Subtle Intentions

Subtle intentions are attitudes that quietly direct thoughts and feelings in various directions. They often operate behind the scenes and can throw us off balance. Becoming aware of them helps lighten the mind and bring contentment and clarity.

Transcript

So,

Last night we left Reneau de Reneau not out in the hot plains someplace,

But up in this very cool,

Damp,

Rainy,

Stormy mountain pass,

Where the storm had just doused him in his candle and his whole spiritual journey,

This whole quest,

And he had sunk into a cold,

Wet funk.

So would you like to know what happens next?

Thank you,

I was looking for that.

Well,

So he was actually there in a stupor for a while and gradually,

Finally,

The dawn began,

The dawn started.

It was still raining,

But it's like in the east the sky went from black to a sort of a dark gray with a sort of first hint of dawn and he was just kind of slumped over and suddenly he sat up and his eyes opened and he thought,

The woman,

The sick child,

Her hearth,

That's got the same fire that he carried out of Jerusalem.

Wonder if it's still lit?

And he jumped up with all,

Loss of all sense of poise and dignity and went running down through the rain and the storm and all that and knocked on her hut and sure enough the fire was still there,

The same flame.

And he realized his whole journey,

His quest was not lost and he felt a depth of gratitude that he had never really experienced before because he had given the flame away,

He had saved it.

And it was a little boggling just to look at how all that worked.

Well,

His continued journey west had many other trials and lessons,

Went through lots of different things.

But by the time he reached the countryside around Florence,

All the exploits of his fellow knights back in the east seemed just a universal way.

The glory of battle,

The draw of knighthood,

It just seemed pale and had no pull for him anymore.

And once he walked into the city,

Remember he's still carrying this candle,

When he walked into the city it was a rather strange sight and people began to gather around and this strange figure and he was so changed that no one recognized him.

And as the crowd grew its mood began to change as it will and the sort of wonder and awe changed to jeers and threats and somebody said,

Put the light out,

Put the light out and they started throwing clods of dirt at him and stuff like that and he was there holding this candle up as high as he could,

Trying to protect it,

Looking around the crowd just to find some kind of friendly face.

And as Hay was doing this,

A woman leaned off a balcony and just snatched the candle out of his hand and it was gone.

And he was like just so overwhelmed he just collapsed into the street,

Passed out.

And the crowds kind of shrieked and laughed and they lost interest to move on and he just lay there in the street.

And then when he opened his eyes he saw Francesca,

His wife,

Was leaning over him.

She of all the people there had recognized him and she said to him,

I feared for the light so I took it and I'm guarding it.

And again,

Kindness had saved the flame and he was just overwhelmed with gratitude.

So the two of them walked through the streets with a candle.

They took it to the head priest who listened to Renero's story and was deeply touched by this.

And so he sent out word through the city about what Renero de Renero had done and said they were going to have a service that night in which they would formally accept this flame into the church.

And during the service the priest recounted Renero's story.

Everyone remembered this brash,

Cruel knight who had been so abusive and insulting of him and they just couldn't believe that he was capable of such a gentle task.

And they said,

Yeah right,

How do we know this is true?

And the priest,

He kind of expected this.

He was ready for this and so he invited Renero to come forward.

He had been kneeling there at the altar just looking at his flame and he came forward with a flame and he stood there in front of them and people barely recognized this handsome weather beaten figure.

And the priest said,

Is this the same flame that you brought from Jerusalem?

How many times did you bite it?

And he says,

It's the same flame that I carried forth.

And the priest said,

How did you accomplish this?

And Renero fell silent and after a few minutes he said,

First I thought it was going to be easy.

It turned out to be very difficult.

I had to learn to mind the candle continuously.

People thought,

Is this the same man?

The harsh set jaw was gone,

These sort of harsh eyes and this sense of self-importance and all that remained there was this soft countenance and these deep still eyes just attending to this candle.

And as Renero gazed at the flame it was like there was a sort of dim glow that began to grow around him until it began to just send the soft light out into the chapel.

And the people said,

The sacred flame,

It burns within him.

So on first pass the story sounds like a story of transformation,

Doesn't it?

This brutish,

Narcissistic mercenary turns into a saint whose luminosity is felt just by ordinary people.

But I don't read the story that way.

I think that that quiet glowing presence was actually with him from the very beginning.

It was just covered up and obscured by all this mix of crossed intentions that just hid it away.

One of the things that I love about the story is that it graphically illustrates all these crossed intentions.

And you see it right from that opening scene in that cathedral where he stands up and he says he's going to bring this precious treasure back to the church.

And what he said and what he promised and the way he said it to me reveal at least four different intentions.

One was his overt,

The stated intention was he wanted to bring back a gift to this community.

And you know there's probably some truth in that.

The human heart naturally wants to be of help to other people.

But there was also a lot of other things that just crowded that.

Another one of his intentions when he stood up to speak there was to make sure everybody knew what a powerful warrior he was.

He wanted admiration and respect.

