Turning Towards

There is nothing in us that needs to be fixed. There is a love, wisdom, flow, and ease that is already here. All we have to do is get out of the way. To do this, we paradoxically turn toward whatever disturbances come along and relax into them.

Transcript

I was looking around for some phrases or images or lines of poetry,

Particularly out of the more popular media,

To see if I could find some expression of popular culture that said something about the essence of what the Buddha was teaching without using words like dharma and karma and mindfulness and insight and awakening and all that.

Because my assumption is that if the Buddha had anything useful to say,

And I think he actually had a lot useful to say,

It wasn't because he packaged it or made it or put it together a certain way,

It's because he discovered it.

And deep in human experience.

And so if he was discovering something that is truly universal,

Then there's got to be other expressions of it.

Maybe for the sake of argument he was better than most other people at putting it together,

But there's got to be other expressions of it around.

So I was looking for something that held the essence of what the Buddha was talking about without Buddhist trappings or lingo.

And I came across a song by a guy by the name of Jim Scott.

Anybody know Jim Scott?

Yeah.

He is a world-class guitarist,

Like nothing I've ever seen.

He used to play with Paul Winter concert,

So he was really right up there.

And he was touring California just a few years ago.

And so I said I would set up a Sunday afternoon concert for him while he was traveling through Sacramento because he had an open spot in his schedule.

And just before the concert started,

Jim and I were up there and we were arranging the stage,

Getting his guitar stands up and making sure the mics worked and doing all that stuff.

And we were also talking about other stuff as we were going along.

And he got to talking about his life,

Some of his personal struggles,

Some of the difficulties with his family.

This big guy is about 6'3",

So is Bonte.

And very open.

And so as we got to talking,

He was standing there and there were these tears that were just quietly going down his cheeks.

And after about five minutes of this,

I interrupted and I said,

Jim,

There's about 200 people here who are watching us.

And the concert was supposed to start about five minutes ago.

And he looked at me and said,

Oh!

And he sat down and he picked up his guitar and for the next two hours gave this absolutely exquisite concert in which he was like totally present for people,

Totally attuned to them.

It's like this music flowed through them from somewhere else.

And I wondered,

Was this what it was like to be around Mozart?

I don't know if you know anything about his history,

But he reputedly,

Mozart's family life was a mess.

But when he was composing or when he was playing,

It's like he just got out of the way and this beauty flowed through them.

And that's what was happening with Jim.

He just did it so easily and gracefully.

So he's a composer as well as a guitarist and has recorded four or five albums.

And there's one that's called Earth,

Sky,

Love and Dreams.

And this is the lead song on it.

I would sing it for you,

But it wouldn't be as pleasant as hearing it from him.

So I'll just give you the lyrics.

I would just assume that some days go by without worrying about things I hadn't done.

I would just assume that some time go by without worrying about battles never won.

I would just assume that a woman or a man live at peace on the ground.

And before we judge the way they live their lives,

We'd be prepared to lend a hand.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

I would just assume that our wounds heal in time without worrying about who deserves the blame.

And I would just assume there'd be no heroes in war,

Though you win,

You lose.

It all works out the same.

I would prefer we'd find a compromise so nobody dies in a fight to divide the earth and sea and sky.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

I would just assume pass on fashions to life without binding us to all in life that's vain.

I would just assume that passions be for love and not dominance or war for selfish gain.

It would be enough for me,

The fleeting beauty of the wild,

That I might be beguiled without boundaries,

Without lies,

Till I can see with the eyes and the wisdom of a child.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

Most of us have struggles and concerns and anguishes and all kinds of stuff that goes on during our lives,

Poignancies.

And a lot of times as we were sharing earlier today,

Oftentimes people come into meditation as a way to fix some problems or to mitigate them or to find some kind of protection.

But as we find out soon enough,

Meditation just makes us a little more sensitive without fixing anything.

That's what really happens.

I think where the Buddha started was a much more radical proposition.

He started from the sense that there's nothing that needs to be fixed.

There really isn't.

There's a wisdom,

There's a clarity,

There's an organic peace that's already here.

There's nothing that needs fixing.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace.

It's not as far away as we think it is.

