Growing Up and Waking Up

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

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 20, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Growing Up and Waking Up

So welcome, welcome. It's nice to see you all; it's nice to practice together. Tonight I want to talk a little bit about a phrase that I heard a number of years ago, and then recently heard again. It's a tribute to John Welwood^[1], who is a psychologist as well as a Buddhist practitioner. This phrase is that the practice is about "waking up and growing up."

It's this interesting idea that waking up—enlightenment, awakening, this peace and freedom—is a direction I like going in. But growing up is maybe working with all those issues or things in our life that are... well, I like this expression that Jack Kornfield^[2] uses: "this unfinished business of the heart." These are things that maybe still need a little bit of metabolism, or I don't know what they need exactly, but there is this idea that practice is both. We can't just do one without the other, even though, of course, many of us come to spiritual practice secretly hoping we won't have to work with that kind of stuff—the difficulties, some of the really difficult stuff.

To be sure, we don't have to at the beginning. But as our practice unfolds, our capacity to be with whatever is difficult really grows. Then we're able to be with, understand, or hold the difficulties in a different way.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

There's a poem that talks about this. I'm interpreting it to talk about this; I'm not sure what the poet's intention was, but this is how I'm interpreting it. This poem is called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters^[3]. Maybe some of you have heard this.

Chapter One I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. But, it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in... it's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter Four I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter Five I walk down another street.

I kind of like this, right? I walk down another street. I like this progression. At first, we don't see it. Then we're like, "I don't want to see it." Then we see it, but we have this momentum of habits and patterns in our life; even though we see what we're doing may not be so helpful, we do it anyway. This is part of the human experience. Then we might walk around it, really gaining some wisdom or understanding. But we might say that Chapter Five, walking down another street, is maybe where some real spiritual awakening is happening—where things are seen and understood in a really different way.

Developing the Self and Realizing Not-Self

One way this waking up is described—and people point to it and talk about it in a number of different ways—is that there's a radical shift in the sense of self, where the self-concept is different or goes away entirely. There's no longer this idea that there's a permanent self, core, or essence to which one appends experiences, as if we have this core and experiences just happen to it. Instead, there's just the recognition that all there is are experiences. There isn't an essence or a core.

This isn't something you have to believe, nor is it something you necessarily have to try to make logical sense of. This is something that makes more sense experientially, or with meditative experiences. I know certainly when I first heard this, I thought it was very peculiar, bewildering, puzzling, and odd. So you might be having that experience too when I mention this idea of not-self.

Jack Kornfield talks about a similar progression toward this understanding of not-self, similar to this "growing up and waking up," and similar to the poem. But the poem is a little bit misleading because it's very linear—it just goes one, two, three, four, five. Maturing in our life and our spiritual practice isn't neat and tidy in a straight line; we could think of it more like a spiral. We gain a little bit of insight into understanding what our habits and patterns are, and then maybe that allows our meditation to deepen a little bit so we're not so easily caught or triggered. As our meditation deepens and we see deeper patterns, maybe we can soften those and realize they aren't so helpful. As those get let go of, we settle even more, and the spiral just continues on and on.

In the Buddhist teachings, there's a real emphasis on waking up, becoming awakened. There isn't as much about growing up—how to heal the parts of us that need healing, how to work with the real difficulties in our lives, trauma, or the many things we encounter just being in the modern world. The Buddhist teachings don't address that directly. But there are different modalities, of course, that do. So there's a recognition that we might need more than one way to approach this process.

Jack Kornfield describes four steps in this cultivation:

1. Reclaiming and Healing Our Sense of Self Maybe with meditation, we might start to understand the painful conditions that created a part of ourselves that feels inadequate, deficient, or lacking. This shows up differently for everyone. We recognize some of these old patterns we gained from our early life, which then get reinforced by our family, culture, education, or society. Gradually, we cease to identify as much with these old patterns, just as we saw with the poem. This allows a healthier sense of self to naturally arise. We reclaim our feelings, our perspectives, our voice, and our sense that "I am here and I matter." It's not uncommon that we need a skilled person to help us with this healing process.

2. Developing Character and Wisdom This is where Buddhist practice is a big support. It's patient training and repeated cultivation. So much of spiritual practice is about this training: the Eightfold Path^[4], the Seven Factors of Awakening, the Ten Paramis^[5]. These include things like patience, resolve, joy, tranquility, equanimity, ethical behavior, and livelihood. It involves restraining from acting on impulses that cause harm to ourselves or others, as well as systematically and intentionally directing our attention. For example, in meditation practice, we bring our attention again and again to the breath to settle and quiet the mind. We intentionally cultivate loving-kindness, warm-heartedness, and compassion toward ourselves and others.

