Buddhist Formula For Negativity

This is a talk that was recorded during a silent meditation retreat. In it Shane shares what is called the Buddhist formula for negativity. These tips on how to work with our emotions and moods show you how to work with these states in and out of formal meditation so that you can live life with more happiness.

Transcript

I hope everybody is having a good retreat thus far.

It's very important for me that everybody enjoys themselves and if they don't enjoy themselves,

At least they pull something out of it through that suffering or whatever is happening.

You know,

We can't always expect life to be you know,

Just fun and roses all the time,

But that's the way life is.

We want things to be nice for ourselves and it just doesn't always happen that way.

As long as we understand that,

Then it's okay.

If we grow up and we're young people,

You know,

Like a five-year-old and your parents say,

Don't worry,

Everything is going to be perfect.

And then you hold on to that idea that everything is going to be perfect for the rest of my life.

And of course,

You're going to be let down.

So we should kind of learn to use those things as tools.

You know,

Life is up and down and up and down all the time.

In the recording business and recording,

They use what's called a compressor,

Where it takes the highs and lows of these signals and compresses them and then it makes a really rich sound.

And they use that in just about all recording.

Every recording studio would have a compressor in it to compress the sound.

Without a compressor,

A lot of the bands that we listen to and stuff,

Their music would be so.

.

.

The peaks would be so high and the lows would be so low that it really wouldn't sound very good.

It would affect our ears.

So even when you hear somebody perform live,

Their music is usually compressed.

When you listen to a band,

They have these highs and lows and those are just squished,

So everything is right here.

But you don't lose anything because it's really rich.

It's a rich sound,

The audio that we hear.

And if we can do that with the.

.

.

We have the ups and the ebbs and the ups and downs in life.

And.

.

.

Really,

In a way,

Mindfulness meditation allows us to act like a compressor and compress those signals so that life is much richer.

So there's more substance here rather than all of this.

I guess the next question would be,

How does that happen?

How do we do that?

Even if we are using a compressor,

We're not going to be able to compress the sound.

How do we do that?

Even if we are using a compressor in music,

We'd want to understand that we have the tool to be able to do that,

To have a compressor.

And if we have a compressor in our life,

And a tool,

First of all,

To understand how it works,

I'm a really firm believer in being aware of the tools that we have and how we can use them.

Awareness alone has a huge effect on our life and how our life operates for us.

And what I mean is that,

You know,

We talk about negativity,

I'm not really talking about real suffering,

You know.

We talk about our negativity like in a group of people like this.

We talk about our difficulties and stuff,

The ups and downs,

You know.

We have good times,

We have bad times.

And the suffering that we have is like this.

It's not down there all the time,

But it's up and down like that.

And that's actually the kind of suffering that the Buddha was talking about.

In Buddhism,

Suffering is a very prominent thing,

You know,

Because Buddha said that he taught two things.

He said,

I teach suffering and the end of suffering.

And that's all he teaches,

But he has so many different ways to do that.

And so that word suffering is huge in the Buddhist,

In the Pali language that the Buddha used,

Dukkha,

Or more like dukkha,

Dukkha is the word that means suffering.

And there's not really a very good English translation for that word.

You know,

It doesn't really mean suffering,

But we use it in that translation,

We use it that way.

But dukkha means,

It means,

You can't describe it in one word,

But it means it's based on the back when they had carts and horses,

Or oxen too,

You know,

They probably had more oxen than horses pulling carts.

But when their wheel was squeaky,

It drove them nuts,

Driving down the road in a squeaky wheel,

Because they have this grease and this tar substance that they put on there to keep them from squeaking like that.

And if they squeaked,

They called it dukkha.

And so it's a constant kind of nagging,

Squeak,

Squeak,

Squeak.

So if we get a bad cart at the grocery store,

You know,

Squeaking cart,

We can call that dukkha,

It's the same thing.

And it's true,

You just grab,

There's a hundred carts there,

And you grab the bad one,

You know,

And you start going down.

