Spiritual Bypassing

What are the effects of spiritual bypassing? How do we bring our needs for human affection and unresolved issues to dharma practice? How can buddha-dharma help or not help? This talk affirms our ability to transcend and to be liberated.

Transcript

Okay.

Everyone is doing alright?

The next topic is spiritual bypassing.

Two students asked me to speak on this topic.

So I'll offer some comments on it.

Apparently spiritual bypassing is a technical word.

It's a term that a therapist,

Who is also a spiritual practitioner,

Came up with about 30 years ago.

Observing some of the happenings in Dharma centers.

And the behaviors of the people there.

So,

Spiritual bypassing,

How this person describes it,

I think his name is Will Wood.

How this person describes it is that students,

By extension,

Teachers,

Use the Dharma practice as some kind of substitution.

To avoid dealing with their own real life issues.

Now,

Many of us come to the Buddhist practice,

Dharma practice,

Or any spiritual practice,

Because we want to find some kind of inner peace,

Happiness.

We want to find some kind of solution to the problems that we're facing.

That we're feeling.

So,

Because we're complex human beings,

With a whole history of feelings,

And the meaning that we derive from these experiences.

That we carry with us throughout our lives.

And many of which are unresolved.

Naturally,

People tend to gravitate to methods of practice,

Stages of realization,

Different experiences that are newly acquired through spiritual practices.

And of course,

There's a great scale of the range of intensity with which we experience these issues within us.

This problem of spiritual bypassing,

Avoiding facing ourselves,

The human side of ourselves,

Our desires,

Our needs,

Our aspirations,

And the history through which we have lived our lives,

Shaped us,

Is something that was present even during the Shakyamuni Buddhist time.

It's now something new.

The term may be created 30 years ago.

But this phenomenon goes back to early scriptures,

You can see,

Some of the Arhats liberated,

Awakened beings.

They have some personality problems.

There are cases in which these Arhats,

Some of them are cold,

Aloof.

Some of them are just me.

Others,

Arrogant.

There's even one who has a tendency of scolding people.

So,

You may call that residues of aversion,

Anger,

Resentment,

Agitation.

Now,

Do they still harbor the poisons of the mind?

Namely,

Greed,

Hatred,

Ignorance.

No.

Their intentions are free from that.

Do they still manifest that?

Yes.

They still have a tendency to do so.

Why is that?

The analogy I have is,

It's like a wine bottle.

I don't drink alcohol,

But this is a good analogy.

You dump out the wine,

And you smell the bottle,

And it still has the scent of alcohol.

In the mental continuum of people,

Practitioners,

Even awakened practitioners,

Such as the Arhats,

There's still the scent of the poisons of the mind.

When does a person actually become free of those?

Full Buddhahood.

This is not the Buddhahood that Chan,

Zen,

Or other Buddhist traditions talk about,

Like Zogchen,

Mahamudra,

Or Vipassana,

Buddhahood in this life.

It's not that Buddhahood.

I'm talking about eons and eons of practice.

Complete fulfillment of all the perfections.

Then,

The stains,

Or the stench,

Of the poisons of the mind,

Completely disappears.

Short of that,

You can pretty much guarantee that all practitioners are working with these issues.

So that's the first thing.

But this brings up a point.

That is,

Is it possible to reach awakening without resolving these issues?

Yes.

What do you call that?

Spiritual bypassing.

You can bypass that.

If you have to work through all of these issues,

And then at the end of the tunnel you reach awakening.

Too long.

It's not even possible.

It is possible,

However,

To have glimpses,

Or very deep,

Profound,

Experience of awakening,

The last weeks,

Months,

Years.

And have these issues.

This is the fundamental difference.

Buddhadharma practice is not psychotherapy.

It is not a way to,

In a sense,

Better ourselves,

Or improve our personality.

It's not.

It can be,

All the professions in Buddhist practice.

These are meant to transform these deep,

Embedded,

Stench of vexations.

It includes that,

But that's not the actual goal.

What is the actual goal?

Freedom.

I'll get back to this point.

What is the goal of psychotherapy,

Or therapy in general?

According to Freud,

He phrased it,

I will hope humorously,

From hysteric misery,

To bring people from their hysteric misery into a shared common level of basic unhappiness.

