October 2, 2007 Tuesday Evening, Consciousness and Its Objects Class
Discussion of Access Concentration, Vipassana, and Pure Awareness; Guided Choiceless Awareness Meditation; Working with Low Energy In the Sitting
This transcript has not been “cleaned” to make it into a dharma talk, just reviewed for typographical errors.
Barbara: … Bring attention now to the body, feeling the buttocks on the cushion or the chair. Rock the body and forth and sidewards, back into center…
Breathing in, breathing out. Aware of the breath touching the nostrils and upper lip. Right there with consciousness of touching, be aware that there is contact. The body touching the breath, the sense organ of touch is touching the object of the breath. And with contact, consciousness arises…
Right there in the breath, be aware of the texture, the feeling of pleasant or unpleasant, or neutral. And the perception, knowing this as the breath…
If any thought arises, for example, a judgment about the breath, that it should be softer or firmer or different in some way, know it as judgment…
If an impulse energy arises to try to control the breath in some way, know it as volition…
Whatever arises, let it be, don’t try to change anything. Mind settles into a choiceless awareness, willing to be with whatever is present just as it is…
If an object takes you away from the breath, do not call this wandering. It’s just part of the choiceless awareness. If a sensation arises in the body like an itch or throbbing and draws attention away from the breath, don’t resist the object, simply be with it. Contact.
Perhaps it’s a sound that drew you away, the traffic noise, maybe, or somebody in the room coughing. Sense organ of ear, touching the object sound. And with that contact, hearing consciousness arises. Feeling– pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Perception, knowing the sound as a sound, knowing the cough as a cough and the car horn as a car horn. Perception files things, categorizes too. And then volition. If the traffic is loud, there may be an aversion that arises, wanting to get rid of the noise, hearing not as sound but as noise.
If aversion or grasping arise, they may bring a contracted energy. This is an important point in your practice. If there is a contraction, that becomes the new object. Don’t get caught up in, “This is an aversive thought, this is a grasping thought” with attempt to change them. Simply watch the body and the contraction you may experience.
The whole experience of contracting is the object. The body as sense organ, touching that object. Consciousness arising with contact. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Perception noting, “This is a contraction.” Can the contraction just be there without further contraction around it? It arose out of conditions. It’s impersonal, impermanent. Let it be. As the contraction dissolves, come back to the breath.
In the same way, if a thought arises, perhaps a memory, mind touching on a memory, contact and consciousness, feeling, the unpleasantness of the memory, perception, “this is an unpleasant memory.” A mental formation, moving into aversion. It might be aversion toward the people involved in the memory. It might be a judging thought to the self, such as, “I shouldn’t be remembering,” or “I should be angry.” It’s just a thought. It’s impersonal, impermanent. It arose out of conditions. There’s nothing there you have to believe in. It’s often helpful to find the body contraction there with the aversion because aversion is such a big experience in the body and the mind. You’re not avoiding or denying the aversion to bring attention to the contraction, it’s just a way of staying centered through this difficult memory or difficult body state. As it changes or dissolves, come back to the breath.
When we practice in this way, slowly the body settles down. The mind settles down. From choiceless awareness practice as the tool that we’re using, we open into access concentration where the mind starts to pick up each mind and body state with choiceless awareness as the tool. Without a self, nobody choosing this one or that one or trying to get rid of this one or that one. Everything arising or passing away. Resting in full presence, access concentration.
You feel a shift. The contractions stop. Aversion and attachment really stop. They’re just objects arising and passing away, some pleasant, some unpleasant. Those that are pleasant will remain pleasant. Those that are unpleasant will remain unpleasant. But there’s no reverberation from that pleasant or unpleasant experience or neutral experience.
We’ll sit now for 20 minutes.
(meditation)
Did all of you see the transcript from the last class? If you did not see it, it’s on the Deep Spring website, please look at it.
We asked you last class to practice in this way and see how it felt to bring in this precise noting, knowing contact as contact and consciousness as consciousness. The feeling—pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Perception. And then if a mental formation or volition arises out of this impulse energy, or a thought, “it should be this way or that way”, noting judgment, aversion, or grasping if that arises, to really see that as a new object. This is basically what I led in the guided meditation tonight. And this is the way we establish both choiceless awareness and access concentration.
So I’d like to go around and hear from you what experiences you had in these last 2 weeks, working with this, either frustrating ones or joyful ones or some mix of both. Also, questions you may have. Let’s just go around here…
Q:There was a mix. (I) have a question. There seemed to be consciousness or awareness, whatever, all the time. (I) saw the contact with object and then consciousness about that, like hearing consciousness or sensing body consciousness. But underlying all of it, there seemed to be consciousness.
