Nov 13 -- Power

[Missed section before first 5-minute meditation, it's from memory.]

A: OK, I've brought along some food and drink, hopefully there's
something here which everyone craves.  Pick something, but don't consume
it now.

Let's do 5 minutes of whatever meditation we each find stabilises the
mind.  Then consume the food/drink for 30 seconds or so when I say, then
stop and we'll do another 5 minutes' meditation.  Just watch whatever
comes up during those five minutes.

[5 minutes pass]

A: OK, go ahead and consume.

R: Don't yell at me this time!

A: I'm sorry about [yelling when you took a sip to early before.]
[Laughter]

[Sounds of eating and drinking.]

R: So exactly how much should we have?

A: Just consume whatever seems right.  Ideally I'd like to stop when
everybody's caught up in the world of eating.  But it's hard for me to
judge.  Actually, now seems like a good stopping point.

J: But I was just... [Laughter]

[5 more minutes pass.]

A: Any comments?

S: I'm generally finding it really hard to concentrate right now.  I
don't know if it's because of this or just because for some reason my
mind is just going all over the place, and I'm having a really hard time
just focusing so I don't know if that has anything to do with this at
all, but that's just what I was finding.

A: Uh huh.  Have you been able to meditate 10 minutes a day or so?

S: Definitely not 10 minutes a day, but yeah I've been doing it
semi-regularly.

A: Uh huh.  Just a tough day today.

S: Yeah, it was one of these go, go, go kinda days for me, and I've got
a lot on my mind.

[Rob starts to take another drink, thinks better of it.  Laughter]

A: Thanks, Rob.

S: But I was having movie clips and all sorts of stuff [coming up in
meditation.]

A: Oh, OK, so did anything stand out in terms of the experience of
eating and then stopping?

S: I don't think so.  I was looking, but I had a huge dinner.  I think
if I hadn't, then it may have had more its desired effect, but I ate so
much before coming over here.

A: Anyone else, what was your experience?

J: Well, I enjoyed the texture and the taste, and then you stopped us
and I wanted more.  But I couldn't have more, but I said "OK, I'm not
really that angry because I'm not hungry."  If I were really hungry, I
would have been mad.  And I just sat with it, and I was just happy about
liking cashews.  Because it kept tasting like cashews in my mouth.  And
I realized I didn't need any more.

A: Oh, that's fantastic!

G: Nice!

H: I wanted to pick one of these little things up and throw them at you!

[Laughter]

J: I don't like sweets, I'm very lucky!  Cookies, now if you'd brought
cookies I would have been in trouble.

A: Anyone else?

P: Well at first when I stopped I thought "That's fine, I'm just not
eating those for a while."  But then I thought "Well, what if I'm not
allowed to eat them, ever, and that was problematic.  Because, "Oh, man,
I want my cashews!"

H: I had the whole thing going on.  I had the thoughts like "When do I
get to eat again, are we picking this up again?"  And my brain kept
visualising [the food], so because I felt like it was still here, still
with me, so would have liked someone to take this stuff away, because
that would make it easier.  And then I realized it was plaguing me more
because it was still present.  And the sensations were still there, like
my mouth is watering, and I'm feeling that, and the experience of
swallowing and  then needing to swallowing, which reminds me that I'm
not eating these delicious little things.  And I was recognizing the
heart-hurt about it.  I don't feel any hunger, but I could feel it
around [my heart/chest], and there was this sadness about it.  There was
a lot going on.

G: She pretty much nailed it.  My meditation was on a much more
difficult craving.  I had the same situation, where it's much harder
because it's still around.  It's like a smoker.  If they see someone
smoking it's much harder not to smoke.  So that's my trouble, the
craving thing.  The trigger is the object of craving.  And the other
thing was not detaching myself from  craving, but I could watch myself
craving.

A: Great!

G: You know, in the third person.  And that was interesting.  Doesn't go
anywhere, it just is what it is.  I think I'd have to do a lot of
tonglen if I wanted to get rid of the craving.

A: Yeah.

G: It's just pain, and I don't want it!

A: I know what you mean.

G: It takes motivation, right?

A: It sure does.  Definitely does.  And some cravings you don't
necessarily want to give up, right?

G: Exactly, so it's problematic.  I don't know what the solution is.

R: To be honest, I didn't really have... although my actions might seem
to suggest otherwise... I guess I just wasn't really craving it that
much.  I didn't really have any trouble  just clearing my mind just
then.

