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Perspectives

Good evening or good morning, good afternoon, or good day, whatever time of day it happens to be when you're listening to this. If you're here in California at the same time that I'm speaking, it's evening.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how the perspectives that we take influence our experience. The perspectives that we have in our minds, that sometimes we're not even aware of, influence our experiences directly and indirectly.

And one way is to use this expression that I used a little bit in the guided meditation, of "becoming sensitive to," as a way to think about practice. To think about our meditation practice, to think about our Buddhist practice, as becoming sensitive to. We can think of this expression "sensitive to" as being like attuned to or noticing. Maybe like when you hear a song in the distance, or maybe in the middle of a restaurant or a coffee shop that's loud, and you hear a song and you think, "Oh, is that that song that I think it is?" And you kind of tune into it, kind of tune the ear for it. Maybe something like that. Becoming sensitive to is tuning into or inclining the mind.

So it's not so much about being more susceptible to becoming upset or thrown off balance. Sometimes we have that expression, "Ah, you're too sensitive." That means that you're getting overwhelmed by your experience. So that's not what I am pointing to here. But being sensitive to our experience is more just using our senses, all of our senses, in a more complete way, and in a way that maybe acts like little antennas or something like that.

One of the reasons why I bring this up is this idea that we might consider or take the perspective that practice—meditation practice, Buddhist practice—is about becoming sensitive. Because how we conceive of the purpose of meditation affects the approach we take towards practice, maybe in some subtle ways.

For example, if we consider or we have this idea that the goal of meditation practice is to see clearly, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we might find ourselves having this idea that we have to create a magnifying glass. That we are straining to magnify our experience, we're straining to get a closer and closer view and to see clearly, and maybe we're straining to really zoom in. We might not be noticing that little bit of straining, or maybe it's not even little, maybe it's obvious.

So having this perspective of "becoming sensitive to" is an alternative to this idea that we have to see clearly. Or maybe we have this idea that the goal of meditation, the purpose of meditation, is to have no thoughts. And then, if we have that idea, every time thoughts arise—and let's face it, thoughts arise during meditation; they might get quieter and quieter and wispier and wispier, but not at the beginning of meditation—when we have this idea that the purpose of meditation is to have the thoughts go away, then when thoughts arise there can be this repeated, maybe subtle, sense of disappointment. There may be a sense of frustration, and then maybe comes in some comparing mind. That is, we're remembering that time three years ago when we went on that retreat and there weren't any thoughts for a little while, or maybe we're comparing to what we imagine other people's experiences are. It seems like some other people clearly aren't having any thoughts, they're sitting so quietly. Having the idea that meditation is about not having any thoughts, having that perspective about meditation, is a way that influences our experience.

In the same way, if we have the idea that meditating is all about getting blissed out—that is, having pleasant experience after pleasant experience, and of course the more pleasant the better—then we might spend all our time just trying to get comfortable. All our meditation time trying to bat away or push away anything that doesn't seem like it's helping us get to our happy place. And again, there might be this irritation and frustration and annoyances. We try to shove away everything that seems to be getting in the way of our getting blissed out.

But if we think of practice as a way of becoming sensitive to our experience, then at least for me, and perhaps it does for you as well—I hope it does—it has more of a connotation of openness and softness. More of an attitude of allowing, and it allows no matter what is arising to arise. We're just tuning into it or noticing it. And having this perspective that meditation practice is about becoming sensitive to our experiences helps us to recognize that there are a range of experiences, of course, that humans have. When we're meditating, when we're not meditating, there are thoughts that are uncomfortable experiences. There are things that are unclear.

But if we have the idea that practice is about becoming sensitive, then we can just have the attitude, "Well, can I just be aware of whatever's arising now? Can I hold these experiences instead of trying to make them different or push them away? And can I be sensitive to what's happening in a way that supports some stability and steadiness, and with some warm-heartedness, some softness?"

The Ecosystem of the Mind

So one reason why I'm talking about this is to just recognize that the perspective that we take influences our experiences, and in particular, the perspective that we take about the goal influences the way that we might think about or behave in the means. And so our perspective about the goal of meditation might affect our response to or the way that we practice.

This is worthwhile reflecting on: what is your view about the goal of meditation, the purpose of meditation? Is there a particular way in which you think about which experiences should be arising, or what the purpose of meditation should be? Maybe it's not as explicit as the language I'm using right now. Maybe it's not even clearly defined in your mind, but maybe there's a view that shows up in the way that we interact with our experiences, or meet our experiences while we meditate. And maybe this way is helpful or not so helpful.

