Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Breaking Habits without Breaking Down

Transcript

Breaking Habits without Breaking Down · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:09
Let's, I said this would be a talk slash workshop.
0:13
So there'll be some practical elements, but also I'll just be
0:16
talking as well. But let's start with something a
0:19
bit more practical. So just a little experiment.
0:23
I learnt this recently, so I'm keen to try it out.
0:27
So I'm just going to put a hand here at my shoulder level.
0:31
And this, this represents kind of balance.
0:34
Yeah. So my hand here is is showing
0:37
some kind of balance, but also you can imagine there's a scale
0:40
going up and a scale going down. And the higher up my hand goes,
0:46
the more excited I am, whether that's positive or negative.
0:52
But there's more going on for me, something a bit more active
0:55
and energized going up in the scale.
0:58
Anything below the hand is a feeling of slight dullness,
1:02
sleepiness, feeling a bit flat. If it were to go even further,
1:07
feeling heavy, feeling depressed, feeling stuck,
1:13
frozen. Yeah.
1:15
But here at my shoulder level, this is this is balance.
1:20
So at the moment for me, because I'm sat in front of you all, I'm
1:24
not quite here. I'm somewhere up here.
1:28
And because I'm mentioning it, maybe that's helping bring
1:32
something a bit more down. So the invitation is for you
1:36
just to put the hand at the shoulder, one of your hands at
1:40
the shoulder level and then just TuneIn and see where are you at?
1:46
Maybe you've just been outside talking, having good
1:49
conversation and the energy is high and excited.
1:53
Maybe you've come here, you've meditated, you feel a bit flat
1:56
and sleepy. So just just indicate with your
1:59
hand, where are you currently at in terms of your energy level?
2:04
Yeah. And yeah, some of you slightly
2:12
moving. So as we do this and TuneIn, is
2:15
there any modification that we need to make in the level of our
2:20
hand? I'm just remembering I need to
2:22
do it too. OK, good.
2:35
And then just bringing the hand down, Lucas can find his seat.
2:46
So that's just tuning in, just starting to tune in.
2:49
Where are we at? Where's our energy at?
2:51
And I'll say a bit more about energy as we go on.
2:56
Wherever we were at then whether you were slightly high, slightly
3:00
low, slightly balanced, let's just do another little
3:03
experiment. So this time the invitation is
3:06
just to have a little look around.
3:09
Yeah. So we come back into the room
3:12
and often we can have a bit of tunnel vision focusing on what's
3:17
going to happen next in the speaker, but there's all this
3:20
space around it. So just have a little look
3:23
around the room and see what you see.
3:31
And there's all that space up as well, so you can have a little
3:34
look up blue sky. Just notice what happens
3:48
physically as you're doing this. Is there any shift happening?
4:02
OK, and then just coming back. So we'll explore a little bit
4:11
more of that as we go on. I feel more present now.
4:16
I don't know about you, but I feel a bit more present.
4:20
And one way of talking about that, if we were going to use
4:25
Buddhist, it's not quite Buddhist language, It's it's
4:28
tree Ratna Buddhist language, you could say that what we just
4:32
did was one way of finding what we call the gap, the gap.
4:40
So if you were here a few weeks ago, I was giving a talk about
4:44
the wheel of life, which is the big image on the red wall as you
4:48
come into the Buddhist center. And on that wheel there are all
4:52
these stages around the edge, all these pictures around the
4:57
edge that represent what happens to human beings when they go
5:02
around in the world. Yep.
5:05
So we go around in the world, we have all of these senses,
5:08
hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, thinking.
5:13
Things happen in the mind and they senses come into contact
5:18
with sense objects like other people, whether images, dreams
5:25
that come to us in our mind and usually or well actually all the
5:31
time, whenever that contact happens, there's some feeling
5:35
tone, which we would describe as being either pleasant,
5:40
unpleasant or neutral. So we see a snowdrop.
5:45
Lalita Ratner mentioned seeing snowdrops this week.
5:48
You see the flower, there's contact, maybe it's pleasant,
5:53
maybe it's unpleasant, maybe it's flowers are not your thing.
5:57
Maybe you just don't, you kind of see it, but you're not really
6:01
interested in it. So we have these feeling tones
6:05
to all of our experiences. And then what tends to happen is
6:10
that once we have the pleasure, the unpleasant or the neutral
6:14
sensation, we either want to hold on to the pleasure, which
6:20
we would describe as a kind of grasping, or with the unpleasant
6:25
sensation, we want to push it away.