A third motive was to try to mask some of the stuff that was inside him.

I don't know how conscious this was but there was a masking that was going on.

I mean nobody becomes that arrogant and cruel without some deep psychological damage in there someplace.

Remember Thomas Merton he wrote once that pride is the ego's way of lifting itself up after it has shrunk into self-hatred.

So the story doesn't tell us much about the particulars of where this brutishness and self-hatred came from but you can bet there's some deep history here.

And the fourth intention that's revealed there,

This is a tricky one.

The fourth intention was actually a desire to be free.

A desire for spiritual liberation.

And I don't think it was particularly conscious of it at the time but it was operating and as the story unfolds it reveals itself but it had to be there in the beginning.

So for example right there in the beginning,

Ramañara was not able to address this crowd of people without falling back into his habitual braggadocio.

But the promise he made,

The actual promise he made,

Not so much the way he said it but the promise he made was really pretty kind and gentle.

He didn't promise to slaughter more of the heathens than all these feckless knights put together.

He didn't promise he was going to be the sword of God's wrath.

He didn't promise that he was going to hack all the enemies to pieces.

You can well imagine the sort of figure he presented from making those kind of promises but instead what he promised was to bring back a gift to his spiritual community.

And he committed himself to this task without even knowing what it was.

He had no idea what it was.

But months later,

Alone in the dark streets of Jerusalem,

Walking barefoot towards that single flame burning there at the tomb of Jesus,

He recognized that that was the most precious thing he could bring back to the church.

In his own kind of crusty way,

He was genuinely moved.

And this drew him into this practice of sampajana,

Right,

Of being aware of the present and all the surroundings all at the same time.

And deep in that promise is a kind and liberating urge that he didn't fully understand.

I don't want to keep it,

Not consciously.

This intention is somewhat mysterious and I think it touches all of us,

Including all of us here to some degree.

Otherwise we wouldn't be here.

There wasn't something of that in there.

So,

What brings you to this practice?

We rarely,

Any of us,

Do anything with just one intention alone.

So what are some of the differing intentions that drew you to this?

What are the ones that are easy for you to recognize?

And what are some of the subtle ones that may be under there a little harder to see?

So I want to give you some time to actually talk about this just a little bit.

I'm going to invite you to get into groups of about three people and to talk about these questions.

This is not going to be a time of social exchange.

I just want you to,

And I'll read the questions to you again,

I just want you to reflect on these questions and just share anything that you would like to about it to another heartful presence who is not going to speak to you or ask you any questions about it,

But will just be there to witness and hear it.

Okay?

So get into groups of about three people each.

Okay,

Yeah,

There will be one group of four.

Or actually why don't we have two groups of two?

Let's see if we,

What happens if we get into groups of three?

I'm sorry to be a little confusing about this.

I'm actually just thinking about the time and if there's groups of three we can go through three.

There's an even number,

Yes,

There's somebody here who knows.

I trust her.

Yep,

Yep,

We got it.

We got it.

Just because we're meditators doesn't mean we can't count.

Okay,

So what's going to happen is two of you are going to just be witnessing,

Just listening to this person and the person who's speaking will be responding to these questions and you don't have to go through all of them.

I'll just read the questions again and I just want you to just notice what kind of lights up inside you and then you can just talk from whatever gets stirred inside you.

Okay,

And I will ring a bell so it will just be a few minutes.

We won't take a long time on it.

The questions are what brings you to this practice?

What are some of the different intentions that you bring into this?

Which intentions are easy for you to see or acknowledge?

And what intentions may be hidden below the surface there that are a little bit harder to see?

Okay,

So your first task is to figure out who in the group is going to speak first.

And whoever is speaking first will raise their hand.

Okay,

The first person in this group.

Okay,

We did it.

Second big task,

We've done it.

Okay,

So again,

What brings you to this practice?

What are some of the different intentions that you bring?

What are,

What motives,

What intentions are easy for you to acknowledge?

And which ones may be just a little hidden beneath the surface a little bit that you can sense there but maybe a little harder for you to notice or acknowledge?

Okay,

And so begin.

And then we'll run through it.

So that's sort of the reason why I'm here.

I think I've already talked about my experience.

I think we've just been getting to the point where you know,

You should not have everybody in the class to talk to her.

But I think it's a positive thing.

No,

There's one person talking now and I'll ring the bell in a minute.

Okay,

So,

Pick the bell.

And then the second person to speak,

It's now their turn.

Or however you do it,

You may be creative.

That was the intention to do it one at a time.

You go to the second person.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So you bow.

And then it's time for the third person or the however you're doing it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So bow.

Okay,

Thank you.

Thank you.

You can stay in your groups,

We've got another little one in a minute.

Just one or two comments of what happened for you.

You don't get to report on what anybody else said,

That's for them to say,

But anything about your own experience.

It's nice to be able to finally talk.

I'm glad to hear from people.

I've seen for several days and not know anything about them.

Yeah.

I'm glad to hear them share.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Good,

Good,

Good.

