Beyond Hindrances

In this talk, Doug explores eight specific techniques for working with persistent hindrances: feelings not thoughts, crossed intentions, secondary hindrances, subtle intentions, dispassion, seeing impersonally, labels and language, and how hindrances want to self-destruct.

Transcript

Many years ago I noticed that my wandering thoughts usually took the form of explaining something to somebody.

This is not particularly unusual in a sense because the mind's job,

Given us to by evolution,

Is to know what's going on around us.

And so part of what it does is it just comments what's going on.

And if this is done lightly,

Gently,

It's actually no problem.

In meditation,

If we're sending out uplifted states and these comments are going around in the wings there,

It's not a problem.

If they overtake everything,

If you're in the really higher upper jhanas and you six are everything,

But usually they're not an issue.

Still,

I thought it was interesting that the mode of my comments was usually explaining things.

And I thought maybe I became a preacher and a psychotherapist because my mind liked to explain things to people.

Or maybe I liked to explain things to people because as a preacher and a psychotherapist,

It had developed a habit.

But whatever the case,

Rather than,

It was curious,

So rather than just ignore all this,

I just thought at one point to just ignore the content,

And just feel the tone.

And the tone of my explaining was not light.

In fact,

It was,

Sometimes it seemed very earnest,

Sometimes even urgent.

And so I wondered,

You know,

Is this what the Buddha meant by subtle intentions,

Like we were talking about last night?

After all,

I didn't see it until it rose in the moment.

It was not future-oriented.

It was just there in the present.

I wasn't doing it.

It just came up.

And it had this quality of sort of directing or shaping the mind going in a certain direction.

So I just kind of settled in and felt the tones and the textures of the thoughts and the comments and the voice that was speaking them.

And the earnestness turned into,

Moved in the direction of loneliness.

And sometimes the loneliness was really sort of deep and sharp.

And my mind said,

Let's not go there.

But I've been doing this practice a long time,

And my mind has developed this,

Sometimes I call it a kamikaze habit,

Of it just turns towards and relaxes anything that comes up that has a charge to it.

And so I did that.

And as I sort of relaxed into this loneliness,

The mind began to feel,

It was like a young child.

It was like a little boy that was running around trying to explain things to people,

Thinking if you could just get people to understand what he was explaining,

Maybe they would understand him.

There was a lot of emotional isolation in my early years.

When I look at the photos taken of me when I was young,

A lot of times the eyes are very forlorn.

Sometimes it breaks my heart just to look at those old pictures.

So I just softened into this loneliness,

Just sort of let down into it.

And the loneliness began to spread out.

It began to get thinner and bigger and more spacious.

I wasn't trying to push it away at all.

I was just open and soft and became more spacious and poignant and really okay.

It was okay.

And I remember the smiles arising,

Just these quiet smiles.

And then gradually it just faded into nothing,

Just this luminous,

Quiet mind,

No thoughts left,

Neither perception or non-perception.

And the next day the explaining was back.

So over the years I think this inclination towards explaining has been deeply,

Deeply wired into me,

Sort of embedded in me.

It doesn't happen all the time,

But when the mind has a little extra energy it just seems to kind of spark this and it kind of goes in that direction.

And it is what the Buddha called a cetana,

A subtle intention,

Or anusya,

Which is a subtle hindrance.

And I wish that inclination wasn't there.

I mean,

I'd really rather meditate with a different mind.

It's a kind of acute and a naive wish,

Because after all it's the mind I have.

Paradoxically,

To skillfully just accept these leanings and inclinations allows them to come to the surface a little more so that we can see them.

And then if we just let them be,

Then they'll kind of soften and relax and spread out and eventually dissipate all on their own.

Just have to see them,

Recognize them,

Release them,

Relax,

Be kind to them,

Radiate some kindness and be patient.

The six R's.

In the quiet recesses of our minds and hearts,

I think there are lots of these little inclinations and pushes and pulls that kind of sit there sort of below the radar a little bit.

These little leanings push the mind in one direction another.

We may not even see it sometimes,

But it kind of pushes it around.

And maybe your mind explains too,

Or wonders or muses or comments,

Or maybe not.

All of us have different kinds of inclinations.

Things go differently for each of us.

But the process of uprooting and allowing these to dissipate is pretty much the same,

Regardless of what our particular inclinations are.

So tonight I would like to talk about this process of just how to let this stuff surface and dissipate on its own.

Two nights ago we were exploring hindrances and sampajana,

This wide open awareness like a candle flame,

Its receptive qualities,

Exploring the hindrances,

Hindrance being anything that just pulls us out of the present.

And then last night we were looking at two different species of intentions,

Ones that are premeditated and focused on the future and others that are really non-premeditated and just arise spontaneously out of the internal and external environment.

And we experience these as attitudes that come up somewhat spontaneously.

We don't see them coming and we don't have control over them in the moment.

We have some influence how we respond to them,

Some influence on their likelihood to arise in the future,

But in the moment they just show up.

The Buddha was much more interested in these present in the moment intentions than in these future oriented plans that we make.

So tonight I want to just explore this relationship between intentions and hindrances and out of this suggest maybe like a little toolkit of strategies that you can use for working with these.

The basic dynamic with these just to see this is that these intentions arise and if we don't see them and relax them then they turn into inclinations.

And if the inclinations are not relaxed then they will lead into action.

And if the actions are repeated they become habits.

And if the habits go on and on they become an identity.

So some inclinations and intentions and habits are actually quite healthy and wholesome.

Part of what we're working on this week is just strengthening the habit of turning towards things relaxing into and six-R-ing.

And the habit of just radiating uplifted qualities.

And to walk down the street radiating metta and kindness to those around can be,

It's just a lovely habit.

To develop this habit of just six-R-ing anytime we feel an upset,

Just see where the tension is and just six-R-ing it is a lovely helpful habit.

Here there are some habits that aren't so fun,

You know.

Quick tempered,

Conflict avoidant,

Easily discouraged.

These can become habits and they're not so helpful.

So some habits give rise to happiness,

Some give rise to bummers.

So when intentions are helpful,

When these subtle intentions are helpful to us,

We actually tend not to notice them.

And when they're not so helpful we call them hindrances.

Where did that come from?

Came in there stirring things up.

Is it getting too warm in here?

A little bit.

Yeah.

Do you want the AC on for a little bit longer?

Yeah,

I can feel the temperature in the room going up and if it's not just me,

You know.

Well,

She just opened those a moment ago.

Okay,

We need a committee to study this problem.

Michelle is our committee.

If you have a version it's a squeak,

If you like it it's a song.

That's the end of the Dharma talk for tonight.

This is all planned.

So the question is how to work with these inclinations and intentions and habits that don't seem to serve us so well.

So you can think of it this way,

Hindrances and intentions,

The intentions that drive the hindrances,

You can think of them as they're like plants.

They're like plants.

And if we like the plant we call it a flower.

If we don't like the plant we call it a weed.

But the plant itself is just neutral,

It just is what it is.

