Bart van Melik: The Power of Perception

Welcome. And I would love to take you on a journey tonight to explore the teachings of the Buddha on perception. I just want to start with the, actually, the teaching of the Buddha that's kind of tattooed in my brain, on my mind. And it goes like this, whatever one frequently thinks about or ponders upon, that becomes the inclination of their mind. And what I love about it is that that expression feels so true. Whatever your mind often thinks about or ponders upon, that becomes its inclination. It already shows that everything, even our mind states, are conditioned. And tonight what I'd love to do is I want to share quite a bit of teachings of the Buddha and quoting the Buddha, but then see if we can use the quotes and the teachings as meditation instructions on perception. Because I found a really powerful teaching where the Buddha is actually connecting perception to getting lost in this overthinking, endless loopholes that we sometimes end up in, in our own minds, or even in the stories of others. And there, perception plays a key role into this. But before going there, I just want to thank you all for having me. It's such a pleasure to be with you all in community right now. I'm actually sitting here in an office at NYU. And there's actually a friend of mine who's sitting next to me, whom I just co-taught a class with that we call Meditations on Earth with students and staff at NYU. But I didn't have time enough to get back to Harlem, where I'm from. And so I'm sitting with you here near Washington Square Park in New York City, just to give you a sense of where I am. And my dear friend Katan just made me some coffee, because that would be helpful too. So I take a sip of that. I just want to invite first a pause. Just checking again how your body is doing. See if you can connect to the body again. There's something really powerful about this embodied listening that you still feel connected to your body. But at the same time, you're also open to hearing, to listening. What are you perceiving right now? It's in the foreground. I find it fascinating that we're constantly perceiving. It's an ongoing process that enables us to make sense of the world, this ability to perceive. I'd like to start tonight's talk with the Buddhist definition of perception. It's almost deceptively simple. He said, perception, perception, it said friend. But what is perception? It perceives friend and therefore it's called perception. And what does it perceive? It perceives blue. It perceives yellow. It perceives red. It perceives white. It perceives friend and therefore it's called perception. And so here the Buddha is giving a definition of what he calls visual perception. I'd like to ask you to see if you can get an experiential feel for it right now. As you just look around, notice when you recognize color of any object that you might see in the space you're in. So on that very basic level, the Buddha is describing perception. What I always do when I have to kind of give a talk on a topic, I go to the Buddha's language. The language in which the teachings are recorded in Pali. And the word we're talking about in that language is Sanya. S-A-N-N-A. But there's waves on the end, Sanya. And I looked it up, but it also says that besides being translated as perception, it's sometimes also translated as cognizing or recognizing. So this is kind of the territory for today's little mini-retreat. This ability of mind, whenever there's a sense input, to recognize the experience, to perceive it. And so you could say that our perceptions, they're based on previous experiences and on our memory. And I found a sutta that's actually called the Sanya sutta, the perception sutta. And I want to read a little bit about that one too. And just to see if you can see that as an instruction from the Buddha to practice, to see if you can experience it. Now he's talking to monks. He says, bhikkhus, that's monks in Pali. There's these six kinds of perception. What six? Perception of forms. Just as you pause right now, like we did with color, see when you look around, if you recognize forms, if you just maybe see all of a sudden an image at home of someone that you know, a picture or an object that you recognize like water bottle, meditation cushion. When you see me Bart, cup, drinking Bart, there's a perception happening through our eyes. The Buddha went on, he said, there's also perception of sounds. Just pause for a moment and become aware of hearing. What's being recognized? Maybe you're already just getting familiar with my voice. Maybe you've never heard it before, but Bart's voice. It's like you're a hum that you might perceive sounds near you or far away. Perceiving, recognizing, perception of odors. See if you can smell something or maybe smell your hand for a moment or anything that's near you, you recognize it. Perception of tastes. If you're not eating right now, maybe just move your tongue around. Can you recognize something? Maybe still from dinner you might have already had or anything else. Then the Buddha said there's perception of what he called tactile objects, which basically is just a sense of touch. Can you recognize the touching sensation of your body, perhaps touching the floor or a cushion or a chair? Can you recognize that experience of touch? Even if you put your hands together, you just recognize the touch, but also maybe recognize and feel the temperature of the hands. What I also find really interesting, Buddha always talks about six senses. He calls the mind another sense organ, if you will. Can you perceive what the Buddha called mental phenomena? Can you recognize a thought you might be having right now or a mood or an emotion? Just to give you a sense of what perception means from the Buddhist perspective. It's about recognizing and what I did is I also went into the dictionary just to see the difference how we usually use that word in our language and that sometimes gets conflated. So I looked up, I think actually the Cambridge dictionary. It said this, perception is a belief or opinion often held by many people and based on how things seem. For example, these photographs will affect people's perceptions of war. So here there's a lot more already kind of interpretation into what we usually call perception. But for the Buddha, it's more like this basic recognizing of a sense experience. But the Buddha's teachings of perception actually kind of fit into a larger understanding of how the mind works. And so I'm going to take you into a lot of different discourses tonight, but all kind of seen as a guided meditation on