No Big Deal

In this passage from Buddhahood Without Meditation, Ken is steering people away from treating direct awareness as something to produce, monitor, fine-tune, or possess. The phrase “Direct awareness is no big deal,” from his translation of Revelations of Ever-Present Good, can perhaps be understood as a deliberate antidote to spiritual ambition. Ken’s point is that because it is already here, direct awareness is not something to attain, but we keep trying to achieve it nonetheless.

This passage also helps me understand why Ken is wary of “observing” in the usual sense. “Be what knows the arising.” The point is not to become a skilful tracker of every thought and feeling. Instead, be awake in whatever is happening. No spacing out. No suppressing. No trying to manipulate experience. The image of standing “like an oak stake in hard ground” carries a strong, resilient simplicity.

Sukhasiddhi’s instruction gathers the whole thing into three lines:

In empty space, free from concept,
Plant the root of mind which is awareness.
Plant the root and relax.

For me, that “relax” is crucial, but relaxing is not drifting off or going blank. It means I have to drop the wishful thinking that understanding will dawn through conceptual clarity. It means I have to stop meddling.

From Buddhahood Without Meditation 6

Ken:

Direct awareness is no big deal and doesn’t need any work. Stop trying to change it or adjust it.

(How many of you spend your meditation practices trying to fine-tune that natural awareness?)

Whenever conceptual thinking arises, don’t look at what arises: be what knows the arising.

Like an oak stake in hard ground, stand firm in awareness that knows, and go deep into the mystery.

Revelations of Ever-Present Good

Now, there are two approaches to this kind of practice. One is look at what arises. And the other is to look at what experiences the arising. Very broadly speaking, some people say that in mahamudra, the emphasis is on looking at what arises. In dzogchen, the emphasis is on looking at what experiences the arising. What’s the difference? Caroline?

Caroline: No difference, because what experiences and the experience, you can’t separate them.

Ken: That’s right. Two different approaches that end up in the same place. So one approach will probably work better for some people, the other approach would work better for others. That’s how it is. And one isn’t particularly better, even though lots of people will stand up on soap boxes and claim that it is.

Ann: Didn’t you recommend that in the case of dullness that looking at what experiences the arising could be helpful?

Ken: Yeah, I did. You can also do it the other way. What is the dullness?

Minor question: what’s the difference between knowing and emptiness?

Student: I really want the answer to that one, because in the Dancer in Pristine Awareness practice, you plant the root of mind in empty space.

Ken:

In empty space, free from concept,
Plant the root of mind which is awareness.
Plant the root and relax.

This is Sukhasiddhi’s very famous pointing-out instruction.

Related posts

• Don’t Miss the Point
• A Simplicity That Costs Everything
• Just Rest

No Dos or Don’ts in a Burning World

Complete—all teachings on behaviour end up in no dos or don’ts.

From: Revelations of Ever-Present Good, Jigme Lingpa.

This line from Ken’s translation of Jigme Lingpa’s poem is particularly enigmatic in today's world.

We are living through a convergence of upheavals—ecological collapse, political fragmentation, social polarisation, economic instability, and a lost sense of living in a meaningful, sacred world. Everywhere we look, there are urgent calls for action and for taking a stand. In these difficult circumstances, “no dos or don’ts” can sound not only impractical, but irresponsible.

Yet the point here is not the abandoning of ethics. It’s the end of relying on fixed notions of right and wrong as a way to navigate experience. We already know what happens when we rely on formulas.

Ken's book, A Trackless Path, is a commentary on Revelations of Ever-Present Good. As he points out in the commentary, moral systems organise belonging. They define who is right and who is wrong, who is inside and who is outside. In doing so, they generate cohesion—but also division. In the current climate, this dynamic is amplified everywhere. Positions harden. Identities form. The defence of what is “right” easily becomes the justification for dismissing or attacking others.

In the commentary Ken quotes Manhae (Han Yong-un, 1879–1944), a Korean Buddhist monk, poet, and independence activist. A key figure in modern Korean literature, Manhae's poetry explores love, loss, and awakening while also expressing Korea’s experience under Japanese occupation. He helped reform Korean Buddhism to re-engage with society and was imprisoned for his role in the 1919 independence movement.

Yes, I understand ethics, morality, law are nothing but the smoke worshipping the sword and gold.

Everything Yearned For, Manhae, Francisca Cho (translator)

Manhae’s line is not a rejection of ethics. It’s a recognition of how easily ethics becomes entangled with power, fear, and self-interest. And we see this not only in politics or institutions, but in the spiritual sphere as well.

So where does that leave us?

If we abandon external rules and cannot rely on shared moral ground, what guides action?

Ken’s answer is uncompromising: live from knowing. Not from conceptual knowing about what is right, not by applying a framework, not by aligning with a position—but meeting what arises directly, and responding from that immediacy.

This sounds simple. In practice, it is anything but, because we inevitably meet fear, anger, and grief. We fear the future; we fear loss and instability. We experience anger at injustice, indifference, and systems that seem beyond reach. We meet grief—often unacknowledged—for what is lost. And woven through these emotions are deeply conditioned patterns that shape what we see, what we feel, and what we do, often before we are even aware of it.

As Ken puts it:

Ordinarily, what I say or do in any moment is largely shaped by emotional and biological conditioning. Like the tectonic plates that make up the surface of this planet, reactive patterns shift and move inside me in ways that I can neither control nor predict. These movements may open fissures in my personality into which I tumble out of control. They may cause massive earthquakes that shake me to my core as different patterns collide and fracture. The notion that “I” exist as a seamlessly integrated personality is a Platonic pipe dream. All I can do is meet what does arise, open, and stand there until a way is clear. There is no guarantee that things will not turn out badly in a conventional sense. When they do, I meet that situation and then the next, learning in the process how to make similar occurrences less likely. Anything else seems arbitrary, contrived and self-serving.

A Trackless Path, Ken McLeod, p. 70

To live with “no dos or don’ts” means stepping into all of this without the protection of a script, without ethical systems that tell us what to do, without ideologies that tell us where to stand, and without dogmas that tell us what to believe. Without these, we are left exposed to the full complexity of each moment. And yet, this exposure makes a different kind of response possible.

Ken describes it as moving in the direction of balance and making ongoing adjustments. In this sense, the question is not, “What is the right thing to do?” It is, “What does this situation call for, when I am not defending an identity, a position, or a belief?”

Sometimes the response will look like action, sometimes like restraint, and it may be clumsy, incomplete, or even wrong in conventional terms. Closely connected with this is learning from mistakes. As Ken says, in session 4 of a retreat called A Trackless Path:

If you do something and you learn from it, no big problem. I mean it may be a problem, but if you do the same thing three times and you still don’t learn from it, now you have a really big problem.

So, there are no guarantees, and this is perhaps the hardest part to accept. In a world that feels unstable and deteriorating, we want certainty that our actions will lead to good outcomes. We want assurance that we are on the right side of history, or morality, or truth. Living without dos or don'ts offers no such assurance.

Instead, it asks that we do not turn away from what is in front of us, and that we respond from the clearest knowing available, again and again. Not as a principle. Not as an identity. But as a practice.

This does not resolve the crises we face. But it may change how we meet them. And that, in turn, has ripple effects.

p.s. Writing this reflection reminded me of Ekla Chalo Re, one of the most famous poems by Rabindranath Tagore, the renowned Bengali poet, philosopher, and Nobel laureate. "Ekla Chalo Re" translates to "walk alone" or "go alone." He wrote the poem during the Indian independence movement. It reflects the spirit of fearlessness that dawns with clear knowing. Here is a version performed by Shreya Ghoshal with Bengali lyrics, English translation, and some quotes from Rabindranath Tagore.

Related posts

• Compassion Beyond Despair
• Two Temptations
• No Enemy, No Separation

When Translation Meets Practice

Recently Ken published How to Lose Your Mind in the practice materials on the Unfettered Mind website, and he has been commenting on Gampopa's text in a series of newsletters. I then had the good fortune of stumbling across Eric Pema Kunzang's translation of the same text in Perfect Clarity: A Tibetan Buddhist Anthology of Mahamudra and Dzogchen.

