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Judging and Evaluating Our Practice

Whenever we are meditating, we are constantly judging and evaluating our practice to see how it's going and how we are doing. This is perfectly natural and goes on in any case. But such thoughts are like any other discursive thinking that runs through our mind--except that they are potentially harder to recognize because, as we meditate, gross or subtle thoughts about our practice are somehow more convincing and seem more "real."

The Real Practice of Meditation

Don't think that the real practice of meditation is occurring when you are feeling peaceful, filled with insight and understanding, or deeply inspired. The real practice is occurring when you backside is sore and your legs ache, you are tired and distracted and--although you can't remember why you are here on your cushion and doing this--you continue to work with your breath and try to see what's going on. The "big moments" of peace and insight are just the karmic fruition of the real work, which is basically grimy, sweaty and rather tedious.

The Great Charnel Ground

The space of meditation is the great charnel ground in which all dreams lie dead or dying, including dreams of meditative experience and spiritual attainment.

Our Fickle Mind

The disciplines of dharma--study, practice, and sangha—are critically important because our mind is so fickle. It continuously feels differently about everything including the dharma. Based on those quixotic feelings, it is continuously changing direction, moment by moment, like a sail boat with no rudder. The discipline of dharma is like a rudder: it helps us sail a straight and coherent course from our present state of imprisonment to freedom, even while our mind continues to jump around like a Mexican jumping bean.

Honoring Others and Ourselves

We have no position and no leverage to judge other people’s life. Somebody may sit down and start talking to you and what they are saying to you sounds completely crazy and off the wall. We need to look into that individual and see the life that is trying to happen there. We need to make that life happen. We need to make that person live. And we need to make that person fulfill why they were sent here.

What we are is so sacred. And what others are is so sacred. It’s a life that is needing to happen. Please, just in case anyone here is judging themselves, please don’t do that. It is such a waste of time and such a loss. Instead of judging, how about honoring what is going on within us and making it live, giving it room to live and express itself, fulfill itself. That’s why we’re here.

We are here to discover the life that we have been given charge of. And this is one of the few places in the universe, strangely enough, that we have the room to actually make that discovery. In order to do this, of course, we have to take ourselves completely out of it. The ego has no role to play at all except as a kind of distant observer. And we need to train the ego to be a custodian of this karma and to affirm who we are rather than deny.

Custodians of Our Karmic Package

We must take an attitude of mother’s love toward whatever arises. We are custodians of this karmic package that is us. And we may feel “I don’t like this karmic package,” or “I wish I had a different karmic package that I was custodian of.” But the universe, in it’s infinite mystery, has produced all of these moments of karma, where karma comes together. And we are an example. We have the responsibility to honor this coming together of karma, which is our body and our conditioned mind.

We are ultimately not this body and we are not this conditioned mind. We are not our thoughts. We are not our feelings. We are not any of it ultimately. That’s not who we are. We are the Buddhanature. We are enlightened. Within us there is enlightenment. And that enlightenment has been asked to carry and be responsible for this karmic package and this coming together of causes and conditions that we call “me.”

This “me” is not an unfortunate accident in the universe. We regard it from the view point of our limited perception. We regard ourselves as a somewhat unfortunate occurrence. That is only our limited and uninformed point of view. That’s a point of view that we hold because of what we have heard, been taught, read, and thought. But the fact is that this karmic thing that is me is a rare occurrence in the universe. In fact, it’s absolutely unique; it’s never happened before.

And this has occurred because of what we have to do in this life. We have this karmic coming together. This karmic package has a function to perform in life. We are here for some karmic reason, which we don’t know. But we can find out by looking into our being and seeing what happens when we stop judging ourselves. We see what starts happening with us and what kind of direction things go in. That’s how we find out why we’re here. By sitting on the cushion and having our upheavals, our anger, our longing, our depression, whatever it may be, that is the process of beginning to find out why we are here.