I believe there's a common thread between all of us,

Among all of us.

Yeah.

And do you want to dare,

Oh,

Among the three of you or among all of us here?

We spoke about it among the three of us,

But it makes sense that all of us are here.

There's something in common,

We all have something in common that lies here.

Two more comments?

I'm just down with how non-linear this whole process can be,

I'm just telling them how I felt.

I feel like I've been playing for a while with my practice and just in the last two days,

Like the kinds of things that have been happening,

Like it just makes me realize that it's not,

It doesn't just have to be this like day-to-day linear progression,

A little bit over the years.

So it's really exciting.

Good,

Good,

Good.

There's a real sense of value in the practice.

Yeah.

Even though each person's personal stories,

There's a real sense of value for each one,

That they show up.

Yeah.

Especially at a retreat,

Which takes a little commitment.

Yeah.

Giving them vacation time or whatever to be here now.

Yeah.

Just sit around and be silent and do nothing for nine days.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Good,

Good.

So,

Renaro de Renaro's first attempt to engage his spiritual practice didn't go so well.

As you remember as he,

Yeah,

It's okay if you need a chair or something.

As he,

As he galloped out of that group of his compatriots,

His flame was extinguished.

And then he was faced with these conflicting intentions.

What does he do?

Does he try to maintain his facade of confidence and competence?

Or does he humbly go back and rekindle the flame and start again?

And then he runs into this ragtag bunch of thieves.

And again,

He's got these conflicted intentions.

Does he pull out the sword and gleefully vanquish all of them?

Or does he humbly protect the flame?

When the woman came running up the path for asking for help to light her hearth for her child,

He has these conflicting intentions.

Does he reinforce his sense of self-importance and keep it to himself?

Or does he give the flame away to help the child?

So,

All these situations,

I view them as metaphorical intentions,

As metaphorical hindrances,

Crossed intentions and metaphorical hindrances.

The wind,

The bandits,

The woman who was trying to divert him from the path,

The crowds that were jeering him and trying to get the light in Florence,

All of them were obstacles.

They were getting in the way of him getting that candle light safely to the cathedral.

And yet,

Those same obstacles were actually the instruments of his awakening.

They wore out his thin,

Tight,

Gnarly,

Self-centered habits and opened him up to a larger,

More luminous presence.

It was so palpable that the people around him could feel it.

So,

His practice turned these deep,

Crossed intentions into grinding stones,

If you will,

That just wore away some of that crusty exterior.

And,

When he reached Florence,

He actually wasn't transformed.

He was revealed.

He was revealed.

This practice that we are engaged in will not transform us.

It's not going to turn us into somebody we're not.

That's not possible.

It just isn't.

But,

It might reveal depth in places in us that we had never really quite imagined possible.

One of the things I love about this practice is there's a lot of things that seem very esoteric and far away that are actually quite,

Quite reachable.

They're quite reachable.

So,

I want you to get back into your groups.

And,

The questions are,

What are some of the things that your mind heart does when your spiritual practice doesn't seem to be going so well?

When you're confronted with hindrance and stuff.

What are the habits of mind that you have that you just might be ready to have worn out and abandoned?

And what depths might there be in you that you find hard to imagine?

Okay?

You don't get points for shyness on this last one.

Yes.

Yes.

So,

Get back into groups.

And again,

You don't have to go through these.

You will not be graded and answer every one of the questions in an equal amount of time.

But just use these questions and see what gets stirred inside you and just share from that place.

What are some of the things that your mind heart does when your practice doesn't work so well?

When you're meditating and it seems to get logged down.

How does your system respond to that?

What are the habits of mind that you might have that you just might be ready to have worn out and abandoned?

What might be some depths in you that you can imagine or that you may even have a fleeting glimpse of that you don't want quite to admit?

What are some of the depths or heights in you that are hard for you to imagine?

So we'll do the same thing,

Well,

It won't be the same thing for all of us.

What I'd like to do is have one person share for about three minutes and then I'll ring the bell and it'll be time for the second person to share and then ring the bell and be time for the third person.

Okay.

So begin.

We'll begin with the fourth person stomping off the Sale.

So you can vow and then switch to the second person.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And bows.

So just a few comments from a few different people.

What you notice,

What came up for you.

Pardon?

What a concept.

Yeah,

Well in the West doubt is pretty common.

It comes with inquisitive minds.

It's the dark side of it.

I think that we're all pretty,

After two days,

We're all pretty confirmed that the six arms really do help pull you along.

Yeah.

I was going to say push but pull you along.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is effective.

I was amazed at that because it's all so jingoistic.

It's all so jingoistic.

So jingoistic.

I mean it just,

You know,

It seems like a,

Well in my book I say it was first reminding me of those old Berma shave commercials.

But it works.

It just works.

One more.

I was just going to say it's all about your intention.

Yeah.

Just like this,

What you've been talking about this evening.

Yeah.

If you have your intention in the right place,

I mean maybe you can't practice for 30 minutes or an hour or something like that.

