150614emSunAMC Aaron's morning instructions on the chain of dependent origination; contact, consciousness, feelings, perception and mental formations.

June 14, 2015 Sunday Morning Instructions, Emrich Retreat

Basic instructions with contact, consciousness, feelings, perceptions, mental formations.

Aaron: Good morning. My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. I hope you've had a restful night.

Humans have preferences. It's part of being human. I want sunshine, not rain, on this day of retreat. No bedbugs or other such creatures in my life. No surplus of announcements; I want quiet. It seems sometimes like everything is pushing you.

Dear ones, you did not come into the incarnation to live 70, 80, 90 years of untroubled bliss, much as you feel that's what you want. How would you learn anything if you were not sometimes pushed and had to learn how to respond to the pushes?

Imagine if you could take birth, be nurtured for a year or two until you were old enough to walk and feed yourself, and then put into a completely enclosed room, sealed, all your needs met except for connection with other sentient beings of any sort. An isolated cave. The weather would be perfect. The food would be perfect. Music that you chose at a touch of a button. Good books, everything you wanted there. But no companionship, because if there is companionship and the companion says something you don't like, there's a reaction to it. "No! I don't want this!"

You have come into the incarnation to learn one thing, love; how to love deeply, to open your heart, even when something is unpleasant; how to stay uncontracted and present with what has come to you rather than closing up with it.

(demonstration of "pushing hands" with partner) Here we are, sitting comfortably, in perfect harmony with each other, and suddenly a bee stings me (I accidentally hit or push the other personas I react to the sting), and then she pushes back! I push back, and she pushes back, and I push back. –"oohhh... a bee stung me; I'm sorry for the reaction." Both relaxing...

So, doing this again. Here we are. There is just barely contact. And then for whatever reason she pushes hard. I have two choices. Noting contact, consciousness of that contact. What happened? Mind noting "push, push." Because it was a hard push, it was unpleasant. Can there be compassion for this human that does not want to be pushed?

At this point(push again, hard)feeling pushed, pushed. I can just hold space for that. As I relax and she sees I'm not going to push back, she relaxes. The whole situation opens back up. Or the other option (push!) (sound effect). Back and forth we go, which is probably what most of your lives look like much of the time. Is that what you want? You do have a choice.

This is where our meditation practice takes us. No matter what the push–a bee sting, a bedbug, the deer eating your garden, the birds that have dropped their feces all over your car, the car that won't start when you walk out in the morning,  the traffic jam, the sore knee, the sore neck, the phone call from somebody who is angry or the boss who walks into your office with anger: all of these things will come. When it comes (push!), note whatever the contraction may be. Note physical pain, body pain, sensation, emotional pain, sensation of that pain. Note the contraction around the pain. Notice sadness, grief, anger, fear, confusion. Whatever has arisen, it's a push. You can simply label it "push," you don't have to be specific. But youcan be specific. Neck hurts, knee hurts. Sadness, grieving, feeling loss. Rage. Whatever comes up.

It's up to you whether you carry it further or whether you hold it there. And the practice gives us the opportunity to not carry it further. (Push! Push again!) Tension, tension. Breathing in, I am aware of the tension. Breathing out, I hold space for the tension. The experience of feeling pushed in whatever way, unpleasant feeling. The reaction of tension, and aversion comes up. "I don't want this."

The next step is what is so important. How do I relate to what has arisen? What's predominant for me now is the "I don't want this." "Oh, I shouldn't mind." It creates more tension. "I'll just push back harder. Make it go away." That creates more tension. Can I just be present with this? Eventually, whatever impulse has caused the push, it will cease to be predominant.

It won't always relax. One might have the boss who's constantly angry, arrogant, trying to control everything, and it's a constant push. Every day at work it's very unpleasant. Your not pushing back is not going to cause the boss to stop pushing. Maybe eventually it will, but maybe it won't, because you're not the one controlling what's arising for him, his conditioning. All you can do is relate to it in your own way, in your own heart. How do I relate to this catalyst?

