Transcription
... getting clear about what your intention is. So, in a different practice, yeah, we might think about really noticing vedanā clearly or this or that, but these three characteristics, what they're mostly about is they're ways of letting go, and that's different than noticing dukkha or noticing unpleasantness or noticing even impermanence. They're certain lenses that they just -- everything that arises, just let go, let go, let go. That's a slightly different intention. Do you see what I mean?
[student confirms, and asks if, when one doesn't notice a letting go while working with such a lens, the lens is being incorrectly applied]
Yeah, yeah. And so then we have to figure ... All these practices, basically, apart from sometimes very complex psychological things, when they're just inappropriate lenses, really, because -- we talked about this at Gaia House; something might be complex or trauma or something, and just to say "impermanent," it might dissolve or whatever, but it's not quite the right thing. But everything else, yeah, it should be that there's some ease, there's some release and relief. And if not, it means something or other somewhere in there is not quite right in what one's doing. So then we have to find out: okay, what's the thing that's not quite right here?
[student comments that applying the unsatisfactory/dukkha lens to the pleasant seemed okay, but applying the same lens to emotional pain did not]
Well, it could be two things in that case, two issues -- either one, or maybe both. One is, as I said, when you apply unsatisfactory to unpleasant, the mind will immediately think it's unsatisfactory because it's unpleasant. But in this practice, that's irrelevant. The unpleasantness has nothing to do with it. No matter how pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, it's just -- unsatisfactory just means ultimately this isn't going to satisfy. That's another way of explaining what it means to say "unsatisfactory." Ultimately it's not going to satisfy because it's impermanent. That's really what you're saying in that one word, unsatisfactory.
So it could be, with difficult emotions, that one was getting more into the unpleasantness and actually just going, "unpleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant." "Unsatisfactory" came to mean "unpleasant," and so you're just kind of going, "Unpleasant, unpleasant," and it's reinforcing the unpleasantness. Do you understand? So you're labelling it and the labelling is actually functioning as a kind of fabricating. It's consolidating the experience. So that could be partly what's going on sometimes. What that points to is that at some point in all this, we also have to investigate the power of labelling -- that actually, helpful as it can be sometimes, it can also end up fabricating things without us realizing it. The very label, the mental label, forms a concept, and that sticks things together or keeps them stuck together. But that's another time. So that may be one problem.
The second problem is, related to what we just said earlier, that it might be, depending on what kind of emotional pain is going on, that -- I don't know what language we would use -- the heart and the soul need a different method. It doesn't need to be let go of; it needs to be held or cared for or become intimate with or there needs to be more story involved. So I don't know what exactly it was going on, but it could also be that's the issue. With all these practices, especially practices that unfabricate, like samādhi, mettā, emptiness, there's always this question. The way I would teach it, there's always this question of when can I just do that and let things unfabricate, and when actually do I need to let things fabricate and care for them and respond to them kind of in all their complexity rather than just dissolve them. That's always a question, and sometimes it's tricky; we don't quite know. Sometimes it's obvious, no problem. But there are times, especially with heart dukkha, where it's like, "Hmm, what does this need now?"
So there's two potential issues in what you're describing. I don't know, what do you think?
[student mentions a scenario of beginning a sitting when there is already some turmoil in the emotions, and rather than going straight for the three characteristics, needing to take care of the heart first]
You do. And the way I usually instruct people is be open and be flexible. Sometimes we think, "Oh, there's so much turmoil. I better do some samādhi, or I better take care of my heart before doing any emptiness." But sometimes not, you know? You just do it, and it dissolves. Other times, you try doing the emptiness, and after five, ten minutes, you just feel like, "This is not helping. It's not the right ...", or it disappears and then it just comes back immediately. Then it's your clue: "Oh, I need something else." Other times, you might try some kind of more emotional work or with a story or whatever, and that's really helpful. Other times you do that and then you feel after a while, "You know, maybe I'm just fabricating here for no reason." So, in a way, we don't always know immediately or in advance. The only thing we can do is kind of walk a little bit down one lane and see, "Oh, this is good," or see, "Nah, it's not quite right." And then you can change, you know? So I usually say yeah, be open, and be willing to be flexible, and be willing to be surprised as well. Okay?
