Where The River Of Freedom Meets The Ocean Of Security

Такой I'm struck at times by sometimes the sort of dual nature of our spiritual aspirations.

In particular,

The ways in which we want freedom and the ways in which we also want security.

And how complicated that makes this practice and this path in many ways.

So many of our trained habits and actions toward those two things are in contradiction or can seem in contradiction.

They can seem in conflict with one another.

And so we have,

In some ways it's more sort of the theoretical piece,

But really it's like we come on retreat and we find ourselves confronted with both of these aspects of our spiritual ambitions often.

And find that kind of paradox,

A little bit of our entanglement of the challenge of how do we proceed,

How do we move in relationship to what we're encountering on the inside.

Because there is this way that we can feel our sense of self,

Our minds,

Our bodies,

To be like imprisoned.

That we feel contained,

Restrained,

Oppressed by aspects of reality.

Sometimes it's just this sense of a deeper ease and freedom that is available to us as humans that we maybe have seen and others are inspired by in terms of this tradition.

Sometimes we've had glimpses of that in our own hearts and minds,

This sense of moving beyond some of our habitual conditioning.

And so we can have this aspiration to free ourselves from these prisons that we're in internally.

And then we also see that we ourselves have created those prisons and are actually recreating them every moment.

And that those patterns,

Those tendencies,

Those habits of mind and body are actually so powerful and provide a kind of comfort and security as well.

And so there's this very powerful dance that we can find ourselves in,

Both for sort of longing for freedom and longing for security that can be a real place of confusion,

But also the essence of the beauty of this path in some ways.

There's a great story by the poet Rumi where he talks about a man who in his life,

He finally has the opportunity to go on pilgrimage to Mecca.

And he's so excited,

He's so moved to do this.

He can't,

You know,

It's just like this fulfillment of something he has longed to do his whole life.

And so he sets out with his camel packed across the desert on this long journey,

But he's excited for it and ready to show up for the hardships of it.

But his camel is not interested in going to Mecca.

His camel doesn't want to be in the desert,

Right?

It wants to be home and with its own camel family and in the hay and have the comforts of that.

And so they travel by day towards Mecca and then he falls asleep on his camel and at night the camel turns around and starts walking back.

And so he wakes up and he sees that he's halfway back home already,

You know.

And so he turns it around and they go back and it's like night after night,

The same process happening.

And he realizes he's never going to make it there if he keeps going this way.

And so he decides he needs to leave the camel and just walk.

So he jumps off the camel and he breaks his ankle and the camel runs home.

And he says that's what the spiritual path is,

Right?

That's where we find ourselves when we've committed to this,

You know,

The freedom and not just going back to the places where we feel comfortable,

That we actually find ourselves in a harder spot,

You know,

In a harder position.

We're wounded and yet it's this like sort of deeper test of ourselves and of our dedication and of our capacities that we learn along the way.

And so I like it because it's humorous but also very intense,

You know,

In the sense of like,

Oh no,

You know.

What we can relate to that at times as a yogi in our practice,

You know,

The sense that boy,

You've jumped off into this period of renunciation,

Of intensive practice,

Of silence,

Of commitment,

Dedication toward this path.

And there are times where it's frightening,

You know,

This sense of what we see we're up against,

How long a journey it is,

How humbling it is.

And yet if we can find that place of beauty and that beautiful motivation and aspiration for ourselves,

That there is this kind of ongoing process with the camel,

You know.

It's not just,

You don't just jump off the camel once really,

Right?

It's like we find ourselves going back and back and back at times,

You know,

And we have to sort of like,

You know,

Manage this process and start to see that this tension that we perceive,

That we can believe between freedom and security is actually not true.

It's a fabrication.

It's not a real tension,

That actually there is a deeper security available to us in the mind and the heart in our deepening relationship with reality,

With the truth,

With what is actually happening in the present moment.

A rising and passing of phenomena,

Right?

We see that it is hard to be with this,

Right?

That all of these things are so unstable,

So undependable,

That conditions are always changing,

That our heart's habit of contracting around things,

For a craving,

Around aversion,

As a way of stabilizing,

Is understandable,

Right?

We have this care,

We see that there's like,

It's a deep training and yet this sense that there's a deeper freedom,

A deeper security that actually we can touch into and maintain through this practice,

Right,

Through the stopping of the resisting of reality,

Right,

Of actually accepting things as they are because we understand them,

Because we see that any ability to control them on this level creates more suffering,

Just kind of recreates and recreates this prison.

In the Atadandha Sutta the Buddha says,

When embraced,

The rod of violence breeds misery.

Look at people quarreling.

I will tell you how I experienced dismay.

Seeing people floundering like fish in small puddles,

Competing with one another,

As I saw this,

Fear came into me.

The world is entirely insecure,

Every direction in turmoil.

Wanting a haven for myself,

I saw nothing that wasn't laid claim to.

Seeing in the end nothing but competition,

I felt discontent.

And then I saw an arrow here,

So very hard to see,

Embedded in the heart.

Overcome by this arrow,

You run in all directions.

But simply by pulling it out,

You don't run,

You don't sink.

