Confessions Of A Jittery Mind: Dharma Talk

This dharma talk was given at the North Carolina Zen Center. The talk concerns ways to reduce distraction in meditation, from considering posture to seeing what we might consider being a distraction as simply being part of our field of awareness.

Transcript

So,

Good morning.

Such a blessing this morning to have such a nice morning with the windows open and the breeze blowing.

So I don't usually title talks,

But I wanted to title this one to give you an idea where I'm coming from.

So the title of the talk is Confessions of a Jittery Mind.

You know on Facebook,

I see these different memes that I like.

So one is,

You know,

The Buddhist monk and he's sitting meditating and there's the large speech bubble above.

And the speech bubble is like,

Silent,

Just here,

Emptiness,

Ice cream.

Right?

Or the other one,

Which is side-by-side of just a regular practitioner sitting in meditation,

And the one on the left is what everyone else sees.

He's sitting there,

Stable,

And the speech bubble above him is all just empty.

And then the one on the right is what I see,

And he's sitting still like a mountain.

But the speech bubble is a picture here.

I'm going like,

Look at his watch.

So,

You know,

It's something we all face,

A difficulty holding steady in meditation,

Keeping our center.

And,

You know,

It's like when we engage with our thoughts rather than simply observing their presence and allowing them to pass.

Then we get lost.

So I'd like to do something unusual.

Some of you know,

I work with fourth graders,

Fifth graders,

Sixth graders.

I teach grammar,

I teach geometry,

I teach arithmetic,

And over the years the students have become,

For me,

Increasingly difficult to read in terms of how they're receiving what it is that I'm saying,

And more particularly what their understanding is.

So here's what I've gotten into the habit of doing with them over the last few years.

I'll say,

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to close your eyes and hold up fingers,

And I tell them one finger means,

I totally don't get it.

Five fingers means,

I totally get it,

I could write the book.

Three fingers is,

And I tell them three is a good number,

Three fingers is,

You know,

I get it,

But I sure could keep practicing it.

I sure could keep talking about it,

But I basically get it.

And they've gotten really good at it.

So what I'd like to invite you to do,

And you're welcome to just leave your hands in your lap if you like,

But,

And folks online,

You're gonna play by the honor system here.

I'm gonna,

I'm gonna ask you in a minute to close your eyes and hold up a finger,

Or fingers.

One is,

No,

I'm totally in the zone.

Distraction meditation is simply not an issue.

I am in deep Samadhi.

Five is,

Man,

I come in here,

And I may as well stay home.

I'm just like completely lost.

And three is,

Yeah,

You know,

Sometimes this is a problem with me.

You know,

Sometimes it's hard,

Sometimes it's not.

It's something that I'm working with in my practice.

If you're comfortable doing this,

But you got to play honor system,

Because what I do with the students at school is,

And I then feed back to them what it is that I see.

And it helps them gain an understanding among themselves of where they are.

Sometimes I'll get,

You know,

Some twos,

And they know that I give them an opportunity to understand that they're not the only two.

So if you're comfortable,

If you're not,

Just leave your hands in your lap.

Close your eyes.

One is,

I'm completely in the zone.

Five is,

I'm just distracted at every moment.

And three is a good number.

It's somewhere in between.

You can decide one to five.

Have your eyes closed.

Please hold up some fingers.

Fingers down.

Eyes open.

I saw mostly threes.

I saw a few fours,

And I saw a few fives.

I didn't see,

I don't think,

Anything below three.

So we're all kind of in the same boat here.

Let me read to you from a journal entry I made after a session a year or so ago.

I got home,

And I wrote,

I was amazed and disheartened by the images and wandering thoughts I experienced in Sashin.

It really was just sensory indulgence.

A snippet of a favorite movie,

A song's refrain,

Memories from the family reunion last summer,

And thinking about things that weren't pleasant,

Replaying my divorce 30 years ago,

And that heartbreak,

And then trying to push it away.

And I felt so tired.

I kept allowing my eyes to close and my mind to drift,

And I was having difficulty with my koan,

Wondering and doubting if koans really are the right path for me.

I swear I was beset by the hindrances.

I kept getting swept away in them,

Unmindful that they were even happening.

And I know that when I'm unmindful,

Hindrances can envelop my mind and obstruct my ability to see clearly,

To understand what is real,

And what's not real,

What's skillful and not skillful.

And I tried so hard to get a handle on it,

To work skillfully with the hindrances that were impeding me,

But it was so hard.

I went on in that journal to use the phrase,

My jittery mind.

And friends often know that's exactly what I have.

