The Dharma Life

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Dharma Life. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 15, 2020. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

The Dharma Life

Good morning, or good afternoon, or good evening. Sometimes when people talk about their dharma practice, they use language which implies that the dharma is somehow distinct from other parts of life. For example, at the end of a retreat, people often say, "So when I go back to regular life..." Or if they're talking about their cushion practice, they might say, "In the rest of life, such-and-such is like that, but here on the cushion, it's different," or, "In my normal life, such-and-such." All of these ways of speaking indicate that somewhere in our mind, we have the idea that the dharma is different from the rest of life, or that practice is somehow distinct from the rest of life. Maybe even without realizing it, we've made a little distinction like that.

I'm calling this talk "The Dharma Life," and I want to talk a little bit about the interface between what we think of as our life and the dharma, and how we can live in a way where those are connected. It may be that that's not an issue in your life or not interesting, and that's fine. Or it might be that it is interesting, but you're not sure how to do that. Or it might be that you're trying really hard to connect everything together, and almost the harder you try, the less it works. So it's all fine; I think there will be something for everyone.

When I went to practice in Sri Lanka a few years ago, the monk that I was practicing with was named Dhammajiva^[1], which means "Dharma Life." I think it suited him, and he really had taken things in.

In this book, The First Free Women—which is a kind of interpretation of the Therigatha^[2], the poems of the awakened nuns—there's this verse from the nun Sakula^[3] which I also read during the meditation:

"If there is something in these teachings calling out to you, it's because something in you is calling out to these teachings. The path will take you whenever you're ready, just as you are."

I want to talk a bit about this. That last phrase, "just as you are," is such an important idea in practice. The context is that the path will take us whenever we're ready, just as we are. It's not really that we need to be different, but we do need to be ready. That has to do somehow with our relationship to the teachings and our relationship to practice.

What is this "being ready"? It seems to be a balance, or a middle way, among a number of different relationships that we might have to practice, and something that we explore in ourselves over time.

The Self-Improvement Project

One relationship that I want to start with, because it's such a common one, is seeing our practice as the ultimate self-improvement project. We use various reflection or self-assessment tools, and we come up with an idea or a list of what our issues or difficulties are. Then, we come up with some strategies for addressing those. I'm making it very explicit; not everyone does it so explicitly, but we can check if maybe even subtly in our mind we have this idea.

For example, we might decide that we have an issue with anger. So we're going to try anger management workshops, and we're going to do Nonviolent Communication so that we can connect better with people that we find irritating. We're going to do psychotherapy in order to work out the issues of our upbringing, and then we're going to do meditation for calming the mind and opening the heart. We subtly have this list of things that we're going to address through various practices. Let me say first of all that all of those are great things to do! They're very valuable and they do reduce suffering, so I recommend them.

However, what I'm pointing to here is that background idea going on, where we have an idea of what the issues are—"We know this is it"—and we're going to work on that by doing various things. There's a sort of rational plan. The subtle conclusion is that when I've really processed all of these things that I'm working on, then I will be well on my way to awakening, and that's what it's going to take. Maybe a subtler underlying attitude there is the idea that awakening means all of my rough spots are going to be smoothed out, all of my oddities are going to go away, and I'm going to become that ideal person that I imagine I can be.

I'm being pretty direct, not because this is a completely wrong approach, but because we have to be aware if we have that attitude. Let me give you an example of something that happened for someone I know in practice. They began just following the meditation instructions: follow the breath, when the mind wanders away let go of that and return to the breath, really stay connected to the body sensations and the breath in the present moment. They did that pretty diligently for a number of months. Then they noticed, to their surprise, that they were less angry at work.

This was a little bit shocking to them because they thought, "Wait a minute, if anger is going to be reduced, shouldn't I have had to work directly on the anger? Shouldn't I have done that to practice? But suddenly, there's just less reactivity, less being prone to anger." It was surprising because all they'd been doing was trying to follow their breath for some period of time per day.

But the path sometimes works like this. Sometimes we work directly with things, but sometimes we don't have to work directly on things for them to fall away. The path works in unseen ways and sometimes in surprising ways. It's important to be open to that, not to feel that everything has to be managed directly by working on that exact thing. We might in some ways reinforce difficulties by working on them directly. If we say, "I'm an angry person, I've got to work on this anger, I have this problem with anger," or sadness, or depression, we almost reify it in a certain way. There's a little bit of subtlety there in knowing that our mind has certain tendencies, but not making them into a self, not identifying them with how we are. Sometimes it's best just to return to the breath and be surprised where that can take us.

