Jeanne Corrigal: Dharma talk: Finding Freedom in the Bumpy Ride

Happy to offer some thoughts now on this four foundations of mindfulness and we have practiced there kind of directly with two of them. The first is the body, body and the breath, and the second, Vedana or feeling tone. And body and the breath we come to as a home base as a way of settling the attention. And there are a number of ways of doing that which we practiced today and but I just want to offer three as a helpful suggestions for when you're cultivating the home base of body, breath, one is the noting practice. It can sometimes be helpful to note in the just a small whisper in the back of the mind that only takes a small part of the attention. Oh, in breath, oh, out, oh, thinking. Sometimes that's helpful to help us stay connected to what's happening. Secondly, some people count the breath. I wanted to read something from a book called Tofu Roshi, the collected letters, the life and collective letters of Tofu Roshi and it's a collection of letters that his students have written them and his responses. Dear Tofu Roshi, this is written by Susan Moon. When I meditate, and this is about counting, when I meditate I seem to exhale more completely than I inhale and consequently by the end of the meditation period, I feel quite deflated. What do you think I should do? Prudence bird whistle. Dear Prudence, proper breathing technique is widely misunderstood. You are not alone in having trouble with it. From your letter it sounds as you may be making as though you may be making a common mistake. Breathing out more times than you are breathing in. This is why we recommend counting breaths. Only by counting can you be completely sure you are exhaling and inhaling the same number of times. One of my students uses golf counters for this. Well, with her left hand she enumerates inhalations, while with her right she takes a count of exhalations. At the end of the period she checks to make sure the numbers on the two counters are the same. If there is any discrepancy she takes an extra moment to even things up. Adding the indicated number of exhalations or inhalations. But it is best to alternate whenever possible. Breathe in once, breathe out once, then they go all the way back to the beginning of the cycle and repeat. So, counting can sometimes be helpful. It's good not to get too serious about this. The third way that I find very helpful to support the home-based practice is to find a way to find skillful pleasantness in it. So this is a skillful way to use Vedana or feeling tone. We can look for pleasant experience and let it support us. We want to do that though without grasping for it. So there's a difference between finding a way that the breath can be pleasant. I suggested a few in the meditation today. It might be just the sense of resting back and receiving, tuning into the soothing rhythm of the breath or having an image. For me, I always remember the gentle swell of the ocean. And that just connects me with the breath so very, very easefully. But there's a difference between that and grasping for a pleasant experience of meditation. And there's a poem I'd like to read that talks about this difference. It's Remembering How I Got Here in the First Place by Rosemary Watola-Tromer. And it's a difference between well, you'll see it's the experience of grasping for a particular experience in meditation. Focus on your breathing, Susie says. Imagine this next breath as your first and for a while it works. I feel the inhale move from nose to throat to lungs, feel the new air travel through my legs and arms, then breathe it out. I'm curious. I follow as the breath becomes my daughter and I wonder how her first day of climbing went yesterday. And that was so weird how she was in my dream last night when I swallowed a spider. Oh, yeah. Inhale, exhale, the breath. My chest is rising, my hands are still and wouldn't it be nice to go walk in the redwoods? How long has it been since we were there? 97, 98? And inhale. And there it is again, the invitation to take the first breath. And wow, feel all that air as it rushes in and fills the body like the balloons at Finn's birthday party last weekend. No, that was so fun. The boys were so sweet to each other. Wait right here, breath. Paying attention to the places where my body meets the ground, but knees, shins. And isn't it wild how the hum of the cars on the highway outside at first sound like a gong? Wrong, wrong. Think, breath. Or, not wrong. Just another invitation to embrace the process. Eat thought like the wind. And I'm rowing a small canoe. Is silence always this loud? Someone across the circle is snoring and from the kitchen it smells like Thai curry and Susie says return to the breath and for another moment I breathe in, breathe out and I thank you mind for all of this practice. You're so good at what you do. It matters this dance, this chance to be present, to show up and meet the all that is. I so want