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Inquiring

So, I wanted to explore again a little bit this idea of inquiry or questioning. I talked a little bit about it last week, and I'd like to explore it a little bit more.

Some of you might be familiar with the story of the Kalamas^[1]. It's a group of people that had a lot of spiritual teachers coming through at the time of the Buddha. And then, when the Buddha is in the neighborhood, they asked him, "Well, you know, there's all these different teachers coming through. Who should we believe? Who's telling the truth?"

And rather than just the Buddha saying, "Well, I'm the one that's telling the truth, you should believe me," instead of saying that, he encourages them to question. He encourages them to have an inquiry. There are a few things that he says, and one of the primary ones is to ask these questions: Does this lead to welfare and happiness? If yes, then live in accordance with it. And then another question is: Does this lead to harm and suffering? And if yes, then to abandon it.

So to pay some attention to what they're doing, what they're saying, what they're thinking, including their inner life—their inner mental events, including their intentions. And so we can do the same. Does what we're doing lead to welfare and happiness? Are the intentions that are underneath my behavior, that are underneath what I'm saying, are they such that they come out of a sense of wanting to be right? Or maybe they come out of a sense of wanting to be seen in a particular way—I want to be seen as a smart person. Or are our intentions coming out of compassion and care, and trying to do the right thing for ourselves and others?

So not only do we pay attention to what we're doing, and our speech, and our inner mental life, and our intentions, but we also pay attention to the consequences. Does what we're doing lead to happiness? Does what we're doing lead to greater suffering and harm?

This type of inquiry requires that we're connected to our experiences, that we are paying attention, and that we're noticing. Not that we have to have this question like, "Is this right?" but the question of, "What is happening? What are the consequences?" With a spirit of discovery, maybe like a research scientist: "Okay, so I did this, and then what happened? What were the consequences of this?"

In some ways, when I was a research scientist, I used to love this part. This was one of my favorite parts actually, is to have a question about, "How does this work?" or, "What's the role of this particular factor or element?" and then to be able to go into the laboratory and test it. To have the skills and to have the resources to be able to do that—to have a question and to go in and test it.

And I think that Buddhism kind of encourages this research scientist or being a naturalist, for example, just observing. It's part of what makes Buddhism compelling. So rather than this idea that we have to believe, that we have to adopt a particular credo, or that we have to adopt a particular way of viewing everything or interpreting everything, instead there's this encouragement to see what's underneath the actions, what are the consequences of our actions.

So the teachings really ask for us to have a listening heart in some kind of way, to have a wise heart. To have a wise mind and a mind that pays attention to what is happening, as opposed to taking on and maybe wearing the cloak of particular beliefs. Instead, there's just an encouragement for us to see for ourselves, rather than insisting that we believe something.

So with this practice, practices are offered and understandings are pointed to, with the invitation to see if this matches your experience. See if this is how things unfold in your experience. What happens when you do this? What happens when you don't do this?

When we sit to meditate, it isn't so much that we're trying to make something happen. How many times have you done this—tried to sit and try to make something happen? And of course, it doesn't quite work that way. As was pointed out in the guided meditation, we don't get to control what our experiences are. We don't get to control what's happening. We don't get to make it happen.

We sit down and meditate, we notice, and there's a little bit of a spirit of inquiry of, "What's happening now? What's happening now? And what's happening now?" So can we listen? Can we have a question with the spirit of curiosity, rather than trying to confirm something that we already know? Rather than have this confirmation bias of like, "Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I know this. I just gotta see this," and not really paying attention, but kind of like a check mark: "Oh, okay, there was an in-breath^[2], that's good enough. Oh yeah, okay, there was a sound, that's good enough." In a way that's not really intimate with our experience, but maybe kind of trivializes our experience. Instead, can we have this spirit of curiosity?

And so we might ask ourselves, well, what blocks some of this questioning? Either these big questions, or the question of what's happening right now? Some of it might be that there's an inner critic that shows up really loud and feels authoritative, and it's asking this question: "Am I getting it right? Is this the experience I'm supposed to be having? Is this right?" And so it doesn't really allow us to relax into our experience.

Instead, it has kind of a deadening effect on our practice if we're always wondering or worried, "Am I getting it right?" Or maybe the inner critic comes in a flavor like this: "Well, who am I to question this?" Whether it's a teaching, whether it's an experience, maybe whether it's an insight, there might be a small little voice that thinks, "Oh, we just have to accept it. Just believe it." We feel like, "Well, who am I? Maybe I'm not worthwhile to question these things." Or maybe the flip side of that is also like, "Well, surely others know more than I do. I just have to adopt the beliefs that others do." So this trusting of authority, as opposed to, in an openhearted, warm-hearted way, having some questioning of authority.