And there's a power in it,

There's a force and there's a flow to this life that is with us if we would just release and let it be that way.

That's the tricky part,

Releasing and getting out of the way.

Not so easy,

Not so easy.

So when we come into this practice we turn to another artist,

Spiritual artist,

Who in later traditions we came to know him as Siddhartha Gautama,

The Buddha,

To learn some of these,

To learn how to release.

I have this image in my mind.

Jim was standing in our living room in our kitchen one morning.

Erica's a musician and Erica was talking to him about how much she enjoyed listening to his music and as a magician she recognized that the stuff he was playing was incredibly complicated and difficult.

But it was saying,

You know,

If you weren't a musician you wouldn't know that.

There was just such an ease and a flow to it.

And so Jim says,

Aw shucks,

I took private.

Which is an allusion to high school bands.

Usually what happens to a lot of people in high school bands is you come into this sort of group class where the,

I played trombone in high school so I've been through all this,

Where you get a few pointers.

You know,

When they do this there's these different positions on the trombone slide.

And you get a little bit of instructions but mostly they just kind of fool around and try to figure it out themselves.

And then within that environment there's always a few who really stand out,

Who are really excellent.

And if you ask them,

You know,

How did you get so good?

They all say,

Well I took private.

Meaning they took private music lessons with a teacher that gave them,

You know,

Kind of more structure and more discipline.

So right at the core of this whole meditation process is a paradox.

The paradox is it takes some discipline sometimes to figure out how to get ourselves out of the way.

And this is where,

At least in this tradition,

We turn to the Buddha and his teachings,

Which is basically a deep training on how to get ourselves out of the way skillfully.

And the essence of what the Buddha taught,

I think,

Was another paradox.

How we get out of the way is actually turning towards difficulties that come up for us.

That rather than run from it,

You just turn towards them,

Open up,

And relax into it.

That's really the core of the whole process.

And that's what our job is here in this retreat.

It's actually whatever comes up inside,

Just to learn how to turn towards it.

Drop the story lines,

Story lines don't help,

But how to turn towards energetic,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

You know,

All those.

So turn towards it,

Open up,

And relax into it.

And even though most,

If not all of us here know this to some degree,

Still sometimes we sort of hang on to that wish that somehow the meditation is going to protect us.

And if that's true for you,

Then you have my condolences.

As far as I've been able to see,

You know,

We live in the sea of life and there's just no escaping it.

We can put it off and make it a little bit worse for a while,

But mostly it's a matter of just turning towards it and opening up.

The one thing that meditation can give us though,

Doesn't protect us from anything,

But it can give us a resilience.

And I think that's actually a really worthwhile thing to intentionally cultivate.

I haven't done a lot of training in Zen tradition,

But I did do a little training with Sansein,

He's a Korean Zen master,

He's in Korea and then in the Boston,

Rhode Island area,

So I don't know,

He's done much out in California.

But he had this statue of,

Wooden statue of Buddha,

It's about a foot,

Fourteen inches high,

With a smoothly rounded bottom on it.

And he had gotten this heavy duty elastic and it stapled the elastic to the bottom,

This rounded bottom,

And stapled the other end to a board that the whole thing sat on,

So it would sit off here off the table.

And every once in a while he would swing at it with the back of his hand and lap the Buddha and go,

Bong,

And lay it out,

And then the rubber band would pull it up,

Bong.

And he said,

You know,

There's nothing that's ever going to protect you from getting lapped,

But meditation can be that piece of elastic that pulls you back more quickly and builds in that resilience.

So,

I think that's enough for me,

And just in terms of a monologue,

Just to say that in this practice we really escape nothing.

And to even try to do that is not very helpful,

But it really can build a lot of resilience.

And you can see it down even to microscopic levels after a while.

I find that back in the old days there were things that might take me three months to get over.

They still come back and they get me,

But sometimes it's just a matter of minutes,

Sometimes longer,

But certainly not these long,

Stretched out things.

So,

What I'd like to shift to is just talk a little bit about the specific techniques and practices and what it is we actually do to develop that resilience and get a sense of how it operates together.

Let me do this.

Let me ask you three or four questions,

And I want you just to sit with them for a moment and then we'll open up for a discussion,

Anything you want to share around this.

