When Practice Stops Being a Place You Go

*transcript generated by AI

Voila.

Great.

Okay.

So, hi everybody.

Thank you for coming and practicing with me today, with each other today, with yourself today.

Anyone have anything particular for our discussion?

Such obliging Zen students.

Only that this version of Qigong sitting, Qigong only at the deeper and then coming here, is like, hey, wait a moment, I’m not done with meditation yet.

So, I mean, yes, there is never an end to meditation.

Like what?

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

Creates a really different experience.

So, which is really, I think, fascinating because, you know, we spend an hour and 15 minutes in total doing Qigong and meditation.

And somehow, even though it’s like so rich, it’s not enough, you know.

This is funny because like, wow, that’s an hour and 15 minutes.

If you say that beforehand, like, hey, I want you to spend an hour and 15 minutes in contemplative movement, breath and silent meditation.

Like an hour and 15 minutes.

Oh, that’s a big commitment.

I don’t know, you know.

Hey, shut up when you’re doing it.

Why is it over?

Again, this structure feels very different than completing the brocades and then having a sit and then having a liturgy, right?

And that creates a very different kind of like, there’s a more staccato flow as you’re completing an exercise, then you’re doing a different exercise, you’re completing that, you’re doing a different exercise and you’re completing that.

It’s more segmented, which through its staccato nature, allows us to have clear boundaries, right?

And that structure is very holding.

And it’s also less like real life.

Yeah.

Which makes it wonderful.

And also, you know, something to be cautious of.

I argue with that a bit.

Right.

Because the staccato nature of it changing, changing, changing, that is life.

That is how life unfolds.

The needing to adjust and then adjust and then adjust.

Well, at least in my life, the adjustments happen without clear transitions.

True.

And so they’re not really staccato.

It’s more like one minute I’m working on my book.

And the next minute, there’s a dog that has a need.

And my consciousness wants to stay with the book, but I need to move to take care of the dog, right?

And then the dog’s done doing the thing and the kid needs a thing.

And so it’s like, is my mind still with the book?

Is my mind with the dog?

Is my mind with the kid, right?

Like, yes, it’s constantly doing this, kaleidoscoping.

But at least in my particular life circumstances, I don’t get to be like, I’m going to spend 75 minutes working on my book.

And then I will take a five-minute break, and I will spend the next 45 minutes taking care of the dog.

And then I will take a 10-minute break.

And then I will take 15 minutes for self-care and meditation.

Yes, true.

And simply my body says I never do anything in my life, usually in that depth.

So I never felt my body like this when I worked on something or whatever.

So the shifts and the states I’m in in usual daily life are more light.

Instead of what I just experienced in this meditation, I usually don’t have.

So this is the big difference for me.

Otherwise, that’s true.

And when this happens, when it really happens that I do something with so much concentration, so much focus, and then something interrupts, I’m usually very confused, like I am right now.

Well, how perfect.

Yeah, both in two ways, right?

One, in the invitation to bring yourself to a greater depth of presence in your day-to-day life and recognizing how much more depth you can be living.

But then also to name the conflict in your consciousness with the idea of interruption, which I believe is kind of an unfortunate word.

Yeah, especially because I experienced at one point of my meditation practice that there isn’t really any disturbance or interruption.

It’s just another moment.

And then comes another moment.

And each moment looks different.

So it’s just then this, before it was that, and now it’s this.

So yes.

Yeah.

What I see, I don’t need any interruption from the outside.

I’m able to interrupt myself.

Let me just say, for example, I go to the kitchen and want to, I don’t know, get the salt or whatever.

I go into the kitchen and, what did I want to do in the kitchen?

So this is why I’m thinking about the next step.

Not this, what I want to do now, but I’m thinking, the next step is I want to go something elsewhere.

And I forgot what did I want to do now in this moment.

And so the interruption does not come from the outside, but from the inside.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s part of the great work that we do in meditation, right?

This whole idea of unification of mind, Akagata, or Ekagata.

I never know where the stress is in Sanskrit words.

But we experience it when we practice our meditation, especially if we have a procedural meditation like Jhanas, where we’re going through and we’re bringing ourselves to concentration, and then we’re shifting our states, and we’re doing these more subtle things.

