Laura Bridgman: Meeting Our Habit Patterns

So I got a question from one of you yesterday following my talk and that question was, what do you mean by backing up? And it's not a straightforward question to answer, but I'll do my best. So I want to begin by sharing with you. It's probably one of the most ultimate teachings from the Suttas. The Buddha says something like, there is an unborn, unmanifest, unfabricated, unmade. And if there wasn't, there would be no escape from the fabricated, the born, the conditioned, the made. It's a mysterious, isn't it? What is that? We can't even give it a that-ness, whatever that may be pointing to. And most of the time where our tension is with the conditioned, with the fabricated, with the places where we feel stuck or held or compelled. In the teachings in the Suttas, whenever the Buddha mentions that the people he's been teaching have experienced liberation from the conditioned, he talks about their chitta. He uses the parli-word chitta, C-I-T-T-A, chitta. Again, a very hard word to translate, but the chitta is freed. It's no longer subject to clinging. Gone beyond birth and death, gone beyond the born, the fabricated, the made. The chitta is liberated. So it's not the chitta disappears. There's nothing, but it's freed. And so an analogy I often use for this is like if the heart, mind, a whole being system is like a river. And that river has whirlpools and sand banks and shallow places where it's more turbulent. So there's a river. And most of the time we're in the activity of the river, you know, where it's caught on the sand bank or in the turbulence, caught in a current. So a simple example, a very simple example, and this is happening in so many levels, a very simple example is there are three people called Laura who work or reside in Gaia. And if more than one of us is in the same room and someone says, Laura, you'll go, you'll respond. So that's Sankara. That's a fabrication. That's a current in the river that I, an I, a familiar identity, the name is Laura, that name gets said, the mind moves. And for a while I was called Kovida. That was my name as a nun for 25, 20 odd years. Kovida. And I forgot about Laura. And then when I just wrote and people start calling me Laura again, it's like, it felt strange. It's not my name. And then I got used to it again. So the jitter is like both the content in the river, the sand banks, the turbulence, whatever activations are going on. And it's also the river itself. It's the space. This is all being known within. So some teachers refer to this jitter's heart mind or also that which knows. So it's like these spins get created in our systems through association, through impressionability. And we locate ourselves in those whirlpools, those spins and those sandpines because that's where the familiar inclination is to locate. It's not like we're choosing it. It's just that whole system gravitates there. And as we, as we simplify and still we become more conscious of these drives, the way we incline the habits. And these habits happen at the, on three, in three expressions of our experience. They happen in the mind. So that's the word sankara is what I'm referring to. Any of you familiar with that word sankara? You know. So it's a Pali word that the root meaning of it is to make together. It's like you have different ingredients for a recipe. You make together. So when we, for instance, look closely or see a little bit more about our patterns, we can see part of what's feeding that whole makeup of that tendency is some attitudes we have towards ourselves. Maybe our preference we have because it doesn't feel good. We want to move away from it. A contraction in our body, contraction in our mind. So there's different threat operating that all come together and interweave. And so on the mental level, you can just feel how the mind gets driven or taken. It's on subtle levels. It can be how when we're on the walking path, our eyes want to look around. They want to look at this, they want to look at that, they want to look at that. You know, you can see attention has a certain movement in it. Or it can be the drive of the pressure of the inner critic. So something's operating in the background of the mind and it's creating a push. This is not okay. And the effect has an effect. The drive in the mind or the activity in the mind just because we think a lot and plan a lot, that when we stop, that thinking and planning doesn't stop. It's got a certain momentum. It keeps running. It's a bit like those toy cars that, you know, that have a mechanism in them if you do this with them. And then you let them go. They just, they run. So it's like we're doing this with our mind and it creates a certain momentum. So when the Buddha talked about the monks or the people's minds being free to no longer clinging, the means are no longer being unconsciously caught in those tendencies. They've been seen, they've been understood. So that's Vajisankara, that's one level of activation. So that word, sankara, sometimes translates as volitional tendencies. So that's the one. I'll just say, Arjuna, do you want to come in? Sure. And then there's, together with that, then there's a jitta sankara, the jitta heart-mind. But it's where that jitta is caught in the whirlpools. It's caught on the sandbanks. It's the emotional, it's the reactivity. Emotions, let's say, a reaction. Someone says something and I have a tendency when they say that to feel, I've done something wrong. And I move into this someone who's done something wrong and how do I make it right? Then I need to make it right. So the jitta sankara, of course I'm just talking about this very short hand, but hopefully just give you a sense. And then the kaya, there's the body, there's a corresponding tension pattern in the body with the pattern, holding pattern. So how do we back up? How do we back up? Knowing backs up. Knowing. So you're actually known to see these activations. So for