Barbara: When you say underlying it all there seems to be consciousness, do you mean not sense or mind consciousness but some deeper level of awareness? Okay, good point. Yes.
So what you’re saying here is that the mundane consciousnesses are picking up mundane objects, and what seems to be simultaneously, there is a deeper level of supramundane awareness that’s touching some bigger field than just this sound or that pulsation. So that the mundane consciousnesses are within that bigger field, but they don’t pick up an identity of importance as this or that, so much. It’s like watching the ripples flowing on the surface of a pond, but you don’t identify each ripple, but only know that there are ripples. But you’re also aware of the vast water, the depth of the lake, and so forth.
Q:Yes.
Basically this is, it’s hard to articulate this… Supramundane awareness, what we call pure awareness, is simply one level of consciousness, but it does not take a mundane object, it takes a supramundane object. All the mundane objects continue, they don’t go anywhere, but they’re experienced as ripples on the surface so we don’t get caught up in them. If mindfulness is sharp, we still see them.
It’s like the looking-through-fingers exercise. If you focus on the fingers, there’s just the fingers. If you look through, you may entirely miss the fingers. But you can see both. I didn’t really hear a question, just that this was your experience. I’m trying to articulate it more precisely for others. Was your experience that, or did you lose touch with the mundane objects?
Q:Sometimes there was just emptiness but many times there were objects with consciousness; it was like looking through a wide angle lens…
Barbara: Okay, and am I correct in guessing that there was not a lot of contraction around the specific objects? Maybe not any? (Q: not much) I can’t tell you at this point if this is access concentration or pure awareness, which one is predominant. It sounds more like access concentration.
Q:My sense is that in pure awareness, there is not such a direct experience of an object and consciousness with that object.
Barbara: That is a very clear distinction between them, yes. So with access concentration, you’re more focused on the fingers, even though the space is very much there. With pure awareness, the fingers are there but there’s very little notice of them. There’s the vast space. Two different forms of consciousness, two different predominant objects.
What’s the use of this? I want to keep tying what we’re doing in this class back to daily life. I had my teeth cleaned this week. I have good teeth; it’s never a terrible process, but of course it’s unpleasant getting one’s teeth cleaned. There are stabbing sensations and scraping, and… it’s not as much fun as floating on the lake in a kayak! So this is a wonderful place to practice. I always try to make it a practice experience.
So I was just noting the scraping and, because of my hearing or non-hearing, perhaps I feel the vibration of the scraping maybe more than many people do. Chills running up my spine—scraping! A little too hard—tension, tension. Watching, really settling down into access concentration and watching each of these arising and passing away, and reaching a point where I wasn’t taking any of it personally. Eventually mind and body were relaxed and at one point I almost fell asleep! The tension dies out of experience and there’s just this progression of various sensations, some more unpleasant than others, none of them really pleasant. And then it’s finished.
Taking this to something bigger. An injured foot. Pain, cast, unpleasant. Or taking it to, rushing to the airport in a traffic jam and missing your plane, orgetting a phone call about a loved one’s illness. Different objects that come up.
The question in terms of our daily life is how are we going to relate to these objects? When we relate from the place of self, it’s like, I just used the example of the ripples on the lake. The wind was blowing one day and there were whitecaps on the lake. I was trying to swim and waves were hitting me in the face. Now, I have a choice. I can take it personally, “Why do these waves have it in for me? Why are they smacking me in the face?” Or I can just relax, “This is the way waves are. When there’s a wind, the water blows into waves.” So I can turn around and do a different stroke. I can do something different. I can relate to the waves in an openhearted way, just knowing this wave is literally arising from conditions. When the conditions cease, it will cease.
So, for me, with this practice, when the mind settles down into this precision, it really frees me from taking it personally and getting caught up in the story, “This shouldn’t be this way, this should be that way, this isn’t fair, I don’t like this, I want that.” Stories. It doesn’t mean I don’t act skillfully. If the waves are smacking me in the face, it’s probably not skillful to try to keep doing breaststroke right into the waves, I’ll keep coughing and getting mouthfuls of water. So I respond appropriately, but there’s no self in the response. There’s no fear or grasping or aversion in the response, just skillful response.
So let’s continue going around, and as you talk, I’d like you also to talk about this: in what ways did what you experienced practicing in this way, help you in your daily life? What insights did it give you? P, do you want to add anything to that?
Q:I recognize that when a thought pulled me out of access concentration, I saw how that was a separation. Focusing on the thought separated the consciousness from the way it feels in access. So it just reinforced the separation that mind can create.
Barbara: And that separation is an object. It’s not real, it’s a concept arisen from conditions. It’s literally almost impossible to keep access concentration going through your tennis game or your driving in traffic, or whatever. But having worked with access concentration in sitting, mind is much less likely to react to the sudden horn or the driver on your right who gets a blowout or whatever, much less likely to relate by getting caught up in the story of it. You catch the story much faster, usually, based on the stability of this practice.