In order for the process unifies the mind, and in order to move through the process, the mind has to be unified.

And so that’s a very strong reinforcing container that kind of gets all of the different parts of our brain to agree to do one thing.

And that’s part of what makes meditation feel so good, because generally speaking, we’re so internally divided and conflicted.

And that even if we haven’t done a big individuation process in Jungian terms, where we’ve reconciled all these parts to be more cohesive, a meditation kind of gets our brain doing the thing, right, which is interestingly, the same thing that happens under anesthesia.

Brainwave studies in anesthesia also show that the mind ends up settling into a very coherent brainwave state, right, at a certain rate, which is what puts us under, so to speak.

And so one of the things that we could say, one way to frame what we’re doing in a practice like what we have, is that we are unifying our mind through our formal training period to move through life with a unified mind, right.

And so when we notice those interruptions, what we end up really noticing, whether we name it or not, is our disparate parts, how disunified we are.

Right.

And then it’s like, oh, well, that’s great.

Now I’ve got a real concrete inner phenomenon that I can say, this part wants to think about the future.

This part wants to worry about the past.

This part wants to be focused on the present, right.

That’s a very, we have more parts than that, but that’s the general spectrum, right.

And what we find, what I find, and what the meditation traditions teach us, is that as we get these unified, the individual capacities don’t disappear.

And this is what most people are afraid of.

Most people are afraid to die to themselves because they’re afraid that their capacity to plan for the future or remember the past will disappear.

And so it’s like, what precious part of me am I willing to let die, is really a question that kind of is supposed to move us through a process of bringing everything together.

Right.

And we see that all the time in alchemy, your solar consciousness and your lunar consciousness, right.

Mixing the yin and the yang and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever metaphor you want to use.

It’s not about discarding that capacity and discarding that capacity so that we’re left with this very narrow band of now.

It’s about making now include the entire past and the entire future.

And that gets to be pretty trippy.

Yeah.

In a cool way.

So energetically, that would require much more grounding and intention than what I bring to my day-to-day life, regular races.

Always something.

Yeah.

And also, Zetian and I were talking about this the other day.

It sounds like something you have to do more of, right.

It requires more grounding and intention than I typically bring.

It’s more like foregrounding the unconscious processes that you’re always using.

Okay.

Right.

Because in simple terms, it’s pay attention, do what you’re doing on purpose.

That’s like the most basic form of instruction, but it’s so basic that it actually makes it kind of hard because like, okay, what does that mean?

Right.

But that’s where you get into like, what is, what must be, imagine, attempt, realize, assimilate, resort.

You’re already doing that with every activity that you do.

And you’re already doing all of those activities through your body.

So it’s just being with yourself, doing the thing that you’re already doing.

Right.

And from a meta perspective, that includes being with yourself while you’re distracted, doing a thing that you’re doing.

And when you’re watching yourself from that kind of like fifth person perspective, right, that’s a technical term in developmental psychology, a fifth person perspective, developmental psychology, a fifth person perspective, which is to see yourself in the context of time.

Right.

And to be able to bear witness to yourself and your environment in the context of past, present, and future.

Right.

Is, is the kind of zoomed out meta perspective that we’re talking about.

And then it doesn’t matter because even if you’re with yours, even if you’re distracted, which you can’t be distracted or disembodied, which you can’t be because you’re in a body, if you were disembodied, you’d be dead.

Right.

So you see all these things and now you’re paying attention and then you choose like, okay, do I want to continue thinking about Swiss cheese while I pet my dog?

And then you say, well, yes, I do.

And then you’re zoomed out so that you’re thinking about Swiss cheese and petting your dog.

It’s not you yourself located in the you who’s fantasizing about Swiss cheese and your body absentmindedly petting the dog.

You’re fully with both experiences because you’re bigger than those experiences, which is already true.

And already that’s not an advanced capability.

That’s actually what’s happening.

Right.

It’s just not contracting into one localized set of identities and experiences.

It’s staying expanded, but you have to be expanded to contract.

You can’t contract into something that you haven’t already included.