Our practice is to lead us to be able to respond with kindness, with compassion. Note that kindness and compassion have the capacity to say no. I'm not going to ask Q to come back again, but if she kept pushing, there might be a certain point when I would say, "That's enough. Please stop pushing me. If you want to talk about why you're pushing me, I'm willing to listen. But you may not push me anymore." I am able to speak, not from anger, "You can't push me!" which is just more anger, but from the heart, "That's enough."

We say that's enough to the bedbugs by cleaning them out of the dormitories. We say that's enough to the boss by simply saying, "I know we both want to get the work done. When you push me in this way it creates a lot of anger between and tension for me. It would be so helpful to me if you could just come up and explain what you need in a calmer way. Then I'll be able to do what you want me to do much more successfully." Maybe the boss can listen; maybe she can't. We don't know that. But we respond to push with compassion.

So we take this back to the basics of the meditation practice. First there will be contact. Physical contact through the body, and mental contact, a thought arising, a sensation arising. Noting contact. With contact comes consciousness. We become conscious that there's been this contact that this object has arisen. A mental object, a physical object.

It will always have a feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. There's nothing else, no other choice. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. If it's neutral, we may become bored with it very quickly, and mind starts to wander off, wanting something else that's entertaining. If it's unpleasant, aversion may arise. If it's pleasant, grasping, wanting to hold onto it, may arise. This is all the flow of conditioning. Contact and consciousness, feelings, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Perception. Perception and feeling come together, but not quite. One may come first, the other might come first. So, seeing an angry face. Somebody really scowling at you. Unpleasant. Seeing a happy face, pleasant. Sometimes the feeling comes before the perception. Smelling the skunk, first there's the acrid smell. And then, noting, "Ah, that was a skunk." It doesn't matter which order they come. Don't try to figure it out. Just be aware of the arising of perception and feeling.

For the beginners, what I'm going through here may feel overwhelming, much too much information, and that's why you're meeting with Lisa, who will be explaining this slowly through today and tomorrow morning, giving you a chance to absorb it step by step. For the very experienced people, this is review. Don't tune me out and say, "Oh Aaron, I know all that already." Listen, and maybe you'll hear something new. Maybe you won't. It's okay either way. But I want to remind you of this as you go into the beginning of the retreat.

So contact; consciousness; pleasant, unpleasant, neutral feelings; perception; all will arise. Then we come to what is called the active moment, the moment when there's something pleasant and it moves into grasping, or something unpleasant and it moves into aversion. But in that moment when it's pleasant and you feel the beginning of grasping, if there's strong mindfulness that notes the move into this mental formation that we call grasping, and it's noted, that which is aware of grasping is not grasping. There's the opportunity to step back from the grasping, to rest in the spaciousness that sees this human that is inclined to grasping. "Ooo! Look at the strawberry shortcake! Ooo! I want that!" Back into spaciousness, because mindfulness has been keen enough to note the beginning of that move into grasping and step back from it. Noting, "If I move into grasping it's probably going to lead into unpleasant results. Can I just step back and relax, and hold spaciousness, with compassion, for this human that's about to grasp at this pleasant object?"

Or unpleasant feeling arises. You're out walking in the woods and suddenly rain starts to pour down. Cold, wet! Unpleasant. And you watch the "I don't want this." Can you feel the distinction between unpleasant sensation and aversion? Just because it's unpleasant does not mean that you have to move into aversion. This is your choice.

So what we practice here, sitting in the meditation hall environment free of strawberry shortcakes and rainstorms, with the smaller arisings. Sitting, calm, peaceful. And then the knee hurts a bit. First just a very small bit of pain. Noting unpleasant, throbbing, throbbing, pain. It builds up, more and more pain. As you sit here and note that shift from pain moving into getting caught in the stories of the aversion, "They're going to have to pick me up and take me off to the hospital. I won't be able to walk after the sitting." Story. It's just a story.

In that moment, bring your hand up to your heart. Take a deep breath. Feel, it's almost like you're on a vehicle that's picking up speed and you want to put on the brakes. Moving into aversion. "Breathing in, I am aware of the tension, the fear of what my body is doing, the fear of the pain, the dislike of the pain. Breathing out, I hold space around it, for this human, for all humans." Feel yourself coming back to a place where there is just the knee throbbing, and then you can make the skillful decision to extend the leg out and release the pain in the knee.