Again, kind of getting back to some of the days when I was a research scientist, I remember that I had this job during my very first summer after college, and I was a lab assistant. There was somebody that was in the lab across the hall that was supposed to be some really well-known scientist. Now I don't remember all the particulars, but I remember thinking like, "Oh okay, he's supposed to be a really well-known scientist." And I remember that he drove this really beat-up car. There was a wonder that this car could move at all. It had clearly seen better days. And on this car was this beautiful, clean, new bumper sticker that looked really out of place with this poor, beat-up car. And this bumper sticker said: "Question Authority."

At the time, I thought, why would this really well-known, authoritative scientist have this bumper sticker, "Question Authority"? It wasn't clear to me when I was such a young person just starting college. But later I realized, oh, this is what made him such a great scientist! Just having this openness, this willingness to question. So when we're Buddhist practitioners, we're not scientists necessarily, but there is still this spirit of not just passively accepting, but having some curiosity. This might not come naturally to some people; maybe for some people it doesn't come so easily or readily, or it feels uncomfortable or foreign.

In some ways, we live in a culture that prides itself on its independence and the pioneering spirit. But in another way, there's an awful lot in our culture that is beholden to authority in different ways. For example, the media often tells us things to inform us in an entertaining way. Of course they do, this is their job, and we need the media, and it's great that they do this. But sometimes, if it's done in such an entertaining way, it might discourage us from being engaged with it, or thinking about what was just told. What did we just hear, and what did we not hear? It becomes more like just something that we sink into and don't really stay awake for.

Jack Kornfield^[3] tells this story—there's a few elements in this talk that are inspired from some things that Jack has said in Dharma talks—but one is that he tells the story of this principal. She had in her life this wish to do more service. So a few days a week, she began to make sandwiches after the school was finished in the afternoons. And she had this pleasure of doing service and giving these sandwiches to the homeless. She would give them to the homeless, and she didn't care if she was thanked, or she didn't care if they almost refused them. She wasn't doing this to be liked. It was just this calling in her heart that she wanted to be of service to others in this particular way, and it felt like the right thing for her to do at this time in her life.

So she was, a couple times a week, making sandwiches and bringing them to where the homeless people were. Then the media found out, and she became kind of a minor celebrity in her area. Inspired by her work, other teachers and other people around her began to send her money for her ministry. And to their surprise, they all received their money back, with a short note that read: "Make your own damn sandwiches." [Laughter] I don't know why I always laugh when I think of this. "Make your own damn sandwiches," right?

This encouragement just to feel what that is. What does a call for service sound like? What is it calling us to do? Maybe service isn't what's being called for us, but there is this encouragement that we have to do our work ourselves. We have to be engaged. We have to kind of lean in in some kind of way. And that we can't become more wise, or more loving, or whatever it is we would like our spiritual practice to do for us, simply by taking on that outer costume, or sitting in a particular way, or adopting some type of language, or any type of exterior imitation. To ask questions, to have an inquiry, is a way in which we can lean in and really be involved with it, as opposed to just being on the exterior. Making our own damn sandwiches.

But maybe there's some pressure to not ask some questions or have some of this inquiry, because of course we want to have answers. Not necessarily questions, we want to have answers. We believe that having answers will protect us, or provide some security, or make us have some more confidence or worry less. But the truth is, we don't know the future. Nobody really knows the future, and maybe this year, 2020, I don't think anybody certainly predicted that this year was going to happen this way. So the truth is that we don't know the future.

There's this story at the time of the Buddha. Malunkyaputta^[4] is a monk under the Buddha, and he goes to the Buddha and says, "I'm going to disrobe. I'm going to leave the monastic order. I'm no longer going to be one of your disciples unless you answer some of these questions." And he has a number of questions—kind of metaphysical questions. And the Buddha replied, "Well, I never promised you that I was ever going to give you the answers to all these questions." Malunkyaputta agrees that, okay, yeah, that wasn't part of the deal. The Buddha never promised that.

But one of the questions that Malunkyaputta asked is: "What happens after you die? What happens after you die?" And the Buddha refused to answer this question. Refused to answer, and he said, "Well, to answer this question is not beneficial. It doesn't lead to peace, it won't support insight or awakening." Just similar to how he gave the question to the Kalamas of, "Does this lead to welfare and happiness, or does this lead to suffering?" The Buddha is pointing to how some types of questions, even though there's a spirit of inquiry, shouldn't be answered. They don't lead to welfare and happiness. They aren't beneficial; they don't lead to insight and peace and awakening.