It's not a particularly heavy one.

The first question is,

What is it that's really working well for you in this practice?

And the second question is,

Where do you have trouble?

The third question is,

What is it that you wonder about?

What is it that's not clear?

And the fourth one,

I'm going to sit with the fourth one for just a moment,

To see if you can sort of relax and clear out inside,

Just sort of letting your stuff go,

Letting go of tension,

Just let it drop.

And then it's a matter of just sort of opening out and reaching out to whatever.

You can conceptualize it any way you want,

I don't think it makes any difference.

It's a source of wisdom or knowing.

And ask,

What would be most helpful for me to know or see or understand or work with?

What would be most helpful for me during this retreat?

And don't try to think your way into the question.

The question is just a frame that you put out there.

What would be most helpful for me?

And then you just drop into an open space.

And something may come in very quickly,

Something may show up tomorrow afternoon when you lay down for a nap,

Who knows?

But you just put the question out there.

So what I'm asking you to do is,

In a sense you're posing this to the mind so the mind really knows that you're really interested in this.

So when it sees something it will let you know rather than to think.

So I want to open it up for thoughts,

Questions,

Things you'd like to share around any of those.

I thought at first I was going to put you into pairs so everybody would have to talk to somebody.

It's the first night and people are tired and that would take a long time.

And you're welcome to respond to any of those four questions or anything that came up in what I talked about earlier.

So how do you feel towards that analytical process?

I think I feel kind of weary,

Like I feel like it's potentially preventing the full development of the path itself.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So there's this myth that's really common and particularly in Buddhist circles.

Thinking is bad and not thinking is good.

In fact,

The brain,

The mind,

This is how we survive,

We're scavengers.

And the way scavengers survive is they're always scanning the environment and sort of building models about what's going on and figuring out and may collect lots and lots of information,

That's where the intelligence comes from,

That they don't actually need at the moment.

So when the mind is doing that analytical thing it's actually just operating perfectly naturally.

Where the problem comes in if you get wary or have aversion to it then you get in this tug-of-war with it and then you get in this whole thing.

But what you can do is,

Particularly when that analysis comes up,

Is particularly if you can just be aware,

Ah,

I'm analyzing.

Not so much the content we're looking at,

But just be aware that the mind is analyzing and see that and see how it feels.

And that actually brings,

What it does is it gradually with time builds some space around it and so this analyzing thing can go on but you're not tangled up in it.

The warnings that people get are actually getting too much caught up into the particulars of it,

But the fact that the mind is analyzing,

It's just,

It's just,

It's how it's built.

You actually don't have much control of it.

As the tension and as you relax it,

And particularly sometimes what you can do is just let the analysis go on and simply 6R the weariness,

So you can soften into it.

Because the weariness is what will be driving it.

It's not the analysis,

That's just… Yeah.

Utejaniya does this thing a lot where he'll ask this question,

Is it better for the mind to be thinking or not thinking?

Yes.

Yeah.

And of course most people,

I mean they realize it's a trick question so they'll be very worried about answering it,

But the automatic response is better to have it not thinking.

Well then if the mind starts thinking you've got a problem.

It stops?

No,

If the mind starts to think and you think it shouldn't be then you've got a problem.

But if you realize it's just operating its own,

Then it's not necessarily a problem and then you can be with it in a nicer way.

I have a challenge with doubt around is the feeling strong enough?

Am I glowing or am I… Adequately.

…radiating correctly?

I'm a 37,

I want to be a 43.

If I hold an image of radiating is that correct or not?

So there's a doubt that comes in or the feeling of some of the feelings are a lot more subtle and I think,

Oh this isn't… because I've had stronger feelings in concentration practice,

Really intense,

Really intense feelings and then with this practice it's a lot more subtle than I think,

Oh no,

It can't be right,

I'm doing it wrong because it's too subtle.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Comparing mind always finds it.

So what are some of the ways that others of you have worked with doubt?

It's an interesting activity,

You know,

This polarity flipping and flopping,

Vichy kitsa.

I don't know what that means.

It's an interesting… well that's the Pali word for a dichotomous mind.

That's doubt,

You're doubting,

So should I,

Shouldn't I,

Shouldn't I,

Shouldn't I,

Yeah,

I should… it's an activity.

