A student asks Ken McLeod what he means by dropping in. Ken explains how, as we become familiar with meditation, we discover that we can simply be present without having to do anything. He then describes how to bring this into everyday life.
Sutra Session: The Art of Stopping.
Student: Referencing Wednesday, you you mentioned something in your talk about dropping in.
Ken: Oh, yes.
Student: And I was wondering if you could expand on that concept of dropping into.
Ken: On Wednesday, I was here and we went through a set of meditations, or different aspects to the same meditation:
Body like a mountain.
Breath like the sea.
Mind like the sky.And several people said, “Wow, that’s a different way to practice. Had a different experience, just like there.” And somebody asked about, "Okay, how do you take this into your life?" And I said, “What you do now is you learn how to drop.”
It’s basically a case of developing facility. Let’s take reading for example. Now, when we learn how to read, we spell out the words, or we spell out the sounds, but that’s just the learning process. As we gain facility with reading, then we just read and we absorb the meaning.
So, in the beginning, when we’re practicing meditation it’s very much learning the mechanics and actually how to sit and let the mind rest. And then we discover, “Oh, I can just sit here and I don’t have to do anything.” And that’s what a lot of people experienced on Wednesday night, just being there and not having to do anything. Is that right? Yeah. Okay.
So what you do during the day—and of course this is really hard—is, you stop. And you don’t do anything. That’s what I mean by dropping. You just stop.
There is something wonderfully liberating about Ken's instruction, like discovering that an itch doesn't have to be scratched. We don't have to get anywhere, produce a particular state, or make our experience different. We just stop.
But there are pitfalls. We want to become more open, and be free of thoughts and emotions that disturb us. Without noticing, we make waking up into something we hope to attain, rather than recognising what is already present. In his commentary on Gampopa's How to Lose Your Mind, Part 5, Ken highlights this very tendency. We may recognise a moment of openness or clarity, but then try to hold onto it, deepen it, or reproduce it. We turn an experience into a result, something we hope to achieve through practice. This is the paradox. Any effort to reach get somewhere keeps us engaged in precisely the activity Ken is asking us to stop.
In my own practice, I've slowly come to understand that I don't need to banish the longing I feel, or the impulse to do something about it. When I become caught up in these, I remember Ken's instruction.
Just stop.