Our job is to honor this body and this mind. And not in terms of what we think we should be, but in terms of what we actually are right now, our karmic situation. And maybe we have a day to live. We should honor our life and our death. There’s no need for us to judge what’s happening, because we have no way to judge the life that is this life. We have no way to do that. The tools that we use to judge ourselves are completely inadequate.

Weeds and Flowers

We are like a garden that is just beginning to grow. Our job is to nurture that garden and not judge it. You might be a new gardener and plant a lot of seeds in the millions of seeds of all kinds. You didn’t know the names of many of them and you definitely didn’t plan the garden. Then in the spring, all these little shoots come up. And if you’re impatient, if you are not a good gardener, you start trying to figure out prematurely and without sufficient information which ones are the weeds.

It is very important that, as those little shoots are coming up, we don’t try to decide which ones are flowers and which ones are the weeds. We don't try to decide which ones are edible and which ones are poisonous. We let the garden grow and postpone the decision about which ones to weed out. We water the garden with the water of meditation and let the sun of loving kindness warm the soil and nurture the plants. That’s our job. That’s all we have to do.

Later, when the time comes for us to weed, we realize that there actually aren’t any weeds. Some of the plants that, in the beginning, looked the most weed-like, turn out to be the most beautiful. Some of the ones that we thought were poison, turn out to be medicinal herbs. And so, we realize, “It’s really a good thing I didn’t start pulling out these plants and figuring out which ones are the good ones.” Many times, the plants that we thought were really good plants turn out to be very mediocre; really not the most beautiful or powerful plants in the garden at all. But still, even they are useful in their own way and have their own kind of beauty. So, in our person, nothing at all is extraneous.

Striving for Wholeness

Usually what happens in life when we are going through something painful, something unpleasant or something unwanted, something that doesn’t fit into our current scheme, we react against it. We shut it down. If it’s a painful emotion, we try to discharge it in some way. We might talk to somebody, yell at somebody, say something to somebody, distract ourselves in a certain way, or push the emotion down underground. All of those are ways of preventing the mind from regaining its natural wholeness.

There’s something in us that wants to be whole. There’s also something in us that wants to be perfect. But that’s the ego. Perfectionism is a function of the ego. It’s basically the ultimate ego trip. “I’m going to be perfect.” “I’m going to do this perfectly.” But there’s something deeper in us that wants to be whole.

You really have a choice in life and everybody has this choice. You can either strive to be perfect or you can strive to be whole. If you strive to be whole, you have to surrender to your process. You have to surrender to the seasons of your own psyche, of your own internal working. You have to give yourself room to be in darkness, to be depressed. You have to give yourself room to be tired. You have to give yourself room to be completely uninspired. And you have to realize that allowing yourself to be depressed, tired and totally uninspired is the ultimate trust in the universe. Most of us can’t do that.

Physical Pain, III

I’m not saying that we should have good alignment and shouldn’t have these pockets. The human condition is to have poor alignment, to be totally uptight, and to have resistance throughout our body. That’s the nature of the human ego and the situation we’re in as human beings. So the path of meditation largely involves working with our body. And when we feel physical pain, believe it or not, that is the process of the body beginning to wake up.

Physical Pain, II

One thing we notice is when something occurs that we don’t want to feel, we freeze. We freeze ourselves against it but actually we do feel it. We may block it out of our awareness but we trap it somewhere in our body. When we start meditating, we find we are filled with tension and patterns of holding and unconsciousness. There is part of us that would prefer to be dead than to feel so we freeze it in our bodies. If we hold it too long or too much, we eventually get sick.

Physical Pain, I

The basic underlying view of physical pain is that our bodies and our minds are not two, they’re one. And when we are feeling pain in our bodies, physical discomfort, it’s because our alignment isn’t right and we’re holding on in different places. The reason we’re holding is because we’re anxious. Our body is filled with pockets of unconsciousness and numbness. Stored in the hundreds of pockets of the body are trapped memories, thoughts, feelings, and things that we don’t want to feel. We started developing patterns of avoiding uncomfortable feelings as far back as childhood and probably as far back as when we were in the womb.

