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

The Activity Of Awakened Mind

The story of Ananda's awakening at the First Council touches me deeply. He is excluded, turns away in sadness, and then responds without hesitation when his name is called. There’s no deliberation, no strategy, no attempt to prove anything. Just a simple, immediate response: “Yes?”

Ken McLeod describes this as the activity of awakened mind—doing what needs to be done without preconception or self-reference. Mundane and ordinary though it may seem, Ananda's response inspires and sets a direction: to be present enough so that when life calls, one can respond without rehearsal—not from habit or identity, not from a need to help or fix, but simply because that’s what the moment requires.

Ken connects this way of living back to rituals, not as performances, but as training in attention. Offering torma to gods and demons acknowledges what pulls us into reactivity. Offering to dakinis and protectors nourishes the capacity to respond without thought, without delay, without “me” in the middle.

Seen this way, the activity of awakened mind is something we already touch, many times a day, and perhaps don’t notice. The practice, as Ken often reminds us, is about removing what gets in the way, so that when the moment comes, turning and saying “Yes?” is possible.

From Mind Training in Seven Points 5

Ken: Tibetan Buddhism, by and large, places a very heavy emphasis on ritual. You had rituals and ceremonies for almost everything. Any time anything went wrong in your life—for that matter any time anything went right in your life—you did a little ritual. So, these torma offerings are rituals, in which you prepare a bunch of stuff, and you recite a liturgy, and you do a visualization, and make an offering.

What is being acted out in the ritual is, in the case of giving torma to gods and demons, you are giving your attention to those things that hook us into reactive behaviors. Gods and demons are symbols, essentially, for those aspects, or those things that arise in our experience which feel good to us—those are the gods—and those things that feel bad to us—those are the demons. And ordinarily, when something feels good, we just feel good, and we attach to it, we want more, we’re attracted to it, and so forth. When something unpleasant happens, then we want to push it away, get rid of it, kill the messenger, and so forth.

By doing these little rituals, what you’re in effect doing is acknowledging, “Oh, that happened,“ and “Oh, that happened.” So you’re just noting it. And disengaging from the habituation which causes us to make a big deal, one way or the other, out of it. That’s the essential idea here. I’ve thought about this for many years, and I’m still at a loss as how to translate that ritual-based practice into the way we live life here in the West. If any of you have any ideas about that, I’m very open to them.

And then, offering torma to dakinis and protectors. Dakinis and protectors are symbols of the activity of awakened mind. And what does this phrase, the activity of awakened mind, mean? It means when we do something naturally from just knowing what to do without any preconception. We do this all the time, actually, we just don’t notice it. The story of Ananda’s enlightenment is relevant here.

Ananda was excluded from the conference following Buddha’s death, the conference of the senior students who were all arhats—a degree of enlightenment—who were going to decide what was going to be preserved of the Buddha’s teaching. It was very unfortunate Ananda was excluded from this, because he’d been at all of the Buddha’s teaching throughout the whole life of Buddha Shakyamuni, and he had a phonographic memory, so he had it all. And the story is told—this is the Zen version of the story, the Theravadan version is a little different—that Mahakashyapa, who was one of the top arhats, said, “No, you can’t come in because you’re not enlightened.” Ananda turned away very sadly, and Mahakashyapa said, “Ananda!”

And without any thought whatsoever, Ananda just turned around and said, “Yes?” And those kinds of simple responses, where we’re just right there, that is what the dakinis and protectors are symbolizing. You walk into a situation, and you see what needs to happen, and without any thought you just do it. That is the manifestation of the awakened mind. There is no sense of, “I am going to do this for this person.” It’s something that just happens like that. [Finger snap]

So, what you’re doing here, again, in these little rituals, is nourishing that quality in your own experience. In essence the offering of torma is an offering of attention to, on the one hand, those aspects of experience which pull us into reactive patterns, and on the other hand, those aspects of our experience and activity which are an expression of being awake.