A: That's good.

G: Pick something harder then!

R: Well, I was just thinking, I do [reach for things to consume then put
them down] subconsciously all the time.  Maybe I like to torture myself,
but if I'm craving something, I just try to resist it.  And it's not
even a conscious thing.

A: Do you remember what was going through your mind the second time you
picked up the [bottle of hard lemonade]?

R: I think just absent-mindedness.  It was just sitting there, and I
sort of instinctively reached for it.

S: Just to pick up on what you said about instinctively, I wonder if I
would sense the craving more if... because if I'm actually holding a
drink, then I habitually drink it.  I would have done exactly the same
thing if I was holding it [in my hand] but because I put it [on the
floor], it had a different effect.

A: I just had an idea... Anyone who feels uncomfortable with this can
veto it.  I suggest that we go on consuming this stuff mindfully, during
the rest of the class, and if you think you notice that someone is doing
it absent-mindedly, then you can call them out on it.  And no one loses
in this.  This isn't a matter of winning and losing.

R: But how do you recognise that someone's doing it absentmindedly vs
willfully?  Or mindedly, I guess?

A: I can't tell you...

G: Maybe the cue is that we eat it really slowly if we're doing it
mindfully.  Like we reach for it more slowly and deliberately to show
everybody...

A: Yeah, this is why this kind of stuff gets really complicated.  You
try to set up external metrics for stuff like that and what really
matters is the intention and the internal state.  All I can say is
you'll know it when you see it.  And we'll just trust that everybody in
the room is making their assessment as honestly as they can.  And if
someone gets called out on it and they say "No, I was eating mindfully,"
we'll just trust that that's the case.  But things like, you know,
they're bent over the food, or...

S: A glazed look... [Laughter]

A: Yeah.  Of course, then patterns evolve where people look very
attentive while they're eating.

G: So, "Life in practice," right?  So is the idea of that to cultivate
mindfulness while craving something?  Not food [necessarily]?  Like
you're really craving going on a trip.  So you're just mindful about the
fact that you're craving a vacation?

A: Yeah, it's definitely about practice in life.  Power is about the
realization of practice in your behavior and in your modes of
perception.  And craving is definitely a part of that.  And if you can
be mindful when a craving is in operation, that cuts the suffering right
there.  That mindfulness is the antidote to the ignorance which leads to
suffering.  It doesn't mean you're not going to experience pain in your
life, but it does mean that you'll have the possibility of still being
mindful when the pain arises and experiencing the pain in attention and
not being bewildered by it, thereby establishing a clearer and clearer
picture of what's going on in your life and the conditioning that's
running your life, and ways that you might change that.

I have no experience with this, because I just can't seem to put on
weight, but while I was researching this, I found this diet called the
"Deconditioning diet," which is basically Pavlovian conditioning, or
Skinnerian training, actually, applied to food.  So the way it works is
you initially try to put as much structure as you can into your daily
eating, so that you've got a fairly clear picture of it, you take note
of all the cues that trigger your desire for a snack or something, and
then you do what's called counter-conditioning, where you put that cue
in front of you (basically what I'm doing now) and you trigger it, but
then you don't eat.  And that's an expression of power.  And then you
start extending the time between meals until you're fasting
periodically.

And this is a really beautiful example of why Buddhist practice is
useful even if you don't really believe all of this stuff about the
soteriology of enlightenment and the end of all suffering.  If you can
approach your eating that way so that you're not bewildered by your
cravings and you approach things methodically, then you actually start
to treat the conditioning in your life as a kind of a garden where
you're creating the desirable conditioning out of the behavior that
you're performing at the moment.  [R], you look skeptical.

R: No, I'm not really skeptical.

A: All right.  So one place where power really is directly used as a
spiritual practice is martial arts.  The most famous example is kung
fu.

R: [To P] was [that consumption] absentminded?

P: Yeah, I guess it was.

A: Can you remember what was going through your mind before you did it?

P: Well, I was definitely thinking "I'm thirsty, I need some water," but
I wasn't thinking about experiencing drinking the water as I was
drinking it.

S: Sorry to interrupt, but coffee, for example.  I have an unbelievably
unhealthy attachment to coffee.  Is this practice something I could work
with?  Because the idea of going and getting some coffee and not
drinking it would drive me crazy.  You know what I mean?  I have a
really big problem with the amount of coffee I drink.  So, is this the
kind of thing that would be worth... What I'm saying is that finding the
kind of object of desire like that and then practicing this kind of
exercise, is that a good thing to do, or?