Rushing Around and Doing Things

We may think that rushing around and doing things is the most engaging and compelling thing that we can do with our lives. But, if we do, we have never experienced the real peace of the bliss of phenomena that arise and reach their fulfillment spontaneously and entirely on their own, with no intervention from our side.

Resistance

Any one who thinks they don't have any resistance to meditation is most likely fooling themselves. Of course, our precious little egos resist everything all the time, but it is in meditation that we see our resistance the most clearly. And only in meditation can we work with it the most directly. We meditate to see, work through, and abandon our resistance to reality, the resentment, disdain, and rejection that goes on all the time with us and leads to such suffering for ourselves and others.

True Happiness

True happiness has nothing to do with immediate pleasure or pain. True happiness occurs when we are acting in a way where there is no cause for regret, no sense of holding back, and nothing amiss.. Perhaps the only time we ever really experience this kind of happiness is when we are practicing meditation. And we experience it throughout our practice period as an underlying joy, far more fundamental than the comfort or discomfort of the moment—joy that we can open to “what is.” But it is subtle and, because we are often tied up with our irritation or impatience, we often fail to see it.

Once you stop worrying

Once you stop worrying about whether you exist or not, then things become very interesting. The mind is incredibly alive, sensitive, and active. Clouds of energy are continually on the move in our mind. There is brooding; there is fire energy; there is big space and little space, cool space and hot space; our awareness can be bright or black or dull. Various familiar or bizarre thoughts pass through. The important point is that none of it is personal. There is no question here of a personal self. That is just not part of the picture. For example, thoughts of "me" and "I" are among the most bizarre and unlikely of all.

If you approach meditation with too much worry of how it is supposed to be and what you are supposed to experience, then you won't be able to realize what is actually going on. And what is actually going on unfolds continually and invites our inspection. What we find out is very, very interesting although, because it is always the unprecedented life of our mind that displays itself, we can never fully put any of it into words or even into thoughts. Experiencing our own mind, we are left with nothing to do and nothing to say. Hence the “silence of the Buddha.”

Things are fundamentally groundless

The buddhahdarma says, "things are fundamentally groundless." We can see this very vividly in our own lives. Some people actually think that they have secure ground in their lives, their jobs, their relationships, finances, whatever. In that case, they put a lot of energy into trying to maintain that secure ground that they think they have. This is the conventional approach. While it may temporarily produce a modicum of comfort and security, it doesn't solve--or even address--the fundamental problems of our lives, namely that—at best--things are always uncertain and we live on the edge of death.

Then there is the approach of the buddhadharma. Most of us practitioners feel quite groundless a lot of the time, if not most or even all of the time. We want to get things together; we want situations to be clear; we want people to understand and appreciate us; we want to know where we stand and who we are. But somehow, we can never get any of this to happen in a definitive way. We feel shaky and unresolved about the important things in our lives. Our relationships are problematic and we cycle between hope (that they’re working) and fear (that they’re not). Our employment situations are marked by uncertainty, lack of clarity, and questionable future prospects. People are in their own worlds and we can never get them to be or do what we want. And our own sense of identity is constantly up in the air. We can never quite arrive anywhere or come to any definite conclusions about ourselves.

As the dharma says, groundlessness is not a temporary experience or a random insecurity and it is not a problem that can be fixed. It is just the way things are. In meditation practice, we have a chance to be with that feeling of groundlessness and explore it. And groundlessness eventually opens up into the dharmadhatu, the limitless space of mind in which everything is free to be what it is and what occurs is seen as the play of wisdom.

It's never going to happen!

When we contemplate our practice, a lot of times we think that we are going to work all kinds of things out. We are going to solve a lot of problems and our lives are going to be much better. It is more beneficial to realize that such a thing is never going to happen. It is simply never going to happen.