But even if you just show up to your mat for five minutes,

Or maybe it's not in the mat,

Maybe it's a meta practice,

Or maybe it's being mindful that day,

Or just thinking the practice off the mat or off the cushion,

That's the most important thing.

Yeah.

Good.

That's a nice segue to where we're going.

So you're done with your little groups?

You have one more?

Oh Theresa.

We are becoming a community because we are always here for almost very simple reasons.

And even if we do not speak,

We do not interact,

There is,

At least I think,

Much,

Much closer to the whole group.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

It's interesting,

Even without speaking,

Sometimes speaking actually gets in the way of community,

But we sort of think it's all in the verbal interaction,

But yeah,

I find it in retreat after retreat after retreat.

There is that sense.

I have a comment about the story relating to that.

Obviously this is a Christian story,

But from a Buddhist perspective,

To me I see the story about the Sangha.

The support of the Sangha in fulfilling the quest.

We're not going to focus on the bandits here,

But the woman who begs for the plane,

He's willing to share it.

And then there's a Sangha support right there.

And then at the very end,

Again Sangha support unknowingly,

His wife grabs the candle,

Holds it above him,

And then supports him on his final journey into the Church.

Yeah.

And so we all,

It's.

.

.

And the priest was actually able to hear him on a deep level.

Yes.

And so it kind of begun to reach that level of nirvana,

Lightly,

Whatever,

Individually,

The Sriavacara,

The pratika Buddha,

But it's so much nicer to have the Sangha,

And that's why we take refuge in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

The Buddha said,

Well it was an interesting passage,

The exchange was,

You know,

Somebody said,

You know,

The Sangha,

The gathering community is a very helpful support on the path,

And the Buddha said,

No,

That's not right,

It's the most important.

It's the most important.

So you can.

.

.

Floor recognizes Bill.

Well,

I'm just picking up,

The story actually for me,

I resonated with the Crusader Rene area,

And with his intentions as a warrior,

That to me was the beginning of the spiritual journey.

And,

Because I think I saw myself in my Lutheran self many years ago,

I related to the Crusader and the warrior.

Right.

And with what I thought was the purest of intentions.

Right.

And his intentions continually confronted the consequences of his intentions,

Not just from the flame on,

But from the very beginning,

You know,

It was a real evolution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll leave some time for some more comments later,

But I want to throw some more material in here.

So you can bow to your groups and you can stay there,

If you want to come back in the circle,

That's fine.

So,

Last night we looked at the story and viewed it mostly from the perspective of awareness,

Sampajana,

This wide open awareness,

And the hindrances.

And tonight I want to expand the horizon to bring into this the intentions.

It's intentions are very subtle,

Very powerful,

Very pervasive,

And sometimes not fully understood,

But have a really powerful effect.

And then tomorrow night I want to look at the relationship between the hindrances and intentions.

But tonight I just want to focus in on the hindrances,

I mean the intentions themselves.

The Buddha departed from the Jains and the Brahmins and most of the other contemporary spiritual communities,

And that he put less emphasis on what we do and more emphasis on the leanings in the mind that get us to do those things.

He said what we do is not as important,

It is important,

But it's not as important as the intentions that drive it.

And to help understand what the Buddha was talking about by intentions,

I want to talk about intentions a little bit from three different perspectives.

Whether they are oriented towards the future or whether they arise spontaneously in the present.

And then I want to look at just the strength of intentions and then whether we identify with them or in some cases disidentify with them.

So I'll walk you through all those.

The first one is to distinguish between two,

I think fundamentally different species of intentions.

Ones that are focused onto the future and these ones that just arise spontaneously in the present.

In English when we use the word intentions,

The conventional understanding of intention is something that is oriented towards the future.

So yesterday Michelle announced her intention to drive into town today and to pick up some supplies and things people want.

So that's an intention.

And it's future oriented,

Right?

It's something she's going to do.

And it's like a plan or a strategy that has a goal and it also implies an agent.

There's a self who's going to execute this plan.

Or another future oriented intention might be something like,

Next time I see that guy I'm going to let him know what I really think about this.

So these future oriented intentions can have sometimes determination and will involved in it.

I'm going to meditate for an hour and a half every morning.

That's another intention.

The next sitting I'm not going to let my mind wander once.

Yeah,

Good luck with that.

So intentions don't have to be wise or doable.

So the Buddha was a really kind of be here now kind of guy.

Was a little less interested in the future,

More interested in what was right here in the present.

In Pali,

The language Pali,

Which is the language that the early suttas are recorded in,

One of cetana,

C-e-t-a-n-a,

C is pronounced like a c-h,

Cetana is one of the words used for intention.

And in Buddhism and Pali,

One of the words for perception is sunya.

And in Buddhism,

Perception has a very specific meaning.

It's actually assigning a label or an identity to something that we experience.

So I see something that's green and I go through this catalog in my head of green objects and I say,

Oh,

That's a leaf.

That's what they're talking about,

About intentions.

And the Buddha said that sunya and cetana are conjoined.