A: It's what I'm doing.  That is my practice these days.  Not so much
with craving but with fear.  Well, craving too.  Lots of craving comes
up.  When you start doing this stuff, you can't follow a set formula
anymore.  If you try to do that, you're back in the world of the
intention instead of making the intention an object of study.  So I
can't give you specific advice about how to do this sort of thing, but I
think it's an appropriate way to use these practices.  And if having a
cup of coffee in front of you and not drinking it drives you crazy,
there are a few approaches to that to make it less disturbing.  One is
to do concentration beforehand to steady your mind.  I wouldn't do metta
practice before this, but the joy/breath thing would be a good one to
do.  The other is to do this practice when you're not going to have the
craving.  So you have your first coffee, then an hour or two later, or
at whatever interval where you're not likely to have the full burn, then
do the practice.  And if you do that, don't reward yourself with the
coffee when you're done.  Just pour it down the sink.  [Rewarding
yourself that way] is just going to make it worse.

S: Yeah, that makes sense, because then you're just increasing the
desire, and kind of suspending it.  That's  really interesting.  I'll
try that.  Cause I have this starbucks card, so you get free coffee for
the rest of the day.  So I can just dump as much as I want down me...

A: Yeah, and to a certain extent, this is "Physician, heal thyself."
I'm still addicted to the internet.  And the measure at the moment is,
I've got these little devices on my computers which plug into the
ethernet port, so you can't remove them without a special tool, and [H]
has that tool.  [Laughter]  And H's computer has the password to the
wireless router, and I don't have that password.

S: You do what you've gotta do.

A: Yeah, so I have go to the library to get on the internet, so then
it's much more controlled.

I'm not putting this forward as a panacea for addiction.  It's something
I'm struggling with.  But it is something which seems to work for
people, and it's not just in the dharma, it's based in good science as
well.  This deconditioning diet I was talking about, that's based on
Skinnerian principles, which are the most scientifically grounded
theories in psychology that we have.

A: So, martial arts.  So, Zen was founded... this is the myth, it's
probably not historically accurate, but...

[Rob takes a drink.  Laughter]

R: I feel so self-conscious, now.  All eyes turn.  I like how you look
at me, and I'm like "Yes."

J: "Yes, I'm mindful."

A: Yeah, so Bodhidharma went from India to China and founded Zen,
supposedly.  He also supposedly invented kung fu.  Shaolin kung fu comes
out of Zen.  The expression of power there is obvious, and the idea
there is that when you punch someone, you don't just throw the punch
and put all your weight behind it.  You're aware during the entire
punch.  If you're not aware for the entire thing, then... let me show
you what can happen.

[Shows how an overcommitted punch can lead to being pulled off balance.]

So there are these exercises in tai chi called "push hands," where the
idea is that you're trying to take each other's balance.  And you can't
let the other person into your space too much, but you also can't just
try to push them away.  Because as soon as you become rigid, you're as
easy to tip over as a chair, basically.  This is a physical exercise
which we could all do now.  If you could all pair up with someone with
roughly the same physique... [nervous laughter]  We're not going to do
anything rough, here.  Let me demonstrate, here.

We stand [roughly toe to toe], and put our hands together, and then we
try to push each other over [through our connected hands.]

Give this a try.  Try to remain aware of what's going on in your body as
you do this.  Don't try to throw each other across the room, just try to
take each other's balance.

R: So we're supposed to just be conscious of our balance?

A: Conscious of your balance, and conscious of the other person's.  If
the other person goes rigid, that's a good time to push.

[A couple minutes pass]

Has everyone got a sense for it?

S: I guess it's not... H was...

A: Oh, yeah, H would be really good at this.  She was in a troupe doing
something called contact improv for a year.  So she has excellent
physical awareness.

So did you get a sense for how this relates to intention and the
intention of the other person?

J: It's all about paying attention to where the other person is.

A: Did anyone have the experience of their partner rigidifying, and
being able to push them as a result?

S: I was rigidifying.  I noticed when [H] was pushing me over, I'd
frequently have my legs or my arms locked.

H: I felt a lot of desire to pull.  To create resistance and then let
go.  To kind of play with the space between force and absence of force.

