Allowing Dhamma to Become Integral

To Your Way of Life

Old Student Talk at McKinsey and Company,
New York City, April 14, 2018
 This old student talk is about the
challenges and triumphs of meditating in
daily life.
 Goenkaji felt his Dhamma talks were complete,
with no need for addition or modification.
The teachers he appointed do not give
“Dhamma talks.”
This old student talk is intended to be a reminder about how to
become established as a meditator now, under
newly emerging conditions,
and has been developed only after encouragement
from other teachers.
It is not intended to generate “old student talks” as a
general practice,
but is a specific response to specific requests.
 This talk will be similar to but different from
the old student talk given at
McKinsey and Company, New York City,
two years ago(2016),
and to the one given in California that is posted on
www.Pariyatti.org/paul
Many old students find that meditating twice a day
for an hour each time, and keeping Sila,
as Goenkaji defined it for householders,
is difficult, burdensome, or impossible.
Many other old students find that becoming
established as a meditator in these ways
is easy, natural, and a great blessing
in their lives.
The difference between these two groups
of students implies there may be
a “tipping point.”
Let’s look for the attitudes, tricks, practices, and
ways of doing things
that make living the Dhamma life so easy for
that second group of students.
 The first and most important trick is to
meditate without negativity towards yourself
or your meditation practice.
The goal of Vipassana is to walk towards
Nibbana,
which means a heart like the Buddha’s,
without negativity.
When your thoughts are negative,
they won’t help you get established as a meditator.
Don’t criticize yourself when you fall short of
goals or when you face difficulties.
 Give yourself credit for whatever you do.
Being “egoless” does not mean you can’t
appreciate yourself.
In the general social context of the
twenty-first century there is little
outside support for meditating,
and everything you do
to live the meditator’s life
is an accomplishment that you have attained
against a gradient of the times.
Even if you imagine that you are too busy to sit
two full hours a day,
(a myth that I will challenge)
still, don’t criticize your once a day,
or even your occasional practice.
Instead, notice that even under the pressures of
your time conscious life, you have still managed
to remain loyal in your heart to the Path.
In the midst of the hurricane you are keeping
your eyes on the pole star.
 Honor your own efforts.
Even a very busy person
has still found time to meditate sometimes.
Or, recognize your accomplishments
by appreciating the fact
that a mostly struggling person has
from time to time
had the courage to
observe him or herself
through the lens of meditation.
 If meditation leads you to criticize yourself,
to feel you are falling below expectations,
to feel that you are not doing what your teacher
would want, then meditation will begin to feel
like a point source of
self-criticism and dissatisfaction.
We will stick with those things that make us
feel good about ourselves, and we will
eventually discard practices and behaviors
that make us feel inferior or second rate.
Guilt is not on the Path.
A school of Dhamma, an educational tradition,
needs to give its students clear
guidance and standards.
This clarity leads to a coherent group of friends
who practice similarly and have a path they can
all walk together.
Practicing two hours a day is a modern,
educational invention
by Goenkaji and his immediate predecessors,
and is designed to keep us steady.
This guidance is not found in the Pali Canon.
A strong commitment, a strong determination to sit
twice a day,
will make us unshakeable in practice,
even when we are shaking inside.
The Buddha called Nibbana,
“unshakeable deliverance,”
and we need this strength, this anchor of
two hours a day,
to become as unshakeable as the goal
towards which we are walking.
 We can aim to be
like a tree in the wind
that has roots
deep in the ground.
On the surface, the tree looks unstable
and subject to the forces around it,
but in its depths, the tree remains
unshakeable.
Sitting one hour twice a day has been
our backbone, our refuge and
our way of life.
We can’t recommend it too strongly.
 The best reason to never miss
twice daily meditation
is that when you least want to sit
it may be most beneficial to do so.
Sitting right then may help you deal
with something that you would otherwise
have avoided.
If you systematically overrule
your resistances to meditating,
those barriers may diminish
and your meditation may become smoother.
 Take your meditation as the medication that
you will use when all physical medication,
complimentary medicine, healthcare behavior,
and new-age treatments fail.
Meditation is the medication for your well being
that is deeper than health.
Let’s look at the meaning of the word, “refuge.”
This is your final resting place, your last stand,
your safe harbor.
Don’t you think the last, best, refuge is
awareness of the sensations of your own body,
understanding that
all body sensations are impermanent,
and establishing equanimity in the presence of
constant change?
When you look back upon your life, what will be
more central to you than a practice that leads
towards equanimity within yourself?
This same practice will lead towards
goodness of heart and
Metta
that your can send in all directions.
Make meditation central every day,
the pebble you have tossed
from which all the ripples of your life
flow outward.
 Choose to sit when you are not
exhausted, hungry, or tired.
Ernest Hemingway advised young writers to write
every day at their best time of day.