It's not that we don't ever work on things, but sometimes doing so can bring up an attitude of aversion. If we've decided that this is the "good" part of my mind and this is the "bad" part of my mind, and I have to work on the bad part and make it go away so that only the good will be left, that's a particular attitude about practice. We don't want to be cultivating a sense of aversion to part of our mind. If we've made this big division between good and evil in the mind, that's a way that we might not be quite ready for the path to come and take us.

As our awareness gets more steady by cultivating mindfulness in daily life and regular sitting practice, we're less likely to get overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions. Then we can start practicing with the idea that certain things will untangle themselves if we just give them some space and see them clearly. We're certainly not going to deny that there are various difficulties in the mind coming up, but there is an attitude we can have where, "If I see this, there's some part of it that can disentangle itself. And then maybe when I've seen it more clearly and let that part go, maybe there's some direct work to do also."

Having that awareness that some of it can work itself out is so important on the path, and it creates so much more spaciousness for us. It's kind of how the dharma works, and we get more in tune with the dharma being able to do that for us. If your tendency is to sort of actively work on parts of the mind, you might consider this somewhat simpler approach: either just dropping things and returning to the breath again and again without judgment, or even holding something in a space of awareness that's strong enough to hold it, and letting it play itself out. It can be a really helpful approach.

The Structure of the Path

Now, there is of course a structure to the path. It's not that it's all just open. The Buddha had many teachings; in particular, he taught the Noble Eightfold Path. We do get a series of steps that are worth learning, knowing that the path is going to include these eight things: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. All of those factors will be developed as we proceed along the path, as we transform the mind in the way that it can through practice. I do encourage learning this structure. I'm also a big fan of asking people to read the suttas^[4], the original discourses of the Buddha, as part of the practice in order to understand the main principles that he was teaching.

But this is pointing now toward another subtle attitude that I want to highlight, another way that we think we're in control or managing our own path, and that is that we can get attached to that structure. There are people who spend a lot of time reading dharma books or reading the suttas, learning all the principles, and trying very hard to match their experience up to what they have heard or read.

This one is subtle because you do need to listen to the dharma, like we are today, and you do need to learn something about what the main points are that the Buddha was making—about things that we need to cultivate and things that we'll be letting go along the path. And yet, we don't want to take that up as an abstract, theoretical model that we then impose onto our experience, because our experience just is what it is. If we're subtly applying these ideas to our experience, we are again, in a very subtle way, controlling it. If we have the idea, "Let's see, which part of effort am I working on right now? Which of the four aspects of effort is relevant right now?"—while we're doing that, we're not fully taking in the experience of the moment. We're subtly seeing certain parts of experience and ignoring other parts that we don't think fit our idea of the path. Because until we're awake, we can only have an idea of exactly what it is that we're doing. Our theoretical ideas can act as barriers toward actually walking the path, actually engaging experience, and finding our freedom within it.

This is not at all to discourage study, any more than I am discouraging working on and understanding our difficulties. It's just to know that there are attitudes around that that can hinder the way that we are able to be free in experience. The good news about the Eightfold Path is that the more I work with it, the more impressed I am that it has a way of undermining identifications. By actually following the steps of the path as they're laid out—here's what right view entails, here's what right intention entails—and aiming to do that in our own experience, everything will be undermined. It will undermine even itself. In a way, the Eightfold Path is a process that undoes even identification with the path. It's quite beautiful.

There's this balance in watching the mind for its tendency to want to control, manipulate, and theorize, and then also being open and letting things unfold as they are.

The Invitation of the Far Shore

The beginning of the verse from Sakula goes like this:

"If there is something in these teachings calling out to you, it's because there's something in you calling out to these teachings."

This is another way of considering our relationship to the dharma, another means of connecting and interfacing with our practice. Here you are right now, listening to these teachings. Is there something in you that has drawn you here this morning? Is there something in you that is calling out to attend a sit and a dharma talk? Take a moment to feel what it is in you that brought you here today.