instance, I might be lost in feeling unclear and the mind is trying to get clear. What should I be doing? How do I do this? How do I get this right? And then I suddenly reckon, oh, I'm feeling unclear and I'm trying to get clear. That's knowing. And then a bit more presence with that experience. Can it be okay right now not to know? Meeting what's here instead of being caught in the pattern. Or if the pattern's really strong, just noticing I feel this feels like it's really pulling me in like now. I've been lost in this for the last 10 minutes. That's what's happening. I'm naming that. I'm knowing that. Or there's a knowing of that. So knowing shifts it from being something happening to me and about me to something being known. That just shifts it from subjective to a little bit more objective. And being more seen for what it is, which is a kind of structure rather than who and what we are. And that can really release some of the judging pressuring of the inner critic. I know releasing the judge is not a small thing, but just acknowledging that we'll be playing its part. So the Buddha with me gave us these frames. He was inviting us to look at our experience in a way we don't normally look at it. So bring a different vantage point. This is mental sankara. When I feel this activity, this is mental activation. It's normal. And how would it be if I shift from what I'm thinking about just to feeling the energy of that activity? What does the mind that is feeling busy? What does the busy mind feel like? It's got a certain movement and energy to it. Shifting from the narrative to the feeling tone in the mind. And then seeing if you can steady with that feeling. I don't know. And the allowing is a step to support that. A gentle curiosity about the energy. So what keeps sankara's going is grasping, rejecting and identifying. So we need to be with sankara in order to see where that's happening. So with a simple way to notice grasping is to ask yourself when you're turning towards something, ask yourself as you're with it. Am I being with this in order for it to go away? I'll be with it as long as it changes. So then we're adding in some grasping and the immensely frustrating thing about the mind is that we'll bring more contraction. It's so annoying that we can't do it. We, with our agenda for change, can't have change. The more we try, the more frustrated we are by the nature of our system because the way nature works is we grasp, we give more fuel. So paradoxically, if I notice, I ask myself that question, am I being with this in order for it to go away? Yeah, yeah, I am. How much feel that wanting? And so you're coming closer to what's here. Feel that wanting. I really want this to go away. What's that like to make space for that? Or I really want that meditation experience I had on the last retreat. This is annoying. It's not coming here. So I want. So because it's all kind of the heart. The wanting is in the heart. If we try to just suppress or control our wanting, we actually shut down or limit our heart. So in the flow, we're actually allowing the heart to have its movement, but we're making space for it. We're actually connecting the river with the activity in the river. So it's a bit like we find a way to put our feet on the river bed so that we can steady. We can feel the currents, but not just in the currents. Even if we're in the current, there's some awareness. That's what's happening. We name that. So we're feeling both levels of the chitra. When we bring awareness in, we're feeling both levels, both the whirlpools and that which is unborn, unmade, unconditioned. So that can feel like a very rarefied, that's ultimate top of the mountain nibbana. But actually it's in that moment of knowing. It's part of our nature. It's actually more fundamentally who we are. It's a bit of a blasphemy to say that in Buddhism, but if you want to really sense who you truly are, it is that's more truly your nature. So I hope this is helpful. Please take or leave what feels useful. But I'm going to just give you a little, another image just to leave you with. So if being in the momentum of our drives is like being on a train, trust is seeing what it's like to step onto the platform. You feel the energy of the trains passing through. Effort or energy, the kind of energy it takes to stay on the platform. Just noticing what pulls me in is if when I want this to go away, how do I meet that? Oh, I want this other experience. How do I meet that and include that, including all the flows? What makes it possible to be on the platform as the trains are moving? What steadies me? Sometimes backing up, sometimes resting, sometimes turning towards. So when I say backing up, I mean softening the attention. So maybe turning your attention maybe somewhere else, like going for a walk or leaning against the tree, lying down, resting, feeling the floor support your body. And then wisdom gradually knows where the train is going. It doesn't really give us what we want. If I follow this, I know where it's going to lead me. I feed this pattern, this loop, this closed loop. And wisdom knows what's driving the train, what's fueling it. So these sankaras, these activators, they have a kind of thirst for them. They want us to keep throwing coal on the fire. They have a certain traction in our system. And so it does take a certain steadfastness to say, I feel that traction, I'm not going to follow that pull right now. There's a certain intention. I want to know it more. I really want to know this. So we gradually discover or uncover the threads and how the threads interlink, that ripen into the pattern. So the Buddha used this analogy of a tangled ball of thread. And it's like we gradually see one piece of thread and we start to loosen that way. I think about something, that attitude, for instance, and it starts to loosen the shape of the pattern. We can see more about it. Okay, I'll pause there. We'll just pause for a moment.