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Dharma If You Dare Podcast

What does it take to live a life of meaning and compassion in our busy day-to-day lives? Tune in to get the knowledge and tools you need to help you tackle life’s biggest obstacles joyfully … if you dare!

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About Dharma If You Dare

A Planet Dharma Podcast

Dharma Teachers Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat with to share with you the journey to a life of clarity and bliss. Join them on this podcast of excerpts of their live teachings. They share ancient wisdom updated to speak to the current and evolving paradigm of spiritual awakening in our modern age.

Meet the Speakers

Dharma Teachers Qapel (Doug Duncan) and Sensei (Catherine Pawasarat) are spiritual mentors to students internationally and at their retreat center, Clear Sky, in BC, Canada. They are lineage holders in the Namgyal Lineage, both studying under the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche and other teachers.

Having lived internationally for many years and traveled extensively, Qapel and Sensei draw on intercultural and trans-cultural experience to broaden the range and depth of their understandings of liberation that they share with others.

Catherine Sensei

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Qapel

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Dharma if you Dare podcast

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Why Practice the Paramis? (Part 2 of 2)

Oct 5, 2013

Paralyzed and Free!

A quadriplegic man in the hospital for 25 years sees the spaciousness through which all manifestations can arise, including the mind. Was no longer obsessed with the arisings.

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Part two of the “Why Practice the Paramis?” podcast from Aug. 23, 2013.
The “he” referred to at the beginning is “Gerry,” who was laid up in the hospital for 8 weeks unable to move. This talk was originally given on Dec. 13, 2007, in Kyoto, Japan.

Listen to part one here: https://www.planetdharma.com/why-practice-the-paramis-part-1-of-2/

Podcast Transcription:

He said the thing that got him through was my story about the guy that I met who was a quadriplegic in the hospital in Toronto for 25 years – paralyzed, neck down, 25 years, couldn’t move. Did I tell you that story?

I was a porter. I was making money to travel with my teacher and I took a second shift. Sometimes they’d have second shifts guarding patients. They had their needles, patients would pull their needles out during the night, so they hired porters sometimes to babysit, to make sure that a person doesn’t pull the needle out during the night. And so he fell asleep and my job was done. But the guy in the next bed was quadriplegic. He’d been paralyzed from the neck down for 30- some 25- 30 years. He didn’t have any family, no friends. Nobody, except the nursing. And you know the nurses are nice enough, but they got 600 patients. And they change every couple of days. And they’re in and out and “Hello, Mr. Smith, how are you today?”, “How are you today, Mr. Smith? Okay, let’s change your sheets. Let’s give you a bath. Okay, Mr. Smith.” Twenty-five years of that.

So, we had a long talk about hallucinations and altered states. I mean you can imagine, you’ve got no other feed, right? He was a Hungarian guy. And so we talked about all the hallucinations and the altered states. And I said, “Wow, you must have gone through every hallucination in the book?”

“How did you know?”

“Well, I’m a meditator.”

“Really?”, he said, “Is that what happens when you meditate?”

“Yeah, every hallucination and weird idea and strange feeling. You know, out there all over the place. You know what it’s like, right?”

He said, “Oh yeah, I’ve been through everything”, he said, “Now it’s mostly just flat.”

I said, “Oh well, have you worked on the spaciousness element?”

“What do you mean by spaciousness?”

I said, “Well, just imagine that now that you’ve had all the hallucinations, that it’s one huge empty space through which all manifestations can rise, including your body, including your mind. And you’re just kind of a huge kind of open, spacious emptiness from which everything bubbles forth like Pandora’s box or a cornucopia.

“Okay, ” he said, “Well, I never thought of that.” Because he’s too busy with the arisings. He was obsessed with the arisings, and therefore he was clinging to some and had an aversion to others. So he said, “Okay, I’ll try that.”

I came back a couple of days later and he said, “Wow, this is like freedom. This is fantastic. I am free. What do I do now?”

“What do you want to do now?”

He said, “Nothing”.

I said, “Exactly, right. It’s lighter, with nowhere to go. Nothing to do. You’re out of it, bro.”

He died two weeks later. He says, “Okay, I’ve done it. This is it. I can go. I don’t have to hang on anymore.” He gave his last gift, which was his life. Gave it up.

For more information, please visit clear Sky center dot org. That’s www. c l e a r s k y c e n t e r.org

Why Practice the Paramis? (Part 1 of 2)

Aug 23, 2013

The paramis are qualities of character or “perfections” of heart and mind that can be developed to support the path of awakening–practices that develop wholesome activity, growth, and enlightenment. “It is so clear that the Teaching is the only refuge.”

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What are the paramis?

They are qualities of character or “perfections” of heart and mind that can be developed to support the path of awakening–practices that develop wholesome activity, growth, and enlightenment.
In the Theravadin school of Buddhism, there are ten. In Mahayana, six is considered to indicate a sequence of development: generosity, virtue (coolheadedness), patience, energy, concentration, and wisdom.
For more on the paramis, search for “A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” or “paramita.” Also, “The Path Of Victory: Discourses on the Paramita” by Namgyal Rinpoche can be ordered from BodhiPublishing.org

Podcast Transcription:

Why practice the paramis? Well, as you remember, if you had a turban and it was in flames, what would you do? You’d put it out… or take it off. And so, to extinguish the flames of craving you must apply the antidote and the antidote is… the paramis. Simple as that. You are in a burning pit of passion, desire, fear, hope, ambition, worry, anxiety, and wishful thinking. You know, “When my prince comes, when my house is paid for when the banks get it all straightened out, everything will be fine.” No, it won’t. Then you’ll be 60 and you’ll have a heart attack… or something.

I talked to Gerry today, you remember Gerry? He’s walking now, which is good, very fast [recovery]. They call him the poster boy for rehab. He was supposed to be in rehab for 3 months, but it looks like he’ll only be there a month and he can walk with a walker.

He said to me today, “You know, Sensei, I hate to say it, but this has been absolutely, totally, fantastically marvelous.” Crushed from the knee to the ankle, thinking he’d never walk again, losing both the lower parts of his legs, having them rebuilt.