Ken provides a link to the Tibetan root text, so I was able to give ChatGPT the Tibetan as well as both Ken and Eric's translations. ChatGPT commented that Eric's translation is "clear, respectful of tradition, slightly formal, and requires some background, while Ken's tone is direct and experiential—almost like he’s talking to you in retreat." Eric gives the architecture: cause, condition, method, path, fruition; disturbing and harmonious experiences; stillness, emptiness, attainment, and release. There is clarity in that. It lets me see the bones of the instruction and recognise its place in the Mahamudra tradition. But Ken’s translation brings the text into my heart.

Where Eric writes “nonfabrication,” Ken writes “this unaffected mind.” Where Eric writes “freeing concepts into dharmata,” Ken writes “this freeing of mind in empty experience.” Where Eric gives “disturbing experiences,” Ken gives “unconducive energy shifts”—including unstable attention, illness, panic attacks, and doubts. Suddenly the text is not speaking in codified and often self-referential language from a distant world. It is speaking to the actual texture of practice: what happens in the body, in attention, in fear, in discouragement, in the subtle ways we interfere with experience.

As someone who cannot read Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan or Chinese, I am utterly dependent on translators. Even with the help of ChatGPT, I have no possibility of understanding root texts. I don't know the range of a Tibetan word, or when a phrase is technical, poetic, ordinary, or deliberately paradoxical. So translators are not just carrying words across from one language to another; they are mediating our practice worlds. This makes translation style profoundly important.

A literal or tradition-preserving translation can be valuable, especially for those who are at ease with traditional vocabulary, or feel drawn to precise maps of practice. But I need language that shows me what to do when I practise, and helps me recognise what is happening. I need translation to reflect lived experience rather than adhere to standardised, technical terms.

Ken’s experiential style does that. His language points less to concepts and more to movements: mind resting, presence emptying, knowing arriving, clinging unwinding. These are not abstract ideas. They feel like things I might notice, return to, deepen, and not mistake for the end of the path.

The experiential style of translation is like ambrosia to me. Rather than aiming to preserve a sacred vocabulary, it functions to awaken recognition. For anyone who relies on translation as a bridge into practice, this matters enormously. A traditional translation may tell us what the teaching is. The experiential language helps us enter it.

Here are a few examples to illustrate how translation styles differ depending on the orientation of the translator.

Eric Pema Kunzang

The Single Sufficient Path of Mahamudra

Ken McLeod

The Pure Essence of Mind, The One and Only Path of Mahamudra

Mahamudra has no method, yet nonfabrication is the method.

Although mahamudra has no method, this unaffected mind is a method.

Mahamudra has no fruition, yet freeing concepts into dharmata is the fruition.

Although mahamudra has no result, this freeing of mind in empty experience is the result.

As the main practice, settle the mind in the state of nonfabrication and embrace it with nondistraction.

For the main matter, consistently place mind without distraction and rest without affectation.

The first harmonious experience is the occurrence of stillness; from this, the experience of the empty essence follows.

For conducive energy shifts, first the shift into mind resting arises, then the shift into presence emptying, then the shift into knowing arriving, and then the shift into clinging unwinding.

Related posts

• How Meaning Reveals Itself
• The Rocky Path of Not Knowing

Meeting Bitterness

In this passage from Buddhahood Without Meditation, Ken describes, with unflinching honesty, feeling crushed by the difficulties he experienced in his practice. Bitterness took root because he became convinced that doors were forever closed to him. His poignant insights on how to meet bitterness speak deeply to my own experience.

Slowly, over many years, I came to understand how much of my life has been shaped by core reactive patterns. Their reach is terrifyingly pervasive, influencing layer upon layer of decisions and commitments. Then, at some point, the impact of those core patterns came sharply into view. Although I'm less reactive now than 10 or 20 years ago, I'm still living a life shaped by earlier patterns, and by choices I would not have made with hindsight. With that clarity came bitterness, and meeting that bitterness has proved more difficult that I ever imagined.

Ken’s emphasis on view has been helpful. First, his reminder that bitterness has to be experienced fully whenever it arises. If not experienced, it leaches out into interactions and relationships, colouring them in ways that lead away from what we intend. Secondly, Ken highlights the importance of holding open the possibility that a difficulty is not final. It may feel claustrophobic and absolute, like a verdict, yet other possibilities remain. They may be barely visible, no more than a crack in a door. But remembering that tiny crack keeps the heart from closing completely, and an open heart makes it possible for what now seems fixed to soften with time.

From Buddhahood Without Meditation 8

Ken: What kind of beast is a difficulty in practice?

Student: It's an experience.

Ken: Difficulty in practice is an experience.

Ken: I encountered in my own practice and still do, really, really great difficulties. And there was at that point, no way to regard them as just as an experience. It was overwhelmingly difficult. Physically and emotionally I was just crushed. And just to sit there and go, "This is just an experience," that just didn't work for me at all. They were sufficiently challenging, should I say, that I felt that there was no possibility—this was a bit over 20 years ago now—of ever making progress again, that the doors were forever closed. One of the consequences of that was a bitterness in my heart, whose depths I could not even begin to plumb. It was just there.

I was wrong on all accounts, but that took a lot of time before that was revealed. I bring this up for two reasons. One, when I say difficulty in practice is an experience I don't mean this in any trivial or glib way. Even the harshest and most devastating of difficulties is, in the end, an experience.

And the second reason I bring it up is that, even when you don't know it at the time—this is where the practice of view comes in—hold it out as a possibility so that things don't completely close down in you. That closing down is actually quite problematic. I've seen it in a lot of people who've also encountered some difficulties. It's good to keep the door open, even if it's only a crack, and it may only be a crack. And that's why view or outlook is very important.

Related posts

• Open to One Thousandth at a Time
• No Enemy, No Separation
• Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles

When Old Patterns Loosen

Practice can release energy locked in old conditioning, and it helps to let this energy spread evenly through the whole body. Otherwise it can concentrate, stagnate, tip into imbalance, and feed more reactivity. My experience has been that the breaking up of deeply entrenched reactive patterns happens unpredictably and can take years, decades, or a lifetime. As patterns fall apart, all kinds of experiences can arise: clarity, intensity, agitation, vulnerability, confusion—even feelings of craziness.

This guided meditation from A Trackless Path I has been very helpful to me over the years because it takes us through an energy dispersion practice that can help to balance unruly energy. I’ve found this practice immensely valuable, not just on retreats, but also as part of daily practice when life feels like a rollercoaster or like riding a wild horse. Ken explains this in great detail in When Energy Runs Wild.

I've found that when a part of a deeply conditioned pattern is dissolving or releasing, it doesn't need interpretation. It needs space, patience, and a way for the energy to redistribute itself. As Ken says, "It is best to move in the direction of balance."

From A Trackless Path I, 15

Ken: So, let’s just let the mind settle. Body on the cushion. Mind in the body. And relaxation in the mind.

[Bell]

I’m going to take you through an energy dispersion exercise for balancing energy at the end of sitting practice—often helpful in retreat situations or intensive practice situations.

So, let the body settle. Let the breath settle. And let the mind and heart settle. [Pause]

Then let your attention drop to the dantien, the center of your body, four fingers below your navel, a couple of inches in front of your spine, right in the center of your body. And feel energy gathering there.

