Heart Sutra Internet Class

[Burning Dog of Irony (Ken McLeod)]

Hi, I'm opening up a forum for discussion of any and all topics related to the Heart Sutra Internet Class, which started last Monday.

[Pat Stacy]

Well this is it, isn’t it? We have a fear of “being in pain and ill health and being dependent, helpless” and we call that “what’s ultimately true.” While it does seem to be what’s true, the basis of all our fears, I suspect we just haven’t gone far enough yet (myself included). I suspect it is the red herring being waved about by self, the ultimate misdirection of the master magician. “Look over here, these horrible things could happen to you!” so we should---what---be constantly vigilant, focused on the inevitable? While it's very helpful to know what is causing the fear, to move beyond it we have to see its nature or its essence. Is this how Avalokitesvara can say,

“…no old age and death, and also no extinction of it”
“…no fears exist”

How is this possible, right in the middle of chronic pain, incontinence and vomiting, or the idea of them? Not getting rid of them and also not believing they are the ultimate truth? Is it possible to see emptiness in this experience?

“Forget about looking.
That’s just how you keep your distance.

To see
You have to
Step into the jaws of experience.

Chew and be chewed,
Until nothing is left.”

Ken McLeod, "An Arrow to the Heart," p. 52.

You do it, Ann, when you accept help and your experience is one of “overwhelming gratitude” instead of humiliation or the dread you have when you imagine what it will be like ahead of time.

My cat is in my lap as I am typing this. . . and she isn’t smelling too good. “No nose, no smell, no perception” (Laugh)

Cool Budgie of Pedagogy (Pat)

[Turning Falcon of Passionate Intensity (Ann)]

Thank you oh so Cool Budgie -- I am in a situation right now where all that we've been talking about in this exchange is totally "live" and I begin to see that it's a matter of facing and feeding my demons -- and not just once.

With a loving mind, cherish more than a child
The hostile gods and demons of apparent existence
And tenderly surround yourself with them
............Machig Labdron

[Chou Dog of Dis-illusioned Allegory]

Somewhere recently I read a story about Milarepa that goes something like this:

Milarepa was living in a cave, meditating, and he was being harrassed by lots of demons. He tried everything he knew to get rid of them, but all his magic and meditations totally failed to even distract them, let alone dispel them. So finally one day he just said, Okay, fine, come ahead in and eat me if that's what you want!
And they all disappeared...

[Pat Stacy]

Milarepa has a modern-day counterpart. My friend attended night college courses at a junior college fifty miles away. She was a single woman in her fifties dealing with alcoholism and the dysfunction of having been raised by wolves---the usual. The return drive at night along dark mountain roads terrified her, but she was determined to get her degree. Sometimes she would shake so hard she would have to pull over and wait for the fear to subside.

Near the end of the drive, there was a long frightening uphill grade that was always the worst. On this hill she would feel a monstrous presence in the dark back seat, poised to devour her. This perception would build and build, and was so vivid she was afraid to look. She knew what she would see would be worse than anything she could imagine.

One night, as the terror grew and grew, she felt she couldn’t go any farther. She pulled off the road, turned and said, “Okay, get me!” and Milarepa’s miracle happened. All the terror vanished instantly, and she drove the rest of the way laughing with delight.

When she told me about that night, embarrassed by the disclosure of her fear, all I could say was that it was the most courageous act I had ever heard. Forget about running into a burning building to save a child. People who do that say they aren’t thinking about anything except the child. They aren’t afraid. They aren’t confronting their own demons the way this woman did.

When you hear this story you might think, “Oh how could an intelligent, grown woman be afraid of a monster in the back seat of her car?” But this kind of fear doesn’t have anything to do with logic and reason. It’s a visceral slice exposing the intense vulnerability we all carry. It takes a supreme act of courage to face it and it’s always empty. We all live in Milarepa's cave.

