Let practice become a path

Practice becomes a path when practice itself is no longer an issue. You just do it. It's a way you have found that brings a certain quality into your life.

Practice becomes a path when you understand that you cannot control what happens in your life and you cannot control your reactions to what happens.

Practice becomes a path when you know that all you can do is put in place a process that opens possibilities, possibilities other than the tyranny of reactivity and conditioning.

Practice becomes a path when you accept the direction that life offers you in each moment. 

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

There are different approaches in different traditions because people have different capabilities. Some can just sit and drop into awareness and that's their form of practice. Others, by developing such emotions as loving-kindness or compassion or devotion, are able to drop into awareness and rest there. Most of us have to work with how we experience the world, and train ourselves--and often the training is long and rigorous--to let go of thinking.

From: Unfettered Questions

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Mindfulness is remembering

We’re going to have to retire the word mindfulness. It’s been hopelessly corrupted in English. Its fundamental meaning is to remember, to remember where you are and what you are doing. 

From: Money and Value

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The price of clarity

At every stage of practice a price has to be paid for clarity. The price is the loss of an illusion.

From: Wake Up To Your Life (pg 264, Track 111)

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Samsara and nirvana

Whenever you find yourself struggling in life you are experiencing  samsara. And I really want to underline this. A lot of people think of samsara as life in the city and of nirvana as life in nature. No. Wherever you’re struggling, that’s samsara.

By contrast, you've experienced situations, interactions where things flowed extremely easily with absolutely no sense of struggle. You don’t feel separate from things or have a really strong sense of "I." You’re just there. That's nirvana.

From: Then and Now

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Touch the awareness that is always present

Touch the awareness that is always present, even in the worst of times. We carry stories about who we are and stories about who others are and, in the moment of interaction, we regard the stories as facts, as how things are. They aren’t facts. They are only ideas and projections arising in the moment. They distract us from what we are actually experiencing. To stop the projections, we drop the stories about who we are, who they are, how we are meant to be, or how they are meant to be. We drop everything and open to what we actually experience, the play of physical and sensory sensations, emotions and feelings, and thoughts and ideas. We open to the whole ball of wax, the whole mess, until we can rest in the clear empty awareness in which the whole mess arises. It’s there. It’s always there, just as silence is present in sound, and space is present in form. When we touch it, we know what to do and how to do it.

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Tradition and your teacher

A tradition begins only when someone does something that is not traditional. In other words, a tradition begins with an innovation. It is not a tradition at that point. It is just somebody doing something different. It becomes a tradition when others pick it up. The "first follower" plays a crucial but often unnoticed role. 

Sometimes the worth of the innovation is immediately apparent and people follow it readily. Sometimes it's not and it quickly dies out, only to be rediscovered again, and again, and...

A tradition is heavily influenced by what happens when the innovation first appears. If met with ridicule, it carries the energy of shame and rebellion. If met with violent opposition, it carries the energy of anger and violence. Thus, a tradition, from the beginning, carries the seeds that corrupt it.

When you talk about a tradition, it's usually a sign that its time has passed. When you talk about preserving a tradition, you have already conceded that it is dead.

What is a tradition?

Is it a way of doing things, ritual, ceremonies, etc.? Is it a way of life? Is it a way of thinking? Is it a way of practice? Is it a body of teaching? Is it a mode of interpretation?

A way of doing things may look like a way of life, but be just a way of doing things. Don't go by appearances.

Tradition and lineage are not the same. Both pass something from one generation to the next, but they do so in different ways.

A lineage consists of specific individuals, each learning from the previous, a supposedly unbroken line back to the source. The hidden message is that what was once discovered cannot be discovered again and must be transmitted.

A tradition is more like a culture, an agreement about a certain set of behaviors and interactions.

Traditions are products of their circumstances. They arise when circumstances require a change. When circumstances change again, a tradition splits. One is based on one or more adaptations to the new circumstances. The other is based on one or  more ways of ignoring the new circumstances. Both claim to be preserving the tradition.

They are both wrong. The tradition is dead, and new ones have emerged, whatever they call themselves.

To follow a tradition is to participate in a culture. To study with someone who has been traditionally trained is a different matter.

A traditionally trained person usually has a well rounded training, and has learned, directly or indirectly, how different aspects of the training interact with each other and how to approach training and learning in a balanced way.

He or she may have that skill and understanding but still not be able to explain it to you.

On the other hand, people who are traditionally trained may only be able to mimic they were trained.

You can usually tell by the way they respond to unexpected or challenging questions. Do they become alive, awake, curious, thoughtful? Or do they just parrot what they have learned?

Do they have a sense of humor?