He’s walking, it’s good, he’s walking and he’s probably happier than if he didn’t obviously, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but he said “This was the most amazing experience of my life. It is so clear, it is just so absolutely clear that the Teaching is the only refuge.”

Because everybody else is busy. What are they doing when you’re in the hospital for six weeks, or in this case, two months? Moving on. When you’re sitting there in the hospital bed for two months, what are they doing? Going to movies, having suppers, talking to their friends, oh, calling you once a week to see how you’re doing. Maybe you get an hour of their time and then mostly they’re going, “Well, okay, gotta go.”

He said it brought the teachings so home. The only refuge you have is your state at the moment and the only thing that maintains your state in the moment are the paramis. There is no other place to go except busyness, and the nature of busyness does exactly what? It hides the nature of your clinging. The more busy you are—and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be busy; it’s fine to be busy—but what I’m saying is that the busier you are the less visible it is—the clinging that’s going on. When you’re in your hospital room and you got nowhere to go, you’re just left with it—the body and you: clinging. And you have to be in the moment. You have to give up… you have to let the passions and the feelings come and go. You have to give them up. You have to surrender them. You have to surrender your impatience with the process. You can’t move.

He wasn’t supposed to move off his back for six weeks. Don’t move, they told him. Never mind go for a walk. Don’t move. Because your flesh is building…in his leg and if he moves them he disturbs them.

Patience isn’t something you have any choice about. Coolness—you either do that or you lose your mind, which many people do in those circumstances, they go bananas. They throw things at the nurses, they scratch them, they kick, they bite. Because they’re freaking out. I mean, can you imagine… weeks without moving on your back if you have no training, no mental training, no training in the mind? I mean all of a sudden… you know, you’ve been busy being Joe-head-of-your-department, and all of a sudden you’re in the hospital. You’ve got nothing.

Listen to part two here: https://www.planetdharma.com/why-practice-the-paramis-part-2-of-2/

Bliss Arises

Apr 30, 2013

Bliss is present because there is no one trying to do anything. Be very clear about this: bliss arises when you no longer try to do anything.

—

A one-minute excerpt from a talk by Doug Sensei on the Diamond Sutra held at Zofukuji Temple, Miki, Japan, on Jan. 4, 2013. You’ll want to listen to this one over and over again.

Podcast Transcription:

“Bliss is present because there is no one trying to do anything. Be very clear about this: bliss arises when you no longer try to do anything. Whether it’s a golf shot, a poem, a recipe, or singing a song in a band. You’re not trying anymore. The minute you don’t try to do anything, there it is — the flow, I guess. You only can be a samurai when you realize you are already dead. The minute you put in a defensive motif of any kind it tightens your muscles, it slows down your reaction time, puts you in a sense of separation […] So, recognize awakening is… you already have to see your life as being over. My life is over. MY life is over. There’s just life. My preferences and non-preferences are over. There’s just options.”

A New Year’s Resolution

Feb 5, 2013

Not getting lost in phenomena

Doug Sensei offers a suggestion on something to do for a New Year’s resolution for 2013: “I undertake to train myself to refrain from getting lost in phenomena”.

Podcast Transcription:

Qapel: I suggest this be your New Year’s resolution for this year: I undertake to train myself to refrain from getting lost in phenomena. If you want to put it in a nutshell: I undertake to train myself to refrain from falling asleep in my own stories about ME. Which is the great power? If you don’t have the teacher present, the power of the group – they’re there to keep you from getting lost in your own stories, no matter how good they are. So, I suggest this be your New Year’s resolution for this year. What is the most likely place for you to get hijacked by your own ego? And make the resolution to try not to let that happen in 2013. Or less, In any case. I undertake to train myself to refrain from getting hijacked by – where do you get lost in you? Where do you get kind of swept away by you?

Maybe it’s by not moving fast. Maybe you like to move really slow and carefully. So you’re always hijacked on slow. Or maybe you always want to see all sides to every argument. So you never really make a hard decision of any kind because you’re always, you know. They can be subtle. Where do you tend to undermine your own unfoldment? Maybe it’s having your life too much in control. It’s too much just the way you like it. So you never have to deal with, you know, there’s very few things that you have to deal with that disturb you from your trip because you don’t put yourself in a situation where they ever can happen. You can think about this a bit. Where am I most likely to fall asleep? Where am I most likely not to see the transcendental? In what conditions or situations am I most likely not to meet the transcendental opportunity? You can word it in any way you want. Does this make sense?

CPS: Would you suggest that we ask one another for feedback? Or we ask you for feedback?

Q: You can bring it to me in the new year if you want, if you want my opinion, you don’t have to, but if you want to you can. And I may or may not comment. I may leave you with the one you’ve got, or I may up it, or change it, or move it. But it’s up to you. But it’s better that you come up with it because liberation is self-liberation. And if you get an insight into where you get shanghaied it’s much much better than if I tell you. Your next one may not be the ultimate one, but it’s the one that’s in front. Right. And that’s the one you should work For in 2013. You just, you know, every couple of weeks, once a month, you just bring it out, put it on a piece of paper, put it on your door. Forget about it. And then you know once a month just bringing it out and how am I doing with this one? Okay maybe I have to think about that a bit more and you remember it for a few days and you forget about it. But at the end of the year, it will be less. All you have to do is bring it out and name it. And without any effort on your part, it will be less at the end of the year than it was at the beginning. It’s not hard to awaken. All you have to do is want to do it, gradually. In the teaching, there’s something called the near enemy and a far enemy.

But the near enemy is what you can’t see and the far enemy is what’s obvious. So you could say well what’s the near enemy? What’s the far enemy, you know where do I get caught? So the near enemy maybe just comfort. And the far enemy may be people who make you feel uncomfortable. That could be it. So again you can see that from looking at your life. And you can also do it by what you avoid: what is it you always steer around? or what do you always avoid? Or, again, what is so close and engaged and involved in your life that you don’t question it – it’s so much a part of what you are and what you do that you never raise your eyebrows about it, or if you do its kind of well that’s, I can’t do anything about that. So these are all various ways.

