A Review of The Eightfold Path

A Review of The Eightfold Path
Part VII: Right Mindfulness
Dharma Talk -- Eric Kolvig -- September 17, 1998 -- Albuquerque, New Mexico

We're doing our last waltz through the Eightfold Path after twenty-one months, and I'm so sorry that we didn't get to the eighth aspect -- Right Concentration -- which we'll deal with on November 19, after I return from my retreat. This is the last time around with Right Mindfulness. It's a subject that we talk about more in vipassana than any other subject -- mindfulness -- and probably, if you've been around the scene for a while, you've heard many talks on this subject. I have to say that I'm really tired of my own words on mindfulness, so I'm going to do a lot of reading from other people tonight, just for variety's sake.

There are many reasons why mindfulness is considered so important. This tradition is called "vipassana", which is a word in Pali -- the ancient language of the Buddha. Vipassana means "seeing things as they really are" -- it means "mindfulness." So, it gets a lot of air time in this tradition.

I think mindfulness is especially important because in terms of the day-to-day, moment-to-moment application of our practice, this is the thing we do most: to make an effort to pay attention, to be aware. I've tried to think about what's the core -- what's the bottom line on mindfulness? I think it's something very essential, very basic. I was talking the other day to Joseph Goldstein, a senior teacher in our tradition who has been my teacher for many years. I was sharing with him the fact that, as I prepared to go into a self-retreat for six weeks, there's developing in my own meditation practice -- the practice of mindfulness -- a very strong sense of presence, that somehow makes my practice seem much more spacious than it has, often, in the past. And he said, "Oh yes, presence. Be careful not to objectify it. Be careful not to turn it into anything, because it's basically the presence of awareness." It's quite wonderful that we can have, sometimes, a sense when mindfulness is strong -- this strong sense of power that's here. And also, just a living sense of being present. So simple. But the Buddha said:

The heedful [that is, those who are mindful, or aware] come to the deathless [that is, come to that which doesn't arise or pass away; to that which is not born and doesn't die], and the heedless [those who are not mindful, or not aware] are as if dead already.

So it seems to me to be just that basic and essential in our lives -- if we're aware, we're present and we're alive. If we aren't very aware, if we're not very present, then we're actually not very alive. That quality of being present, unfortunately, isn't a birthright -- it's not something that comes absolutely naturally to us, because most of us have spent decades training ourselves not to be so present. We're deeply conditioned to be lost in the fantasy of thought -- to being distracted. And it's possible, if the Buddha was right, that we have spent countless lifetimes training ourselves not to be present -- millions, billions of lifetimes.

So to me, it's an enormous gift just to get the news -- "Be here now!" to quote Ram Dass, with his famous hippie book of the 1970's. It's just that simple. To be truly alive we need to be present.

I'd like to read a little example of something that I came across again, recently -- just a little tableau, a little moment where you can really see the difference between an intelligence, or a consciousness, that is quite present and quite alive to surroundings -- a real sense of vitality -- compared to other consciousnesses that don't feel so present and so alive. It's from J. Krishnamurti's little book The Only Revolution, which has been a real favorite of mine. Many books of Krishnamurti's are basically transcribed talks that were edited by people, but there are a few of his books -- maybe three -- where he actually put his own hand to writing, and he was an extraordinary writer, a wonderful writer. So I'd like to read this little passage from Krishnamurti. Just one warning: Krishnamurti was born into the Brahman caste in India, and as a Brahman, he never, in all ninety-plus years of his life, ate meat. There are a couple of references to meat in here, and there's definitely aversion coming through, so I just wanted to give you that warning.

On every table there were daffodils -- young, fresh, just out of the garden, with the bloom of spring on them still. On a side table, there were lilies -- creamy white with sharp yellow centers. To see this creamy white and the brilliant yellow of those many daffodils was to see the blue sky ever expanding, limitless, silent. Almost all the tables were taken by people talking very loudly and laughing. At a table nearby, a woman was surreptitiously feeding her dog with the meat she could not eat.