That's how he framed it.

Freud.

I think we have gone a long way in modern therapy beyond what Freud defines it.

To the level of happiness.

A sense of fulfillment.

Being at ease,

Connected to different aspects of ourselves.

And content with all of our issues.

All of our issues.

Personality issues.

There's a history to why we are the way we are.

Most of this happens,

You know,

How we have come to be who we are.

How it happens through osmosis,

Gradually.

Day by day.

Thought by thought.

The ways in which we have strung together these thoughts and feelings Through the days,

Weeks,

Months,

Decades,

Years.

They have formatted us to be a particular way.

To be self-evident in the way we have made the link between these moments of experiences,

Giving rise to a sense of permanence.

A sense of continuity of me,

I,

Mine.

These links are made at an unconscious level.

They may have begun when we were children.

The survival mechanisms through which we came up with our childish minds.

Not to belittle children.

But the mind that we had when we were children.

The survival mechanisms,

The strategies of survival.

To cope with what is happening around us.

In this whirlwind of flux and change.

We've learned.

The problem is,

We have carried some of these outdated decades old survival strategies Into our adulthood.

Even though they don't really work.

And that's what I see the genius of good therapy can do.

They make these subliminal,

Undercurrent mechanisms of strategies,

Surface,

And conscious.

So you can call it unconscious.

Make the unconscious conscious.

And this is what I call exposing.

Embracing.

Working through.

Then letting go.

These fourfold processes.

This genuine,

Necessary process of going through these stages.

It's not linear,

By the way.

It's reciprocal.

The more we expose,

The more we accept.

The more we accept,

The more we expose.

And then we can work through them.

Be at peace.

So,

I see the genius of therapy as having the potential to accomplish this.

Buddha Dharma focuses on that which is most important.

Freedom.

And the necessary prerequisites for this freedom.

It identifies,

For example,

In Yogachara,

Consciousness only school,

The necessary mental factors that must be present for practice.

Must be cultivated.

And the negative mental factors,

The unwholesome ones,

The root ones,

Must be dealt with.

It has 52 different mental factors.

It doesn't mean we have only 52 different mental states.

We're so complex.

But it doesn't deal with that.

Why?

Because it's not necessary to reach liberation.

To reach awakening.

You don't have to go through all of that.

To deal with all of our issues.

You need,

What needs to be done.

What can be done.

Focus on those,

And the person will be able to be free.

So in that sense,

It is a kind of bypassing,

If you will.

But in order to be whole,

To be a good person,

To be responsible,

We have to deal with our issues.

We have to deal with all the complex human sides of our experience.

And meaning.

This requires a good teacher.

This requires clear,

Good instructions.

On what practice is.

How the mind works.

And part of that practice involves validating our personal history of who we are.

That's why it's important my teacher has laid out this blueprint,

If you will,

Of affirming the self.

And maturing the self.

And letting go of the self.

You can't really work on ourselves without affirming ourselves.

Without validating our human experiences.

Our past.

This is what shaped us.

Our childhood,

Our rearing process.

The way we have strategized how to survive.

How to reconcile this sense of lacking inside.

From our limited developmental brain.

The brain doesn't fully develop in the mid 20s.

So whatever strategy,

Survival tactics we have come up with,

When we are 5,

6,

Or a teenager,

Is limited.

So it's skewed.

For example,

Children,

In traditional Buddhism,

Don't really teach them how to engage in meditation.

Until they are about 11.

7,

10,

11.

Why?

Because earlier than that,

Children cannot engage in abstract thinking.

They cannot distinguish themselves from their thoughts.

Whatever they think of,

That's what they are.

So they can't disassociate themselves.

Why?

The brain hasn't completed the wiring process yet.

So,

They can meditate.

They can give them some fun things to meditate on.

But they can't really go deep in meditation.

Because the brain cannot engage in distinguishing between discursive thinking and awareness of that.

So there's no distance,

No space from which they can actually see thoughts.

And be able to let it go.

So,

Developmental process.

Whatever strategy we came up with,

With our inability to think abstractly.

For example,

Mommy,

Daddy go to work.

They come home tired.

I need my attention from them.

I need my love.

But they are tired.

Give daddy and mommy a break.

We had to fix dinner.

I can't engage in abstract thinking.