Things do change, but it is not always the things we want to and rarely in the way we want them to. The less time we put into thinking how great our life will be because we meditate, the better.

What does change, however, is our point of view on our problems. We continue to struggle and wrestle with our problems because that is how karma works. But, at a certain point, the struggling becomes less impressive and less compelling. It is like watching a professional wrestling match. In the beginning, you might find it interesting and engaging. But, after a while, you start to realize that these people aren't really wrestling, they are just faking the whole process. In spite of all the shouting and yelling, and the apparent pain, there is really nothing happening here. Then it begins to become boring and uninteresting.

At the same time, you notice something more compelling which is the stillness of the mind behind it all. But it would be mistaken to think that all the ego-nonsense just goes away. It doesn't and doesn't need to. In fact, we begin to realize that it is the fuel for our journey and our way of connecting with other people. No ego means no path and no compassion.

In the case of a dead end

In meditation, usually there is some kind of journey to make. In this case, it comes to us as we sit and it generally has nothing to do with our expectations. But sometimes there seems to be no journey at all and we are sitting there facing a brick wall. It just feels like a dead-end. In that case, be like Bodhidharma [founder of Ch'an, Zen] and sit facing the wall for seven years, with your eye lids cut off. I.e., just look without blinking or shying away.

What are we trying to do, anyway?

What we are trying to do with our meditation practice is to find out how samsara works. When you see exactly how samsara is operating then right then, at that moment, you are free. What goes on in us that we get so tied up? So let's look right at our most difficult emotions and states of mind. The more turbulent and frantic our mental state is, the more worthwhile it is to look right into it because the more we are likely to find out.

Too much ambition

Too much ambition ties our mind up in knots and puts it into a deep freeze. You can really see this when you sit down to meditate. Ambition includes not only excessive expectations in relation to our practice but also in relationships, work, and other areas of life. We are not talking about getting rid of our ambition. We are what we are and when we practice, it is what we are. At that moment, that is the only possible basis for our meditation. Instead, the point is to see how our ambition reflects itself in our practice. When you let your expectations go, then you can feel ambition as a kind of subtle speed, lack of space, and over all impatience. Just be with it and watch it, let go into it. That in itself is how the journey to "beyond ambition" is made. It is important to balance shamatha and vipashyana. In practice, it is important to balance shamatha and vipashyana. Shamatha is applying the technique that we are using, while vipashyana is noticing what is going on. As you are working with the technique, take an interest in where you mind is, what it wants to do, where it is going. How are things at that moment? As you sit, what unfolds? Sometimes we become overly preoccupied with the technique to the point where most of our energy is going into the process of focusing and the rest into thinking about what we are doing--judging and evaluating. At that point, there isn't any vipashyana. It is important to be relaxed with whatever technique you are using. Work with it, but always attend to how things are with you and what is going on.

It is easy to go along

It is easy to go along in life and let ourselves be driven by the winds of our own karma. Then we have our successes and our failures without having to put out any real effort. Of course, we do think we are working ourselves to death, but actually we are being lazy. And, of course we do feel constantly dissatisfied, we complain morning, noon, and night about our lives, and we are continually imagining how things could be better. But this is the easy way.

It is much harder to turn around and actively look at our own karma, face to face. This is the path of meditation and this is what meditation enables us to do.

Leaving our practice open ended

If you give your practice enough space and time, things will eventually settle. We can't always do that, but once or twice a week we should make an effort to leave our practice a little open-ended. It is often in the “open-ended” places that the mystery and the magic can really unfold.

Non-doing

All doing must begin in non-doing. Otherwise we are just recycling our old habitual patterns. And what's the point of that? So we always need to begin with non-doing. How do we do that? First, we need to train in non-doing, which is what our daily meditation practice is about. And then, in situations, we should take a moment to connect back to that 'nothing happening' state of mind, before we proceed.