They all seemed to have huge helpings, and it was not a pleasant sight to see people eating. Perhaps it may be barbarous to eat publicly. A man across the room had filled himself with wine and meat and was just lighting a big cigar, and a look of beatitude came over his fat face. His equally fat wife lit a cigarette. Both of them appeared to be lost to the world.

And there they were -- the yellow daffodils, and nobody seemed to care. They were there for decorative purposes that had no meaning at all, and as you watched them, their yellow brilliance filled the noisy room. Color has this strange effect upon the eye. It wasn't so much that the eye absorbed the color, as that the color seemed to fill your being. You were that color. You didn't become that color -- you were of it, without identification or name. The anonymity, which is innocence; where there is no anonymity there is violence in all of its different forms.

If you just have a sense of this intelligence being able to open to the yellow of the daffodils and the creamy white of the lilies, and becoming that color -- you really have a sense of a presence and a vitality and a livingness which, to me, is quite moving. He wasn't free of prejudice about body image, either, clearly. I just needed to say that, too -- it's from a different time.

We can practice awareness, or mindfulness, to hold our center when things get very difficult, and we can also practice awareness when things are just very ordinary, and both of them have their beauty and their value. Not long ago, I read an interview with Ken Wilber, the Buddhist scholar and practitioner, and he sums up in a couple of sentences the importance of being mindful when things get very difficult. In the interview, he was talking about the experience when his life completely fell apart, quite a few years ago. His wife, Treya, had terminal cancer, and for many years they worked with her illness. He was very present, serving her. They moved to a fairly remote location in North Lake Tahoe in California, and at some point, the difficulty and the challenge of their situation overwhelmed him, and he lost it. His life was basically organized around writing, and he had had to give up his writing in order to deal with this very serious illness of his wife's. He lost his identity -- he lost his center. He started drinking early in the morning, and drinking until late at night, just sitting in front of the television. And his explanation of it -- he was someone who had done a lot of meditation practice in his life, but the circumstances were just too much for him -- it happens to us in our lives, occasionally:

The strong taste I had of the witness slowly evaporated. I no longer had easy access to the center of the cyclone. I only had the cyclone.

For me, that's a very powerful image -- that the witness was lost, so he had lost the center of the cyclone, and then all he had to deal with, at that point, was the cyclone. It reminds me of the image from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets -- the still center of the turning world.

What happens if we make an effort to be present -- to be aware, to know what is happening, to open to what is happening -- again and again in our lives, when things get very difficult? More and more, we're able to hold the center of the cyclone. The witness stays with us. Occasionally we lose it, when things are very difficult, but if you establish the habit of awareness and presence in your life, you're able to hold the center of the cyclone even in a cyclone.

But it's also really wonderful to be here for just what is really ordinary in our lives, and there's just a special joy in that, for me at least. I gave a talk a while back on mindfulness in Santa Fe, and I woke up the morning that I was going to give the talk and I said to myself, "I have to talk about mindfulness this evening. Wouldn't it be interesting if I actually walked my talk and tried to be mindful today?" And so I made a special effort on that day to be mindful, and it was a very ordinary day for me. I prepared three meals, and I washed the dishes, and I bathed this body, and shaved it and groomed it and clothed it. I prepared a dharma talk; I wrote out a letter on the computer; I did some e-mail; I did a bunch of phone calls; I paid bills. I had a fifty-pound bag of rolled oats that I decanted into little bags to put in the freezer for making granola -- a very ordinary day. And yet, I really made an effort to be present as I was experiencing that day. I even put on a very snug fitting pair of Levi's, because I figured there would be more sensation [laughter], and the more sensation you have, the more present you are, and it worked, actually!