It's kind of interesting.

You know,

When something like that comes up,

Wow,

You know,

That's interesting.

You know,

It's not even how did that happen,

But whoa,

Look at the color of that one going… it's just an interesting activity that comes out of nowhere and then dissolves back into nowhere for no reason.

But I've also experienced,

Not actually,

But I mean,

And I've also experienced when I've had streams of time where that mepta is very strong and stuff in my mind will be sank hard,

That's the way it's supposed to go on.

Yay,

Look at that.

And then getting this sky tracked around the ego involved and then the pride or the grasping attachment to that.

But what I started noticing when the mepta zing got quieter,

Less muted and stuff,

That the equanimity and all of that just grew so much stronger and that I was seeing,

Oh,

You know,

It's not a loss,

It's just part of the process.

So I stopped worrying about whether the mepta was strong enough or sparkly enough or whatever I had in mind.

So I kept azed out of being transitioned bysounding.

And it's usually a tightness somewhere.

And then I ask what's driving it.

And it's usually some kind of an emotion that's tight like a fear.

And as I just hold that,

It begins to open up where I get an insight.

Like if I'm doing it wrong,

I may just get a doubt whether I'm doing it right or not.

It'll usually come and it'll give me an answer.

So part of the framing of both of those was not that the doubt is necessarily a problem,

But was always looking at what's pushing it up from underneath.

And so clearly this is not an analytical process.

It's really a sensing sort of energetically where it's coming from.

I find it asking for me will just open it up.

And I would say there's actually a whole practice around that you're just very,

Very familiar with,

Of asking questions.

And it's important to understand that when you ask a question like that,

It's not an intellectual inquiry.

It's sort of like,

I don't know,

You have this castle wall and there's some guards that may say,

Hey you,

I want you to watch for people in green cloaks.

And so you just sort of let the mind know that you're interested.

And it will figure it out.

What people don't realize is the mind knows so much more than we know it knows.

It's like you can walk through a room with a lot of people and you walk to the other side and somebody says,

Was David there?

And you say,

I don't know,

I didn't see him.

And you say,

Oh yeah,

He's over there.

You know,

Somewhere that information is stored but they haven't quite accessed it.

And so you're just letting the mind know that you're interested in it because the mind is actually pretty compliant.

Actually it tries so hard to do what we ask of it.

We just give it all these crossed intentions.

Curiosity is one of the key things to enlightenment.

Curiosity.

I think you mentioned saying,

What's the attitude of my mind-heart?

And that's been quite interesting because sometimes I've only been present with the feeling.

It might have been a tense feeling and then I've said that.

And then what's come back is,

Oh wow,

I didn't know I was walking.

That was my state of the mind-heart at the time.

I was completely unaware of it.

And I thought that,

Oh,

Because I was aware of the feeling and of sensations and the feeling that everything was OK.

But actually when I asked the question there would have been aversion or greed or something.

It comes straight back up.

Yeah,

And so that's actually part of the art of what she's talking about is actually learning,

Just ask those questions and then open up to them.

And also to reinforce what Erica was talking about,

Don't worry about sending out metta.

Really,

Particularly when you get up to where you are,

The instructions are basically to send out uplifted qualities.

Another word for it is wholesome.

It's states that have very little tension or move towards lessening tension.

Peace,

Metta,

Which actually doesn't mean love and kindness,

It means friendliness.

That's the origin of the term.

Compassion,

Generosity,

There's lots and lots of uplifted states.

And so you don't have to control it so much.

It's really funny you've told me this before twice.

My mind still doesn't,

There's still resistance to it.

That's the whole premise of the book I wrote.

They're slippery fish,

There's one that,

And there's some of them,

So just get used to it.

There's some of them that you'll just need to hear over and over and over and over again.

So you keep asking and then you'll hear from other places,

But we all have them.

And when you find one of those that gets away so quickly,

You know you're really on to something.

Otherwise it wouldn't slide away so quickly.

The other thing,

There is doubt and there's skepticism.

And so,

As you know what the Buddha said,

When Pat was talking about the curiosity,

It's actually our direct experience to see things for ourselves.

