down and closed his eyes. The fox thought, “Sleeping is not doing anything.” As he watched Nasradin, he too began to feel tired. He laid down and went to sleep. Then Nasradin crept past him and stole some fruit.

How many of you have experienced Nasradin stealing some fruit? How many of you have gone to sleep because you thought your emotional reactions weren’t “doing” anything? And then you wake up and find that they’re in full swing?

Emotional reactions take us over because we regard the emotions as something real. Something solid. We believe them. They are the fact. They define the world.

So... when something happens with our spouse, we get angry. The emotion is saying, “This person is your enemy,” and we believe it and react accordingly. We have this kind of thing all over the place.

The point here is that… we react because we fall out of knowing our experience. We fall out of really knowing what is happening.

The knowing that I’m talking about isn’t like, “Yeah, I understand, I know what you’re talking about.” That’s a conceptual thing.

The knowing I’m talking about is being IN the experience and awake at the same time.

When we make that effort, life becomes much richer. But it also appears to be much more inconvenient. Because we’re experiencing everything. Including all the uncomfortable feelings that we normally try to avoid and which actually trick us into emotional reaction.

So the purpose of this talk is to develop an increased capacity to know our experience. When you know experience completely, then what arises as emotion is an experience. And you can know it completely. And the nature of experience is that it releases when it is experienced completely.

And we’ve all had that experience. That is, there will be some irritation or joy or high or low we’re feeling.... And it dissipates. It releases.

What is the function of a feeling? What does a feeling live for? Answer: It lives to be felt.

So whenever we’re avoiding feeling what is arising, we’re introducing an imbalance into our field of experience because there are things which are arising which we’re not letting ourselves experience. And they keep knocking at the door. And they can be quite persistent. And the more we push them away, the more circuitous and devious they become to try to get attention. So we want to learn to give them attention.

We’re going to work with three different techniques over the following three weeks.

The first is based on one of the most fundamental sutras, the Anapanasati Sutra which means "The Full Awareness of Breathing." (“sati” means mindfulness. Anapana refers to inhalation and exhalation.) Very simple, very profound, very helpful.

Next will be a technique which many of you are familiar with, the practice of taking and sending — a Mahayana practice. Creating the conditions so we can experience what is arising completely.

Finally, the practice of releasing through direct awareness, which is from the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

Each of them we’ll speak of as a 5-step practice. Hopefully, this will give us all a number of tools that we can work with in our daily lives.

The key principle in all of this is to experience things as completely as possible. And this does not mean to think about them. It means to rest in the actual experience.

To practice resting in experience, there is an ancient formula:

Body on the cushion.
Mind in the body.
Relaxation in the mind.

Body in balance, back straight. Skeletal frame being used to support the body so there’s not a lot of muscular tension.

It’s good to start any meditation period by just resting in the body... shrug shoulders, rock a little to find your center, let your body find its resting in stillness. As you do that, you’ll naturally become aware of the breath. Let the body breathe. Let the breath find its own rhythm. Don’t try to breathe in any particular way.

As you do this, you may notice tightness here and there, and you think you have to get rid of the tightness. In this particular approach, I’m going to recommend that you not try to get rid of the tightness. That’s your first experience. Just experience the tightness. Any tension in the body, don’t try to get rid of it. Just experience it. And you’ll find that as you experience it, things shift and adjust and take care of themselves for the most part.

So now you’re resting in your body, and the body is breathing. Now you rest IN the experience of breathing.

The usual meditation instruction is, “Now watch the breath with your mind.” And that immediately introduces a separation. In this case, just be in the experience of breathing. Be aware of your body breathing. All the aspects of your body involved in breathing. But don’t concentrate on the breath. Just rest in the experience of breathing.

What happens is that a thought arises. And the next thing we know we’re thinking about this and that from the past and future.

Saraha said:
Mind is like a bird on a ship in the middle of the ocean. A thought flies up, and no matter how far away the bird flies from the ship, the bird has to come back to the ship.

So it doesn’t matter what thoughts arise. Sooner or later, that thought will dissolve and you’ll come back. And there will be “oh!” Usually followed by, “I’m supposed to be meditating.”

What I encourage you to do, when that happens, is come back to the body, back to breathing, back to resting in the experience of breathing. Don’t bother chastising yourself or even worry about whether you’re doing it right or wrong.

Body on the cushion.
Mind in the body.
Relaxation in the mind.

So you rest. In the experience of breathing. And whenever you recognize that you’ve been distracted by whatever, just come back to the experience of breathing. Check in with your body and rest in the experience.

Homework for this week: Sit in this way each day for at least five minutes, more if possible.

Luminous Mind

Like the center of a cloudless sky,

The self-luminous mind is impossible to express.

It is wisdom of nonthought beyond analogy,

Naked ordinary mind.

Not keeping to dogmatism or arrogance,

It is clearly seen as dharmakaya.

The appearance of the six sense objects, like the moon in water,

Shines in the state of wisdom.

Whatever arises is the unfabricated innate state.

Whatever appears is the nature of mahamudra.

The phenomenal world is dharmakaya great bliss.

— Jamgon Kongtrul the Great 

A Gathering with Mike Snider -- Jan. 23

Luminous Mind Presents

A Gathering with Mike Snider

"Nonduality and the Mystery of Being"

Saturday, January 23, 1:00-3:00 p.m.

Love offering

Those who attended Mike's recent OneDharma satsang (or "cutting through the crap" as he prefers to describe his sharing) were moved by his music, humor, clarity of being, and straightforward message of truth of who we are. Delivered in simple, straightforward language, with great humor and compassion, Mike shares the story of his own search for Truth and its ultimate collapse. I was happy to meet him and get a big hug afterwards, and invite him to come talk to our group as well. He was so very gracious and has been in good email contact since.

Mike Snider hails from Gleason, Tennessee, and is a musician extraordinaire, a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry. He has been asked by Adyashanti to share his knowledge and deep realization of the truth of awakening. Mike's message of nonduality is resonant with the nondual teachings of Buddhism and other religions; in fact, such experience transcends religious barriers altogether.

If you've ever wondered whether nondual realization is possible in this lifetime, or how it plays out in lived experience, his talk will provide inspiration and refreshment. Ample time will be given for questions and answers in a relaxed atmosphere.

Location: the home of Rita Frizzell, 1716A Linden Avenue in the Belmont Hillsboro neighborhood in Nashville. Seating and some cushions provided. Feel free to bring your own.

Snow Day! Dharma Study Group cancelled tonight

After consulting with a couple of members and checking weather reports, dharma study group is cancelled for tonight. Many side streets are ice rinks, and the news says it's going to be bad again tonight. Take care, everyone!