That perception and intention arise together.

And when I first heard this,

It didn't make any sense to me at all.

I mean,

Just because I see a leaf doesn't mean I'm starting to make a plot about what to do about it.

So I thought maybe that he's actually talking about something a little different.

Ooh.

I'm back.

So what I'd like to do is to just investigate this notion that maybe that,

You know,

Intentions and perceptions are tied together.

So what I would invite you to do is to close your eyes and I'm going to just read you a list of labels that are things that you could perceive.

And so relax,

Open your sensitivities and just see what happens in your mind just upon hearing this thing that could be a perception.

Just notice how they affect the mind heart.

Sunset.

Blizzard.

Velociraptor.

Kitten.

Kitten.

Kitten.

Baby cat.

A flock of geese high in the sky.

Donald Trump.

Okay,

That's our experiment.

Can you feel how images and moods and emotions,

Even memories,

Shift in your mind just around these one simple little things?

We didn't do this the other day,

Did we?

Oh,

Okay.

I actually thought of a response to somebody's question and I thought I stepped on that,

But I didn't know what I'd actually done.

So as you hear those,

You can feel how the mind just kind of leans or moves in different directions.

So these forces and tugs are what the Buddha was actually talking about when he used what we now translate as intention.

Check them out.

So think of it this way.

The mind is this vast space that has words and thoughts and images and choices and memories and decisions and all kinds of stuff flowing through it.

It can also have things like anger and fear and kindness and compassion and agitation and wisdom.

All this big space and flowing through all those are intentions that tend to just kind of trigger them and line them up and point them in various directions.

The word chaitanya has also been translated as directionality in the mind.

You can see how it gives it some direction.

And it doesn't necessarily have a goal.

It has a direction,

It has a place it's going,

But it doesn't necessarily have a goal.

And it arises just in the present.

It's like when I say the word,

It comes up.

And you'll notice that as this comes up,

There is no one who actually creates it.

As you feel your mind leaning,

You're actually not doing it.

It just happens.

Now you can philosophically think there's all kinds of things going on,

But your actual experience is that you're not doing it.

It just happens.

So close your eyes again and just watch this for a moment.

I'll give you a few more words.

Purple.

God.

Sin.

Punk rock.

Marijuana.

Lavender.

Orlando.

Mountain.

Okay,

Thank you.

So these intentions,

Can you feel them shifting around?

They can be as subtle as a breath.

And yet,

Our system is permeated with them.

They're kind of the juice that activates everything.

You know,

You don't,

I don't,

I pick this up,

There's an intention that precedes it.

You scratch your nose.

Get up to go to eat a meal.

Pick up a cup.

Turn on a light.

There's an intention that precedes that.

They just animate everything.

Some of them are very obvious and some of them are softer than a whisper.

So let me give you one other example that I think illustrates the difference between a future-oriented intention and these ones that just arise spontaneously in the present.

So you could have the intention to go over there and open the door.

That would be a future-oriented intention,

Right?

You go over there and you turn the knob and open the door.

You could have a future-oriented intention to go outside.

And when you go over there,

You would still open the door in the same way so there would be an intention that did all that,

But it might fly under the radar screen,

Right?

Because you're actually focused on going outside rather than opening the door,

But it still happens because there is an intention,

You know,

With everything we do.

Do these fall under the skandhas?

Are these mental formations that we're talking about,

Perceptions and then mental formations that arise then after them?

This is a real,

It's a tricky one.

Skandhas actually come close to them,

But I'm not sure if we want to get too far into it tonight.

The key to it is that he said that the intentions and perceptions arise together.

A lot of perceptions are like a kandhas.

We can talk about that more.

Yeah.

I don't see it as an intention because there's no actual intention.

Yeah,

So I'm going through these because we're translating these words through several different languages and different words have different clusters of meanings around them.

And so intentions isn't quite it in English,

But,

You know,

A friend of mine who's a neuroscientist who does a lot of work with stuff,

He says no,

This actually all happens in the brain.

That when you say something even like purple,

There's places where it actually registers that will tend to move the mind in a certain direction so if an action comes out of that,

So it kind of sets up the potentiality and the movement in that way even though it may be very,

Very subtle.

And I believe him.

It also occurred to me that there's a valence,

You know,

Like Wilma,

So a conservative movement toward or away from with all of our perceptions.

So that seems related to intentionality.

Yes,

And you can feel it,

You know,

With,

You know,

Ted Cruz,

Let's say,

You know,

And there may be something that,

At least for me,

Kind of goes a little and there's,

You know,

Chocolate that kind of,

You know,

Kind of leans that way.

So you can see it sets up the potentiality.

And that's enough on that.

Other questions and comments?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Highly metaphorical.

Right,

But yeah.

Right.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Right,

Right.

So in Pali there's another word,

Sankapa,

That Terry brought up,

Tracy brought up yesterday,

Which also means intention.

It's the samma-sankapa is the second,

As we mentioned last night,

Is the second aspect of the eightfold path.