A person without traditional training, e.g., someone who has had a spontaneous experience of awakening, the training may be effective, but it is often incomplete and unbalanced. It has met only a limited range of contingencies. Yet it may be more vital and relevant to your life.

Traditional/not traditional -- this may not be the best way to look for a teacher.

The person with whom you study has to embody what you yourself are seeking.

At first you may not be able to tell that this is the case and you may have to rely on references, reputation, etc., i.e., tradition. But sooner or later you, yourself, have to see that he or she embodies those qualities. If you don't, or can't, then you must ask if this is the right person.

Is this person teaching you a tradition, or is he or she teaching you how to be awake? Again, this can be difficult to discern at first and you have to give it time.

How much time?

How much do you have?

This is not about progress in any linear sense. It's about creating new possibilities. It's not about following a tradition per se. It's about experiencing life in a different way. It's not about conforming to a set of behaviors or expectations. It's about discovering wakefulness and cultivating it in your life.  

Quotation

If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking... This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

Faith and Belief

There are two very different ways to meet what arises in experience.

One is to interpret what arises according to our conditioning. This is a self-reinforcing dynamic and results in a closed system in which everything is explained, the mystery of life is banished, and no new ideas, perspectives, or approaches to life can enter. This I call belief.

The other is to open to whatever arises, to allow the reactions and stories of our conditioning to arise but not be swallowed by them, to open to the possibility of not knowing, and thus making a place in our experience not only for the mystery of life, but for new ideas and approaches. The willingness to meet experience this way I call faith.

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Blame Game

Blame is refreshing, because it is so unambiguously a reaction. You don't have to think or wonder about it. As soon as you see you are running the blame game, you know you are in reaction.

Stop right there. What's happening?

Clearly, things didn't turn out the way you expected or wanted. You are frustrated and disappointed, and you can't tolerate those feelings. You don't want to feel this way.

You have a story about what happened, but that story is immediately suspect because in it, you are the hero. You use logic and reason, the opinions of others, support from friends or colleagues, to bolster your story. You are right!

But remember, when it comes to blame, reason is a weapon you use when you do not want to acknowledge your anger.

Or, depending on your predilections, you turn it around. You still have a story and you still have a privileged role, but this time, you are wrong. It's all your fault.    

To counter this pattern, the first instruction is to lay all your problems, everything that is wrong in your life, at the doorstep of one pattern: wanting things to be different from what they are. Blame is a wonderful reminder here of how deeply you want the world to conform to your expectations.

The second instruction is to meet whatever arises. Don't avoid it, internally or externally. When things turn out differently, meet that situation, not the one you wanted or expected.

One last point. Blame is a form of mind killing. It reduces the complexities of a situation down to one emotionally charged point. It blinds you to the role of other factors. It provokes reactions that lead people to act against their interests.

Thus, when the blame game is running, stop. Stop right there. Step out of your story. Step out of your judgments. Step out of your obsession with who's right and who's wrong. Step out of your racing mind.

Take a breath and meet the world you are in.  

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Waking up is hard to do

To wake up is hard. We must first realize that we are asleep. Next, we need to identify what keeps us asleep, start to take it apart, and keep working at dismantling it until it no longer functions. As soon as we make an effort to wake up, we start opening up to how things are. We experience what we have suppressed or avoided and what we have ignored or overlooked. When that happens, the reactive patterns that have run our lives, kept us in confusion, distorted our feelings, and caused us to ignore what is right in front of us are triggered. They rise up strongly to undermine the attention that is bringing us into a deeper relationship with what we are and what we experience. When we can see those patterns and everything that is constructed out of them as the movement of mind and nothing else, we begin to wake up.

From: Wake Up To Your Life (book | audiobook)

This article by Ken McLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

          

Learn how to be in what you're experiencing now

To look back and try to feel what you were feeling in the past is really stepping out of the present. In the case of trauma, what happened in the past has sometimes a very significant effect on what is experienced now. So put the attention and the effort into what you are experiencing now, which will likely include all the results of any trauma. That way you stay in the present. Because you can’t go back. You can only learn how to be in what you're experiencing now. 

When we do this--when we're completely in the experience of now--things that weren't experienced in the past but are still somewhere within us may arise in experience. And that’s where we experience the release. But we work from our present experience, not trying to recover the past, so to speak. 

From: Releasing Emotional Reactions

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As we grow older

Unattended, our expectations and ways of acting become more and more rigid as we grow older. And this is one of the reasons why meditation practice is probably a good thing to do, because regular practice of meditation changes our relationship with that solidification process. We keep letting go of  our ideas about how things should be and what we want--that's what we actually do while we're meditating. And this allows us more flexibility and openness in our lives.

From: Unfettered Question 115

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