to know what is true. And so I love this poem because she moves from the relationship with the breath of thinking it's wrong and grasping for something, grasping for the breath to always be there and the thoughts never to be there. She says wrong, wrong. Think, breath. And then she shifts and says, or not wrong. Just another invitation to be present. Oh, the mind is moving. And that's when she can shift into gratitude and have a sense of peace in the midst of thinking. And so this is the difference between grasping for a quiet, peaceful sit. That's the relationship of grasping and aversion to thought or a relationship on grasping, non ill will of allowing. That can bring peace. And so that's the first foundation, body and breath and how it can bring us to peace. The second foundation is the foundation of the pleasant and unpleasant and neither feeling tone. And how we've talked a bit about how that can bring us to peace. This capacity to cultivate a non-reactivity to unpleasant and pleasant. That doesn't mean we're gritting our teeth and burying it. It means we can be with, this is unpleasant and there are unpleasantnesses in life. It's a steady capacity to be there and to have wise response. And the same with the pleasant is skillfully work with the pleasant so that we can actually enjoy it rather than grasping. Rather than grasping. So I want to clarify this grasping ill will vocabulary. In the Buddhist teachings we have, so this is going to, we're going to move now. So the first foundation, body and breath, the second foundation feeling tone. The third foundation is the mind. Although Vedana is part of the mind heart, it's a mental quality, but the Buddha put all the other mind and heart qualities in the third foundation of the mind. Vedana was so important, he took it out and gave it its own foundation. But all the other heart, mind, states, emotions are in the third foundation of the mind. And we can already see how the body and Vedana support us working skillfully with emotions and thoughts. Oh, are they pleasant, unpleasant? Oh, where are they in the body? We begin to be able to be more steady with unpleasant emotions, wiser with them. We can meet them. We don't have to be afraid of them. And we can meet pleasant emotions and actually be there for them. So these are the first three foundations. And the fourth foundation is called Dhammas in Pali. But what it is, is a collection of five lists that describe freedom. These lists, we use the first three foundations in order to understand how to work with these freedom lists intentionally. The last list in the fourth foundation is the heart of it all. And I'm going to go into that list. It's the Four Noble Truths of Dukha. And this word Dukha is a word we want to understand. So let's look at Dukha, what Dukha means. And then I'll talk about the Four Noble Truths. So Dukha, this is Joseph Goldstein on Dukha. And he says, suffering is the often used translation of Dukha. And sometimes it's appropriate, but sometimes it can be misleading. We might get a better sense of its meaning by remembering its etymological root. The word is made up of the prefix Dukha and the root ka. Dukha means bad or difficult. Ka means empty. This refers to several things, but one of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. And this bumpy ride is a good analogy for our ride through this human experience. And so he compares this to a cart in the time of the Buddha. And he rode in one of these carts of a mountain. And he said the ride was extremely bumpy. The axle doesn't fit into the wheel, the hole of the wheel very well, and it's a bumpy ride. And I cannot help but think about the Metis carts that would bump across the prairies. That would be a bumpy ride. That's our bumpy ride. That experience of riding along in this bumpy ride. So this is what Dukha can mean. This is a very visceral truth, Joseph goes on to say. This extremely bumpy journey is a very visceral example of Dukha, which is the first noble truth. And he says, words like unsatisfying, unreliable, uneaseful, and stressful all convey this universal aspect of the human experience. It can be a bumpy ride. That's the first meaning of Dukha. This human experience can be a bumpy ride. There's lots of joy too, but it can be bumpy. And so this is the first meaning of Dukha. And there are more than, there are two meanings of Dukha that are important for us. And he goes on to describe now the second meaning of Dukha. So there's a subtle point here to understand, he says, and it has strong implications for how we understand the practice. And that is the understanding that for this bumpy ride of phenomena to lead to suffering, which is the second way of understanding Dukha, for this bumpy ride to lead to suffering, there has to be a presence of craving. Craving is the cause of suffering, this second form of Dukha. Suffering is not inherent in the bumpy ride itself. So even a fully awakened being experiences the Dukha