Q: I did not catch the detailed watching that you are asking for. I noted when I was in access concentration, but I will now really watch for contact, consciousness, feeling. That seems to happen so fast.
Barbara: It happens fast. It’s like Ajahn Chah’s story of falling through the trees and all the branches just go flying past, and then the thud. With that thud, suddenly there is anger or there’s judgment or there’s fear, thud! And if mind says, “Oh, there’s anger,” and gets caught up in it, that’s a lot different than saying, “Ah, here’s a volitional formation, wanting, or a mind filled with aversion. Here is a mental formation. Oh look, isn’t that interesting.” Thud! And then you don’t have to figure out how it happened, just, “Okay, breathing in, I am aware of anger, or judgment or fear. Breathing out, present with this object. Is it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral?” So however it comes, we take it into the practice rather than getting on it and riding it off into the sunset.
Q:Access concentration is like knowing the field as well as the figures. Do you know what I’m saying? So last week we were at a theater festival and not every play was engrossing for me, but I was sitting, of course. So I could know the people and players and audience and all that but I wasn’t connected to the story.
Now, some, I was, but when I wasn’t connected, St Joan, for instance, which went on for hours—Bernard Shaw writes very long plays and I got disconnected but I got connected to the field of the whole thing.
Barbara: And it’s interesting because you see the whole thing so much better when you’re not absorbed into one part and lost in it.
Q:Immediately after last class for a few days, the instruction was very clear, and I was able to see the contact, consciousness, perception, and able to go quite deep into the object, even mundane objects. As the 2 weeks progressed, it got muddier. What I missed was the undercurrent of tension that I seem to carry all the time. When I saw that, I got out of the loop of object, aversion, object, aversion, object, aversion, and took the tension as the new object. And then things opened up for me.
Barbara: I’m glad it opened up.
It can start to feel very mechanical to try to live your life with contact, feeling, perception. We can’t do that 24/7. When there’s a place where you start to get caught, though, or mind moves into some story, and you feel the energy field in the body contracting around maybe a judgment or feeling sad or angry, contracting, instead of going into the, “Here’s anger, or fear,” or whatever, if you just note the contraction or tension as you did. Bringing yourself back into the body and feeling the experience of the contraction—unpleasant, contracting, tension, tension. And probably it’s unpleasant, and recognizing it as tension, and then looking at the question, “How am I relating to this tension? Can there be open heart? Instead of judgment, can there be an open heart with this tension?” But if there’s judgment of the tension, that’s just another object, more tension. So you can’t get the whole thing, there are too many objects. If at that point thud, you hit the ground, crash, ask, “What’s going on?”
This is the place where there can really be some freedom, where you can find freedom from these habit energies. Just by starting to see them without being so much inside of them, and to know intellectually, “Okay, this is where mind is in this process. This is what just happened.” That can be very helpful. Not in disassociation from it, that’s not what we’re after, but just not being so deep that we’re caught in it. It’s a very different experience to be caught in a swamp of hip-deep mud or standing on a hill looking down at it and knowing, “That’s deep mud. I don’t have to wade through it this time, I see the path around it.”
Q:My practice has been in a phase of low energy and poor concentration. This has been going on for several months.
Barbara: Is the low energy and concentration just in the formal sitting or through the day?
Q:Just in sitting.
Barbara: How long are you sitting?
Q:45 minutes.
Barbara: I would like to suggest this week trying 10 minute sittings with a 5 minute walking period in between. 10 minute sitting, 5 minute walking, 10 minute sitting, 5 minute walking, 10 minute sitting, 5 minute walking. Using the walking to help bring up more energy. You can do slow walking but you can also do fast walking, just noting, “Stepping, stepping.” Just back and forth, not out in the fields taking a walk. But it doesn’t have to be very slow walking. But then after 5 minutes of walking, roughly, you don’t need to use a timer, but after a few minutes of walking, then sit again so that you’re not asking yourself to stay focused and bring up energy for 45 minutes, just 10 minutes. For 10 minutes, can mind stay settled down into this flow of objects? Okay. (Q: Yes)
Q:Like J I have also had very low energy in practice, for about 4 or 5 minutes. So this class has been helping me re-enter the practice again. I feel very discouraged about it.
Barbara: Low energy can happen for many reasons, but often it’s a result of resistance of some sort. Force is not the answer. But some degree of self-discipline is needed. So trying what I suggested to J—short sittings, instead of walking for 5 minutes in between, you can just stand up and move the body a little to stretch and reflect, “What if there was good concentration now? What is low concentration enabling me not to see? What might I experience if I had good concentration?” This is not to try to dig out some answer, it’s just to reflect it’s okay. There’s probably something, some place of fear here, and it’s okay, I can move into this. Whatever it is that I’m afraid of, whatever fear is there, I’m willing to see it.