how perception works. And he's going to give us an example again through the first kind called through the vision or visual perception. Let me just pause again as you get ready for the Buddha's words. And I'm going to ask you to see if you can find one thing in the room, one object that you can keep looking at for a while. See if you can find something in the space you're in and kind of stay there as you kind of hear the teachings. Here come the Buddha's words. He says dependent on the eye and forms, eye consciousness arises. Just feel into that dependent on a healthy eye forms that we can see. Eye consciousness arises. The meeting of these three I call contact. This happens before any conceptualization. You keep looking at that object. Contact is happening. Here comes the second step, again the Buddha. He says with contact as condition, there's feeling. Just check the form that you're looking at, the object you kind of keep looking at. Is that a pleasant experience? Is it kind of unpleasant or you go, it's not that distinct, it's kind of neutral. It might shift. I'm looking at a water bottle and first it was pleasant and now it's more neutral. See if you could try with other objects and notice how you feel about them. Here comes the second step, with contact as condition there's feeling. Especially if you're with people in the room, maybe notice when you see them. Pleasant. The Buddha is saying like based on having a healthy eye, light and forms, and consciousness. Sense impressions happens, contact. With contact as a condition there's feeling, it has a certain feeling quality. Here comes the next step, what one feels one perceives. He says you kind of move around and maybe now also start including other experiences. Maybe something is way more predominant in your body or in your mind. Notice how when the stronger the feeling about something is, the more likely you start to perceive it. For example, a wear of cold hands, they're unpleasant. That's what I'm perceiving the most right now. So with every contact, sense impression, a feeling co-arises and that triggers perception. So now we start to see how perception is actually created. And the Buddha had a name for that, he called that dependent origination, which is kind of a deep teaching and kind of summed up in almost deceptively simple way. The Buddha said, because of this, that arises. But he also says when this is, that is. So for example, when there is contact, there's feeling, it just happens at the same time. But when there's feeling, that gives a condition for us to perceive. So you already can start to see that through this teaching, nothing exists on its own. Nothing is self-standing. In nature, nothing exists alone. Here comes the next teaching. He says, what one perceives, one thinks about. What one perceives, one thinks about. Let me just look around. And if you've found something that you want to keep your eyes on, I'm looking at a pigeon, a stuffed pigeon with glasses on, and it has a necklace that says NYU. Just notice whatever you're looking at is thinking starting to happen because you're perceiving something and you stay a little bit with it. What one perceives, one thinks about. We can just checking what's most predominant right now and it might have a feeling quality, conditioning, and perception. Do you start noticing that you start thinking about it? With contact, there's feeling. What one feels, one perceives. What one perceives, one thinks about. This process takes place all day long and mostly without us actually being mindful of it. And I find it actually completely fascinating. And when I started to get into this teaching, I just realized that my mind, I don't control so much what it thinks. It's actually quite humbling. Most of our thinking is based on these perceptions. But the teaching goes on. I hope you're still with me. So what one perceives, one thinks about. Here comes the next one. What one thinks about, one mentally proliferates. Or in other words, one starts to overthink. Just pause again. See if you can let these words of the Buddha be, taste them, feel them. Are they true for you? Especially when you're not mindful of, when the thinking process kicks in because of a perception. Does it lead to overthinking or obsessive thinking? If you look back at today, there have been moments when you were kind of stuck in a little bit of like a thought loop. It all started with some perception. And in the Pali language, this process of overthinking is called Papansha. It's kind of the mind's tendency to start to elaborate and to spin out into ideas, stories, and particularly around I, me, or mine. And now we're kind of in the heart of the teachings around perception and how powerful they are. That's why I share it with everybody. Like let's call this talk, the power of perception. Because perception is what leads to all this overthinking, these obsessive thoughts that we all have. And I want to share a story that happened to me when I was traveling this summer. I had to travel on a plane and I had to catch another flight. And then when I had to catch that other flight, because my first flight was delayed, I was very, we were just in a rush. Sometimes you can move quickly and with mindfulness, but sometimes you just rush and you're not mindful at all. And we came on time for the plane. But as we were waiting to board the plane, I paused and noticed just how jacked up my system was. And all of a sudden my heart started beating in a different rhythm. It wasn't boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I immediately had the perception, oh, wrong heartbeat. And I'm a heart patient and been operated on the thing. And it was just that moment, it was a tactile contact perception. The feeling was unpleasant as I was waiting there. And I started to also become really warm. And then thinking started. Is it back again? Do I have to call my cardiologist? Again, what one perceives, one thinks about. The stronger the feeling, the more likely that perception starts to kick in so much thinking. But then it also triggered all this, you know, this mental proliferation, the Papanchak kicked in of like, maybe I should have to go back home. And will I, I saw myself even back being at the ER again in the intensive care unit. What one thinks about, one starts to overthink. And also really notice that sense of, I am afraid. And I could feel that in my whole body. And then we moved into the plane and I was just talking to my friend here at NYU that, you know, if you share duke, it feels less intense. But I didn't want to share that duke at the time with my wife, because we