Cool Budgie of Pedagogy (Pat)

[Sharon Allen]

Abundant accolades to Ken for providing us with this visually informative format for experiencing the class. It's such a pleasure to have this depth of presentation "alive" as if we are in a room with him. This is the beauty of the techno age we find ourselves in. It doesn't just happen without great effort. Thanks, Ken.

[Cynical Heart of Mellowness (Greg Germano)]

In the second class, Ken gave us examples of how to read through this (or any) sutra, observing the shifts in experience as each line is read. I worked with this approach during my practice this morning. After settling in for about 30 minutes, I spent 30 minutes just (mentally) dropping the lines "saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature", "form is emptiness", "emptiness is form", "form is not other than emptiness", "emptiness is not other than form". The shifts I experience were much more marked than when Ken walked us through this process during class. I suspect part of this was just the basis of attention I established first. Part of this might also be some kind of time-delay effect of the material from the class sinking in.

My experiences of the shifts varied from feelings of opening, the bottom dropping out from under me, uncertainty, clarity, fear, and relaxation, just to name a few.

Has anyone else tried this?

Also, Ken mentioned in class (the "first" second class, the one that didn't get archived) some questions that went along with the lines from the sutra. My memory says that the one that went along with "form is emptiness" is "what is this experience"? The one for "emptiness is form", I think, is "where does this experience exist?" or something like that. I can't remember what the last two are, or if there was one for "saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature". Does anyone remember this? Or, Ken, if you're listening, could you comment?

Thanks!
-greg

[Cynical Heart of Mellowness (Greg Germano)]

I have a question about the five skandhas, or rather some experiences I'd like to understand what the skandhas are through (forgive my horrible grammar). (Yikes, that's almost so bad it's hard to tell what I mean... let's try again)

I would like to deepen my understanding of the defnition of the skandhas by offering up some experiences and taking a shot at where they fit in the skandha framework. (that's better)

I understand the skandha of form to be the set of experiences that are associated with the 6 senses, the raw sensations. The skandha of feeling is the tug/push towards either like or dislike, or the lack of tug (indifference) that comes up with the sensations of the skandha of form.

I had what I think might be a very direct experience of the skandha of concept tonight. I flopped down on the couch and said "I'm tired". As I said this, I noticed that there was sense of confirmation to my statement, like I wouldn't really be tired unless I labeled it as such.

I get pretty fuzzy on experiential examples of mental formation and consciousness. I'd like to hear what others think about my examples above, and what their experiences of the skandhas are like. This seems like a valuable experiement in investigating these skandhas to see if they really are empty :)

-greg

[Pat Stacy]

Greg, I heard you ask your question again last night during the heart sutra class. That reminded me that I wanted to try to answer your post on this forum. It’s hard to talk about bundles of stuff. Maybe we could just talk about one of the senses and that way we wouldn’t have to define anything. We all know what hearing is. If we talk about hearing we don’t have to use any Pali, Sanskrit, or Tibetan terms. My first experience with what this sutra is describing was with the sense of hearing.

This sutra is telling about experience, and in some sense, also delivering it, as Ken pointed out. When I try to describe this experience, all we will have is words on a screen and some general impressions. If we follow the directions we can have the experience itself. It probably will not be exactly as described, so the remembered description itself can get in the way of the direct experience. It’s important to keep this in mind so as to not try to duplicate the experience, just follow the directions and see what happens.

I asked my teacher to describe right comprehension--you know the first part of the Eightfold Path. I thought this was a perfectly normal question and I expected a straightforward answer. He told me that it was not the job of a teacher to explain things to the mind. He said a teacher was there to provide the student with the experience, not the answer. He told me to try to hear the answer, to pay attention to how I did hearing, how I had the experience of hearing. Hearing would seem to have nothing to do with comprehension or right view, but it’s hard to go looking for right view. Looking at hearing is easy.