So if we don't like the plant then the stems and the flowers that come up of it,

That's the hindrance that we see.

And then the roots are the intentions that are somehow a little bit under the ground that feed them and help them grow.

So if you cut a plant off at the ground level,

Some of them will die.

You know,

Some root systems are very shallow,

Some are deep,

Some have a lot of energy stored in them,

Some have very little.

So some plants you cut them off and they just die.

Then the lions have roots that go down as long,

You know,

Sometimes 10 or 15 feet.

And you cut those off at the surface and they,

Another one springs up.

But if you keep cutting them off before they have a chance to leaf out,

Eventually they use up all the energy and they will die.

And then there are some plants that you can cut them off at the surface and what happens is they just go dormant.

And years later they can spring back to life.

Five,

Six years,

Seven years ago I spent some time in the Palestinian territory in the West Bank.

I wanted to see what life was like for the Palestinians in,

You know,

Off the cameras everyday life.

And I learned a lot when I was there and,

But unexpectedly,

I learned a lot about olive trees because they're very much just a part of the agrarian culture there.

And olive trees are amazing.

Olive trees can live easily four or five hundred,

Sometimes a thousand years.

In fact,

There's some olive trees over there that they think go back to biblical times.

And the way they survive in this dry climate is that when the water disappears,

They seem to die.

But they actually just go dormant.

And it can be 20 or 30 years later some moisture comes and they just start sending out more leaves.

So plants vary from species to species and hindrances vary from species to species.

Some of them you can just 6R and they're gone very,

Very quickly.

As a matter of fact,

A lot of things you can 6R and they fade very quickly.

There are some hindrances that hang on a little longer and you 6R them and they will sort of gradually fade.

And then there are these other ones that you 6R and they just go dormant.

If you want to get them,

You really have to go below the surface.

You have to sort of dig down and figure out ways to take them out by the roots.

So here are eight tips,

Eight tips,

Eight techniques,

If you will,

For getting underneath the surface and rooting these things out.

To do this,

What you really have to do,

It sounds so easy to say,

But you have to be able to see the intention clearly and openly the intentions that are feeding the hindrance and allow that to soften.

So my example of my explaining that sort of habit of mine is an example of one of those deep intentions.

So some of these tools are ones we've talked about,

Some of the ones that you know,

But I just want to go through all of them so we can get this sort of collection together and you'll have a bunch that you can choose from.

And as I go through these different tools,

I would invite you to think about your practice and see if you have some examples of these so we can talk about them a little as we go along.

So the first one,

The most obvious one we mention a lot is when you're dealing with hindrances,

The first thing you want to do is to ignore the content,

Right?

Ignore the content and instead pay attention to the attitudes of the mind,

The textures of the mind,

The feeling tone.

Ignore the story lines,

The concepts,

The ideas,

The beliefs,

And look at the textures and the mood that's going on below the surface.

And as you do that,

It allows the,

Because if you turn from the content to the tone,

It allows the mindfulness to become subtle enough to begin to see those underlying intentions.

And if you don't see them,

I would say don't worry about it.

One thing you can't push it,

If you don't see it,

It's just because your awareness is not quite strong enough yet.

And as the practice goes on,

Your awareness will get stronger and you will see them.

You will see them.

And the best way to strengthen mindfulness is practice.

Six R's.

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Soften,

Smile,

Bring in some uplifted qualities,

Radiate.

As the energy,

As the tension drains off the six R's,

What happens is what's left behind is a stronger and stronger awareness.

We don't actually create a stronger awareness,

A clear awareness.

It's already here.

It just gets covered over by those tensions.

So let me ask about this one.

What are some thoughts that you have had?

Have you had thoughts that come up in meditation and you recognize,

Well,

I got six R's,

But somehow the thoughts seem more important?

Anybody dare share an example of some thought that came up that at the time it really seemed so important that you didn't want a six R?

I did one of those giving trees for a friend and I had written out what I wanted to say on the first line and somehow in the middle of my meditation,

Oh,

And it was too long.

And so one of the people up there helped me to think of something else to say.

And all of a sudden in the middle of meditation I realized,

Well,

That's too long too.

And did you come up with a shorter one?

Well,

I actually came up with a little bit of a different one in confining when I went back and I wasn't ready to six R.

I had to get up and go up one time.

That's right.

I talked the other night about designing that lamp.

I was just talking about ridiculous things but in the moment it seemed more important.

Other examples?

I sometimes think that initially in sitting down for meditation,

Especially in a new environment,

That survival instincts come to play.

For example,

You might go,

What's that itch?

And on a very primitive level,

Is it a biting ant?

Is it some threat to me at a physical level?

Right.

A tick.

Yeah,

It's a tick.

You know,

The old thing about the tie in the room,

What's that sound?

Could there be a snake behind me?

You're meditating,

You're sitting on this beautiful rock overlooking the trail and that thing in the bush that you just heard has got to be the rattlesnake that's just like that going for you.

And it's so much based on that survival instinct first before anything else,

Before you even think of,

Well I'm just really annoyed that it's hot today.

It's more like a threat assessment.

Yeah,

So there can be and sometimes that really is useful actually to pay attention to what the content is.

You sit down and you think,

Did I turn the heat off the pan on the stove?

Well,

If there's a possibility you did,

Probably what you want to do is go turn the stove off and then you can come back at 6 R.

So it's not like there's one way,

This is a relative world,

Everything is relative,

You have to know the context.

Okay,

So the important thing there is that you can take that momentary assessment to see if there's a real threat.

Usually there isn't.

And then there's also the psychological thing.

If you genuinely in the moment feel like getting this line right for the giving tree is more important than the meditation,

To just know that,

To just know that.

And so you might want to get up and do that,

But just know why you're doing it,

So it's not unconscious.

Okay.

Other juicy ones?

Ah,

Yeah,

There you go,

There you go,

And that can seem really,

Really important because we all know what a slob you are.

I mean that's what the voice says.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Other ones.

And these will sneak in,

There's a lot of hindrances that,

As Utejani says,

They never come in through the front door.

They come in sideways and sneak in there and they say,

I'm more important.

You know,

I'm in a different category,

This is something that,

It's not to be 6 R,

This is special.

And oftentimes they're related to,

You know,

Deep identity states or something like that.

But with a little caveat of making sure that it's actually not a rattlesnake curled up next to you,

It really helps,

Particularly those pressing ones,

To shift your attention away from the content and just feel,

You know,

The urgency that I was talking about,

Or the pressure in there and the texture,

And to 6 R that.

And then,

And then sometimes if it's something that objectively really does need to be taken care of,

You go do it.

But that's pretty rare.

At least in my experience,

There's about 1% of them there's a genuine threat.

My name is really hard.

I teach for America,

I love them,

And I have a master's in education and I'm writing in school.

This training has been wonderful for ideas.

And because of my professional experience,

It's rooted,

It's important that you write this down,

It's important that you stop.

So it feels like all the treatment you described.

Right,

Right.

