DSC Books: Seven Days: A Journey Into Awareness - Days One to Three

Day Three (Section 22)

Barbara: Good morning. Today will be entirely silent beside instruction and question periods. Instead of the day being broken into meditation periods and then breaks when we talk, the silence creates a flow through the whole day. Not only the meditation is meditation, but stretching, using the bathroom, eating lunch is all a part of the meditation. We did some of this yesterday. What we seek in the long run is not to find a way just to meditate and then go on with our daily lives, but to make the meditative mind a constant in our daily lives.

During the sitting periods, I’ll be happy to meet with you privately in another room if there’s something that’s coming up in your meditation practice that’s confusing you and you feel a need to talk about it. So, please ask if you need to speak privately with me. You can sign your name on this pad. I will not ask you if you need to. It’s your responsibility to ask me.

You have all received a schedule for the day. We’re going to start with some instruction and then a formal sitting. You were with us Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m not going to repeat those instructions which are the basic foundation.

Yesterday, we talked about sense contact, the sense organ touching the sense object and resultant sense consciousness such as ear touching sound (bell rings once), “hearing, hearing.” (Pause) In this case, it’s pleasant. Then, the sound dies away. You return to your breath or whatever is primary, the primary object in your experience.

I want you to close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, then note the unpleasant quality of what you’re hearing. Watch yourself carefully and see if it moves into what I call secondary contraction. “Hearing,” and then perhaps your body is going to contract. (Barbara beats on a pan.) Can you feel that? It’s a very natural response. Then, the sound dies. Even if it was unpleasant, there’s probably no strong dislike. Your body doesn’t hold the contraction.

I want you to observe how the primary object shifts from hearing to knowing it’s unpleasant and then to dislike. The hearing is no longer primary; wanting to get rid of is primary. The focus of your attention is on wanting to get rid of. Close your eyes, listen, and watch the process. (Barbara bangs on the pan repeatedly, loudly.) Can you feel the tension that you hold as hearing gives way to dislike and wanting to get rid of? Can you feel that?

Question: Long after the noise is gone, I can still feel the tension in my body.

Barbara: Yes, note that just as “tension, tension” or “contraction, contraction.” The noise is no longer primary. As you said, it’s gone. Hearing is not what’s happening. Tension is happening. So, we need to differentiate. We move through these stages, contact, consciousness, sensation of pleasant, unpleasant and sometimes neutral, and then mental formations, the mind states such as tension, aversion or desire.

If there was a wonderful smell coming from the kitchen just suddenly coming out into this room, you might note, “smelling, smelling,” sense touching sense object, the sense consciousness “smelling,” the sensation “pleasant.” Then, perhaps, the door is shut and the scent dies away. The craving is still there.

These are simply mind states. Note them as “desire” or “craving,” or as “tension,” “contraction” or “aversion.” Feel the tension of these states. Then mind may start running into “How can I get that?” or “How can I keep that way from me?”

So much of our reactivity in the world grows out of these mind states. The mind state often has little to do with what’s actually happening. I want to make a distinction here. If a wonderful scent which doesn’t remind you of anything, wafts into the room and desire arises, then there’s just desire in this moment. If the scent reminds you of something that used to be cooked for you when you were young and offered you much love, it brings all those old memories with it. Desire is not related just to that “smelling, smelling,” but to all the old memories and desire to be loved.

While I clank this (Barbara bangs on the pan.), it’s not just the noise to which you react. It’s all the times in our lives when something has come at us and we’ve felt out of control and unsafe. All of those old mind states come up, so that we’re not really just in this moment, we’re also getting a lot of old conditioned mind statements.

When you’re meditating and any physical sensation comes up, has a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral quality, and then you note the arising of wanting or wanting to get rid of, you don’t need to figure out where that wanting or aversion is coming from, you just need to be present with it, to feel how it feels. That’s the primary object, how much aversion there is or how much wanting. Simply stay with it. As you are with it, a memory may arise, a time when there was, maybe, a father who yelled. Loud noise! (Barbara beats on the pan.) Feeling helpless. We don’t need to be able to figure it out, just to recognize, “In this moment there’s only a spoon clanging against a pot. The rest is old.”

Just be present with what is here, knowing that what is old, is old. We may not even know where it came from. We may just know it’s old. But in this moment there is tension of aversion or desire, fear, pain or confusion. That is present in this moment, whatever its source, so we rest with it as the primary object, aware of the physical sensation of it in the body. Open to it gently; let the body soften around it.

So, we come back to this moment and we find it’s unpleasant. (Barbara beats on the pan.)

I want you to close your eyes again. Can there just be space for this unpleasant noise? There will be a contraction. There will be awareness of unpleasant. Do we need to get into a relationship with it and try to chase it away? Can we just let it be here and know when it stops? It will stop!

One step further. If the body tenses, can the body just be tense without needing to get rid of that either? Aware of unpleasantness, aware of aversion, aware of the body’s tension, space for it all. I’m going to make noise now. (Barbara bangs pan repeatedly.) Not trying to deny anything. Being there fully with unpleasant, with aversion, with body tension. No self that needs to get rid of any of this.

(Pause while we do this.)

You can open your eyes. I’m going to ask you to stretch your legs for just a moment and then we’re going to sit for half an hour in silent meditation. Physical sensations are going to come up. Maybe a phone will ring. Can you hear traffic on the street? There will be noises. Maybe someone will sneeze. Note the contraction that comes with the first hearing. It’s just a contraction. It’s a very natural response and we don’t need to fight against it.