3. Discovering Our Positive Qualities This means allowing what is obscuring or covering over the beautiful qualities we already possess to fall away. Sometimes we don't have access to them or feel disconnected, but we want to make them a more integral, accessible part of our life. It's the idea that maybe we don't have to "improve" ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart or our wisdom. When our heart is free of fear, anger, grasping, or confusion, then these qualities manifest naturally. A big part of practice is recognizing this and allowing it to happen.

Part of this process is also honoring our personal identity. We recognize the deep patterns and archetypes that make up our individuality. We aren't all exactly the same, nor do we want to be. Can we transform some of these patterns from things we hold onto tightly, into things that really serve our lives and the lives of others? Jack Kornfield notes that maybe a critical intellect can support discriminating wisdom, a desire for beauty can support harmony, or a capacity for intuition can be a gift for healing.

4. Realizing the Emptiness of the Self Finally, we combine this development and discovery of the self with the realization of the emptiness of the self. We need both. We need a strong sense of self in order to recognize and understand the lack of an inherent self. There isn't a permanent core that has to be protected, bolstered, and defended. Clinging to a specific self-image often brings a lot of difficulty and suffering into our lives, especially when people don't see us the way we want them to, or when we hide our unflattering parts and prevent intimacy with others.

The realization that there isn't a stable, permanent core at the center is actually associated with a lot of joy, freedom, and relief. When we just think about it, it might sound frightening and odd. But the experience is one of, "Oh my goodness, what a relief. This thing that was so heavy and I've been carrying around, I can put it down. I don't need it. It's extra." We need a strong and healthy sense of self to withstand going through these processes, but as meditation deepens, the sense of self starts to get really thin and soft. The development of the self and the realization of not-self evolve together.

The Three Characteristics of Experience

The teaching of not-self is one of the three characteristics of experience.

1. Anatta^[6] (Not-self): There isn't an inherent, permanent core.
2. Anicca^[7] (Impermanence): Things change.
3. Dukkha^[8] (Suffering/Unsatisfactoriness): There isn't a lasting source of happiness.

Everything has these three qualities. Part of practice is starting to see that, and then stopping our insistence that things be otherwise—trying to make things permanent, stable, or a source of everlasting happiness when they inherently can't be.

Gil Fronsdal^[9] sometimes teaches these three not as characteristics of objects—not as nouns—but more as adjectives or perceptions. I really like this because it points directly to our experience. It's not about adopting a philosophy; it's about what is actually going on in our experience at this moment.

Anicca as Inconstant We could translate Anicca as "inconstant" rather than impermanent. When the mind is quiet, we start to see a fluttering or flickering in our experience. We aren't just having one single experience all the time. The mind rests on the breath, then a sound happens, then it comes back to the breath. It's more easily understood that experience is changing all the time. Sometimes when we think it's not changing is when it's the most difficult—when we feel like, "It's going to be like this forever." Instead, notice, "Yeah, it's changing."

Dukkha as Painful We can look at Dukkha as being "painful" rather than translating it broadly as suffering. We have mental and physical experiences that are uncomfortable, and part of the reason they're uncomfortable is because they're always changing. We want a stable place to land that will make us happy and let us relax, but those places don't exist. This doesn't stop us from continuing to look for them, of course. Recognizing Dukkha as painful is just noticing that not everything is bliss and happiness. Even in moments when we feel fantastic, there's often a flickering of, "I hope this doesn't end," or, "What was I doing right before so I can make sure I get this experience again?"

Anatta as Not-Self Translating Anatta as "no self" gets complicated because people think, "What does this mean? Of course I have a self, I'm here." Instead, think of it as "not-self," pointing to our experience and saying, "Nope, that's not myself. That's not myself. This isn't myself." When we investigate, nothing has a stable, permanent core at the center.

These three perceptions point to direct experience, encouraging us to examine what's really going on, rather than bringing in concepts, personal history, or philosophy. We shift toward noticing the stream of moment-to-moment, impersonal experience that, for the most part, we aren't controlling.

Cultivating the Opposites

Part of putting the conditions in place to allow this shift in perception to become more evident is to cultivate the opposites. Just as we cultivate the sense of self to help us see not-self, we cultivate stability to help us see inconstancy.

What does it mean to cultivate stability? Part of it is our meditation practice—sitting quietly and physically being stable. Pay attention to posture, uprightness, and settledness. Feel connected to the ground. Sometimes I talk about feeling your sitting base—the foundation against your body. Feeling physically connected and grounded supports a sense of stability. We can also use imagery: mountains, rocks, or redwood trees. There are things in our experience that have a sense of stability, and we can use that imagery to support us.

Mental stability involves concentration. Allowing the mind to settle, resting on the sensations of breathing or doing mettā^[10] practice, and allowing the mind to quiet. With practice, a sense of stability happens as the mind quiets down. We might call it composure, being collected, or feeling in harmony with ourselves and our environment.