Sometimes low energy is related to the stage of insight. I don’t know if this is true for either of you or anyone in this circle, but as we move through these insight knowledges, sometimes in meditation there’s an experience where everything does seem to dissolve and a feeling that there’s nothing one can hold on to. The deeper concentration goes, the more there is this feeling, “I can’t hold on to anything.” And there’s a fear. We talk about it as standing on the edge of the cliff asking ourselves to jump off. It’s scary. What will happen to me? Will I dissolve? Everything is dissolving. The body is dissolving. Moment by moment. Mind is dissolving. There’s nothing solid.
At this stage of insight where everything is dissolving and there’s a… almost a “nothing matters anymore” feeling, this is a normal stage of practice. So with this often comes low energy. When there’s low energy, we can’t say, “Oh, you must be in that stage of practice.” But usually in that stage of practice, there’s low energy. We just want to back out and stop. And the only answer is to note, “Here is fear. Here is this feeling of depression and nothing matters. And okay, let’s just take this as an object.”
When concentration becomes very weak in that stage of practice, the answer is to invite and nurture concentration because concentration on no-concentration brings up energy and creates concentration. It’s circular. When we say, “There’s no concentration, I can’t do this,” then we’re on that horse riding into the sunset. But when we say, “Okay, there’s no concentration. What is the direct experience of no concentration?” with no stories about it, just how does it feel, feeling empty, a toppling over kind of experience, no firm ground. It’s unpleasant, there’s not much control. Uncomfortable. Feeling very shaky.
As consciousness takes that feeling, that experience, as an object and just watches it like every other object, impersonal, impermanent, we stay with it for awhile and it changes. And suddenly you find yourself concentrated. And with concentration comes energy.
I’ll email some more out to all of you.(Pasting a small section into the transcript; we’re speaking of #8, Contemplation of Disenchantment)The Teachers’ group worked with the complete grouping of insights and knowledges at the Teachers Training Weekend this summer. For those of you who are not in the teachers’ group, I think that material is on the website, Library/Transcripts/Other transcripts… (Group: It is.)
Part of the Path of Knowledges and Insights:
5. Knowledge of Contemplation of Dissolution
Attention moves from arising to dissolution. Everything dissolves
6. Knowledge of Contemplation of Appearance as terror
Terror about this dissolution. Nothing to hold on to.
7. Knowledge of Contemplation of Danger
We begin to see the danger, how easily we could get caught back into taking anything as solid, see into the danger of formations and our attachments to them.
8. Knowledge of Contemplation of Disenchantment
Disenchantment with everything, the conditioned realm, practice, – everything is seen as part of the process of becoming, and an obstacle to freedom.
9. Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance
From Matt Flickstein,Swallowing the River Ganges:
Knowledge of Disenchantment:
As a consequence of seeing the danger in grasping at any of the aggregates, we naturally become disenchanted with all material or mental formations. This is called the knowledge of disenchantment. This disenchantment arises from wisdom and is accompanied by equanimity, as opposed to aversion.
The experience of disenchantment may extend to all areas of our life and we may discover that we cannot find comfort anywhere. At this point in our practice we may feel quite alone in the world. When the sense of disenchantment becomes intense, we may once again consider giving up our practice, believing that our meditation has led us to a dead end.
Deep aspiration arises to continue the path and find freedom.
Q:I have nothing to say right now. I’m happy to be here.
Q:There were a couple of things that happened, but I’ll just talk about one. At a group sitting, for the last 3 or 4 weeks, there have been 3 very loud people. They were there snoring. They were sent to us for a very special practice. I have lived with a snorer for 47 years, so it is particularly galling to me to have this happen.
Barbara: The sitting is the place thatshouldbe free of it! (laughter!)
Q:Right, right! But I also happened to know the cause of the sleeping of at least 2 of these people, and it softened my distress.
Barbara: What did you note?
Q:I know the reason for their snoring. They are on medicine for very difficult conditions. And I was able to note the contraction that was happening for me, anyway. And I took that as the primary object and I was astounded how that opened up a whole field. It was amazing.
Barbara: And the experience didn’t change, the snoring was still snoring.
Q:The object was the real contraction…The snoring did not change. But I didn’t hear it much.
Q2:You took out your hearing aid! (laughter!)
Q:The opening that happened really was like a flow, like a river flowing by. And it had nothing in it. The river flowing by is not really an accurate statement because there just was nothing.
Barbara: Were you in access concentration?
Q:I don’t know the difference.