I was quite present that day. And I would keep noticing that, because I was making the effort to be present on that day. I remember that I was carrying something from one room to the other in my house, and I just noticed that I was there for every step. And it's really a joy -- it's really a joy to be present, and I'm looking forward to being in a self-retreat over the next six weeks, because my only responsibility -- there won't be any e-mail, or any bills, or any telephone, or any correspondence -- I will just have this wonderful privilege: my only task will be to be present, and thereby to be alive, all day, every day. And I don't imagine it's going to be easy -- the cyclone may hit during this retreat. But to me, it feels like such a wonderful thing, even in the midst of the very ordinary routines in our lives, if we can just come back to our bodies, for example, and know what's happening for them. As you sit here right now, know the sensations of your body as you sit here listening to me speak. Just check in, and see what the weather pattern is in your mind, in your emotions right now. You may be interested, you may be bored; you may be happy, you may be miserable; there may be anger, there may be frustration, there may be equanimity and patience -- whatever it is, just come and check in and be present for whatever is happening in this moment. It's that simple.

Why we talk about mindfulness so much is that it actually is a very great power. The Buddha said:

Mindfulness, I declare, is all-helpful.
All things can be mastered by mindfulness. [Imagine that -- all things!]
Mindfulness is the path to the deathless.

What's interesting -- we've spent so much time talking about the Eightfold Path, about cultivating these eight things: understanding, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration -- what's remarkable about mindfulness is that by cultivating this one thing -- Right Mindfulness, the seventh aspect of the Eightfold Path -- you can simultaneously cultivate the entire path. If you're really present and you're really aware, it becomes more and more difficult, for example, to hurt people through your speech, or to hurt yourself through your speech. If you're present, you won't do it. If you're really present and conscious, you won't hurt people through your actions, or hurt yourself through your actions. You won't hurt people through your livelihood -- through your work. If you're really present and aware, it becomes more and more obvious -- through mindfulness comes the development of understanding, or wisdom, as you come to see that everything is absolutely connected and there is no separation. And as this understanding transforms in your mind, then your whole relationship to reality changes. And that can come just by the practice of mindfulness. Through the practice of mindfulness, concentration arises. Through the practice of mindfulness, energy and effort comes. So it's really the whole path that gets fulfilled through the practice of awareness.

The Buddha also said that the magical thing about mindfulness is that by cultivating just this one quality, mindfulness draws to it all of the wholesome qualities of consciousness. The Buddha described, I think, thirty-one wholesome qualities of consciousness -- liberating qualities of consciousness. By cultivating mindfulness alone, all of them are drawn in, and all of them are strengthened and brought into balance. There's a story of a monk, in the Buddha's time, who had a very difficult time keeping all the rules. Monks in this tradition have to follow 227 rules, and back in those days there was no writing, and so everybody had to memorize all these rules, and this monk just couldn't manage it. He couldn't keep track of it all. I'm sure all of us have run up against rules at some time of our lives. And he just couldn't do it, and he felt like, "I can't be a monk because I can't keep the discipline here." He went to the Buddha and said, "I'm sorry -- I tried, but I'm out of here. I'm history, because I can't follow all these rules." And the Buddha's answer was very simple: "Can you remember to do one thing?" And the monk said, "Yes, I can do one thing." And the Buddha said, "Just be mindful. If you're really, truly mindful, then you'll be keeping all 227 of these rules" that are basically designed to keep us focused and present in our lives, and nonharming in our lives.

So how do we cultivate mindfulness? The Buddha said that the cause for mindfulness to arise is mindfulness. So it's really simple. [Laughter] It's just a conditioning process, like behavioral psychology -- it's all just conditioning. If for one moment you can be present to whatever -- to the sound of that passing car -- if for one moment you can be present and aware, that conditions -- or makes it more likely -- for you to be present and aware in the next moment. So that no effort is ever wasted, no matter how mundane and humdrum it feels -- being present for our experience conditions us to be more and more present. And it creates a kind of momentum of presence, so that it becomes the norm in our life, rather than the exception.

The Buddha talked about the benefits of mindfulness, which are purity of mind, clarity, wisdom, happiness, and freedom from attachment. Not bad. He also said -- and for me, I keep coming back to this, and I know I've repeated it again and again, but for me, I keep reminding myself -- the Buddha said, "Every moment of mindfulness is a moment of nirvana." Every moment of clear mindfulness -- in that instant, even if it lasts for only a moment, we're entirely free, because in that moment there's no subject or object, there's no self and other -- there's only an event and the knowing of it. And so in that moment, we're free, even if we're totally caught in the next instant. So if you're just reaching for a cup, and you feel the cup, there's a moment of freedom.