You have to go all the way in the store,

Then you get over by the fruit section and you realize that,

I have a squeaky cart,

You know,

I got one of the bad ones,

And we can call that dukkha.

And so dukkha is not necessarily,

I think a better translation is stress,

Rather than suffering.

And stress we all experience,

We all have it in our life.

Every day we experience some kind of stress.

It's like,

It's just a part of life.

And again,

That's the ups and downs,

You know,

The highs and the peaks and the valleys and everything that we experience.

And for a little bit of stress,

We go,

Fine,

You know,

I can handle that.

And we move on.

The reason that we can handle that is because we know it's not going to last.

It's going to be there for a while,

Then it's going to pass.

If it lasted,

Then we would really be worried.

It would even get worse.

You know,

It would carry on and we would carry the stress with us.

And it's kind of like when we get sick.

For,

Ever get sick and you feel like,

Oh,

For a moment,

Like,

What if I never get well?

What if I'm always like this?

And we have the flu or a real bad cold?

And you ever have that,

Just think,

What if it didn't go away?

You know,

That would be horrible,

Wouldn't it?

But inside we know it'll go away.

Three or four days later,

We're as good as new or better,

You know.

Because one of the good things about being sick is that we get well.

And then we feel good.

And,

You know,

So all this,

All the suffering that we have is based on,

I like to call it stress.

And a lot of the stress that we're working with are this negative,

Negativity,

You know,

In the mind.

And I've been talking about this since yesterday.

A lot of it is the past and the future.

Well,

I shouldn't say a lot of it because just about 99.

9% of it is the past and the future,

Meaning that the past contains some things that we've done or some things that other people have done.

It contains a lot of anger,

Actually.

The past does.

And anger is something that we can't really experience in the present moment.

When we are in the present moment,

There is really not much of that stress going on because that's kind of when the mind settles in and says,

You know,

Everything is fine.

If there is a little bit of a problem,

It's impermanent,

You know,

And it won't last.

It's all in the presence,

In this presence that we're talking about.

And in the future,

There's a great deal of fear that we hang onto.

And so,

You know,

Just talking about those two things,

Anger and fear,

Anger being in the past and fear being in the future,

We understand that it's mind made.

We're making it up.

We're creating it ourselves by visiting the past and going into the future to fix any kind of problems that we might have.

Of course,

There's a lot of other types of negativity.

Negativity is,

We talked about the five hindrances this afternoon and,

You know,

What the sensual desire,

How that works for us,

And aversion,

You know,

The thing for sensual desire like this,

Aversion,

The things that we push away that we do not want,

Restlessness and worry,

Including trying to fix other people's problems,

You know,

That kind of thing,

And trying to take care of other people's situations,

Feeling bad for other people's misfortune,

And sloth and tarp,

Or the drowsiness and the doubt.

You know,

Those are the five hindrances.

The reason I repeat those again and again is because it's so important to know those.

It really is.

And so those are,

You know,

The primary negative mind states that we have.

And as I mentioned,

Another very important thing is that any negativity that we have can be categorized in these five hindrances.

Everything from a barking dog,

You know,

That brings up anxiety or brings up anger,

And that can be put into one of these categories of the hindrances,

And on and on.

There would be,

Well,

That would be a class in itself,

You know,

Taking all the negativity and putting it in these categories.

And so if we understand that,

If we understand where our negativity comes from,

For the most part we create it in the mind.

There's a really good formula,

And I know a lot of people really like formulas,

And I do,

That allows us to totally get it,

You know,

Totally understand this negativity,

What causes our stress,

What causes our feelings of being incomplete,

What causes our fear and anger and desire and all this.

There's a formula that we can use along with that negativity to help us get along in the world.

And basically in Buddhism it was expressed as the Satipa-Thana,

The four foundations of mindfulness,

And also the Anapanasati,

Which is the mindfulness of breathing.

And these are the Pali words for those translations that I just said,

Four foundations of mindfulness,

And mindfulness of breathing are two teachings that the Buddha gave that are essentially the same thing.