Mommy and daddy have work all day.

They are tired.

I have to give them some space.

And then,

When they have time,

They can play with me.

It doesn't mean they don't love me.

Children can't do that.

What they feel in that moment,

What's going through their mind is this embodied feeling of unloved.

I'm not loved.

And they have come up with particular strategies.

Survival tactics to mend the situation.

So there are 4 strategies that I've identified.

1.

Pleasing.

And you see this in people.

After you hear me talk about these 4.

Pleasing type.

So,

They don't have love.

So they found ways to do something good,

To be a good boy,

To be a good girl.

So that they can get the affection.

Whatever way they come up with.

So the first type is pleasing.

2.

Blaming.

Blaming.

It's a kind of anger.

First time has some resonance with Buddhism.

Desire.

The first poison of the mind.

Second one,

Aversion.

It's their fault.

They've always done this to me.

That's why I'm like this.

That's aversion.

3.

They don't try to please.

They don't try to blame.

They've resorted to themselves.

To keep themselves busy.

Or they evade the issue at hand.

How they feel.

They don't know what to do with it.

So they just do something else.

It's called distracting.

Self distracting.

This is the type of people that's in a group.

There's always one joker.

Anything serious happen,

That person has to make a joke out of it.

To lighten up the situation.

It's a kind of distracting.

And we distract ourselves.

When we face difficulties,

We just do something.

I have a friend.

His wife was giving birth.

His wife was giving birth.

So very intense.

First child.

He doesn't know what to do.

I have to go wash the car now.

So he went downstairs and drove out to a car washer.

And just started to distract him.

Whenever he encounters things,

He has to do something else.

A fourth type.

Also,

Come from not blaming,

Not pleasing,

But kind of resorting to oneself.

And these are very intelligent children.

And somehow they have tapped into that intelligence where they can actually rationalize.

They can think through stuff.

Maybe not so young as children,

But when they get older,

They've learned this mechanism of rationalizing.

And they're very good at analyzing situations.

They still have suppressed feelings of unlove,

For example.

But they justify through their rationalization,

Their thinking.

They're very good at analyzing other people's problems.

So they're pleasing,

Blaming,

Distracting,

And rationalizing.

And much of this,

This is only one side of the equation.

The other side is that these mechanisms are actually learned through the body.

They have completely embodied it.

So the body has the intelligence of these 4 modes of strategy.

So they developed physiological,

Corporeal responses to these experiences.

I would say at a cellular level.

Every part,

Every fiber of our being has these qualities.

It's like muscle memory.

Piano player,

Guitar player.

Their bodies are so in tune with,

In sync with their knowledge of musical notes.

They don't have to go through thinking anymore.

They've embodied it.

So they see the scores,

The music,

They can start playing the piano.

When they encounter particular situations,

They automatically go into that mode.

In neuroscience,

This is called the interoception.

In which the brain,

Our brain is not a reactive brain.

Our brain is a moment to moment interpretive brain.

So it continues to predict what is going to happen.

With the luggage that we carry from our past.

So,

These survival mechanisms are continually at work.

Now,

Many of the higher levels of Buddhist practice do not really deal with this.

Because,

At the basic level,

Behavioral level,

The Buddha Dharma's way of dealing with this is precepts.

So even those arhats who have these personality issues,

Unresolved issues with their parents,

Friends,

Whatever child we're in process,

They still reach arhathood.

But,

Because the absence of the poisons of the mind,

And the opponents of precepts,

The precepts guard them.

Freedom from hurting other people.

It's impossible for them to break precepts.

So at the foundational level,

It's this opponent of precepts that serves as a guard,

As a protection for ourselves.

From ourselves,

And of course,

Others.

Harmonizing others.

So precepts are very important.

At the medium level,

We have all the perfections.

Six perfections,

Ten perfections,

Or eightfold path.

You can look it up in Google.

So all of these actually work with our emotions.

This is not really talked about in this way.

I haven't heard it from other Buddhist teachers.

But this is the way I talk about it.

They actually work with our emotions.

For example,

The six perfections.

Generosity.

Generosity is a particular mental feeling.

It's a particular tone.

For a person to have a kind of charity,

A kind of giving.

So it's important to cultivate that.