When I was doing research for this talk -- doing some reading -- I came up with a new list -- this tradition is full of lists -- so I want to share this list. The Buddha says:

Without giving up six things, oh followers, it will not be possible to practice mindfulness of the body as the body, practice mindfulness of feelings as feelings, practice mindfulness of the mind as mind, practice mindfulness of objects of mind as objects as mind [those are the four foundations of mindfulness]. Which are these six [the things we need to give up]?
To be fond of activity is the first. [That's a good one for us modern folks. That's the thing that most keeps me not being mindful in my life -- being overactive and lost in the swirl of activity. We talked about this -- it's the modern curse.]
To be fond of talking.
To be fond of sleeping.
To be fond of company.
To lack control of the senses.
To be immoderate in eating.

And the Buddha's not suggesting that we give up any of these things. Basically, what he's suggesting is that we find balance with all of these things, so that we don't take them to extremes. So, the goal is not to give up activities and become a total ascetic living in a cave, but to find the balance of activity in our lives so there's room and space to be aware, to be mindful, to be present, to be alive. It means pretty much eliminating the addictions in our lives, if we want to find that balance.

I'd like to read something that I've talked about fairly recently and bring it up again, because for me it's so powerful. I'd like to read a passage from the Mahaparinabbana Sutta, the long sutra that describes the very last of the Buddha's life and his death, and what followed his death. Very near the end of his life, he had this experience -- in India, there's a rainy season every year, and in the Buddha's time and since, during the rainy season, people stayed in one place to wait out the rains and tended to do intensive practice. So, during the rainy season in the last year of the Buddha's life:

And during the rains, the Buddha was attacked by a severe sickness with sharp pains, as if he were about to die. But he endured all this mindfully, clearly aware and without complaining. He thought, "It is not fitting that I should attain final nirvana without addressing my followers and taking leave of the order of monks and nuns. I must hold this disease in check by energy and apply myself to the force of life." He did so, and the disease abated.

Then the Buddha, having recovered from his sickness, as soon as he felt better, went outside and sat on a prepared seat in front of his dwelling. Then the Venerable Ananda [who was his devoted and lifelong attendant, and cousin] came to him, saluted him, sat down to one side and said, "Lord, I have seen the Lord in discomfort, and I have seen the Lord's patient enduring. And Lord, my body was like a drunkard's. I lost my bearing, and things were unclear to me because of the Lord's sickness. The only thing that was some comfort to me was the thought, `The Lord will not attain final nirvana until he has made some statement about the order of monks.' "

Essentially, what Ananda is saying here is, "I got real worried because I thought you wouldn't name your successor. We need to have somebody to lead us after you are gone." And the Buddha's response is giant radical, here. He says:

"But Ananda, what does the order of monks and nuns expect of me? I have taught the Dharma, Ananda, making no inner and outer [that is, not having special secret teachings and public teachings, no esoteric teachings]. The Tathagata [referring to himself] has no teacher's fist in respect of doctrines. If there is anyone who thinks, `I shall take charge of the order, or the order should refer to me,' let that person make some statement about the order, but the Tathagata does not think in such terms. So why should the Tathagata make a statement about the order?"

The Buddha was saying, "I didn't lead the sangha, so why should I name somebody else to lead it?" And then he says:

"Ananda, I am now old, worn out, venerable, one who has traversed life's path. I have reached the term of life, which is eighty. Just as an old cart is made to go by being held together by straps, so the Tathagata's body is kept going by being strapped up. It is only when the Tathagata withdraws his attention from outward signs and, by the cessation of certain feelings, enters into the signless concentration of mind that his body knows comfort. [In other words, only when he goes into deep absorption states of concentration can he keep any kind of comfort with his decaying body.]