But it also sounds like, in terms of the first reason we were talking about, that there's maybe a slight distinction in the intention when we say "unsatisfactory" where really kind of a universal letting go is the intention, and that's different than labelling something as dukkha because it hurts or because -- you understand?
I don't know if you've heard the teaching that the Buddha talks about the three kinds of dukkha? Are you familiar with that? There's dukkha-dukkha, and there's anicca-dukkha, and then there's -- I can't remember what the third one's called, something like [saṅkhāra-dukkha]. So there's dukkha because this thing hurts, you know, because I've got a headache or whatever it is. There's dukkha because this thing, no matter what the vedanā is, it's anicca-dukkha because it's impermanent. At this point, that's the principal one we're talking about.
The third one, which I can't remember the Pali, but it's usually translated as something like dukkha dependent on conditionality or something like that. I can't remember the Pali exactly, saṅkhāra-dukkha or something. But anyway. Usually, interestingly, it gets translated in a way that says something like, "Because it's conditioned, it's impermanent." So it ends up being just the same as the second one in most people's translation. I think it's pointing more to the fabricated nature of things. They're conditioned, they're fabricated, which means they're not quite real; they're constructions. And so it's a slightly different dukkha, saying it can't satisfy because it's something, in a way, that it's false, it's artificial, it's -- I don't know in French what it would be, but 'artificial' in English means from the Latin you're making something. So that's the way I tend to interpret the third one.
But right now what we're mostly talking about is the second one and not the first one. Not dukkha-dukkha; anicca-dukkha. That means -- it's almost like it's irrelevant, the vedanā of things is actually irrelevant at this point. You might notice it, of course, but it actually doesn't even matter if you don't. Yeah? So really, it's a very slight development of the impermanence way of looking, of the anicca way of looking. You're just adding the implication that because it's anicca, it's dukkha. But it's a very subtle extra step, very subtle. It's almost the same as doing anicca practice. But again, the way I would teach, or the way in my book and the way I would teach an anicca way of looking, the first characteristic, is not noticing kind of, "Ohh, ohh, it was impermanent," waiting for it to occur to you -- you're actually looking for impermanence. You're just seeing impermanence. You're just seeing, "It's impermanent, it's impermanent." Now with this *dukkha/*unsatisfactory, you're saying, "Impermanent, therefore unsatisfactory. Impermanent, therefore unsatisfactory." But that's too much of a mouthful [laughs], so we just say dukkha. That's what I call the subtext, the small print. Does that make sense?
[student confirms, asks about choosing which characteristic to practise with at a given time]
Yeah, I would probably -- when you're learning the three characteristics, I would probably keep them separate at first. It depends on where you are, if you're on retreat, etc. But now that you're off retreat and sitting two hours a day, I would probably do one of the three characteristics, one of the methods of the three characteristics, and stay with that for a few days. What you really want is to get familiar with the flavour and the kind of terrain, because they're a little bit different. They unfold differently. You want to get familiar with the terrain and the journey of each one. That takes a little time. Even if you were on retreat, I would probably say yeah, stay with it a few days, one practice. Then within that practice you have the flexibility in terms of what the heart needs that we talked about before. Maybe it needs sometimes to go and just hold some pain, or there's a memory or whatever it is, maybe. So you're open to that.
And then secondly, you have the flexibility in terms of what your supporting practice of samādhi or mettā is. So in your two hours, you could do an hour and an hour, or you could just fluidly go back and forth, but with these three characteristics, yeah, you probably want to -- let's say we've chosen the dukkha-dukkha one, unsatisfactory. You probably want to stay with that for at least twenty minutes at a time, at least, if not longer, until you get the hang of it. These things evolve, so we can revisit that instruction later, but yeah, I would do that rather than say, "Oh, now, which would be the best one now?" That's too confusing for you at the moment. And it's more -- what we're really trying to do is learn each one rather than kind of feel better in the moment, yeah? So generally we're leaning our weight towards, okay, I'm doing this practice, I have to learn this new practice, so I need to put my time in like that.