Out of non-doing, what needs to be done will eventually make itself known. That alone, is real doing. Anything else is ultimately completely ineffectual and futile, although the whole world may be taken in by us and may be bowing down to us in praise for what we have done.

In our non-doing, we should wait until what needs to be done shows itself. We should take the attitude that even if the universe comes to an end, we are going to wait. What if we have to do something sooner than that? We should take the attitude that we are going through the motions, we are not really doing anything at all, we are just wasting time — until something authentic turns up.

Practice is not a substitute for life

Practice should not be a substitute for life. Rather, it should be an incentive for life, a crucible for life, and a way to work with life. What is life? As the Buddha said, it is suffering. We mustn't expect practice to change that fact.

Does practice make our lives more bearable, more workable, and more inspiring? Of course. But it's important that we don't look at practice as a way to repeal the first law of existence: life is suffering.

The Nausea of Samsara

Let your practice period each day be a time to attend to the sickness, the sores, the nausea of samsara. How do we "attend"? Simply sit there, letting the bad feeling, the slightly revolting feeling be there, feeling its distressing or disgusting nature, just letting our awareness enter in to it. The sickness of samsara, the dread or nausea in this moment, becomes our ground and our path. When this occurs, let us not think that there is any problem. In fact, it is our promise. Let us stay with it and see where it leads us.

Our Mistakes

We need to appreciate our mistakes and the ways in which we seem to mess ourselves up. In the life of a practitioner, those seemingly false steps represent the ripening of karma and the exhaustion of evil deeds. We are so wise to make those mistakes! Some kind of deep wisdom is breaking through when we experience a pratfall. The important point is to join our mistakes immediately with practice. Simply rest in the embarrassment or the shock, and don't judge! Rest in the painful energy and see what comes along from it. That is known as bringing (apparent) obstacles to the path. I say "apparent" because situations and events only become obstacles when we do that funny thing with our mind and make them so in our thinking.

Apparent Obstacles

It is perfectly okay to practice when you feel that you have lost your ground, lost track of yourself, and aren't sure exactly what you are doing or what you are trying to do in your practice. In fact, that is the best time to practice. It is an important moment and an important opening. In that case just sit, feel your radical uncertainty, and look at what is going on with you. See what evolves and where it leads.

No Shadows

When you realize that there are no shadows in life, this creates tremendous freedom and joy. "No shadows" means that everything that presents itself is just as it should be, fully displayed in its own nature and for its own purpose. "No shadows" means that we do not have to compare things to some supposed standard or judge them, that to do so is to retreat from their brilliance, their meaning, and their power. "No shadows" means that we can be completely direct with things in life. We don't need to hesitate before them or retreat. We can enter into the full experience. Whoever understands this is truly free.

When You Are Feeling Wretched

When you are feeling wretched, think of your meditation cushion. When you are feeling depressed, confused, excessively paranoid or poverty stricken, think of your next meditation session. Think that you will have an opportunity to sit down and work with this painful and seemingly solid state of mind. Realize that all states of mind become workable on the cushion, and feel joy that we have such a priceless resource as our practice. When you are feeling trapped or hemmed in by solid pain, realize that this is just a temporary situation and that soon you will be able to take the elixir that dissolves obstacles and gets the path moving again.

"Answers"

It's natural to work on problems when we sit, but we should always keep in mind that "answers" often as not turn out to be just other random thoughts and evaporate like the morning dew.

Important Thoughts

In our meditation, we sometimes have important thoughts and in our practice, we may find ourselves, day after day, thinking seemingly significant things about our lives. Sometimes we think we are working basic things out and solving fundamental problems. All of this thinking is important, in a way and can impact our lives in good and major ways. But we always have to remember that the thoughts are a by product- a result of our practice. Our meditation practice comes first, last, and foremost, always. Even the great thoughts—especially the great thoughts—are nothing more than a byproduct of our practice. We should let the important thoughts have their day but never for a moment think that they can replace our practice in any way.