"Therefore, Ananda, you should live as lights unto yourselves, being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge, with the Dharma as a light, with the Dharma as your refuge, with no other refuge.

"And how does a nun or monk live as a light unto herself or himself, with no other refuge? Here, Ananda, a monk or nun abides contemplating the body as body, earnestly, clearly aware, mindful, and having put away all hankering and fretting for the world, and likewise with regard to feelings, mind, and mind objects. That, Ananda, is how a nun or monk lives as an island or as a light, unto herself or himself, with no other refuge. And those who now, in my time or afterwards, live thus, they will become the highest. If they are desirous of learning, they will come to full awakening."

So he was saying: you need to be lights unto yourselves, and the way you do it is by being mindful, by being present, by being aware.

I'd like to read something from a modern teacher -- I think he may still be alive, or he may have died recently -- a great Thai teacher named Achaan Maha Boowa. He says, about mindfulness and its importance:

For the sake of the certainty and stability of your future, develop mindfulness as a habit from this moment onward, until you have it constantly present within you -- every moment you act and every moment you rest. When the time comes to make the mind still, mindfulness will come to stick close by the heart, and will be established as soon as you make the effort, just as you want it to. At the same time, your mindfulness will have enough strength to force the mind into stillness at will.

So for the sake of the certainty and stability of your future, it's useful to cultivate mindfulness. Especially important when the cyclone comes in our lives.

And I think -- for myself at least -- it's really important to be aware of two things: to be aware of what is happening in any given moment, like a sound [the bell rings], and then to notice what your relationship to that event is. Essentially, there are six things that can happen to us at any given time: a sight, a sound, a smell, a taste, a physical sensation, an event in consciousness. Associated with every event that happens is that it is pleasant, or unpleasant, or neutral to us. And we are so deeply conditioned to push away what is unpleasant, and to grasp for what is pleasant. If you can notice what is happening -- say, someone is screaming at you, someone is very angry at you, and yelling -- notice what is happening: "That person is yelling," and then notice your response to it. If someone's very angry at you, you're likely to be resistant to that experience -- notice that. As we come to notice our resistance to what is unpleasant, and our grasping for what is pleasant, and our spacing out what is neutral, we really come to see that it isn't working so well. Because you can't keep unpleasant things from happening -- we have no control over that. You can't hold onto pleasant things. It's not useful to be spaced out with some neutral thing, like reaching for a doorknob and opening a door. It's much better to be present. So, if it's possible to notice what is happening and then notice your relationship to it -- that's the whole practice. And our freedom comes from changing our relationship to our experience -- that's the whole key to freedom.

We just completed, on Sunday, a ten-day sandwich retreat in Santa Fe, and that was the basic theme of the whole retreat -- pay attention to what is happening; mindfulness of what is happening; mindfulness of our relationship to what is happening. It was really wonderful, in this sandwich retreat, to have people reporting what was happening during intensive practice on the weekends, but then also for them to come in the evenings, when they had gone to their daily activities, to come back in the evening and to sit and to share what was happening. Fascinating, just fascinating.

So I hope this may be my last talk on mindfulness for a long time. It's a very important subject, but I look forward to talking about other things as well. May we all develop this presence so that we can be truly alive in our lives.

* * * * * Questions * * * * *

Q: I am studying a subject that requires a lot of analytical concentration, and I'll find that after three or four hours of this, I'll wake up out of this state where I've just been in my head. How do you handle that with mindfulness? I can't do my subject without doing this, and yet it's hard to be mindful when you're not. [Laughter]