If I remember back to those emptiness retreats, I can't remember whether I really separated them out so well. I might have done a guided meditation where I did a quick tour through all of them, and maybe that gave the wrong impression. When it came to the Metta and Emptiness retreat, which I think was 2011, so it was after I'd done those [Meditation on Emptiness retreats], then I separated them out and I told people, "Just stay with this for a few days, then we'll visit another one," I think. But anyway, that's definitely how -- it will go better if you do that.
And like I said, you will definitely have favourites. So, you know, let's say you do this for, I don't know, a month or two weeks or whatever it is -- at the end of that, you're going to feel like, "Well, that one, I preferred it much more to that one." And someone else will say, "Oh, really? I preferred that one." So there's quite a lot of individuality involved, yeah.
The other thing that occurs to me is -- and it's probably in the book somewhere -- you might want to think about, again, not so much looking for the dukkha, but deciding what your range is first. So, for example, I'm going to choose one sense door, and just do this characteristic, this method, in relation to whatever comes up in that sense door. So it could be body sensations, or it could be sounds, or whatever, at first. So again, that's a different thing than looking, "Where's the dukkha? Okay, I'll use the method there." So later on, you can do it that way if you want, but in a way -- how should I say? -- we're not trying to feel better in this practice, at this point. When it starts working, you will notice, "Wow, this is really lovely, and I do feel better." But that's not the point so much as we're learning a practice for the primary reason of learning about emptiness and dependent arising. So you could do it both ways -- you could choose one sense door and just play with that for half an hour or an hour or whatever, and then when you've done that in all of them, then you could, for example, mix it, just an open awareness where you're doing it with everything. Which is a very different kind of aiming than looking for the dukkha.
[student asks about being attentive to the results of applying a certain lens]
Definitely, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very good. So basically you stay with something, because what we're interested in is exactly what you said: what's the result of viewing this way? Our talk about the big picture, it's like, that's the main thing that we're interested in: what's the result of this view, what's the result of that view, what's the result of this way of looking, what's the result of that? So yeah, you stay with something. And even -- let's say it's going well. So you sit and you say, "Okay, body sensations." And what comes to prominence first is, "Ugh, my back hurts." So you do whatever it is -- "Unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory, because it's impermanent." And then maybe, if it's going well, the vedanā calms down a little bit, gets less unpleasant, maybe becomes neutral. You could just still stay with it. The neutral, too, is unsatisfactory. Maybe it then goes through the neutral into the pleasant -- "Unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory." So you could have stopped it and put your attention somewhere else earlier, but it's also interesting to just keep with something and see what happens, you know? So both are interesting. That's one point.
A second one is about the size of the lens. As you said, there could be one sensation in the body that's prominent, my knee or something, and so I'm narrowing it down to look at those sensations, so my awareness is just around the knee mostly. Or you can be in the body as a whole, yeah? You should probably try both. They're almost different -- it's like a camera lens; you can use a zoom lens and a wide angle. So you can do it like that as well. So there's a lot of variations and they're all kind of worth checking out and exploring. Does that make sense?
[student confirms, asks if this too should be one mode per sit]
It doesn't have to be so strict with that kind of stuff. You mean mode of the size of the lens? Not necessarily, no. I mean, you could do, but it doesn't have to be necessarily. What you really want is a sense of -- like a good photographer will know how to use both, and she can only learn how to use both if she spends enough time doing both individually. Once this photographer, once she knows how to do it, then she can change quickly or whatever, but it takes a little while, just stay with one thing for a while till I really feel like, "Okay, that's familiar, how to work that way."
[student confirms]
It sounds clear, yeah? Good, okay. It's almost like you decide in advance, because the intention is different -- I'm not figuring out what's the best thing to feel better right now; I'm figuring out, "Oh, I want to learn this, or I want to learn that."
