The principle, don't protect any area of your life from your practice, has become central to how I practise, but the first time I heard it, I felt cold fear and hot shame. I knew immediately that there were many areas I was protecting.
In the retreat, Mind Training in Seven Points, Ken talks about finding a method of practice for this. The method I’ve come to rely on starts with the question, “What am I protecting?” For me, systematic reviews using frameworks like the six realms tend to lead to procrastination or resistance, whereas simply sitting with the question or praying does not. From there, I work with the five-step practice or, more recently, taking and sending—turning toward the places I would rather not look. I “let practice work on me,” as Ken often advises, until something releases. And then I go back and ask, “What am I still protecting?”
I’ve come to recognise the rigidity Ken describes. Working with whatever tightens when attention turns toward it has not been easy. Some of these areas feel non-negotiable, defended, off-limits. It can take years, even decades, for a protected area to be recognised and then to soften and release.
However difficult it may be, I know in the marrow of my bones that this principle matters deeply. If practice doesn’t reach into the places I would rather exclude, then it isn’t really practice at all.
From Mind Training in Seven Points 6
NOTE: In this passage, Ken mentions the The Mind Training Prayer. His translation, made several years after this retreat, is called Opening a Path to the Sea of Awakening Mind. Another translation can be found in The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva.
Ken: Then the third principle is usually phrased in the negative. Don’t be partial in your practice. And as Kongtrul writes in here, some people are really good at getting along with other people, but they have no patience when they get ill. And other people are the other way around. They can bear illness very easily and patiently and very constructively, but they really don’t get along with anybody. And maybe you can do those things, but somewhere else you’re falling down. And as it says elsewhere in the book, it’s very important for mind training to touch every aspect of your experience.
Another way that I put this is: don’t protect any area of your life from your practice. The area of life that you protect from your practice is reinforced. Two things happen. When you protect an area of life from your practice, and you continue to practice, because you practice, the general level of energy in the system increases, because that’s what practice does. It raises the level of energy, because you’re cultivating attention. So, energy pours into that area that you’re not paying attention to, and it pours into the blocking mechanism. Both of those get stronger. So, that area of your life gets more and more walled off from your conscious attention, and operates more and more strongly.
The result is various forms of imbalance. And we have seen this time and time again. Various teachers who can be very, very capable in giving instruction and guiding people in certain contexts. But you put them in another context, their desire for sex, money, fame, power, or whatever, is just right out of control. And the way that you see this is that, when you interact with a person if you hit an area where they are rigid or inflexible, that is an area that they’re protecting from their practice. It’s a good rule of thumb to have in mind.
So, one of the suggestions—just a slight diversion here—but something I wanted to say this evening. From my perspective, this is a very special group. The quality of practice is very solid, and I was noting that again in the walking meditation. So, for the record, you’re doing very well. And for the record, don’t let it go to your head. [Laughter] But it’s very solid here. And because of that, I want to push you a little bit further. Just as I said before, I’m going to raise the bar. [Laughter]
Okay. Now, some of you have been working with some quite personal issues—and appropriately so—that are coming up in the taking and sending. And that is very important. At the same time, this third principle, of making sure all bases are covered, is also very important.
Now, in a question that came up, I think yesterday, I sketched out "a" framework of practice that I used in my own practice of taking and sending. Going through the eight hot hells, and the eight cold hells, and the four kinds of hungry ghosts, and the different kinds of animals, and the four major and the four minor suffering of the human beings, and the suffering of the titan realm, and all the different problems in the god realm, and the different types of gods, etc., etc. That’s one possible framework.
Now, from our perspective, all of those—that whole Buddhist cosmology—represents the total possible mind states that any of us might experience in our lives. So, by meditating on every one of those, explicitly, you’re actually covering the whole range. And that’s a very traditional method of doing so.
I have a prayer with me which Jamgön Kongtrül wrote called The Mind Training Prayer. It’s never been translated into English that I know of. And he just goes through every conceivable emotion. He goes through the six realms. Then he goes through the five afflictions. Then he goes through the—I can’t remember all the other things—but one category after another. So, if you know these categories—and Buddhism is a tradition of lists, as some of you know—they’re very useful because they give you a framework.
And if you’re interested, I can sketch out the eight hot hells, that’s about hot anger, you know, the explosive kind. The cold hells are about hatred, that cold anger which freezes you inside. And then the hungry ghosts are—and I detailed this in Wake Up To Your Life—the various kinds of obscurations, where you look and you never see that there’s enough in the world. And it brings up all kinds of greed. But there’s another kind of obscuration, you have everything you need around you, but nothing satisfies. And that’s also represented in the hungry ghost realm.
And in the human realm, the four major sufferings are: birth, old-age, illness, and death. The four minor sufferings are: being with people you don’t want to be with, not being with people you do want to be with, trying to get what you don’t have, trying to keep what you do have.
I remember working with a student in Southern California, and I presented these because he was doing his meditation on the six realms. He looked at those, just those four, and he said, “That’s what I spend my life doing.” And these are the four sufferings of the human realm. And so I can go into that if anybody’s interested.
But you can use another framework. One that I thought of in preparing for this evening’s talk is to go through every socioeconomic status that you can think of, right from a homeless person on the street to Bill Gates—the corporate executive elite—and so forth. And just go through every one. You’re going to cover all the bases that way.
And some of you may think of other frameworks, but what I want to encourage you to do now, is to come up with a framework which is going to cover the whole range of human experience, and start working through that systematically in your meditation. Deborah.
Deborah: [Unclear]
Ken: No, not really. The six reactive emotions cover most. And that’s just the six realms. Okay? But really getting into all of the different kinds of desire, different kinds of pride, different kinds of jealousy. But some framework, so that you cover the whole range of experience that you’re ever likely to encounter in yourself. This is a way of not protecting any area of your life from your practice. Janneke.
Janneke: [Unclear]
Ken: You can start at the bottom and work up. You can start at the top and work down.
Janneke: How much time [unclear]?
Ken: Well, that depends. I mean, we have eight meditation periods in the day. So take six of them and put one on each realm. Or put five minutes on each realm in each session. Either way is fine. And some people work better shifting the focus of the practice fairly frequently, because it keeps them awake and engaged in the practice. Other people do better taking one topic and really going into it deeply. And that’s individual variation; there isn’t a right or wrong there. So find the way that works for you.
But what I want to emphasize now is developing a method of practice for yourselves—and I can help you with this in the interviews if you wish—which ensures that you cover a whole range of human experience. Okay? Any questions about that?
Student: [Unclear]
Ken: You’re not protecting any part of your life from your practice. For instance if you think, “I’m willing to do taking and sending with every aspect except control.” You know, “I like to have control of my life. So, I’m not going to give away control, and I’m not going to take lack of control.” Okay. That’s what I mean about protecting an area of practice. And god’s realm is a lot about control.