All of this is supported by learning to soften the judging of our experiences. "I like this, I don't like that. I want this, I don't want that." Our whole life can be nothing but this forever seeking, which is the opposite of stability. Is there a way we can soften that? "This doesn't match my preferences, but it's okay." If we constantly allow our preferences and aversions to agitate the mind, it's like we're always stirring the pot, and the muddy water never settles.

Just as we cultivate stability to help with insight into inconstancy, we cultivate a sense of well-being to be with Dukkha. Well-being encompasses joy, happiness, gladness, and contentment. It's an integral part of our life and practice. We might think joy is frivolous because we have "important work to do." I certainly used to feel like, "Joy is for people who have everything together; I have to work hard!" It turns out it doesn't work that way. We need joy. Even subtle things like recognizing, "Yeah, things are okay right now. The posture I'm in feels alright." Notice those subtle moments of contentment. Intentionally cultivate appreciation. Be grateful for simple things, like coffee in the mornings. Cultivate generosity; give your time or resources in a way that feels good and supports your sense of well-being.

Finally, to help see the insight into not-self, we cultivate confidence.

Why do we need to cultivate these perceptions of Anicca, Dukkha, and Anatta? Deep insight into these are doorways to awakening. They are doorways to greater and greater freedom, peace, and ease. Experiencing them transformatively allows a deep letting go and softening that opens us up to freedom. Growing up and waking up happen together, intertwined in a spiral.

Questions and Answers

Question: I feel like in my meditation practice I get a lot of glimpses of where suffering comes from, and there are hints. It's very obvious to me, like, "Oh, I'm uncomfortable in this suffering." Or I get a lot of hints around impermanence, like the breath comes and goes away. Do you have easy pointers of what the hints are for not-self? They seem harder for me to detect.

Diana Clark: That's a good question. Often, impermanence leads to not-self. You realize, "Well, things are always changing, they can't be a lasting source of happiness, so why was I identified with that anyway?"

But something else is the idea of vedanā^[11], the feeling tone. Every experience we have comes in three flavors: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. We notice the pleasant because we want more of it, and we notice the unpleasant because we want less of it. We often are not noticing the neutral things, like the feeling of your feet on the floor. It can be helpful to set an intention: "Okay, I'm going to pay attention to the neutral things." Often the mind thinks neutral things are boring and wants to find something to want or not want, because wanting and not wanting bolsters our sense of self. A self is always wanting or not wanting. But if we create the conditions in which the wanting and the not wanting go away, then maybe there can be this glimpse of, "Oh, there isn't anything here."

Question: Sort of along the same lines, it's just a comment. But I heard somebody ask, "What would be left if there's nothing left to solve, to fix? What's left?" And that really struck me when I heard that. It's simple, but it was profound.

Diana Clark: Thank you, yeah.

Question: In thinking about Dukkha, what I've been noticing is that there are different levels. There's the Dukkha that's obviously uncomfortable, whether it's physical pain or difficult emotions. But then there's a quieter level of Dukkha that's just the inescapable mundanity. Like that you have to brush your teeth every day. You don't have to, but if you don't that will lead to greater consequences. You have to eat, you have to get dressed. Just the mundanity that will never stop as long as you're alive, and is in some way burdensome simply because it is. And we pretend it's not. We celebrate eating or clothing to avoid that feeling. But once all that settles and clears away, there's a recognition that actually it's just a subtle level of Dukkha. It's an inescapable reality of being human and alive and having bodies. The burden of needing to fulfill these tasks; you can't get away from it. Recognizing that is actually a fundamental Dukkha to existence.

Diana Clark: Yeah, Dukkha shows up in so many different ways. We could say everywhere, if we look in subtle levels. In one way I can say it's an unresolvable Dukkha because you can't make it go away. The only resolution to it is really Anatta. It's seeing through the identification, that resolution of our separation and sense of burden.

Question: Last week you spoke of impermanence, and for some reason I took issue with that. I was driving home and trying to grasp onto something solid, and I thought, "Well, if impermanence is guaranteed, then that's kind of like a permanent, solid thing that will always be there." If today's a crap day, tomorrow and every other day can't possibly be crap days. You might just get lucky and have a good day. For some reason, I clung onto that impermanence as a constant, so that's kind of something solid to respond to.

Diana Clark: Yeah, concepts and ideas, we can hold on to those. Those are the only things that are steady: our concepts. Experiences are not steady. They are inconstant. But yeah, great, thank you.

Question: [Reading a written question] "Can space be used to cultivate neutral feelings?"

Diana Clark: I'm assuming that this is talking about cultivating space as one of the elements. To cultivate neutral feelings, I would say if we're using feelings as vedanā, then we don't have to cultivate them. Neutral vedanā, neutral experiences, happen all the time. But by "neutral feelings," maybe they mean not being "for" or "against" something. I would say that is equanimity. A part of equanimity is seeing the big picture of things rather than getting lost in them, so maybe space can help with that.