Such a big part of meditation practice is, in fact, learning to be flexible, learning to be malleable, and to have some plasticity in the way that we approach our experience. To include that maybe it's appropriate sometimes simply for us to be sensitive to our experience. That is, we can be sensitive to our bodily experience, either the global bodily experience—for example, feeling the posture or to sit and know you're sitting in some global way, some general way. Being sensitive to whether your posture finds the balance between being alert and being at ease. Or we can be sensitive to more particular bodily experiences: that pain in the knee, the furrowing of the brow, the leaning forward, or whatever it might be.

This idea of becoming sensitive to is a way in which we can avoid having a sense of inertia. And what I mean by that is there can be, especially if we've been practicing for a while, a way in which we think, "Okay, I know how to sit, I always sit this way," and we're no longer really paying attention to it. It's familiar and in some way we're kind of in a rut. We think, "I sit this way with my hands this way," but there isn't any longer a being in tune with or sensitive to what's actually happening, what the bodily experience is.

So this idea of being sensitive to is a way in which there's a little bit of a movement in a flowing, relaxed way that's inclining the mind towards the experience that's supportive. So not so much in this deep probing, "I have to figure this out," but more in a way which brings a sense of aliveness or brings a sense of awareness that brings along with it a sense of vitality or energy in some kind of way.

Simplifying Our Emotions

Of course, we can also be sensitive to our emotions. When we can tune into, "Okay, this is a difficult emotion, one that we might feel overwhelmed by," then often the first choice can be to simplify. Simplify the emotion and in this way let them quiet. One of the easiest ways to simplify an emotion is to become sensitive to bodily experiences that are associated with an emotion. For example, tuning into the lump in the throat or the knot in the belly, or maybe the feeling behind the eyes. And then when we do this, when we simplify our emotions in this way by becoming sensitive to the bodily experience, we do this with warmth and with care. Not in a way that's harsh or dismissive of our emotions, and we're not pushing them away. We're not shutting them down. We're just in some kind of way saying, "I'm not going to go there right now."

And to be sure, simplifying our emotions by tuning into the bodily experience isn't what we should do for all of our emotional experiences, both on and off the cushion. It's not appropriate for our whole path of practice, it's not appropriate all the time. Sometimes it's appropriate to be sensitive to the fullness of the emotional experience and to attend to it, to notice it, to be with it with warmth and care and compassion. But I think all of us know it's easier to do that when we have a certain amount of stability, and we feel like we have the capacity to do that.

So the approach—whether we are simplifying our emotions by tuning into the bodily experience or being present for the whole shebang of our emotions—which approach we choose is something we learn. And for each experience we learn by exploring, by having a sense of curiosity, by playing. A big part of meditation practice is being able to pick up tools, such as this idea of simplifying emotions and being sensitive to the bodily experience of an emotion. Having this flexibility to pick up tools and to use them, but also to put tools down and to notice when they aren't helpful. Maybe some things are helpful on the cushion but not off the cushion, or the other way around.

Being sensitive to our emotions and which tools that we're using to be with them also includes being sensitive to what leads to more suffering and what leads to less suffering. There are so many different ways we might determine this. Suffering might be feeling overwhelmed, or it might be a feeling of constriction and stuckness. Or it might be still difficult and uncomfortable, but there might be a little bit less suffering because we're being sensitive to what's happening, and there's still a little bit of a sense of being able to move forward so that there's a moving through. A metabolizing or processing in some kind of way that maybe we don't even understand.

So this idea of being sensitive also to what kind of tools that we're using, and is this the best tool at this time? And sometimes we don't even know that. Maybe I should say all the time we only learn this through experience, through trial and error. Which of course means there will be a lot of times when we discover, "Oh yeah, maybe that wasn't the best way. But it's what I did, and I learned something from it."

In the same way as we can be sensitive to our mental experiences, we can be sensitive to, in general, what are some of the perspectives or attitudes that we have? For example, do we find ourselves stuck in an us versus them, me against the world kind of a mindset, in which we find that we're doing a lot of blaming? "I can't believe they did that," "That person said that," "I can't believe I did this." When we find ourselves filled with or feeling stuck in this way of an us versus them or blaming, when there's these really strict ideas of, "There's a self here, and maybe there's a self over there, and that self shouldn't be that way, or this self shouldn't be that way." Of course, we're not using this type of language explicitly, but there can be this general attitude or perspective that we're taking.

In contrast to maybe finding ourselves filled with appreciation or gratitude, or a certain softness or openness to our experiences even though they might be uncomfortable, or they might be comfortable. But that perspective we take influences the comfortableness or uncomfortableness of those experiences.

So we can become sensitive to the general way in which we are with our thoughts. This kind of global sense of me versus the world, or maybe a global "things are okay," and there's an openness and softness, gentleness towards the types of thoughts, whatever attitude that we have. In the same way, we can become sensitive to the particular types of thoughts that we're having: a lot of planning, or a lot of fantasy or reminiscing, or story-making of some sort or another. Or we might become sensitive to the particular type in terms of it being light or wispy, or in some ways being not so solid, that they're like coming and going.