You know,

Another thing that I do with this that I've always done on retreats is usually there's one time during the day,

Oftentimes just before I go to bed at night,

You know,

I'll sit down,

I'll just make some notes of stuff that came up for the day.

And what I find for me that was important,

This is just my way of handling it,

Is that I would just get the essential ideas down because there could be this temptation,

You know,

To write out the whole sermon that I was supposed to give the next month or so.

Well,

That would take forever.

But it's amazing that sometimes with those really important thoughts,

It actually just takes a sentence or two.

Well,

I have to put it aside because I have to make the invitation when I am sitting as a teacher.

Yeah,

No,

I'm just suggesting that you can experiment with this.

For some people it's actually really important just not to do it.

And for other people,

Maybe I'm just a little more OCD than some people,

But it was actually,

There would be less disturbance for me,

Just to take a quick note.

And it was interesting,

When I was writing the Buddha's Map,

I had gone right through the Sixth Jhana,

I mean I had gone from the fifth into the seventh.

So I was writing about the Sixth Jhana,

I went to Bhante and I said,

You've got to tell me more about the Sixth Jhana because I just,

I passed it.

And he looked at me and said,

I remember when you were in the Sixth Jhana.

And I went back and I got my notes out and I looked and there were very,

Very clear descriptions of the Sixth Jhana.

I didn't realize it was the Sixth Jhana,

But it was right there.

Okay,

So one toolkit,

Shift from the content and just look at the feeling tone and understand how you work with that.

Another thing that we've mentioned before is crossed intentions.

We rarely do anything for one reason alone.

We may tell ourselves that we want to meditate,

But deep down there may be this other intention of coming up with some really good retorts for that guy that sort of verbally caught you by surprise.

There is nothing,

This is my theory,

I haven't seen this in any books any place,

But my theory is that there is nothing that comes into the mind without an invitation.

So there's some,

Without an invitation,

Yeah,

So there's some part of us that invites it in.

So if there is a persistent thought or something that comes back in,

To spend a few moments,

You know,

Just ask yourself,

Is there some way I really want this here?

Because that can be a crossed intention and once you actually see it as something that some part of the mind wants,

Then you can sixar it.

But if you don't see it clearly,

Then it just works behind the scenes all the time.

So what are some hindrances that you've felt ambivalent about?

You know,

Something that you want to get rid of but secretly you kind of like it there,

You know.

Sexual fantasies.

I don't want sexual fantasies in my meditation.

Oh yeah,

Right,

Music,

Yeah.

That's the biggest hindrance in my practice is like very difficult to get the radio to stop playing.

Just a little aside,

You know,

This,

There's this way of working with those tunes and music that gets in here that I stumbled upon that I think is really,

Really helpful.

That,

How many people have ever had music playing in their head and have trouble getting rid of it?

Anybody has not.

So it's quite common.

But what you can do is just allow your awareness to just really settle in on the music itself.

And what I find is you listen to it more and more carefully and more openly and with less,

You know,

Kind of ambivalent feelings and let it be there.

What happens for me is it actually begins to slow down and then I see that what's actually happening,

The tune is not playing in my head.

There's a note and my mind remembers what the next note is and throws it out and throws out the next one and the next one.

And so if you just let the awareness come into the sound itself until it just gets subtler and more and more open,

It slows down to the point that eventually there's just one sound.

And if you are a sixer and relaxing,

Then the mind doesn't actually go and produce the next one.

Because that does that kind of soto voce,

You know,

It sort of does that behind the scene.

But if you're actually watching all that,

It's the same thing I found with,

With,

With incessant thoughts coming in.

At one point I got more interested in seeing the process of how thoughts arose.

And so I was actually sitting there welcoming them,

You know,

I just want to see how these arise.

And suddenly there were no thoughts.

There were just none.

Because I was interested in seeing them.

So they almost require a little bit of aversion or something.

It's the same,

Same thing I think with the music and I remember the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies used to play through my head.

It's like,

Where did that come from?

Similar,

But not exactly is,

That my mind often makes music out of other sounds and rhythms and stuff.

Like it used to drive me nuts in walking meditation.

I used to speak to Bonnie about it,

That the rhythm of my feet would be the,

The drum line for all of this other stuff.

Or this morning those doves and the rhythmic pattern that they use.

I was like,

God,

Can't you move on to the next.

.

.

Stop!

Stop really pissing me off.

And that often occurs.

Yeah.

Would anybody guess that Erica is a musician?

No,

And so really,

Because there's something of years and years of training the mind to be sensitive with this stuff and the mind tries to be compliant.

And so at some point you say,

Never mind.

Well,

The mind is there.

Well,

For years,

Just doesn't know how to turn it off.

I have one.

Sometimes when I sit down to meditate,

I'm sitting down to meditate and I get into,

I need to take up some balance.

Like again,

I was mentally- Another thing,

And it depends on what your practice is,

But when there's something like that,

That you can take the feeling and just sort of let go of the thoughts themselves,

But just open up the feeling.

If it's an uplifted one,

If it's a comfortable,

Lovely one that's gotten hooked on this other story line,

You can just let that feeling come in and send that to yourself or your spiritual friend and then let the words and stuff go away.

And that's,

I think,

Usually is a pretty wholesome and helpful way to sort of mine that.

Because,

I mean,

You're sitting here practicing,

You're inviting the mind to bring up these wonderful states and so it brings some up.

I did a lot of psychic training years ago and I used to channel daily for about four or five years.

And what I learned in all of that stuff is that when you're asking for help or guidance,

It's not like the universe really knows what you need.

And so sometimes,

I'm thinking with this,

It comes in and it's sort of like saying to the mind,

Yeah,

I want these states,

Not quite in that form,

But this is close,

This is good,

But we'll use this one.

And so you kind of have to fine tune it,

Not just slam it out,

But sort of give it credit where it's due and then you can build from it.

You have to kind of use what you've got sometimes.

So this is a tricky one and I think it's tricky in the West because part of the question is,

Is it objectively true?

And actually,

If you're meditating well,

To just kind of enjoy that good feeling is not bad.

I mean,

What you're talking about is where the ego gets involved and says,

Oh,

I'm this and I'm going out and write books,

I mean,

That's what I did.

And all this other stuff,

There's others that get on there.

But again,

Pride gets a lot of bad press,

You know.

And when pride is in the form of I'm better than that person,

I think it's problematic.

But when pride,

There's a sort of simpler stuff of just enjoying that,

You know,

In a good space and that you've done some stuff that's wholesome and helpful.

And I'm not suggesting spending a lot of time analyzing and teasing it apart,

But you might watch to see if that good feeling when it's there,

If there's tension in it.

And sometimes there isn't and other times you can feel the ego kind of at work under there.

That's a great example.

Okay,

So attitudes,

Not thoughts,

Crossed intentions,

Secondary hindrances.

I think I mentioned secondary hindrances in here before.

You're sitting there and a secondary hindrance comes up usually when there is a really persistent hindrance.

So for example,

You have a lot of restlessness and you're 6R and the restlessness comes back up again.