You may feel that part of your body getting a little heavier. Maybe there’s a slight kinesthetic sensation. Maybe you have your own way of experiencing energy. Just feel energy collecting there, following the general principle of energy follows attention. [Pause]

Let your attention widen. And feel the energy spreading from the dantien throughout lower torso, and abdomen. Up into the upper abdomen and chest. Down into the pelvic region and the legs. Right down the legs to the toes, feet and toes. Now into your arms and down into your hands and right up into your head. Energy spreading gently, smoothly, through the whole body. [Pause]

And then feel the energy coming out of the pores of your skin all over your body, evenly, so that you come to be sitting in a field of energy that extends two or three inches beyond your body. Top and bottom, front, back, both sides, all over. And just sit for a few minutes in that field of energy. [Pause]

Then let it go. And rest for a minute or two. [Pause]

And again, bring your energy to the center of your body. Four fingers below the navel and a couple of inches in front of your spine, and feel energy gathering there again. [Pause]

And again, feel the energy spreading all through your torso and abdomen up into the chest, down into the pelvis, into the arms and legs and up into your head. [Pause]

So energy spreads evenly through your whole body. And feel the energy coming out of the pores of your skin, in front of your body and the back, top of the head, bottom of your legs and feet, arms, so you come to be sitting in a field of energy that extends two or three inches away from your body. [Pause]

Then let it all go and just rest. [Pause]

And once more, feel energy collecting in the dantien. Let it spread through all your body, abdomen, the torso, arms, legs, head. [Pause]

Feel it come out of the pores of your skin. And you’re sitting in a field of energy that extends two or three inches away from your body, evenly all over your whole body. And just rest there. [Pause]

[Three bells]

Now this is a simple dispersion exercise. As I said before, dispersion here doesn’t mean dissipating the energy. It means spreading it uniformly through the whole system so that imbalances are evened out, it doesn’t stagnate anywhere, cause problems. You can use this dispersion exercise after periods of meditation just to balance energy. And it’s particularly useful in retreat settings like this where one’s been practicing a lot. The level of energy has been raised. Sometimes imbalances have set up in the course of the day. But spread this out and it may help one to sleep more easily and peacefully rather than being a bit wired.

This is quite a safe technique. There are no inherent dangers in it that I know of. And if you’re feeling very high states of energy, you can extend it further than two or three inches. You can take it out six inches, or even six feet or more. So you just have this feeling of being in an even field of energy which is commensurate with what you’re feeling. And you’ll know how far to take it out by how you feel. It’s when you just begin to settle and feel in balance that will tell you that that’s the right distance to take it. And again, you’re not removing energy from your body, you’re creating a larger and larger field. So, again I want to emphasize this isn’t about dissipating the energy, but dispersing it so that it can balance out.

Related posts

• Seeing From the Inside
• A Key Principle in Practice
• What Am I Protecting?

No Enemy, No Separation

I’ve noticed that non-duality has become a kind of spiritual umbrella term. It can sound like a special state, a metaphysical concept, or a badge of accomplishment. By contrast, Ken has an uncommon knack for finding plain, experiential language: “nothing to push against,” “no separation,” “no enemy.” This language feels closer to practice and speaks to me much more deeply.

In the opening session of There Is No Enemy, Ken reveals that a shift in his own practice came through “really experiencing that there was just nothing to push against.” Towards the end of the session, and on several other occasions, he says that when attention rests in the experience of breathing, there is “less separation.”

Further into the retreat, in session 5, Ken says, “An enemy is an experience, not a fact.” That feels to me like one of the clearest ways of talking about what others might call non-dual understanding. The problem is not simply that we divide the world into subject and object in some philosophical sense. It is that we turn parts of experience into enemies. We set ourselves against what is arising, inwardly or outwardly, because something in us cannot bear to feel it, receive it, or make room for it.

Seen this way, no separation is the lived absence of opposition, what remains when there is nothing to push against. Distinctions still exist. Pain is still pain, conflict is still conflict, difficulty is still difficulty. But the habitual move of making an enemy, of hardening into self here and problem there, begins to relax.

Ken keeps bringing me back to lived experience. Not to an ultimate truth or absolute view, but to this breath, this contraction, this resistance, my habit of trying to get something out of my world. His use of language helps me sense what becomes possible when there is less and less separation.

From There Is No Enemy 1

Ken: So welcome to the fall retreat here at Mt. Baldy Zen Center. As you all know, the topic for the retreat is, There Is No Enemy.

Now, I’ll be quite up front with you. Exactly what we’ll be doing, I have some ideas, but we will see as it unfolds, because this will be the first time I’ve actually approached this topic in a retreat. And as Carrie said earlier, in a certain sense you’re all guinea pigs. But basically everybody who ever comes to retreat with me is a guinea pig because I very rarely do the same thing twice, so it’s always a bit of an experiment.

This phrase, there is no enemy, came up very much from my own experience. A bit over a year ago, I experienced a very significant shift in my practice, which was very deep and very disconcerting, because I’d just finished a ten-day retreat in New Mexico with a group of eighteen people, teaching them mahamudra. There’s a three-day break between retreats where I was hanging out with a couple of people who were there for both retreats, and then I was to do another ten-day retreat with a different group of people on dzogchen. And in the middle of this break, everything just shifted in me. And I no longer had any idea what I was going to teach in the second retreat. So it was very irritating—or not exactly irritating, just like, “Okay, now what?”

And the shift had a lot to do with really experiencing that there was just nothing to push against. And it was sometime during that time this phrase just came to mind, there is no enemy.

And I looked it up on Google and there was nothing. It is actually not a common phrase at all. Though it is now the name of an album put out by a rock band in Des Moines, Iowa. So if you look it up on Google, that’s what you’re going to get. And Google’s full of that stuff. But the album, or the group, is very honest, they say, “This is an album name, it is not a philosophy.” So I’m going to say, “This is a philosophy, not an album name.” [Laughter]

For most of us, there’s definitely a posture of opposition deeply, deeply conditioned. I was reading something on more of this brain imaging stuff and running some experiments on brain imaging with people watching sports. How if they’re watching a sports event between two teams from two different cities that they didn’t belong to, they just watched it and there was no particular brain activity in a certain region. But when one of the teams was from their city, then a whole other area of the brain lit up. Now, it’s very uncertain what the lighting up of the brain actually means in these PET scans. There’s a lot of speculation. But it does possibly suggest that this tribal identification, “us vs. them,” is very, very deeply conditioned in us, both biologically through evolution, psychologically, emotionally, etc. Yet it’s functional in a certain way in that it creates group cohesion which enhances survival, etc. But it also is the source of a great deal of suffering for ourselves and others, as all of us know.

So what we’re doing in spiritual practice, generally speaking, is trying to find a way to come to terms with this experience we call life. And all of you are here because you think that by attending this retreat it’s going help you in some way: either learn some skills, or build some capacities, or gain some insights or something like that, which will help you negotiate this experience in a better way. And I’m going to leave “better” here very, very undefined.

Now, we run into all kinds of things in the context of spiritual practice, many of which I’ve come to question quite deeply. One which I let go of a long time ago was the idea that all spiritual practices lead to the same thing. You know, there’s one enlightenment and, you know, it’s the same for everybody who experiences it. Ah, well maybe, but I don’t think so.

A few years ago I received an email inviting me to participate in a film project that was going to discuss the common vision of non-duality that was present in all spiritual traditions. I’m not that well known in North America, so I was very surprised to get this invitation. So I emailed back and said, “I’m very happy to, feel quite honored by this; however, in the spirit of full disclosure what you’re taking as a fact, I regard as a question.” Fifteen minutes later my phone rang. “What!?” was basically what the other person was saying. And we had a rather difficult conversation, which basically ended when I said, “Look let’s get down to basics. If you and I take a slice of pie from the same strawberry pie and each of us eat it, we actually have no idea whether we have the same experience or not. And if that’s the case for strawberry pie, I can’t see it’s going to be any different for non-dualistic vision, or whatever.” And there was sort of a grunt at the other end and we concluded the phone call. And an hour later I got an email saying that, “You’re right, you’re probably not the right person for this movie.” [Laughter] How to win friends and influence people: do not study with me.

So, I think it’s very important to keep that general aim in mind. In Buddhism, the aim is generally described as ending suffering. And people have many, many ideas about what that means. And a lot of people think you reach a state where you simply don’t suffer anymore, and so it’s a case of achieving a state. That may happen for some people. I’ve heard people describe that for them. I’m not sure that it happens for everybody. I’m not sure that it can happen for everybody. And my own feeling is that when we talk about ending suffering, it’s about learning how to live life a different way, so that the ending of suffering takes place moment to moment.