A: Cool.  OK, so this is really... does everybody remember the
unbendable arm?

R: What's that.

A: Right, you weren't there, that's right.  So I'm holding my arm rigid,
there.  Just bend it.  [He just about tips me over.]

So now, try again [he still bends it, but it's much harder.]

R: It was a lot harder.

A: So the thing there is that the first time I'm holding this rigid, and
mechanically, my bicep is opposed to my tricep, so I'm doing half the
work for you.  Whereas if my arm is just out like this, I don't need it
to be rigid.  My natural response is fast enough that I'll be able to
tighten my tricep against your push before you can push it too far.

R: I see, so instead of keeping it flexed all the  time, you just keep
it relaxed until you feel the initial impulse, and then you resist.

A: Exactly, and this is why they're always going on in martial arts
about staying relaxed.  On a physical level.  There's more to it than
that.  On a perceptual level, you want your perception to be relaxed as
well, you want to see everything that's going on, you don't want to just
focus in on the other guy's fist, or his sword or whatever.  You want to
see the whole picture.

And training in this way of  relating to the world, particuarlly in the
middle of a fight, is really difficult.  And at the same time, it's what
makes it such an effective spiritual practice.  There are all these
reactions which come up, not just when you're trying to apply force but
when you see a threat, and they create these intentions which aren't
really coming from you, they're coming from some kind of internal agenda
to preserve an identity you cling to.  It may just be your
identitification with your physical body, of course, and that's
perfectly reasonable, but the fact is it gets in your way if you want to
do this stuff right.  And again I should say, I'm no martial arts
expert.  Anyone could kick my ass in a fight.  I've done a couple of
years of tai chi, I've done aikido a few times.

S: Is that the one with the sticks?

A: Yeah, they do use swords and sticks.

S: Oh, right, that's pretty bad-ass. [Laughter]  Must be fun.

A: Oh, it's so much fun.  Once you get comfortable with being thrown and
learning how to land.  Throwing people through the air and being
thrown, it's a lot of fun.

S: We'll have to clear the furniture.  [Laughter]

J: G would like that!

A: There's an aikido class I'm going to on Monday nights.  Through
freeskool.

P: Good for after the apocalypse.

A: Yeah, we're gonna need these skills.

S: Take care of those zombies.

A: Let's talk about social power now.  The exercise of power really
comes down to the same thing, except now you're exercising some kind of
influence over somebody else.  And this doesn't have to be domineering.
It can be just a reflection of what you would like in the situation, if
you have a good relationship ideally that's how it works.  But even just
doing that is difficult for a lot of people?

H: "Where would you like to go to dinner?"

A: Yeah, "I dunno, where would *you* like to go to dinner, love?"

J: "I don't care.  You choose."  [Laughter]

A: Exactly.  When it comes to social power, those are where the
reactions come in.  They're more inhibitory reactions for the most part,
than a matter of actually exercising the power and then collapsing down
on that.  Though of course that happens as well.  A conflict can easily
arise because, for instance, you ask someone where they'd like to go to
dinner, and you're upset because you wanted them to ask you where you
wanted to go for dinner.

Let's do an exercise about this.  Each of you in turn, tell me something
that I'm doing wrong in this class.  [H], you go first, it'll be easy
for you.  [Laughter]

H: You're not starting with 10 minutes of meditation!

G: It took a long time to hear about the class schedule.

A: You mean the schedule within the class?

G: Yeah.

A: See, now I've got my reactions going, because I want to know what
needs to change.

J: Last time was too much content, and you need to put the chart on the
web so I can look at it.

S: I have no idea, I can't think of anything right now.

A: OK, well just tell me something wrong that I'm doing in general.

S: Oh, man.

A: (It's going to be hard for him because he's Canadian.)

S: That's totally true!  [Laughter]  I was thinking about it, so much of
this is culturally determined!  As soon as you said that, I was like,
"Oh my God."  Like, I got really stressed out when you said tell me
something I'm doing wrong.  I was like "Oh,  fuck, I don't know how to
do that!"

H: He's asking too many questions!

A: Yeah, yeah, you just told me something!  [Laughter]

S: You're asking me too many questions!  [Laughter]  (Dodged a bullet.
I'm gonna have some root beer.)

G: Mindfully?

S: Definitely

R: Could be more engaging?  More, like... actually, this class has been
very engaging, but the previous...