You know,

Maybe at first you actually 6R it quite openly,

But it keeps on coming back and then after a while there's a little place inside that develops some aversion to the restlessness.

So you've compounded it.

You haven't compounded it.

It has compounded.

And then what happens is that the mind will focus on the restlessness,

But this aversion is like the Wizard of Oz.

It's back there behind the screens pulling all the levers and you're actually focused on this when it's the version that's running it.

So it's particularly with a repeated one to just see if there's what the attitude in the mind is towards that recurring hindrance.

So what are some recurring hindrances for you that you get a little stuck with?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah.

One that I find very annoying is that you get to a quiet place.

You then don't do something.

Right.

Yeah,

You got a lot of laughs.

I assume that's familiar to a lot of people.

Because some of that,

This is,

You weren't here,

But I was talking about this thing about big surprise,

That the way,

If you go out and do something,

You get the mind going on something and go sit down.

It's almost like,

You know,

After all these years,

Maybe we don't need to be quite so naive but to recognize if you do something for a while and develop some momentum so you get a little bit of patience with it.

Yes.

I mean,

For me it was interesting because it was so clear that what it does is to illustrate the sort of automatic nature of those thoughts and how it's part of the human thing to always start elaborating the descriptions of the environment.

Yeah.

And then you go out and then the charge can go out of it and that of course decreases its frequency.

Yeah.

An example of that very same thing for me is actually here.

Because after the Dhamma talk I usually look through my notes for tomorrow's Dhamma talk just to make sure I have it all together.

And then I go out for a walk and then those thoughts keep going.

And I can get annoyed at it and then I see my annoyance at it and then it just sort of brings up my sense of humor.

And once I have a sense of humor about it then it kind of softens but if I fight it,

You know,

It just feeds more energy back into it.

I'd like to throw out the word judgment.

I think it fits under secondary hindrance but it comes up a lot.

So it can come up as a secondary hindrance where there is a hindrance that comes up and then the judgment is I ought to be able to deal with this better or something like that.

Yeah.

The judgment is actually something,

There's something else behind that that's more important that you have to deal with than the actual judgment.

That's why I call it a secondary.

Right.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anybody else here ever have a judgment about the…?

You know in the classical hindrances those judgments,

It's hard to see it but actually it's a form of doubt.

And I think sometimes when you can see the judgment,

The doubt in it,

Then it becomes a little easier to work with it directly.

Because again the judgment gets very tied up in the content of the judgment.

And that just doesn't go anywhere but if you can feel that there's this doubting behind it then you're back more into the attitude.

And I can hope that.

And also the sense of when you're judging somebody else because you're feeling insecure.

So really just criticizing them.

Yeah and there's a lot of things that fall into that.

I guess I think envy and jealousy,

They usually fall into that.

There's often times something underneath that.

Because if you feel perfectly adequate and comfortable with who you are then other people can be whoever they are.

But if they are the ones that shine some light on some insecurity then it's uncomfortable and then the mind wants to find something out there to blame.

Yeah.

Jim?

I think you and I talked about a lot of things like can be rooted in control.

And then behind that is fear.

We have this desire to want to control all kinds of situations.

And then we encourage people to really go gentle with themselves around control.

I mean society produces control freaks but as Tracy was saying there's always fear.

There's no fear.

There would be no need to control anything.

So if you can see the fear behind it then you can soften the fear then the control tends to dissipate.

That's when subtle intentions.

I talked a lot about this yesterday.

And the important thing is,

For example,

My example of playing solitaire,

That the subtle intentions are very very difficult to see.

And the thing that I found that helps it is actually to run for just a little bit.

You know,

To sit there and play that solitaire game and then watch the motivations that are alive then.

So if you feel those subtle ones that are activated and if you really want to see them,

It's to give a little more time to the recognition phase of the six R's.

And really the part about letting it be.

Because the mind can just skip right over them.

I don't know if it's in my new one.

I'll have to see.

I'm sure all this stuff is in there.

I don't know if I have a catalog quite this way.

What the book is about is,

It's organized around all the questions that I find I have to answer over and over and over again.

I had a therapist,

Used to call them slippery fish.

So I would be in therapy and she would say something and it would just zap me to the cord.

And like a minute later I couldn't remember it.

And she would laugh and she said,

Yeah this is a slippery fish.

When the mind can't hang onto it,

You know that's something that's really really helpful.

So it's going to be called Buddha's Tendrances,

The title of the book?

They're much more universal than that.

It's called,

To get in and out of the way,

Reflections on Meditation Insights that are Easily Forgotten.

I start off with slippery fish but it was just too hard to work into a title.

You have a lot of fisherman spots.

This looks like fish bait to me.

Other things about subtle intentions,

We talked about those yesterday.

Have you noticed any,

Since the Dharma talk yesterday,

Has any of that stuff showed up that you've noticed in your practice?

Are they too subtle?

I have.

I've sort of seen the whole,

I think there's a really interesting thing we can do about it just like the past.

The doorknob is sitting there and it's like I'm just reaching for it without thought and I'm stopped.

It's wonderful.

It's beyond me.

I like that.

Because yesterday's talk was opposed to something I'm trying to do.

Right.

Yeah,

And the fact that you can't see them until they're active is the part that makes them so subtle.

I guess that famous line that's the big catch phrase right now is mind the gap.

Mind the gap.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's just taking that time to be mindful of having that pause before you then have the impulse to act on whatever.

So that whatever it is in the relationship but minding the gap,

Whatever that situation is that's coming up.

But it's a new hot phrase right now.

Yeah.

I thought they were easy to sell jeans.

One of the things that's fun is I've been sort of taking dependents on what I feel,

What perceptions feel like and there's so much more positive in the words of the author.

I had noticed that before.

It's kind of well negative.

Yeah.

But if people pay attention there's so much more of this.

Yeah.

The neuroscientists say that the brain is about four times more sensitive to negatives.

And that's just evolutionary.

You know,

If you miss,

You don't see the piece of fruit,

You can get it in a few minutes.

If you miss the crunch of the animal foot over there,

Your DNA gets taken out of the gene pool.

So we're much more sensitive to that.

And you know,

Even in the Abhidhamma and a lot of the Buddhist psychology there are many,

Many,

Many more positive uplifted states than negatives.

It's just that they won't give us the same kind of trouble.

Rule number five.

Dispassion.

Dispassion.

So sometimes it helps,

You know,

If you're struggling with something,

To just try on the attitude of I don't care whether this comes or goes.

I don't care whether this hindrance continues or it disappears.

Because there can be that subtle aversion.

This was a big one for me.

I used to,

I remember sitting in Dhammasukha and the image was that I was sitting there and there was this big pipe over my head which was my karma.

And there was a hole in the pipe and so I'd be meditating and I'd say,

Well,

Okay,

Let's see what falls out of the pipe today.

It's actually with a lot of interest but really not caring.

Whether it's positive or negative or one thing or the other but just the chance to see it.