Like any good investigator you get on a ship, what do you do? You walk around, you check everything out, you try to go down the engine room, you go up on the deck you find out where all the, you know, you go looking around. If you ended up in a palace, what would you do? Do you go explore when you go looking around? So same too with this, you just go looking around -look at your life from this side, look at your life from that side. You could even get feedback if you wanted to. But this is not big like the guilt, shame thing, right? This is not not to make you feel guilty or shameful, like you’re a loser, or you’re not doing dharma. This is not the motivation for this, the question for this is: do I want to be more awake?

It’s not a negative. You’re not getting put down, you’re raising yourself up. So the more you keep your wits about you the less you get lost. And then from that vantage, you say: is this taking me forward? Is what I’m doing with my time and my energy unfolding to me? Is it bringing me to greater compassion? Is it bringing me to greater wisdom? or is it just kind of passing le temps? And if it’s passe le temps do something else.

For more information, please visit clear Sky center dot org. That’s C L E A R S K Y C E N T E R dot org.

The Map to Awakening (Part 4 of 4)

Dec 24, 2012

Part 4: Q & A

In this full talk, the “Map to Awakening” metaphor is a journey from west to east—in this case Kyoto to Tokyo—with the arrival point being the awakened state.

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The metaphor: Traveling west to east, from Nagoya to Shizuoka to Yokohama before reaching Tokyo. “Tokyo” is the awakened state, while any city along the way is still part of conditioned existence. Question: “Could you speak a little bit to Westerners? We seem to have these expectations that our teachers need to prove that they’re holy by living in a certain way to determined ‘by me.’ At least in North America we think you shouldn’t smoke, should probably be a vegetarian, etc.…” “The lama in the vajrayana system — the teacher, the guide — becomes much more important because you’re relying more on the person who’s been to ‘Tokyo’ than you’re relying on the map that you have in your hand or that you’ve been given. You’re relying more on the humanity, the interhuman connection of it, more than a program. And in that sense it can be very much faster, because you don’t have to stop and look at your map all of the time.” How can you tell the charlatan from the real teacher? “You look at the teacher from the point of view, ‘Do I feel that he loves me? Do I feel that he has my best interests at heart? And does he act that way?’ Not whether I agree with him, whether I like him, whether that’s something I approve or disapprove of, but ‘Do I feel that he or she is basically on my side?’ That’s what you can trust.” The Aquarian Age is all about ‘group guru’ — how to come together as a group, a community. The four stages of the womb journey: 1st stage: Bliss in the womb 2nd stage: Contractions (intermittent) 3rd stage: Birthing (violent); trauma 4th stage: Plop and cut Concepts such as personal mastery, shifting the burden, and creative tension vs. emotional tension are based on the recommended book “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge.

https://www.planetdharma.com/

The Nature of Addiction/Appetite (Part 5 of 5)

Jun 11, 2011

Resisting the Urge to Escape the Pain through Addiction

The nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain at the core of our being. Resisting the urge to give in rather than face the appetite or addiction takes patience and determination.

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In this concluding section, Sensei answers such questions as: How do you live in the moment and still plan for the future? Aren’t there authentic pleasures that are not based on addiction? How can you not identify with the objective world in a healthy way that still allows you to function?

https://www.planetdharma.com/

Podcast Transcription:

From this point of view, the decisions are irrelevant. What’s important is the state of the being that’s doing them. And then whatever decisions you make from that point of view will follow according to your karma: your Proclivities, your natural interests, and your conditioned responses. So if you’ve been conditioned to be kind of a farm girl from Manitoba, then that’s as good a decision as being a doctor from Chicago.

From the point of view of being free from addiction and being free from appetite, it doesn’t matter what you do. You can be a ditch digger, a doctor, a lawyer, or a plumber. But in the process, the one thing you probably won’t do is a job that causes pain; to either yourself or others. The difficult part when it comes to relationships is that we tend to create relationships of pain in order to liberate the original pain. But all we do is act it out, because you can’t use a relationship to liberate the pain.

The nature of the relationship mirrors in some ways, the pain of the child. And so it’s an attempt to get in touch with it, but it doesn’t solve it. It’s a solitary and lonely journey. It’s really good to have Dharma brothers and sisters to go along with you on (because at least they understand what you’re going through), when everybody else says, ‘oh! just get over it’. Which of course, you can’t, really.

Q) So how do you live in the moment and still plan for the future?

A) Well, you know, winter’s coming. That’s your animal/social/planner guy, right? So you know you have to chop firewood. If it’s August, and tonight you want to have a beer with the boys down at the bar, you have to make the decision: ‘do I go home and chop firewood or do I go to the bar’? If you always make the decision to go home and chop firewood, then you’ll be kind of a grump. And if you always make the decision to go to the bar and have a drink, you’re going to be dysfunctional. And so the nature of the decision isn’t important, what’s important is which decision is the most appropriate one at the moment. And you’ll know which decision is the most appropriate one at the moment by how much firewood you have. If you’ve got three cords of wood you can afford to go to the bar. If you haven’t even started cutting down trees…. These decisions are fairly straightforward.

If, for example, you have a job in Winnipeg (where your friends and family are) and you get offered a job in Toronto as a head psychiatric hooba hooba of hubba hubba – it’s a good job and a promotion. Now you have to make a decision, ‘what does my family want to do’? because that’s a contract you have. ‘What do I want to do’? That’s another contract you have. ‘What are the various factors’? Again, on that decision, I think the factors are fairly obvious. So your decision comes to ‘which one I have to do in the end’. And that’s the one you follow. ‘Well, my family is more important to me than the job, so I’ll stay’. Or, ‘my family is happy to go to Toronto, but I don’t want to be in a big city, so I’ll stay’. Or ‘I’ve been in Winnipeg for 30, 40 years and it would be good to have a different perspective, so I’ll go’.

But we think that that decision is going to determine our happiness. What I’m saying is the opposite – that decision won’t affect it. You won’t be any happier here or there unless you’re happy now. You can only be happy now if that decision isn’t the important decision. The important decision is, ‘am I okay at this moment’?