It's usually translated as right intention,

But really has more,

Utejaniya translates it as wise attitude.

And as we were talking about last night,

You can't really conjure up those attitudes directly,

But if you look at your life and the world in particular ways,

It tends to draw up various intentions,

Attitudes,

Leanings around it.

So while we don't have any control over these kind of intentions coming up,

We do have some control over how to respond to them.

We can shape that.

And I would say that the neuroscience is completely behind the Buddha on this.

Yeah,

It's real.

No.

So for example,

You know,

If I reach over here to pick this up,

What's actually going on in the mind at that point in the brain is there's a signal that goes from someplace in the brain to the motor cortex,

Which fires these muscles,

And which then lifts this up.

And using very sensitive instruments,

I won't go into the details,

It's really amazing how they do this,

But they can see that the neural impulse to pick this up,

To say,

Okay,

I'm going to pick this up,

The neural impulse is flowing through the brain before I am conscious of it.

Right?

If you can get that.

So the sequence is there is an impulse that eventually translates to I'm going to pick this up.

There's an impulse that starts,

Then I become aware of it after it's already flowing,

And then it hits cortex,

And then I move it.

So we actually do not have control over these subtle intentions because they arise before we are aware of them.

But if we're paying attention,

We can notice them before we act so we can restrain them.

So one of my teachers,

Tony Bernard,

Gail knows,

Is very fond of saying there's no free will,

But there is free won't.

It's not exactly true,

But it's cute,

And it gets in what's going on.

So this is why the precepts are always framed as restraint.

There is no precept about not feeling ill will.

There is a precept to restrain from speaking or acting with ill will because we actually don't have control over whether or not the ill will arises,

At least not in the moment.

There is no Buddhist precept about speaking the truth.

There is a precept about not lying.

You can feel the difference.

So somebody says,

Doug,

There's this great movie,

Let's go to it on Saturday,

Are you busy?

Well,

I've got no interest in the movie,

And I don't want to spend an afternoon with this guy,

So what happens?

My mind just automatically starts generating alibis.

Oh,

Well,

I can,

You know,

This,

That,

And the other.

Well,

If I've taken the precept seriously to not lie,

There's nothing I can do about those alibis starting to be framed,

But if I'm sensitive to lying,

I will notice what's going on,

And then I can actually keep my mouth shut until I figure out what to do about it.

But the intention to lie,

You can't stop the intention to come up,

But you can actually stop the lying.

Or if someone threatens me,

You know,

You go,

Or just startles me from behind,

There's,

You know,

Maybe it's subtle,

It just goes like this,

But you can feel,

You know,

The arm is getting ready to strike.

And if I've seriously taken the precept of not harming,

Then I'm very sensitive to that,

And I see that come up,

And I know I don't want to follow through on that,

So I six-R it and relax,

And sort of then back away from it.

Okay,

So future intentions,

Present intentions,

Future intentions,

We obviously have a lot of control over the present intentions,

We don't.

That's what the Buddha talked about most.

The second quality of them is whether they are strong or weak,

And I mean something really simple in this.

It's if there are conflicting intentions,

Which one wins?

Well,

The strong one wins.

So I go into the cafeteria there to get a piece of fruit,

And I walk away with some chocolate in my mouth.

So there are several different intentions going on.

The overt one,

You know,

The future one that I planned was to get a piece of fruit,

And I see the chocolate and it triggers my sweet tooth,

And without even thinking about it,

It's in my mouth.

So the intention to get the fruit is really obvious,

But it wasn't the stronger of them.

So the subtle intentions are sometimes like guerrilla fighters,

You know,

Blow the building up and disappear before we see their face.

I wake up in the morning and I think,

Ah,

Good time for me to get up and meditate,

And I lie there staring out the window.

So there are two intentions going on there,

One to meditate and one to just lie there for a while.

The strong one wins.

I crawled into bed one night and I picked up my iPad and I said,

I'm going to play just one game of solitaire.

You're all laughing.

I played six.

And I saw this happening over and over again,

And I actually became really fascinated by the phenomena.

And so I wanted to see if I could see that intention to play that next game.

And at first it was almost impossible.

You know,

It just kept on coming up.

But then what I,

I mean I could have just exerted more willpower and just blotted it out.

That would have been easy enough to do.

But I really wanted to see this intention arise.

And so what I did was I got in the bed,

You know,

Following nights down there,

I would just relax and soften as much as I could and say,

Okay,

I'm going to play one game.

And that was usually,

If I just relaxed into it a couple of them ago,

But I could begin to notice that as I finished one game,

It was almost like this faint whisper in the back of my mind that said,

One more.

It was almost inaudible,

But it was very firm.

And then I get playing the next game and I would think,

You know,

I could actually stop this at any point.

And it was at that point there was this little voice that would come up and say,

Finish this one first.

So after a while I got used to it.

I knew what I was looking for.

And so once I knew what I was looking for,

I could begin to watch for them.

None of them were oriented towards the future.

They were all in the present.

One more.

Keep playing.