Related posts

• Mistaking Effects for the Method
• Can You Imagine How Amitabha Must Feel?

Can You Imagine How Amitabha Must Feel?

When I first heard this story, I couldn’t see how the heartbreak Julia felt when reciting the four immeasurables verses connected with Ken McLeod's teaching story about a village elder knocking on an angry woman’s door. The story felt clever and funny, but it didn’t touch the place Julia was describing.

Recently, I listened again. I had been experiencing what feels like a consequence of practice: relationships falling away, a sense of loneliness or isolation, and grief arising in huge waves. This time, what stood out was the elder’s response. He doesn’t take sides, rebuke, explain, or attempt to fix anything. He stays, his heart breaking as he listens to her, and asks a single question: Can you imagine how Amitabha must feel? We don't know what happens for Mrs. Fong, but an unspoken implication is that the question shifts her perspective.

Compassion, Ken reminds us, doesn’t resolve suffering or make things right. It asks us to be present, without protection, perhaps the deepest form of companionship there is.

From Four Immeasurables 4

Ken: This is the fourth class on the four immeasurables. I believe the focus for practice over the last couple of weeks was compassion. Compassion being the wish that others not suffer, at least at one level. We’re working with the four lines:

May I be free from suffering, harm, and disturbance.
May I be present with everything I encounter.
May I experience the world wishing me freedom from pain.
May I accept things just as they are.
—Four immeasurables

What was your experience with this? What questions, insights, challenges? Julia.

Julia: I had two experiences that were frequent and notable. One was heartbreak. And the other one was very strong movement of energy as I did the lines.

Ken: As you did the lines. Describe the heartbreak.

Julia: [Pause] I had an increased awareness of the degree to which people suffer. And also a sense that for many people, they may not have the means available to them to help them with their suffering.

Ken: Thich Nhat Hahn tells a story of an extremely bad-tempered woman in a village in Vietnam. We’ll call her Mrs. Fong. And while she was very bad-tempered, she was also extremely devoted to Buddha Amitabha, who is the buddha of compassion.

And she would pray at the top of her voice to Amitabha every day for hours. [Laughter] People in the village found this somewhat disturbing. And because she was so short-tempered, her noise pollution was creating a body of resentment in the community.

And the elders met together to talk about what should be done. One of the elders said, “I know what to do. Leave it to me.”

So the next day when she was right in the middle of her prayers, he went over to her house and knocked on the door and said, “Mrs. Fong, I'd like to speak with you.” There was no response. After a few minutes, he knocked again, and said in a somewhat louder voice to be heard over her prayers, “Mrs. Fong. You know who it is. Please come down. I’d like to speak with you.” And the only indication that there was any effect was an increase in the decibel level of the prayers. So finally he knocked very, very loudly, and said, “Mrs. Fong. I really must speak with you. Please come down.”

The prayers stopped. There was a sound of a mala or rosary being slammed on the table. Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! The door was thrown open. Mrs Fong said, “You are disturbing me in my prayers!”

And the elder looked at her and said, “I’m very sorry. Obviously you are very agitated by this and very disturbed. But I’ve only been calling you for a few minutes. Can you imagine how Buddha Amitabha must feel?”[Laughter]

And what you say, Julia, is very much to the point. The immeasurables build on each other. When we start with equanimity, through equanimity, we come to the understanding that everything everybody does, they do for one and one reason only. In that moment, they think that what they’re doing, or what they’re saying, is going to make their world a little happier, or a little better.

Of course, because of the confusion, it often has the absolutely opposite result. But that’s why people do these things, to relieve some pressure internally or externally. “It’s just going to make things a little better.” Because they can’t stand the ways things are right then. Or they think, maybe it’s very good, and they just want it to be a little better. And they ruin it by their action. But that’s why they do things; that’s why we all do things. We think it’s going to make our world a little better. and in that way, a very profound way, we’re all the same.