So there's a wonderful simile in one of the sutras that talks about how it is that the hindrances can obscure our perceptions and our mind,

How they can make it difficult for our minds to function clearly.

So if you consider a pool of clear water that you might look down into to see what's at the bottom.

And the simile says,

The sutra says,

When sense desire is present in the mind,

It's as if the pool is suffused with a colored dye,

Brilliant and attractive,

But which changes the way we perceive what's really in the water.

When anger and aversion are present,

It's as though the water is boiling hot and the mind is seething in turbulence.

When drowsiness and lethargy are present,

The pool is overgrown with algae and there's a strong stagnation in the mind.

When we experience restlessness and worry,

It's like water that's stirred up by the wind and the mind is tossed about from one thing to another on the wave.

And when we are doubtful,

The water is muddy,

Turbid,

And our mind's clarity is obscured.

Now distraction and meditation is part of the game.

And we can't really blame ourselves for it because thinking is what the brain is meant to do.

Every meditation tradition really,

You know,

Buddhist or otherwise,

Offers ideas on what to do in the face of distraction.

But to make things even more mysterious,

We might ask from the Zen perspective,

Is there even such a thing as distraction?

Thanissaro Bhikkhu,

Who's a Buddhist Theravadan monk and author,

Once wrote,

When we follow certain forms of thought,

We develop habits which naturally go along with them.

When we react negatively to what we perceive as distractions,

Thanissaro asks,

Are we developing the thing our meditation is meant to develop?

Are we developing a sense of calm?

Or are we developing turmoil?

Are we developing the mental stability we seek?

Or are we developing a restless mind?

So what to do?

Try to block it out?

I can tell you that for me,

That carries its own set of difficulties.

It's like a losing battle and it usually leaves me feeling frustrated,

More distracted than ever.

It's not a workable solution for me.

So how do we get to the heart of this?

Maybe we can start by just looking at the logistical aspects of meditation for part of the solution.

You know,

What's our state of mind when we come into the zendo?

I have long made it a point when I'm in the car I don't listen to the news.

I don't even really listen to music.

I try to arrive here as settled as I can be.

And then there's our physical posture.

And we can use settling breaths no matter what our posture is.

We can use settling breaths to sort of settle ourselves physically and energetically once we come into the zendo.

And there's a mental posture as well,

A posture of intention.

You know,

As I sit and come in and I begin to settle,

I set an intention to take this time to really practice,

To try to honor and try to build my presence here in the zendo.

And to be with Sangha as a support for my presence.

As a support for my presence.

And I can take that with me when I go back out into the world.

But these are easy.

You know,

These are surface level things.

So let's see if we can look a little more deeply.

Meditation as a practice.

Learning to sit comfortably within the dharmagate of bliss and repose,

As Dogen says.

And we have to learn this,

You know,

Being comfortable and aware in our bodies.

Comfortable and aware in our minds.

We have to find these.

And sometimes it feels like I can't find either.

But I also know that we have to be patient with ourselves.

Patient with our own process.

Patient with the time it takes for our practice to grow.

And for me to be accepting of those times when,

In spite of my intention,

In spite of my effort,

I come in here with my body,

But I remain out there with my mind.

It's helped me to bring a compassionate tolerance to this.

Just a fundamental and conscious change in my response to this.

You know,

Having aversion from my own wandering mind is a trap that I have fallen into many times in my life.

And it's helpful to me to remember Thanissaro's question.

Am I developing a sense of calm in these times?

Or am I developing turmoil?

Impatience,

A desire for better meditation.

It's a hindrance that I've indulged and it can be tumultuous.

So I've developed a sense of forbearance for my wandering mind.

Patience with my process.

Patience with my practice.

And this feels a little deeper.

But let's keep looking.

For me,

My own practice of Buddhism at large,

Understanding my home in the three treasures,

Taking this into my heart,

Is so grounding.

And I find that the act of taking refuge,

The recitation,

I take refuge in Buddha,

I take refuge in Sangha,

And the prostrations,

They're a moment that reminds me of qualities within myself that are attuned to the Buddha's path in this spiritual way that I've chosen.

To recognize in the moment the life of the Buddha,

The Dharma,

And Sangha within myself,

When I really feel Buddha,

Dharma,

And Sangha as lived realities,

It helps me to deal skillfully with circumstances in my life.

Not that taking refuge makes my problems go away or helps me to deepen my meditation.

But by relying on the example of the Buddha,

The wisdom of the teachings of the Dharma and the support of Sangha,

Keeping these things close to my heart,

I find that I'm able to transform my response to a variety of life's hardships.