Of course,

In addition to actually generosity,

Giving people material things,

And spiritual advice,

And so on.

Sharing the Dharma.

But what's crucial here is the mental factor.

What I call the undercurrent tone of feelings.

And that generosity,

That kind of mindset,

Nourishes a particular type of feeling tone.

Same thing with precepts.

Vigilance.

And ethical conduct of not harming oneself,

And not harming others.

It's a particular feeling tone.

It's based on a sense of connection with others.

Connected also to ourselves.

Likewise with diligence,

Patience,

Meditation practice.

Even wisdom,

When it's applied to interpersonal relationships.

Wisdom is compassion.

Compassion is the action of wisdom.

So the kind of sensitivity that one has to self and others.

These are ways,

The six perfections,

Are ways to work with our emotions.

Ways to work with ourselves.

But the top level methods,

They don't deal with this.

For example,

Huatou,

Gongran practice.

This is a practice originally designed on the foundation of Mahayana practice.

Six Perfections.

On the foundation of precepts.

If you divorce that from the foundation,

What you have is spiritual bypassing.

Koan practice.

Whatever Koan put it down.

Whatever vexations put it down.

You raise the Koan.

You're not meant to experience them.

Same thing with similar practices.

If you have a triangle pyramid,

The top level are usually free from these foundational intermediate practices.

That really work on ourselves.

So,

If people only focus on that,

Then you have problems.

Especially without the foundation of precepts.

Then you break precepts,

And you cause havoc to the Dharma centers.

Student-teacher relationship.

All kinds of issues that we can see in centers these days.

So,

It's like building a house,

You have to build the first floor,

Then the second floor,

Then you can enjoy yourself on the third floor.

You can't build a second or third floor without,

Like,

In midair,

Without scaffolding.

At least,

At the very minimum,

Scaffolding.

Like those beach houses.

They don't really have a first floor.

It's just kind of posts.

At least they have that.

So,

Scaffolding precepts.

But the more foundational practice is quite rich.

The stronger the foundation,

The better the perfection practice.

And the deeper you're able to get into some of the higher teachings.

But even at the foundational and intermediate,

Like I said before,

Dharma is not really about bringing a person to a state of happiness.

Resolve personal,

Emotional issues.

It's not meant to do that.

So it only cultivates the necessary qualities for freedom,

For liberation.

You can see it in the 6 Perfections.

What are the necessary?

You can see it in some of these intermediate meditation methods.

The foundational practices of how to be a good person.

How to be filial.

Devotional to one's parents.

That's in the early scriptures.

How to be a good neighbor.

These issues.

Now,

In East Asia,

We have our own foundational practice.

In Confucian cultures,

Which values humility,

Gratitude.

Buddha Dharma,

These foundational practices also have that.

These must be the foundation.

It must be cultivated.

Must be nourished.

For the sake of working through some of our issues.

But what I want to say so far is that,

One,

Spiritual bypassing has been around for thousands of years.

Buddhism,

Cultivated in a particular way.

It could be said to be a kind of spiritual bypassing.

It's focused on liberation.

It's not focused on working through your personal issues.

Does it have aspects of practices that deal with that?

Yes.

It does.

It does.

But it's not necessary.

The bare minimum would do.

The bare minimum.

Founded on precepts.

Founded on basic humanity.

The common sense of being a good person.

Not sufficient.

But the real life of living out our lives We can't be jerks.

Very often,

Like I've said,

We carry our outdated modes of survival tactics into our adulthood.

So we're still kind of blindsided to some of the issues.

We don't see it.

Because it's so ingrained in us.

So,

These two aspects of therapy,

Which is meant to unearth or make conscious these unconscious strategies And Buddha Dharma,

Which is meant for liberation,

These two can co-exist,

Can work together.

And the way I've taught my students,

Especially in the last 5-7 years Is this practice of what I call,

Embodied experiencing.

It's important to understand what this is.

Because in Buddha Dharma,

Awakening is not a product of practice.

It's something intrinsic.

It's something we already have.

It's not some mystical experience,

Nor is it some things outside ourselves.

Some acquired experience,

Knowledge,

Past history.

It is right here,

In this moment,

The most natural,

Fundamental way of being.

It is this awareness.

Freed awareness from the shackles of the narratives,

The stories,

The words and language,

The interpretations,

The survival strategies.

