No. 14, December 2022

Dear Ken,

Another year, another door? Increasingly for me, each year feels like I've gone through a door and I am living in a different world. As I've detailed in another newsletter, deep changes are taking place and will continue to do so.

This year I finished my book on Vajrayana. The printer has informed me that the finished books are scheduled to ship on or before the end of January. I've reactivated Unfettered Mind's store on Amazon, and if all goes well, you will be able to order copies around the middle of February.

Once the book was complete, I had to confront a long list of postponed projects. It didn't take me long to realize I needed help. The response to my requests in the newsletter was wonderful—more than I ever imagined. Almost a hundred people volunteered. Once I figured out how to manage the projects, we made a lot of progress and will continue to do so, from editing transcriptions for the website to making a video trailer for the book to preparing Wake Up to Your Life for a digital edition, to name just a few.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you for your donation of time, energy, and expertise. You have no idea what a difference your help has made to me, and I know from my own experience, that none of us know what a difference your help may make in the lives of others. So, thank you.

My thanks also to all of you who have supported Unfettered Mind financially. Every dollar of your donations goes to enhancing the website, our main vehicle for making instructions in the practice of Buddhism freely accessible to all who are interested. Again, you have no idea what a difference your support may make in the lives of others, but I can say with some confidence that it is all for the good.

For the immediate future, I hope to see some of you at the book events planned for February and March. I also plan to complete the current series of newsletters on the seven points of Mind Training in Seven Points. (You can read the first four here.) And, as always, I welcome your questions or suggestions for topics you would like to see discussed in the newsletter.

My best wishes to you for peace and good health in 2023. And have a Happy New Year!

Ken

Practice Tip:

Don't walk around performing what you would do when awake

To give credit where credit is due, this instruction comes from a friend, and I decided to expand on it today. It captures a trap into which many people fall— from the best of intentions, or for good reason, or both

The best of intentions is that most people are trying to practice according to what they have read or the instructions they have been given.

The good reason is that mistranslations, misinterpretations, and misunderstandings are many and profuse.

There is nothing new here. These problems have always been present throughout Buddhist history. Some correct themselves, others fade away, and some endure for decades, even centuries, sending people up blind alleys or over cliffs.

One of the most common is to take a result as a method. (See Wake Up to Your Life, pg. 58-60.)

Take the Noble Eightfold Path. It is often presented as the path to awakening. It is not. The Eightfold Path describes how you live and practice when you have experienced some kind of awakening. It is a description of result, not method. (See this series of talks on Unfettered Mind's website.)

If you take it as the path to awakening, then, of course, you try to emulate those qualities. Right speech, for instance, is described as truthful, relevant, considerate, and appropriate. That is a description of result.

What happens when you try to practice that way?

The best result is that you end up in a mess, tied up in knots, unable to speak or say anything. That is the best result because when you are completely tongue-tied, you are forced to see that something is wrong with this approach.

The more common and the more problematic outcome is that you act out, you perform, your idea of what right speech is. Almost inevitably, your speech will be contrived, disingenuous, inappropriate, and will ring false. The problem is that you are speaking out your own projections. In doing so, you are reinforcing your own reactive patterns. Yet you believe that you are doing the right thing and moving in the direction of awakening.

Nothing good comes of this approach. As organizational theorist Kenichi Ohmae said, "Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction." Yet, because of the belief that it is the right approach, it can be difficult to correct.

This kind of misunderstanding is widespread. Throughout the centuries, practitioners have taken results as method. I suppose we are always looking for shortcuts, for hacks in today's parlance, but in any bona fide discipline, they never work.

How to practice right speech, then, or any of the other aspects of the Eightfold Path?

Here are eight steps. (Please don't entertain the idea that these two sets of eight are related. It's just a coincidence that these steps came to me this way today.)

1. Start from where you are.
2. Bring attention to what you are doing.
3. Bring attention to how you are doing it.
4. Experience what you are doing at all levels of your being.
5. Sense any imbalance.
6. Go empty.
7. Make a small movement in the direction of balance.
8. Repeat.

Here is a more detailed description of how to do these eight steps in the context of speaking. It's a practice. You may not be able to do all of them right away, but most people are able to train this technique without too much trouble.

1. You are having a conversation with someone, or you are in a meeting, or you are giving a talk.
2. As you speak, listen to the sound of your voice as if you were listening to someone else speak.
3. Hear how you are speaking, what you are saying, how it comes across to you, etc.
4. Experience all this in your body. Experience your own emotional reactions to your speaking. Experience the thoughts and stories that come up as you listen to yourself speaking. You may have to do these one at a time before you can do them all at the same time. It's usually best to start with the physical reactions that arise when you listen to yourself speaking.
5. As you rest, you will probably sense some imbalance in how you are speaking. You may register that imbalance as a physical sensation (e.g., you feel some physical discomfort), as an emotional sensation (e.g., an emotional reaction to what you are saying or how you are saying it), or a cognitive sensation (e.g., a thought, perhaps, of "That's not quite true" or "That's not what I meant to say" or "That was a bit loud" or "Why am I mumbling?")
6. When you can experience all of that at the same time, ask "What experiences this?" Don't try to answer the question. The question itself usually precipitates a shift. Rest in that shift. If you don't experience a shift, breathe out, and rest at the end of the exhalation, letting body and mind rest naturally.
7. Keep speaking, but let what you are saying or how you are saying it change a little in light of the imbalance you noticed. Don't make a big adjustment. The idea here is to let the adjustment arise from the resting rather than from your idea of how you should be speaking. As Rumi said, "A white flower grows in the stillness/Let your tongue be that flower."
8. Now return to step 1. Say what you have to say, listen to your voice as you speak, and go through the steps again (and again, and again, and ...).

This is not the practice of right speech. This is a technique for bringing attention to speech, and training in such a way that you open the possibility of not speaking from reactive patterns. You cannot decide not to speak from reactive patterns because the you, the self, that decides is itself a reactive pattern. However, by engaging your experience of speaking as completely as you can (using the steps outlined here), you can create the conditions for another possibility to arise. That is what this technique does.

All of the elements of the Eightfold Path can be approached this way, that is, devising a way to bring attention to how you practice mindfulness, how you live your life (livelihood), and so on.

The main point here is not to make the mistake of trying to practice a result. Doing so inevitably throws you back into reactive patterns.

Learn to distinguish descriptions of results from instructions for practice. This is one of the most important distinctions to learn and will save you an immense amount of grief and confusion.

In your practice, focus on technique, just as a potter focuses on the technique of throwing a mug or bowl, a musician focuses on the technique of playing scales, or a baseball player focuses on the technique of fielding a ball.

Technique is a matter of learning how to do something, learning it to the point that it becomes second nature, and learning to do it in any situation. For this, you need both skill and capacity. You build those two qualities through practice.

In both the short and long term, you will do better developing skill and capacity. Without actual technique, it is very difficult not to perform in some way. Mind and body don't know how to move and you inevitably fall back on reactive patterns. On the other hand, when technique has been deeply trained, it becomes possible to let go of performing and meet what arises in a different way.