And if the answer to that is yes, then whether you choose to go to Toronto or stay in Winnipeg will have relative consequences based on the dynamic of those situations, but it won’t affect your happiness. Because your happiness isn’t built on those decisions. And when we’re addicted or when we’re caught in appetite, those decisions seem to be the root of our happiness. That’s what I’m trying to turn around. The reason we have such difficulty with this is that we think these decisions are the root of our well being. What is actually the root of our well-being is the decision to be okay at the moment, and then go close the door or whatever you’re gonna do. And if we turn that around, all of a sudden the decisions in our world become much much easier. Some of them are no wins.

Now, the reason we have pain is that we’re hoping that the other person will tell us that it’s okay for us to be us. But the nature of the experience is that it’s not okay for you to be you. The price of being you is that you’re alone.

Q) So are you saying we could be happy in any story you create?

A) You should be happy in any story you create because you’re creating them. If you have a mixed story and you can’t be happy in any of them, laugh and say, ‘you know what, this is a no-win situation! I love it! I’m gonna be happy in a no-win situation’. By the way, when I say happy, I don’t mean happy happy. I just mean that you understand that your well-being in this moment, is in this moment. All the complicated life decisions aren’t gonna change that.

If you’re not happy at this moment, you won’t be in the next one. And if you are happy in this one, you’re gonna have to be happy in whichever one, because you might get cancer <knock on wood> or you might be in the plane that goes into the Twin Towers tomorrow. You’ve got to be happy on that plane. In that moment, you’ve got to be okay with that moment because sooner or later, we’re all on a plane into the Twin Towers.

Q) When we were first talking about addiction, the impression I was getting was television, McDonalds, all those things which seem bad, but I’m also wondering whether there are people in the world who are addicted to authentically positive things?

A) Yes. Yes, of course. Of course, there are, but they’re all based on when you’re being authentic in your being. If you look at the nature of authentic experiences out there, they’re authentic because you’re being authentic. When your misery seems overpowering, it’s still an authentic experience and you should be happy with your misery – misery is also authentic. The idea that we will have no pain is inauthentic.

I’m not saying everything that happens all the time is painful. What I’m saying is that when there is pain that’s authentic, you have to be okay with that. It’s not like it’s the end of the world. It’s just modern life. If you’re an Eskimo and you’re old, you just get off the [COMETICK?] in the middle of a snowstorm. Everybody pretends they don’t see you as you just walk off and die, because you can no longer be of use to the community. This isn’t cruel. This isn’t mean – this is life!

The illusion that we have – the fantasy that we hold – is that nothing bad is supposed to ever happen in life, but the major cause of death is living. [Laughter]. Yeah, I am talking a lot about the pain side, but only because I’m talking about the falseness of the other side – which is the idea that habits and addictions and appetites are gonna produce pleasure. That leads us back to this: ‘What or where is the authentic pleasure?’ Well, the authentic pleasure is to be mindfully in the moment, and that is infinitely pleasurable.

But when that moment isn’t good enough, because of the addiction or because of the habits, then we’re back into the pain dialogue. And this moment as it is is only pleasurable because it isn’t tied to that which is unreliable; what’s unreliable are objects. Physical objects, mental objects, and emotional objects are all unreliable because they’re impermanent. They’re subject to loss and they can’t be maintained over time, because all objects that come into being disappear.

So the ultimate pleasure or the absolute pleasure (I guess if I can say it that way) is the mind that rests in its own experience of perception and awareness without attachment or aversion to the objects.

Q) Does that seem to then collapse this duality that you can reconcile both?

A) Yes. Yes. You reconcile the duality by recognizing that the dialogue between the two sides is happening in your mind. When you don’t have that dialogue, that duality collapses. But of course, the nature of our experiences that were habitualized to the dialogue.

Q) But are they the same because they’re both sensations, they’re both sensing?

A) Yeah, in the end. Pleasure-pain, you know. ‘Is she crying out of joy at the wedding or is she crying out of pain at the wedding’? It’s all about whether you’re happy that she’s getting married or that you’re sad she’s marrying such a jerk. It’s all in the interpretation. Right?

Q) I was just wondering, how can you not identify with the objective world in a healthy way that still allows you to function?

A) You just answered your own question, my dear. You just have to be aware that you’re identifying. You’ve identified with the story, and in the process of identifying with the story, this story ends in pain. Or this story ends in pleasure. And so you can be pleasurable as long as the story is held together. But all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And in the cycle of stories, you always return to the same still point, spacious emptiness, vibrant voidness, or shunyata mind state of its in-betweenness.

Like a movie, I’m sorry, we’re back to non-digital metaphors here. But you know, in a strip of the film, you have 32 frames a second, right? And in between each frame is a gap. Just because those frames are moving at speed and make it look like it’s continuous; it’s not. And so is your mind, your mind has these little gaps. We’re just so addicted to the story, we don’t even notice the gaps.

Meditation is really just to become aware of the gaps. The stories don’t change, but you have a place of refuge that you didn’t have before. The place of refuge is that gap, where the pain and pleasure dialogue is just two frames of the movie. Pleasure, pain, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure (and then your stocks were all in Enron) pain, pain, pain, pain, right? But in between, you always have the gap, but you can’t find the gap from the point of view of your habitual mind, your addictive mind, or your appetite mind because they’re so all-consuming that you miss the gap.

When you first see the gap you get bored because there’s nothing happening there. Then you get fearful because there’s nothing happening there. And then you get anxious because you think you’re losing your mind, when in fact what you’re losing is the continuity of your story. Now in the spiritual life, what you train yourself to do is simply to be happy in the gap. No story of pleasure, no story of pain, neither loss nor gain can do anything to the gap, because the gap by definition is: a gap.

Recognize that in the magic circle, or in the threshold of adventure (using a Western metaphor rather than an Eastern metaphor) that when you enter into the spiritual world, you enter into the side that is what I’ve been describing. And when you go back out into the world, that world follows its rules. And when you go back to the world of Doug in Toronto, that follows its rules. And the two sides are irreconcilable in the sense that any decision you make in the world won’t necessarily please anyone else. And that’s just the law of it.