One of them pertains to mindfulness in our meditations,

In our everyday life,

Where he really laid out this formula for us in detail,

In great detail,

Particularly the area of the body,

And I'll touch on that here in a minute.

The Anapanasati is a shortened version of that that he used in a retreat very much like this,

Except for,

You know,

A couple thousand people more than this.

And he gave these instructions,

These meditation instructions,

And he talked about this formula and how to use it.

And I'm going to just touch on it now.

We can use it for negativity,

Particularly any of the hindrances.

And a lot of you are probably familiar with this,

Or might not be familiar with how to use it in this way.

So the Anapanasati or the Satipatthana,

They are broken into four areas.

I talked about this briefly yesterday.

But there's the body and feelings,

Mind states,

And the dharma or dhamma in Pali language.

And real briefly,

The body is basically everything material.

You know,

That's a big hunk of who we feel we are,

This body.

We look in the mirror and we see a reflection of what we call a body.

When we relate,

When we talk about breathing,

We're talking about the body too,

Because it's a function of the body.

You know,

The body is weak and the body is strong and on and on.

There's so many different parts of the body.

Most of us,

Lots of us are in professions where we work with the body,

Exclusively.

But that's not only who we are.

There's some other areas,

Particularly when it comes to the thought process and the mind.

And those two primary areas,

The first one,

Are feelings.

And these feelings are everything that comes into contact with our senses.

So it has a lot to do with sense desire.

So when we see something or smell,

Taste,

Or hear or touch something,

There's that connection,

That there's a feeling associated with that.

And when we think of something,

There's a feeling too.

We might think of a pleasurable thing and there's a feeling or an unpleasant thing and there's a feeling that happens.

And this is really rich with tools,

You know,

That whole teaching right there,

Because there's nothing that we can do about the feeling.

It's just that it is there.

It rises no matter what.

We see,

Well,

I look at something and I might get a pleasurable feeling or an unpleasurable feeling.

Somebody else might look at the same thing and get just the opposite or they might get the same.

A lot of times you'll be with somebody and you'll go,

Oh,

Don't you like the color of that car?

And they'll go,

No,

I don't,

You know.

Well,

I like it.

I don't like that orange.

I do like that orange,

You know,

That kind of thing.

It's like that not only with seeing but with smelling and tasting and touching and our thought patterns.

There's a connection with each one of the senses and that's what we're calling the feeling.

And that's a huge part of the mind and how our mind works.

It's our connection with the world.

You know,

It's like tentacles going out and touching our world in the form of seeing and hearing and these kinds of things.

And realizing that there's a reaction,

It's going to be pleasant or unpleasant.

And a lot of it could be neutral,

Too.

If we look at this rug here,

We might pick out some pleasurable colors,

We might see some unpleasant colors,

But there's probably some neutral colors that kind of just kind of blend in there.

They don't really mean a lot to us.

And it's true with everything.

Those are feelings,

Like I said.

That's the part of the mind.

We have the body and the mind,

Feelings,

And then there's another part of the mind called the states.

And basically states,

We refer to them as moods and emotions because people can kind of relate to that.

We can look at ourselves and feel a mood and emotion within us right now.

Sometimes it's a little tricky.

Sometimes we have to be creative.

If I would go around the room and say,

What mood or emotion are you experiencing,

Everybody could come up with a word.

And you would probably have a tendency to want to come up with maybe a couple words to describe it because there's a mixture of different things happening,

That kind of thing.

Right now,

You might have a state of acquisitiveness or boredom,

Any kind of state that you might be experiencing.

Just take a moment and ask yourself what state or what mood or emotion am I experiencing right now?

Just do that for a second.

So you're going in and investigating right now,

Checking it out.

And consequently,

You're being very,

Very,

Very mindful at this moment.

You're not judging it.

Hopefully you're not judging it.

You're going in and checking it out.

What state,

What mood or emotion are you experiencing at this time?

And so we come up with these labels.

Hopefully everybody came up with a label.

And probably just as easily as you're able to come up with that label,

You could probably see it change.