But I could begin to see them arise and pass and as I could see them,

I could begin to kind of soften and look at them and I noticed there was some faint flickering in the back of my mind.

You know,

There was this,

It was almost like a steel hand in a velvet glove and then there were these flickering images.

And one images were of me winning a computer solitaire tournament.

And there was another image of me as an aspiring holy man who found solitaire tournaments just really embarrassing and just wanted to blot them all out.

And so the Olympic solitaire player and the holy man there would struggle with each other and in that struggle awareness was just blotted out until they were gone.

But as I allowed,

Began to give more space for all these to arise,

Not trying to control them.

And you know the six R's are not about getting rid of anything.

The slightest amount of push or pull will make them disappear.

But I was really,

I was like,

You know I think of a field anthropologist,

You know,

Or a field biologist that just wants to see the behaviors of these strange animals here.

I wasn't interested in controlling them and as I just allowed that stuff,

Embarrassing though some of them were to play out,

I could begin to see these.

And then as I saw each of those intentions,

Then it became possible to six R them.

Not push them away,

But just let them,

See them,

Let them be there,

Relax,

Smile,

Sense of humor about them.

And as I did that,

Then the solitaire player and the holy man began to fade a little bit in the background and there was just a little bit of wisdom that can come forward.

So strong,

Silent intentions are not always bad.

So,

Reneiro de Reneiro,

His overt future-oriented intentions tended to be brash,

Cruel,

But there was this simple,

Kind intention to be helpful that was just pretty much below the surface in the beginning,

But in the long run it won out.

It won out.

So that's strength and the strength of an intention is not the one that's most obvious,

Necessarily.

It can be sometimes,

But not necessarily.

The third important quality about intentions is identification.

We tend to really identify with the future-oriented intentions.

This is me,

This is me,

I'm going to get that fruit.

The present,

The ones that just arise in the moment are a little more difficult to see and when they're stronger,

We don't identify with them.

We call them hindrances.

It was my intention to get the fruit,

The hindrance got the chocolate.

It was me who was going to play one more game,

But the hindrance kind of snuck in there.

It was an illegal immigrant.

They did something I didn't want to do.

But all of these,

All of these in truth arise in this vast field called the mind.

All of them come out of the same place.

There's some we identify with and some that we push away,

But they all basically come out of the same stock.

So tomorrow I want to pick up at this place and look more closely at this relationship between the present intentions and hindrances and how to work with them.

I'll have to tell you,

I was concerned about putting this together because all my teachers say these present intentions are too subtle,

Nobody can see them,

They're almost impossible to work with.

But I have found them just really,

Really valuable to begin to see how they operate and to begin to see how to work with them,

To actually soften and to open up and allow this embarrassing Olympic card player to have enough time up that he can begin to see them.

And then he can work with them.

We'll talk about that more tomorrow.

For now I think the most important thing is just to begin to learn to recognize these as they come up.

Part of the problem,

One of the reasons they're difficult to recognize is that they are largely dormant until they get energized and then they just show up in the present.

So you'll never see them coming.

You will never see them coming.

They just arise.

And the way we experience them when we arise,

And I debated,

Switched to this language,

It's hard to know quite what to call them,

But when these present intentions arise we experience them as attitudes.

Attitudes.

Attitudes in the mind.

So we all have pure awareness,

This pure awareness that is unobstructed.

If we didn't have that we wouldn't see or know anything.

And then there's the objects we look at and that pure awareness looks through the attitudes in the mind.

And those attitudes can distort.

So an attitude then has a value assigned to either a positive,

Negative,

Or neutral?

Yeah,

Except it's a lot more nuanced than that.

The attitudes can have all kinds of leanings and positive,

Negative,

And neutral is just one of the more boring ones,

But they do have that.

So just right now,

Take a look and just notice what the attitudes in your mind is right now.

Does the mind feel tight?

Does it feel relaxed?

Does it feel curious?

Or bored?

Excited?

Tired?

Just see what's in there.

And if the attitude in your mind right now is one of,

Let's say,

Judgment,

One of those things that we Buddhists don't like,

Discouragement or unwholesome qualities,

Let's say,

This is good news.

This is good news because they lie dormant in there and if you can begin to see them,

Then you can recognize them,

Release them,

Relax them,

Soften them.

But it's important to notice that they arise before you see them coming.

So in a sense you're off the hook.

Right.

So when you see these unwholesome qualities arise,

The wise,

Intelligent response to that is actually one of compassion because you don't quite have control of it.

The other piece of the good news is that we do have this control over how to respond to it and how we respond to it affects the likelihood of that quality arising in the future.

It has some influence on it.

You still won't see it coming but it does change it.

So in other words,

If there's an unwholesome quality comes up and you greet it with horror and dismay and try to push it away and get rid of it,

That feeds a lot of tension back into the mind that create,

That influence the mind to moving in a tight way.

If on the other hand you see this junk comes up inside you and say,

Wow,

Look at that,

And you just kind of open up to it with a lot of kindness and acceptance that influences the mind in the direction of kindness and acceptance and actually peacefulness and wholesome states.