I listened to him talk as he answered other people’s questions, and I used his voice to pay attention to how I hear. The first thing I noticed was that I use my right ear to listen. The left one only backs up the right ear and helps locate the direction of sounds. Then I became aware of a tension around my ear canal, not a strain to pick up sounds, but a squeeze to keep out too much sound, or something I might not want to hear. There was also a tiny fear about letting in all sound, about not controlling it. I relaxed that tension when I discovered it.

The next thing I was aware of was the sensation of the sounds hitting my eardrum, and the drum itself vibrating with the sounds. We almost never pay attention in such close detail, but we are actually able to feel the vibrations. While I was paying close attention to the hearing process, I also had the feeling that my teacher was aware of what I was doing.

After the awareness of the eardrum vibrating, I noticed the vibrations were also in my chest, my lungs or upper chest. They hit there all the time but go unnoticed unless there is a particularly loud deep sound, such as thunder or a gunshot. After the chest awareness came the sensation of the sounds hitting my heart, not my physical heart, but that area. It is a beautiful experience to be able to feel them as they hit there and something there vibrates in return, something there “hears.” “Something” is an awkward word for this. Maybe it’s better to say hearing happens here. I don’t know how to describe the shift that happens here between the self that perceives and just pure experience. At this point tears started flowing down my cheeks.

I think Buddhism calls this “the heart cave.” It has some of the characteristics of a cave. It is silent, so sound can appear. It is dark, so light can appear. It is smooth and empty, so the disturbance of a thought can be noticed. It is hidden, so we rarely visit it consciously.

My teacher went on speaking, answering other questions. He interrupted his talk abruptly at one point, turned to me and said, “When you eat, taste tasting; when you look, see seeing; when you feel, feel feeling; and when you hear, hear hearing.”

Seeing also opened up right along with my experience of hearing “hearing.” The light in the room got brighter and everything looked different, crisp, clear, and somehow perfect. Then he said to me, “So now you know what right comprehension is, don’t you? By direct experience!”

This was just hearing, just one of the senses. The same thing can happen with sight, touch, etc., and has from time to time. My point in relating this is that we are all in the habit of limiting what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. We decide moment by moment what will be “real” for us. We actively, if unconsciously, select, from millions of sense impressions, what is convenient to know; and we shut out the rest. And while we are busy picking this or that, we completely ignore the matrix within which these impressions arise. This is why a teacher’s instruction to “pay attention to this” or “ignore that” is so valuable. And if I had been given the answer I wanted that day I still wouldn’t know what right comprehension is. I would have an idea and not the direct experience.

My teacher always directed my attention beyond the activity of the senses to what lies underneath and supports my entire world. He wanted me to see the nature of all experience, how each sense works. Knowing one means knowing them all. The operating mechanism is the same. This penetration to the heart of all experience is what the Heart Sutra is addressing.

Greg, you said you flopped down on the couch and were aware of the thought “I’m tired.” As you did this action you ignored the feeling of weightlessness as you started to fall, the sensation of falling, the sound of the couch as you impacted it, the vibrations throughout your body from contact with the couch, and maybe a feeling of “Ah” or relief, and many, many other sense impressions. You selected that one thought out of all the ones available, and you had a sense that that thought added validity to the feeling of being tired. That though arose within emptiness the same as sound does and it can be traced back to its home, but it’s harder to get there with thought---at least for me. For others, and maybe you, it might be exactly the place to pay attention.

Cool Budgie of Pedagogy (Pat)

[Cynical Heart of Mellowness (Greg Germano)]

Pat, thank you for your generosity in sharing your experiences. Your comments about the volume of sensations that are commonly ignored matches with my experience.

My teacher has suggested a body-based practice to help me tune in with bodily sensations, and little bit by little bit, I'm discarding my notions about what this practice is supposed to be like and just doing it. I hear echos of my own experience in what you report, although you are a much quicker study than I.

It's a bit ironic that it seems such a struggle to stop struggling...

