Talk: Give Peace a Chance

An excerpt from Dharma Dialogues with Catherine Ingram, recorded in Los Angeles in 2016.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following is excerpted from a session of Dharma Dialogues called Give Peace a Chance.

It was recorded in Los Angeles in 2016.

The offering at this gathering is not any kind of teaching,

Practice,

Program,

Philosophy,

Training.

None of that.

The offering is simply to remember something that you already know,

Something very important that you already know,

And that you perhaps sometimes or often overlook.

I do.

Sometimes.

And that is just this simplicity,

This ease,

This kind of relaxed sense of presence,

A quietness,

Slowing it down so that you can feel yourself.

This very important thing is actually to feel this,

To feel this that is familiar.

And yet isn't it delicious when you just stop?

You know,

We had to drive in traffic for over an hour to get here.

And sitting down before you all came,

I could feel the movement in my body,

All the lights that had passed through my,

All the imagery and all the billboards and the speed and the traffic.

And then you stop.

And it was almost hard to give rise to a thought.

How nice that something so lovely is so close,

So near at hand.

And yet we forget,

Don't we?

We kind of forget.

We get caught up in the rush.

Or we get caught up in a sense that there's going to be something more.

If only we could unlock the right combination.

There's going to be some other thing out there,

A happier state or a better state somehow.

And we overlook,

We forget entirely,

We forget how easy it is when you just sort of rest into it.

You don't have to strain.

You don't have to do much with your mind at all.

You don't need a philosophy to feel yourself.

You don't need a training to feel yourself,

To feel yourself at ease.

It's no goal.

It's something you already know.

But it is also important to have some intentionality to visit this ease of being as much as you can.

Just as much as you can.

It doesn't have to be all the time,

But a lot of the time.

There are always moments that come along in this world.

I had one yesterday,

And it's coincidental that we happen to be having this conversation in this particular room because my longtime friend,

Steven Levine,

Died a couple of days ago.

And his son,

Noah,

Was the founder of this Against the Stream community here.

And this gathering here is happening in their space.

And I heard that news yesterday.

And of course,

As it does,

It threw me into lots of memories and feelings and a few tears.

You know,

We go along in this world and we talked about it last week as well.

Of course,

There are moments that take your breath away.

Take your breath away and rip your heart open,

Break your heart open again.

So it's not to suggest that this sense of ease of being is always just floating along in,

You know,

Like on a cloud of sweetness.

Sometimes there are very difficult moments,

Very sad,

Sad moments.

Tears come and they're welcome.

But a lot of times we're fretting and fussing and freaking out when we really don't need to be.

When it's like the good moments,

When everything's fine.

We imagine all kinds of stuff and freak ourselves out,

Make ourselves anxious or sad or fearful.

So in this context tonight,

Really the offering is to just rest.

Just really rest.

You may even feel like you're dozing off a little bit.

It's okay.

Just in this quiet place,

This simple place inside,

Your most essential taste of you,

Beyond your story,

Beyond the world,

Beyond the history.

Just this privilege of being.

Your simple taste of that.

Just relax.

You don't have to attain it.

It's already happening.

And this is a context.

That's the offering.

This is a context in which one gets to just soak in that.

Nothing extra is needed.

We'll soak together.

All right.

So if anyone has anything you'd like to discuss on these matters,

Please feel free.

I am plagued with all kinds of very,

Very battering,

Dark,

Resentful,

Ugly,

Ugly thoughts.

And I do have a tendency to get locked in a closet with them in my brain.

But something you said when I first started coming,

Really changed that for me,

Which was you said that I don't have to fight with my brain.

I don't have to fight the thoughts.

But that instead I could just see them for what they are,

Just thoughts,

Just stories in my head,

And allow them to roll through.

They come,

They plague me,

And they also go on their own.

And allowing myself to not fight the thoughts,

If one comes up,

I'm no longer going,

Oh,

I'm not allowed to think that.