Then in loving-kindness, we connect with this deep yearning, which drives our actions. We want to be happy. We tend to make a mess of it, because even though we want to be happy, we don’t really see things very clearly, so the actions we do aren’t really appropriate for the situation. So, it makes a mess.

As we come into touch with our own wish to be happy, it actually becomes quite easy to wish that others be happy, too. It doesn’t mean we have to like them. A lot of people confuse loving-kindness with liking. But there’s a difference between liking people and wanting others to be happy.

Then we come to compassion, which is the wish that others not suffer. And as we cultivate compassion, then as Julia describes, there’s a heartbreak. Because in order to cultivate compassion, we have to see the suffering that is there. And we tend to see it, not only in others, but also in ourselves. And the more intimately we become acquainted with our own suffering, the more clearly we understand that the process of suffering—how we create our suffering—operates exactly the same way in everybody else. Again, there’s no difference.

And now it’s a very short step to that heartbreak. Because we see and know how people are creating suffering for themselves all the time. And our heart goes out to them. And that heartbreak is not pity. It’s not feeling sorry for others. Each of those sentiments has an element of separation, and possibly an element of arrogance, superiority. In compassion, there is no sense of superiority. There’s just being present with the pain and suffering, our own and others. And when we do that, we experience a broken heart.

Related posts

• How Meaning Reveals Itself
• A Simplicity That Costs Everything

Recognising Reactivity in Real Time - Part 1

In this passage Ken describes one of several ways to recognise a reactive pattern. A hallmark of reactivity is an insistence on black-and-white inflexibility: “I want it this way—can’t have it that way.” This can show up as a demand for comfort or a refusal to feel discomfort. Behind those hard edges sit beliefs that quietly organise experience without ever announcing themselves.

A sense of shock arose when I first encountered Ken’s "indicators" of reactivity. I realised how pervasive reactive patterns were. Refrains of “can’t have this, must have that” were running much of my life, shaping behaviour in a multitude of ways. At the time, I believed the psychological explanation that my reactive patterns stemmed from a disorganised attachment style shaped by adverse childhood experiences. But as I took in more of what Ken presents in Karma: Awakening From Belief, I began to notice complexity in how patterns were layered. Eventually, I began to view psychological explanations of recurrent, mindless, mechanical behaviours as useful concepts rather than truths.

A next step was taking in Ken’s reminder that the point isn’t to eliminate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arise with beliefs and reactivity, but to notice them and hold them gently in attention, especially the ones that had already hardened. In recognising those silent “musts” and “can’ts,” something loosens. Space opens, and in that space lies the possibility of freedom from the same old patterns.

From Karma: Awakening from Belief 7

Also see Wake Up To Your Life, chapter 5

Ken: Several people have asked how you recognize a reactive pattern. Well, one of the features of a reactive pattern is, as I mentioned, that they're mechanical in nature. What's one of the characteristics of a mechanical system?

Student: No variation.

Ken: No variation. It just runs one way. So, a way to identify a reactive pattern—and it's very useful to do this—is, "Must be this way, can't be that. Have to have this, can't have that. Must have this, can't have that." Any time you have that going in you, chances are you're running a reactive pattern. We run into this all the time. The retreat that I did recently in Santa Fe, there was a little confusion the first day, and there was no coffee at breakfast. [Laughter]

Student: Not a good move.

Student: Ah, love it.

Ken: See, there we are, right there. "Must be this way, can't have that."

A nobleman once asked a dervish, "I've been a student of the path for many years but I feel I have gained no understanding at all." And the dervish replied, "That is because you are too arrogant." And the nobleman said, "If you weren't a holy man I would take offense at that remark; however, I am willing to listen. I will do whatever you say." And the dervish replied, "The situation is beyond hope. You will not do what I say, and so you cannot learn anything on this path." And the nobleman said, "I don't accept that. Give me your instruction." And the dervish said, "I want you to take off your fine clothes, put on some rags, wear a horse's feedbag full of oats in front of you and a sign saying 'Kick me' on the back." "I can't do that." "Exactly," said the dervish, "so you cannot learn."