And it is a letting go of unconscious reactive patterns, because when you know what you’re doing in the moment you’re doing it, even if it’s three times or three things at once, then you know that you’re doing three things at once.

I had another thing.

I mean, this is especially the meditation experience today.

So I was a little bit tired.

And I just found myself, oh, look at this.

I’m thinking about things.

Do I want to go back and concentrate on something?

Oh, yes, actually, I want.

I want to do this.

Good.

And it’s very interesting that my current experience is that the different stages of the jhana practice are like, they are a little bit like in a window screen.

So they’re all available.

And I just kind of like, I think this one would be nice.

I have a sense.

It’s not already there for this.

I need to concentrate and then let it come.

But it’s like, oh, next.

Something like that, which I find very interesting.

So this move, I would call it like this, moving my consciousness to something that’s already there, but wasn’t in my view before.

Maybe, I don’t know if that’s a way to name it.

Moving my consciousness to something that wasn’t already there, but that was already there, but wasn’t in my view.

Yeah.

So this is that whole attention, awareness, focus, right?

Attention is a spotlight.

When you spotlight something in a dark room, you don’t see the rest of it.

And then you move the spotlight and you see the thing, right?

But the thing was always there.

You just didn’t see it because your spotlight was lighting up something else.

So then it’s being the master of who holds the spotlight.

And then it’s realizing that actually, it doesn’t have to be a spotlight.

It can be a light bulb, right?

And then now we have a much more meta perspective.

But then it still requires focus, because even in a perfectly lit room, you don’t see everything at the highest resolution all the time, right?

Because I’m focused on the screen, I don’t see with perfect clarity in the orchid in the center altar, the Lego orchid in the center altar.

I still have to put my focus on that, right?

But I know it’s there.

I have a relationship with it, right?

If it were to get up and start dancing, I would see that.

So I think this is, for me, it’s a very helpful metaphor for understanding the process.

It’s like, and then we get our basic words, enlightenment, right?

Become very, while borrowed from a totally different tradition, become very helpful.

Because it’s like, we’re just lighting up the room that we’ve already been in for our whole life.

My experience in the meditation was a little bit similar to Susanna’s.

I know to a certain extent, I’m not a very good meditator, but I’m not a very good meditator because I know two different states that I call meditative.

The one is to be concentrated on my breathing.

And the other is, sometimes when I wake up and I don’t get up immediately, but I stay in a state of letting go my thoughts.

It’s just the sort of flow that I’m in, which is not concentrating.

And what, but I experienced it as a meditative state.

So, this, yeah, this are two forms, two forms of meditation for me.

And what I experienced in the meditation today was, it was a mix.

Sometimes I was in this flow, I got a little bit tired, and then there was the focus on my breathing.

And sometimes I get confused about these two states.

So, to decide, where do I go to, where do I want to go in, you know?

Yeah, yeah, well, it’s interesting.

So, there are two different, my understanding is that there are two different brain modes.

Yes, it’s exactly.

So, one is, one concentration uses a certain set of our brain and one open awareness uses a different set of our brain.

And depending on your lineage of meditation instruction, they bias one or the other.

And the, but the results fascinatingly end up being the same.

So, in Zen, we have the Soto lineage, which biases open awareness, open and awareness, but with a little bit of a twist, because the nuances of the posture and the breath are so specific, that they are anchoring the mind in a very specific and concentrated way, which is kind of like allowing it to be in a state of open awareness, right?

Which is kind of the prerequisite for open awareness meditation, is that you’re not following or chasing any of the things.

And Soto uses the posture and the embodied posture to anchor the discursive consciousness, so that you can be in a true state of open awareness.

Rinzai uses concentration meditation, more like a yogic style of concentration meditation.

But when you hold either long enough, PT arises.

Agitated bliss, a fullness of mental process, right?

So, when you come into yourself deeply, and you’re just within your own experience, deeply enough, then there’s a real sense of pleasantness that arises in the body.

And that happens regardless of which mode of meditation you use.

Now, in my experience, and in my experience mentoring people, it’s much harder to stay in an open awareness style of meditation, because invariably something that you’re allowing to come up from your unconsciousness grabs you.