Because We Know the Background

Dharma practitioners go through absolutely everything that everyone else does- of course! The difference is that their lives and experiences are the foreground, while the background is the sacredness of all existence, the primordial abiding of all that is. And, strangely enough, this background does not make it more difficult to engage the foreground. Quite the opposite. Because we sense its totality and its perfection of being, we can live much more completely and engage the foreground--our individual lives--with much less hesitation, with much more of a whole and trusting heart.

Feel Sympathy for the Accomplished

Feel sympathy for truly accomplished people because they are just as puzzled and in awe of the gifts that come through them as you are, and probably more so.

When someone judges you

When you see someone judging you and trying to fit you into their little conceptual boxes because they can't deal with what you are, don't be angry with them just be sad.

Men and Women

Men and women should have profound sympathy for each other. Women should look at men and have profound sympathy for them because men have separated from the totality and become these one-sided creatures so that there can be life and existence. And men should have profound sympathy for women because they have given up half of themselves in order for being and life to come about. Although we usually don't realize it, our lives express a profound, pre-existing generosity that, in our being, we have let go of the whole and come into this world partial and fragmented so that all of this can be. Aware of this, we would do well to give rise to profound sympathy for one another.

The Ultimate "Wild Place"

Many of us love truly wild places--stretches of forest where there are no paths, mountain valleys unseen by human eyes, the sea in a savage storm. And rightly so, we should love the wild places because they are so completely themselves, so fresh and pristine, so beyond the contamination of human design. But ultimately what we long for in the wild places is closer to home. We are always seeking in the outside world the utter wildness that is actually our own innermost mind. This is not the thinking mind, but the primordial awareness that underlies our ordinary consciousness-- an awareness that is blazing in it's clarity, savage in it's accuracy, terrifyingly vast, limitless in its depth, and supercharged with energy churning and roiling. When we experience this primordial wildness, then we are face to face with the source, the origin of all wildness and our spirit is at peace.

Choices?

Sometimes we feel we have a lot of choices in how we follow the spiritual path. Actually, things are far more choiceless than we realize. We have to be as neurotic as we are and we have to be as sane as we are. No Choice. Our wildness, our calm each has its place. And we have to make our mistakes and get lost also: no choice. What changes as we go along is not that we get rid of our neurosis, our confusion, and our "mistakes", but that we come to see the wisdom in them and the path they provide for us and the blessings they contain. Then we realize that the choiceless neurosis and sanity is not only the only way, but the very best way.

We Can Stop Any Time

Sometimes we feel that we have accumulated so much karma that we can't really follow the path; that we have to dig ourselves out somehow. Unfortunately, of course, more struggle creates more karma. Actually, our karmic situation is perfect, just as it is. We can stop right now, and begin to relate with our life as it is. We can begin to let the space of reality--the Dharmadhatu-- show us how to be, how to move forward, what to do. That is exactly what the Buddha did. We can just stop at any time and all and everything will be there, just as it needs to be.

I Don't Know If I Can Do This

Student: I don't know if I can do this?
Teacher: I don't know if you can either.
Student: How does one know?
Teacher: In one way, you don't know, ever, until you attain enlightenment. And then the thought doesn't cross your mind. In another, do you think you have other choices? If you do, it's going to be a long journey.

Be a Mystery to Yourself

Don't be afraid to be a mystery to yourself. So many times we do things or take certain directions that we don't understand. Only much later, we see how that certain direction fits in perfectly and inevitably to the overall pattern of our life. That is why it is so important to be willing to take a chance on our inspiration, our intuition, our hunger. When we override our deepest desires with "practical, " "reasonable" considerations we are not only wasting our time, we are passing up precious opportunities that will not come again.