Jeffrey Shugin Arnold,

Who's the abbot of the Mountains and Rivers Order in New York State,

He wrote that taking refuge involves taking a leap forward with a deep sense of trust in our own basic nature.

Buddha,

Dharma,

And Sangha are the real activity of compassion that has been passed down through many generations.

They point to how real people seek real truth in a particular time and place.

This feels closer now.

But as I was thinking about this over the last few days,

It seemed like there's more to get to the heart of this.

Our true nature is eternal,

Joyous,

Selfless,

And pure.

We just chanted Joe Raku God Joe.

In a letter recommending the Kanzayan chant to a friend,

Hakun wrote,

And I love this,

Because it is so brief,

I sincerely hope that you will recite this two or three hundred times every day.

Our true nature is eternal,

Joyous,

Selfless,

And pure.

Suzuki Roshi,

From the San Francisco Zen tradition,

Used to say that our individual small mind,

Lowercase n,

Is not separate from what he called Big Mind.

Capital M.

The integrated wholeness of life.

That our small individual mind is actually an expression of Big Mind.

Which for me sometimes is hard to fathom.

But I can take it on faith.

Cohen Yamada Roshi wrote,

Great faith means believing without any doubt that you are intrinsically awake.

That all beings are intrinsically awake.

He goes on,

Great faith also means believing that every person is in the process of eventually achieving supreme enlightenment.

Our true nature is eternal,

Joyous,

Selfless,

And pure.

This feels true.

It feels hopeful.

Some things we can just accept with faith.

But let's get down to practice.

I've always loved the opening passage of the Anapanasati Sutra.

It's one of only a few where the Buddha addressed meditation directly.

And it reads,

I heard these words of the Buddha one time when he was staying in Savatthi.

That night the moon was full.

The Buddha,

The awakened one,

Was sitting in the open air and his disciples were gathered around him.

After looking over the assembly,

He began to speak.

Friends,

Our community is pure and good.

Such a community is rare and any pilgrim who seeks it,

No matter how far she must travel,

Will find it worthy.

Friends,

The full awareness of breathing,

If developed and practiced continuously,

Will be rewarding and bring great advantage.

And what is the way to develop and practice continuously the method of full awareness of breathing?

It is like this.

The practitioner goes into the forest,

Or to the foot of a tree,

Or to any quiet place,

Sits stably,

Holding his or her body straight,

And practices like this.

Breathing in,

I know I'm breathing in.

Breathing out,

I know I'm.

.

.

It's just so simple.

I keep telling myself.

But as anybody who's ever tried it can tell you,

It can also be just that hard.

So here's the perspective that for me has been helpful.

In a Dharma talk that I heard by Paul Haller,

Who's a priest at the San Francisco Zen Center,

He spoke of the difference between directed attention and receptive attention.

Directed attention is just what it sounds like.

When we bring our attention to an input from our senses,

Including thoughts,

Which the Buddha considered as an input from a sixth sensory organ,

The mind itself.

When we bring our attention to an input from the senses,

The difficulty with directed attention is that we tend to bring things along with it.

Impressions from past events,

Our preconceived ideas,

Our values,

Our judgments,

All of these accompany our directed attention,

And our awareness of sensory experience is changed by them,

Colored by them,

Disrupted and changed by them.

With receptive attention,

We engage sensations such as hindering emotions and thoughts in a way that allows them to simply show their nature.

For me,

Meditation is always more clear when I bring receptive attention to the sensation of my experience rather than directed attention in its attempts to examine experience.

So in a way that allows sensations to simply show their nature,

Doubt,

Worry,

And the sensations of these things become more vital than our effort to interpret them or our propensity to just be swept along by them.

I'm experiencing doubt.

I'm experiencing sense of desire.

When we engage in this way,

We find that something's being expressed,

And we can stand intuitively with the real nature of what's happening.

Now for me,

The root of being able to do this is a practice of non-attachment,

Being able to just observe things as powerful as doubt or desire or worry without clinging to an immersion in their stories.

Just letting it be something simple,

Just a sensation of doubt,

Of desire.

Of worry without the clinging,

Cloying,

Gobbledygook that I might otherwise concoct.

So here's what I think I know.

That distractions in Zazen don't actually exist.

I mean,

How could they really?

As Zen practitioners,

We value an understanding of non-duality,

The inherent oneness of things.

Things as it is.

Some of you've heard me quote Suzuki Roshi on this before.

Things as it is.