And to give you a very simple example of that, how many of you have had the experience of getting carried away by a thought and getting into quite a negative state because of that? [Laughter] Okay. So, there, ending suffering means being able to just experience that negative thought and not get all wrapped up in it and allowing it to propagate, etc.

Now I’m feeling somewhat sheepish teaching this retreat because I had a two-week experience of getting completely wrapped up with certain thoughts about AT&T. And I spent two weeks absolutely in full rage. Angry enough that people were hanging up on me at the other end of the phone, because they managed to do everything that irritated me. And eventually their corporate process ground through so everything got fixed and it’s all working now. So now I feel rather sheepish about the whole thing. But, yeah, I mean we create an awful lot of suffering not just for ourselves but for other people by not being able to experience certain things.

So one of the central theses of this retreat, and it’s something that I’ve certainly found through my own experience, is that the notion of enemy—of something opposing us—arises because in the interaction with whatever that is, a feeling comes up in us which we are unable to experience, for whatever reason. And me being without the internet was an intolerable experience for me. Because I do a lot of work through email and things like that so I just felt like. And if I’d been smart I would have said, “Oh, I’m without internet for a few days. Cool.” But since I’d been away for a month and I needed to catch up with like 300 emails I wasn’t too cool about that.

So there’s that experience in ourselves that we can’t experience and whatever is bringing up that experience we label as enemy. And now we try to get that out of our experience completely. So one of the things, as a kind of framework this evening, I want to offer a kind of systems perspective on this. I’m going to give you three definitions here: a definition of relationship, a definition of conflict, and a definition of enemy which we’ll be using in the context of this retreat.

Related posts

• Looking for Truth
• When the Picture Falls Apart
• Don't Miss the Point

Two Temptations

Reflecting on Seek Knowing, Not Truth by Ken McLeod showed me how often I succumb to the temptation of looking for an explanation when something hurts or feels confusing. I want an interpretation or a framework so that I can feel oriented. The habit of seeking "truth" is a pull towards certainty, a wish to pin things down, reach the right conclusion, and to feel nourished and protected by it.

I’m also prone to the other temptation he describes: a collapse into distrust, cynicism, and, sometimes even nihilism. If every formulation is limited, then why trust anyone or anything, why commit to anything, why not retreat into bitterness and despair, or decide to do whatever I damn well please?

And yet I know that practice points in a different direction altogether—towards meeting the movements of fear, projection, and reactivity directly, rather than trying to secure them in belief or dismiss them in cynicism. Practice asks me to know what is here without turning it into something to cling to or a target to attack.

Then there’s Ken's description of lineage, not as the handing down of truth, but as the passing on of methods. This way of viewing lineage feels so alive. It leaves room for respect without idealisation, and for discovery without self-importance.

From Seek Knowing, Not Truth

A king, disenchanted with his subjects’ dishonesty, decided to force them to tell the truth. When the city gates were opened one morning, gallows had been erected in front of them. A captain of the royal guard stood by. A herald announced, “Whoever will enter the city must first answer a question which will be put to them by the captain of the guard.”

Mullah Nasrudin, who had been waiting outside the gates of the city, stepped forward first. The captain spoke: “Where are you going? Tell the truth … the alternative is death by hanging.”

“I am going,” said Nasrudin, “to be hanged on those gallows.”

“I don’t believe you!” replied the guard.

Nasrudin calmly replied, “Very well then. If I have told a lie, hang me!”

“But that would make it the truth!” said the confused guard.

“Exactly,” said Nasrudin, “your truth.”

“Why do I have to experience this?”

That’s where it all starts, isn’t it? The this may be many things: suffering, loss, confusion, an unnamable angst, etc. Right away, you have to make a choice. Do you look for a formula that explains this (i.e., look for “The Truth”) or do you look for a way to know this completely? Watch out. In going after “The Truth,” you are sailing headlong into the Straits of Messina where Scylla and Charybdis—two monsters from Greek mythology—lie waiting.

The reliance on formulaic or conceptually based “truth” is one of the diseases of modernism. It takes expression in the two great religions of today: fundamentalism and materialism. Both seek to justify themselves through reason and logic. Materialists use the belief that “Only that which can be measured is real” to define their world. They worship science, which sees “The Truth” in the construction of models that account for what is measured. Fundamentalists (religious, economic, or political) use the recorded word of God, of Buddha, of Mohammed, Adam Smith, Lenin, or whomever, to define their world. Belief in the recorded word leads to “The Truth”, but it is usually belief in just those passages that embody their inherent prejudices. Both materialism and fundamentalism are closed systems that rely on conceptual processes, restrict the scope of inquiry and reflection, and marginalize other perspectives. Like Scylla, they are multi-headed monsters that attack anything (outside or inside) that asks basic questions about their approaches to life.

Opposite the Scylla of modernism lies the Charybdis of post-modernism, the questioning of any claim to objective “Truth”. Post-modernism sees all worldviews as constructions that arise from historical processes, and, as such, as a function of power rather than truth.

Because there is no objective reality, worldviews are constructed. Constructed worldviews embody the power and interests of those who build them. Therefore, they are inherently oppressive. Because they are oppressive, they should be taken apart (deconstructed). Deconstruction shows that all worldviews are relative. Hence, there is no objective reality. Because there is no objective reality, worldviews are constructed. Constructed world views…

This circular thinking leads nowhere and people are sucked into a whirlpool of nihilism, cynicism, and despair.

Many cultures and traditions find these waters difficult to navigate. Islam today faces exactly these issues and I’ve based the above critiques on this essay.

Buddhism has never postulated a “Truth” existing apart from experience itself. The respective lineages offer tools for a more mundane aim: to know whatever arises in experience, free from the projections of thought and emotion. Whether through the Theravadan practices of bare attention (mindfulness), the Mahayana practice of awakening to experience (bodhicitta), or the Vajrayana practices of direct awareness (mahamudra, dzogchen), the aim is one and the same: natural knowing that is not separate from experience.

Many people don’t know what to make of this possibility. Unable to fit natural knowing into their usual frame of reference, they react with suspicion and fear. In looking for a reference point that is more familiar, they conceptualize the result of practice as “The Truth” or some other ideal. Modernist tendencies kick in. “The Truth” becomes an object, either of scientific investigation or of belief.

To counteract this objectifying tendency, students are often told just to trust the lineage as the guarantee of transmission from an enlightened master to a perfectly devoted disciple. Two problems now arise. First, the sanctity of transmission sends a hidden message: what was once discovered cannot now be discovered again. Second, disillusionment inevitably sets in when the teacher turns out to be something less than their idea of an enlightened master and the student fails to be the perfectly devoted disciple. Unable to trust either their own experience or the lineage, they succumb to the bitterness of post-modern cynicism and despair.

Lineage is not the passing on of “The Truth” from one generation to another. It is the passing on of the methods, the tools, with which you uncover and live this natural knowing. Then you see that things are neither true nor not true, they just are. You see that things always change, that emotional reactions to change are suffering, and that you are not an entity that exists in opposition to experience.

You see that this knowing is there for anyone who makes the same efforts. It is not the result of reasoning. It is not the result of belief. It is not the property of those in power. Nor can it be used to oppress or control. Increasingly you appreciate not only the wisdom and understanding of those who have come before you, but their courage and efforts in letting so much conditioning and projection fall away. In this way, a clear open appreciation of lineage arises in you and a door to still deeper knowing opens.

A Chinese master lay dying. A close student, fearful that his teacher would die before he had understood what is ultimately true, came to him, and asked, “Dear master, please tell me the first truth.”

The old man smiled and said, “I will.”

Days passed, and the master’s life continued to wane. Again, the student approached. “Please, master, please tell me the first truth.”

“I will,” said his teacher, “but this is not the time.”

Soon after, the signs that death would soon claim him were clearly evident. Desperate, the student approached him a third time with the same request.

With his last ounce of strength, the master looked gently at him, gazing with an extraordinary clarity deep into the student’s eyes. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Ah, if I tell you the first truth, it will become the second,” and then he died.

Related posts

• Truth or Experience?
• A Key Principle in Practice

Leave No Ashes

In this short passage, Ken points to two aspects of practice. One is to experience completely, so that life is lived fully with few echoes or reverberations. The other is to do completely, to give full attention and leave nothing half-done or trailing behind.