Trying to uproot deep hindrances tends to put more trying into the system but not necessarily much uprooting.

But if you cultivate this attitude of dispassion,

Then when the stuff comes up,

If you don't have a shtick with it,

If you're not trying to push it or pull it but you're just interested in seeing what it is,

Then you will see it more clearly.

And then the big secret in all this that I mentioned the other day is that as the awareness gets stronger,

It will take care of the hindrance.

You don't have to do it.

So,

In the Buddhist psychology they talk about near enemies and a near enemy is a state or quality that is very close to another one but is really its opposite.

So a near enemy of dispassion is disinterest.

I don't care.

I don't care.

Dispassion,

And we could argue about the connotations in English,

But what the Buddha was talking about about dispassion is one that is genuinely interested in seeing what's there.

So it's wide open to seeing it.

It's the good scientist.

And yeah,

If you say,

I don't care,

It's too much,

You're going to block it out.

That's just a form of aversion.

And that is problematic.

And I come,

I've developed a lot of dispassion basically by running into the cliff over and over.

You know,

I'm a slow learner.

Bhante sometimes still tells jokes about me because I'd come in and say,

Bhante,

I just figured another way to fall off the horse.

And there are some of us that just have to go do the wrong thing over and over again until you realize my trying to get rid of this just actually doesn't work.

And the mind will think,

Well,

Okay,

I'll just pretend that I'm okay with it and that will get rid of it.

So you get all those things and sometimes you just have to crash enough times that you really get it that it just doesn't work and then the dispassion comes out of that.

There's no other choice left but to do it the right way and that's what usually motivates me to do the right thing.

Some of us just have to know how your system works.

I'm a Taurus.

This is bringing to mind the levels of attachment and dispassion to me probably would be the one you seek the most,

Which I believe is the lowest level of attachment.

So you have no attachment to it at all.

So you said a few minutes ago that it's not a disinterest.

So how can you tie in this idea of zero attachment or very,

Very low attachment because you don't want to care really.

Yes,

And so you get some aversion to caring which is,

You can see all the problems that you have.

It's talking about the piles up.

So this is a very subtle area.

I know I mentioned it the other night but this is one of these things that's in my book because it needs to be said over and over and over again.

The difference between wisdom and let's say greed or aversion is subtle and yet really quite profound.

So you're meditating.

You don't come here to meditate unless you think there's something good that's going to come out of it.

So there's some kind of desire that brought you here.

So unwholesome desire goes for the results.

I want dispassion and it grabs for it.

I want enlightenment.

I want equanimity.

I want to be more loving and it goes for that.

What wisdom does is it investigates.

Wisdom in Buddhism is always about dependent origination.

Wisdom is always about seeing causes and conditions.

So wisdom says I want to be more peaceful and what are the things I can do that will create the conditions in which my mind will be more peaceful?

And then the wisdom goes out and it does that.

And if the mind becomes more peaceful that's great.

If the mind doesn't become more peaceful that's great too.

And it's like a good scientist.

It's like okay we'll take that one off the list.

Now let's see what will work.

So that's what the dispassion is.

It's actually really interested in it but it's not betting on any horse.

Are you saying dispassion is to observe but not want an outcome?

Yeah,

It's being more,

That's stating it a negative that is true but it's actually really being more interested in seeing the process than being concerned about what comes out of it.

Yeah,

I think the analogy of the science experiment is perfect.

Scientists would come in and decide let's see what results come up.

But we're going to do a blind study.

I'm not going to influence it one way or the other.

That's where the dispassion comes in.

We're going to allow results to arise and the only way that you can have a successful experiment is if you are not tinkering with it to have a fixed outcome.

You're not attached to the results.

Well not just attached but also you're not tinkering with the scientific evidence.

Not cheating.

We all know that if we see it from a scientific point of view we can easily see well yes exactly,

We wouldn't want that.

So we did a blind study and it was just interested in exactly how the results came out one way or the other.

But it's so hard that we're coming at it from a more humanistic point of view.

I don't know how much I've said it here because I say it a lot at other retreats but I'm a strong believer in empirical trials because all our systems are a little bit different and so there's a lot of these techniques.

I remember I was talking to at least a couple people today about stuff.

I wasn't sure whether to go this way or that way and say well just go try it.

But pay attention to the data.

Do not be the bad scientist that goes out there and tries something that doesn't work and says well do it again and do it again and do it again until I get the results I want.

But really pay attention to the data and try stuff out to see.

Tool number six.

My note here is impersonal.

Any time something feels personal you want to 6R it.

Any time something feels personal.

So for example if you are sitting by the ocean watching the sun go down after a lovely day there's probably very little sense of self there.

There's just a kind of flow of phenomena.

And then let's say some big raucous noise comes along and if there's complete dispassion then it's just a big raucous noise and you're mellow.

It's just a noise.

But what else can happen is a sense of self can come up that says I don't like that noise.

And then we view the noise as a hindrance that we've got to deal with.

Any time that there's a hindrance there is a sense of self that is suffering from it.

You can 6R the hindrance,

You can 6R the sense of self and it accomplishes the same thing.

Sitting here right now can you notice your sense of self?

A sense of meanness?

And can you see where it seems to reside in your energy system,

In your body?

And if you can see that,

A lot of people experience it more in the head.

You know we look out from here.

If you can just soften that,

You'll feel like just a little bit of tension there.

You can just soften the sense of self.

Just let it.

Some people get a little spacey.

Does this make sense?

It's a subtle one.

So what I would say is that deep-rooted hindrances,

Including these subtle ones,

Are always tangled up with our identity in some place.

This very sense of who we are.

One of the things that can happen is when you start uprooting these,

Is sometimes it can be joyful,

Sometimes it feels like you're falling apart.

I think in Buddha's map I talked about how I was chronically depressed for forty years.

And I really think I really struggled and worked hard for probably a good ten or twelve years to actually break out of that clinically.

And so I had this deep identity with struggle that had really kind of saved my life.

And then I got into meditation and at one point I could feel the struggle down underneath all that.

And as the awareness got down to that I realized you know I could act that there was a tension under that and I could just soften that and relax it.

And I was like,

Oh my goodness,

Am I going to remember how to tie my shoes?

There's so much stuff that can get built up around that.

So with any hindrance you can just actually look and see who the self is that's struggling with this and just see if there's a way to relax it a little bit.

What should you go in and try to understand something about the mind itself might feel tension around it?

This doesn't work very well.

We haven't talked about dependent origination,

But it's sort of the sequence of how things arise.

So there's a raw sensation and the raw sensation may be pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Pleasing,

Unpleasing,

Has a sort of feeling tone is what it's called.

And out of that if we like it we tend to lean into it,

If we don't like it we pull away from it.

That's the beginning of a sense of self because there's something there to push against and there's somebody that's pulling.

And then the next thing that happens is the mind tends to shrink wrap around that experience and label it.

And once it's got a label then it's off into thoughts and concepts and ideas,

Etc.

,

Etc.

So when you go in and try to analyze this stuff you're way up here and the tension is way down here.