And then equally so, you hear something calling out to you. What is this resonance between the teachings and your heart? On a recent IRC^[5] retreat, Paul Haller^[6] was talking about "the invitation of the far shore." That was the phrase he used, and it really caught my attention. The far shore is a poetic term for the goal of Buddhist practice, which is the end of greed, hatred, and delusion. It's not so much that that is a different place far removed from here, but it's more that we're often not focused on it. What we're focused on is all the stuff that's right in front of us and is occupying our attention, and that's collectively in Buddhism called the near shore.

When the near shore is in focus, when we're really focused on all of those things that keep us busy, we're not focused on the far shore. It's in our far-field vision, in a sense. But it does invite us. Even when we're here on the near shore and we're taking care of our lives, there's an invitation in each moment from the far shore, and that can help take us deeper into ourselves, deeper into this moment, whatever it is.

Discerning this call—whether we're discerning the invitation from the far shore, or whether we're discerning what in our own heart is calling out toward that—we need to listen. I call this contemplation. The word contemplate can include a sense of combining listening for this invitation with an internal contemplation of what is wanting to come forth from the heart. We invite the dharma as well as the dharma inviting us. Are we in tune with what that is for us right now?

Relating to the teachings can get very intimate. It's something that we each have to discern for ourselves, and it will change all along our path. How we're relating to the teachings comes forth differently in our heart over time. There's a beautiful phrase we could contemplate: the traditional refuge is in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. We might consider: is there a way in which we feel like the Buddha is in our own heart right here? Is there a way in which we feel that the Dharma is something that is flowing through our veins and nourishing all the cells of the body? And is there a way in which the Sangha is not something outside that we're relating to, but that the Sangha can never be separated from us? The whole Sangha is contained just within this being.

Considering it in this way, it's as if refuge is woven into our very being. This is something that we can point to during meditation with the breath: the way the breath flows through the whole body, beats with the heart, and unifies everything that's in the body and the mind. Of course, it's not like this every time we sit, but it can be a guiding idea in our practice. Finding the way in which that resonates for us, and the way in which, once we have saturated ourselves with this sense of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha being in the fiber of our being, seeing what actions can come forth from that. How we get up from the cushion and talk with people, how we get up and do our work around the house or for our job.

I would say that when we've done this enough, that's what it means to be ready for the path to take us, just as we are, but with the addition of the refuge woven into our being. We can look, for example, at how long-time practitioners practice. What do they do? Mostly they go along with their life, but every now and then they undertake particular practices or trainings. They might feel like, "It's time to do a retreat with a particular teacher, or a self-retreat, or to take a trip to Asia, or to set aside a time for writing." These things have a way of feeling like they're ripe. We say, "Okay, now it's time to do this next thing. It just feels like it's the time."

Usually, there is some fruit when it really feels like something is ripe and it's the time to do a short retreat or take a class. There will be some fruit from it, but sometimes it's surprising. That's one of the hallmarks of the dharma: it's a surprise. We know there's something coming, but what it actually is, is not anything that we could have thought necessarily. Truly, we're not in control of this process, but we can sense it as it flows along. That's this balance that we're finding. It's really, in some ways, only a matter of how deeply we accept that we're not in control, and yet there is something happening. We have a role to play. So relax, and allow the path to unfold. Sometimes it will do so easily, sometimes not so easily, but it's always going to be unfolding just how it can. This is the life of the dharma, the continual unfolding of that.

Let me read this verse one more time:

"If there's something in these teachings calling out to you, it's because something in you is calling out to these teachings. The path will take you whenever you're ready, just as you are."

You are great just as you are. In fact, you're probably on the path just by being here and sensing into your experience as it is. I hope very much that you find this resonance as often as possible. Sometimes we fall out of it, but when we're in it, there's this sense of resonance between what's calling out from our heart and the call of the far shore, the teachings. So may your path progress very well, and be well.

Q&A

If there are any questions or comments, we do have a couple of minutes, and I welcome anything coming into the chat. Please be aware that I have a delay, so I won't see it right away, but if you want to ask any questions or make any comments, I'll see if there's anything else I can say. Otherwise, have a wonderful day or evening.

I see a question about the book that I read from. It's called The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. It's not exactly a translation of the Therigatha^[2:1]. It's of course based on that, but it's more of an interpretation. It's somewhat more poetic, so yes, I recommend it.

All right, thank you.