Or maybe as you're sitting peacefully, suddenly a very painful memory arises. Sadness. The direct experience–what is the direct experience of sadness, without being compounded by stories of, "I was, or will be abandoned. My needs won't be met. I am not loved. I am not loveable." All of those are embellishments. What is the direct experience of sadness?

But if it picks up steam and starts to run into those stories, with mindfulness, sitting here in the meditation hall, we catch it there. We can use the noting of "stories, stories, embellishing." Building this enormous structure on this one little thought.

Maybe you were at a party last week. You saw an old friend, with whom you had parted with some tension, and you started to walk toward him or her but the person got up and walked away. Wow, where mind can go with that! "See? I'm unlovable. I'm unworthy. Nobody likes me. Something terrible is wrong with me." Is that so? All that happened is this person walked away. But we note this in the practice, watching thought arising. Contact with the thought and consciousness, unpleasant memory. Just noting "unpleasant."

Awe watch all the compounding. There's a Pali word,papancha. It means the embellishment, one building on the other, like popcorn popping. All blowing up, out of this one experience and memory: "Somebody walked away." Maybe they saw somebody else. Maybe they had to go to the bathroom. Maybe they were thirsty and went to get a drink of water. Who knows what happened. Where do all these stories come from? But even more than knowing where they come from, because of course they simply come from this old conditioned mind, do I choose in this moment to allow this embellishment to blow up and blow up again and again? How many thousands of times has this happened? Have I done it enough? Am I ready to let it go? Can I choose to come back into this moment, feeling the fluttering, shaking of the body, the tension, the sadness? The feeling out of control? Holding all of that in the loving heart and just returning to this moment.

Bring attention back to the primary object, to the breath or whatever else you're using as a primary object. Breathing in and breathing out. It's important here that we are not trying to hold attention to the primary object, to the breath, to a mantra, to any specific object, but to be present in this moment with whatever is predominant. Because the breath or other primary object–mantra, etc.–can become a hiding place. One can become very proficient at returning to this primary object and screening everything else out, but that one cannot relate lovingly to the world. One sets up armoring.

Come back to center. Breathing, and open and letting oneself experience whatever the next moment brings. It may be emptiness, deep peace–fine. Or it may be another strong physical sensation or emotion or thought. So we are present with what arises but not embellishing it. Watching a whole tendency to flow into stories. Or the tendency to push it away and say, "No, I won't have that. I'll come back to my breath." But then you're just armoring yourself, the turtle in his shell.

I would say here about armoring. Armor separates you from the world; you can't learn anything with armoring. Shielding is different. Armoring is the person who goes into a cave and bricks it up when it's raining outside. The rain can't get him. But he can't connect with anything in the world. Shielding is the person who, when it starts to rain, puts up the umbrella. You don't have to get wet. It's kindness to put up the umbrella. And when the rain stops, you put the umbrella down.

Watch this in your practice today, the ways that you tend, each of you, to armor yourself by escaping. Don't try to figure out where you're escaping to or why you escape. Just note the experience of getting away, which is part of aversion. If something unpleasant has arisen, in what ways could you be with it more compassionately, not armor yourself and move into the separation, which all of you claim you want to get past? You say you want to be connected, to have interbeing and intimacy with everything. Then how can you armor? So can you watch the armoring, the tendency to armor?

Allow yourself to offer whatever shielding protection is appropriate. If a very painful memory comes up, instead of pushing it away, shielding would look like holding space for the memory and working with metta, with loving kindness practice, with that memory or pain until there's some space. And once there is some space–2 minutes, 10 minutes, half an hour, whatever it takes–once there's more space, then come back to the breath.

So this is the flow of our practice: contact and consciousness; perception and feelings; mental formations. Watch that shift into grasping or aversion. And if it occurs, okay, know that it occurred. What is the direct experience of grasping, of aversion? What happens to the whole mind and body when it's noted with spaciousness and kindness? Then you return to the primary object again.