How To “Resolve” Problems

In order to be resolved, our problems have to pass through our practice. It would be a mistake to think that we can just meditate and our problems will go away by themselves. When we meditate, we make a relationship with basic awareness and in that context our problems arise, display themselves, have their life, exhaust themselves, and dissolve. Each time this occurs, part of their karmic charge is dissipated. Our job is merely to make room for this to occur. We do that through meditating.

Surrender!

The teachings say "surrender". But the fact is, we are incapable of true surrender to anything. Our surrender is usually just another ploy of ego to stay on top. Hence we meditate, to put ourselves in a kind of state the end result of which is that somehow surrender does occur. But it is never "me" who "surrenders". Somehow, practice brings us to the end of our resources, the end of our rope, and eventually we have no choice but to give in.

Entrenched Cynics

Some of us are such entrenched cynics that even when we can see the obvious results of practice right before our eyes, we still refuse to believe it and somewhere think that striving for happiness in the ordinary way is somehow going to work.

Samsara Is Like a Dream

Sometimes we hear it said that "Samsara is like a dream". On one level, this means that, like the dream of a dreamer, samsara can seem to be very real. Yet as in the case of a dream, when we wake up, we realize it was a fragment of our imagination- nothing more. However, there is a deeper level. When we rest in the nature of unborn awareness, our own fundamental state, the seemingly solid world of everyday experience appears as transparent, unreal, and dream like. When we watch fog rolling across a meadow and assuming one shape, now another, we find ourselves not quite invested in any shape that may momentarily appear. In a similar way, we are not quite invested in the misty and ever changing shapes that samsara produces.

Caught!

We practitioners are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, we see that the usual samsaric pursuit of happiness is not going to yield lasting results. On the other, practice is a bear. But let us consider ourselves well-caught in our dilemma. The lineage has finally caught up with us and in its grip lies our only hope for freedom.

The Price of Admission

We mustn't think that the price of entering into any practice mandala--whether dathun, retreat or whatever--will be small. The monetary cost is the least of it. We will need to make offerings of our neurosis, discomfort, and suffering at each step--all those things which, while painful, define us and give us a sense of ground and familiar identity. But of course the eventual rewards are beyond any price you can measure.

The World of Retreat

When we are in retreat, in a unique way, we are in the world of the lineage in which everything that occurs is working with us and everything is part of the journey they are leading us through. If we are energized or tired, if we feel sick or afraid, even if we are so worn out we can't pay attention or concentrate at all, such experiences are all part of our journey to the center. The center of what? Reality. Ourselves. This is why the retreat experience is so important and sacred.

How to enter the Dharmadhatu

How can we enter the dharmadhatu, the "realm of reality"? "As soon as we liberate your dualistic thinking, as soon as we forget self and other—or more accurately notice how we are always forgetting them-- in that moment we are in the Dharmadhatu.

On the Practice of Being "Me"

We spend far too much time being "me." For a few minutes each day, it would be most beneficial to practice being somebody entirely different. The Dagara people, in central West Africa, have a saying, "never take the same path home twice." On the outer level, you don't want wild animals and enemies to know your patterns. But the inner meaning is, 'take a path that is fresh, new, and unknown, for this invites intelligence, awareness, and discovery.’

In the same way, if we can put ourselves in the position of not following along the usual ruts of our habitual identity, if we can allow ourselves to be somebody different just for a bit--there can be much benefit. How do you do this? Just look for unusual, unexpected openings in the jungle of your life and step through, without a thought.

Just working with the breath

Just working with the breath, just trying to pay attention to it and return to it when the mind wanders, brings you closer to awareness itself.

Beneath our daylight world of anxious activity, there is a process going on...

We have to realize that beneath all of our struggle, our daylight world of anxious activity, there is a process going on - a process of great depth and reality. This is the process of the lineage, of the buddha nature, of our unfolding existence, whatever you want to call it. This is why relaxation in meditation—and in ordinary life - is so important, because it enables us to touch, to tap into that process, and eventually to identify with it. Only in this way can we discover our "true life", which is always coming into being beyond the armed struggle of our ego.