If the noise continues or doesn’t continue, either way, or if a physical sensation in the body like a cramp in the knee or a scent from the kitchen comes, whatever the experience may be, if the body tenses around it and moves into dislike and wanting to get rid of or into liking and wanting to hold onto it, be aware that this is not the physical sensation itself.

Very precise instructions. You stay with whatever has arisen as long as it is predominant. As it changes or subsides, come back to the breath. This means when you see that strong aversion or strong desire is present, the prior sensation of just hearing, or smelling, or touching, or the physical sensation of pain is no longer primary, you come back to the breath. If tension in your body around the loud noise pulls you away from your breath, then that’s the new primary object. Just be there with this primary object. You are no longer with the hearing or other physical sensation, but what we could label very generally as “contraction, contraction,” or sometimes more specifically as “dislike” or “desire,” and just be there with it. Is this clear?

Question: What if the pain doesn’t stop?

Barbara: Nothing is ever permanent. People sometimes tell me they sat with a strong pain in their leg for a whole hour. And I ask them, “Where was it in your leg?” “I think it was in this knee. No, it was in this knee.” And really, it was many little pains that came and went. Desire’s the same way.

Question: But then you say desire is the primary object?

Barbara: Is it the concept or direct experience of desire? How is “desire” actually experienced in mind and body? First, something wonderful is cooking in the kitchen, and you note “smelling, smelling.” There’s no desire yet, there’s just smell. There’s not even pleasant or unpleasant with that first smell. Then comes pleasant. Then, regardless of whether I can still smell it or not, there may be desire. I then come back to the breath, because desire is now primary, not smelling. If desire pulls me away from my breath again, as with a thought, “I want that,” or an image of it, or a tension in the body, then I just label it as “desire” and stay with it. This is what’s present right now in my experience. The object that stimulated desire may be gone. It doesn’t matter.

We can label it in many different ways, “craving,” “desire,” “wanting,” or even as “contraction” or “tension.” You don’t have to be precise about how you label it. Just know, “Here is desire.” As it changes or subsides, come back to the breath, just that.

Question: But when you said mental formation, you mean desire is mental?

Barbara: At first. Desire is a mind state, precisely. What else could it be? It originates in your mind. Then the body picks up on it and contracts around it. With increasing meditation experience we keep getting more subtleties. For now, simply note it as “desire.” As awareness settles down and becomes more precise, you start to differentiate between the mind movement of desire and the body’s reaction to that desire, which is also not the desire itself. It sounds very technical and very mechanical, but it’s not, because it’s coming out of each moment’s experience and we’re just being in the moment, just being fully present. Whatever is there, is there. There’s no need to do anything with any of it.

In my experience, it’s a bit like watching a fireworks display in a big empty sky. You’re just sitting. There’s no stars, no moon, just a big empty sky, and suddenly fireworks go off, bright light. “Pleasant, pleasant,” or maybe “unpleasant,” but you see all these colored lights glisten and fade, and there’s the empty sky again. Then, mind may pick up on it and say, “I want more of that.” Then body tenses and says, “Yeah, more.” The tension is held in the body. That’s just another firecracker going off.

We tend to differentiate and say, “This is an experience I can’t control,” like the fire cracker in the sky, “and I can’t do anything about it. It’s just out there.” But then we follow up with, “This is my reaction to the fire cracker and I should do something about it. If I don’t like it, I should like it, or if I do like it, I shouldn’t like it.” We get so complicated. But there’s a fire cracker going off out there. There’s nothing to do about it. You can watch it and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Then here’s another fire cracker, of liking or disliking, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Another is the reverberations of all of that in the body. We just stay present.

I will talk more the next sitting about how this relates to thoughts and emotions. I want to keep it simple, one step at a time. So, we’ll sit for half an hour.

I want to say something very briefly about posture, since most of you sat in chairs before. Those of you who are sitting on the floor, backs erect, I would prefer that you slide your body forward so the cushion is just supporting your buttocks. Rest on the front edge of the cushion. This allows the spine to be straight. Keep arms and legs whatever way is comfortable. If, as you’re sitting, you find pain in your legs, first note it, “pinching,” “burning” or however the pain feels, “unpleasant.” Note the tension in yourself that wants to fix that unpleasantness, that wants to move. It’s okay to move, but I don’t want you to move immediately. This is a place to practice. Spend two or three minutes just being there with the pain. Maybe it will change or disappear. Note if you feel the fear and tension that it’s going to come up again. Note the difference between the physical discomfort and the aversion to discomfort. If the pain stays and you need to move, note the intention to move and then, very gently, unfold your legs. When the pain is gone, if you want to fold your legs in again in a few minutes, again notice the intention that precedes the movement and then just bring your legs in again.

We have enough pain in our lives that we do not need to create artificial pain by forcing ourselves to sit motionless for a half hour. At the same time, we need to learn that things are never going to be just right. You can move every thirty seconds trying to find a perfect way to sit, but it’s not going to happen.

So, we start here to learn how we relate to the unpleasantness in our lives and how that creates our suffering. Is it the pain in your leg that’s really creating your suffering or is it this internal tension that says, “I’ve got to fix this”? Okay, let us sit.

(Meditation practice.)