And so doubt can be a way of saying,

Well I don't believe this stuff and just shutting down.

Or it can be like,

OK,

I'm not so sure of this,

Let me just see what's there.

And that's the enlightened attitude,

The one that the enlightenment factor is like,

Oh let me just see.

Are there any other questions that you would recommend asking yourself?

I would say the probably most important one is what's going on in the mind heart.

What's going on?

What's going on in the mind heart.

And again,

It's not the content,

But it's actually the mood and the tone.

We actually have no direct control over the content.

It just comes up.

And so to not want that content there,

It's sort of like trying to change the past.

It's already there.

But the attitude of the mind,

To see what that is,

That has a long-term effect on it.

And so to just see,

And if the mind is tight,

If there's some distortion,

If they're traditionally called defilements,

You don't even have to get rid of them.

You just have to see them clearly.

If the mind has a wholesome and an unwholesome state at the same time,

Which one do you think wins?

It's a trick question.

So most people think the unwholesome wins.

It's not true.

So the mind can hold two states at exactly the same time?

Oh,

Yeah.

I mean,

You can have metta and doubt.

You can have anger,

And you can have really clear awareness at the same time.

You can be deeply depressed and sort of fascinated.

So there can be a doubt,

And there can be this real kind of interest and curiosity all there at the same time.

So what the practice is about is actually cultivating the wholesome qualities,

And they will take care of the rest of it.

Ute Janiez,

Some of you guys know this story,

But his metaphor for it,

I always love,

He says,

It's like you have a small town,

And there's a thief in town,

And you've got one cop,

And he's a good cop.

He's not a corrupt cop.

He says,

As long as the cop knows who the thief is,

There's no problem,

You know,

Because he goes out and does his thief,

And the cop knows about it right away,

And he doesn't get very far.

It's when the cop doesn't know who the thief is.

So if you have a recurring doubt or something like that,

If you have some awareness and some clarity of that,

Then when the doubt comes,

It's,

Oh,

Well,

There's the doubt.

Well,

When you're seeing the doubt clearly,

It really can't run amok.

You know,

It may want to grab hold of this or create this story or something,

But if you're actually very aware that at that moment,

Oh,

Here's my old friend doubt again,

You'll just see it,

And you'll begin to experience the tension and then let it relax,

And it will kind of run its course and eventually disappear,

Unless you're doing it because you want it to disappear,

And then it'll be there forever.

And then eventually we see what causes it.

It's just you have to see it as many times as you have to see it,

And then you go,

Oh,

That,

Oh my God.

That's all.

You just awaken to it.

It's just realization.

And the way you do that is,

Again,

It's that stepping back and relaxing.

It creates some space around it in which you can actually see it.

And you can try to create the space,

But the trying will actually contract the mind,

So it's just… So that's why the recognizing,

Why the release is so important,

And also as important as relaxing,

But it's not often in any tension that's in it,

Because that allows the mind to go back more towards that natural mind,

Where it just has the space.

So if you take care,

If you're just cultivating those qualities,

Then they will take care of the rest of it for you.

So what else came up for people?

I don't know why I just thought of this,

But it's kind of funny.

I was in Maine one time,

And we had come from Lincoln,

Maine,

And we went somewhere,

And then we went somewhere else,

And we found these blueberries,

And then we bought these blueberries,

And then the guy said,

You know,

We should get back,

Because… So he asked the guy at the blueberry stand,

And he said,

How do we get to Lincoln from here?

He said,

Well,

You can't get there from here.

And that means that you have to go somewhere else to go somewhere else to get there.

And that's kind of what seems to happen with this.

It's like… Sometimes.

I mean,

Doubt turns out,

In the sense that we were talking about it,

Not to be the problem.

It was sort of a result of,

Say,

Something that was causing the doubt.

So whatever was feeding that,

That was sort of the problem.

So you can't get there from here.

You have to kind of go through the doubt.

In other words,

You have to go back through Brendan and then over to Charlentown and then to Lincoln.

Yeah.

I'll be talking about this a lot as we go on,

But the basic thing you're talking about is what always feels to me like you're relaxing into whatever the issue is.

Some people will relax as a way to get away from it,

Which has just a little bit of aversion,

But if you just kind of soften into the doubt so you're not fighting it,

That'll get you to Lincoln.