So in a sense what we're doing in this practice and with the six R's and everything else is we have no effect on the present because what's here has already arisen.

It's trying to change the present and it's like trying to change the past.

But we can gradually rewire,

Train,

Influence the mind in the future to move to more and more wholesome places.

And last you want to grasp for the wholesome because grasping is an unwholesome quality and then you put that in there.

Are you with me with this?

What happens during meditation is really not all that important.

The important thing is to just do it because what's really important is what's going to come afterwards.

And what comes afterwards is influenced by how you respond to it.

So if something,

A wholesome state comes up and you look at it with clarity,

Oh,

There that is.

With acceptance,

It is what it is.

With ease,

Just soften with good humor,

Openness and with a sense of sending out some kindness to it.

And with patience,

It influences the mind in a more wholesome direction.

And if you notice what I was doing there,

Those are the six R's.

I was using different words for it but you know the clarity is just recognize,

The acceptance is just the release,

Allowing it,

Softening,

It's all of it.

It's six R's.

And so what happens over time,

Those of you who have been practicing with this for a long time,

You'll see,

They begin to become habit.

And so as you work with it a lot,

There's this tendency when unwholesome qualities come up to just kind of greet it a little bit more,

That openness and acceptance,

And then just relaxing the tension in it without trying to fight it off until it gets more and more wired in.

The way Ute Jania describes some of this too,

It's that because the practice he teaches is a little different than this,

But his practice is almost a pure wisdom practice.

So it's just awareness.

And he says,

And those of you who have been on retreats before,

You can experience this.

On retreat,

You know,

You're practicing being mindful,

Being present,

And if you want to deepen this practice,

There are two things you can do.

One is to smile a lot,

And the other is to be continuously aware of what's going on as you can.

I think I spoke about this other night,

If you strain to do that,

You'll just get exhausted and stop.

But if you just keep gently encouraging the awareness,

What happens is the awareness begins to develop more and more momentum until it gets stronger and stronger.

And in my experience,

You know,

You go off retreat and say,

Okay,

I'm done with that,

I'm going to stop being mindful.

Well,

Forget it.

You know,

It's got a whole lot of momentum,

It'll just run on its own.

And of course,

If you stop practicing,

Then it'll run out of the momentum and stop.

And what he,

He doesn't use the word enlightenment,

But what he says is that when the awareness has enough momentum,

It gets strong enough that you just can't turn it off.

You're not doing it anymore,

But it's just there.

So you're saying that that's where it will go into regular life instead of just regular meditation?

Right,

Right.

Yeah.

So,

I mean,

So what I encourage people to do is just,

You know,

As you go through the day,

Every time you think of it,

Just pay attention to see what the attitudes in the mind are,

Just at that moment.

And don't make a big deal of it,

Just kind of notice,

You know,

Lightly and gently and then go on.

And then when you think of it,

Just keep checking.

And what happens is that just begins to be built in as a habit.

Other comments,

Thoughts?

So,

In case you have any doubt about whether simple perception can have a powerful effect on present and future oriented attentions,

I'll just,

I'll close with a story.

This is one that Joseph Goldstein tells.

He was talking about some friends of his who bought a house.

And they were very excited about this and they moved into this house and got their stuff moved in and they went to bed that first night.

And when they woke up in the morning,

There were these birds,

They were chirping in the basement.

And they were just so charmed by this.

They felt blessed to have these woodland creatures that had come into their basement.

And then on and off through the day,

They could hear these birds chirping down there.

And they told each other they're not going to go down to the basement because they were afraid they might have some babies down there.

And they didn't want to scare them off before they had a chance.

So they stayed away and they were just,

You know,

It was sort of magical having these creatures living in a house with them.

And then one day something happened and someone just had to go down there.

So the husband tiptoed down the stairs trying to be as unobtrusive as he could.

And he got down to the bottom of the stairs and he just quietly looked around.

And he couldn't see the birds and he couldn't see any sign of them.

And as he was looking around,

He heard this loud chirp behind him.

And he turned around and he was looking at the smoke detector.

And after that they found the chirping so incredibly annoying that they immediately called an electrician to come off and turn the darn thing off as quickly as possible.

Thank you all for your practice.

Again,

It was really lovely to talk to all of you one on one today.

And a couple of people asked,

So just to know you'll have an interview at the same time every day.

So I look forward to seeing you.

And recognizing that in this practice it actually serves people around us,

Not just us.

Just in how we interact with each other.

And other people's practice,

You can feel it as this has been talked about in the community,

How we affect one another.

Because we're all connected together in this interdependent web.

So knowing how deep and subtle and yet powerful that is lets all of us,

Just as a group,

Intentionally,

Together,

Send out this well-wishing,

May all beings everywhere know their true nature.

May all beings know kindness.

May all beings have ease and well-being as they go through their day.

May all beings know compassion.

May all beings be free.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

Namaste.

So we are back in silence again.