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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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