And so you use the other side, the spiritual side, to recognize that whatever decision or whatever choices I make in my life are going to be mixed. You can have positive effects and negative effects and spending your entire life simply looking for just the positive effects of that kind of involvement is doomed to suffering because no matter how good you are, you can still have a bad thing happen.

The only mistake you make (I guess is what I’m trying to say) is that if you spend 90% of your time trying to find happiness in that so-called ‘Object World’, you’re not gonna do it. And if you spend 90% of your time finding happiness in the non-objective world, you will. But that won’t necessarily make your objective world happy all the time. But it does give you the tool to handle those times when it isn’t.

But in order to do that, you have gotta let go of your history or herstory. It’s not easy, but you have no choice. Nobody, nobody wants to awaken. No. You say you want to awaken, but you make all the decisions to keep yourself from awakening. You do it because you have no place else to run to.

For more information, please visit clearskycenter.org

Thank you.

The Nature of Addiction/Appetite (Part 4 of 5)

Jun 11, 2011

The nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain at the core of our being. Resisting the urge to give in rather than face the appetite or addiction takes patience and determination.

—

In the end, the nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain that is at the core of all of our beings. Getting on with the spiritual work means learning to be okay in the present moment, just as it is, without need for stories or elaborations, knowing that we’re going to die, that no absolute security is to be found, that everything is impermanent. Part 4 of 5, public talk, Winnepeg, Canada, Sept. 2009

https://www.planetdharma.com/

Podcast Transcription:

Fundamentally you’re never in a relationship with anybody, ever. Because, in fact, nobody is there to be in a relationship with except the stories you’ve written. All you have in the end is your story. And that story is you. It’s not the story that’s the problem. The nature of the problem is the addiction. In other words, the need of the being to create a fantasy or a story to get out of the present moment because the present moment is threatening.

So where the difference lies is when you replay the tape. The way out of that is you say to yourself, “ok I’m replaying this tape, what’s the pattern”? What is the structure of the story? What are the dynamics of the story? What kind of unstated assumptions am I writing into the story that I’m not seeing?” All of a sudden you’re much more fascinated by the hallucinations you’re having. I painted this kind of like the guy from Saskatchewan like he’s Romeo, and all he is is a guy from Saskatchewan.

And you go, “ok, why did I do that”? You could become the next JK Rowling. Just turn that experience into a story. Now in order to do that, you have to give up a very basic addiction. The very basic addiction that’s at the core of all our being is a one root addiction that drives everything else. It starts with a ‘P’. The second letter is an ‘A’ – four-letter word – third letter is an ‘I’… Dukkah = PAIN. That’s driving the story: feeling of separation, feeling of aloneness, feeling of rejection, or however you paint it. Whatever dialogue you have. It’s like, ‘I’m not understood’, ‘nobody recognizes how much I try’, ‘I do my best and they don’t see’… you know what I mean? One way or the other; pain, pain, pain.

I’m not blaming mothers, please be very clear about that, but the number one lesson of the child is they’re not good enough the way they are. They’re not. Kids are not good enough the way they are. Otherwise, we’d still be peeing on the floor and pooping our pants and eating with our hands and throwing potatoes against the wall. So it’s a true message in the sense that you weren’t good enough the way you are.

But the difference is acting that story out and trying to find substitutes with money or relationships or property or love or fame or whatever. Fame, shame, praise, blame, trying to get away from that. And in the end, the nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain. It’s an attempt to escape the fact that you weren’t good enough and never could be. But that which was being fixed, wasn’t you.

And now the child’s job is to be upset with that. Sure, fine, no problem. Rebel against that? Sure, fine, no problem. But in the end, they’re functioning. They’re functioning adults and only a functioning adult can have the necessary discipline required to do the spiritual work, which is: to forgive their father or forgive their mother (if God is female). Forgive the mother for they did what they had to do. It’s not that they didn’t know what they were doing, they did. What they had to do was train you to be a functioning adult. And at that point, your control is to forgive them for doing what they had to do.

Then, get on with what you’re supposed to be doing as an awakening being, which is being okay in the present moment. Just as it is without any need for stories or elaborations or whatever. Just the way it is, knowing that you’re gonna die, knowing that there’s no absolute security to be found, no refuge to be found anywhere – other than the fact that it’s impermanent – always changing, it’s all gonna fall out from under you, and you have to come to terms with that.

Otherwise, if you don’t do that, there’s only one other option left: addiction. Or in a milder form: appetite. You’ll keep looking for a Mr. Goodbar or whatever. You’ll keep looking for someplace or thing or person or situation out there that’s gonna work for you and you’ll never ever ever find it because the thing that’s looking for it is that which refuses to admit the core pain of having to be something else. So that’s where the story starts. I’m gonna see how this story is written. How did I get here? Whether it’s in a relationship, at work, in terms of your community, your family, or your job – how am I getting myself into this fix where other things, other events other than my own mindfulness, is creating a hell state or a difficult state for me that I don’t have to be in?

That can’t happen to you if you don’t have the appetite for a refuge that is false. You can’t be put in that position. Nobody can do it to you. Nobody has the power. You can be tortured wherever, and nobody can do it to you anymore. And the reason they can’t do it to you anymore is because you’re no longer buying into the habit. You’re no longer buying into the appetite. You’re no longer buying into the addiction.

You see, the nature of the addiction is your impulse to try to find an escape from the fact that the original motion of you was painful and that if you let go of that, it’s peaceful. It’s as simple as that; hard to do. It’s hard to do because the nature of the addiction and habit is so overpowering. And so you need to do meditation, you need to do counseling, you need to do practice, you need spiritual teaching, you need a spiritual group, and you need a spiritual teacher in order to keep your eyes on what you’re doing. Otherwise, the stories just come in and take you off. Five years later, you’re chasing a new relationship which may be, you know, a perfectly decent relationship, until they hit that button of blindness.

Yes, you had a further point?

Q) So being present and avoiding pain, right? Being present for that pain….

A) It’s just a decision. Do you want to let it go? Okay, stick around kid. Because it’s gonna take time. It’s old and it’s stuck.