I find that if I am grateful,

If I open up to gratitude,

If I'm really concerned about fidelity,

Then that expansion will just allow to get more of an insight or a knowing.

And that gratefulness for me is very important to expand my mind quite quickly in order to get to that tight place.

Yeah,

There are actually,

I'm not big on the Abhidhamma,

But when they list various mental states,

There are actually more positive ones than negative.

It's just the negative ones we latch onto.

So gratitude is another one,

But there's just lots and lots of expansion.

And part of what you do is recognize which of those come more easily for you.

For some people it might be gratitude,

For some people it may be peacefulness,

Or whatever it is.

Let those qualities come around it.

You sound like it's whistling,

It's supposed to go to bed.

I was going to say,

Well,

Let's see if there's one more and then maybe that's gone way too long.

It's an orchestra.

So we'll be getting on,

Moving on and moving towards sleep shortly.

And if you think,

Ah,

I wish I'd said that.

This is your last chance.

Okay.

So,

I'm trying to remember if I had something clever to say at the end.

Never mind.

So I just want to close just by coming back to that fourth question I asked.

And end with that.

It's just the sense of kind of opening out and asking,

You know,

What is this really going to help me during this retreat?

All of our paths are a little bit different.

When I ask that question,

Sometimes there are the craziest things that come up and that sometimes can be very helpful,

But it takes me a long time to know.

So the most important thing is to open up that question.

If something comes through that seems a little weird or trivial or you've heard it a thousand times,

Don't just dismiss it automatically.

Just allow it to be there.

Say that again.

So when you open up and ask questions,

What's most helpful for me,

Sometimes the fluidian thought will come.

One time what came up was soften your belly.

And for me that was completely out of some other universe I didn't think really did anything if that was that.

It was a while later I really understood more about where the tension and stuff was caught there and how important that was.

And there are a lot of insights that I think are trying to get through to us all the time.

There's a certain kind of wisdom that gets there,

But they sort of become background noise.

And so the first thing,

I mean I learned this with channeling and with all kinds of psychic work too.

The first thing you want to do with any of that stuff is not dismiss it out of hand.

So if something comes up,

You know,

Sit with a little bit.

If it doesn't hold up,

There's nothing lost.

But if something pokes at you a little bit,

Just kind of get a little bit of space to see if there's something underneath it.

This is again really weird stuff.

But you know,

In learning to channel,

One of the things that you realize is that whatever it is that speaks to us,

Whether it's our own wisdom or the queen of Atlantis or anything in between,

Is that oftentimes it's not like that wisdom knows clearly how to communicate with you.

And so sometimes it comes through a little muddle,

Because you have to be willing to kind of listen and let it unpack itself.

And you don't have to have any New Age beliefs to believe any of that.

It's just like trusting that as we all know,

You know,

That wisdom can come from other people in forms we don't expect.

So just keep yourself open to that.

OK.

So,

I always like to close.

This is part of the tradition I love.

It's an understanding that when we do this practice,

The people around us benefit.

And when people around us are practicing,

We benefit from it.

It's like,

You know,

You go into a room where there are people,

Even you can feel it,

And it'll sort of stimulate that in you.

So it's not so much in some time to talk about whether you're trying to send all your goodness out there.

It begins by just recognizing how deeply interrelated we are with one another.

So you may think you're being totally narcissistic and just doing it yourself,

But the people around you will benefit,

And you'll benefit from them.

So to close,

I like to just sort of remind us of that and just feel some of your connection with people around the room as we've gotten to know each other a little bit during these last several hours.

And then,

There are lots of other people out there,

Some near,

Some far away,

That you've got a conscious relationship with.

So just include all of them.

And directly or indirectly,

We all affect each other to some degree or another.

So just feeling that ocean of life that we live in,

And just for a moment sending out consciously,

May all beings be happy.

May all beings know their true nature,

What they are and what they aren't.

May all beings have confidence in their unfolding process.

May all beings have ease.

May all beings sleep sweetly.

May it be so.

So thank you all for your practice.

If you got some good energy and want to stay and sit some more,

Please do.

I don't see that anywhere.

Enjoy your rest.