Mahamudra and the Ships in the Harbor

An Eternal Now SG

by Kenneth Folk

realization SG

I've transcribed the above talk by Kenneth Folk.

There was a time in the early to mid-90s when my mother had to... she felt she had to explain to her friends and relatives what I was doing with my life. Because I was doing a lot of intensive retreats, as much as a year at a time; and I suppose it might have looked pretty odd to people who didn't know what I was doing. They didn't know what Buddhism was and so my mother said to me one time that she had explained to her friends that Buddhism is not a religion, it is a philosophy. And she said, "Is that right?" And I said, well, as I understand it, there certainly is religion in Buddhism. In fact, when you go to SE Asia, mostly what you're going to find is religious Buddhists. They believe the doctrine of Buddhism and they make regular offerings to deities. And so yeah, Buddhism is definitely a religion, but that's not all it is. There certainly is the philosophical component of it. You can think all kinds of really interesting things about Buddhism and talk about it. And it's also psychology. There is a very sophisticated psychology; the Abhidamma or Abhidharma depending on whether you're talking about Pali or Sanskrit. So it's all of that. It's a religion and it's a philosophy and it's a psychology, but for me, all of that is secondary to what I think Buddhism really started out as; which is a technology for awakening. And so I would say that everything else was for supporting this awakening; these practices that we do to awaken.

Tonight I'm going to talk about Mahamudra which is one of the technologies for awakening. Mahamudra comes from the Tibetan tradition and I'll tie it in with some other ways to triangulate, as I think of it, to look at it from different perspectives [and] to find out what on earth is really going on moment to moment. What is this awakeness we're talking about anyway?

I'd like to read a very short passage from the third Karmapa's Mahamudra prayer. "While looking again and again at the mind which cannot be looked at, the meaning which cannot be seen, is seen vividly just as it is." Let me try that one more time. "While looking again and again at the mind which cannot be looked at, the meaning which cannot be seen, is seen vividly just as it is." Now you may be tempted to think that that's utter nonsense. And in a way it is, but it's pointing to something very profound and that's what we're going to talk about.

Looking at the mind which cannot be looked at...

We are in New York City and so if you listen very hard, very carefully now, maybe you can hear the ships in the harbour.

[silence from the audience]

But then on the other hand you notice, not a chance!

[laughter from the audience]

There's no chance you're going to hear the ships in the harbour. There's all this traffic, we're in the middle of a building, we're a couple of miles from any ships, so you can't hear them. And yet, if you try or if you open to the possibility that you might hear them... So let's do this again. I'm just opening to the possibility that I might hear the ships.

[pause and audience listens]

When I do this the mind gets very very big and soft, very still. And what I find is that I do hear some other things. I can hear the air-conditioner and I can hear the traffic, and I can hear the dreadful music from downstairs... and the mind seems very sensitive, so I can feel subtlety within the body. And I'm also finding that although there is thinking, there's not any particular story going on right now. The mind is kind of turning away from the story-telling because it's engaged in this listening. Now it's worth reflecting upon what an extraordinary thing that is, what an extraordinary moment. We don't want to take this for granted. If your mind stops yammering at you for a second, that's remarkable! And all of that can happen just by listening for something that we cannot hear.

So let's go back to those two sentences, those two lines from the Mahamudra prayer. "While looking again and again at the mind which cannot be looked at, the meaning which cannot be seen, is seen vividly just as it is." Now what if you say, "I don't know what the ships should sound like. Maybe I should be listening for fog-horns. Maybe I think fog-horns sound like bicycle horns. " But if you think about it, it really doesn't make any difference, since you can't hear it anyway. We're just listening for something. We're listening for whatever we think the ships ought to sound like. And even though we don't hear them, the mind becomes big and soft and still. So if the intention is for the mind to be big and soft and still, [then] we've accomplished it.

realization SG

What was the second part of that? "...the meaning which cannot be seen, is seen vividly just as it is." So if I ask you to look at the clear light of awareness. Look at awareness. You might say, "I don't know what I should be looking for." But that wouldn't be so bad, because it's the looking for it that might bring the mind to stillness. So if I say [or] use certain pointers/metaphors to point to awareness... something pristine, something still, something stainless and unstainable. So we're looking for that. And what is your mind doing as you look? In other words, is it becoming big, soft and still? If so, that's a really good thing.

Now here's the kicker. If you think you are seeing awareness, [then] you're mistaken! That's not awareness, that's something you're seeing, that's some phenomenon in the mind or in the body. The mind which cannot be seen, there isn't anyway to see it. There isn't anyway to see awareness anymore than you can hear the ships in the harbour. And that's not the point. We're not trying to. In other words, the point is not to see this thing and possess it and describe it and say, "OK, got it now. I know what emptiness is". No! You don't know what emptiness is. If someone tells you they know what emptiness is, you know they know exactly nothing about it. In other words, they don't know what they're talking about.

Emptiness is not something that exists in the ordinary sense of the word. We can infer that there must be awareness, but we cannot see it. And that's OK, because turning the mind toward this mind which cannot be seen, brings about this moment of blessed relief, this moment of stillness. In fact, this moment of awakeness.

One of the reasons this is sometimes challenging is because you think you are going to see something. You think you're going to get the answer. The point here is really the free-fall or what I think of as free-fall. When the discursive mind is brought to its knees; this is the same principle by which a ko'an would work in Zen Buddhism. It's a question that can't be solved by the intellect. And when the intellect stops operating for a moment, you can see things as they are.