Choose your meditation time to be your best time
every day.
The meditation that you want feels valuable
every time you sit.
Don’t be grim and routine, like a soldier.
Treasure the timing of your meditation.
You will establish yourself in an ongoing practice
when you make big life choices ahead of time,
preemptively.
How will the choice you are making regarding
job, family, geographical location,
facilitate or hinder your progress
on the Path?
 Don’t expect your meditation to curl
itself around your pre-existing obstructions.
Instead, give your life a shape in which meditation
can flow straight.
Arrange your life, and rearrange it, so that there is
an open channel for Dhamma.
 Many established meditators have made
big choices that molded their life into
a clear channel for meditation.
It is choices, not will power, that constitute
“the tipping point.”
Once you unblock the dam, you don’t have
to coax the water.
On a beach in Florida, I once saw
a tee shirt that said:
“I love you, but I have chosen
rock and roll instead.”
Sometimes, the dam opens, or the seesaw tilts
during a Vipassana course.
But sometimes, the life-shaping choices are
made in a conventional moment.
You say goodbye to one phase of life and
let go of its attachments, and
you open the door to a new way of life.
The tipping point may come when you relinquish
old habits and subtle consumer attachments,
like television, internet, social media, texting, etc.
The tipping point may come from opening a door,
or from slamming a door.
Meditation is for strong individualists.
We also need to know how to say, “No.”
When your obstacles are too great, and your
meditation is not strong enough,
accept your current reality
as it is.
Honor your loyalty, praise your faith
that in the future you will grow.
Just as we are taught to refrain from
criticizing or demeaning other people,
we should treat ourselves, and
the meditation practice we actually have,
with the same respect.
 Our teaching is to be devoted,
but not rigid and rule bound.
Don’t force yourself to do anything that is
harmful to your well being.
 No rule is exact for everyone.
Goenakji specifically taught us that
a new mother, for example,
should hold her baby with
awareness of sensations,
and with Metta,
but should not disrupt her maternal responsibilities
by artificially forcing herself to sit cross-legged
two hours a day.
 A tree bends in the wind.
The concentric waves rippling outward from
a pebble you have tossed,
become asymmetric when they encounter
an obstacle in the water.
Although nothing is more important to you than
your meditation,
sometimes some people may find themselves in
a condition similar to a new mother.
 When you have become
accepting of yourself,
realistic, and not fighting with yourself,
nor trying to be who you aren’t,
then this hovering authenticity will allow for
changes
that are not products of coercion.
This process is like fruit
ripening on a tree.
While we all wish to see improvements in ourselves,
it is also our way to value our life and opportunities
as they actually are.
Grow without forcing anything.
Increasing self-acceptance
is a valuable form of growth.
We are all pilgrims walking barefoot towards
Nibbana.
We are not practicing, “be here now.”
We are following the teaching,
“this is suffering,
and this is the way out of suffering.”
We have a direction.
Early in a long course, Goenkaji addresses the
student who feels overwhelmed, and he advises
him or her to think about our place
in the cosmos.
He says that we are located on a tiny dot among
infinite circles of galaxies.
Similarly, the Buddha emphasized
that the whole physical universe
consists of unstable, temporary aggregates.
 Everything is a temporary compound of
particles, atoms, molecules, and energy.
Our bodies, the Earth we stand on, and
the sun, whose light is the source of our energy,
all share the same characteristic.
They are all impermanent, changing compounds
that will disappear.
Today, we are lucky to live in a culture where our
strong telescopes can picture the spiral galaxies,
so that we can accurately assess our location
in a limitless, changing world.
Our meditation can open us to the big picture.
We live in an incomprehensible universe
of ungraspable size.
We can use our wisdom to abandon
Earth-centered fantasies, and histories
that give unrealistic importance to
invented stories.
The Buddha said that when we have learned
not to grasp anything,
we have learned everything.
.
 Our current phase of the universe started
fourteen billion years ago, far beyond our ability
to comprehend.
The Earth is four billion years old and upon it,
life “most beautiful and most wonderful”
has evolved through numerous
shape-shifting forms until it became us.
What an incredible story!
 The cushion upon which we sit is the
billion-galaxy universe.
Our meditation is a gift that has been made
possible because we have taken birth
within the complexities of time and space.
Limitless Metta is our gratitude
to the limitless world.
 All beliefs are conditioned by our culture,
by our historical era, and by
our conceptual limitations.
If we let go of beliefs, we can rest our weight
upon the equanimity we attain
and the Metta we send.
 Metta is our yardstick.
Send Metta from your own heart and mind
in your own way.
Make it authentic and not an imitation.
The ability to radiate Metta limitlessly and
in all directions
is a great contributor to the “tipping point,”
after which you will want to meditate every day.
You won’t want to miss the meditation
that helps you feel this.