were all so miserable. It was the middle of the night. And then I sat in that chair in that, you know, second flight. All of a sudden I realized that the heart started beating in its normal rhythm again. And I could feel a sense of like ease coming over me. But the obsessive thinking was still happening. And then what I did was I just gave it the name, oh, obsessive thinking is happening. And I realized that most of the obsessive thinking was purely speculative. The only thing that was true is that I was overthinking. And I just had that experience. But so often when the mind is in this obsessive thinking mode, it's all speculative, at least in my mind. And in that moment I realized the teaching, oh yeah, this is all based on this perception. And I went back, what was it again? And I just realized again that moment when I stopped and felt that first skipped heartbeat, wrong heartbeat. And it was really helpful to see my whole experience through that teaching of perception. And that's why I think it's so helpful to hear the Dharma, to study the Dharma. Because sometimes then you just start to see that pattern happening that the Buddha saw so clearly and you can name it. What one perceives one thinks about. What one thinks about one mentally proliferates. Now here comes the last part of the teaching, the last element of that Sannyasutva. He said, what one thinks about one mentally proliferates, what one has mentally proliferated as the source, perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation beset a person with respect to the past, future and present forms that are cognizable through the eye. He was still talking about visual perception. So basically what the Buddha is saying is that whatever you frequently start thinking about or perceiving, that starts to become your inclination. Even about things that happen in the past and you think back on them. And I realized that all the overthinking that is so natural that happens for me as soon as I feel something wrong with my heart, it has completely colored my experiences, but everything that's heart related, it has colored it. And so in the same way that Sutta will go on and talks about also the perception of all the other sense impressions. So the same process happens for sounds, for odors, for tastes, for sights and of course mental objects. So let me just pause for a moment, I've spoken a lot and I want to ask you, what perception do you notice in this moment? What's being recognized right now? I'm perceiving like a slightly hungry belly, unpleasant. But this teaching is showing us that what we do in mindfulness practice is recognizing accurately what our perceptions are. That's what we do a lot in mindfulness practice. And then this way we can interrupt also that immediate process of the pansha of overthinking, but also it starts to identify with the particular thoughts that we're having. And so it made me wonder and I want to ask you when we move to the questions and response period, what perceptions for you trigger overthinking or obsessive thinking? Let me just pause for a moment. I was talking about this with a friend a while ago. He said, you know Bart, it's really strange, but I do yoga. But every time I'm in warrior one pose like this, it triggers me thinking about someone who wronged me always. It's like I can just, he said, even doing it right now for you and he did it. I picture that person in front of me who did me dirty. What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about one mentally proliferates. And for me, like the hard thing that can easily trigger a lot of overthinking, but even just the mental image of a particular family member. And I can start overthinking that a lot. And likewise with famous people who have a lot of power, you pick your politician or artist and sometimes hearing their name, there's ear contact, unpleasant, and then perception of unskillful, dangerous person with too much power. And this can easily trigger the overthinking of worry or feeling powerless, angry. But the Buddha said, when this overthinking process is happening, what very often happens too is we start to identify with the thoughts. Like, if I start thinking about a certain individual with a lot of power, I'm usually, I am right about my perception of this person, my opinion. Or I am the one who feels threatened by this person. And I remember when I was stuck in a thought loop of, do I have this condition of AFib again in my heart? It felt very strong like I will be sick again. I am this right now. And the Buddha had a name for that too when we start to strongly identify with a certain experience. He called it mañana, it almost sounds like tomorrow in Spanish. It's spelled M-A and then N-N with the little waves on it. N, M-N-N-A-N-A, mañana. And sometimes it's translated as identifying or conceiving. But we kind of become what we overthink. And what I realize that most of my overthinking, and maybe this is for you too, is about people and their behavior. People we are responsible for, people who might have wronged us, or have wronged others, people we are in love with. And I also teach a lot of inside dialogue, as Niko was mentioning in the beginning, is an interpersonal meditation practice. And the person who taught me this, who is also responsible, almost completely for the whole practice, his name is Gregory Kramer. And I once was in a class with him, actually my very first class. And he starts like this, he goes, most of our suffering is people's suffering. And it feels sometimes really true in this reflection about how perception works, especially when we're not mindful. Because the more we keep proliferating, the more these perceptions start to keep on coloring our future perceptions, as the Buddha said, which leads to a process of getting fixed ideas and views about our perceptions. But then I was thinking, what else is really triggering a lot of overthinking? And then I kind of turned it towards myself. So many of us carry these distorted perceptions about our bodies. Or our mind or our abilities. It's quite painful to notice these distorted perceptions about our body, our personality. Like when I really got sick with my heart, I also started to, I felt this sense of being disappointed in my body, disappointed in that it got so sick. But I also noticed that the disappointment and all the overthinking around it was also about myself or not, I wasn't being maybe responsible enough. Maybe I was the cause for my heart disease. But with this support also specifically of this teaching, I can see how Papanchya and Manjana, how overthinking and identifying, they had that