Not harsh,

Not greedy,

Not perturbed,

Everywhere in tune.

This is the reward,

I say when asked,

For those who are free from preconceptions.

For one unperturbed who knows there is no accumulating.

Abstaining,

Unaroused,

They see security everywhere.

This understanding of how all of our worries and concerns and projections onto objects,

To find security in the maintenance of pleasant objects,

In the keeping away of unpleasant phenomena,

The mayhem that this actually creates in the mind.

Because the reality is these phenomena are streaming by out of our control.

It's not to say we don't have control over some conditions in our lives,

And that we shouldn't do things to take care of ourselves and take care of one another.

But on this very basic level,

As you sit here,

You see there is just this flood of experience.

Some pleasant,

Some unpleasant,

Some neutral.

And all effort to be managing that and maintaining that and mitigating that and manipulating that,

It comes to folly.

It comes to seeing how this crazy making,

This idea of free from preconceptions,

We start to see that we try to imprison the world in our concepts.

We hear a sound,

We name it,

We label it,

An image arises in the mind.

We hear another sound,

We name it,

We label it,

We identify how far it is,

What's around it.

We are conjuring a world around every moment of sense experience.

And then we're re-conjuring it and re-conjuring it and re-conjuring it.

And then we have these ideas that we try to keep as fixed.

This is a bird,

This is a squirrel,

This is a chipmunk.

We have these ideas that we're living in.

We are living in the fabricated world around our notions about things.

And if we continue that,

When you actually see a chipmunk outside,

You're not going to be interested at all.

You're not going to have an actual relationship with it.

Because you think you know what it is.

You've got that down.

That's that,

It's not a threat.

This is bad,

This is a threat.

This is good,

I want more of that.

And so we stop having kind of genuine relationships with the phenomena that we encounter and only have relationships in terms of their,

The viability of their notions to our happiness,

Or how they relate to our sense of self-protection and security.

And again,

It's understandable,

It's reasonable,

But it's a prison that we live in and it's a prison that we put on the world.

Right?

There's a way that we're,

Everything else is subject to our projections on them.

And there's not that sense of authentic relationship with the world around us,

Or the world we're experiencing in the sense stores.

There's another great sutta that I've just been enjoying recently.

It's called the Dhaniya Sutta and it's about,

It's a sort of poetic kind of dialogue between the Buddha and this guy Dhaniya who was like a cattleman and he was basically a successful businessman essentially,

You know,

Back in that era.

And so you have this sort of fun kind of dichotomy where he's proclaiming his security in life,

Right?

He's like,

I have all these children,

They're all happy,

I have a big family,

Everyone's happy,

I have tons of cows,

I've got my house stashed.

I'm ready.

And each thing ends with,

I'll read it,

But it's like,

If you want to rain,

Rain gods,

Go ahead and rain because I'm so steady.

And then you have the Buddha responding to each of these things as a homeless wandering mendicant on the riverbanks being like,

I have nothing and I'm so happy.

And this is actually like a deeper happiness,

Right?

A deeper security.

Dhaniya says,

The rice is cooked,

My milking done.

I live with my people along the banks of the Mahi River.

My hut is roofed,

My fire is lit.

So if you want rain,

God,

Go ahead and rain.

And the Buddha says,

Free from anger,

My stubbornness is gone.

I live for one night along the banks of the Mahi River.

My hut's roof is open,

My fire extinguished.

So if you want rain,

God,

Go ahead and rain.

And so of course,

He means this,

The fire of the heart,

The wanting,

The craving,

The aversion,

The delusion,

The embroilment that we find ourselves in,

That it's extinguished,

That he has total peace of mind.

And one of the things I like so much about this sutta is it's not making fun of Dhaniya.

It's recognizing that there is a kind of security in favorable conditions.

And it's totally understandable.

And there is something wonderful about if we use those conditions in generous ways and in kind ways.

And it goes into more detail about that.

But also this sense of really recognizing that even in those perfect conditions,

They're subject to change,

Right?

It's subject to suffering,

Subject to difficulty.

The cows may get sick,

The children may get sick,

The,

You know,

Things can still go wrong.

And that if your happiness is dependent upon everything always going right,

It's a fragile happiness,

Right?

It's a fragile security,

It's a fragile peace.

And that the Buddha,

Through his extinguishment of these forces of craving and of delusion in the mind,

That he doesn't need things to be one way or another to have the sense of peace,

To have the sense of contentment,

To have this freedom.

And so this,

Again,

This understanding that actually the freedom and the security are actually intertwined,

Right?

This deeper aspect of it that's so important.

And so we see,

Of course,

The ways in our lives that we may be,

You know,

Replicating those sort of phenomena and negotiating those,

You know,

That we do try to take care of ourselves.

We are,

In this room at this point,

All lay people,

Right?

That we are,

To some degree,

You know,

Taking care of some kind of home,

You know,

Some kind of living arrangement,

Taking care of,

We have responsibilities more than a wandering monastic.