of the bumpy ride. It's still a bumpy ride, but there is no suffering because craving has been uprooted. Venerable Analyo clarifies this. He says suffering over here, suffering is not inherent in the bumpy ride itself. Unlike unsatisfactoriness is not inherent in the experience of the world. Only in the way the unawakened mind experiences them. This is indeed the underlying theme of the Four Noble Truths as a whole. The suffering caused by craving can be overcome by awakening. For an awakened being, the unsatisfactory nature of this human experience is no longer capable of causing suffering. And so then we can understand the meaning of Dukha. And now we can understand the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth, there's Dukha and stress in this bumpy ride. It can be unpleasant. Second Noble Truth, if we have craving in relationship to this stress Dukha, this will give rise to the Dukha of suffering. Third Noble Truth, the Dukha of suffering can end if craving is released. And the Fourth Noble Truth, there are practices that can support this release. And four of the major practices are the four foundations of mindfulness. And so this points to our relationship with what is happening as key to freedom. And so we want to taste, we want to begin to taste the flavor of these truths, to know them in the body, in the first foundation of mindfulness. So here comes the first foundation of mindfulness and how it can support us. Because we can understand, we can know what these feel like in the body. So the first Dukha of this bumpy ride, what does it feel like in the body? Is it unpleasant or what does unpleasant feel like? As we begin to feel into this, we actually begin to uncouple the unpleasant experience from the suffering. When we begin to notice this second foundation of mindfulness, oh unpleasant, we begin to unglue this Dukha from the suffering Dukha. We often think they're the same thing. But when we begin to notice, we can unglue. Oh, just to be, we start at the light end, at the, you know, the light end of the gym. Oh, unpleasant, I want that hot tea. I can just be with that experience. I don't have to slide to grasping, which is the agitating part. I always often share this experience that this was a pivotal moment for me. It's very simple. I share it quite a bit. It was with my dad in the Bush once and we were, it was kind of chilly. And I was cold. I said, dad, dad, are you cold? He said this, he said, yes. That was it. He didn't, he was cold. Maybe it was unpleasant. He didn't slide to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go home. Oh, that taught me a lot. So steady. So we want to know what these feel like. We want to know what unpleasant feels like in the body. Direct sensations, cold, tingling, tightness, stabbing, pressure, heat. Those are, you know, could be unpleasant sensations. Then we want to know secondly, what does the dukkha of suffering feel like in the body? If, and if I asked you, you could probably tell me, I'm just feeling back into that same example. Of the tea, it was a, there was a push. Venerable Analyzo says that that's how this feels. The suffering feels like there's a push. Like, that's the Vedana. There's a push to do something or a pull. There's like a, and that's, that's the trigger that we tend to miss. So how does suffering feel in the body? We want to get to know that, the urgency of it, the ill will of it. We want to know that because it feels different than this stress dukkha. The urgency, the ill will, the tightness, the grasping. And then we want to know number three, how does release feel? In Rosemary Watola's Trummer's poem, oh, not wrong. Just another invitation. How does that feel? Wow, wholehearted presence. I so want to know what is true. So we can get to taste that release and know it in the body. And that's called an unworldly pleasant feeling. The experience of release is an unworldly or a spiritual pleasant feeling because it's not conditioned. It's not dependent on sense pleasure. The worldly feeling tones, which are usually what we jump to, want the hot tea. That's based on wanting sense pleasure to be pleasant. The spiritual pleasant feeling is that feeling of release, the highest happiness. And so I have a few examples of how we can work with this understanding of the Four Noble Truths, this path of freedom, this map of freedom, this list, this process of freedom with the first three foundations, or with I'm going to go straight to emotions and thoughts. So we already had an example of this with thoughts with Rosemary Watola Trummer, how we could grasp for something, grasp for the thoughts to be stopped, and the shift into release. And so we can bring this also to emotions. So I have an example of a pleasant emotion, or an unpleasant one, and a pleasant one. And so if we notice something's going on that's unpleasant in the emotional field, I used to feel extremely reactive to the emotions and mind states around uncertainty and