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

Dharmette: Gil's Story Pt 2 (3 of 5) Deeping Into Insight

Before I start with the talk, there were no comments about the audio being too low, but there was one comment that my breathing was audible. I have a very sensitive microphone, so it might have been its positioning relative to my nose, or it could be that the pickup volume is too sensitive. Hopefully, it's better for the people that troubled. My assumption is that if my breath is audible, it's impossible to turn the volume down.

I'm continuing the story of my practice life. Yesterday, someone commented that I had misstated some of the years. I said 1995 is when I went to Burma; it was 1985. I went to Burma to be with U Pandita^[1], the teacher at the Mahasi Center^[2], in September of 1985. I was there for eight months.

This was really where I learned Vipassanā^[3] practice in a deeper way. I was first introduced to it, as I said, in Thailand. But I didn't really know what Vipassanā was. I didn't know the different schools and techniques of Vipassanā practice. I just stumbled on the monastery in Thailand, and the ten weeks of retreat there made a big impact on me. It wasn't so much because of the technique, but because the opportunity to be on retreat for ten weeks allowed something to happen that was quite significant for me. I really had no choice but to continue it.

I had learned that the source of the particular technique I learned in Thailand was this meditation center in Burma. I didn't know who the teacher was, but I just knew it was the source, and it felt like I should go there. I was able to make it there in September of 1985 to practice with the lead teacher who taught all the Westerners, U Pandita. He has a book published in English, which is a series of talks he gave at a three-month retreat at IMS^[4], called In This Very Life. Practicing for awakening in this very life is the idea behind the title.

U Pandita was stern and demanding. He expected a lot from us. We saw him almost every day for practice discussion. The first thing we had to report was how many hours of sitting meditation and walking meditation we did. Even though we were practicing all day long—there was nothing else going on; we didn't have to work, we went to two meals a day, we usually went to a Dharma talk six days a week, and had practice discussion six days a week—we still had to report how much we practiced. That was how we were accountable because we couldn't lie. It had to be a certain number of hours to have his approval.

The idea there was that you were supposed to sleep only four hours a day and practice all day long. I think my hours were something like sixteen hours a day of sitting and walking practice, and approximately four hours of sleep, with meals and everything else making up the rest. It was pretty all-encompassing, and this teacher was demanding. I felt like I really had to apply myself in these daily practice discussions where I had to report on my practice. I gave myself over to his instructions, and every day I was pretty diligent to follow them.

However, there was a reason why it worked for me very well. I didn't go to Burma for his purposes, which was to attain Nirvana in a particular way. That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was this inner call that I had to do this again. There was no higher reason except that I had to go into this deep inner quiet again. The way I talked to myself about it was that I was going there to learn to do Zen meditation more thoroughly. The Zen meditation I was taught was called Shikantaza^[5]. It literally means "just sitting"—only sitting and being present here and now.

This was a non-dualistic meditation practice where there was no gaining idea. There was nothing to attain because the idea was that everything you were going to experience was here. The attainment was right here and now. Somehow, there was no distinction between the practice and the attainment. Learning how to settle into that kind of oneness of practice and attainment was a big undertaking. I wanted to learn how to do it better, more thoroughly.

What I learned from doing this practice in Burma is that the way I practiced just sitting, I described to myself as an unconditional acceptance of the present moment. There wasn't something else to attain; it was just unconditional acceptance. When doing Vipassanā, which involves very careful attention to the moment and the sub-moments, I found I could do this unconditional acceptance in a broad way through Zen practice, but when I really paid attention to the micro-moments of my mind, I saw there was a lot of non-acceptance—a lot of wanting and not wanting. So, I learned to do this more and more thoroughly.

It led to a little bit of tension between the teacher and me. He told me at some point I should strive—strive for Nirvana. I told him I wasn't there to strive. He was flabbergasted that I wasn't there for that purpose. We had a conversation through a translator, and I thought we had come to an understanding. Then, the next day, he told me to strive for Nirvana again. I just shrugged my imaginary shoulders and said, "Well, I'll just leave that alone."

I did this practice well, but I did it without that striving. There were a lot of Westerners who went there to practice with him and picked up the striving. They strained, and some crashed and burned because of it. It was really hard for them; they weren't prepared for that kind of practice. Maybe they had unresolved personal and emotional issues to work through, and this practice made no room for that. I had fortunately worked through enough of my psychological and emotional issues through Zen practice that I came ready to do what I was told.

I did give myself over to the practice. I wouldn't say striving, but I really made an effort to do what he was teaching and reported back for about two months. Then, a very fortunate thing happened for me: he left for two months to go to Australia to teach a meditation retreat. As soon as he left, having been primed by two months of practice and the extra effort I made to practice hard for him, I just relaxed. Something immediately relaxed. I think it was unconscious. With that relaxation, the extra strain and tension dropped away, and I immediately dropped into a very deep place of quietude, stillness, and peace where this Vipassanā practice started to have a life of its own.

Vipassanā has a classic unfolding—a flow to it that begins to take over. As long as we try to make it happen, the striving interferes with it. But at some point, we're in the stream of practice, and it begins to unfold in a deeper and deeper way that reveals a phenomenal contact, intimacy, and absorption in the changing nature of perceptions and experience. It can be quite enjoyable, quite blissful. I sat with a lot of joy and bliss in this deepening flow of practice. It certainly had its difficulties as well, but it unfolded and deepened.

When U Pandita left, I saw another teacher, U Lakkhaṇa^[6], who was almost the opposite of U Pandita. He was like your favorite grandmother. You could do no wrong for him, and there was no sense of striving or pushing from him. He was a field of loving-kindness. You'd go sit with him, and his kindness and love were palpable. He was so supportive, and you didn't have to show any progress. To have teachers of the same technique with such different approaches was very interesting to see. It was just the right time for me. In this way, I relaxed and started to go deeper.

I was very grateful that U Pandita had left, and grateful for what he offered me. By the time he came back, my practice was so deep that he treated me very kindly and gently, taking a very different approach with me.

That was about four months of practice. Tomorrow, I'll say a little bit more about that and talk about the integration of coming back to this country and how important that was for me. That takes me up until January of 1986, and it'll continue tomorrow.

Thank you.