And so this,

Of course,

You know,

We have this tension in our lives of where are we doing that out of care,

Out of wisdom and understanding of trying to,

Of course,

Create protective conditions for ourselves that are supportive,

Protective conditions for others that are supportive,

Where is it coming out of anxiety,

Right?

Of worrying,

Of stress,

Of,

And where are those pressures,

Of course,

In our lives where it's like,

Well,

You have to keep paying your rent or keep paying your mortgage or keep paying,

You know,

That like,

There's this,

The insecurity of it is always right there,

You know,

And,

You know,

Things can,

Things can change,

Things can go wrong in our lives,

Things can go wrong in the world that have an impact on us.

So we have that,

Of course,

That relationship to creating these external supportive conditions and our heart's motivation around those.

In this context,

You know,

We have the benefit of being protected by these conditions of this place,

Right,

That we have housing for the weak,

We have food for the weak,

We have,

You know,

All kinds of supportive things around that so that,

Again,

We see it's not for nothing,

Right,

That it matters.

Of course,

We could all do this practice in kind of more and more austere circumstances,

But there's,

There's this trade-off that,

Of course,

We have to negotiate of when does it start to get so hard that it actually is too much of a stretch for the heart.

So we know this sense of appreciation of our,

Of our supportive conditions here.

And then,

Of course,

Even with these,

You know,

When you look at the world,

Kind of unbelievably,

Basically perfect conditions here that we have,

It's still so hard,

You know.

Like,

You know,

We still encounter all our little,

Or all our grief,

Or all our worries,

Or all our anxieties,

Or all our things,

You know what I mean?

It's like,

That's what's so amazing,

And it's kind of,

It's what the Buddha is talking about,

That even with perfect conditions,

We're still find ourselves in this dilemma,

In this challenging situation with,

Whether it's our own mental stuff or just the fact of the body,

Right,

The fact that there are unpleasant physical sensations that are going to arise,

And how do we manage them?

It's still a challenge,

And this is a,

This attempt at cultivating these,

The capacity of the mind to be at peace,

To be wise,

To be understanding,

To be caring,

Beyond conditions.

And of course,

It's a,

It's a training,

And a slow training,

Sometimes a difficult training,

Because what we see is we're not only creating the sort of infrastructure of the world around us,

We're constantly creating and recreating this internal infrastructure of self,

Right,

Of me-ness,

And constantly shoring it up,

Constantly,

It's like,

You know,

This question of,

You know,

If there was a solid me,

You could control your thoughts,

You know,

You could say,

Okay,

I'm going to follow the breath,

And you'd follow the breath,

Rather than,

I'm going to follow the breath,

And you're like,

Right,

Just off to whatever,

You know,

It's like,

That's a new me,

That moment,

That's not at all interested in the breath,

You know,

That's interested in something that has nothing,

As far away from that as we can imagine,

You know,

And that we,

It's so humbling sometimes to see the ways in which we can bring our burdens with us,

You know,

We bring our worries,

We bring our desires,

We bring all of this with us,

And kind of keep reinforcing it,

Recreating it during our period of retreat.

How painful that is sometimes,

To feel like we finally get some space,

You know,

We finally give ourselves this opportunity,

You know,

We arrange everything in our lives,

And then we come here,

And we're face to face,

And we end up bringing a lot of these dynamics with us,

Very humbling.

Sometimes it is good to look at some of the stories and poems of,

You know,

People from the ages,

You know,

Who have done this,

This kind of practice,

You know,

Who've gone to the mountains,

Have gone to seek refuge in retreat in these ways and practice in these ways,

Still have a hard time,

You know,

There's,

Sometimes you see those,

I like a lot of the kind of Chinese hermit poets,

You know,

From many centuries ago,

And I've finally started to find ones that aren't just so perfect,

You know,

Like so much time,

They're just like,

They're poems about like the peak experience,

You know,

And you're like,

Oh,

That sounds great,

And it's inspiring,

You know,

And then there are other ones that are sometimes more poignant.

This is Wei Ying Wu from the Tang dynasty,

Manling Hermitage.

Up high to a cloister of rock walls,

I pushed aside clouds and climbed.

A fine hike was what I hoped for.

Ignoring the dangers,

I reached my prize.

But as light on the escarpment faded and streams branched out like the lines in my hand and the forest held nothing but loneliness and the pinnacles disappeared into space,

A man of the way,

After reaching such heights,

Descended alone in the stillness of night.

The mountain turned dark after sunset.

A hundred springs echoed across the fall sky.

My lamentable burdens reappeared intact.

Why can't I stay free of cares?

You know,

At one time or another,

We all have some experience of that,

You know,

We can come on retreat and sometimes maybe we do have a sort of mountaintop experience,

You know,

We're so freed for some period of time and then conditions change,

Night falls,

You know,

Even literally the sense of a cloud moving over the sun can have such an impact on our hearts,

Right,

This sense of ache that can arise and we find ourselves back into that familiar place,

You know,

Of loneliness,

Despair,

Of anger,

You know,

Whatever it might be,

The deep craving that we have for something.

