In this passage from Buddhahood Without Meditation, Ken describes, with utter honesty, feeling crushed by the difficulties he experienced in his practice. Bitterness took root because he was 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 deeply core reactive patterns have shaped my life, influencing layer upon layer of decisions and commitments. At some point the consequences of those core patterns became clear: I am living the life those choices produced. 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. Firstly, that crushing bitterness has to be experienced whenever it arises, not acted out. If not experienced directly, it leaks out into relationships and interactions, 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 very small, no more than a crack in the door. Remembering that tiny crack keeps the heart from closing completely, and an open heart makes it possible for what now seems fixed to change over 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.