And so we can also become sensitive to the felt experience of the mental experience. That is, is it tight or constricted, or is it flowing and spacious? Maybe the thoughts are rapid or languid. And if we find that the thoughts are persistent, then we can become sensitive maybe to if there's an emotion underlying them. And then if we discover that there's a difficult emotion, then we can do just like we did with difficult emotions: become sensitive to a bodily experience, simplifying the difficult emotion and tuning into a bodily experience that's associated with it.

Effort and Beauty

We can also become sensitive to the amount of effort we are applying during the meditation. Even part of the reason why I'm using this expression "sensitive to" is to just get a sense of the feeling of the type of effort that is needed for it. To become sensitive is more of a type of an opening or allowing movement, as opposed to this idea of getting concentrated or getting focused, which implies more of a bearing down type of effort. I'm finding myself hunching my shoulders and making a fist. That kind of effort, versus more of a relaxed open effort. And so becoming sensitive to or getting focused on, it might have the same direction, the same movement, but there's a way in which there's a different flavor. Maybe a little more closed versus open. The art of practice is to notice some of the ways in which we are over-efforting, striving, straining, and which ways in which we're under-efforting, that is being cavalier or too relaxed. So one more thing we can become sensitive to as part of our practice is the amount of efforting.

Then I also would like to introduce something else, which is that we can intentionally incline the mind to become sensitive to beauty. Allowing ourselves to be nourished by the visual beauty around us. It's only one type of beauty is visual. Chances are that you're sitting in a room right now, and perhaps there are things hanging on the wall that were put there because maybe they're aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they have sentimental value. Maybe you have coffee table books, so to speak, books that are filled with beautiful pictures or calendars that have beautiful pictures on them. So that is a way in which we can become sensitive to beauty.

Another way in which we can maybe soften and allow, when we kind of tune into beauty, there's a way in which there isn't usually a bearing down, but instead there's an openness to this. We can see this sometimes when we go outside, when we go for a walk either just in our neighborhood or maybe even driving in our neighborhood, or wherever we might be. We can tune in to become sensitive to the architecture, the colors, and in nature, trees, plants. This is a way that can really support us and help us find some stability.

The Path to Freedom

So then we might ask, "Well, if practice is about becoming sensitive to all these things, really there's got to be more to it than that." And when we become sensitive to all these different experiences, all of our experiences, and tuning in to the amount of effort we're applying and being nourished by the beauty that might be internal as well as the gratitude and compassion that we might find, then we begin to notice more.

And one thing that we notice is how things are connected. That is, that the perspective we take influences our experiences. If we take this perspective of our meditation practice of being just "sensitive to," we're more apt to be open. We're more apt to have a softness in our practice that allows our experiences to flow through and to arise and pass away, as opposed to our glomming onto them and getting stuck in them and feeling overwhelmed by them.

You might notice that, of course, when we're hungry, and something has just triggered a memory about a fight that we had a number of years ago, or maybe even the other day, then of course we're more apt to have anger in the present moment because we have this perspective. We've been stewing maybe in some anger, then we're more apt to become angry. Or if we've been practicing loving-kindness or appreciating beauty, or reflecting on appreciation, that same example, that same experience, we're less apt to become angry. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. We all know this, that's why we have this expression of, "Well, maybe you should sleep on it." We say that with this recognition that, "Oh, you'll see things differently later. And when you see things differently, you'll have a different response to them."

But so much about practice, in some ways maybe one of the most important things about practice, is to see all the different conditions that come together to create the present moment experience. Including our perspectives, including what's happening in our mind, kind of like the ecosystem of our mind. And recognizing this, we can adjust, shift, affect our perspectives which then affect our experiences, which then make it easier to affect our perspectives.

And when we start to see that our perspective affects our experiences, then we're less apt to really hold on to our experiences as being, "This is the solid true nature of this experience right now. This is the absolute truth of the moment." We tend to hold it a little bit less tightly when we know that the perspective that we take influences our experiences. Then we don't hold our experiences as tightly.

And with holding our experiences less tightly, it's easier to let go. Less tightly holding is less suffering, less dukkha^[1]. So this is the way to greater and greater freedom. All the way to complete freedom is to notice the conditions that are coming together that are helping to create our experience, and importantly the perspective that we're bringing. And I'm offering this idea of "becoming sensitive to" as a perspective we can take that allows us to maybe tune into, but still with some softness and openness that can support having our experiences have softness and openness. And maybe for them to have a little bit less of a solid static experience that we can get ourselves stuck into, but instead can allow some letting go so that we can find some more freedom.

So in this way, being sensitive to our experience, one way of understanding practice is how practice can lead to freedom, all the way to liberation. Thank you.