Very hard and very poignant,

Very powerful to see,

But also to see that that is how this practice is designed,

You know,

We're,

It is designed to be watching ourselves go through these ups and downs,

You know,

Based on changing conditions,

See how the heart gets elated around certain things,

How the heart gets despondent around other things,

You know,

We're not,

We would have no expectation or even want to have this sense that you're going to come here and you just sort of like create this little kind of bubble of experience that you just sort of like hang out in over the week.

It's not to say that that kind of thing can't be helpful at times to give ourselves some reprieve,

To give ourselves some rest from the suffering,

From the hardship of things,

Creating a cocoon,

It is part of this tool of concentration and where it's the mindfulness practice is designed to see things as they are,

Right,

To understand the nature of phenomena and understand the interrelated nature of phenomena,

How one thing leads to another,

Right,

And how the sort of conditioned qualities of the heart impact that,

Affect that.

We start to see,

Again,

This,

These,

You know,

It's like if we,

If we let go of these worries in our minds,

Or we let go of all the things we're aspiring to in our minds,

Who would we be,

You know,

Would we even recognize ourselves without the kind of,

You know,

Familiar chatter of the things we're worried about,

Or the things we want in the past or in the future.

It's so much of our familiarity,

You know,

It's so much of how we keep recreating,

Reshoring up the sense of ourselves,

Our place in the world,

As pain,

Even the painful aspects of it,

Because at least it feels more stable,

More solid,

You know,

When we start to see that we're trying to be with the nature of reality that is always changing,

Right,

That's undependable,

That's coreless,

That's,

That's actually daunting,

You know,

Sometimes,

Some other traditions,

You know,

You might say that,

It's like,

The truth of things is,

You know,

Oneness and,

And,

You know,

Golden shining beauty and whatever,

You know,

This sort of,

Like,

The joy,

And it's like,

The Buddha is like,

No,

The nature of things is like,

They're always changing,

They're totally undependable,

And there's actually nothing solid about yourself even in any of it,

It's like,

Woohoo,

You know,

That's awesome,

You know,

It's,

It's a different kind of motivation,

It's not the motivation around excitement,

Around experience,

And he says it over and over again,

You know,

This is not about creating a kind of experience that we're going to maintain and preserve,

It's not,

When Michelle says it's not a state-oriented practice,

That's it,

We're not going to get to some experience that's going to stay stable,

It's the peace of heart that is with reality and all its instability and all its changeability,

And so then there's also this,

This understanding that of course that's very hard,

It's not,

We're totally untrained or,

Or largely untrained to,

To be with that quality,

Those aspects,

Those characteristics of reality,

And so of course the mind falls back on its deeper training,

Which is craving,

Which is anger,

Which is delusion,

Right,

Which is wanting,

Aversion,

Spacing out,

Those are tools that we have developed,

Not just as humans,

But like through the animal realms,

Right,

Through millions of years of evolution to deal with the undependability of reality.

Craving,

Wanting,

There's a way to fix,

To fixate the mind and to,

To fix unpleasant experience or experience that we need to survive.

The fear of things that are a threat,

Again,

It's a way of kind of solidifying ourselves against the changing nature of things,

Delusion,

This ability to space out,

To numb out,

To not see things clearly as a defense.

And so it's important that we start to see and have some compassion for these parts of ourselves,

Right,

That on one hand,

Yes,

The mind's ability to be with the reality as it is,

Is,

Will uproot these things,

Right,

We won't need them anymore,

We won't need craving and we won't need anger,

We won't need delusion,

The more we're okay with things as they are,

The more we understand the folly of them and the nature of reality.

But we also see that these things have actually served us,

They have protected us,

Right,

They have helped create conditions that might have helped make us successful to whatever degrees we might in life or even just survival.

You know,

A couple weeks ago I was at a different center,

I was walking along this path and there was a fledgling bird that was trying to learn how to fly and it was kind of right in my path.

And so I had to keep going,

I was trying to be careful,

But I had to keep going where I was going and sometimes these birds,

They'll stay on the ground for a week before they learn how to fly.

So I don't know how long it had been there,

But as I approached it,

It was scared and it kept moving and it kept trying to go here and there and then finally it was scared enough that it flew away.

And it's like,

Yeah,

I'm like,

Who's going to criticize the bird for having aversion be its motivation for learning to fly?

It's like,

Yeah,

Okay,

Sometimes that's what it takes for us to get out of there and to see that,

Yeah,

Of course these things have protected us and yet the prison that they've also put us in,

The pain of those habitual patterns is also something that we seek,

We long for release from and relief from.

And so we have to have,

You know,

As Michelle was saying with the raindrop,

The R-A-N and the D-R-O-P,

The sense of respect for the resistance,

You know,

Respect for the opposites,

Respect for the denial and the resistance and the obliviousness and the personification because they are our deep conditioning trying to protect us,

Even just doing it out of ignorance because it's,

You know,

The mind hasn't been trained.

And to remember at times that's all this is,

It's just a retraining of the mind.

And of course it's a slow and long,

Hard process,

But that we don't beat ourselves up for being afraid,

We don't beat ourselves up for longing,

For pleasant experience,

Of course we do,

You know,

Of course we don't want painful experience.