6:28
With the neutral sensation, we're so uninterested in it that
6:32
we kind of wilfully block it out and don't notice.
6:39
And that creates this whole what is described as a wheel of life,
6:45
where we just keep having the same reactions in the same
6:49
habitual patterns all the time. But the gap is the gap between
6:55
the sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, and how we
6:59
react to that. Do we follow the same old track
7:04
and keep going around the wheel, or do we have the sensation and
7:09
then do something more creative with it?
7:12
Yeah. So for me coming in to give the
7:15
talk and you all coming in and looking at me, it's mixed.
7:21
It's partly pleasant, partly unpleasant.
7:24
And I could go into all different reactions around that
7:27
of OK, right, I've got to give a really good talk now or our
7:32
people are looking at me and I feel shy.
7:34
So I'm just going to kind of collapse a bit and go into my
7:38
shell. Or I can do what we did and just
7:42
look around a little bit, calm down, come into the gap, and
7:47
maybe I can give a talk in a different kind of way.
7:52
So all those, the opportunity to do that is with us all the time.
7:58
Yeah. So maybe we have a habitual way
8:00
of listening to a talk as well. Maybe we don't have to listen in
8:05
the same way and just breaking it up, looking around, and then
8:10
there's something more present, something more active.
8:15
Anyway, that's a long preamble to what I really want to say.
8:20
Recap on the the talk from last time and the link is that what
8:27
Buddhism offers is many ways to explore the gap, to find the gap
8:33
in our experience and try to live more and more fully in that
8:39
gap. Not going down the habitual
8:43
routes, not suffering as much because of habitual habits and
8:49
tendencies, but to find other creative responses to life and
8:54
the stimuli of life. But it might be that we think,
9:00
OK, great, Buddhism, the gap, now everything's fixed because
9:07
now I just do the Buddhist things, and then I'm not in the
9:10
wheel anymore, and the reactions are not happening.
9:14
And to some extent, that's true. It's like we found something
9:17
that offers a tool to help us to do that.
9:22
The problem is that we're so complex and so habitual that
9:29
even Buddhism can become a way in which we express those old
9:35
habitual patterns. Yeah.
9:39
So with all good intention, we learn to meditate, we learn
9:44
about Buddhist ethics, we start to study what the Buddha taught,
9:48
we put pictures of the Buddha around our room and around our
9:53
apartment to remind us. And yet the same habits keep
9:59
clicking in and taking over. So what I want to explore a
10:04
little bit today is how do we also address that?
10:09
So how do we keep finding the creative response within a
10:15
Buddhist practice? And it's a good excuse to tell
10:22
one of my favorite stories, which is the an episode from the
10:26
life of the Zen master Hakwin, who was born in the 17th century
10:32
and was teaching in the early 18th century in Japan.
10:39
So let's let's start the story high up on a mountainside.
10:46
Yep. So in I've never been to Japan.
10:50
I'd love to go, but I have lots of images in my mind.
10:53
So just imagine high up on the side of a mountain in Japan.
11:00
If I remember the story correctly, it's the Shirakawa
11:03
district just outside Kyoto, up on the mountain.
11:09
And Haquin is there, and he's a young monk at this point, maybe
11:13
in his late 20s. And he's out of breath.
11:19
He's panting hard. He's taking hundreds of breaths
11:23
trying to, yeah, recover himself because he's just had a hard
11:28
climb all day. He's been climbing the side of
11:32
the mountain, but he's got to where he wants to get to, which
11:36
is a cave. So he's on the outside of a cave
11:41
and there's a kind of grass or Reed curtain covering the mouth
11:46
of The Cave. And like I said, he's had a long
11:51
day coming up this mountainside. It started before dawn, back at
11:57
his monastery in Kyoto, when he slipped out of the monastery in
12:02
the night with a backpack and determined to find a hermit who
12:08
lived somewhere in the countryside.
12:12
He didn't know where, but he'd heard rumors that there was a
12:15
hermit living on the side of the mountain, a master called
12:20
Hakayu. So he left the monastery.
12:24
He went out in search of Master Hakayu.
12:27
He found his way to a tea house, and in the tea house he asked
12:32
the people there, do you know where I can find the great
12:38
famous Master Hakayu? And the people in the tea house
12:42
said, well, we've definitely heard of Master Hakayu.