I feel these as distinct yet inseparable. To experience completely asks for openness to whatever is here, pleasant, neutral, or painful. To do completely asks for wholehearted responses to life experiences. A key here is balance: openness can become inward, passive, or ungrounded, while wholehearted response can become driven, performative, or self-important.

This passage reminds me of the famous line in the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It also brings to mind the two wings of Mahayana practice, emptiness and compassion. Taken together, they point to a balanced practice: emptiness or wisdom prevents compassion from collapsing into sentimentality, attachment, or the need to fix everything, and compassion prevents wisdom from hardening into abstraction, coldness, or nihilism.

The Rocky Path of Not Knowing

This is an amazing half hour with Ken McLeod on mahamudra, beginning with students’ questions about the single mind, the absolute, and whether there is anything at all to hold on to.

Rather than offering a philosophical answer, Ken brings the inquiry back to direct experience, showing how the wish for certainty or belief can itself become an obstacle.

Again and again, he points away from explanation and towards the unsettling, vivid knowing that appears when we stop trying to resolve experience into something we can believe in.

From Learning Mahamudra 4

Ken: Some traditions have really cheery ways of looking at things. Dilgo Khyentse was once asked why do we practice? And he said, “To make the best of a bad situation.” [Laughter]

But here’s something from the Sufi tradition:

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.
You asked me what to do about them.
It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.
Face that one first.

Your Problem, Reflections, Idries Shah, p. 79

So, how’s it going as a member of the human race? [Pause] Let’s take the first part of this evening and hear about some of your practice experience, questions, challenges, or insights.

Chuck: Claire and I have been wondering for the last 15 years about the last sentence on page five.

Ken: Who and you? Claire. Oh, in this book?

Chuck: Yes. The mahamudra book.

Claire: The last paragraph on page five.

Chuck: And then there’s the next paragraph on the other page:

This essence is not something that exists within the mind-stream of just one individual person or just one buddha. It is the actual basis of all that appears and exists, the whole of samsara and nirvana.
(Then on the next page it sort of follows along with it.)
The Great Brahmin Saraha stated: “The single mind is the seed of everything. From it, samsaric existence and nirvana manifest.”

Lamp of Mahamudra, Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, Erik Pema Kunsang (translator), p. 6

What does all that mean?

Claire: And is there an absolute?

Ken: So that’s the real question, is there an absolute?

Chuck: That’s her question.

Ken: Okay, what’s yours?

Chuck: Mine is, what does it mean? I’m primarily interested in the one: “The single mind is the seed of everything. From it samsara and nirvana manifest.” Now, does this mean each one of us? Is that what it’s trying to say? It seemed so lonely. [Laughter]

Ken: May I be glib first? It’s only lonely if there’s somebody there.

Chuck: [Laughter] I see. So, there isn’t even a single mind seed?

Ken: Well, no, there isn’t. This is a very good question, Chuck. Let me respond to Claire’s question first, because that’s a little easier. At least for me, it’s a little easier. It may not be actually easier, but for me it is. Is there an absolute?

Claire: Is that single mind?

Ken: Yes. Well, in a phrase that became a cause celebre in the last decade, it depends what you mean by is.

Claire: Actually, it depends on what the meaning of is is.

Ken: Okay. It depends what the meaning of is is.

Claire: “It is the actual basis.”

Ken: Okay. It says, “It is the actual basis.”

Claire: It says, “It is the actual basis of all that appears and exists, the whole of samsara and nirvana.”

Ken: Yeah. Now, it’s one thing to have a philosophical discussion, and we can go into a philosophical discussion, but in my experience it’s relatively useless. What I would like to invite both of you to do is: when you read this, there’s something that happens in you. Okay. Claire, you’re first. What happens?

Claire: I would love there to be an absolute. I would like to have something to believe in, because I don’t believe in any of this, as you well know. [Laughter] If you’re a buddha and I’m a buddha, and we both experience emptiness, are we both experiencing the same thing?

Ken: Ah, now you move on to Chuck’s question, which is the more difficult question.

Claire: You haven’t answered mine.

Ken: Well, you just took care of yours by revealing what the real question is, which I appreciate. Thank you. It’s wonderful that you should ask this question because a week or two ago, I received an email inviting me to participate in a documentary film—to be interviewed—on the subject of the vision of nondual truth. And there were going to be representatives from the Buddhist tradition, and the Christian tradition, and the Sufi tradition, and Jewish tradition.

And the purpose of the documentary was to show that—while it may be expressed differently in different traditions—the vision of non-dual truth was the same in all traditions. And so I emailed back the producer and said, “I’m very honored and a little surprised that you’re asking me to participate. And I’d be very happy to. But you should know that what you take as a premise, I take as a question. And this may affect your interest in having me participate.”

So literally 10 minutes after I sent the email, my phone rang, “What do you mean?” [Laughs] And so we had about a 15 or 20 minute discussion, the core of which was something like, “Ken, when there’s no duality, there’s no experiencer and there’s no experience.”

I said, “Oh, are you out cold?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you out cold? Are you unconscious when you’re experiencing non-dual truth?”

“No.”

“Oh! So, there’s some awareness of some kind. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, awareness is an experience.”

He went, “Hmm, okay.”

“And how can I tell whether the experience you’re having of non-dual truth is the same as the experience I’m having of non-dual truth? We can’t even tell whether the experience of the strawberry pie you were eating and the experience I’m having when I’m eating strawberry pie, is the same experience. We can’t even know that. How can we tell whether our experience of non-dual truth is the same?”

So, there is no way—there is absolutely no way—of determining whether the experience one Buddhist is having is the same as the experience another Buddhist is having, or if the experience you’re having is the same as the experience Chuck is having, etc. There’s absolutely no way of knowing that.

Claire: Well, then what does that mean? What does this mean that it is the “seed of everything?”

Ken: Okay. Now this goes back to something that we discussed in the first class. What is the one thing you know?

Claire: That I’m aware.

Ken: Exactly. Yes, that’s the only thing. Now in your world, in the world which is illuminated by your awareness, which is not the world of stuff—it’s the world of your experience—how are things? How are things in your world?

Claire: My world is a good world.

Ken: Why are you here?

Claire: Why am I here?

Ken: So it’s basically a good world, but there’s something that gnaws at you, right?

Claire: [Pause] I think you’re a good teacher.

Ken: [Laughter] Why is that important to you?

Claire: The reason that I’m here, I think, is rather serious. And it has to do with this question. I would love to find something to believe in, because I don’t believe in nirvana, and I don’t believe in samsara. I don’t believe.

Ken: Why would you like to—or love to, as you put it—find something? Why would you love to find something to believe in? If you found something to believe in, what difference would that make?

Claire: Well, it really wouldn’t make any difference at this point in my life, but it would be interesting for me to know that, yes, there is a basis for all the things that I do. My awareness is what it is, my insight, the clarity which I nurture and have had experiences of—

Ken: That there’s some basis for that. What difference would it make knowing that there was some basis for it?

Claire: I don’t know. I really don’t know.

Ken: But it gnaws at you, doesn’t it? Yeah. Okay. That’s all I wanted; that it gnaws at you. Okay. So by this, what I’m trying to point out here is we know we’re aware; we’re aware of our world. And as we’ve talked about before, that world consists of thoughts, feelings, and sensations. And there’s something out of balance.

Claire: There’s something out of balance?

Ken: Yes. And the reason I can say that is there’s something that is gnawing at you. Okay? So, you’re here out of an interest in finding a way to address an imbalance that you experience.

Claire: Yeah. Perhaps. It’s better said than I’ve said it. [Laughter]

Ken: I think that was an agreement, don’t you? Okay. I’ll take that as a yes. That is why we study and practice Buddhism. Each of us has come here, and each of us undertakes this, because there’s something in each of us, and it may or may not be the same thing. That’s all conjecture. It’s something that gnaws; it disturbs. Sometimes it’s something that we can feel as being really upsetting and we’re really out of balance. And other times it’s just this little thing that keeps pushing at us or keeps us from resting. But it’s all the same reason. Now, what do you do about that?