It's not crazy,

You know,

It just can feel crazy when we keep reminding ourselves of it over and over and over and over again,

Right?

But again,

It's like that moment of assurance and solidity that comes with fear,

It only lasts for a moment before it dissipates like everything else.

So it has to be reconjured and reconjured and reconjured.

So we're in this cycle of just kind of convulsions around reinforcing this sense view of the world over and over again as a creation of this internal structure.

The Buddha,

When he got enlightened,

He is said to have said this phrase around that and it's again,

It's like this infrastructure of the self that's constantly getting shored up.

He said,

Oh house builder,

You have been seen,

You shall not build this house again.

Your rafters have been broken up,

Your ridge pole is demolished.

My mind has attained the unconditioned,

Ibana,

And reached the end of any sort of craving.

So just that sense of,

Again,

Of like the conditionless,

That there's so much peace,

Right?

There's so much understanding of the nature of things that there isn't,

There's this peace regardless of what's happening and not the need to keep reinforcing this internal house structure and the painfulness of that,

The relief that comes with that.

On retreat,

We are,

These mechanisms of security and resistance that we encounter are kind of often broadened into not just kind of greed,

Hatred and delusion or craving,

Aversion,

Ignorance,

But a group of five things called the hindrances,

Nivaranas.

So the first is sense,

Desire,

And then aversion.

And then it goes into sloth and torpor,

Restlessness and worry or remorse,

And then doubt.

And so knowing these as these sort of deep habitual pieces of response,

Right,

Of defensiveness in the heart and mind,

It's so important as a yogi to get that this is normal,

Right?

That this is the,

So much of the realms of kind of hardship that we encounter in our practice,

Especially in these first few days of retreat,

Fall into these categories.

And so to not,

Sometimes we're so surprised,

For example,

With like,

Oh my God,

How sleepy we are,

You know,

Just this,

We come on retreat and,

You know,

We okay,

Maybe we're not fully rested in life,

But boy,

We hit this just wall of just like,

You know,

Sleepiness,

But also this quality of torpor of lack of gusto,

Right?

Lack of kind of volitional energy.

Sometimes you'll just notice it's like the bell rings and the thought of like dragging yourself back into the hall,

You know,

I was like,

Oh my God,

I was like,

How am I going to do this,

You know,

Or getting out of bed or it's like,

This is like this,

It's like you're walking through molasses,

You know,

Trying to get through and how humbling that is,

You know,

It's like,

Oh my God,

But to really,

If you get that it's like,

Oh yeah,

This is,

It's some piece of resistance and you don't need to kind of analyze it too much about like,

Is it resistance to this or,

You know,

Is there something happening that I'm not seeing that I need?

It's just like,

It's just this resistance to reality,

You know,

We've had enough,

You know,

Of all this reality and it's just like,

Let's just,

You know,

And then there's like,

Let's say in the fuzziness and the sleep,

You know,

The Buddha called sleep the world's greatest pleasure.

And it's like,

Yeah,

You can see that.

It's like,

Oh,

You know,

Again,

It's like that caring,

It's like,

Okay,

Yeah,

There's just,

There's resistance.

And then we,

We try to make good decisions about how to relate to that.

You know,

There's times where bringing in a little bit more energy can be helpful,

But there's many times where it's just watching it,

You know,

Just,

Just being with it,

Trying to understand these,

These mind states,

You know,

Sometimes we think that if we're falling asleep on the cushion,

That we're not being good yogis.

And I just,

You know,

Over and over again,

We see how that idea can get in the way of having a relationship with these places in ourselves,

With these experiences in life that are so common,

Right?

Of course,

Sleepiness arises.

Does it need to be the enemy?

Does it need to be a problem?

Can we just be interested in it?

Can we relate to it as simply another phenomena that's arising and explore it?

What is,

What,

What are the kinds of thoughts that start to emerge,

Right?

That give us the sign that something's going on,

You know,

Before we fall asleep,

Right?

It's like,

Oh yeah,

Sometimes like the thoughts are just kind of weird,

You know,

Like they don't make sense,

You know,

And you're like that,

What was,

You know,

And then you're like,

How does the body feel in these,

In these times?

You know,

Where is there a sort of softness?

There is a,

There isn't just awake and asleep,

Right?

There's this huge range of qualities of consciousness that are in between and they're all worth knowing.

You know,

This,

This practice is about getting to know the full spectrum of the heart and mind's experience,

Of the body's experience,

Of sense experience.

So and not being attached to any of it and not being at war with any of it.

So what is the mind like here?

What is the mind like here?

What is it like here?

And often actually by bringing some level of interest,

By getting that process going,

We actually start to build energy,

Right?

That interest builds energy.

And so if we can do that,

That can be very helpful,

Right?

We start to get curious and sometimes energy can kind of open up in that.

It's a great place also just exploring the sense of self.

You know,

When we're really alert and awake,

You know,

The mind,

It always feels like us.

It's like,

Brr,

Brr,

Brr,

Brr,

Brr,

Brr.

And then you start to sleep and there's like these other thoughts that come in and you're like,

You don't identify with them actually as much.