12:46
In fact, he's quite famous in these parts.
12:51
He said he's said to be 370 years old and he's said to have
12:59
helped people in certain difficulties.
13:03
So Haquin thought, great, it's true, he exists, but they said
13:12
you'll never find him. And he said, oh, why is that?
13:15
And they said you'll never find him because he doesn't want to
13:17
be found. So apparently whenever anybody
13:20
catches sight of him, he just runs away.
13:25
So Haquin says, well, sounds like a challenge.
13:27
He's quite a determined character.
13:29
Sounds like a challenge. I'm going to go and try and find
13:32
him. Do you know where abouts on the
13:35
mountain he is? And the people in the tea house,
13:38
they just pointed pretty much to the top and said, you see that
13:42
little white thing? Yeah, that's a waterfall,
13:46
probably somewhere near there. So I imagine Haquin then had
13:51
another green tea to get his energy up, and then he sets off
13:57
towards that little white speck high up in the mountain.
14:02
And it wasn't long before he got completely lost.
14:05
So he entered the forest, the trees, a mist descends, and he
14:10
just realizes I've got no idea now where I am and where I'm
14:14
going. So he did what Buddhist monks
14:17
do. He fell down on his knees and he
14:21
started to recite a Buddhist sutra.
14:24
That was the only thing he could think to do in this lost
14:27
situation. Probably he recited the whole
14:31
thing because he'd been doing this since he was a child.
14:36
And when he stopped, miraculously he started to hear
14:40
the sound of somebody chopping wood.
14:45
So he decided to go and follow the sound, listening out for the
14:49
woodcutter. And eventually he found a
14:52
clearing and there was somebody there chopping wood.
14:57
And he went over to them and he said, I'm looking for Master
14:59
Hakkieu. Do you know where I can find him
15:03
in this mountainside? And the woodcutter just looked a
15:06
bit puzzled and said, well, I've heard of him, but I don't think
15:13
you'll ever find him because he doesn't want to be found.
15:17
So Haqqin says, well, OK, just could you point me in the right
15:20
direction? I was looking for this white
15:22
thing, and now I've got no idea where that is.
15:25
And the woodcutter pointed again, this time to something a
15:29
bit more like yellow coloured and square.
15:33
And he said, I think there's a cave up there.
15:36
It's possible that you'll find Master Haqqiu somewhere around
15:40
there if he wants to be found. So Haqqin goes off, and at this
15:46
point he's quite excited because he thinks this is it.
15:50
But he loses his way again. There's no tracks.
15:53
He has to tie his robe kind of up around his waist or
15:56
something. He describes how there are
15:59
jagged rocks everywhere, thorny bushes scratching all his legs.
16:05
He's covered in thick, oily sweat.
16:09
It starts to get so high up that there's frost and there's snow.
16:14
But eventually, after many, many hours, he finds his way to the
16:18
mouth of The Cave. And that's where we started the
16:21
story. So there he is with this grass
16:25
curtain outside The Cave. By now he's caught his breath
16:32
and he's about to pull aside the grass curtain and peer into The
16:38
Cave. And sure enough, when he does
16:41
that, it's a small area, maybe 5 feet squared, two or three
16:47
meters squared. He looks in and he sees that
16:51
there's somebody sat there. He looks old, old man, but alive
16:59
and very kind of vital and energized.
17:03
And he thinks this must be him. I found Master Hakku but the
17:08
person in The Cave is just sat there completely unmoving and
17:14
Haquin says Master Hackyu I've come to find you and to ask your
17:20
advice. I really need some help and just
17:24
keep sitting. Then all of a sudden an eye
17:30
opens just one and takes a very hard look at Haquin and then
17:36
just closes again. Hakkun says Master Hakku I
17:42
really really do need your help can you help me?
17:48
Silence. So he thinks well I'm just going
17:52
to go for it and tell him why I'm here.
17:56
So he goes right back to the beginning of his life and tells
18:00
Master Hakku how when he was a 7 or 8 year old boy, his mother
18:05
who was a very devout Buddhist took him to a sermon in
18:12
meditation hall. And the Buddhist priest who was
18:16
there giving the sermon was talking all about the 8 hot
18:22
Hells. And this poor 7 year old kid was
18:28
terrified by the description of the hell realms that are part of
18:34
the whole Buddhist cosmology. And he thought, I've really got
18:38
to become a Buddhist because if this is what's going to happen,
18:42
then I really need to learn another way.