The impermanence is so much a big part of that teaching right there.

So we could have a clown come through here and do a couple of somersaults and go out that door.

Come through that one,

Do some somersaults and go out that door.

And the state that we experienced would no longer be there.

It would be completely different.

A whole new state would be introduced in that moment.

And it happens all the time for us.

There's a state present at every moment that we are conscious.

And actually when we're unconscious in our sleeping too,

There's a state that dictates our dreams a lot.

We wake up with a state of fear or a state of ecstasy or whatever it might be.

So there's always a state present and consequently there's always a feeling as well.

The feelings that I talked about that are connected to the senses.

And then the other part of this is the Dhamma,

Which are these matter of truths,

These teachings.

Some people call them teachings.

Some people relate it to nature.

And how we go about our lives.

We walk out into nature and hopefully a lot of you did it today.

You go out into the woods and you notice these beautiful woods.

Alive trees and there's dead trees.

But we don't judge it.

We just see it as part of the woods.

We see some green and some brown and some different things.

A lot of different things happening there.

It's not all what we would call alive.

And these are just labels anyway.

It's not all alive and it's not all dead.

It's a mixture and it's the truth.

It's the absolute truth of how it is.

We're not trying to color it or change it or add to it or pull away from it.

It is the forest.

The forest is the forest.

The only time where it might look funny to us is if man starts intervening.

Then we start.

That kind of changes everything for us.

We run a bulldozer through the forest or something like that.

Then we have a different opinion about it.

But these four areas are really a huge doorway to teachings and to the tools that we can use to understand ourselves at a very deep level.

And like I say,

It's like a formula.

Let's say we take one of the hindrances for example.

Let's just take a look at fear.

It seems to be a big hindrance because it seems to color everything.

There can be fear mixed in with desire.

We desire something so much that if we don't get it,

We're going to be fearful.

We can even desire something so bad so much that if I get all of that,

It's really scary.

That kind of thing.

It can mix very easily with desire.

Fear can mix very easily with aversion,

Of course.

Aversion is that stuff.

No,

No,

I don't want that.

That can be fear itself.

Fear can be a part of restlessness and worry.

We worry about fear.

We have restlessness because of fear.

And drowsiness,

A lot of times when we aren't 100 percent,

We're a little bit foggy-minded and drowsy,

We can be fearful because of our actions or the actions of other people.

And all the way down the road,

As far as doubt,

It's the same way.

Just being fearful or doubtful of our own abilities is a fear itself.

Fear is very prominent in our lives.

And if we can get a handle on fear,

We do very,

Very well.

We cover a lot of bases.

We really do.

So let's say that fear is an issue for us.

And we want to take a look at it using the Anapanasati or the Sattapathana,

These four areas.

Let's take fear and just imagine if you're meditating.

You're meditating and you notice this fear comes up in you from something that happened or something that you remember.

It's just whatever comes up in the mind,

This fear.

And we've probably all experienced this before.

And so the first thing we want to do is experience that fear in the body.

Maybe it's a warm feeling,

Maybe as far as temperature goes within the body.

Maybe we feel as if it's the chemicals,

Like the cortisol,

Or the digestion of the foods,

That kind of thing.

We're fearful and we have this kind of acidy stomach,

For example.

These kinds of things can raise havoc with us.

And so we can feel that fear.

We might even feel it in our jaw.

We might feel it in our head in the form of a headache.

We might feel it in our total nervous system by shaking.

We see that all the time.

We can feel the fear in the body.

Everybody can,

Right?

We can experience that.

And so that's,

Like I said,

A big part of us is this body right here.

We move on to the mind.

We feel this fear,

The feelings of it itself,

The pleasantness or the unpleasantness of the fear.

And most fear,

When we first take a look at it,

We notice that there's an unpleasantness there.

Because we're probably fearful that something's going to happen to us personally,

Or something's going to happen to one of our loved ones.

That's the greatest fears that we have.

They're hard to shake.

And so we have this image.

These are related to our senses.

We can visualize or we can actually see it,

Something that creates fear.