Barbara: Was mind alert and picking up objects? (Q: Yes) But there was no going out to them and pushing them away? (Q: Yes) This is access concentration. It’s an amazing experience. The objects are still there. It’s not like suddenly a heavy veil has descended, the objects are still right there, full presence.
Q:But without inherent value.
Barbara: Yes, exactly. Thank you for your witness here to the power of this practice.
Q:Let me tell you the other one, too, because I’m not sure how this fits in. Clarence Thomas has written a book and there have been a lot of interviews and reviews of it this week. When his Supreme Court appointment hearing was going on, I was very involved in that and had a lot of opinions about it. And what I saw in the interviews and what I heard from the reviewers was that this was a very bitter and angry man. I was watching one interview and he certainly was bitter and angry, but I thought, this is a man who wants to be dedicated to doing a good job on the court, and yet I’m not seeing that. He was not able to convey that with words. I thought, here’s a man who grew up in the segregated south. He has every right to the bitterness he feels about what I’m sure were terrible experiences.
With that, in a very mundane situation, things really opened up and I began to see him as a person differently than I had before. My husband was saying some fairly uncomplimentary things, and it just occurred to me, and I said, “This is a very complicated situation.” It was like the same sort of thing happens as an opening in meditation where everything was one. He fit in the equation as much as I did or anybody else. That seems to be the application of practice.
Barbara: These are wonderful examples, thank you. I don’t want to get into a long discussion now of what you’ve said, just that at that point, when there’s access concentration, or when there’s the heart of compassion and seeing “judgment” and not getting caught up in the stories of judgment of the self or other people, there’s the possibility to really heal the karma and open to a different path, rather than just going the same way all the time. When we keep batting our heads against the wall thinking finally the wall’s going to break down, all we do is end up with a very sore head, instead of looking for a different way through, which is letting go of the identification with the stories. Right there is really the healing of karma, because when your heart opens in compassion like that to somebody, this is the place where the karma shifts. I’ll talk about it after the break, it’s called the active moment. It goes with the volitional formations that I was talking about earlier. We’ll come back to it.
Q:I was not here. I did not have the assignment.
Barbara: Okay, work with that from here…
Q:I am very, very happy to be here.
Q:I’m enjoying this class so much and I’m staying with it, and I’m going to learn how to do a little signing myself.
I have had in the past two weeks a special opportunity to make contact with sensory experience. Our regular yoga teacher has been away and we’ve had a teacher who has offered us new poses. After every class that I have on Friday, I leave with massive cramps in my back. We’re doing wild things like standing on our hands, I’ve never done before. Acting like peacocks! And my back is full of spasms tonight. I need to stretch…
So I’ve become acquainted with aversion and fear because I have a condition, gastric reflux, which can produce backaches in people who have a serious version of gastric reflux, with esophageal– changes in the cellular composition in one’s esophagus. I have lived in fear for some time.
The last class was helpful to me because I took to heart the message that whatever comes to the foreground in experience can become the object of attention. That’s very helpful. Often, paying attention to the pain itself has not made it go away. But there was one night when I couldn’t sleep. I came downstairs and the living room was filled with moonlight coming through the window. And I sat on the landing of the stairway and just contemplated with my eyes open. And the pain was there but I had a different relationship to it because the moon was part of my interior landscape.
So I wasn’t really actively reframing anything. It’s like what we talked about earlier…that the objects of attention take on a different quality. There is no fear. I felt the pain but it was part of a larger scene. Just in doing that, I experienced relief.
Barbara: Good. What you’re saying feels to me more like an experience of resting in awareness than access concentration. We talked briefly about the distinction earlier, that access concentration tends to take up each object very precisely, but there’s no attachment or aversion to it. There’s no value judgment placed on it, no contraction around it. But it’s still right there, like an object bouncing up and down on the waves. Whereas awareness takes you up a ways above the waves, watching them ripple under you. They’re there but there’s also all that space.
So I can’t say for certain but it sounds more like an experience of resting in awareness. It doesn’t matter that much which it is. The usefulness of knowing which it is is simply to know, … let me explain this briefly to everybody.
Resting in awareness. The citta, the consciousness which are capable of perceiving the Unconditioned, are present, but we still need to come back into access concentration. So resting in awareness is a way of opening to the space that supports the opening of access concentration. It’s not yet access concentration. But resting in awareness in itself is a very valuable practice just because it teaches us how not to get caught up in this story, to see the space and just take care of the fingers(Barbara holding up hand and wiggling fingers; looking at both the fingers and he space beyond them). So there’s a balance.
The texture of access concentration is important; it can become too fine-tuned. There can be tension within it. It poses as access concentration, but it’s not completely access concentration. For me, when my practice gets into that place and I’m starting to try too hard, Aaron just says, “Relax. Open your eyes. Just spend some time doing pure awareness practice.” Ahh. And then close your eyes again 10 minutes later, and return to the noting but with more space. So the space can support the access concentration.
