Meeting the Problem

Rather than immediately thinking, or trying to think of a solution, it’s more skillful to refer to embodiment and establish dispassion.

Transcript

A lot of the intentions that go on in dharma practice and intentions why people practice is about problem solving some kind, Fixing changing conditions and causes that are occurring. It's a natural enough rationale or reason. And you know we don't do so much in terms of language, Words, But because a lot of the problem is words, Is the, Is easily captured by words. The conceiving process itself is a problem, And the conceiving process not just as thoughts going really fast and speeding around with negative effects, But the very kind of modality of thought. Too fast, Can only work in terms of what it knows already. Language is just a series of codes and just noises that bodies make in some respects. And they're kind of things that happen in, In sort of brain seem to do them, You know. And these kind of immaterial experiences, They sort of flare up and rush around and futter out and race each other around and very much it's this mind base. As I said, You know, Whatever dhammas arise from mind, These are burning. And the Mano from the intellect is a subject of burning. That's what we have. By and large the experience that when we feel disoriented or overwhelmed or uncertain or you know, Losing, Every thought starts occurring. Thoughts start pumping up. Thought is the natural response to the disorientation. Get some thought will give us an answer and of course, Limited. Often thought becomes an agent of disorientation. It's predicting and naming and worrying about oneself and describing oneself and this and that and the other not knowing what to do and kind of storm cyclone sweeps through in the thinking mind and it can't, Can't disengage itself. It just adds more thoughts and even the systems, Meditation techniques and systems that we learn become thought. And we, You know, Just apply another think of reassuring thought on what I'm supposed to do. I'm trying this for that, You know, It's all the same agency is operating it. So ideally, You know, We get down to do very simple places for problem resolution. One is energetic, Roughly speaking bodily. The other is through understanding, Roughly speaking, The realm of dispassion, The realm of non engagement domains. And putting very, Very simply, You know, You get problem arises, Big problem arises, You feel rocked around and where are you? Where are you? Without describe using words without describing it without creating an abstract definition, Can you feel where you are? Can you feel a sense of presence? Can you go into that? Can you give it your trust? Can you try a little longer to maintain presence as a felt experience? And you let your body help you with that. Some places are very helpful, The soles of the feet, Palms, The hands, Opening, End of the breath, Ending of the out breath, Particularly. Things that are very helpful and by and large, When we lose orientation, We lose access these places or we close down or we go up into our breath goes up into the top of our chest. Feet hands slightly clenched, We lose our feet altogether and we just upper body trying to figure out what to do. So why we spend a lot of time just building the body field, As I've talked about that, These different forms and the form of the field of the body, Because it's not something we necessarily inhabit. And through not inhabiting that, That we've made ourselves vulnerable and lost access to the strength and the presence and the groundedness that can offer. I'd say by and large, The world in general doesn't even really know the body. It knows visual appearances of the body, Knows cosmetic descriptions of it, It knows, You know, Things of little value and measures makes much of that and to really know this body, This amazing gift. So it's mindfulness of body and very simple thing to say, Seemingly skip over that next thing. There's really a lot of benefit through really knowing it, Exploring presence. Buddha didn't waste his words saying within this body, World arises, Passes and the path. Not talking about the cosmetic body or the visual body, But felt. Untouched is the deathless in the body. The place where earth, Air, Fire and water have no footing. Earth, Air, Fire and water are like a simple code for body, You know, Elemental properties. So we contemplating body as just substance, Heaviness, Pressure, Heat, Energies flowing, Flooding, Rushing, Fiery vital, Pressures moving through air, Breathing in, Breathing out, All kinds of pressures moving through and the cohesive connecting quality of embodiment the way that resonances run across it like ripples across a lake. So now this is a little bit closer to what's being mentioned. And then where is it those elements don't bind. They have no footing and it's up to you. But here, When they come into harmony, Why a lot of practice can be just about soothing, Steadying, Balancing, Brightening up, Cooling down, Opening up this elemental body. So as they come into harmony, There is you sense something, Sense of a resonance there. It's just it's not measured in ordinary terms, But there's a depth and it can seem like, You know, We might imagine it to be a narrow channel, But I sense it's not. We can actually seem to maybe sense that there's a narrow channel