Do you all know that Sufi story about the guy that lost his key and was looking for it under the street lamp?

He was looking and looking for his key and a friend of his came along and said,

What's going on?

I said,

I'm trying to find my key.

And so his friend looks at him and they look and they look and they can't find it.

And the friend says,

Why did you lose it?

And I said,

I lost it in the house.

He said,

What are you looking for out here?

And he said,

There's more light out here.

So,

You know,

Thoughts,

Concepts,

Ideas,

There's a lot of light out there,

You know,

It's very bright,

But that's not where the problem is.

So you really have to,

It goes back to the first one about going back to the attitudes and the tones underneath it.

Because even if you can figure it out,

Then you just have a figuring it out.

You're not in the ballpark of where the stuff arises.

When I was on my block a couple hours ago,

There was a hiker coming down.

I didn't know it was a hiker,

I thought it was just somebody from here.

Just a regular person rather than a hiker.

I'm looking around and because we had talked about six-houring with the self,

I was working on that and feeling lovely and open and expansive.

And all of a sudden I heard this really loud noise and this yellow lab comes bounding out of the woods and a few animals are rushing.

There was even a turkey that kind of carried off.

And immediately I felt all contracted.

Lovely.

Yeah,

It was a contrast of.

Right,

Right.

No,

That's what's lovely about it,

Because we go through that all the time.

But,

You know,

The first ennobling truth is that there is suffering and we need to understand it.

And so there's this wonderful,

You know,

As you're doing there,

You watch this whole process happening.

And if you go too quickly to try to fix it,

You don't see the whole process.

But as you can see,

The contraction and actually involuntary both physical and emotional responses to all that and see it clearly,

Then it actually starts to look less personal.

It was fast.

Because at first I didn't realize it was a dog.

All I knew was something,

You know,

So I turned and looked and,

You know,

Something later.

But it was too late by then.

I was already infected.

It was a threat.

But you experienced both and you were conscious of both of them.

So that's kind of the,

You've got your foot in the door.

Because you know there's this other possibility and this comes up with these causes and conditions.

And you see that in a sense it's not you.

There's just certain causes and conditions and this arises.

And that's the beginning of having a way to work with it.

I feel like there's a space now between myself and the facts and stories and concepts that make up my life,

My entire life.

And that is so nice.

It's very,

Really is,

It's like a thing that can haunt or be bothered,

Frightened.

And so you have a fearlessness now that you can just sort of walk through.

Which to me kind of comes back to Shambhala thought.

Well,

Yeah,

I can hear that because there's some Shambhala concepts about its etheric body,

Et cetera,

In there.

But the root experience there is having a kind of objective,

Non-identified perspective on your identity,

Which is great,

Which is great.

Ready for number seven?

This is about labels and language.

So pay attention to the language and the labels that you use in thinking and talking about hindrances in the mind and the mind.

So as we were talking about yesterday,

The Buddha said that perception and attention are conjoined,

They arise together.

So how we experience a phenomena can be deeply affected by how we label it.

For example,

In Pali,

The language that the suttas are recorded in,

The word for hindrance is nivarana.

It's translated as hindrance,

But what the word literally means is a covering or veil.

So think about your attitude towards a hindrance versus a veil or a covering.

So a hindrance is something that's in the way,

And there's a sort of automatic sort of struggle that's set up there.

A covering or veil,

At least for me,

There's some,

Oh,

I have to pick this up,

Take a look and see what's under it.

So what a nivarana is really talking about is it's something that there's some piece of wisdom or understanding that has been obscured,

And the nivarana is what obscures it.

And so the good news is that it points right to where that wisdom is.

We just have to pick up the veil.

But when you think of it as a hindrance,

It just creates a whole different set of attitudes towards it.

Another word is obstruction.

Right,

Right.

Yeah,

Obstruction.

And I was talking about,

Yeah,

One of the things I like about Renero de Renero is there are all those obstructions and hindrances that are clearly the things that help awaken them.

So the nivaranas are,

Again,

Messengers that show us where to look.

And if we look at them that way,

Then the hindrances actually become these messengers and guides,

Etc.

,

That are showing us where we need some more good attention.

Sadhu Utejaniya takes this one step further and is something that we can do in the retreat here.

He's very strong on not using personalized language so that rather than saying,

My mind is filled with wandering thoughts,

Or you say there are wandering thoughts in the mind.

It's a little counterintuitive at first.

I have Kuan Yin here,

So this is my statue of Kuan Yin.

So this is mine,

And what does that mean?

It means that I have control over what happens to it.

I can do what I want with it.

And if you do something with what I ask of me,

Then you're stealing it.

This is mine.

So we think of our minds as mine.

So you can just tell yourself,

No more hindrances,

No more obstructions,

There's just bliss and wisdom.

We don't have control over our minds.

They're not ours.

So to talk about this stuff as if ours is a little deluded.

I mean,

Even the body.

I mean,

If the body were really ours,

We could say,

Fat be gone,

20-20 vision,

I want to be able to bench press 500 pounds,

You know.

It just doesn't work that way.

Even our bodies are not our own.

I mean,

The mind and the body obey natural laws,

And we'll be talking about those more.

And if you learn those,

You can have some influence on them.

But we actually don't have control.

So what comes up on our mind,

We have some influence on it.

We don't have control.

So it is really much more actively,

Much more accurate to just drop the language of hindrances and ownership and just objectively describe what's going on.

Rather than say,

I hurt,

Or I'm uncomfortable,

Or I want some food,

Or I'm at peace,

Or I'm overrun with hindrances,

We say,

Oh,

There's pain in the body,

Or there's comfort in the body.

There's wanting in the mind.

There's loneliness in the mind.

There's clarity in the mind.

So when you say we have influence over our minds and minds,

You mean our awareness does,

Or?

Well,

That's an interesting metaphysical question,

What is it that has influence on it.

That the Buddhist stuff is always a middle path.

You know,

We don't have complete control of it,

But we do have some influence.

So there are intentions.

I mean,

You can,

As we were talking the other night,

You can restrain impulses,

And that's an influence.

And when you see,

I talked to you,

You know,

When I'm about throwing a rock up in the air and how it comes down on your head.

If you understand the law of gravity,

You don't do that.

If you understand how tension creates restlessness,

For example,

Then you can do things that relax the tension.

But if you just work hard to get rid of the restlessness,

You just put more tension into it and increase this.

So you have some influence if you understand how it works,

And you work within those laws.

But if you think you have control of it,

You know,

It just doesn't.

I've been reading some Zen stuff recently.

You went off the ranch.

And what's interesting is their emphasis on Buddha nature,

That no matter how deep the shit is,

You still have intrinsic Buddha nature.

And that's where the veil metaphor comes in.

It's the Buddha nature veil.

But it's a kind of cheer up strategy where you can always believe that,

Well,

I have Buddha nature,

Therefore I can appeal to that in some way,

Shape or form in a well-directed way as a way of getting some memory kind of.

That is not in any way to dispute what you're talking about in terms of original nature.