So what I am suggesting to you here is if this kind of situation comes up again and there’s this feeling of space, and the pain isn’t so unpleasant any more, it’s just pain, there are no stories around it, then maybe you can close your eyes and start to be more focused on the arising and passing away of sensation. You see that it changes. It’s not one sensation, it moves a little but it gets stronger, it gets weaker, it moves from the front to the back and back to the front again, just watching it changing and knowing it’s not one object, it’s a series of objects arising and passing away, impermanent and not self. This leads into deeper awareness of impermanence.
So use the resting in awareness as the base and then once that base is open, come back into a formal sitting, closing your eyes, and just being present with these difficult sensations. Okay?
Q:I have been totally away from my practice. I have been very involved in this seminar that we put on a week ago. So absorbing, it was. But something has surfaced and that is that I have noticed that since returning from the seminar, I’ve been involved in some unskillfulness. It’s been very interesting because it has caused me some contraction. A lot of contraction. So, the last time this happened—it’s happened 3 times—with the contraction, I made a decision that I would just sit and sit and sit, a long time. And then I decided to journal about what came up in the sitting. I also am taking S’s class on Wednesdays, and this was something we talked about in her class.
Then I did a self-breathe practice and came to complete clarity. It was amazing. And I came back to a place of complete equanimity. So that doesn’t fulfill the homework assignment—
Barbara: It does, because you’ve brought mindfulness to it. You were aware that there was contraction and you responded skillfully to the contraction rather than getting caught up in the story.
Q:That’s true. It was amazing!
Barbara: The tools that we use to work with the contraction vary. A heart of your practice is breath work. Somebody else’s might be journaling or yoga or just more sitting, more vipassana, which you did. (Q: a lot!) and that was a necessary foundation probably to the clarity that came in the breathing.
Q:Hour after hour.
Barbara: Good. Let’s take a break…
(break)
(Bell)
Barbara: I’d like you to imagine yourself floating down a big, wide, lazy river , just relaxed, floating, cool water, sun on your face. There are places where the river narrows a bit and picks up speed, and then it opens out wide and becomes slower again.
You’ve been told that there are some forks in the river and to stay to the right. Whenever you come to a fork, stay to the right. Suddenly the river narrows. You expect it will open up again as it has been, but as the inner tube is shooting through this narrow chute with a big cliff on each side, the current sweeps you off toward the left. Pulled off to the left, you see a passageway on your right but you’re too far left and the current is pulling you. Ah well. Down you go. Then there are waterfalls, rocks, bump, bump, bash, bash, bang! Bruised all over, blood, ow! Finally it opens back up into the wide space.
You’ve reached the bottom. There’s a truck to take you back up to the top. You’ve paid for a whole day of river riding. You expect to take 30, 40 trips down this river. Most of it is lovely. Jump in the truck, back it takes you, you climb back into the river, thinking, “This time, I know where that rapids is and I’m going to be sure I catch the right hand fork.”
So you see the series of rocks coming up, you see the river narrowing. You say, okay, I’m off to the right, here. You use your paddle and push yourself off to the right. And as you’re coming through, suddenly a big bird flies up, catches your attention, and whoosh, off you go into the left fork again!
Third trip through. Coming up to these cliffs, attention, this is the place where I’ve got to be careful or I’m going to get sucked into a difficult channel. I’m all set and I can do this. And then you’re so tense that you can’t paddle right, you can’t paddle correctly. You see the fork entrance off to the right. Scratched, bruised… Well the rest of the river is so wonderful that you keep climbing back in the truck and going up again. You know it’s possible to go through the right-hand fork but you’ve not been able to do it.
The sixth or seventh time, an experienced friend goes ahead and says, “Just watch me.” You’re right behind your friend. You’re just paddling smoothly, smiling and at ease but very focused. The current gets fast and(sound effect)and you follow. “Ah, I did it! Now I know how to do it.” So that you see it is possible to choose a smoother route. The next time through, you’re very sure of yourself. “I know how to do this.” You come to those narrows, and “Ah, I know what to do!” then whomp! Got overconfident, wasn’t paying attention.
But each time you do it, it gets easier. And finally by the end of the day there’s no problem taking that right-hand fork. The left-hand fork doesn’t even pull you at all, you just know how to do it.
Q:What if you get attached to the left-hand fork?
Barbara: Well, if you get attached to getting beaten up, then you probably need to sit and meditate and find out why you get attached to it. That old question, what does getting beaten up do for me? In what way to I choose this?