So then, after giving this little talk to him, the Buddha then gives this simile of the poisoned arrow^[5]. Suppose that you're shot by a poisoned arrow. And then your friends and relatives learn that you've been shot by this poisoned arrow, and they run to go get the doctor to help you. They bring the doctor back. And before the doctor can remove the arrow and help you, you insist on asking, "Well, who shot the arrow? Where does that person live? What does that person look like? What type of feather was on the shaft of the arrow? What was the shaft of the arrow made out of? What was the arrowhead of that arrow made out of? What was the bowstring that was on the bow that shot the arrow made out of?" Right? All these questions. And by the time it took to answer all these questions, the person would have died, having been shot with a poisoned arrow.

So in this way, there's a spirit of inquiry, but to notice, to kind of keep in mind which questions are worthwhile to answer, which ones are not. Instead, this practice of questioning is to help us to see for ourselves. And in some ways, to see for ourselves is the Dharma^[6]. It is to be connected to the Dharma, to be experiencing the Dharma.

There are a number of ways in which we might understand Dharma, but one way it is described is that the Dharma is visible here and now. Something that we see. It's immediate, and it's inviting to be seen for oneself. It's onward leading and to be personally realized. So this way of questioning is a way for us to connect with the Dharma, which we could also understand is just the flow of how things go. The conditions, this kind of flowing nature of all experiences, all the arisings and passings away.

There's a number of different ways we might understand the Dharma. But to help us understand the teachings and what is the Dharma, we can ask big questions. For example, what is it that opens the heart? What is it that opens the mind? How can we live in such a way, how can we practice in such a way, that our hearts and our minds are open in a way that is onward leading, and leads to peace and freedom, that leads to greater and greater ease? And can we live from this place of love and freedom? How can we live from a place of love and freedom, love and wisdom?

Sometimes it's easy to see the roots of fear, or confusion, or greed and hatred, and seeing how that's playing out in the world. But can we see also how the roots of love and care, and the roots of wisdom, also can be playing out in the world? And is this something that we can tap into and trust, and use to guide our actions, our speech, and how we show up in the world?

So these roots of love, how deep are they in us? And can we trust them? Can we have this inquiry, have this type of question to explore, to take some time to investigate? We might ask a question: "How might I live in the freest way possible, with the most amount of freedom, true freedom?"

We train our hearts and minds with meditation practice in order that we might face fear and confusion, or allow joy to grow in us, allow some happiness and well-being to grow in us. And with our meditation practice, we might have tastes of freedom, might have tastes of contentment, we might have tastes of well-being. And how can we live with letting that guide us? Having those tastes of freedom, to come from those places. Because if we don't live from those places, then it's just a memory that we had those experiences. But instead, can we use it to guide how we are in our daily life and how we're showing up?

Of course, we can have this inquiry of, "Who am I?" in a deep sense. What is this? What is this experience? Who is it that is doing this inquiry? Who is creating these ideas, and who is it that is telling these stories? We can ask these types of questions.

So what would it take for you to be able to answer these questions? Maybe you would take some loving-kindness^[7] practice. Some people will say that for a year they'll do loving-kindness practice steadily as a way to kind of open their hearts and learn the questions of how to live from a place of love.

Maybe we could simplify your life, in whatever way that means, literally or figuratively. I recently moved, and I noticed that, right when we move, we organize our things and get rid of things that we no longer need. And I'm just noticing that having more freedom in terms of having fewer items just makes more room for more freedom. Simplifying really has had an impact in a really nice way. So maybe that's something that might support you to answer some of these deep questions.

Or maybe to do some service—to make some damn sandwiches, in whatever way you interpret that or whatever works out for you. Or maybe to do some deep reflection practice, sometimes to drop in some of these questions during your meditation.

So there are some things that we do know. The Buddha was pointing to, and that our experience tells us, is that things are changing. They're inconstant, they are not stable, they are not permanent. And this change may be subtle or it might be obvious, but they're always changing. We know that clinging, holding on, doesn't work. Especially when things are changing, you get kind of a rope burn—the expression is, things are sliding through and we're holding on really tight. We know this.

We know that experiences only arise when the conditions are in place for them to arise, and we can work with conditions. And when there is cause and effect, when something is causing something to arise, if that cause is no longer there, then that will no longer arise. So there are some things that we know, or maybe we don't know—maybe the Buddha is pointing to these, and it's worthwhile for us to investigate these things too.

But freedom is possible. A freedom of knowing that even though problems arise, even though difficulties arise, and we can get caught up with our fears and our confusion and the sense of problems... to recognize that this is not who I am. This is not what I am. This possibility is in your heart, is in your mind, just as much as it is in everybody else's. Just as much as it is in anybody else's. And it is for all of us to discover, all of us to have this inquiry, and to discover the way that freedom might show up, and the way that we might live from this freedom. Thank you.