Eric: It's a great question, and it's a dilemma that I've faced for my whole professional life. I was trained as a scholar, which involved working very much in the head, and for years I made my living as a consultant writer and editor, which is the same way -- a lot of brainwork, absorbed in documents. It's difficult, but it is possible. It's possible, for example, every fifteen minutes or so, to step from back from whatever the task is, and take a deep breath, and just come into your body -- to actually make that a kind of discipline. You won't lose the train of thought -- we need breaks anyway. Take that kind of break and just breathe, and feel it. I find, since I have to do a lot of work at a computer -- mostly word processing -- that it helps just to be aware of the sensation -- not only to be aware of the words themselves, or the intellectual task and absorption into it -- it can be just an instant of coming back to the body sitting, and the fingers going on the keyboard. I've found, after a lot of doing this, it's more and more possible for me to be present. Or, very often, whatever your work, unless you live a very privileged life and you can go and hide in a room somewhere, the phone will ring, and you stop the task, whatever it is, and then you're really present for reaching for the phone and picking it up. Just a little moment like that -- it sounds so trivial, and yet if we really do it, if we really deeply habituate that, it becomes more and more possible to come back and be present. That's one aspect of it -- just to develop more mindfulness in whatever ways you can.

And the other thing I've found is that in my work, being very one-pointed on an intellectual task and getting lost in it -- yes, there's not much mindfulness, but there actually is one-pointedness, concentration and absorption. So very often, if I'm really involved in writing a complex, deep, and difficult document, or editing it, I will spend hours working on that task -- being totally caught up with the structure and tone and everything else that's required in that particular craft. And then when I finish, and stand up to go and make a cup of tea, my mind is deeply concentrated. Concentration is the eighth aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path. So even if you're not mindful, if you're really one-pointed with your task, you are doing dharma practice. So it's really useful to see that.

And I find, more and more in my life, that I go to a movie that I find fascinating and I get totally absorbed. And I don't even notice that I'm absorbed, until I stand up afterward and start to walk out of the theater and I realize, "Oh!" My mind is in absorption. So I'm doing dharma practice while I'm watching a movie. It really becomes more and more habituated. So I think if you find, "OK, I haven't had a moment of awareness for the last three hours because of my intellectual task," notice how one-pointed your mind may be. If you're really devoted to it, your mind is not very distracted. If it's a very demanding task, you have to be there for it. So with intellectual work, and often with artists -- people who are sculpting or painting or whatever -- there's a sort of laser-beam focus -- that's dharma practice.

Q: There's something I may be confused about, and that's the notion of experiencing things as sensation without thought -- for example, when you ring the bell, to experience that, and hear it, without thinking. But for me, the process of recognizing it and being aware of it involves saying, "Oh, that's a bell." So I'm confused.

Eric: It's really helpful to notice the whole sequence of what happens. In the actual moment -- if you put your attention on your ears -- in the actual moment of hearing [bell sounds], there's only the sound and the knowing of it. In that moment, there's no self, there's no bell, there's no Eric ringing it -- there's just a sound and the knowing of it, in that instant. What we're doing is taking our experience and bringing it down to the most fundamental building blocks, which is a sound and a hearing of it; a sight and the knowing of it; a smell and the knowing of it; a taste and the knowing of it; a physical sensation and the knowing of it; a mental event and the knowing of it. The Buddha said, "That's the all." Actually, he once described what I just described and someone came to full enlightenment just hearing it, because they realized, "Oh! That's all there is!"

And then, in the next instant, there's a sense of recognition -- a "perception" is the word used in Buddhism -- and it's because of memory that you know, "Oh, that's a bell." There's the thought, and the recognition, and the concept of "bell" which gets overlaid, after the experience of hearing. And then, there's a feeling like, "I heard that bell" -- a concept of self which gets overlaid to that experience. So if you just go down to the basic experience, none of that exists. That's why a moment of mindfulness is a moment of nirvana -- there's only a sound and the knowing of it. There's nothing happening to anyone, it's not happening by anyone -- in that moment, there's no subject and object, there's no separation, there's no nothing -- not any of that. It comes in the next instant: "Oh, that's a bell." This process happens so quickly that we normally don't notice it, but if you really pay attention -- if you're really mindful -- you begin to notice that there's the event, and the knowing of it, and then the thought about it, or the conception of it. Does this make sense? It overlays our experience.

Q: Well, a little bit. [Laughter] I guess I didn't come to full awareness hearing the explanation. I don't see how to be aware of something without thinking about it.