So what does that feel like? It feels very simple and very free and no big deal. It's a big relief. So, if you're getting anything that's even remotely like that, a sense of relief or free-fall or some sense of cleanliness or clarity, "Good, go with that!"; because that can be cultivated. That's a moment of awakeness.

Now if you attach an idea to this and say, "OK, this is it. This is what I think of as awakeness", you can inquire into that. You can be a little skeptical. Well, is this really awakeness or is this awareness? Am I making a thing out of something that everyone insists is not a thing? If so, fine, that's not a problem at all. And then you can ask yourself once again, "OK, what about this awareness? What about this awareness that is not even manifest and therefore cannot be seen?" And yet, this exercise of looking for it and turning the mind toward it, does something remarkable to the mind. It brings you this beautiful moment of freedom.

Now from this point of view, this point of view of momentary stillness, we haven't even created time yet. So any idea that there could be some development through time to enlightenment, is a non-issue. There's this moment of stillness, and this moment of stillness. And if you're going to be what I call a ruthless non-dualist, you would insist that there is no time and you wouldn't be willing to consider the possibility of the question of development.

But development is also a legitimate point of view. We do live in the world of time and we can see that we're a little more enlightened today than when we were yesterday. And presumably, we'd be more enlightened tomorrow. So how do we reconcile this momentary awakeness with a development? So let's go ahead and posit time and talk about this other perspective because we're going to triangulate. We're looking at this from various perspectives.

The simplest model of developmental awakening that I can think of, would be a long line. So, a horizontal line. I'd imagine a yardstick and one end of the yardstick is "not at all enlightened" and the other end of the yardstick is completely enlightened. And then there's a continuum. So, there's a ratio all along the way from "less enlightened" to "more enlightened".

But how are we defining enlightened? I'm using awakeness and enlightenment synonymously.

Well, once you add time, then we're talking about how many moments of awakeness as compared to how many moments of asleepness. If we pick an arbitrary time unit. So, in one minute, how many times am I awakened? And how much of that am I awakened and how much of that am I asleep? So there's a ratio and we can intelligently talk about what I mean by developmental enlightenment.

So all the way at one end of the yardstick, there is the primordial Buddha of the Dharmakaya who never lapsed into dualistic thinking for even a moment. That's the extreme of all the way enlightened; it doesn't get any better than that. And then of course at the other end, just never has a moment of alertness. So we've got this ratio.

If you pick up this yardstick in the middle... pick it up at the middle so it bends in the middle, and so that it forms a kind of an inverted "V" or kind of a mountain-shaped line. Now we have a tipping point in the middle where you're working toward enlightenment the whole time. Remember, because the all-the-way enlightened of the Primordial Buddha of the Dharmakaya is all the way at one end, but in the middle of this thing there's something - a very special moment. This is the moment at which the ratio shifts from mostly not awake to mostly awake. And this is a really significant moment in the life of a yogi. This is what I call forth path.

Notice that there's lots of hill left, but now the difference is if you've been peddling your bicycle uphill the whole time, now you're peddling your bicycle downhill. Now [that] makes a big difference. Now on the way up, you're peddling up and you liked doing it... I mean it was a labour of love and you could feel the progress the whole time but sometimes the wind is in your face and sometimes it's at your back. But you knew that you're generally going uphill. Now that you've tipped over, [now] that you've crested the hill, you're going down. And again, sometimes the wind is in your face and sometimes it's at your back. So we're not talking about the gravy train here.

Life is still challenging, but you know you have this fundamental confidence, "Oh yeah, I'm awake, I can think of myself as an awake person. I even get what those heavy cats from the days of yore were talking about!"

And this by the way is not speculation. This is very accessible to ordinary people. It's happened to me and it's happened to lots of people I know. So we're kind of reclaiming what the Buddha said in suttas. The people were getting enlightened all over the place, back in the day.

For some reason along the way, we re-intepret Enlightenment to mean something that never happens to anybody. It could only happen to people back in the day as though human life was somehow regressive to the point where we're just completely clueless, compared to people 2500 years ago.

What are the odds? I mean I would say, if anything, I would make the other case that we have developed as a species. It's probably easier now to get enlightened to the point the Buddha called "arhat". It's probably easier now, not harder. So it's counter-productive and frankly ridiculous to define enlightenment as something that never happens.

So we're using this tipping point model, where the line is shaped like a hill. Go up the hill for a while, and then you crest it and then you go down. Are you ever going to get to the point of the Primodial Buddha of the Dharmakaya who never lapses into dualistic thinking for a moment? I don't think so.

I mean I've never heard anybody say it that that was their experience. So it's more about this ratio of awakening to forgetting; awakeness is to asleepness. And most people will say - the people whom I talked to who feel as though they've crested this hill - they feel pretty good about this. They feel you know really, "Well, I've gotten whatever it is that I wanted from my meditation practice. I feel I'm awake." And I see that there's so much left to do. I see that what's left to do is arguably infinite, because I'm not going to get to the point of the Primordial Buddha of the Dharmakaya.

But fine, because I'm happy; I'm fulfilled. I have a deep kind of contentment that does not depend upon the conditions of my life. Sometimes things go my way and sometimes they don't. It's not always easy and I'm OK. And I can contrast that with how I used to feel: not OK. So there's something very practical about this. This is a very pragmatic thing.

Listen for the ships in the harbour. If you can get even one moment of awakeness by any of these perspectives, any of these pointers or techniques, then you can get another moment of awakeness.

Listen for the ships in the harbour.

sinweiy SG

btw how no sound? the mp3 too.