So taking this metaphor into our daily lives, we each have certain predominant habit energies. For some, it might be the need to fix everything, to be in control, to keep everything in balance, for another, to be the good one, or to be helpless and taken care of. If we went around the room, I’m sure we’d get a dozen different predominant habit energies. Whatever it is, it’s (sound effect, whomp)
We come into that situation and we’re so geared toward that that it’s very hard to choose a different direction, a more wholesome direction. We call that moment where one paddle-stroke one way or the other will take us into the right or left hand fork, the active moment.
Using a very simple emotional example. You’re walking down the street and you see a man walking toward you. And the last time you saw this person, there was some tension between you. And now, as you see him walking toward you, he’s scowling, a fierce look on his face. Maybe,“Uh-oh, what did I do?” comes up, or “How can I get away?”
Whatever the predominant habit energy is will probably come up—to be the good one, to immediately try to appease the person, to be controlling, to protect yourself with anger, to deny the situation by running across the street. Whatever the predominant habit energy is.
So the person approaches. We take it into our basic practice. The eye organ touching the object of an angry face, contact. Seeing consciousness. Sometimes feeling will seem to come first and sometimes perception. Here there’s probably perception, perception of anger, feeling threatened. Seeing the angry face and feeling threatened are two different experiences. So it may happen very quickly. Seeing the angry face, there’s perception of unpleasant, and the mental formation of feeling threatened. The reaction to seeing the angry face is the new object. A mind object, feeling threatened. Actually you feel it in the mind and in the body. Contact and consciousness, consciousness feeling threatened. Unpleasant. And the perception, this is dangerous.
And then, the predominant habit energy, “What’s wrong? Why is he scowling at me?” Or, “What did I do? How can I fix it?” Or, “I’m out of here!” Whatever it might be.
But if in that moment we can recognized, “I’m getting swept into that challenging channel again and that’s not where I want to go. Breathing in, I’m aware of tension. Breathing out, I smile to the tension,” right here, this is the active moment. The mental formation has arisen of wanting to run, wanting to attack, wanting to protect–whatever it is. And then acknowledgment, “This is not wholesome. Right now, I can make a wholesome choice to hold space for this energy and not have to get caught up in it.” Breathing in and holding the space, as J talked about doing with the pain, as M talked about doing with the sound, and others of you talked about in various ways. Holding the space.
We may not make the most wholesome choices in that moment, we might look back and think, “I could have done it even a little bit better.” But at least we didn’t go down that steep waterfall, battered by the rocks. Maybe we got out and portaged. Well okay, next time you ride the easy way down the channel; this time you avoided the rocks.
Here is where the karma can shift. Awareness arises that this is specifically a karmic formation, a habit energy, and that there is a choice. We do this using 3 supports. One is the everyday support of sila, here as intention to do no harm to ourselves or others. One is mindfulness, presence in this moment and seeing each object arising and passing away. And one is a basic confidence in ourselves and our inherent goodness, that grows as we practice. We see, maybe not in this rushing river but in a little stream, “Okay, I can not get caught in the dangerous current. I’m not ready for the big river yet, maybe, but in this little stream I can do it.”
So we watch the results and we start to gain confidence in ourselves. And if we doubt that confidence, then that’s a habit energy and we ask, “Why am I doubting? What is the experience of doubt, here in this moment? Maybe that’s the predominant habit energy, that belief that I can’t do it.”
Pali words. It’s fine to simply say, wholesome or unwholesome consciousness.akusalameans unwholesome. Akusala citta is unwholesome consciousness. What is an unwholesome consciousness? A consciousness filled with aversion or grasping.Kusalais wholesome, kusala citta is wholesome consciousness.
Dosa is aversion. Dosa citta is a citta of aversion, aversion consciousness. It’s unwholesome.
In the class notes handout, included the Pali words because you’re liable to encounter them reading but I’m not asking you to learn these Pali words. It may be helpful to see how precisely these states are categorized. It is useful to be able to note, this is wholesome consciousness, this is unwholesome consciousness. When I’m caught up in that unwholesome consciousness, I need to ask myself, is that where I wish to be? I think you’ve all worked with Clear Comprehension with me. The four parts in the practice of Clear Comprehension. Is there anybody here who has not worked with Clear Comprehension. I’m not going to repeat it at any length, then.
Clear Comprehension—what is my predominant direction or purpose here? Is what I’m choosing suitable to that purpose? In other words, if my predominant purpose is to go down the right-hand fork of the river and not get bashed, and I’m choosing each time I come through that river, for one reason or another, to lose control of the boat and go off on the left-hand fork, then what’s happening?
Using that as metaphor, if I keep getting caught by somebody’s anger and become argumentative and more and more angry in that particular situation, and also have purposes to create some real harmony and understanding, what’s happening?