What I call,

Furniture.

Awareness,

Which we already have.

The problem is,

We're not conscious participants of what we're actually aware of.

We're just on automatic pilot,

Projecting our past into the present,

Into the future.

So,

The most direct way to bring these two together The healing part of ourselves,

And fundamental freedom of what we are Is through awareness.

I typically don't talk about awareness.

I talk about it sometimes.

But I found using that word,

Because everyone is using it,

It's so vague.

To the extent that no one really knows what the hell they're talking about.

What is it referring to?

So the word that I usually use is experiencing.

Experiencing.

And this experiencing is already embodied.

The experience of the eye,

Ear,

Nose,

Tongue,

Body,

Mind.

It's already embodied.

So embodied experiencing.

Moment to moment to moment.

You're already experiencing.

It's just that this experience,

In this experience,

We clutter it with so much furniture.

Luggage.

That we don't really know what we are experiencing.

We're just repeating our habit,

Tendencies.

Following the contents of our thoughts and feelings.

So the practice that I teach Stems from my years of practicing,

Decades of practicing silent illumination.

And the complementary method of direct contemplation.

Coupled with the correct attitude of being able to unearth,

Excavate all the clutter.

All of our histories.

All of our survival mechanisms.

And cultivating that clarity to not try to change it.

Not try to improve it.

This is very important.

But completely vulnerable and accepted.

Without interpreting it.

Because the mind's habit is to interpret,

Reify,

Solidify,

And build a story around it.

So we reframe from label,

Judgment,

Narratives,

Storyline.

We simply aware.

Simply what I call embody.

Experiencing.

Whatever that may be.

The key is,

Our habit tendency is to make links of our day to day,

Moment to moment,

Week by week,

Month by month,

Year by year.

Decades by decades of experiencing.

Linking it into narratives.

Into a permanent,

Self-evident sense of me.

I.

Mine.

And that is due to the linking.

Interpreting.

Our interpreting.

Our need for meaning.

This is what I've always done.

This is all that we've ever known.

So,

If we are completely open and vulnerable,

Allowing things to come up,

A lot of things will come up.

Our interpreting.

Our memory.

Thoughts,

Feelings.

We have to not judge.

Not interpret.

We have to completely accept.

When we accept,

We will discover.

I'm going to put it in stages of practice.

But please,

Don't reify them into stages of practice.

I'm on the third stage now.

Maybe I should be close to the fourth.

Don't do that.

I'm presenting it as a linear fashion for convention sake.

It serves its usefulness.

But it's a reciprocal process.

It may not be in the sequence.

But I'm going to lay out one.

When we are open to,

When we have feelings of sadness,

Grief,

Or sense of loss.

Self-despair.

When we catch ourselves projecting onto other people,

Our wishes.

We want this moment to be other than what it is.

Open yourself.

Drop everything.

Feel.

And body.

Tap into the body.

Because the body has its own intelligence of feeling these things.

You have to be in tune with it.

Completely open yourself to the body.

Ground yourself.

Not up here.

Not top heavy.

Up here.

Down here.

Ground yourself.

And you will discover,

Beneath the layer of interpretation,

Storyline.

There's these undercurrent feeling tones.

Self-trashing.

Inadequacy.

Not good enough.

Loathing.

Or a particular need.

Sadness.

That's not where you stop.

You have to let these things come out.

It will flow through you.

And if you feel like crying,

You cry.

Relax into this.

And body experience.

Let it flow through.

And keep your wakeful open.

Completely accept.

You will discover,

Even beneath this layer of feeling tones,

What is that?

Corporeal.

Physiological.

Sensations.

You will start to identify different areas of the body.

Holding some of these emotions.

Decades old.

Survival mechanisms.

You will.

What do you do?

Continue to open.

Continue to be vulnerable.

You can lie down on the bed if you want.

Whatever you may be.

Completely open to it.

Ground yourself in the body.

You will discover at the level of sensation.

First,

Narratives.

Interpretations.

Then,

Undercurrent feeling tones.

Then,

Raw sensations.

You need the raw sensation.

You can still feel something.

That's all there is to it.

Just raw energies.

A few years ago,

I've opened up myself.

Last year was particularly strong.