within the body, Particularly the end of the breath. If you come in the breath is if you just turn back towards the spine, You come into somewhere that's came seemingly cooler, More open. But I don't think I think that's just a pathway in something that can't really be exactly measured apart from it's where these energetic forms cease, These qualities stop activating. Now this, Of course, Could be, You know, It's fairly it can be very subtle, But at least just building up that sense of reference to embodiment. And again, This counterintuitive because by and large, When the afflictions touches, Then we kind of think or look for an answer or what do I remember? And you remember the very simple thing here, Presence body and take take some time over until you get it, You really feel it. You can feel it. This is trying to explain the upright axis, The midline, The sense of balance, Groundedness and just stay with that. These rolling tides that rush through don't just quit in a second. They're like, So you just sometimes just the weather through and hold hold that key on that stuff. But you begin to sense you've got you've got a ground. You've got an orientation and the pressure, The panic, The fluster ceases. You'll be here. And it's worth a lot really to spend time with the dullness of the body and the agitation of the body and the pain in the body and all the tangles. Just this is what we call this is our work. Most of this practice is like 90% is just spade work, Just clearing ground, Creating forms. Yeah, About 8% is kind of working it out. Maybe 2% realization. Maybe. But when you get 2% realize, That's wow. You know, That's really, You know, It's worth it. Because every time there's a realization something you resets, You just don't quite go so deeply out into the samsaric tailspin. Yeah. And then dispassion, You get more ground for dispassion. This is just this to mind going loopy. You know, What you know, It's lost it loses it. And then the various forms you can come up with self criticism, You know, Depression, Doubt, Craving, Passion, Conceit, Stubbornness, You know, You know, Blame, Whatever, All the things it can come up with. It is endless box of tricks you can come up with. That's why you really it's it's recommended to use body because the bind is so slippery. There's nothing to do so much harm. Nothing to do so much harm as an ill directed mind. Such as nothing can do you so much harm as an ill directed mind. And nothing can do so much benefit as a mind that's tamed, Guarded, Protected. It's just kind of like pivotal, Isn't it? And so we want to catch how that mind is getting spun. And we have hidden hidden processes that we're not really clear about that come rolling through like, You know, As things clarify, As our behavior clarifies, It seems to give an opportunity for old karma to arise. You know, What's called upadhi, The acquisition, The residues, And you get a little bit of clarity, Take your foot off the throttle of your life. And this stuff comes up, It's got room to speak. That's process, That's process. And as you clear some things, You clear some behavioral things, You clear some, You know, Issues with people, You can get a little clearer, Gives room for more the old acquisitions to arise. And these acquisitions have power to them. They bind and they very much bind you back into the besieged self. And yeah, And self tries to operate, Do something to get out of that. And then really, So like, Really remember, There's a place that those acquisitions don't get to. It's called here. But it's not much. That's why one to develop it, All postures, All movements, Sweeping the floor, Having the dinner, You know, What's here, Even as these movements are happening, What's here. The process of using, Say what breathing or breath energy is about is about being able to move or let from into the active life, You could say, Yeah, Because, You know, Into the dynamic active life of the body, Which we're living in, Which our heartbeat and blood pressure, Our actions are all connected to this flesh body. And yet use that as a way of moderating so you can come from, Because all emotions affect the breathing. All mind states affect breathing. All must affect the breathing. So you can actually just, The more you get skilled in it, You can use the breathing just to allow some of these with these parties, These acquisitions arise, You can feel them and you breathe through them. And you use the breath to bring you back to just just here. Just presence. Use the breath to do that. So in a way, We have to deal with these acquisitions. In a way, You could say there's nothing going wrong. These acquisitions have to be dealt with, But they have to be cleaned out and not reactivated. Doubt. Ill will conceived either in oneself or conceived around one. Passions of various kinds. So much is to be here and breathing. Try to explain or breathing is not matter purely of respiration, But an energy, The energy of discharge, Ending of the out breath. You don't even have to focus on your nose or your belly, Just the overall sense of your shoulders when you breathe out. So remember, We're dealing with a different kind of body than the thing you see. It's everything in that body. You know, It's it's in sympathy. So you know, You can breathe through your eyebrows if you it's just the whole wherever you can