Q:(Beginning lost as tape is changed)Sometimes I can see her anger and not get caught in it and see that it is a conditioned part of what is, and sometimes I cannot. So I knew that I would need to be able to talk to her about a situation that she had been involved in. All weekend I saw stories about how it was going to turn out, without me being there, they were just stories, lots of them. So I knew that this was the place for me to work, to look, to see the attachment to whatever it was that was keeping me so solidly separate and attached.
Monday came around and I had planned out what I was going to say to her, which is usually not the way I do it, I usually let the experience guide me. But I had planned it out. She walked up to me and I could see her face. It was smiling and at ease, and she was so light. And I could not… I went down the left side of the river. Maybe not as much as I would have if I had not been mindful of what was happening, but I was angry that she was so much at ease when I had…
I wished her so much metta and there was so much that I gained from this experience.
Barbara: Thank you for sharing. It sounds like it was a good learning experience.
(recording ends; class ends)
Notes given out in class:
Class Two Notes
Terminology:
akusala: unwholesome
akusala citta: unwholesome consciousness
kusala: wholesome
kusala citta: wholesome consciousness
dosa: aversion; ill will
lobha: attachment; greed
moha: ignorance
phassa contacts the object
vedana experiences the taste of the object or feels it
sanna marks or remembers the object
cetana (volition)- this relates to what we do with the object.
Tonight I want to look at volition in this chain and see how freedom lies therein. Some of you may wish to read Aaron’s book,No Chain at All,which goes deeper into the places in the chain where freedom lies.
From No Chain, page 11:
The second part of the circle,volitional formations,sankharameans all things that come into being as the effect of causes and conditions, and, in themselves are the causes and conditions for the arising of other phenomena. As used in the doctrine of Dependent Origination, sometimes this word, sankhara, is taken to mean only actions, words and thoughts that lead to reactions, in other words, that which creates adhering karma which keeps one captive to the wheel of becoming. I feel this definition is incomplete, and prefer the first, that is, everything that comes into being as the effect of causes and conditions, and in themselves are causes and conditions for new arising.
I prefer the first for this reason. Sankhara is that which leads to the formation of karma,whether adhering or non adhering karma. When your loving actions free of self create wholesome and non adhering karma, this does not further chain you, but karma is still created. Only theArahat, a fully enlightened being who does not need to take rebirth, has the wisdom and complete freedom from attachment and aversion to act, speak or think totally without creating karma.
Page 19, 20
We can break down all of those types of conditionality into 2 areas. The first isnecessary conditionality: this necessitates that. If A arises, then B must also arise. When A ceases, B ceases. When there is birth, for example, there must be death. Birth is a necessary condition to death. Whenever there is birth, death must follow. When birth ceases, death ceases. Many of these subtly different 24 conditions fit into that category, each expressing different kinds of relationships. But the link between them is this – when ever this arises, that must also arise.
The second general category iscausal conditionality: if A arises, it does not mean that B must arise, but A is a causative factor in the arising of B. Furthermore, if A does not arise, then B cannot arise. An example, of causal conditionality is the arising of sense consciousness and its link to mental formation. Sense touches the sense object and results in sense contact. Mind knows that contact has occurred; the knowing is sense consciousness. There is no necessary link here: contact of sense touching sense object opens the door to the possibility of sense consciousness, but you may remain unaware of the contact. Once there is sense consciousness, and then arising perception and sensation, there may be mental formation. Thus, sense consciousness is a contributory factor to mental formation, for example, to craving. Without sense consciousness, there can be no craving. However, all sense consciousness need not lead to craving. It is a contributory factor.
So, what’s important about this? If each step in this process necessitated the next step, there would be no way to escape. It would be hopeless. What we do then is study the cycle to understand which links necessitate and which are merely contributory. In gaining this understanding, it will be vital that you not take my word for it, but examine it in your own life. Then you will begin to know each new place where there is choice and to understand how you slip into adhering karma. With each deepening of understanding of the process, you will find increasing freedom.
…
This does not mean that you never act without adhering karma. Each of you has moments. sometimes many moments, of offering acts and words unlinked to self. These acts, words, and thoughts grow out of clear seeing that there is no self or other. The result of these volitional formations free of delusion, free of ignorance, is non-adhering karma. However, only the Arahat, that being who is fully enlightened and free of this cycle of birth and death yet still presently on the earth plane, only that being’severythought, word, and act is free of adhering karma. Movement from non-delusion is a process, a learning into which you enter. With mindfulness, courage, and open heart, that which flows through you becomes increasingly pure.
There are two parts to this learning. One is to see the repeated arising of delusion, to notice every act, word or thought which grows out of the delusion of self. The other is to learn to identify that space of clarity within you, that space of divinity, Pure Mind, and perfection, and increasingly to learn to rest in that space and to move from that space. In a capsule, these two areas are the focus of our learning for this next year, and perhaps for this entire life!