(The above is my inital post. I'm going to think a bit more about this and respond more later. -g)

[Cynical Heart of Mellowness (Greg Germano)]

As witnessed by most of what I do, I don’t seem to be very good at taking guidance… I know Ken suggested that a pursuit of “labeling experience as this skandha or that skandha is not particularly helpful,” but I might just have to go down that path a ways with my own legs to see the wisdom of his advice… Perhaps this post will help in that little journey.

The purpose of my question was to enhance the experience of resting with the line from the sutra “In the same way, feeling, concept, mental formation, and consciousness are emptiness.”

My reasoning goes something like this: I have some concrete examples of “form is emptiness,” because I have clear examples of experiences that are categorized under the skandha of form, and I can rest somewhat with the emptiness of these experiences. My assumed clarity on what constitutes experiences that fall into the category of form may be contributing to my catching glimpses of “emptiness is form.” I would like a similar way of relating with the experiences that are categorized by the skandhas of feeling, concept, mental formation, and consciousness.

A very Sarvastivadin approach, perhaps.

Ouch, I think I just lost a tooth:

Chew on this until your teeth fall out. Anything less won’t do.
Ken McLeod, An Arrow to the Heart, pg 132

Maybe I just need to give up cartography and shorten this sutra to

“Experience is emptiness, emptiness is experience. But don’t get hung up on it.”

[Pat Stacy]

I'm not sure where to put this, but it isn't a continuation of any other post...so

Yesterday I was washing and waxing my car with a little internal complaining about how with gas so expensive I can’t afford to have the carwash people do the job. I have to do it myself, poor old woman, etc., …and this is so some oil company executive can redecorate his sixth home, grumble, grumble. In the middle of this carping mental state I had another thought. “Yes, but you actually enjoy washing the car, all the soapy water, and when you’re done it looks so good.” Oh dear, this part of the car-washing experience is perfectly true and completely at odds with the grumpy reaction part. I became aware that I could switch back and forth between the two and find very different body sensations associated with each one.

This reminded me of a “Then and Now” class where the homework was to identify attraction, aversion, and indifference as each arose. If I looked, I could also find indifference and identify what that felt like, although it was a little harder to spot. Indifference here is not non-attachment, but a definite decision to ignore my present experience so as to not feel it. It takes just as much effort as attraction and aversion. I played with these three choices and the car got clean and waxed. I could see that I was free to pick any of the three, but only one at a time. Each one seemed comfortable and familiar, and there was definitely some kind of a selection process going on.

I tried to imagine any experience that did not contain the possibility of all three of these reactions and could not. My conclusion was that I select the quality of all experience moment by moment, probably from habit. If this is the case then all experience has the potential to be good, bad, or indifferent; and there is no good or bad until I select which one it is going to be today. If I don’t pick, nothing is happening. And of course, if all experience can be anything, it is not inherently anything. That is, at its heart, it is not good or bad or anything else.

Could it be empty? I had to laugh, because this is what the Heart Sutra is getting at.
Forget assembling all those bodhisattvas with their radiant absorption, we can do this washing the car. It wasn’t a matter of figuring it out, although it might sound like it as I have described my thought process. Instead, it was just noticing. The work we did in the Heart Sutra Class (and maybe the Then and Now podcasts) made the penetration through the thoughts possible. I couldn’t see it if I set out to find emptiness in each experience. I had to recognize how I experienced car washing, and then what was there before I chose how I was going to be doing it.

It sounds a lot more complicated when I write it out, and maybe I’ve just muddied the waters here. But in seeing how I did each of the three states, I could easily see how to not do any of them. Actually “not do” isn’t the right description here. It’s closer to leaving these reactions unprovoked. To see this I had to go through them. I guess that’s why Ken put all those arrows in his book. (grin)

Cool Budgie of Pedagogy (Pat)

[Sister Logchain of the Short Path]

A truly wonderful illustration, Pat. Thanks, it opened my eyes.

Sr Logchain.