I have to think of kittens and rainbows.

Instead of doing that,

I see them now.

It's just thoughts,

Just storytelling,

Conditioning.

And so I do entertain them for a bit,

Notice them,

And then they go.

So I'm wondering how that relates to what you guys were talking about.

Yeah.

If they're just passing thoughts,

And we all have,

All through the day,

All kinds of mishmash is going through the mind.

And most of it is inconsequential.

Even if some of it is a little bit negative,

Or grumbly,

Or resentful,

Or judging,

Or whatever,

Mostly it's just traversing the field of awareness.

It's going.

Occasionally,

One can get interested in a particular cluster of thoughts,

And perhaps some negative ones,

And swirl around in interest on those thoughts.

And then you might start to notice you're having a bodily reaction.

I was just going to say,

I start to notice my stomach is all tense,

Or my throat is closed up.

That's right.

Yes,

You start to notice the bodily triggers that are telling you that this is now actually producing chemistry in the body that is anxiety producing or is depressing.

And when that awareness,

Sometimes it takes the body to give you the real signal that now you're starting to really,

You know,

Muck around in this stuff.

When that starts to happen,

I suggest,

Rather than let it just keep going,

By the way,

I'm going to take a slight detour here.

Depression,

Classical depression,

Is essentially this.

It's basically negative thinking that keeps reinforcing itself and turns into very strong body chemistry.

And it's very,

Once the body chemistry is depressed long enough with negative thinking day after day,

Week after week,

Right,

It's on its own kind of,

It's made its own chemical soup,

Right,

That is now hard to get out of.

People will say,

You know,

They just wake up into it.

And their dreams are very depressing as well.

And so there's a whole swirl of that powerful emotional chemistry.

Right,

But we can feel little tastes of it,

Little,

Little,

You know,

Little samples,

Free samples all through the day.

And we can redirect rather than let them take hold.

Right.

Like if a mosquito lands on you,

You don't have to smash it,

But you can blow on it and make it go away,

You know.

You don't just sort of sit there and let thousands of them land and start feeding on you,

You know.

In these ways,

You begin to become quite like an alchemist with your own self.

You start to know when your chemistry is getting off.

And it may simply be,

You need to walk,

You need to take a walk,

You know,

It may be that.

That's apparently an incredible antidote to depression and anxiety.

You know,

So all of these little tricks,

I said last week,

This is mind management,

All these little tricks,

How you,

You know,

How you deal with the slips into the story,

The big story,

Right?

The dramatic story about me.

You know,

And even when,

Even,

Even at the point when it's really not interesting to you anymore,

You're committed to it.

You know,

It's like,

It's like reading War and Peace or something and you've got,

You know,

Still a hundred pages left,

You know,

You can't give up now.

So,

You know,

So there's an incredibly compelling component to the story,

You know.

But I promise that there can come a point where you just are sick to death of it and you know where it's going to go.

You know,

It's the troubling aspects of it,

You know.

So I recommend cutting it as you go,

Right?

Don't have to get rid of it all at once.

It doesn't happen that way.

It's just,

You know,

Arising in preferences and opinions and,

You know,

But judgments come and go.

It all becomes like dust in the wind.

You know,

It just,

It becomes inconsequential to you.

And so you've heard me say,

Jana,

So many times,

You know,

Assume the mind is mad,

You know,

Let it,

Let,

Who cares what its material is,

How many judgments a day come.

You may be someone who judges a lot,

Someone who judges a little.

It doesn't matter at all.

It's all equally empty material.

So you start to have a very free relationship with your conditioning as you're pointing to in your question.

You have a very free,

You don't care.

You're not trying to make it be nice,

You know.

It doesn't have to have altruistic thoughts.

And in this relaxation,

In this openness,

Gentleness,

In this free space around the material,

A kindness arises in you.

You're being kind to yourself,

First of all.

And a gentleness arises,

A tenderness arises,

Compassion arises naturally.