But if we have this visualization in our mind,

It strikes up that fear,

That unpleasant feeling.

And also,

Now it's affecting the body too.

And so feelings are very prominent.

When the fear is gone,

Let's say there's some fear there and there's a superhero,

Whomever comes along and takes care of that fear problem,

And all of a sudden we feel better.

So we can,

All of a sudden there's a pleasant sensation related to that fear being gone.

We move on to states,

The mind states.

The fear itself is a mind state.

If the fear kept giving us negative feelings all the time,

It would affect the state that we're experiencing.

What kind of state would you have if you lived in a state of fear all the time?

I mean,

What kind of things would come up?

Fear has a great amount of anxiety in it.

Like I said,

It has a lot of doubt in it.

If we could conquer the fear,

There wouldn't be that doubt.

Well,

Let's move on to the Dharma or the teachings,

What I was calling the truth or nature,

That kind of thing.

Take a look at fear in relation to perhaps one of the most prominent Dharmas that the Buddha often spoke about.

And it's one of the first ones that,

Through our own personal insights,

That comes up for us is the impermanence and how everything changes constantly.

And so in relation to that fear,

That fear itself,

We know that it can change.

And we know that it probably will change.

Sometimes we don't think about that,

But when we really,

When somebody would ask you,

You know,

You're afraid now,

But that'll change,

We would say,

Yeah,

Yeah,

But it doesn't seem like it at the moment.

But we know that fear can change its texture,

You know,

And it can change its flavor,

Different kinds of charges,

Emotional charges of fear that are very much these peaks and valleys that we were talking about before.

The Dharma is that it's impermanent and it's a constant flow.

It's not going to last.

And even on a deeper level,

We could see that as long as we are the one looking at the fear,

We are not the actual one that's having the fear.

And that's a little bit a deeper level as far as all of this goes,

As long as we're the watcher,

We are disassociating ourselves with the fear altogether.

I hope everybody's with me on that.

It's like we are analyzing,

We're investigating this,

Call it a fear factor,

Whatever,

Since we're talking about fear so much.

We're looking at this fear from this standpoint and analyzing it from the standpoint of the body,

The feelings,

The mind,

And the Dharma.

And as long as we are the one that's doing the analyzing,

We're separating ourselves from the actual fear.

Basically,

What we're looking at right now is how can we work with that in our meditation?

And it's the same process.

Just make yourself comfortable and go ahead and close your eyes,

Please.

Take a nice deep breath and notice that when you're bringing your attention to the breath,

You're bringing your attention to the body.

So all of a sudden we're working with the body,

We're noticing the body.

Let's say in the meditation something happens.

It could be just about anything that brings up another state.

Let's just use the state of anger.

Let's say you paid thousands and thousands of dollars to be on this retreat in this exotic place.

And there's the neighbor's dog is just relentlessly barking.

In fact,

There's not only one dog,

There's three dogs barking again and again and again.

And there's nothing that anybody can do about it.

Your meditation is not good and you can't seem to break away from the sound of the barking.

It's penetrating things and it's actually really disturbing your meditation.

So you're starting to get angry.

And that's the only thing that we're really concerned about is the anger.

You're meditating and the anger comes up.

If you want to imagine anger from a different angle,

That's fine.

But just imagine where you would feel that anger in the body.

I'm not asking you to necessarily try to create it.

But just imagine where you would feel that anger.

Probably in the form of heat.

You might feel the heat coming up from maybe down below,

Like the area of the stomach and kind of flushing the face.

You might feel the heat in the hands.

Maybe more located in the head.

And also,

As we mentioned before,

The chemicals of the body.

When anger comes up,

We secrete more acid.

We usually,

Angry people can have digestive problems.

Their blood pressure usually rises.

The heart beats differently,

Usually harder or more erratic.

And then temporarily,

Oftentimes the digestion will almost completely stop if there's enough anger.

Our muscles will tense.

In the shoulders,

In the lower back,

In the legs,

We might be able to feel that while we're meditating.

And that awareness of all of this is really a study in itself.