Claire: Are you asking me?

Ken: Yes.

Claire: Sit.

Ken: Why?

Claire: Why? Because it’s the only thing that …

Ken: What does sitting do?

Claire: Because sometimes when I sit, or after I’ve sat, I have an insight into something that’s bothering me or gnawing at me. But this thing that I’m talking about now is much deeper than any of these others.

Ken: Yeah. But because of your experience with sitting—that has helped you to understand and to know things differently so that imbalances are addressed—you suspect that if you—

Claire: There may be an answer.

Ken: Okay, may. Fine. And so you’re willing to engage that path just on that basis, and that’s about it. Now, here’s the important point. Would believing in something actually help you in this?

Claire: [Pause] No. No, it wouldn’t. [Laughter]

Because what I do believe in is the ambiguity of not knowing.

Ken: Yeah. The not knowing provides a path, doesn’t it?

Claire: Yeah. But it gets rocky sometimes.

Ken: Oh, it does get rocky, you know. It also gets muddy, and sometimes it gets very, very narrow. Okay. Now, Chuck, your question: Is there one or many or something like that?

Chuck: Yeah.

Ken: Okay.

Chuck: “The single mind is the seed of everything.”

Ken: Now, does that mean the seed of everything in my world of experience, or the seed of everything in everybody’s world of experience? Is that your question?

Chuck: Yes, I think it should say for each individual.

Ken: Why?

Chuck: Because of what you were saying before; we have no idea whatever anybody else is thinking or what their world of experience is.

Ken: Is this okay with you?

Chuck: No.

Ken: No, it isn’t okay with you. What’s not okay about it? I think you said it earlier. It’s really lonely!

Chuck: Right. Yes. It’s one of these things that gnaw at you.

Ken: Okay. What experiences loneliness? [Pause] Or, may I go a step further? [Pause] Is what experiences loneliness, lonely?

Chuck: Not after it gets used to it. I mean, I’ve had times where I maybe go out on a long trip or something alone, and you start out, you feel a little bit alone.

Ken: Yeah. But I want you to look at—

Chuck: But then it clears up and—

Ken: But I want you to look a little deeper, okay? Let’s go back. What experiences loneliness?

Chuck: Well, this thing called “I,” I guess.

Ken: Is that what experiences loneliness?

Chuck: I think it’s a bodily experience and a mental experience, yes.

Ken: An emotional experience, yes. Okay. What experiences that? Now, this is important. [Pause] Go back to something that you and I messed around with many, many years ago. We did this a little bit the other day. So, just rub your hand on cloth. You experience texture, right? What experiences the texture?

Chuck: My awareness.

Ken: What experiences texture? Now, you look, right? What do you see?

Chuck: You don’t see anything.

Ken: Okay, so when you see nothing like this, you’re looking right at what experiences texture, right?

Chuck: Right. And that’s what experiences loneliness.

Ken: Yeah, but is it lonely?

Chuck: I don’t think so.

Ken: No. [Pause] Good. See what I’m pointing to?

Chuck: Yeah. On the exercise of capacity, I got to a point where I was looking at experience experiencing me. And then it’s all experience.

Ken: Yes. And what experiences that? Okay. And it becomes undefinable, right? That’s where you rest.

Chuck: I see.

Ken: You see. This may be revealing too much, but what the hell.

Student: We won’t get it anyway.

Ken: I hope somebody will get it. We have these questions. What is life? What am I? So forth and so forth. And our conditioning is such that we think there’s an answer; life is this and I am that … fill in the blank. And we further think that if we knew what filled in the blank, then everything would be fine. But this isn’t the case. It isn’t the case at all.

Just as Claire came to see in our little interchange that she started from the perspective, “I would love to believe,” but then saw that actually believing in something would be a hindrance in the very inquiry that she was engaged in. Any cognitive answer to these questions—I am … fill in the blank, life is … fill in the blank—is a stopping of awareness. It’s a block. It stops.

Well, this is very interesting. One of the genius aspects of Buddhism is that it encourages very, very explicitly, never stopping at anything. And it’s got all these tools; whatever you stop at, it blows it out, so that you can continue, just like the exchange I had with Claire. And that’s what all of that logic is about. It’s not about trying to prove anything. It’s about blowing up whatever’s blocking your path.

Chuck: I see. And then just looking.

Ken: And then you continue. What does this mean? It means that the answer to such questions as What am I? and What is life? is not a cognitive statement. It is the experience of awareness. That’s not the kind of answer we’re used to looking for. Do you follow? And what we’re doing in such practices as mahamudra, is developing the know-how, the capacity, and, hopefully, the willingness we have, to be able to engage that way. Because anything which says, “Okay, it is this,”—that’s a stopping point and everything dies right there.

So, when you’re reading these passages, don’t try to understand them intellectually or cognitively. I know this sounds a bit strange, and part of the problem is this was translated like 15, 20 years ago so the English is not as good as it could be. It’s not as clear as it could be, as you know. If you try to understand them intellectually or cognitively, it just ties you up or stops you. Rather, whenever you come across—and this is why I think your question here was very good—when you come across a phrase which throws something up in you, then move into that experience because something is waking you up there.

So open to that waking up, which is going to feel like, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on!” [Laughs] But that’s the sign that you’re waking up. Because there’s something there that has just removed, or undermined, or negated, or questioned, at least, something you actually believe in or want to believe in. And so here’s this statement which is saying … And that’s what all that jarring is, and confusion, and things like that. But that’s the waking up process.

Chuck: So just sit on it and meditate.

Ken: Yeah. And don’t meditate on it. Just be in the experience. And that’s essentially what we’re trying to do is learn how to be in the experience of whatever’s arising. This goes back to the point that I think Darren was raising last week or two weeks ago. When you’re awake, you don’t get to choose what you’re aware of. Someone could say, “That’s a real bummer.” But that’s just how it is.

Related posts

• How Meaning Reveals Itself
• A Simplicity That Costs Everything

Working With Numbness

Lately I’ve noticed an absence of emotional response in some situations that seem as though they should evoke horror, grief, or alarm. This numbness has a strange familiarity and I began to wonder how often I've felt numb without noticing or acknowledging it.

At first, I found myself looking back and wondering whether the numbness was tied to something old that had been suppressed. But in meditation, I noticed that the sense of disturbance came afterwards, with the thought that I should feel something. In other words, I found myself turning an experience into a problem to be solved.

In this exchange between Rita and Ken from A Trackless Path 2, even though Ken describes numbness as “basically a protective mechanism,” he cautions against judging too quickly or forcing an interpretation. Perhaps there is simply very little emotional movement. He shifts the emphasis from judgement to allowing.

The part of the exchange that goes deepest for me is Ken’s question about control and manipulation. Rather than going right into the experience of numbness, I put on the evaluation hat, analysing why it didn’t match an idea of how I thought I should respond. In retrospect I see how I've been swallowed—caught by a demand that experience conform to expectation.

Mindful of Ken's reminder to be clear about intention, when the sense of numbness arises, I've begun to work with Seeing from the Inside, also called the five-step practice, my first resort when there's disturbance.

From A Trackless Path II-4

Rita: If you’re sitting with things that are difficult, sometimes your experience of what arises is very vivid. It’s all there and there’s a lot to work with. Then sometimes maybe the next time you sit and everything’s pretty clear, and maybe the next time you sit, you just feel numb. And it’s a familiar numbness, because you’re aware that you’ve been keeping something suppressed, because you feel like you shouldn’t be feeling this. So there are a couple of ways to work with that. One would be to sit with the numbness, and let it unfold itself as it will. And the other would be to poke it a little bit by bringing to mind those things that you know that you’re suppressing in that moment. And so I’m wondering if they’re both kind of equal in ways of working, or if one is better than the other?

Ken: I don’t think one can say one is better than the other. There are additional ones, in addition to those two. When we start to practice, we learn various techniques, methods of practice. Some traditions, they train you in just one and then you learn how to apply that in everything. In others—and I’m thinking of my own training in the Tibetan tradition—you’re trained in hundreds, so you always have these arrows in your quiver and you pull them out.