18:45
I need to learn how to be in the gap.
18:48
He, he didn't say that, but we could translate it into those
18:52
terms. So as a young boy, he enters a
18:56
monastery and he becomes a monk. And because of his fear around
19:02
this hell realm that has been described to him, he practices
19:06
really, really hard. And in the Zen tradition, when
19:10
you practice really, really hard, you practice really,
19:14
really hard. Yeah.
19:16
And other people make you practice really, really hard,
19:19
and they have sticks and all kinds of things.
19:23
So he practices diligently all the time, reading sutras,
19:29
learning long sutras by heart so that he can just recite them and
19:34
say them. He learns meditation, but
19:39
specifically he learns koan practice.
19:43
So koan's been kind of teachings or phrases that don't make any
19:50
rational sense. So the most famous one or one of
19:54
the most famous ones, there's a goose in a bottle.
19:58
How did the goose get out the bottle or in the bottle?
20:03
I don't know. What's the sound of one hand
20:07
clapping, things like that. So he spends hours and hours
20:14
trying to work on these koans and work out what what the hell
20:17
that means and how the hell is that a way to enlighten them.
20:23
And he has some breakthroughs. So he's sitting, he's turning
20:27
the koans over and over in his mind, and suddenly he has these
20:32
visions of something amazing where he feels very free,
20:40
released, no longer suffering, and then it all closes up again.
20:46
So he goes back to the KOA and he's turning it over his mind.
20:49
Things open up, and then it closes down again.
20:54
So he sees that there's this problem he has where things can
20:57
open up and there is some vision, but he can't sustain it.
21:03
I can't keep it alive. So then he goes around the
21:06
monastery, chopping wood, talking to people.
21:10
But he realizes I'm just as angry as I've always been.
21:15
I just get as attached to things as I always have, and
21:18
possessive. It's not working.
21:22
So it's not working for him, despite all this intensity.
21:28
So what does he decide to do when it's not working?
21:32
He thinks, right, I'm going to try even harder.
21:36
So he describes how he clenched his teeth for a whole week and
21:42
he decided, right, I'm just going to sit here and work on my
21:46
Cohans. I'm not going to eat and I'm not
21:49
going to sleep. I'm just going to grip my teeth
21:52
and work out what one hand clapping is.
22:01
And then apparently within about a month of doing this, he
22:07
described how that his heart fire began to rise upwards.
22:13
All of his lungs were parched, emptied of their essential
22:19
fluids. It's a very detailed description
22:22
he gives of this. Lungs were emptied of the
22:26
essential fluids. His hands and feet became like
22:30
ice and there was a constant buzzing in his ears.
22:35
And basically he realized he was sick.
22:39
Yeah. So apparently two years he spent
22:42
then trying to find a remedy for what was going on.
22:46
His own response was to keep pushing the Koans breakthrough
22:52
cut through, but also he was visiting other teachers, trying
22:56
to get extra teachings how to make the real breakthrough.
23:00
He was going to doctors, presumably traditional Chinese,
23:05
Asian medicine, acupuncture, that kind of thing.
23:09
But nothing was working. And then somebody said, oh, have
23:14
you heard of Master Hakayou? So yeah, there's this Taoist guy
23:21
hermit living up in the mountains.
23:23
Apparently he's being good at curing people of similar things,
23:28
and that's why Hakwin had set off on the journey.
23:32
So he said all of this to Master Hakku in The Cave.
23:37
That's why I'm here. He said.
23:39
Look, I'm really in a pickle. That's what he would say in
23:44
English. I'm really in a state.
23:46
I'm really in trouble. I've been suffering like this
23:49
for two years. I just want to breakthrough and
23:54
I can't. I don't know what to do.
24:01
So maybe we just pause the story and just let that let the images
24:07
of the story and the words of the story just sink in and
24:11
something of the emotion because it's quite a strong example,
24:15
isn't it? And maybe we can relate to
24:23
elements of that story. So whether we have had physical
24:29
pain in our life, whether we have really been inspired by
24:37
something and wanting to achieve something and find a
24:41
breakthrough into a new way of living, whether that's
24:46
spiritually, whether it's in our working life, our relationships,
24:53
just wanting something to happen, really, really wanting
24:56
it to happen and pushing for it. How else can we relate to the
25:03
story? Maybe the desperation, trying
25:09
many, many things, many, many people not getting what we need
25:16
and, and running from place to place and trying to find it.