And the second it grabs you, when you start daydreaming, and fantasizing, and going along with that thought, you’re no longer in open awareness, you’re in discursive thinking.

And so it’s for PT to arise.

That’s why I typically teach concentration meditation, because it’s so much easier to tell when you stopped doing what you wanted to do.

That it keeps you coming back faster and stronger, right?

And then PT arises, but then PT just takes on, and then the jhanas take on.

And so that’s how Soto and Rinzai Zen both produce the state experiences of realization and insight.

Because eventually you go through the jhanas, which is the name of the school.

Jhana, jhana, jhana, jhana, zen, right?

Which is just a cool technology for investigating our lived experience, reality, who we really are in terms of consciousness, you know, what is suffering, all of these types of things.

I guess to more directly respond to you, that’s awesome.

I’m glad that you have the capacity for both.

So I didn’t catch it?

I just said to more directly respond, that’s awesome.

I’m glad that you have capacity for both, and that you practice.

Yeah.

And you might find it beneficial to really set a strong intention to do one or the other before any individual meditation period.

Okay.

Before.

That little bit of accountability goes a long way into making sure that you don’t kind of like get bored and switch your method halfway.

And then never really get into a deeper state, because you keep changing between different modes of mind.

Yeah.

Yeah, usually in the morning before getting up, which I now I’m able to do because, you know, I’m retired and I don’t go to work anymore.

So this, I can stay in this state of flowing and in the afternoon, for example, I can make the decision to make a focused and concentrating meditation.

Yeah.

That’s a good idea.

Thank you.

Have fun.

Yeah.

What you said about anesthesia, whenever we’re getting the brain to function together.

So my immediate thought is also that we’re anesthetizing ourselves.

But I think there’s truth to that.

But then what would I struggle with?

We get our minds unified and, you know, shifting awareness from a broader perspective and focusing in.

The more challenging it becomes in real life to engage in things that you don’t want to do.

And there’s so many things in life that are, you know, that you need to be responsible and functioning and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

For myself, it has become more challenging.

And so then to, I struggle with how do we use what we glean from meditation practice to put that focus on paying the bills, right?

Like to focus on something that is fundamentally necessary, yet unfulfilling.

Yeah.

So what I hear in the subcontext of your question is deep meditative states are like addicting in a certain way.

And the more transcendent experience you have, the less engaged you want to be with the mundane world.

Yeah, exactly.

And this is one of the age old spiritual questions.

And in my experience, right, part of it has to do with our philosophical orientation.

Okay.

And so I finally found a tech, the technical term for a view, a non-dualistic view that I have found most helpful for this.

It’s called panentheism.

It’s called panentheism.

Yeah, panentheism.

And basically what that means is, so you have frameworks where there’s the material realm and there’s the God realm, okay?

Like a transcendent theology.

And then you have pantheism where the material realm is exactly God, right?

Panentheism says that the divine is a bigger than everything that we can experience materially, but everything that we’re experiencing materially is within God, within the divine.

And so I emerged at this experience through meditative insight and have been living this way for a long time.

And that’s what has me flipped into realizing that.

And this is what Zen training does too, in its own way, that taking care of the most mundane thing with care is loving the divine, is a transcendent experience, because it’s the only way that we can really know it, right?

While also at the same time honoring that our transcendent experience really is transcendent, right?

Which is where the pantheism thing gets really challenging because it’s like, wait a minute, this experience doesn’t fit here in this category of existence.

So what’s going on here, right?

And so when we take our meditative mind into caring for our life, then we are realizing the truth that every material thing is exactly a part of the transcendent experience that we found on the cushion.

And then there’s still the truth to the fact that we’re called to do certain things and we’re not called to do other things.

And we always have to ask the question, what do I need to let go so I can live my calling more completely?

And what do I need to take care of in support of living my calling most completely?

And this is where Ignatian spirituality, I think, has a great term magus, which is like doing what’s best.

And in that context, it’s like we all align with God’s will and weaving the way it is integrity, the integrity with the way there’s only one true integrity with the way, right?

And that includes all of the things that support that form of integrity.

But there’s like, there’s forms of integrity that are really close.

There’s forms of integrity that are like good, better, but there’s one best, you know?