find that place of discharge. It's the same energetic signal in this form picks up sense of release coming down your legs into the ground through your feet, Your hands and discharge. So just bear in mind when what is being talked about as a body here. There's a quietness, It's a it's a dimension, A domain of embodiment. And pretty much every every mass that I have known or heard of is always understood the need for protection of that through where you go. So here we're just trying to define a physical boundary. So stay within this sense of building up a certain presence within domains that takes on a particular quality to it. You feel this is your place, Your you can settle into it. You've cleared it, You've become oriented around it and more significantly cause purification in terms of actions, Speech and body actions. So there can be that sense of something one can rest and open up. Establish the field of the forms of the triple gem, Forms of goodwill. These are not trivial things and have you established those forms, They build up a strong field of protection and restraint and calming and confidence and your body. This body feels it. This energy body feels that. This is something that's, You know, Whole traditions of people have undertook and spent years, You know, Just just building up these these forms and fields and respecting them and venerating reciting them, Reiterating them, Checking their behavior against that. In some places they, You know, People on retreat, They every day they make some kind of acknowledgement of faults. Clear it, Clear it, Clear it. So that every day you've got that sense of clearing, Clearing, Clearing, No regret, Clearing, Clearing, Clearing. There's a residue of this in our evening chanting, Asking forgiveness, Of course. It's just a convention, But the idea is that every you can recognize, Oh well, You know, One was not awakened to, One got confused. Let's start again. You know, We weren't really following dumb, We were following thoughts or ideas or future and past or I am this or I'm not that, You know. And so, Okay, Start, Clear it, Start again. So you're always refreshing the place of your practice. So it's every time is new. Because in fact, Time is irrelevant. We're looking at karma here is the karmic field you're generating is that clear? I'm not saying there aren't any acquisitions in it. Of course, There's acquisitions come up these residues, But it's right now. Clearing, Clearing, Keeping it steady, Keeping it clear of laziness, Conceit, Jealousy, Negativities, You know, Harshness. You be clear, You know, These are not just kind of gestures, They're, They're, They're very real practices to build up this capacity. Heart brightens, Heart brightens. Because we're tuning into qualities that brighten the heart, Its respect, Its dignity, Its clarity, Its uprightness, Bright heart. Bright heart doesn't go down so quick as a, You know, It's got some strength in it. You know, The qualities of, You know, Even perhaps even more significant but requiring a basis the realm of dispassion, Detachment, Ceasing. And this is something that can, You know, We can even drop into can be that case that things have lined up, There is a harmony and the program stop chattering the negativity, The something stop with just the very free space. You're aware of everything that you spaced out, But just the program Sankara is stopping the compulsive habits, Mental habits, Psychological habits, Emotional habits. And that's a gift, You know, That comes through sincerity through sincere practices, Suddenly it, You know, We come out of the out of the inheritance and into something more beautiful, Very important when we recognize this, This possibilities and get those breaks. Even though, You know, More stuff can flood in and we get lost again, Just to remember whenever that occurs, Whenever any of it goes to any degree. That's something that's out of the out of the off the page of one's normal life. And it's, But the path to dispassion is essentially through wisdom, Understanding, Again, Unfortunately, It's this could have put it in words again, Conditionality, These are just causes and conditions. They are, You know, The afflictions and even the virtues are causes conditions. If you keep generating skillful causes, Attending to causes and conditions that give rise to lightness, Clarity, Then it's like that. If your mind gets caught up into other ones, It's like it goes the other way. And so, You know, Naturally, The strategy is to build up and keep refreshing oneself in the skillful conditions and building them up. But this is a basis to recognize even skillful conditions are conditions, They're generated, They are attuned to and the point of them tuning to those skillful conditions is to it's just this is just conditions. There's an it doesn't belong to anybody. They don't. And this is where the domain of release is in that. Again, Verbally doesn't sound very much at all. Terms of words. It's a different domain. What's this got to you know, There's nobody in this, What does it have to do to me? It's a domain of release. Obviously this is something that can open briefly momentarily, Sometimes after many years, Sometimes one gets it quite quickly and it disappears again, Closes again. You're very frustrating, You know, You get it in the first two years of practice, Then it disappears