Opened up myself.

And sometimes these things come.

I've identified 4 stages.

Undercurrent feeling tones,

Raw sensations,

Bodily,

Corporeal,

And energy.

So,

I've opened up myself.

It was kind of like a breakdown.

Emotional things.

I've discovered feelings about my mother.

And my relationship.

It just came on spontaneously.

I was watching a movie.

I was actually watching Spiderman.

Spiderman 2 or whatever.

So I saw the Spiderman.

His girlfriend died.

When I saw in that moment,

His girlfriend died.

It's not a happy ending.

She died.

A flood of things just came on.

Nothing to do with the movie.

I was kind of paralyzed.

I just sat there.

These feelings just come.

And I just opened myself.

Eventually I just lied down on the bed.

And I was traveling.

And teaching.

I was at the last day of the retreat.

And I was lying there.

I couldn't move.

All the air was just coming out.

And very quickly shifted into this feeling tone.

Just kind of like this unfulfilled love.

Or just unloved.

You may feel.

But it wasn't me,

I,

Mine,

Unloved.

It was just these feelings.

Why?

Because I'm not in the vortex.

They may come up.

I am feeling unloved.

That's a very good discovery.

I'm not identifying myself.

I'm just open.

I'm allowing it to be.

And more interpretation,

Memories come up.

Open,

Open,

Open.

I was in there,

I don't know how long.

A couple hours.

And then it became just sensations.

Just embodying different parts.

For me it's here,

And also here.

The chest,

And here.

And I continued.

And that didn't,

When I came to,

It was so powerful,

This experience.

And subsequent months,

I continued to have smaller episodes of that.

Until I realized it's not really breakdown,

It's actually a kind of breakthrough.

These experiences.

Because as it unfolded,

The narratives,

And the memories,

And the experiences,

And how it's lodged,

I became clear of what is,

And how it has happened in me.

So I know the narrative part.

I realize the undercurrent feeling tone part.

I understand the raw bodily experience part.

I was in my head.

I was completely vulnerable and open.

I allowed it to be.

I allowed it to be.

Like the spaciousness of the awareness.

Pure experiencing.

Without judgment.

And the furniture,

So much came out.

Is it me?

It's part of my history.

But in working through that,

I'm less identified to my past.

To the history.

Are they there?

More and more,

I'm freed by it.

And because I see all these different layers of it,

I'm doing what the psychotherapists do.

Except this is self practice.

I'm excavating the subconscious level.

The things that used to be blind sighted me.

Completely.

I'm seeing that.

And subsequent to that,

I continue to have different unfoldings of these experiences.

So,

And I made mistakes.

I made mistakes.

But I see through them now.

We expose.

We embrace.

We work through.

And then we let go.

As honestly and humanly possible to ourselves.

If we don't do that,

These hidden tendencies will ruin your relationship.

Your Dharma practice.

And you will negatively engage in spiritual bypassing.

There's a harmful way,

And there's a naturally designed way of Buddhadharma.

Because it's not meant to deal with therapeutic healing.

Although it does,

It could heal.

But it's not meant to that.

So that's a kind of bypass.

For awakening.

That's the way it's designed.

But sometimes what impedes hinders us is our personal,

Human side.

These issues.

So,

For me,

Those 4 types.

Pleasing,

Blaming,

Rationalizing,

Distracting.

For me,

It's a combination.

I'm sure for everyone,

It's a combination.

It's just a matter of percentage.

For me,

It's a kind of pleasing.

And this is quite common for practitioners.

I was doing that with my teacher.

He was like a father to me.

I came to the States when I was very young.

Just with my mom,

No father figure.

Projected onto my teacher.

He saw me grow up from young all the way to adult.

Even when I was his attendant,

I had that thing going on.

But the way he taught me,

He himself is a super rational type.

The third type.

So he can see right through what the hell I was doing,

And just cut it off.

Which made me feel like,

Oh,

I'm on love!

Or publicly humiliated me.

So it's like,

Made me face that.

The more I practice now,

The more I'm able to appreciate him.

And the way that relationship was,

Practice after all,

Is a form of relationship.

Relating to ourselves,

And others.

Relating to the Dharma.

So I was able to see the way I tend to respond to people.

There's a side of me that's rationalistic too.