A: Yeah, the previous two have been a bit... insight is a... They were
too heady.

P: I'm with the Canadian.  [Laughter]

G: Can I take your [opportunity to criticise him]?

J: Is this a guy vs girl thing?  I don't know.

G: Good point.  [All the women are] full of criticism.  [Laughter]

A: OK, so now...

H: And the value of that exercise was?

A: That it would trigger a discomfort.  I don't know if you experienced
it.

J: You're demonstrating [limits on] social power.

A: Yeah.

J: It's an instance of power to express something potentially
disagreeable.

A: Yeah.

S: Yeah, I felt... and also, I was kind of joking when I reached for the
root beer, but I kept wanting to immediately, and then even after the
moment was done, I was like "Nope, nope.  Conscious[ly drink it, or not
at all.]"

A: You're right, it's culturally determined.  But this is in every
culture.  A culture can't survive without people having some kind of
inbuilt sense of shame about how they relate to other people.  I could
go into a freeskool-like rant about what's going on in the US in that
regard these days, but I think I'd just be preaching to the choir.

J: That's right, you're from Australia, yes?  So what's the difference
there?  Are you more like Canadians?

A: No, no, I mean America's always had a very direct culture about
telling things they're doing wrong, and I'm totally down with that,
obviously.  I want feedback.  But when you look at the things people are
doing now in the name of money, and the way they're hurting other
people, alot of these are things that 60 years ago, you know, a banker
who...

H: Where are you going with this?

A: You're right, I'm ranting...

OK, so where are we?

H: We just told you what you're doing wrong.

J: Social power.

A: Yeah, in terms of your practice, if you're looking for something to
practice on it's useful to find places where you know something's going
wrong but you feel like you can't speak up about it or take a necessary
action.  Because you'll usually find some conditioning there that it's
worth coming into a more conscious relationship with.  That conditioning
may actually be very valuable...

H: Can you give an example?  Or can you say what you've said in another
way?

A: Sure.  You were all taught by your parents that certain ways of
pointing out problems with the world are harmful in some way.  Or just
ways of relating to the world.  And these all come out of corruptions of
the four immeasurables.  So, joy and power become sadism or masochism,
or just disdain.  "You think you can do that really well.  Let me show
you a thing or two."  Insight becomes manipulation.  "You must be evil
even to think that."  Metta becomes envelopment, clingingness.
Compassion becomes tyranny.  "You can't do that.  You'll get hurt."  And
we carry those into adulthood.  And those things we learn from our
parents shape our lives.  And it's worth rooting those things out and
coming into a conscious relationship with them.  And the practices that
we've been learning are useful for that, because it's painful to do
that.  It's always painful.  And it's obviously useful from a spiritual
perspective because you want that sort of thing out in the open, and
it's useful from a practical perspective because those are the things
which constrain our lives.

H: Those things?

A: Those being the patterns which we learned from our parents.  I
shouldn't just say parents.  We learn them from teachers and TV, and all
kinds of stuff like that, too.

OK, so I'd like to do one more exercise.  This is kind of the spoken
component of koans.  Now, koans are usually insight practices, but
they're also power practices.  Does everyone know what a koan is?

A koan is like a riddle that they have in Zen Buddhism.  So "What is the
sound of one hand clapping," for instance.  So, you're expected to give
a "demonstration" of what this koan represents.  So, "what is the sound
of one hand clapping?" is about attending to something when there's
nothing there.  To listen and hear nothing.  So a valid response to that
koan is just to indicate that you're listening.  But that's an action,
and a lot of koans have semantic content, so the response has to be in
speech.  And the speech is an act of power as well.  You have to remain
in attention as you speak.  So what I'd like for us to do own is to go
around the room and just say something which comes out of your direct
experience of the present moment.  It doesn't have be profound, it
doesn't have to be articulate, it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has
to be something that you're saying as you're saying as you're aware of
your physical presence and what's going on in your mind, and arising out
of that awareness.  Does that make sense?

J: How does that relate to a koan?

A: This is where a koan has to come from.  So for instance, with "What
is the sound of one hand clapping."  The purpose is to teach you to
look, or in this case to hear, and see nothing.  So you have to indicate
that you're listening.  In this case all I want to you do is say
something which is coming out of your present experience.  You don't
have to indicate anything by it.  Oh, sorry, I didn't answer your
question yet.  The point is that at the time of your response to the
koan, you're listening.  You've developed that capacity to listen and
hear nothing.  So you indicate to your teacher in some way that you're
listening.  And the teacher is supposed to have the sensitivity to tell
whether that's a true expression of something  which is coming out of
your present experience, or just a formulaic response, like someone's
told you "the answer" and you're just telling that in order to get the
teacher's approval.