It's like you don't always identify with dreams that much.

We say,

Well,

Why did I have this dream?

Sometimes we come on retreat and we start having kind of more vivid dreams,

Sometimes not.

And there can be this like,

Why is that happening?

And it's like,

Well,

It's just thinking.

You know,

We're dreaming all day long,

But we think it's us.

You know,

We don't think of it as dreaming.

We think of it as thinking.

But it's the same.

It's just we're identified with it.

And when we're sleeping,

It's the same,

Just stuff going on.

Where we think it's happening to us,

Right?

And it's just like this difference in perspective.

Sometimes it's just that calm that actually keeps that identification from happening.

So again,

With sleepiness,

Often there's calm.

And that's like one of the seven factors of enlightenment,

Right?

Calm is like so important.

And we don't give ourselves credit for the fact that calm has arisen.

And that's great.

Maybe energy hasn't,

Right?

But often calm is there,

Often concentration is there.

But without the energy,

You feel like you're kind of moving towards something in a close way.

And then you drop off into the darkness.

It's like,

Okay,

Well,

It just is that there's low energy.

And that's just a factor of so many conditions that are out of our control.

So we just keep showing up for it.

The restlessness and worry,

Similar.

It's just sort of the opposite.

It's like high energy,

You know,

And can be very hard to be with in the body.

And we think of it as a problem.

And we think of it as like,

Oh,

And then the mind is more racing or more agitated,

Where you are used to feeling this amount of energy as anxiety.

And sometimes it's sort of,

You can be like,

Well,

What's the difference?

How does anxiety feel different than excitement,

Right?

Just like check it out.

And suddenly you're like,

Oh,

This actually,

We're interpreting it in a certain way.

But maybe we can actually tap into that energy and try to fold it back into our practice in a way,

Right?

Of being like,

Wow,

This is intense.

And then this is part of why we're training with this different anchors.

The sense of why sometimes we bring the attention in a very small area,

Why it's helpful sometimes to be able to bring the attention to a very large area.

When we're very sleepy,

Trying to bring the attention to a very small area can be impossible.

It's just like it's too narrow a field of attention.

But if you open it up to the whole body,

Maybe to the area around the body,

To sound,

Sometimes that gives a little more space to get some traction in the mind.

Sometimes when we're very sleepy,

Moving the attention between objects,

Doing hearing,

Doing the body,

Doing the breath,

Doing hands,

Moving things can help get that sense of just traction going again.

Sometimes it's similar with the high energy.

What happens when we're really restless and we keep the energy open?

What happens when we try to narrow the field of attention?

We're all different and conditions are different,

But you can explore that.

And that's a big part of why we try to offer these different anchors for the attention.

Doubt,

We spoke about it a little bit earlier,

But it's considered to be the most dangerous of these hindrances because it has so much power to disengage us from the process,

From the practice.

And again,

This isn't about a kind of curious uncertainty of we say something or we've read something somewhere and our experience seems to be different than that and so we investigate more.

That's good.

The Buddha was very clear about not just taking his word for it.

Ehipasiko,

He said,

Come and see.

This explorer for ourselves,

Really to offer this framework and then see for ourselves what is stable,

What isn't changing.

Is there anything there that we can find that doesn't fall into these characteristics?

And so there's a healthy skepticism and curiosity of wanting to know for ourselves.

Doubt is,

Again,

Like Michelle was saying,

It's often the result of a kind of mix of conditions that we have an unpleasant physical experience,

Say.

There's an emotional response that we're not quite seeing that's overwhelming,

That's challenging,

That starts to lead into kind of hopelessness.

Again,

Sometimes we stop,

We don't notice the emotional aspect of what's happening.

We think it's just we're having a hard time with the physical pain.

But little by little,

The hopelessness grows and we feel the sense of our inability to do it,

That it's not worth it,

That we can't do that,

Or this isn't the one for us,

Or these teachers don't know what they're talking about,

Or whatever it is.

It kind of blows up into this sort of bigger whatever,

Forget it.

This isn't giving up,

Disengaging,

And how dangerous that is,

And how the doubt tends to have our number.

It tends to show up in a way that we so believe,

Because it's so perfected.

It's so hard to argue against,

Because it has figured out its argument for why things are hopeless.

And so you just have to be so careful about,

First of all,

Arguing with it.

It's like you're not going to win most of the time.

Of course,

There's tons of rational reasons why the doubt is not right,

But mostly it's about,

Oh,

Recognizing it.

Okay,

Doubt.

Accepting that it's arisen,

And then maybe this process of investigation.

It's like,

Oh yeah,

Is there something else I'm not seeing?

Might there be a kind of what we sometimes will call a hidden object,

Something that was not seen,

That kind of festered in the background,

That kind of ended up taking over?

Oh yeah,

This always happens when I start this certain kind of experience,

That this kind of day,

This time of day,

This period in the retreat,

Whatever it is,

You start to see these patterns,

And we don't have to be so susceptible to them.

The craving and aversion,

The first two of these hindrances,

Also,

Of course,

So powerful and so humbling,

To see the way in which,

Like the Buddha was saying in one of those early quotes,

Of just that we project it outward,

Wanting this thing.