These two.

Pleasing and rational.

My analytical mind is strong.

But this aspect of pleasing is also quite strong.

Stronger.

So,

Having discovered this,

Having worked through this,

Still,

I abide myself by the principle of Buddha Dharma.

That is,

Free.

You're already free.

Already freedom here.

Spaciousness.

I know the furniture,

I don't need to identify with the furniture.

That's not to say I deny them,

I suppress them,

Or I'm blindsided by them.

I'm not.

I know they're there.

They don't define me.

Just like in your house.

There's a lot of furniture.

Do they define you?

No.

You have them.

The point is not to throw them out the window.

You keep them.

Some of them you recycle.

Remake them.

Make it usable.

You don't deny them.

You work through them.

So,

Already free.

The other side of the equation,

I have to avoid spiritual bypassing,

So I have to focus on my healing,

Focus on myself,

Self care.

You can do some of that.

But please,

Don't turn Buddha Dharma into some kind of therapy.

It's not what it's meant to do.

That's the other side.

Dharma as therapy.

Spiritual bypassing and Dharma as therapy.

That's also problematic.

Because the last thing you want is to feed into this tendency of self care,

Of healing myself,

Acknowledging.

And really,

What you don't want to do is wallowing into these things.

You don't want to do that.

That becomes a hindrance.

All we have is the present moment.

So good therapy will also tell you that.

It's not about the past.

It's about the present.

The more you reify your past as something to heal,

Fix,

Improve,

The more problems you'll have.

You'll never heal.

So always about the present.

Present what?

Being present to it.

Being present.

Exposing.

Thoroughly embracing.

Working through.

Facing them.

Because it is our intrinsic freedom,

This awareness,

This embodied experience,

That each and every one of you have,

In Buddha Dharma they call it Buddha nature.

It is this experiencing that will save you.

Because in this experiencing,

It is open,

It is free.

We have to consciously participate,

Align ourselves to this,

As the foundation,

And face it.

When we do this,

Effortlessly,

We don't put effort into fixing ourselves,

We put effort into participating.

In Chinese it's called Chan.

That word Chan is investigating.

But it also means complete.

Embodying.

Participating.

That is how you free yourself.

And that is how you work through what needs to be done.

What can be done.

For awakening.

You don't have to work through every one of your childhood problems.

You don't have to do that.

Sufficient.

What needs to be done.

What should be done.

Once you have awakening,

You have to awaken again and again and again and again.

Once you have that,

The stronger your compass is,

Then you come back to work through those things.

How?

In the midst of engaging with the world.

That's how you discover your showcomings.

That's how you discover your pleasing,

Blaming,

Rationalizing,

Analyzing,

Distracting.

That's how you discover that.

Layers upon layers of it.

You won't get lost.

Why?

You've already tasted freedom.

You don't get lost.

So that's what Chan Zen practice aims at.

That's why it's called Sudden Awakening.

Right from the beginning,

You aim for that which is you.

That which you already have.

Experiencing.

Already free.

You must personally experience this.

Have a good teacher,

Good instructions,

Good support,

Sangha,

And practice.

And then you won't get lost.

You've tasted freedom.

Is the work done?

Hell no.

There's so much work to be done.

The human side.

The history that made us who we are.

The shortcomings.

And we engage in the Bodhisattva path.

It's a long journey.

No need to hurry.

Just practice.

Okay.

End here.

Reviews

Nice clarity around what the Buddhist dharma helps with and what not

Very good talk and easy to understand. Guo Gu helps us to see the reality of ourselves. Thankyou..

Insightful teaching! Thank you for explaining so clearly your novel way of understanding the human experience as it intersects with Buddhism. Very useful knowledgeable.

Thank you Sending good wishes.

Excellent talk. Thank you 🙏🏼 I wish I had had a good teacher 40 yrs ago! Life was my teacher and “hidden tendencies” became painful lessons.

Deep and life/world changing. Namaste 🙏

Very THOUGHT-PROVOKING! 🙏🏻💕

I am wondering whether generosity can become enmeshed with pleasing? Thank you, joy

This was an excellent talk delivered in a clear tone and incisive words. Just what I needed to hear. As a zen student I often stumble over the "furniture" in sangha life. Thank you very much. 🙏🏼