We're running short of time. We started a bit late, but I do want to say a few more words here.

Eventually, as you practice in this way, a very deep insight develops that everything truly is arising out of conditions, impermanent, passing away, and is not of the nature of a separate self, is not me or mine. I am responsible to attend to it, but I see it arising and passing away, arising and passing away.

Now this is more for those experienced people here. Some of you have experienced what we call access concentration, which is a phase of practice where everything settles down and you see things arising and passing away. There's really not a "you" seeing, there's just spacious perception, seeing; arising and passing away, arising and passing away.

Eventually there is what is called cessation experience. There have been objects arising and passing away, and no going out to them, no pulling back from them, just witnessing them. There's still a subtle sense of a "somebody" witnessing in that way. But then even that witnessing presence truly passes away. The whole body and mind, the whole sense of a self, seems to evaporate, and we move into what is called cessation experience, cessation of the whole sense of separate self. In that experience, there is a very profound peace, connection. Knowing of who and what you truly are. Knowing that you're totally connected to everything, always. That nothing is or ever has been separate or could be separate.

You may rest in that space for a few seconds, a few minutes. Time is gone. You just rest in that space, a profound realization experience of the true self. And then of course you come out of the experience. You can't think about what's happening while you're in that experience because there's nobody there to think about it. There's no self. But then you come back, and you say, "Wow! What was that?"

Then you reflect and review on the experience, and you begin to ask yourself, "In what ways am I living harmoniously with this experience of my non-separation with all that is? Why do I keep coming back into this separation?" The separation is obviously an illusion. And yet I still am this self. I am me, not her. From the mundane perspective, yes, I am a self, you are a self, you are a self. So we begin to consider the relationship of the relative experience and of the ultimate.

What happens following this kind of realization experience is we begin to clean up our lives a little, to make more wholesome choices that allow us to connect and live that profound experience over the following days, weeks, years. Each time there's another such profound experience we're able to take it deeper. I'm not going to go into the whole chain of how we experience this. Simply, these experiences are life-changing. But you are not sitting to have this experience. The experience will be a result of your simply practicing with an open heart, with the intention to more kindness and presence.

One of my first books is calledPresence, Kindness and Freedom is the name. That title really sums it up. When you are present with objects as they arise in your experience, with how you relate to those objects, when you trust that youcan relate with kindness, although you often do not relate with kindness, but you can, and become more skilled at relating with kindness, you have increasing freedom. You're not so locked into the old conditioning, and you have the freedom to relate with more and more kindness.

Each time you relate with kindness, it helps others to relate back with kindness, not to keep the pushing going. And this leads to freedom. And as you practice in this way, you will be more and more able to move into these profound awakening experiences because you're not so locked into the old conditioning.

All right, summing up. What I'd like you to practice today, those of you who are not in the beginner's group, I would like you to watch this whole process. Contact and consciousness. Perception, what it is, and feeling. What it is doesn't have to be precise. If you hear a buzzing, it is just buzzing. You don't have to know, is it a fly or a wasp or a this or that. Just hearing, hearing, buzzing. Hearing a sound. Pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And then that move into aversion or grasping that comes with pleasant or unpleasant. Or the move into boredom, a kind of low energy state, can come with neutral. See if you can catch these at the very beginning. Grasping, aversion, low energy. Just note it. Instead of noting it with, "I've got to fix this,"-- "Ah, here is this. Here is grasping." How does grasping feel? What is the direct experience of grasping? How does aversion feel? What is the direct experience of aversion? And because grasping and aversion are conditioned objects, they're impermanent. They arose out of conditions. As you bring attention to them, and they begin to dissolve, come back to the primary object.

That's it. That's what I'd like to see you practice today. Are there any specific questions on the practice? When you come back to the primary object, can you come back with an ease, just (exhale), not, "Get away from me, aversion; I'm moving back to my primary object."? In contraction, having noted that the aversion is beginning to fall away, noting the texture of attention. And as everything opens up a bit, coming back into the primary object.

That's all then. We'll end here.

(session ends)