But the idea that I want to let go of the pain isn’t quite the same thing as putting myself in the position where I’m gonna meet the pain and let go of it. To do that, we’re gonna have to get you on the cushion. We’re gonna have to put you in a situation where your social world, your political world, and your economic world are temporarily left behind. A week, a month, maybe a couple of months, or a few years – not all at once, but over a few years – where you have nowhere else to go but have that pain right there. That’s the job of the spiritual teaching: to bring you straight back home face to face with it until you can meet the demon of your resistance.

The demon of your resistance could be called:

‘It’s not fair’

‘Can I do it another way’?

‘Isn’t there some other way to do this’?

‘Can’t I just somehow get rid of this somewhere’?

‘Is there somewhere else I can go where I don’t have to do this’?

‘Is there some out’?

‘Is there some escape’?

‘Is there some alternative route’?

And as I sometimes say, awakening is the room at the end of the hall. You keep going to any room you can find until none of them work. And then you’re left with the spiritual life – whatever we call the spiritual life – nothing else works but this.

So I gotta sit there. I got to meet it. That’s not an easy thing to do. You need the meditative mind to sit and say, ‘arising, pain arising, pain and swelling…’ and you go through some rough ground, right? But the thing is that once you’ve accepted the fact that there’s no escape, you’re surrendering to the fact that there’s no escape.

The human condition is by definition fraught with pain insofar as it’s addictive, based on addiction, habituation, or appetite. We think ‘I’m going to find an answer out there’ and sorry, we just can’t deal with this! We just don’t want to deal with this! There’s gotta be another answer!

Sainthood in spiritual life starts when you realize there isn’t. Your sainthood starts when you realize everybody is suffering as much as me about everything. No matter how happy they look, because they know it’s hanging by a thread of imagination, fantasy, clinging, and wanting life to be something other than it is. Either not getting what you want or getting what you don’t want.

For more information, please visit clearskycenter.org

Thank you.

The Nature of Addiction/Appetite (Part 3 of 5)

Apr 22, 2011

The nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain at the core of our being. Resisting the urge to give in rather than face the appetite or addiction takes patience and determination.

—

Part 3 of a public talk given in Winnipeg, Canada, in Sept. 2009

Podcast Transcription:

This moment is this moment. Now what we’re gonna tell you is a bit of a leap, but when you die, consciousness doesn’t change much; it keeps going on. It just does it without a body – a bit like a dream. You know what dreams are like? If you consider death to be like a dream, you have a pretty good idea of what happens.

The body dies, you know, your body is not there for you (in terms of functioning) it’s just sleeping – but the consciousness goes on. Does it not? It goes into dream states. It goes through that deep sleep where nobody’s home, which is what happens, and then the nature of the habitual patterns picks up a pattern, right? Which we call the dream state. The dream state plays itself out until you get bored with the dream, and decide you want to make this dream happen (or not) or this dream is way too weird.

You make the decision to wake up. So you’re dreaming, having a dream – maybe it’s a dream you like, or maybe it’s a dream you can’t stand – but who makes the decision to wake up? Well, in lucid dreaming, you make the decision to wake up. So why do you make that decision? Usually fear, or you’re tired of being in it, or you’re bored. You want to get on with your “real” life.

So now here you are in your real life, and now you’re subject to the dream of being in the next moment. Because not being in this moment means you’re asleep. At this moment, you can’t know what’s going on in this moment if you’re in the next moment. If I’m thinking about taking out the chickens when I’m washing the dishes, I’m asleep! I’m in a dream state. No? So if I make the decision to wake up in this moment, what illusion or dream am I breaking?

Well, I’m breaking the dream of anxiety. I’m basically breaking the dream of my identity because I don’t know who I am if I’m not planning. I don’t know who I am if I’m not getting the ball rolling into the future. I don’t know who I am if I’m just resting in this moment here, which is exactly the state of what you’re in in the dream – you don’t know who you are.

You wake yourself up from the dream to find out who you are. But at the same time, if you’re washing the dishes and you’re thinking about taking out the chickens, you’re not in the here either. You’re still dreaming! Unless we’re planning, prodding, addicting, habituating, consuming, and eating, we don’t know who we are, right? We lose the sense of the definition of our separate, independent individual identities, which we never ever had in the first place.

Your individual personality and identity were shaped by your reactions to your mother, and secondarily to your father. So if the mother said, “Jan take out the garbage”, Jan said, “Sure”. Which made her a good child; Jan the ‘good child’. If mother said, “take out the garbage” and Jan said “no”, this makes Jan the ‘troublesome child’ or the ‘bad child’, right?

If you see the nature of your addiction and your habits, you have an on/off relationship with your: addictions, habits, and consumption pattern in order to keep ‘you’ in the story. You can’t ever possibly be happy in the moment, because the definition of ‘you’ in the moment is that which is not in the moment! Does this make sense? Do you follow what I’m saying?

If I am that which is going to take care of the chickens after I finish the dishes, and all I am doing is the dishes, then there is no me to be the person taking the chickens out. You could say, “okay, I’m doing the dishes”. But if you’re talking to yourself about doing the dishes, you’re not really doing the dishes are you? So let’s shut that up. Okay? No talking to yourself while you’re doing the dishes.

The first thing that’s gonna happen is: Anxiety. The next thing that’s gonna happen is: Fear. The third thing that’s gonna happen is: Boredom. You start writing scenarios for yourself. You write intellectual scenarios, then you can be the smart guy. Or you write emotional scenarios, and then you can be the feeling guy or girl. And then you write sensual kinds of things and then you can be the sensual person.

But all of the data comes back to your basic need to put yourself in the story. What does that imply about other people? If you’re the hero in your own movie, are you? Aren’t you? I mean you’re always the hero in your own movie. ‘I’m oppressed by society’, or ‘I am the struggling hero again depressed by the monster of society’, or ‘they’re all bad and I’m the noble warrior going out to change…’ you know that one?

But in any case, you are the hero in your own story, are you not? Even if you’re the loser. ‘I am so bad’, ‘I’m such a loser’ – well, what an identity to have, right? I mean, nobody can even argue with you! If someone says, “you’re kind of pretty”, you say “No, no! I’m not pretty! Oh my God! I got like a little blemish on my nail here”. Right?