But in this case, you don't have to answer a koan.  All you have to do
is be in the room, attend to the five physical senses and to what's
going on in your mind, and say something which arises out of that.

So why don't I start.  "I'm nervous about this exercise."

G: It's toasty in here.

J: I smell beer.

H: My bum is sore.

P: My head is sore.

R: Nothing to do with that exercise we were doing?

S: I'm tired.

R: I'm a bit anxious to get out of here.

A: OK, how are we doing for time?

H: Ten of.

A: Good, so what came up for you as you were saying that?

R: Well, I was just searching my mind for something to say, and that's
what came up...

A: OK, great.  So now we're going to do the same exercise, but we have
to do something which will trigger a reaction.

J: In ourselves?

A: Yeah... Describe something unpleasant about your current experience.
So again, you want to be in the room, you want to attend to the five
senses and what's going on in your mind, and you want speech about
something unpleasant to come out of that.

J: I'm uncomfortable being the oldest person here.

G: I'm a little hyper.

H: I can feel my belly fat. [Laughter]

P: My head hurts.  Too much in terms of the day.  It's not this.

R: I guess I'm feeling a little hyper too.  I guess I'm just anxious to
get out of here.

A: Uh huh, that's good.

S: I think hearing what everyone else is saying is making me feel like
saying I've been feeling anxious about saying too much.  You know what I
mean?

A: OK.

R: I guess I have friends waiting for me at Maxie's so I'm eager to go
see them.

H: Sounds like it's bringing up a lot of reactivity.  It sounds like
you're conflicted.  You feel obligated to remain here, but your heart is
someplace else.  Another part of you would be "I gotta go, bye."  But
you're not.  So there's some tension there saying "I wanna go..." I'm
just exploring what you're saying because I recognize this from other
experiences I've had, where I'm trying to be polite, and I'm obligated
to be here or whatever, AND, I'm not here, and it's like what choice do
I make, do I stay or do I go, because I'm obviously not contributing
here with my mere presence.

A: Can we... sorry, we're just a little short  on time.  He needs to go,
so... [Laughter.]

So I want to go around the room and do this one more time, and this time
I want you tell us all what's your best feature.  So again, attending to
all the physical senses and what's going on in your mind, just hold that
question and say the first thing which comes into your mind.  It doesn't
even have to make sense.

J: I listen well.

G: I'm excited about everything.

A: I have delicate hands.

P: I'm confused.

R: Jeez.  This is the part that's always hardest for me.  I, uh, drink
hard lemonades well.  [Laughter.]  That was a cop-out.

S: The first thing I thought about was my eyelashes, which is
embarassing to say, because it's not what I would normally say, but it's
the first thing, so...

A: Cool, cool.

OK, so hopefully that triggered some of these reactions in all of you.
Obviously there's a lot more when it comes to social issues.

So, for this week, we're really starting to get into where this stuff
can start to apply to habits.  So I suggest you pick some aspect of what
we discussed this week.  It doesn't have to be the habit you were going
to apply this stuff to, it could be a social one, and start thinking
about ways you could apply what we've talked about today to that habit.

Any questions about how that might look?

G: Yeah. [inaudible]

A: So, for instance, if someone wanted to complain less.

G: Oh, yeah, that was me!

A: Yeah, how are you going with that?

G: Oh, yeah, just totally forgot!

P: Well, you're not complaining about complaining!

A: So, how is going?  Was it for a month or for a week that you weren't
going to complain.

G: Supposed to be 21 days, I think.

A: Is that still something you want to do?

G: Yeah.

A: So, start noticing the things which trigger your complaints, start
putting yourself in situations where you know you're likely to complain
about something, and don't do it.  Look at what comes up, look at the
reactions, make those, not the object of attention necessarily, but the
object of study in your meditation with tonglen.  Tonglen  would be a
good way to approach this.

So, everyone has a habit in mind?

S: The question is choosing which one... But yeah, I've got a few...

J: I have a quick question: how do you spell 'koan'?