not knowing. Does anybody else have anything around that? Yeah, I'm not alone, okay? Okay, great. So we want to be able to notice this is unpleasant, and see if we can slow down the slide to ill will. So this is an example on retreat. I was a bit steady, and I'd been on retreat for a few days, so I had some steadiness. And you may not feel like you've got lots of steadiness, but you have some steadiness. Just from this morning, there's no way you would not have it. There's a bit of steadiness, even if the mind feels busy. There's a steadiness because you can see it, see the busy mind. So I had some steadiness, and the bell rang. We were on retreat where we could determine our own schedule. Bell rang, and I jumped up to go walking, and I thought, well, do I want to go walking, or do I want to stay sitting? And I didn't know, and the mind got all upset about that. It's a genie. This isn't rocket science. It's just now, whether you're going to walk or sit. At that moment, I knew something was going on. Self-judgment is a really good key. So I decided to ask, what's happening? Oh, I could notice. Oh, okay, so this is uncertainty. This is not knowing, and it's unpleasant. So I did what we were doing in the meditation today. Oh, this is uncertainty, and it's unpleasant. And then rather than reacting and trying to push it away, I thought, I'm going to sit down and see what it's like in the body. And so it was kind of like discombobulating, and jingly, dangly, and I sat with it. And about, you know, in a few 30 seconds or so, it settled down a little bit. And the more I could just allow it without pushing and pulling, without aversion or grasping that it be different, the more it settled down. And the more my whole body settled down, and heart and mind. So much so that I started to sit there and enjoy. Unpleasant. It's not so bad if you're not trying to push it to know. It was pleasant to just sit there and not know. It's the pushing to have to know I realized was what was so agitating. So there was uncertainty. That's the dukkha of human experience. And the dukkha of trying to make it different, trying to have certainty, trying to make it go away by being certain, by judging with that whole reactivity spiral. And so I sat there thinking, oh, this is quite pleasant. Uncertainty. Uncertainty. Oh, okay, this is just how it is. It's not knowing. And then it did not take very long. I thought, okay, I'm going walking. Something really important about being with difficulty motion and mind states. And this is what we can learn. This is what we're doing. This is how we can find freedom. And now a pleasant experience. Again, I was on retreat and I was leaving Cloud Mountain. And we were in a rainforest. And it had been beautiful time. I love being in the rainforest. And I was saying goodbye on my last morning and I was looking around. And I suddenly felt myself feeling really discombobulated. That's the clue. That's the key. That's what we want to be able to notice. So I stopped. Okay, discombobulated. What's happening? Oh, pleasant experience of the forest and grasping. I noticed thoughts, oh, I want to take this with me. Oh, I could look around here and it would never be enough. Those thoughts showed me that I was grasping. Now, the question I asked myself was, oh, sweetheart, is it okay that you're looking with grasping? And the response was, of course. Of course there'd be grasping because you're leaving a beautiful place. It's all right, honey. And so that was the shift. That was a shift into the release. It was an allowing of both the pleasant experience and the grasping. So the grasping doesn't even need to go away. We don't have to make that the enemy now. We can hold grasping and non-grasping. And the, of course, practice is my favorite practice for doing that. Of course, sweetheart, there'd be grasping. And then there's no grasping because we're not grasping that the grasping be different. Then I could be with the pleasantness again of the forest and the sadness of leaving. So there, you know, be with the pleasantness and the sadness with wisdom and with peace without push, pull, that it be different. This is the human experience. And this gives us the capacity to be fully here with the human experience without the extra suffering. And so this release, this flavor of freedom is something we can also really tune towards because it's happening more than we think. Aja Buddha Dasa talks about the daily experience of release that we don't notice that flies by our conscious noticing. He says it happens all throughout the day. He says if you have a cup of tea and you just sit down with your cup of tea just for an instant, you know, there's a moment there, right? There can be a moment there, unless you're multitasking. There can be a moment of a little bit of release and we want to be able to notice it. At night when we go to bed, there might be a little bit of release of the trying hard all day. We want to notice it in a way