25:19
Yeah, so many ways we might find parallels If if yeah in any way
25:28
you can relate to the story, then you can relate to his
25:31
emotional desire for to be well in the meditation earlier we
25:40
were wishing ourselves well. And he's he's obviously there,
25:44
isn't he trying to be well. So I I can relate to the story
25:53
in in several ways. One of them is having had a
25:58
lifelong habit of pushing my my energy goes forward, I want to
26:04
do things and achieve things, and that's good.
26:09
Yeah, that's not bad. The problem is for me that the
26:16
way I've done that has often come at a cost.
26:20
So whether that's been in my working life trying to get an
26:25
education, find a job, whether it's been in passions like music
26:33
and learning instruments, there's been some kind of cost
26:38
to pay for the way in which I've pursued those things with this
26:42
kind of forward pushing energy. And like I said at the
26:47
beginning, one thing I've discovered over the years doing
26:52
this whole Buddhism thing is that that tendency of pushing
26:56
forward didn't get left behind on the first stage of what we
27:01
call the spiral path, where we come off that whole wheel of
27:05
life and start to find an alternative.
27:08
I brought aspects of the wheel with me or I was pulled back
27:13
onto the wheel. So I'm not going to claim that I
27:18
was quite as hardcore as Hakwin, because he really was hardcore.
27:24
But I've definitely pushed myself in in my attempts to
27:29
understand Buddhism and the Buddhist teaching.
27:33
And like I said, that has at times come at a cost,
27:36
particularly to my physical health.
27:39
So there have been times where I've generated stress and
27:43
tension in trying to do the right thing.
27:48
Yeah, to the point where there have been times of dizziness,
27:56
feeling dizzy, strange things going on in the heart, strange
28:04
things going on in the neck and the throat where I'm holding
28:08
tension. And a bit like Haqqin, I've
28:11
looked around for remedies to that, whether within Buddhism
28:15
itself or within Western medicine, within other medical
28:21
traditions. And I've picked things up in
28:24
different places that I think have been helpful.
28:31
And I'm still doing that, still finding things.
28:34
So when we get to the more practical things, I'll bring
28:37
some of those in. But anyway, let's go back to
28:41
Hakwin and his story. And if if you can connect with
28:47
something of his life and that kind of thwarted or disappointed
28:57
ambition or the the search for some cure, some help, you can
29:03
relate to that, then you will relate to his disappointment
29:07
when he pours out his heart, tells Master Hakkiyu the whole
29:11
story. And Master Hakkiyu, who's still
29:14
just been sitting there with his eyes closed, he opens them and
29:20
he says I'm just an old fool. He says I'm just an old fool.
29:28
I live up here on the mountain. I eat wild berries.
29:33
I talk to the mountain deer and the creatures.
29:35
He said I know nothing of these things.
29:40
I'm just an old fool, and I'm embarrassed because such a
29:46
superior monk like you has come here asking help from a fool
29:53
like me. Then he goes back, eyes closed,
30:00
just sitting so Haquin feels his heart just sink, sinking right
30:08
down into his feet, into the floor.
30:12
And just when he thinks this isn't the one, I'm going to have
30:18
to go elsewhere. Just as he's about to turn and
30:20
walk away, suddenly a hand comes out and grasps onto Haquin's arm
30:27
really hard. This old 370 year old fool
30:34
suddenly has the power of a ox and grabs onto Haquin's arm and
30:39
gives him another hard stare and then the other hand comes out
30:43
and starts touching him around the belly.
30:48
So you can imagine slightly terrified and not knowing what's
30:54
going on. Then it continues.
30:56
Master Hacky is just poking away and then.
31:04
And then he says, that's not what you want to hear, is it?
31:12
Not much can be done, he said. You've been pushing yourself too
31:19
hard in your Co and practice and reflection and you've been
31:25
cutting off your vital energy, so not much can be done.
31:33
So Hakwin's starting to get that sinking feeling again.
31:37
And he says, I suppose there might be one or two things that
31:43
would be helpful from what I call introspective meditation,
31:50
Introspective meditation and the melting butter practice.
31:56
And then he goes quiet again. And Hakwin says, oh, that sounds
32:03
quite good. You mentioned this melting
32:06
butter thing. Maybe that would help me.
32:11
And then Master Haku goes a bit weird and he says things like
32:15
when you've hit the Earth, it's from the earth that you need to
32:19
rise yourself back up again. He says something like, if you
32:25
want to see more, you have to close the eyes.