Eric: You are always aware of something without thinking about it. The thought process follows closely on the actual event, but in the event itself, there's no thinking. Hearing is not a thought process -- it's a physical sense. There's the hearing, and then the consciousness of hearing, which is not thought, it's awareness -- simply awareness. And thought is something else. Again, if you go deeper and deeper into mindfulness, you can really notice it. You can see a thought as it comes into consciousness and goes, "Blip!" and disappears out of consciousness. That's a separate event from the hearing. So all I can suggest is, pay close attention, and you'll begin to see the distinction between the thinking process and the actual event itself.

Q: Well, it just seems like part of our training as human beings is to shut out a lot of the sensations that we get, because otherwise we'd be totally overwhelmed by them. So, when you mentioned the car going by before, I had heard the car going by, I knew I had heard it, but at some point I'd recognized that it was a car. And so the act of bringing it to awareness was recognizing what it was, not the hearing of it, but noticing that I had heard it. And so I don't see how to separate the sensation, the awareness of sensation and the thinking about it, because the thinking about it is, in some sense, what says, "Oh! You're aware of this!"

Eric: All I can suggest is, pay attention to it and you'll begin to see the sequence actually happening.

Q: I've studied some perceptual psychology -- Western perceptual psychology -- and there is also this same notion that the first thing that happens is there's sensation, in all of our senses, before there's any processing of the sensation. It's only milliseconds later that the information processing of whatever enters our nervous system begins to occur. I was thinking about -- I'm sorry; this is a rather crude example, but during sex -- I think a lot of the pleasure in my experience of sex is losing some of that thought process and just feeling the sensation.

Eric: I think that's true, and I think that applies to much of the pleasure in our lives -- you see a beautiful sunset, and there's this, "Oh!" There's that moment of rapture which has nothing to do with thought. Rapture is rapture -- it's enjoyment. My theory, actually, about sexuality, is that orgasm takes us out of the prison of self, and that's actually what we get addicted to in sex. The pleasant sensations are wonderful, but actually having even a momentary disappearance -- in French, they call it "le petit mort", or "the little death". I think it's extraordinary -- it's like a little foretaste of freedom -- to get out of the prison of self, of ego.

Q: I had a comment about when you were talking earlier about having a cushion with regard to activity. Several years ago I finally "got" that in terms of money. I realized that what I did with my money was to spend right up to the limit, and I didn't have a cushion, so that if anything happened, there was suffering involved. Just recently, I realized that I haven't gotten that with regards to activity -- that I need to have a cushion around my time as much as I do with my money, and that's been really useful to me in helping me to slow down, and get rid of some activity.

Eric: Wonderful. That's a great example -- cushioning activity instead of maxing out and getting into total stress. We've talked about this before -- I feel that this is a critical area of our lives. In other centuries, in other cultures, it wasn't a problem. If you lived in an agrarian society before there was very much reading, let alone television and radio and e-mail and all the rest of it, there was plenty of time. The activities were fairly limited and routinized. This human organism is going through something that has never happened before, and I think it's a huge challenge for us. So, to have the consciousness that you have of saying, "OK, I need a cushion. I need to be able to limit my activity to the point where I can feel OK and balanced about it, rather than feeling totally stressed out all the time," is a wonderful aspiration. It's something that I aspire to, and don't achieve very often, but when I do, it feels good.

Q: Me, either -- I'm definitely working on it. There's so much of a push to be constantly productive, and always fill your time, that it's a challenge to step back and keep stepping back.

Eric: "Hurry up and do nothing," as we say in the vipassana world. [Laughter] I just can't tell you the luxury of knowing that nobody can get at me -- that I'll be protected by total silence over the next few weeks. Nobody can get at me, unless there's a nuclear war. ["And then nobody will be around to get to you." Laughter] So it's an absolute limit on activity. Then it becomes a very big deal -- "Should I go make a cup of tea?" [Laughter] So it's just the opposite. It's going from one extreme to the other, and somehow we need to find balance in the middle, because most of us can't take that kind of time to be in retreat, and cut off all activity. Thank you.