We run into this all the time. And when you hear yourself say—and we have many ways of saying it: "Has to be this way." Some of the examples that were given in earlier conversations: "Have to be peaceful, can't have conflict." Reactive pattern. "It's against the rules." Other people, their conversations: "Can't be peaceful, have to be conflict." Same thing. It's just the reactive pattern running in a different direction. So anytime you run into that kind of inflexibility—black and white, this way or that—you're dealing with a reactive pattern.

Related posts:
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 2
Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles

Getting Black and Blue: Learning to Rest in Awareness

In this passage Ken explains how to build the capacity to rest in being awake—to stay present with whatever arises rather than trying to smooth it out. When he tells the story of The Princess and the Pea, he gives it a depth I’d never encountered before.

Hans Christian Andersen’s tale was a gentle satire, written by an outsider mocking the pretensions of the aristocracy that had once excluded him. Yet when I first heard it, I didn’t think of that at all. I saw myself in the princess—so sensitive, feeling everything so deeply. Ken’s teaching turned that sensitivity inside out: when you truly rest, you start to feel everything that keeps you from resting more deeply. Like the princess, you “get black and blue.” The discomfort isn’t a problem; it’s a gateway to awareness itself.

From Pointing Out Instructions

What has become clear to me over the years is that mahamudra, and all of the direct awareness practices, consist of making lots of relatively subtle effort to bring the mind—or attention, or you, whatever you want to say—into some form of presence and then resting. And the actual power of practice comes through resting, and the more completely you’re able to rest, the deeper and the more powerful your practice becomes. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m setting up a relatively unstructured schedule so that each of you can find, explore your own way of resting deeply. Now this resting doesn’t mean going to sleep. It means being able to rest and be awake but really rest in being awake.

Now how many of you know the story of The Princess and the Pea? Okay, anybody not familiar with that story? Well, it’s a fairy tale, I can’t remember all the details but a prince is looking for a princess to marry, and he’s told by a wise old woman that the only way to find out who a proper princess is, is to put a pea under a hundred mattresses. And so he invites one woman over after another and they sleep on this bed. Eventually one woman says, “I couldn’t sleep at all last night, just black and blue. That was the lumpiest bed I’ve ever had.” And so, this is the true princess because she can feel a pea under a hundred mattresses.

Now there are additional elements to that story but the main point here that I bring it up, is that when you actually rest then you feel all the stuff that prevents you from resting more deeply. And it just brings you right into connection with it. This is often not comfortable. You’re like the princess. You get black and blue.

The mahamudra practice and the direct awareness practice, in general, consists primarily of learning how to rest deeply at first with, and eventually in, one’s internal material. And this is found also in the Theravadan tradition in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and particularly in the Full Awareness of Breathing Sutra in which the breath is used as a way of coming to that deep resting. But one has to be awake in this. That’s very very important. If the mind is drowsy, or dull, or unclear then you’re just sitting in a dull state, and that’s not helpful at all.

So, for this reason often when people are starting this kind of practice they’re encouraged to practice for relatively short periods so that the mind is constantly being woken up, it is fresh and awake. So even if you’re practicing in a group you may start doing this, just resting completely for like literally a minute or two and then relaxing and then resting again for a minute or two [unclear] so that constantly fresh and awake mind and learning how to rest in that. And you may find that it works better for you to practice for half an hour and then go for a walk for 10 or 15 minutes, come back and practice again for half an hour.

This is what I want you to explore. But the quality that I want you to keep exploring is this quality of resting. When you begin to find that quality of resting in sitting meditation, I want you to take that quality of resting into simple activities such as walking. How can you rest in the same way when walking or eating? We won’t have to worry about conversation but eventually you take it into that. And you actually learn to do everything in this clear awake resting mind. And that provides a very, very good basis for the looking quality, which is also what we’re going into with mahamudra.

Related posts:
Working With Pain
Seeing From the Inside: Evolution and Cycles