The first step is to learn the techniques and learn them well enough so that you really know how they work and you develop facility with them. The second level of training is to train probably in a fewer number of techniques to the point that they just happen whenever you encounter certain things. That is, they become second nature. The third level of training is to remove everything inside you that prevents that technique from manifesting when it needs to.

As one trains in these, one is developing a great deal of knowledge about one’s self, about how the technique works in you, what works and doesn’t work, and there’s even a kind of evolution of the notion of what “this works” means. So as you mature in your practice, it becomes increasingly important to be clear about one’s intention. Because intention itself evolves. And I don’t mean you’ll always have a good reason, “I am doing this because,” that’s at the rational level. As one’s experience of practice matures, it can become much more intuitive in a felt sense rather than a conceptual sense. So, there’s “Oh, I need to go in this direction.”

And one of the things that I’ve learned, actually from Jeff here, is—one has to be a little careful with this—to explore one’s relationship with resistance. I’m going to put this in a kind of oxymoronic way. “How can I experience resistance without encountering resistance?” That is, you were saying there’s something in you that is causing some difficulty or disturbance. Okay, how can I experience that or work with that without creating more resistance, or making things more imbalanced than they are? Or maybe I need to make them more imbalanced. But it becomes an exploration of experience. And it’s an exploration of experience that is informed by the accumulated experience and understanding. It doesn’t come out of a vacuum, if you follow. So, there’s something you experience, you sense that is there, creates or generates a numbness which is basically a protective mechanism. So okay, experience the numbness. Maybe that helps. Maybe you poke at it. Maybe that helps. Maybe you just sit and wait because nothing works.

Within your question there’s another whole consideration and that is, to what extent are you trying to control or manipulate your experience? And one of the purposes of this retreat actually is to provide the opportunity of actually exploring not manipulating one’s experience in any way, and what’s that like. Because certain approaches to practice you get very used to directing experience in a certain way. Is this helpful?

Rita: Yes.

Related posts

• What Am I Protecting?
• A Key Principle in Practice

A Key Principle in Practice

In this passage from Mind Training in Seven Points, Ken distills a key principle in Buddhist practice: move into the experience of whatever is arising, right now.

In a few sentences he moves across several traditions. Theravadan practice speaks of the courage to endure what arises. Mahayana reframes experience as dream-like. Vajrayana instructions are equally direct: sit and be with everything, never lose attention for a moment, and don’t try to make anything different. Mahamudra conveys the principle in three pithy points: no distraction, no control, no work.

Methods and practices can easily become the focus. Yet all of them are training the same capacity — the ability to remain present with what is actually happening, even when it is uncomfortable. The practice, again and again,is simply to move into what is arising and be there.

From Mind Training in Seven Points 2

Ken: The key principle in all Buddhist practice is to move into the experience of whatever is arising, right in the present. In the Theravadan tradition this is characterized as the courage to endure what arises. In Mahayana, we cheat. Everything's a dream. In Vajrayana, or direct awareness techniques, sit and be with everything. Never lose attention for a moment. Don't try to make anything different. The mahamudra instructions—no distraction, no control, no work—mean you're not distracted by anything. You don't try to control your experience in any way. And you don't work to make some kind of experience happen, or some kind of ability happen. You're just right in what is. It's the same right across all Buddhism. Move right into the experience and be there. The whole point of all of these different techniques is to develop that ability. Whether it's Soto Zen, Theravadan, Vipassana, visualization meditations, six yogas of Naropa, dzogchen. It all comes down to that point.

Related posts

• Open to All Experience
• Bringing Attention Into Action

Zombies and Vulcans

In this passage from Then and Now, Ken jokes that if we tried to eliminate emotions entirely we might become like “zombies.” His quip also brings to mind the Vulcans from Star Trek, who are often portrayed as having a high degree of control over their emotions.

But Ken’s point goes in a very different direction. Practice is not about eliminating or controlling emotion. The question is whether emotions like attraction, aversion, pride, and jealousy organise around a solid sense of self, or whether they can be experienced openly as movements in mind.

When our capacity of attention is weak, emotions swallow us. Anger becomes my anger. Pride becomes my pride. We are carried away before we even know what has happened. But as attention develops, the same emotions can arise without taking over the whole field of experience. They are still felt, but are experienced as movement or energy rather than identity.

Ken’s image of emotions as waves in the ocean points to something simple yet profound. Waves are the nature of the ocean. Like emotions they arise naturally. The question is how we experience their movement. The aim of practice is not to be emotionless like a zombie, nor to control our emotions like a Vulcan. It is to develop the capacity to experience them completely. When that capacity of attention is present, emotions no longer swallow us. They arise, move, and pass, and we are no longer confused by them — mistaking them for who we are or what the world is.

From Then and Now 7

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

Ken: Get rid of them?

Kyle: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts

• Emotion Frames Thought
• Seeing From the Inside: Evolution and Cycles

Six Mornings, Six Worlds: A Guided Meditation

This long, guided meditation on the six realms, offered by Claudia Hansson, reflects ordinary, everyday experience: alarms, coffee, traffic, work, family. Long before anything significant happens, we may have already settled into a particular way of meeting life, and the world takes shape from there.

Each realm can be sensed first in the body: heat, tightening, hunger, dullness, ache, surge, ease. From there, the world appears in a corresponding way: hostile, insufficient, flat, fragile, competitive, or perfectly ordered. Lightning fast, the realm is already in place, shaping what can be seen, felt, and responded to.

Anger projects a world of opposition, greed a world of lack, instinct a world organised around survival, desire a world of enjoyment, jealousy a world of competition, and pride a world of superiority and certainty. The emotion and the world arise together. When a reactive emotion is operating, the world appears in a way that seems to confirm it. Lurching from one realm to into another, as we do all the time, makes their fluidity obvious. I like to think of the six realms not as identities, but as whole worlds of experience projected by reactive emotions. These arise and pass, often many times in a single day.

The striving that comes with a realm keeps it going—pushing against, grasping for, shutting down, chasing enjoyment, proving oneself, or maintaining position. The practice is to recognise which realm is operating, without judgement and without perpetuating the striving. No counter-move or improvement strategy is needed. When the striving drops, the realm loses its power. Recognition doesn’t vanquish the realm, but it can loosen whether it takes over and how completely.

From Monsters Under the Bed 5

Claudia: As Ken mentioned, what I’m going to do is try to do a guided meditation with you. So, I’d like you to get into a posture that’s comfortable. For this, I would recommend probably closing your eyes. [Pause]

So, let’s begin simply by moving our attention to the breath. Feeling the body come to rest. Feeling relaxation in your shoulders, in your arms. Noticing and experiencing the breathing happening in the body: how the breath moves, naturally on its own. You don’t need to control it. Finding its own pace. Now we’re going to shift our attention, keeping the breath in our awareness.

We’re going to imagine beginning our day in the hell realm. The alarm goes off; that’s your first irritant. You slam your hand down on the top of it. The alarm clock falls on the floor. You drag yourself out of bed, take your shower, get dressed. Go to have cereal and open the refrigerator, and one of the kids drank the last of the milk. You feel in the pit of your stomach a fire starts to burn. Your body starts to tighten up. You slam the refrigerator door, grab a piece of toast, and out the door you go.

You get in your car. You notice it’s raining. That really pisses you off. It’s going to slow the traffic down. You make your way to the closest Starbucks to grab some coffee. You’re standing in line. There’s a high school kid in front of you. A bunch of the kid's friends walk in the door and join ahead of you in the line. [Laughter] Now the fire in you just surges up. [Laughter] The world is out to get you. You finally get your coffee.

You get in your car. You grip the wheel. You feel tightness in your chest. Your shoulders are rigid. You try to keep a space between you and the next car because it’s raining. And every time you have a space, somebody cuts in right in front of you. You know they think they’re better than you.

You make your way to work. You get to work. And of course, the person that you least want to see is right in your face. And so you begin your day rigid, stuck–body angry and hot. Nothing is very pleasant about this life.