So if you’re a hero in your story, what is everybody else? Supporting cast. Welcome to your relationships. And so we write the scenario over and over again, and the story of being a hero in your own movie makes everybody else either supporting actors, or the bad guy that makes you look good. Or that’s the problem, that person over there is the problem. I’m the poor, hard done by one and we should all get out violins and sing the song of the victimized Canadians: ‘the Americans are so mean to us’… right?

Who does this to who? Who creates these stories? And so the nature of the addiction and the nature of the appetite is you write your stories. And you can write any old story, can’t you?

The nice thing about a meditation retreat is you get bored with your stories. Oh here comes that one again. Here it comes up again. So you start writing news stories: ‘Well, you see, if I keep meditating and hold the pose, yeah, and get a robe maybe? The next thing there will be lights, and then I can see the camera moving in, and this will be the mill. And there may be some angels kicking around up there, and then the lights come on, and then I’ll be a buddha, right? And then like I’ll be the Dalai lama and everybody will think I’m wonderful…’ You want the Dalai Lama’s job?

How many hours a day do you think he works? How about President Obama? I mean look at that guy’s schedule! He’s got to come out and seem like he knows what he’s doing and under control and have it all together.

So now you have the other aspect which is: ‘Okay, well fine. You’ve convinced me sensei that I should just be in the now. Be in the present and dwell in a clear and radiant mind state. Breathe in, breathe out you know. Be aware of the ant crossing the trail, or the flowers opening in the sky, or the sunset happening.’ But what about my food? What about my job? What about my relationships? What about work?

Well the thing is you just extend that meditation in the same place. When you’re talking to someone, you talk to them in the present time; you’re present. You’re there with that person doing that thing. If you’re fixing your car – bolt-on bolt off. Kind of like the karate kid – bolts on, bolts off’.

The reason you get bored with work is because it’s repetitive. You don’t like repetition because it’s boring. It’s boring because there’s no surprise. ‘I want an entertaining job’. Now if you have an entertaining job, what’s that gonna demand? It’s gonna demand spontaneous non-control.

In other words, if you have an entertaining job, you don’t know what’s gonna happen next, do you? No! It could be anything! You see the problem with having an entertaining job is you have to be an entertaining person, which means you can’t know what you’re going to do next.

And the nature of appetite is you know exactly what you’re gonna do next. The nature of addiction is that you know exactly what you’re gonna do next. The nature of neurosis is you know exactly what you’re gonna do next.

It’s all written, and you go to the movies to be entertained so you don’t have to live an entertaining life. It’s an escape. ‘Get over there to the movie so I don’t have to be responsible for what I do next’. Because if I do know what I’m gonna do next, then I’m bored. “Ugh, going to school tomorrow.” If I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, well, at that moment, you don’t know who you are, do you? If you don’t know how you’re gonna behave in the next moment, then you don’t know who you are.

From Freud’s point of view, this is the terror of altered states of consciousness – you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. And so now you have these two dilemmas: 1) not knowing what you’re gonna be, who you’re gonna be, where you’re gonna go, or what you’re gonna do in the next moment – which is freedom – and 2) the understanding that if you’re not connected to something, you’re dead. You have these two parts of your being.

What we’re suggesting is: you learn on the meditation cushion and in the spiritual halls of the temple – in the magic circle of the mind of exploration – how to not know what you’re gonna do next or know who you are. When you go to work, you cross out of that magic circle. You enter into the world of the tribe and the community, and you function mindfully as clearly and concisely as possible.

But you don’t take the dialogue out to that, because internal dialogue of boredom, restlessness, and anxiety is because you’re living in a fantasy world and your other world. If you bring that into your inner world and you allow those stories to unravel (the entertainment aspect) then you gradually realize that of everything in the universe that can happen, you already are; but that’s on the cushion. In terms of what happens out in the world (so-called), then you have the exercise of control. I can choose to do this or not do this. But what I will choose is to be mindful.

For more information, please visit clearskycenter.org.

Thank you.

The Nature of Addiction/Appetite (Part 2 of 5)

Apr 15, 2011

Addictions – an attempt to escape the pain

The nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain at the core of our being. Resisting the urge to give in rather than face the appetite or addiction takes patience and determination.

—

If you want freedom you have to come to terms with being okay in the now doing nothing. All of your bad states are entirely your responsibility. Your state is totally under your control as long as you can exercise the mindfulness to be present in the moment. When you remain present you won’t go to the addiction or to a negative mind state. On the spiritual path, you’re not fighting your addiction, you’re fighting the inability to face the appetite or addiction. It takes patience and determination to sit through the state and study the pattern, rather than simply being driven by early childhood conditioning.

— Doug Duncan Sensei From a public talk given in Winnepeg, Canada in September 2009

Podcast Transcription:

From your early childhood condition, you get a very strong imprint very early from your mother that doing nothing is not good. The nature of the interruption of the addiction is you learn to do it to yourself. A mother’s job is to condition you to be a functioning adult. She’s done a pretty good job. You are all relatively functioning adults, right? You know how to feed yourself Yeah. You know how to put your clothes on, you, get the buttons done up, right, okay? And you managed to put some sort of life together for yourself? Yeah. So Mother did her job.

She got you to be a functioning adult. But on the other hand, the nature of the functioning adult doesn’t disturb the status quo. In other words, disturb the tendency of the child to be a brat. So the disturbance of the cycle is gradually, you internalize that process. Now when you get to the meditation cushion, you do it to yourself. When you start to interrupt yourself, the nature of the ego structure can’t handle that, so it has to blame it on somebody.

So what happens is: the child blames it on someone as an excuse for interrupting themselves. So from this point of view, all your bad states are entirely your responsibility because you’re doing it to yourself. Doesn’t matter what somebody else is doing to you, your state remains well within your power. Your state is completely and totally under your control, insofar as you can exercise the mindfulness to be present in the moment. Insofar as you can keep that present mindfulness in the moment, then it doesn’t go to the appetite, it doesn’t go to the addiction, and more importantly, it doesn’t go to negative mind states based on aggression, ill-will and so on and so on and so on. You start to do it to yourself. And this is the interesting thing that you start to see in meditation is that boredom is something you do to yourself by being discontented with the lack of something that seems to be happening at the moment.