32:29
If you want to hear more, you have to stop listening for
32:33
sound. If you want to recover the vital
32:38
energies, then you need silence. And he says the first thing you
32:43
need to do is cut down on words and devote yourself to your
32:48
primal energy. Cut down on words and devote
32:53
yourself to your primal energy. So Haquin's kind of taking that
33:00
in. And then he says, yeah, but what
33:03
was that thing about butter? He still likes the sound of
33:07
that. And Master Haku says, yeah, the
33:10
melting butter meditation. And then he describes it to him,
33:14
how you imagine getting a block of butter, fresh butter the size
33:22
of a duck egg, and imagine that just being placed on the crown
33:27
of the head and then slowly melting, melting down on the
33:35
scalp, on the face, inside the head, through the neck, through
33:40
the body, through the arms, down to the fingertips, through the
33:44
hips, through the legs, all the way to the tips of the toes,
33:50
bathing the inner organs. So that is the the melting
33:55
butter meditation practice. So Haqqin takes that on.
34:02
That's his main teaching from Master Haqiu that he takes away
34:08
and he blends that with the things he's already learned.
34:11
So this Co and practice this really wanting to breakthrough
34:16
to truth, he begins to blend that with something much more
34:22
grounded, much more based in his body.
34:26
Yeah. So the principle I think of, of
34:30
this introspective meditation that Master Hackyu is giving is
34:36
about coming down, isn't it? Coming down into the body, All
34:41
this koan stuff and the words word play, which is very
34:46
powerful practice working. 1 aspect of ourselves needs the
34:51
complement of something lower, something broader, a container.
34:59
And that's what he gets from Master Haku's teaching.
35:03
So bringing energy down from just being in the head and over
35:07
stimulated, remember this. So coming down from that to
35:12
something more balanced and the melting butter thing really
35:16
helps him to do that. So just just let that melt.
35:37
So one thing I think with our approach to meditation here at
35:41
the Buddhist Centre is that we are trying to encourage that
35:46
kind of grounding and settling. So Lali Taratna is a great
35:51
example of somebody who I always love.
35:54
Lali Taratna's body scans. It's like having a warm bath or
35:59
something. Just so enjoyable, the way he
36:02
leads us in it. So it's not anything special
36:07
that you have to go up a mountain to Japan for.
36:10
In a sense, it's here. But can we come more and more
36:15
into our bodily experience in a way that's going to be helpful?
36:22
So that's one of the things we're trying to encourage when
36:25
we teach meditation here. But that's not easy.
36:34
Like if, if we come to the centre and we're up here and,
36:39
and on kind of high alert and very stimulated, it can be quite
36:43
a jump to then come into a space like this, close our eyes and be
36:51
there for 30 minutes, 40 minutes doing a meditation practice.
36:56
We might come to the center down here and a bit low and a bit
36:59
stuck. And again, it's hard to come up
37:02
into that space where we can sit for 40 minutes in meditation.
37:08
Like I find that hard after many, many years of, of doing
37:14
that. And one of the things that makes
37:17
it hard is that we live in a city.
37:21
We live in a city that's very stimulating, so I can hear it
37:27
now. Like engines, the city, just
37:33
going out in the city demands something of us energetically.
37:39
Yeah, meditation can help us with that, but we need
37:43
intelligent ways of kind of bridging the gap between long
37:47
periods of meditation and being out and being highly stimulated
37:54
or modern life, city life can make us feel a bit stuck in a
38:01
way. It's a reaction, isn't it?
38:02
To overstimulation is also just to kind of close down and shut
38:08
down and what just just ask yourself now like, what do we do
38:15
in response to those times where we feel there's just too much
38:20
stimulation? What do we do in those times
38:24
where we just want to kind of flop and close everything out?
38:33
So I've, I've been noticing it's kind of embarrassing, but I'll
38:37
say it anyway. So, so when I'm in that kind of
38:41
state of overstimulation, sometimes what I want to do just
38:46
to resource myself is look at my phone and scroll on my phone.
38:52
I'm not alone, am I? I'm scrolling.
38:56
And in a, in a curious kind of way, I think the scrolling is an
39:00
attempt to get down. Like, it's literally, it's like
39:05
I want to get down there, but for some reason I'm looking for
39:09
it in there. It's kind of weird.
39:14
Yeah. And what it ends up doing is
39:18
creating more stimulation. The other thing I do is eat.