So, take a couple breaths. We’re going to begin the day again, shifting to the hungry ghost realm. The first thing you hear in the morning is one of the kids yelling, “Where’s the cereal? I can’t find the cereal! We’re out of milk!” Right away there’s kind of a wrenching. You feel your day hasn’t even begun and somebody wants something from you. You need a little peace and quiet. You have a sense you’re not going to get it. While you’re in the shower, your partner comes in, tries to have a conversation with you. Complaining that you’re spending too much time at work, “We’ve got to have a conversation about things.”

You just want to get to work, but all these people want something from you. You feel a deep hunger in your body already, and the day has barely begun. You get in the car to go to work. You just really want a little peace. Everybody around you wants something from you. You get to the Starbucks. All the kids—happy, talking—they don’t pay attention to you. They’re not going to give you the time of day. A person in line at the Starbucks screws up your coffee drink; that’s not going to help fill you up very much.

The need in your body is starting to ache. Your need is growing stronger as you jump in the car. Nothing seems to make you feel full. It’s like your life is a bottomless pit. Everyone around you wants something from you, and you can’t get what you need. You feel the strain as you get in the car to drive. You go to pull into a parking place; somebody beats you in. They even want your parking place now. You are hungry. You just want to get your coffee, get to work, do your job, and even that isn’t working very well.

The first thing in the door at work somebody comes at you with a pile of work that they want done. You want to explain that you need some time to catch up on all the backlog at work. But you know it’s hopeless. You’re never going to get caught up. You’re never going to feel like it’s done. That need is just going to keep growing. And that’s the way your day is.

So, take another breath or two. Now we’re going to be shifting into the animal realm. Your alarm goes off. You turn it off. It’s just another day. You feel, “Oh well, I’ve got to survive here. Nothing very interesting going on.” You take your shower. You eat the same thing every day for breakfast. You go outside and you notice it’s raining. “Oh well.”

You get in your car. You drive to Starbucks. You don’t even notice that the school kids are jamming in line in front of you. You just want your coffee. Your body feels heavy, dull, nothing coming in, nothing going out. You’re just doing what you have to do. You can’t feel your heart. You can’t feel much of anything.

You pretty much ignore everything that’s going on around you. You put your body in autopilot, and you drive to work. You don’t know what you passed. You don’t even notice when somebody pulls in front of you. If you need to put on the brakes, you put on the brakes. You can’t really afford to have your car wrecked, so you do what you have to do to survive here.

You manage to get yourself safely to work. The same people are there, day after day. The same annoyances. “Oh well.” Your body’s just kind of numb. You don’t really care much one way or the other. You just do what you have to do to survive from moment to moment.

Take another breath. Now we’re going to begin in the human realm. You wake up in the morning. You go to give your partner a hug. Just want to feel that connection with that person. And they kind of stiffly hug you back and say, “I had a really bad night.” [Laughter] And right away, you notice a little ache in your heart. It’s like, “Well, that didn’t feel very good.”

But that’s kind of the way it is in the human realm. If you have kids, you send them off to school. They’re already fighting. You look up at the sky and you notice it’s raining, and you say, “Well, I’m glad it’s raining. It’s been dry around here. Feels kind of good.” And you get in your car, and the first thing you notice is there’s a bad accident on the road from the rain. And a sadness moves over you, sinks into your body. You know somebody’s suffering. You feel some empathy that somebody’s life is going to be messed up for a while one way or the other.

You go to the nearest Starbucks. You have a clerk there that you kind of feel a connection with. So you kind of like that person. You have a little conversation with him. And they do a better job of making your coffee drink, so you really like to have them wait on you. So you pace yourself so that person’s going to be the one, so you can have that little conversation that makes you feel good in the morning. And a bunch of the school kids come jamming in the door and kind of screw up your whole plan. And you get the other clerk that isn’t very friendly and that doesn’t make you such a great drink.

You sigh, and you feel that in your body. You missed that connection. There’s a little bit of sadness there. You get in the car. The commute traffic’s really bad, people are jamming in all around you. You can feel yourself kind of getting frustrated with the whole situation. But you know, that’s kind of the way it is. Some days are better; some days are really crummy.

You get to work. And you have people that you really care about at work that you’re really connected with. And one of those people comes up to you and says, “I need to talk to you for a few minutes.” Sits down and tells you that they’re moving on. They’re going to move out of town. They’re going to be quitting their job, and they’re going to be going away. You feel in your body right away that sense of loss. You know it’s hard to keep those friendships active when people leave. Your heart aches a little bit. You start grieving before the person even leaves.

And that’s the way it is in the human realm. You want those connections. You want to have a little fun, a little enjoyment in life. But nothing is permanent and things constantly keep shifting. And a lot of sadness flows in and through your body.

So, take another breath. Now we’re going to begin the day in the titan realm. You wake up. This is an important day. You need to get to work. You’re going to be doing a presentation. And you’re going to be really good at it, because you want that next promotion. So you’re all business this morning. You get yourself dressed and you pick your clothes just right, so you’ll look really good. You grab something quick to eat. You notice it’s raining, but you’re not concerned. You know you can handle that. You feel strong. Your body feels good. You feel a sense of power moving through your body.

You get in your car. You notice there’s maybe an accident on the road. And you think, “Well, those people probably weren’t paying attention. But I’m careful, I can do this.” You get to Starbucks to get your coffee. Bunch of school kids start to cut in on you. You just walk right in front of them. [Laughter] You’re powerful. You’re not going to put up with that. You get your coffee. You make sure it’s made the way you want it. Because you tell the clerk that’s making your coffee exactly the way you want it—so it’s right.

You get behind the wheel of your car. You feel good. You feel strong. And then you look over in the lane beside you, and you see somebody with a brand new, beautiful Lexus convertible. And there’s a little pain that rises up, cause you know you’re not quite at the top yet. You’re good. And you’re going to do it. But that person, they probably’ve got it. So there’s a little bit of envy that starts to move in your body. And you can feel that. It’s like a burning desire.

You want it all. This is a juicy world. And you want to get it. So, you’re moving with all the energy you can bring to force to get what you want. And you’re pretty much going to step on anything in your way. So, there you are in the rain in your car. Somebody starts to hedge in. “Oh no, that’s not happening in my lane!” You step on the gas, and you move forward. And you feel that surge of pleasure that comes up when you’ve done it. You aced them out! And it feels really good.

You get to work. And you get ready for your presentation. And another person who’s doing a presentation the same day—and you know they’re your competitor—and you look to see what they have. And notice that one of their ideas is pretty good. So, you tell them, “Oh, that’s, yeah, that’s good.” You don’t say too much. But when you get in to do your presentation, you just casually bring out that idea into your presentation. You steal their thunder, and you do it really well. So when they get ready to make theirs, they’ve sort of lost their little pitch. When it’s over, you feel really good because you know you were the shining star that day. And that’s how your day goes in the titan realm.

Take one more breath. Move into the god realm. You don’t have an alarm clock. The cook’s already in the kitchen, taking care. The nanny’s dealing with the children. You don’t have to worry about that. You just wake up naturally in the morning. You run the company. So you get in when you feel like getting in. You feel a sense of real luxury around you. You take your time getting dressed. You have a huge walk-in closet. Lots of shoes and lots of clothes to choose from. You take whatever you need, whatever you want. You’re very confident. You know that what you do is really good. You get yourself dressed.

You get in your luxurious car. Or if you don’t feel like driving, you have your personal assistant drive you to work. When you get to work, you run this company. Your decision is always the right decision. You’re confident and you know it. In your body there’s a sense that you’re just on top of the world. You don’t notice who works around you. You don’t have to go to Starbucks, because people bring you coffee. So you don’t have to stand in any lines.

This is the god realm. Everything is wonderful. And you feel that surge all through your body. You’re right. You know it. You don’t have to listen to anybody else. And you don’t. And that’s the way your day is in the god realm.

Take a few moments to come back to your breath. And gently open up.

---

Related posts

• Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles
• Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 1
• Anger As Intel