But the point is that at any moment of time, an infinity of things is happening. No? The rug you feel under your bum, you feel the breeze of the fan on the back of your neck, there’s always your breathing. There’s the breathing in and breathing out that’s always with you. Not terribly entertaining!

Now, the thing that you have to understand and the nature of your conditioning is your entire conditioning has been built around being entertained. Whether it’s entertained by work, entertained by relationships, entertained by TV, the average American watches (and the Canadians are, you know when I say American / Canadian, it’s the same now in a way) four hours to five hours a day of television. The average child, who’s now 30 years old or younger, has on average watched 4-5 hours of TV a day as a kid. What are you being fed? 4-5 hours of entertainment or interruption with the idea that it’s not good enough the way it is.

Unless you have gap clothing, you’re a loser kid. Unless you have McDonald’s French fries, you’re not one of the chosen kids. So the battle goes on and on and on. When you come to the spiritual path, or of the path of liberation, or the path of realization, the thing that you’re fighting isn’t your appetites and it isn’t your addictions, right? It’s your inability to face the fact that it’s an appetite and its addiction.

In other words, being bored isn’t the issue, it’s your inability to look at the nature of the pattern of being bored, and that’s your issue. In other words, I haven’t got the patience it takes. I don’t have the determination it takes to sit through this state and study the pattern. Now, the meditative mind is simply that which is more interested in studying the patterns than it is and being jerked around by them.

And so if you’re going to be jerked around by your patterns, you can be sure you’re going to be jerked around by your appetites. And if you’re being jerked around by your appetites, you’re being jerked around by Madison Avenue, or what is it in Canada? Bay Street.

In other words, the advertisers know how to sell you that which is addictive. Advertisers know how to sell you that, which leads to more consumption, that’s what they’re good at. If anybody’s in advertising, they’ll agree with me, that is our job – to sell the stuff you don’t need. But also to sell the stuff you do need.

So the nature of the appetite or the nature of addiction is that you start doing it to yourself and in that process, the conditioning cycle keeps going on and on. And the one thing you’re not doing in the whole process is studying the nature of the patterning of how you respond to conditioning. You’re too busy being driven by your early childhood conditioning to be discontented and disrupted, which is what your mother did to train you and it’s not her fault.

If you want freedom, your job – as an adult, as an awakening being, or as a realizing being – is to come to terms with being okay in the now, doing nothing. Which doesn’t mean you’re going to be doing it all the time. But for this period of time, I am doing nothing. Now it’s very difficult to do that because of the nature of our addictions.

And so we have meditation techniques that give the illusion that you’re doing something. These are made up! These are imaginary objects to engage your imaginary attention. The way you perceive your reality is imaginary. How do you know what’s happening out there? Everything that you experience out there is experienced by this in here.

Your eye has, how many cones? They perceive what? Red, blue, and green. So I’m looking at Karen’s jacket and thinking, what color is that? Purple. There’s no purple in your eye! There’s Red, blue, and green. Your brain mixes them all together.

Curiously enough, the one that you have the most receptors for is taste. You have something like 1000 different taste receptors. Or smells – the ability to distinguish different chemicals in the air. So from the point of view of the meditator right, you can’t possibly be bored. How could you be bored?

You have six senses trained to bug you constantly while you sit there doing nothing. Yeah, So we do come up with these meditation objects to distract you long enough to get you to sit there to realize that your states are being created by patterns. So when we get into things like Tibetan initiations or more complicated meditations, they’re all basically built to keep you entertained while you’re sitting there getting bored. Until you get so bored, you start to wonder what it is that gets bored?

Now, when you start looking at the nature of the question, ‘what is it that gets bored?’ you’re going to find the one beast: the demon we call the Demon of Resistance. The Demon of Resistance is your appetite. Your addiction. Your inability to sit still and do nothing, which drives you out, again and again, seeking happiness where it can’t possibly be found because, as I said before, the nature of happiness cant be found if you’re constantly in the next moment.

In the process of being in the next moment continuously, you actually reaffirm, recondition, strengthen, and deepen the root of your addiction to being disturbed – which will then go from boredom to fear to anxiety, to a new addiction. You go from boredom to fear, from fear to anxiety and from anxiety, you’ll go find something else to occupy your time. But, as I said, we started with this idea that human beings are social animals and the nature of a social animal is to work together. To work in a community, to work in a group, to create a tribe that can survive, can create things and do things. And so then how does this apply?

All you have to do now is make the connection that outer activity is the lesson of meditation applied to the activity. So when you’re washing the dishes, you wash the dishes. If you’re washing the dishes to get to the idea that you’re going to milk the cow, then you won’t be happy washing the dishes right? But more importantly, you won’t be happy when you’re milking the cow either because when you’re milking the cow, you’ll be getting the chickens or whatever right?

And so this whole process is you find that you’re constantly living your life in a fantasy world. In other words, you’re not living your life in the present. You’re living life in some future event that’s going to happen which you never ever get to. This is anxiety-producing.

How can you be at peace in your being if you’re not in the present moment? The only moment you have is the present one. And so the false god, the false refuge of our society, is consumption. It drives our appetite, it drives our needs, it drives our ideas of where we are, who we are, what we’re going to do, where we’re going to be in the future, and so on and so on and so on. So if you can apply that mindfulness, that present mindfulness to your activity, then in every moment you are? Bored. Because you see, the nature of it is you’re not sure how to do it.

Happy actually is the right answer, but you can’t possibly be happy until you get bored with being bored. You can’t possibly be happy until you get bored with being fearful. You can’t possibly be happy until you get bored with being anxiety driven, right? In other words, you can’t possibly be happy until you’re willing to die – because at this moment, there is no previous moment and there is no future moment – you only have this moment. So there’s no birth and there is no death.

For more information, please visit clearskycenter.org.

Thank you.