Right.

And the Buddha nature actually obeys natural laws,

Too.

So that's what a lot of the Buddha's teachings were about,

What those natural laws are,

So we can see objectively and impersonally.

So can you feel a difference between saying,

You know,

I have all this restlessness versus saying there's lots of thoughts in the mind?

So you might just try that on because part of what it does,

If you can feel that,

It kind of takes the onus off you a little bit,

Because it doesn't pretend you have control over something you don't have control of.

And it also allows,

For me anyway,

It's a little more sense of humor about it.

It's like,

Wow,

Look what's going through there.

And it puts you in a much wiser position to respond,

Compassionately and wisely,

To the stuff that's going on.

Just metaphysically speaking,

You can't really give up your responsibility,

Though.

You can give up your responsibility,

But it's not wise.

It's not the right path either.

So it just seems to me that it would be easier to just kind of give up your responsibility if you're not owning something and you're saying,

Well,

It's there,

It's not inside me,

It's running through,

You know what I mean,

I'm not owning it,

So therefore I'm not responsible for it.

So that's misusing it,

But there's a tendency to use that as a cop-out on that.

In Buddhism,

We talk about karma,

And karma really comes out of overt intentions.

So we are responsible for what we intend.

And it gets tricky with the subtle intentions because they will have an effect on us.

If you unconsciously and reflexively sort of smash a bug or something like that,

The effect of that is still with you.

So it still raises a problem because it's that saying,

You know,

The road to hell is paved in good intentions.

And so you can use that as a cop-out,

And that's where you really have to see where the middle way is in this.

See,

Objectively we don't have control,

We have some influence,

And what we do with that influence blows back very powerfully on what we are.

And the human heart naturally,

This way we're wired,

Cares a lot about others.

And so if you shut that off and say,

Pfft,

It's not mine,

You're actually doing some damage to how this organism that we're born into operates.

That's a good point.

One more.

Are you ready for it?

And I have to ask you,

Did I talk about how hindrances are all trying to self-destruct?

Okay,

I mentioned that to somebody here,

But I wanted to be sure and I didn't want to go through all this.

So I would say,

And this is,

We want to anthropomorphize hindrances just for the sake of illustration,

That hindrances actually want to get rid of themselves.

They want to retire,

Disappear,

Go away.

They just don't know how to do it.

So we don't have to fight with them,

We just have to give them what they want.

For example,

Restlessness.

So what does restlessness want to do?

Yeah.

Restlessness gets you moving,

Running,

Jumping,

The mind racing,

Etc.

Anything to actually burn off that energy.

Difficulty for meditators is that one way to burn off energy is thinking,

But it's very,

Very inefficient.

Thoughts burn very little energy,

So you can just go for a long,

Long,

Long,

Long time.

If you just have a few thoughts,

Sometimes if you've developed a lot of equanimity,

You can just let the thoughts run and they always burn out the energy and they're gone.

But other times the restless thoughts will trigger other restless thoughts or trigger other restless thoughts and so they're just kind of off and running.

So the hindrance does want to rest.

It does want to burn off that extra energy and quiet down.

It just doesn't know how to get there.

So it's our job,

Metaphysically,

It's really problematic here,

It's our job to bring the wisdom to it.

To recognize that the tension is the issue and then so you come to 6R to find a more effective way to drain the tension off.

Sloth and torpor basically wants to get rid of itself.

So sloth and torpor,

It's this groggy stuff and what does it want to do?

It actually wants to take a nap.

It actually wants to rest or do something that's revitalizing.

The difficulty with sloth and torpor is that sometimes the mind gets bogged down just because it's in a log jam.

Sometimes it gets bogged down because there's not enough energy and sloth and torpor itself doesn't know the difference.

If the mind is in a log jam,

The best thing to do may be to get up and go for a walk or get your blood moving,

Get some energy going through your system or something that loosens it all up.

If the basic problem is there's just not enough energy in your system to start off with,

Then probably the most efficient thing is to take a nap.

So we have to bring the wisdom to it and sometimes it's even unclear to us.

So this is where the empirical trials come in of just trying some different things until you find what's effective.

What's an actual concrete translation of what a log jam is?

What do you mean by a log jam?

I'm just thinking of it loosely when they used to cut down all the forest and then float the logs down the river.

And then sometimes,

Rather than them all flowing down,

There's someone who gets crossed and they get caught on the side and pretty soon you have this big pileup of logs.

That's still in the domain description of it as a wood problem.

What about it in terms of the model that it's giving of the psychology?

Oh,

Okay.

Well,

I have a psychological issue that my father was really kind of strict and Do you know what conflicts are?

Would it translate as irresolvable conflicts?

I would,

If you want to use some other metaphors,

It's spinning your wheels.

You feel the mind gets bogged down.

So you're trying to solve the problem but it's not clear,

Or you're trying to solve the hindrance that's coming to consciousness and it's not clear.

Sometimes the mind just goes fuzzy.

I mean,

That's what torpor is.

It just isn't clear.

You weren't here,

But I used the example the other night of sitting and reading a whole page and getting down to the bottom and you have no idea what was there.

There's just not enough awareness there.

And that can be because there's not enough energy there.

It can also be that you're tied up in knots and distracted internally about other things,

So there's not enough clarity to absorb it.

And if there's plenty of energy but it's just tied up spinning on itself,

Then sometimes moving the body is the best thing to do.

Just get some energy going through there.

But try some other techniques.

That's why it's on retreat to encourage people not to try to stay away from electronic instruments because they're very addictive.

It's very easy to get caught and get the mind spinning.

And then you can feel that.

You go to sit down and meditate and you want it to clear.

Well,

You've got all this stuff going on there.

And it actually takes a while to clear all that stuff out.

It may not be that you're just physically tired.

It just may be that it's overstimulated and kind of tied up on itself.

I have a question.

That sense of being on the hamster wheel of just grinding on one idea,

You just keep going over it and over it again and again,

Does that fall into this category?

Yeah.

What I would say if you get caught on one thing and it's grinding over and over and over again,

Usually what's going on is the mind thinks the problem is here and the problem is really over here.

So there's probably something subtler that's going on underneath it.

And so you can grind on this forever.

I think I gave the example the other night of people with fear when the underlying issue is that they're just scared of their anger.

You know,

So they work on the fear for a long time and it just won't clear because the issue was over here.

I would say usually if you have a reasonable amount of mindfulness and you're looking at something and it doesn't clear,

It's probably because you're looking for the key under the street lamp when it's in the house.

Do you have any hot tips for finding a house in that case?

Recognize,

Release,

Relax.

The best help in finding out where the thing is lost is actually a clear mind.

The mind knows vastly more than we know it knows.

It really does.

You know,

You can be walking through the house and lights go out and you don't know it,

But the mind knows where all the furniture is.

Today I was talking to an example of,

You know,

You walk through a room of people and somebody says,

Was Cameron there?

And I said,

Well,

Gee,

I don't know.

Oh,

Wait a minute.