A: k-o-a-n.  Yeah, I have problems with koans.  Actually, on Ken's
website at the moment, there's a guy presenting koans and they just make
no sense to me.  I'm really struggling with it.  But I get the idea,
I've done them before, it's just these koans I don't get.

[Switching topic, talking to the whole group]

If you don't like yourself in some way, I would definitely pick a habit
related to that, if it makes sense to you.  That's one of the biggest
benefits that you can derive from this kind of practice, that you can
retrain your mind with regard to that kind of thing.

This is something I do have experience with.  It actually works for
that.

So I guess that's it for today.  Thanks.

S: It's funny what you were saying, because I kept [picking up the root
beer bottle] all the time, like if things get too quiet...

P: "It's time to do something."

S: Yeah,  exactly, or if I was anxious about something, I would go to
the glass, and there was this tension there of wanting to do it, but not
doing it, and then all the various things which came up in that moment?

J: "How can I act like I'm doing it consciously?"  [Laughter]

H: You're just doing it consciously!

A: There's a talk by David Graeber [presented] at Google.  He wrote the
book "Debt: the last 5000 years."  And I didn't watch the entire talk,
but the parts that I did watch, he has this coffee cup, and he keeps
picking it up and looking at it, and then putting it back down, and the
youtube comments indicate that he does this for the entire 90 minutes of
the talk, and they're complimenting him on his discipline.

S: That would drive me nuts.  I was also thinking "When is the moment
I'd least crave coffee?"  Probably when I'm sleeping.  You're like
"After you've had a cup" but after that I get the crest of the high, and
then there's a point where I can feel the coffee high.  Clearly I've
dissected this too much, right?  And it's right at that crest that I
want to have another cup of coffee so that I can sustain it, but that
never sustains it, you know?

J: You're not drinking enough!  I used to be able to drink a cup at 3 in
the morning and go to sleep.

S: Yeah, oh, I can drink a Venti Americano before bed, no problem.

A: Have you heard this song, "Addicted to Stress"?  I'll have to send it
to you.

S: I've really got to cut it out, but it's so totally ingrained.

A: Well, you know, the other warning I should probably make is don't
push it.  If you can't figure out a way to do this kind of work which is
feasible, then don't keep testing yourself in ways where you keep
failing.  Maybe even switch to another habit.

For instance, I'm really good at Mathematics, but what drives that is
actually a fear of being bad at it.  So one of the exercises I've done
recently is I do really simple calculations, but they're complicated
enough that I make mistakes periodically and when I do, there's this
[screwing up tension inside.]  And still haven't really found a way to
put myself in a situation where those mistakes are coming up and that
anxiety happens in a way which allows me to remain present.  So I've
moved on to other things for the time being.

S: Initially when I first started this, one of the things I wanted to
work on was this feeling of losing my temper, and I've noticed that for
a whole host of different reasons, [meditation among them], I've been
able to increasingly more easily see when I'm going to lose my temper
and be aware of it and stop it.

A: That's great.

S: It used to not be an issue for me, but when things got super
stressful over the last couple of years, somehow there was a disconnect
between recognising that I was about to lose my temper and just losing
my temper.  And now for some  reason it's really kind of exciting, it's
like "Don't throw the GPS on the floor"  "Nope, nope, not gonna do
that."  And just put it down and that's fine.  So being mindful of that
kind of pattern of behaviour seems to be important to helping me move
through it.  It seems similar to what you're talking about.

A: Yeah, it's a beautiful example, actually of how you break the chain
of dependent origination.  You see the feelings/thoughts associated with
the anger, but you're not actually angry yet, and just by seeing that
you've broken the ignorance which lets the whole chain run and lets you
become angry.

That's actually been the biggest benefit for me from meditation.  When I
started this, I was just angry all the time...  So the world that you
get born into when you become angry, that's called the hell realm in
Buddhism.  And I did hell realm meditation for about a year.  And I was
with a partner who was the same as me, she would get angry all the time
and at some point she started getting angry with me, and I was like "Oh
you can be angry over there.  I'll just talk to you calmly," and it was
so liberating.

S: It does actually feel liberating, doesn't it? I feel so much more in
control of things.  And likewise, when my partner freaks out on the
phone, I'm like "That's cool, no problem."  Sometimes it'll stress me
out but I won't react to it.

A: Brilliant, that's great.

S: No more throwing GPS's for now.

H: They're gettin' cheap.