This thing will make us happy.

Even though nothing has ever made us happy for long ever,

It's not that pleasure isn't supportive to us,

That there isn't some buoyancy that we get from it.

It's not to deny that,

But to see it's like we know that it's fading,

We know that it won't be sustained,

That we're replicating this sort of need for constant affirmation of these kinds of experience.

And that pain of it in the heart,

That it's actually not about the object out there,

Or the object in the future,

Or the object in the past,

This way that so many of our thoughts can be about,

Oh,

Pleasant experiences we had in the past,

Or pleasant experiences we want in the future,

Painful experiences in the past,

Painful experiences we're afraid of in the future.

This wanting and the aversion,

It can project through time so powerfully.

And that we always,

It's just like this process of,

Again,

Remembering that it's here,

That the pain is happening here in the heart.

The wanting is a contraction here.

The aversion is a contraction here.

It's not really about the thing that we're annoyed at or that we're worried about.

It's not to say that we're not being reasonable about some of the things we're upset about.

It's not saying that it's crazy to be upset about things or to want certain things.

But it's about recognizing that we have this ability to be with that in our own hearts in a way that doesn't actually keep us in bondage.

Because otherwise we are,

Right?

We're actually maintaining this bondage to phenomena that can't ultimately provide us happiness.

That can't actually keep us safe.

And yet we keep investing our hopes for that in it over and over.

And so there is this place that sometimes,

You know,

We need to experience the pain of that at times,

Right?

To want to be released from it.

To want to be free from these things.

And again,

To see that there is this deeper security in not the heart feeling strong enough,

Feeling peaceful enough,

Being caring enough,

Being supple enough to not be dependent upon conditions for its own happiness.

The Buddha spoke about the,

Kind of like Michelle was saying,

With the water,

The hindrances,

It's like craving is like a bowl of water that's filled with turmeric or blue or red dye that you can't see through it.

You can't see a reflection clearly in it.

The mind infused with aversion is like a bowl of water that's been heated and that's boiling and steaming.

It's like you can't see clearly through it,

You can't see your reflection back in it.

Sloth and torpor,

Like a bowl of water that's covered in moss and leaves.

And it's like,

Oh yeah,

Sometimes these images can be helpful in terms of,

Yeah,

This is what it feels like,

A kind of mucky,

Murky kind of sloth and torpor.

The restlessness and worry is like when it's ruffled by the wind,

You know,

And there's just that agitation and that turbulence of mind.

And then doubt,

It's like a bowl of muddy water in a dark room.

I like that.

A bowl of water in a dark room or a muddy bowl of water,

But it's both,

You know.

That's how unclear it is.

And so being able to see,

Oh right,

This is just the mind flavored by aversion.

This is the mind colored by a craving.

This is the mind,

You know,

With this influence that comes over it.

And to not take it personally,

To see that it is through the application of these beautiful qualities of mind,

You know,

Of mindfulness,

Of investigation,

Energy,

Rapture,

This kind of engrossment,

Calm,

Concentration,

Energy.

The cultivation of these things that override,

You know,

Kind of get us over the hump of being totally consumed by these hindrances.

But that these factors of mind can actually be cultivated in relationship with the hindrances,

Right,

With sleepiness,

With restlessness,

With aversion,

With wanting.

It's not like outside of that.

That is actually through the exploration of it that we can come to cultivate these beautiful qualities.

نت And to remember that,

You know,

That why it's so important to see how is it that watching the breath or keeping a relationship with sound is useful at all,

Right,

In terms of this freedom that we seek,

In terms of the security that we seek.

And so it's just to remind us that we are trying to get a more and more precise,

Deeper,

Closer,

Careful,

Subtle relationship with what's happening in every moment of experience.

And to see that experience is happening in a way that is actually often quite different than our normal ideas about life.

And that it is important to start to see this variety of ways that we can experience things.

And it's not to say that we need to have what we think of as like really deep experiences,

Because we can have just as much attachment to the beautiful qualities of the heart and mind,

Right,

Just as much attachment to energy or to concentration or to joy,

To all of these things.

It's not about,

Again,

Creating a particular deep experience that is going to change everything.

It's about this deepening familiarity with this wide range of experience and how that when we see it differently,

Our notions about,

Our fixed notions and the fixedness of our notions starts to loosen and that we come,

We're able to see things on their own terms,

Not just on our ideas about them.

So for example,

If we're outside and we hear a bird,

That's generally how we'll describe it.

Like if you came into your check-in,

Your interview with one of us and you talk about the experience,

You would say,

Oh,

The normal narrative is to say,

I was walking and I heard a bird.

And part of what this practice is designed to do is to see that that way of describing reality is actually quite different than how we tend to actually experience reality.

So that if we were to look very closely at what actually happened in that moment,

What we would actually see is there was a sound and sound consciousness,

Right?

So there's this moment of being aware of a sound.

That sound had a pleasant quality to it.

There was a perception of that sound being a bird.

There was an enjoyment of that.

An image of the bird arose.

There was a liking of it and the sense of recognition that it happened.

