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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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