39:23
And it's so embarrassing, isn't it?
39:29
So I we have some granola at home in a jar, and it's that
39:35
that I go to just dry. Like just, it's so dry.
39:44
Can't really chew it. Yeah, you know what I'm talking
39:46
about. But it's the sugar.
39:49
It's the sugar, but again, I think in a curious way, what I
39:53
want to do is come down. So I'm swallowing the food.
39:57
Maybe I can even feel it going down, but it's sugar, so it
40:03
makes this happen. There's a whole rush going on,
40:08
so I'm trying to educate myself to find other ways to feel
40:17
resourced and grounded. At times when that's what I
40:20
need, when I'm either too high or too low, what will be a
40:25
helpful way of doing it? And like I say, it's
40:27
embarrassing to say. I've been a practicing Buddhist
40:31
for 15 years and I still go to these things.
40:36
But I think it's just part of the process is gradually
40:40
unhooking from those habits and finding more helpful ones.
40:44
Meditation has been a huge help, but like I say, sometimes it's a
40:49
leap to go from a state like that to 40 minutes of just
40:54
sitting on my own still. So what can we do to kind of
41:01
make those little bridges? What can we learn from Master
41:06
Hakiyu and this melting butter thing that helps us just bridge
41:10
the gap so it's more seamless? Because Haqqin's problem was he
41:15
could have great insights, he could see how things really are,
41:20
but then he would forget about it.
41:22
So we can have good meditations, we can kind of force ourselves
41:26
into really good states. But then we lose it when we're
41:31
on EU barn or whatever, or when we're with our partner and yeah,
41:38
we have an argument. We've we kind of lost the
41:40
perspective. So how can we bridge the gap a
41:43
little bit? Is my current theme, if you
41:47
like. So one thing is this thing we
41:53
did at the beginning, just reminding myself that whatever
41:57
I'm doing, wherever I am, I always have the option of just
42:03
like now giving a talk. But I could just there's nothing
42:07
to stop me, is there? Just looking around.
42:10
I'm even, I'm even going to dare to do this right.
42:15
And you can dare if you like, just to turn around or look over
42:18
your shoulders and just see what else is going on kind of in the
42:24
space. And just just notice what
42:29
happens in your body as you give yourself permission just to look
42:35
around and not be so involved in listening to the talk and what I
42:42
have to say. What does it do?
42:45
What do you notice? So what I noticed myself, there
43:09
is some relief, like just a break.
43:17
I noticed some shadows around the room, which are beautiful.
43:21
Actually, look at that. It's like piece of art at the
43:23
back of the room. Sorry to bring attention to the
43:28
people on the back row. And then I noticed there's
43:32
emotion there, quite quite intense emotion there that I'm
43:40
overriding so that I can speak to you.
43:42
But when I stop like that, something more of my emotional
43:46
life becomes noticeable. So if we had longer, I would ask
43:54
you what you noticed, but just just make a mental note what you
44:00
notice. So that is so simple, isn't it
44:06
all? All you have to do occasionally
44:09
is just look around, come away from the phone, come away from
44:16
the granola or the computer or whatever it is that we're doing.
44:23
Just give give yourself a little break for 30 seconds and
44:28
something else can happen. I learnt that on a workshop with
44:33
a couple of other members of our order and it was a six hour
44:38
workshop on Zoom on a Sunday night and it started I think at
44:46
3:00 in the afternoon and ended at 9:00 at night.
44:50
And I'd signed up for it, but I was dreading it like 6 hours on
44:54
Zoom that night before Monday when I had to get up by the end
45:01
of the six hours because they'd kept getting us to do this
45:05
thing. I felt great.
45:09
Like I actually felt my energy was there and available and you
45:14
two were there as well. And we all had a similar
45:17
experience. So try it.
45:20
Just try that. And especially try that when you
45:24
sit down to meditate at home because we can so easily go from
45:29
whatever we've been doing to now I've got to meditate.
45:33
I find my perfect position or my meditation position, but I
45:38
haven't actually just said to myself, OK, I'm here now.
45:42
It's different. So let me just take in what it's
45:46
like and it immediately can create more of a sense of calm
45:52
within our whole system. OK, let's try one more.
46:00
Yeah, so this one bit different. So taking one hand, it can be
46:08
either hand, and just creating an L shape with your thumb and
46:13
your first finger there and just tucking that underneath the
46:17
armpit of the other arm. And then taking this hand, the
46:24
other hand, putting that on the upper arm of the other arm.