Q: Would you say that thoughts always have words attached to them, and awareness doesn't? Would that be a distinction, or not?

Eric: Yes, I think that's a very good distinction. Usually, thoughts come in the form of words, but our bare experience of something -- our physical sensation -- if there's discomfort in here [pointing to knee], in that moment of discomfort there is only sensation and the knowing of it. There's no knee, there's no me. And then, if the discomfort is large enough, just watch the thought process that comes: "Oh, now I'm going to have to go and have surgery. Oh, my health care lapsed. What am I ever going to do? I'm going to be crippled the rest of my life. I wonder if I can go on disability," etc., etc. -- all around a sensation. We need to notice that. One thing is a sensation, and the next thing is all of the thinking about it. And we really do enormous trips around a simple event. If it's possible to notice the event as just an event, and the thinking as just thinking, then it's possible to strip away the thought process and be there with the event. And that's really a lot of what our practice is about. Thought is fine. It's a wonderful function in our lives; we absolutely need it. But we need to use it in a functional way, instead of having it run our lives, which is what happens for most of us. Thanks.

Q: I was just thinking that when I have too many things to do, when I have too many irons in the fire, that -- and I used to think of this as a negative thing -- every now and then I become catatonic. But maybe it's a good thing, because it says: "Stop."

Eric: Right. The organism eventually will say, "I won't do this anymore," one way or another.

Q: Yes. When I can't triage anymore, when I don't know what to do first ...

Eric: I find, with overactivity, when we put ourselves under so much stress, that sooner or later, one or the other of two things will go: our bodies will go -- we'll have a stroke, or a heart attack, or whatever; some kind of expression of too much stress in our bodies -- or our minds will go, and we'll become emotionally distraught. My body tends to be much stronger than my mind, so my mind tends to go first. So I tend to get depressed -- if I get very overstressed for too long, I'll go into depression. And other people will have stronger minds than bodies, and they'll just push themselves until something happens physically. And if we can hold this in balance, we live longer, and we have more happiness.

This "fondness for activity," as the Buddha puts it -- I think back 2,500 years, and imagine the difference between those circumstances and our circumstances -- I don't know if we'd use the word "fondness" anymore. It's our "entrapment" in activity, really, that expresses it, in our very different world. The Buddha claimed to be able to see the future, and he probably looked out and smiled at what we're going through -- the challenges of being human beings in this particular time, in terms of activity.

Q: The thing that gets me through -- if I just let the catatonic state go on, I'll get depressed. But if I go to a routine, which for me, since I wash by hand, is doing that -- maybe washing one sock -- then I feel well again.

Eric: And for many of us, whatever the therapeutic thing is -- to say "OK," and go out and work in the garden, and put our hands in the earth, or wash a sock -- it's the saving grace. For me, it's just having a cup of tea and staring out the window, or renting a Muppets movie. ["At least you don't have to worry about violence in a Muppets movie."] Well, there's violence in the Muppets [laughter], but it's pretty stylized.

Q: Earlier, you mentioned your teacher's caution about not making presence an object. I wonder if you could say a little more about that.

Eric: Right. I think it's very easy to objectify something, and sometimes for me it's a very strong sense of presence and power -- great power. And so it's easy to say, "God is present," and it's fine to say that, but from our tradition, making it into something out there which is coming in here is a kind of dualism that may not be so useful. Or, "The spirit is present," or whatever we want to say. So, it's a really wonderful caution to not make it into anything, except presence. And then you're not creating another mind trip out of it.

Q: So when you say, "... anything except presence," you just mean something that's arising at this moment, and doesn't have anything else to it, except this momentary experience?

Eric: Exactly. And Joseph did, in a sense, give it a label -- he said that it's the presence of awareness, just awareness. Actually, awareness is a power, it's an enormous power. The Buddha basically said that awareness tames all things, so it is an enormous power, but it's just what it is. So it's not angels, although we could call it angels -- it's just awareness. Thank you, and I will try and remind myself of that as I go into retreat.

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