So a cough in the zendo or an itch on the face or a recurring thought,

Are these distractions which separate us from our samadhi,

From our concentration?

Or are they part of our field of awareness,

Just needing to be seen as such,

To be understood as such,

To be welcomed in our awareness with the same attention,

The same value,

The same acceptance that we might give one clear breath.

It's a subtle shift.

Simple,

Like I said.

But for me,

Seemingly,

The practice of a lifetime.

So I'm wondering if anyone might like to share in your own thoughts on this,

Your own experiences.

I wonder,

I used the word surrender a lot before I came here,

And it seems really similar to attachment.

So I'm curious about your perspective on using that word instead of attachment.

Do you mean surrender is similar,

Maybe I misheard you,

Is similar to non-attachment?

Okay,

I'm sorry,

I thought I heard you say this.

Yeah,

Sorry.

Okay.

I don't know if this matters.

It feels like surrender,

And you may disagree,

It feels like surrender is an action and non-attachment is a state of being.

Surrender is a a way of acting and attachment is non-being.

Very good,

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also need to be selective about what's playing in my car on my way here.

It's really something to it,

I don't know what it is,

But it's very similar.

Yeah.

I just don't do it.

I know.

So I get here with it all in my head.

Me too,

It's a fight I have in myself.

I hit that button automatically and of course it's going to be the radio talking about the news.

Right,

Which is never good.

That's all the way home.

I guess along those lines though,

Where you're going at in your talk,

What you're kind of getting at is to be able to sit with all that turmoil in the news and not get swept away.

Yes.

I feel like there's a point though where you stop being mindful and then you do get swept away,

Inevitably.

Yes,

But for me it's also like reduce,

Reuse,

Recycle.

The greatest of these is reduce.

You know what I mean?

It's like,

Yeah,

Sit with it and watch the news on your way to the cinema in the first place.

Right.

You know I was actually,

I guess it was yesterday I was sitting and there's a lot of internal distraction going on and an image came to me which was Duggan when he had to go and meet the emperor and he sits down in front of the emperor and the emperor's got a sword raised and just about swings it and Duggan's just you know,

Right now is right here that's something else I guess and I'm moved by it.

Of course the emperor sat down and decided,

But it helped me that one time.

I think to bring a balance here too is that we want to accept and surrender or practice non-attachment and make room for what is,

But I think there's also room for standing up to our thoughts at times.

Certainly there are times where let's just take,

Instead of thoughts let's just take sleepiness it's an easy one,

Everyone can relate that one remedy or one sort of approach to working with sleepiness is just to let sleepiness be there,

Right?

Just do sleepy sitting that's one way to work with it and there's wisdom in that because we're not fighting it and then there are times also that we blink our eyes look up at the ceiling during the evening splash water on our face drink some tea or whatever to wake up and so taking a more active approach is also a way to work with it.

I think that we have to just be skillful enough to decide,

How do I want to work with this?

Do I want to just let it be or do I want to stand up to it?

There's no right or wrong with it,

Is there?

It's simply different ways of working.

Thank you so much for sharing your journey in that land of it's beautiful,

It's beautiful like a piece of poetry like a piece of poetry I don't understand everything but it doesn't matter and I'd like to hear that again there's two words actually that I will remember is the receptive word that's very important I think it's very inspiring and the other word that I've heard before but I still don't understand is hindrance that you used to start with In Buddhist sutras the Buddha speaks of five hindrances things that can stand in our way of engaging meditation of engaging samadhi of finding this inherent sense of oneness things like doubt,

Worry anger restlessness and the teachings I understand is that we have to be aware of those things observe them,

See them as they're happening create a little space around them so that we can be with them more skillfully Sheldon,

Thank you very much for your challenging and excellent talk when someone observes a feeling or an emotion that comes up during meditation and sits with it and it goes away and you begin to count or you go back to your breath and it comes up again and you observe it again and then you get back eventually to your regular life how do you integrate that?

Whatever understanding emerged I guess what is the purpose of those observations or how do we translate them into making ourselves better people or serving other people better I guess that's the question I think that as we observe these things several things can happen one is their roots can begin to present themselves as well and we can start to understand where these things are coming from they're born out of jealousy they're born out of insecurity whatever it is that they are irritation so one is that we can start to understand the roots of them and when we do they can begin to dissipate the feelings,

The emotions because we're understanding them and able to address them and be with them more skillfully so that's one thing I'll say perhaps we don't that's just a process we're working through but for me as I learn to recognize and see these things I'm feeling irritated and be able to name it as I move through my day that recognition becomes easier the more I engage in that recognition process,

The more easy it is for me to say when I walk into my classroom when I was up at the office for a minute,

I walk in my classroom and people are up on their feet and I'm irritated and in that moment I can speak in an irritated way to my students or I can stop and say to myself I'm irritated and then I can make a choice about how I'm going to respond which then again helps that irritation to dissipate is that helpful?