46:30
Yeah. And then we're just going to sit
46:37
like this for a while. Yeah.
46:41
And again, just notice, what does this do in your body?
46:46
What do you notice? What happens?
47:09
So what does this createspace for?
47:36
And if it gets too much or anything, you can just stop as
47:39
well. That's fine.
47:42
Or you can do the looking around if that's making it more
47:46
helpful. OK.
48:00
And then just resting the arms back down.
48:14
So I just felt myself take a deeper breath when I took the
48:19
hands away. So that's one physical change.
48:23
It's a bit like giving yourself a hug, isn't it?
48:26
That one. And there's something that gets
48:29
a bit more here for me. So if these things, if these
48:35
things help, give them a go. And if they help, then why not
48:39
do them? And if they don't do other
48:43
things, let's just try one more because we've still got a few
48:47
more minutes. So with this one, we're just
48:51
going to take a hand again and just place it on the chest.
49:01
So it could be, in fact, just just notice where does the hand
49:05
want to go? So there's no right position.
49:09
Don't worry about getting it right, but where on your chest
49:13
does it feel like is the right place for the hand to be?
49:17
Could be slightly higher than the center, could be lower.
49:22
Don't look at me for a good example because I've got a
49:24
microphone on so I'm having to work around that.
49:29
But for you, you can just find where's the the place that the
49:32
hand wants to be there and then the other hand place that just
49:39
under the belly button, the lower belly.
49:45
And again, where does that hand want to be to be comfortable?
49:55
What do we notice in the body with this contact around the
50:02
heart and the belly and any thoughts that arise or
50:29
ideas? They're fine.
50:31
Just whatever's coming up is allowed.
50:46
And it might be that there are subtle changes going on in the
50:49
body, so the hands might need to move slightly.
50:52
It's fine. We're not stuck in one position.
51:13
And then just releasing and bringing the hands away.
51:28
So something, I don't think it's just because it's lunchtime, but
51:31
something in my digestive tract just did a happy sound.
51:39
Probably it's picking it up on the microphone.
51:44
So yeah, I hope, I hope you noticed, I'm sure you noticed
51:48
something. But yeah, give that one a try as
51:51
well. Just what's it like to have some
51:54
physical contact, particularly in this part of the body where
52:00
the heart is there, the emotion is there, the, the guts, the
52:04
belly. It's more of our emotional
52:07
centre and just a way of helping us get a bit more in touch with
52:13
ourselves. It's not meditation, it's quite
52:16
simple, but I think it can have quite an effect, particularly,
52:21
as I said, within this transition between everyday
52:24
activity and meditative life. So just to finish, let's go back
52:36
to the beginning and just put a hand up at the shoulder level
52:43
and remember our scale. So anything above the shoulder
52:46
level is excitation and alertness, busyness.
52:54
Anything below is a kind of sinking dullness.
52:59
And now having been sat here for a while and doing those
53:02
exercises, just notice again, where are you at?
53:06
Where would you place yourself on that scale?
53:31
Maybe that changes as we TuneIn again.
53:41
OK. And then just letting the hands
53:43
drop. So the the happy ending of
53:58
Hakwin's story is that he goes away from The Cave, finds his
54:02
way back down. He integrates these
54:06
introspective meditation techniques from Master Hackyu
54:10
into his practice, into his life in the monastery.
54:15
And he keeps having further breakthroughs.
54:17
But this time it's different because he's able to hold them
54:21
and contain them, and that makes him also be able to express to
54:28
other people how they can help themselves and how they can
54:32
reach an understanding. So he became a great master with
54:37
a lot of disciples, students, whatever we choose to call them,
54:44
who've kept alive some of those practices.
54:47
And although we're not a a Japanese Zen tradition, there's
54:51
something of that tradition that has influenced how we approach
54:55
things. So yeah, I'd just like to
54:58
dedicate the talk to Hakwin and his drive and ambition and
55:04
pushing himself, which was not necessarily a mistake.
55:09
All the way up the mountain he pushed, but he was able to come
55:13
down from the mountain and give something else that would help
55:16
people who were also on the wheel of life going round and
55:22
round and ways to break their habitual patterns.
55:26
And hopefully these little things that we've dropped in
55:30
today can help us all too follow in his footsteps.
55:37
O, I'll finish there. Thank you.