If we start to practice,

We can see that that's totally different.

That's like the opposite of saying,

I heard a bird.

What actually happened was there was a sound,

There was a pleasantness to it.

There was a notion about birdness.

There was an image of a bird.

And then there was the sense of me in relationship to that bird and liking it,

Let's just say,

Or not liking it or whatever,

Right?

So that actually the sense of me comes at the very end.

And what it starts with is a sound.

And then in the middle is all this other phenomena that goes into how we construct reality.

And so it's part of how this practice is designed and that we encourage to start to let go of our normal narrative about how we tend to think of experience happening to us and how it's actually happening in the moment.

So we can get into it a little bit more over the days.

But after this evening,

There will be a sheet outside.

I'll put one on each side of this table,

A little stack of them,

That gives some ideas about how to report in terms of your practice in a traditional way in terms of this particular lineage.

And you can see that it's a very different kind of orientation.

And we're not requiring that you do it.

But it's a helpful sheet to look at,

To get a sense of like,

Oh,

Right,

How we can start describing our experience in a way that is a little bit outside of our habits of how we think of life,

How we think of things happening.

And so there will be this emphasis on,

OK,

Looking at our primary object,

I was noticing the rising and falling of the breath.

And again,

It's the sense of,

Okay,

I noticed pressure,

I noticed tension,

I noticed a thought,

I noticed the enjoyment of a thought,

I noticed I was wandering,

I came back to the breath,

The breath was already halfway back down,

I noticed relaxation and a space,

And I noticed the in breath begin again,

Right?

There's this way that when we start to really observe our anchor in this more detailed way,

That it can start to provide a doorway into a different way of understanding how this experience is unfolding for us moment by moment.

So you can take one tonight,

Take a look at it.

There's no pressure to report in this way.

We're also,

Our normal sort of way of reporting,

Especially in the kind of West and this day and age is,

You come sit down,

How are things going,

Any hardships,

Any challenges,

Anything exciting,

Whatever.

We just check in and we can get all the information we need about your practice in that way and support you in that way.

And there is something helpful at times about looking at this other way of not just reporting but of kind of like looking at our practice and seeing that we're starting to deconstruct and see in a very different way how life is unfolding.

And to just kind of,

That willingness to start to see,

Oh right,

How we think of things,

The context,

The framework for how we interpret our lives and interpret what's happening can be quite different and quite fixed and that there are actually,

As we start to settle into our practice,

Different ways that we can start to relate to it.

Not to get tense about it,

Not to get uptight about it,

Not to get too contracted about it,

But to be open about it.

And so to be,

Of course,

Careful.

One of these qualities of energy that we try to bring to our practice of investigation,

Exploration,

These are qualities that are so important but that also need to be in balance.

If the energy is being motivated by a kind of tightness or wanting,

If the investigation is trying to get at something kind of too hard,

Too fixed,

Too firm,

We're not actually going to see life as it actually is.

There's this dance between energy but also lightness.

A connection to our anchor,

A connection to what we're observing that has some degree of firmness but that has to be nimble enough to be with it as it's moving so quickly.

And so remembering that we're always in this process of trying to observe more and more closely just what's happening moment by moment.

And we don't expect your whole day to be this profoundly concentrated,

Absorptive,

Intense seeing of things as they are.

We see that it's like,

Yeah,

Conditions arise and pass.

The energy will come,

The energy will go,

The concentration will come,

The concentration will go.

All of these things are in flux and there will be moments,

Sometimes very short moments,

Sometimes sadly short moments where we kind of just drop in.

We drop in for a few moments and we feel something has come together in a different way.

There's a relaxation,

There's a connectedness.

Sometimes it can last longer,

Sometimes it's very brief.

But it's just this sense of like,

Okay,

We see it's like when things have shifted and we're perceiving things very differently,

Oh,

That we attune to that,

We're aware of that,

We sensitize to it.

Things come back into a more normal focus,

Oh,

We're aware of that.

We notice if there's an attachment,

We notice if there's a dislike to the normal.

Most of this work happens at the quote unquote normal level,

Right?

It's just watching the mind,

Watching the body,

Watching the senses,

Just checking it out.

And the willingness to try to befriend each experience and also the heart's response to each experience.

The slow and beautiful process of coming into attunement,

Like the Buddha said,

With everywhere,

Right?

Intune everywhere,

No matter what is arising.

In the Udana,

He says,

What use is there for a well if there is water everywhere?

When cravings root is severed,

What should one go about seeking?

What use is there for a well when there is water everywhere?

Just remember that at times,

If we find ourselves trying to get somewhere,

Trying to get something,

Trying to even get wisdom or get insight,

It's like,

Oh,

That striving,

That wanting,

That craving that still can be motivating our spiritual practice.

Can we be just genuinely interested in what's happening because it's real,

Because it's what's happening,

Not about what's going to happen next,

Or what we're going to get out of it,

Right?

We don't actually need that peace of mind that sees security everywhere,

That sees water everywhere,

Reminding ourselves of that capacity of the mind.

Let's sit for a minute.

Around this corner.

Thank you for listening.

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