Oh,

Yeah,

He was sitting over there.

You know,

So the mind will absorb all this stuff,

But we just don't quite have access to it.

So to the extent that we can unwind the tension and it allows it to clear.

In meditation sometimes the way this is done,

Since this is an insight practice,

Is if you have something where you're really stuck on,

You don't know what to do with it,

You can just very gently just ask the question,

What am I missing?

What do I need to do?

And then you just release the question and you go into meditation.

The Quakers call this holding a question,

You know,

And so let it float into the background.

And you go into meditation and you just do the meditation,

But you have alerted the mind that I can't say enough,

Really wants to be compliant.

It's just you spend all this time avoiding it,

You know,

This thing.

So you say,

You know,

I really want to understand this.

And then you sit back in meditation and then sometimes that helps bring that insight forward about what it is.

Anybody have other techniques for…?

Q.

On the jhana factors,

The five jhana factors are supposed to be opposite of the five indrances.

Not necessarily against the opposite,

But in conjunction with each other against the hindrance.

Or the knowledge of it,

The knowledge of the felt sense of the factor against the knowledge of the felt sense of the hindrance.

A.

Yeah.

And I would say any insight practice,

That's what you're actually trying to do is clear this.

And the jhanas,

At least,

You know,

The pao-ok system,

They actually line all those stuff up.

And there's a lot to that.

But I don't want to get too technical about that stuff at this point.

But to say that the general thing,

Though,

Is actually cultivating wholesome qualities.

Q.

Well,

You've cultivated these wholesome qualities,

Whichever way you want to put it in.

But as you've cultivated that quality,

You have some kind of somatic memory of that quality.

And as that one,

I'm just suggesting that you could bring that somatic memory back as a response to the equilibrium.

A.

Yeah.

So if you're struggling with something and you can feel the struggle and you have some deep experience with equanimity,

For example,

That sometimes you can just remember what that tone felt like and that will help kind of bring that up.

Yeah.

That's good.

Thank you.

Q.

If I have some really sort of bitching first chakra issue come up,

I can use EFT to get rid of that.

And in some ways it's really heavyweight stuff.

It's not necessarily ideal for something very subtle and at higher levels of the system as six hours are.

Because,

As we know,

The six hours get known as a process where you don't have to do all the explicit training.

And you can do it to stuff where you don't even know what you're acting on if you get to the higher level.

A.

Right.

Right.

Q.

And what is EFT?

A.

EFT is Emotional Freedom Technique.

It's called tapping.

So you do a deep reverse,

Even though I feel so and so,

I'd much rather feel thus and such,

And then start tapping on it and saying words and phrases as you go.

And you've been using EFT in relationship with meditation too,

I believe.

And it's a little bit too brush clearer.

Like when I first started doing this stuff,

I was in a fairly limited way really determined to deal with a lot of stuff.

So I processed with EFT every single relationship with all of my girlfriends that I've ever had.

It took me quite a while.

And nevertheless,

At the end of it,

I felt really a lot clearer and a lot less full of all of that residual thought.

So there are lots and lots and lots of different techniques.

Q.

For me a simple way to deal with it is when there's a lot of charge to something,

And you feel it,

And you're like ahhh about it,

I just recognize that there is distortion in it.

When something is highly charged,

There is always distortion in it.

And so knowing that,

I can sit back a little bit and relax a little bit because I realize that if I keep working it,

Working it,

It's just going to get worse and more and more distorted.

So I just go ahhh,

Lots of tension,

There's distortion there,

Relax,

That's not the answer to the problem.

A.

Okay,

Let's see if we can bring this to a close.

Let me just go back for just a moment to Reneiro de Reneiro.

Tracy brought this up yesterday.

One of the reasons I really love the story is because it has no Buddhist trappings in it.

And yet it's got a really deep Buddhist message.

The story is not about Siddhartha,

A prince who grew up in a sheltered life.

It's not about a bald-headed monk barefoot on a spiritual path.

The story is about a jerk.

It's about this hoodlum wearing knight's armor and didn't seem to care about anybody but himself.

And yet he becomes enlightened,

Or the cultural equivalent of that,

He becomes a holy man.

So when I grow up I want to be a holy man.

I have not led a sheltered life.

I have no intention to shave my head,

Or my beard for that matter.

But I've been a jerk.

I've done lots of selfish things,

Maybe not as extreme as Reneiro de Reneiro,

But I've done lots of bad stuff.

And so I read the story and I think,

You know,

For now,

Dear Reneiro can do it.

There's hope for me.

There was hope for all of us.

So just embrace the possibility that hindrances don't have to be a problem.

They're just a symptom of an imbalance.

That's all they are.

They're messengers that are just sort of gently,

And sometimes somewhat insistently,

Kind of point us to something that needs some attention.

And then take your time.

You know,

6R,

Gently,

Clearly.

David Darling is a cellist and a music educator.

He used to say this about music and education,

Lies and meditation and everything else,

I think.

He said,

Nothing is difficult.

Some things take time.

And the meditation is a process that we actually can't speed up.

The mind will unfold on its own pace.

There's a lot we can do,

And there's a lot we do all the time to slow it down.

But ultimately,

It's really not difficult.

And I am completely convinced.

I've been teaching this long enough that I feel pretty confident in this,

That when you have trouble with your meditation,

It's actually never quite about you.

It's just there's some technical issue.

You haven't quite learned how to do that.

So be gentle with yourself.

6R.

And when you do,

There is something that's always here,

That's beyond the sense of self,

That is always with us,

That is clear,

That is kind,

That is soft,

That is very wise,

And that will not draw any attention to itself.

I'm speaking anthropomorphically now,

But that is always there.

We can just relax enough,

Slow down enough to get ourselves out of the way.

So I said something negative about Zen just a moment ago,

So I'm going to close with a Zen piece.

This is one of my favorite spiritual writings from all time.

It's from Sentang,

The third Chinese patriarch.

The Zen patriarchs,

The old ones,

They all wrote about their wisdom,

And many of those things are like two and three volumes for each one.

The clearest translation of this total writings of the third Chinese patriarch is about 1100 words.

It's just this little piece and it is a gem.

It says,

The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent,

When desire and aversion are both absent,

Everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Like the slightest distinction,

And heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth,

Then hold no opinion for or against.

The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.

Do not search for truth,

Only cease to hold opinions.

Try that one out.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the way,

Nothing in the world can offend.

And when a thing can no longer offend,

It ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,

The old mind ceases to exist.

May all beings cease to take their preferences quite so seriously.

May all beings relax their opinions.

May all beings open to the truth that is around us all the time.

May all beings no peace.

May all beings no ease.

May all beings no happiness.

May all beings no freedom.

May all beings no contentment.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

If you've got some energy left,

That's great.

Stay and meditate.

Spend a half hour with Tracy.

Work the kinks out of the body if you like.

Get some tea.

Come and sit.

This time together is really quite precious.

You know,

To get this face away.

Use it wisely.

Not compulsively,

Just wisely,

Gently.