 Don’t you find it wonderful that a
temporary collection of atoms and molecules,
like us,
can learn to meditate and
to feel peace and harmony
(sometimes if not always)?
There must be some principles, some rules,
some scientific laws,
some Dhamma,
that is manifesting in us.
We have our sabbath, our sacred set-apart time
twice a day, every day.
Taking this holy hour away from distractions
is itself
the accomplishment we are looking for.
 We have two directions:
Take charge of your life, be an active, dominating,
choice-making force
to make your way in the world.
And stop the struggle, accept your life as it is
and yourself as you are.
Just observe the world with detachment.
We also have two directives
regarding other people:
The Buddha said that friendship on the Path
is the whole Path,
so how can you not join the club, participate
in the activities of meditation,
like courses and group sittings, and
“rotating the wheel”?
But the Buddha also taught that we should
wander alone,
free of social allurement,
like an aging rhinoceros in the jungles of
ancient India.
Our teaching encourages us to keep a
proper distance from engulfing
group-think.
Remain true to yourself.
 Make Sila positive, not negative.
Don’t avoid or do without something;
instead, add something,
get something good from
the way you keep Sila.
 About forty years ago, on a bus ride pilgrimage
into the highest Himalayas,
an Indian woman explained to me that vegetarianism
does not mean cooking meat and potatoes,
and then taking away the meat.
Vegetarianism means a whole new way of cooking.
Sila also means a whole new way of cooking your
interests, pleasures, and friendships.
 Build in resilience
by creating a well-rounded life with many
spokes in the wheel.
Don’t neglect livelihood,
other people who are not meditators,
your health, and exercise.
 The value of your meditation is cumulative.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose you are a distracted, worried,
pleasure seeking person and you are no
great saint.
And suppose most of your meditation, most of
the time is
daydreaming, daydreaming, daydreaming.
 Suppose that in a typical hour you return to
meditative awareness of anapana or sensations
only ten times,
and each time you stay focused
only for a second.
That means out of an hour, you daydream for
59 minutes and 50 seconds.
But suppose also that you persevere sitting
two hours a day.
 This means every day you get twenty hits of
the wisdom of anicca.
At the end of a week you get 140 hits.
At the end of the year you will have touched down
into the wisdom of anicca
7,000 times.
Let’s also suppose that you become a serious
meditator at about age 35,
and you stick with the guidance of our tradition
until age 75,
a span of 40 years.
At the end of your life
(and most men and women alive today
will live longer than 75 years)
you will have touched down into anicca
280,000 times.
 Now let’s suppose that over the course of the
40 years,
you actually improve your ability to be aware
of respiration or sensations for
a full 60 seconds out of every hour.
Now you see looming in front of you the possibility
that before you die, you will have lived with the
wisdom of the Buddha
(awareness of anicca with equanimity)
for 1,000,000 moments!
This funny calculation is meant only as an
example
with humorous effect
that is intended to encourage you
no matter how far from perfect samadhi
your practice may be.
I hope no one will really try to keep track
of their time.
The great historian of science, Dr. Janet Browne,
concluded her two volume biography of
Charles Darwin
by saying that his greatest contribution was to
emphasize the power of small changes.
Molecule by molecule, over the course of
four billion years,
tiny rearrangements within living cells
can account for
bacteria and amoeba evolving into
elephants and humans.
Our tradition is for ordinary people, like all of us.
And our tradition is based upon the power
of accumulating small changes.
Enough small changes have already revolutionized
the organic world.
Possibly, if we all accumulate our
one million moments
that are attainable, even for people with
modest meditative skills,
we may also change our world.
 Now that you have chosen a way of life
that fits with meditation,
Now that you have kept your Sila like
a fresh vegetarian curry,
Now that you have made sitting twice a day
your backbone,
but you have accepted yourself as you really are;
Now that you have taken refuge in the Buddha
and in our tradition,
Now that you sit at your best times of day…
Now that you appreciate the cumulative power of
meditating steadily through you whole lifetime,
Now that you have made friends on the Path,
while you have also retained your autonomy and
self-direction,
you may find you have arrived
at the tipping point.
It may now feel easier for you to sit than to not sit.
You may find that meditation is not something you
add to your life,
but is an expression of
something that is integral to
all these other aspects of your life.
Everything you do, and every choice you make
has implications for your ability
to practice meditation on the Path
to Nibbana.
You may be facilitating or obstructing your
own path
numerous times, every day.
 When you have made many big choices
and many small choices,
that open the channel to flow,
your stream of life will naturally fall down hill
following gravity,
towards the ocean.
Little or no effort will now be required.
Goenkaji’s guidance has produced hundreds
of men and women
who have meditated for a lifetime,
and who have given back an enormous amount
of time and energy
to pass the practice on to the next generation.
You can become one of these people.