It's when we are on a program of some sort of purification,

Then there's a real chance for,

I'm gonna say cruelty,

Actually,

To become part of your conditioning.

Because it's like you're being whipped,

Right?

The abused become the abusers.

You're being pushed.

And we see it in all these ascetic traditions where there's a lot of repression and shutting down of the normal components of being a human being.

We see the effects of this in violence,

You know,

In rage.

And this is the opposite direction.

Thank you.

That great reminder about the big story of me and the emptiness of thoughts.

I tell you,

I want to have what you just said tattooed on my thigh so I can just read it over and over again.

Thank you.

You can get the MP3 when you're finished.

That'll be better.

Sometimes when you speak of these quiet moments,

You get all dreamy and you go,

Oh,

You know,

They're delicious.

They're like luxuriating in a bath.

And sometimes I totally feel that,

You know,

Like,

Oh,

Yes,

It's relaxed and it's delicious and sweet and luxurious and so peaceful.

And sometimes it's just kind of dry and boring.

I feel present and I'm just a little like bored and ho hum.

I'm not having crazy thoughts running through.

I'm focusing on the dishes or what I'm doing on the computer.

But I feel kind of dry.

This doesn't worry me.

Is it okay?

I'm going to say it's all okay.

They don't have to be delicious,

Right?

They don't have to be delicious or a warm bath.

You know,

I mean,

In fact,

Just being peaceful is good enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yes.

You've probably heard me tell this little,

You know,

Teaching part.

When I was a young practicing Buddhist back 100 years ago,

Our teachers used to say all the time that the Buddha said the highest form of happiness was peace.

Right.

And I used to think,

Not really.

I think of others.

You know,

I was young.

Peace seemed incredibly boring.

Like,

Really,

Like,

You know.

But it has become more and more true.

You know,

Really true.

Peace is really,

Really good.

And so these moments you're describing as boring and it's just nothing much happening.

They're peaceful.

Yes.

Yes,

They are.

Yeah.

Yeah,

They're peaceful.

A friend of mine years ago,

Many years ago,

The backstory is she's in a marriage that is fraught.

Let's use that word.

It's fraught.

Right.

And so one day she said,

And I have been so-called single,

Not by any deliberate choice,

But it's worked out that way for quite a long time.

And,

You know,

So she one day said to me,

You know,

Don't you get lonely?

Isn't this like a lonely life?

And I just shot back.

Well,

There are moments of loneliness,

But it's mostly very peaceful.

And I could see she almost blanched.

It was almost like it represented for a moment a whole other world because the situation I've actually stayed with them a lot.

And in the back in the day,

It wasn't peaceful.

You know,

There were other goodies.

There's other things to be had that they had,

But it wasn't peaceful.

Peace was not one of them.

And and for me,

That is impossible at this point.

Impossible.

For me,

Peace is the highest happiness and the other ones can come along as,

You know,

Condiments.

But the main meal,

I want peace.

So don't discount it when you experience it,

You know,

And when I use these words delicious or,

You know,

Like being in a warm bath and all of that,

Of course,

It does feel like that sometimes,

You know,

And sometimes,

You know,

Just being in an existence.

You have these,

You know,

These these I use the word last last week,

These flares of,

You know,

Wow,

You know,

That surprise you and delight you.

But a lot of the time,

It's just simply peaceful.

Thanks.

Yeah,

That goes on my other thigh.

You're gonna run out of space.

This has been in the deep.

If you'd like to know more about my work,

Book a private session by phone or Skype,

Or make a tax deductible donation in support of these podcasts,

Which would really help as it takes quite a lot of time and expense to produce them every week.

Please visit Catherine Ingram calm till next time.

Reviews

Beautiful. Down to earth teaching, full of wisdom and humour. Thanks Catherine!

Thank you! Nice, thoughtful reminders to just keep it simple.

Keep it simple. Great reminders.