for 20. What did I do wrong? You try to get it back again or something. The ongoing groundwork of that is to is to abide in awareness of change impermanence, Arising passing sensations, Thoughts, Moods, Mind states, Arising passing in a way very obvious but also not quite so obvious to do. It takes a good foundation to be able to allow something to arise. Things can only pass if they've arisen. And by and large, When something unpleasant arises, We don't want it to arise anymore. That's enough of that. And that's probably in some cases quite wise because we may not have the resources. When there's enough strength and faith and clarity, You can allow something to arise, Express itself and cease. And they don't cease, They don't really cease by themselves unless they've fully arisen until one has opened and stepped back and let it pass through. And at first this isn't something one has the strength to do. Something arises and we just get very reactive to it or very spun out by it. So this is why the strengthening effect of mindfulness and samadhi is to create a foundation where the movements of hurt, Briefly confusion can pass through. It's a cleaning out. And sometimes they're not, When one has the strength, Sometimes they're not that strong. Sometimes it can be just that bearing with and letting something move through and the skill of not adding to it, Not proliferating around it, Not making more of it. So things can shift, Change. And just the imam practice had a time of great doubt. And it's doubt about meditation or non meditation, What kind of meditation or whether I should live in Britain or in Thailand, Whether being a monk was going to work for me or not. And this, That, This, That, The mind would come to one set of conclusions and that's that. And then as soon as I firmed it up, That sandcast would start to crumble again and it would swing the other way. Now you should do something else altogether. That would firm up as that firmed up, It would start to crumble and the mind would just oscillate between these two positions. And every time it oscillated, One wanted to make a firm decision. Get it, Let's get this very clear for once and for all. Let's sort this out, Figure it out, Get it definite. That's the end of the doubt. That's it, Yeah, That's it. Except on the other hand, And maybe, Could again, And then it would go the other way. That's it, No, No, Stay there, No. And it would just start to crumble. And then of course you could see it like this, But they say it this way. He says it like that. This went on for months. And trying to stop the doubt, Push it down. Stop thinking, Yeah. Stop thinking, That's it. Right, Clear enough. Now you just need to figure out what it is, Clear space. So it's quite seductive, Falling back into thought. What do you do for the rest of your life? Oh no, It's a big one, Isn't it? The rest of my life, I'm going to do it for the rest of my life. Make your mind up, Rest of your life, Doubt. You're born. Swing, Swing, Swing. And you see, Like it would be absent, It would not be there. I feel really quite comfortable when walking and I can start to feel it coming. And it would start to rise up. And then my mind would just go into this turmoil of doubt. So it got so that I've started to imagine it being like a dog following me around. And so when I sat down, This dog would come up and start licking, Biting. Get up and walk somewhere else, Get away from the dog. Sit down again, A dog would come up and start panting and chewing my ears and woofing. I get up and walk somewhere else. Go away, Go away, Go away. So once I was walking along a path and I could hear it, I could always feel it running up behind me, About to start thinking again, Starting to happen. I just stopped walking and turned around and said, Okay, Here I am. And the doubt jumped off and disappeared. So I jumped up and was just like, Okay, Fine, Here I am. And the doubt kind of jumped and it dematerialized, Disappeared, Dissolved. I think here you are. That's all you need know. This is all you can ever be. So moments of release are very open moments. Where the sankaras, These activations and forms, Impelled forms, Compulsive forms, You find a place to meet them. It's here. The moment of dispassion is when you just don't mind. You just kind of are not seeking an answer. It doesn't matter one way or another. You're not trying to make it, Get rid of it, Anything. You just want to meet that as it is. And you find a place where you can meet it. That's why we build up these forms to give us that ground, That refuge. I think arises, Passes, But you have to find the place and the structures that will let that occur. It's the beauty of it. Sankara, These are self-releasing. Nobody releases them. They release themselves when the I AM gets out of the way. So whenever our I AM starts appearing, This is a little motto. Okay I AM, Where am I? Now directly. Then fill it out. Fill it out. Live it. Inhabit it. Embody it. Inhabit it. Inhabit it.

Reviews

A steady hand, leading through experiencing of that which the mind creates.

His word create uplift on the whole being.
Thank you for this amazing experience
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Wonderful. He's talk boost the feeling in my body. Very nice and profound

Took a while to process this man's cadence, style, etc. once I did, wow!