And so magus is the idea that we’re going to we’re going to do whatever we have to do to be in the best alignment and the best integrity, right?

And sometimes that causes us to make really difficult decisions.

And sometimes we realize that, well, actually, to be in the best integrity means that my bills are paid on time.

And now it becomes spiritually fulfilling because it’s an expression of the unfolding of the way as you are called to live it.

So perception shifts to have the pain of the bills be part of the transcendent experience.

Will the bills stop being painful?

But this isn’t a blind perspective shift.

This has to be one born of inquiry, which is like, is the pain of these bills actually because what these bills represent is against my calling?

Or is the pain of these bills just because I would rather be blissed out in meditation?

You know, we have to answer that question because that like pain is always a guidepost.

Pain is always bringing us more into integrity.

And the more sensitive we are to pain, the more sensitive we are to misalignment, the clearer we can discover the best.

But again, it has to be born of inquiry and investigation, and it has to match up with a rational intellectual process and be able to be articulated.

Or else it’s just baseless ego preference.

Thank you both, because this conversation helped me to gain insight in something in my meditation.

Because, how can I say?

There is a sense of what’s next in the meditation.

So is it going to the concentration back or letting go?

So very, very, how can I say?

Subtle perceptions and like small decisions.

I just saw, I don’t know if I can use the right words now, but it feels as if even there, but it’s true.

Why not there?

There can be more alignment in the meditation with this thing of, okay, the next would be is just like an illusion.

I don’t know what the next is.

If I feel what the next is, I know what the next is.

Then I can just open up for the next whatever thing I need to be, to do, to let go, whatever.

I know what I’ve spoken about in my body, but I have no idea if you have any ideas of what I was talking about.

Were you talking about the difference between sitting down with a process you’re going to follow and being like, okay, now I do this.

Now I do this.

Now I do this.

And the difference in feeling between trying to do it that way, where you are following a process, regardless of where you’re at in your body versus the experience of the same steps unfold the same way in the same order.

But now it’s more like the steps are coming to you and through you, and you are not trying to go find the steps.

You’re not going to do the steps.

You’re taking the step as it presents itself to you.

Right.

Yes.

Knowing the process allows you to identify those steps when they come to you.

But we don’t go try to take those steps because that disrupts the meditation.

Wonderfully said.

And now I remember earlier times when I did the jhanas, that it was so amazing for me when I let go of the, it must be one, two, three, like it must be in order.

And just to let it go.

And then I just hopped back and forth.

And at one point I was just stable at one thing, and then it moved on.

But I remember like, what’s happening here?

Oh my gosh.

Is this okay?

Oh, no, no, no, no.

And then, you know what?

Fuck that.

Come on, let’s move on and see what happens.

So, yeah, a nice reminder.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And the same for the builds, for example.

Like, oh, no, not this now.

I don’t want to do this.

Okay, maybe this is what it’s now.

So, and if you just do it, then do, do, do.

Oh.

Right, right.

As soon as you get focused on something and get into doing it, whatever it is, can be a fulfilling experience.

It’s the mindset of the resistance that’s placed in there prior to.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, that was a beautiful kind of like dancing, flowing discussion around a wide variety of things.

So, thank you for that.

Really, for me, enjoyable and pleasant conversation.

I trust that it was exactly what everyone needed to get today.

Let’s go ahead and do a round of closing check-in as we are at the noon hour here on U.S. East Coast time.

And that’s when we can close.

So, let’s go with Harald and Susanna, and then we’ll go to Mitra.

Harald, checking in.

Yeah, sometimes I have a little bit difficulties to understand, but I think that it was a very helpful thing for me with this decision thing that you told me.

That’s really great.

And I was really enjoyed to meet you again in the sangha and to have the opportunity to make the meditation with Susanna.

Yeah, so I’m feeling very glad.

I’m in it.

Swaha, thank you for joining us.

Loving the silent expression of life force flowing through me.

I’m in.

Beautiful.

Mitra Ravan, checking in.

So gladdened by that expression that I don’t need to add to it.

I’m in.

Y’all have a beautiful rest of your day.

I look forward to talking to you soon.

Bye.

Bye.