We feel that anger come up and we feel all these things associated with it.

And actually,

The anger that's coming up is when we really,

Really look at it,

We realize that it's not actually happening in the present moment.

There's a bark,

There's a few barks,

And then we'll find ourselves waiting for the next bark.

And it seems like that fear is happening,

Or the anger is happening right now,

But it isn't actually happening now at this moment.

It's happening because of something that had already happened,

Which was the bark.

If it's happening again and again repeatedly,

It certainly does feel like it's in the present moment.

But again,

We're referring to something that has already happened that has to cause that anger.

Now in the area of feelings,

When the anger comes up,

It's certainly unpleasant for us.

There's an unpleasantness associated with the thought or something that we hear.

Maybe something that we even feel,

We might feel a vibration of the dog barking or something like that.

And after all,

That's what hearing is,

Is a vibration of the eardrum.

We can feel that vibration just through the system,

Sometimes even through the floors and walls of buildings and that type of thing.

So there's an unpleasantness associated with that.

As far as feelings go,

We can understand where and what is happening with that anger.

We move into mind states.

Anger is a mind state itself.

It's an aversion.

And it's also called ill will.

We can be angry at others.

We can be angry at ourselves.

We can be angry at a situation.

We can be angry at a thought.

But again,

When we look at that,

We see that we're actually getting angry at something that had already happened.

And then to further our investigation,

We go into the dharmas.

We notice that it's very impermanent.

This might be one of the best healing factors of them all as far as looking at the healing of our anger itself,

Is the impermanence in that it will not last.

If we have patience,

We will get through this.

But as far as healing and understanding this from all aspects,

We can see that we are allowing it to happen ourselves.

It's a choice.

Within the body,

First of all,

That negative feeling that arises due to the sound,

Due to the vibrations,

That negativity is a feeling that it's a personal type of thing towards us,

That we are feeling this negativity because of our own inconvenience,

If nothing else,

And perhaps for the inconvenience of others.

Remember,

We're on this imaginary retreat and the dogs are barking.

We might not be angry at our inconvenience,

But also angry at the inconvenience of others.

But if we can see that we are creating this ourselves,

We can also allow that chemical feelings within the body,

All the negativity that we felt within the body as far as the temperature and the juices in the stomach and all of that that we had discussed,

That would dissipate almost immediately once we realize that we are in a way letting our preferences get the best of us.

And again,

For understanding that as a state,

We realize that it's something that we created by bringing up something that has already happened,

And we're bringing this thought up within the mind of the barking dog that is supposedly bothering us at this moment.

And again,

The healing quality of the dharmas is that it's very impermanent.

If we're trying to eliminate any kind of anger in our lives at all,

Altogether we have to understand that we created ourselves.

Nothing out there is changing and nobody is causing or making us get angry at the barking dog or anything else.

Nobody or no thing can actually cause us to get angry unless we allow it to.

This understanding is enough to disarm the anger,

To make the negative feeling dissipate,

Allowing the body to feel better.

And again,

The anger is one of the hindrances,

It's an aversion.

But this can be done and dealt with with all of the hindrances,

In other words,

With all negativity,

All negativity that we experience,

And we can get very,

Very good at it.

And the process can take just a matter of seconds in its understanding,

And really its function and how it works with us.

And this is actually one of the benefits,

If not the benefit,

Of mindfulness,

That we understand this,

That it's our preferences that get us in trouble.

It's all made by ourselves,

It's created by ourselves,

Whatever the negativity might be or the stress might be,

And that it's a choice that we have.

Just sit in silence for a few moments and just see what comes up based on this.

Notice how it might work with negative mind state experience recently,

How it can fit into this formula.

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Reviews

Really enjoyed your talk..however . .finding it difficult not to relate present pain to circumstances from the past though I know that's not true.

Lots of great tidbits in this talk. I always appreciate tips on dealing with fear or anger, and a review of the 5 hinderances is helpful too. Thank you!

Good talk, nice to listen to as I’m doing light chores then sitting for meditation at the end