Yeah it is thank you very much that was a good practice though extremely difficult yeah the other thing Karen that can happen in this practice I think as you're describing of noticing,

Riding through these feeling states or thoughts patterns and we see them coming and going and we manage to get through them and come out the other side the other thing that we can do in terms of working with other people being with you said how can this be applied to our life and then tolerate other people's difficulty without becoming thrown off because we know that their mind states their emotional states will also go,

Come and go and so we find a greater presence with people because we're not somehow consumed by their feelings or mind states if that makes sense so it's not only just working with our own but also working with others for example if you're trying to help somebody and they're in desperate need many times what that does is kick up a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety inside of us when somebody's in a really bad place and there can be a difficulty in tolerating that in just being able to handle somebody in a difficult situation so the more we practice with our own riding out that wave we can do that with others as well huge difference in that in the last four years huge,

It's amazing those difficult emotions that you spoke about kind of avoiding some way like doubt,

Worry,

Anger anxiousness,

All that I mean those are all beneficial things also I mean like from a survival standpoint or from an evolutionary standpoint like those sorts of what we consider negative emotions have actually helped us survive and get to this point but you said like in your example in class it's like it's okay to feel all that stuff,

It's good to feel all that stuff but just like touching it and then choosing what to do with it instead of just reacting that's just my thoughts on that and I think your point,

The first part of your point is true that these things like doubt and worry they let us know that we have something that we need to be thinking about there's something here that we have to understand and deal with so it's a good point and to do it skillfully you know and to wonder if we need to then dump it onto somebody else what does that accomplish maybe something productive maybe not it's helped my practice sometimes when I can remember to do this when something like that comes up rather than fight it that's not what I'm doing here just acknowledge it and let it be okay I'm not attaching to it somehow it goes away pretty quick that's what surprise means I think it's going to if I acknowledge it,

It's going to be what I'm doing impermanence is part of this too that these things are going to pass I really like the power of feeling impatient and that impatience is going to stick around but resisting it involves holding on to it what you just said is key in the whole process because some people like to feel whatever that horrible feeling is it's been that way their whole lives it's a really hard habit to give up it's worth talking just briefly about because so many of us have experienced traumas big and small traumas in our lives that the way the traumatized brain reacts is that it cannot differentiate it cannot see things from a distance it is caught in the feeling state it is so potent that there is no ability to see this from a healthy distance so part of what practice does is works with the traumatized brain by slowly,

Very slowly creating a sense of healthy distance I see this anger,

I see this fear I see this whatever might be arising when you're traumatized you're in it,

You're just fearful it's what we call in psychology ego-satanic it is part of who we are when something becomes healthier the mind states can still be there but they become ego-dystonic they separate from who we are and that's a healthy thing and so you can be angry but you don't see that you're not consumed by it you can be anxious but you're not consumed by it that kind of thing and so for those who have trauma this practice is a slow a slow process of sort of peeling away from that eventually to the point where you should be able to view the trauma the previous trauma as something like any other memory it's not a denial that it happened it's not that we don't think about it for example the divorce you mentioned that's a trauma and so we remember these things but they don't send us into a state of fight-flight-freeze we can look at them as they are as it is just as a memory so traumatized brains cannot differentiate memory from present experience I hope that makes sense it's kind of like this you had the two finger,

Three finger,

Four finger the best exercise for this I've done this with people it's not mine originally so I don't take credit for it but if you just everybody take your hands and put them up in front of your face you can see things in front of you through your fingers you can see the chairs,

The cushions,

The other people but it's difficult because you're so consumed by your fingers they sort of get in the way and it makes it very difficult to see clearly but if you then begin to slowly pull them away from your face and then slowly down into your lap it's still there this stuff is still there it's just not doing this it's not in the way you can see more clearly when you were talking something came to my mind I spoke as if it was poetry so I had images and one image but I'm going to make it short is that father in a movie that tried to raise his children in the forest and when something tough happened he said okay kids remember stop S for stop T for think O for observe and P for practice I did the practice he was saying something else but what you were saying I thought okay so instead of reacting immediately pause observe and then like you the children are not sitting you stop and practice your I like that I'm going to remember that I think we've got time for just one or two more if anybody has something they want to