Sometimes people ask me,
"Is there a really quick way to enlightenment? There's got to be a quicker way."
[laughter]
A lot of you know what's coming, because this is a standard story that I tell, which is...
Well, are you sure you want to know?
Maybe you won't like what you hear...
Yeah, I can tell you some
Strong determination sitting
It's a classic.
I won't say that every master has done it, but I would say that
the great majority of people that come to the master level on this path have done a
What does that mean?
That means that you sit down and you say,
"Okay, for the next hour, or the next 90 minutes, or two hours, or three, or four, or whatever, three days,
I'm not going to voluntarily move."
I know the prospect of something like that seems
You might not
Well, first of all, I said it could be just an hour, or ninety minutes.
It doesn't
Secondly, even if it was four hours or eight hours,
this is not so extravagantly unrelated to experiences that
In fact, I would suggest to you that at
have been through an experience
Do you [laugh] get what I'm talking about? [laughter]
Sitting for eight hours in break into a posture is
If you've done that... Now, of course, it's a different circumstance.
First of all, there's no way out.
[laughter]
Secondly, there's a lot to distract, and yes, nowadays, there are medications and so forth.
But the way
I think it was nature's way to
It sort of makes sense, right?
You're doing the activity of the Source, expanding and contracting.
It's interesting. I talked about the Sun Dance yesterday, of the Native peoples.
The story that is told among the Lakota Sioux is that—
Originally, Sun Dancing was for men only.
Nowadays, it's women, even children, actually.
—the men wanted to know what it was like to give birth.
If you look at the symbolism of the Sun Dance, the men wear skirts, like women.
You're attached by a tether, pierced, which is symbolic of the umbilical cord.
Then you have to break loose.
That's like being born, like a new birth.
Actually, in the old days, after their fourth year of Sun Dancing,
they considered that they had died, and were a completely new person.
They actually gave away
All their teepees and ponies, everything.
They just started from scratch as a new person.
Even though it sounds really far out there, it's actually no more than what at least
And the good news is, in strong determination sitting, you can gradually work up to it.
You train yourself
There's one absolute rule:
Do not, do not,
How are you going to know if you're physically damaging the body?
Remember, you gradually train yourself to do this.
It's a slow training.
You sit for an hour, you've got some pain.
You get up, it goes away. You're okay, you haven't damaged the body.
Then, you add five minutes, five minutes, five minutes.
As long as you're getting up and after a few minutes, you're okay, then you're okay.
I can assure you that, with rare exceptions,
most people can sit down for four hours and not move and get up and they haven't damaged any joints or anything like that.
You gradually learn how to do this.
Oh, by the way, your legs falling asleep isn't going to damage anything.
You're not cutting off circulation so much.
It's more pressure on nerves that causes that paresthesia thing.
That, as you've noticed, disappears as soon as you get up.
There might
If you wonder about that, check it with a doctor, but usually it's not that big a deal.
The main
The main danger is, if you try to get up too quickly, your legs will not hold you and you fall.
I've seen some
in Zen, and the clackers go, and, okay, everybody jumps up,
and they just do a somersault across the zendo.
[laughter]
So, yeah, you have to get up slowly.
What's involved in a strong determination sitting?
You're going to have
You're going to have physical sensations.
Those are going to get more and more and more intense, for sure.
Then, you're going to have your thoughts and emotions, and your will and your desire and your judgments
arising moment by moment reactively to that.
That's a pretty
That's
And that's why, as I say, not
an
What's going to happen?
You start to get physical discomfort.
What I usually do... This is my own
You'll find whatever strategy works for you, if you decide to do things like this.
My
detecting the
That's the sensory clarity skill.
After you get really intimate with the body, you realize that the body is like a pond.
Not
when there's a local physical or emotional splash, there's a global ripple.
One of the options within the noting apparatus is what I call "zooming."
You can zoom in, you can zoom out, you can zoom both ways.
Zooming both ways means that you thrust your attention
but at the same time, you spread your attention over the whole body.
You zoom in
What
It's analogous to Boyle's Law in physical chemistry.
Pressure is inversely proportional to volume, if pressure is analogous to suffering.
Here's how that works.
When you zoom in to a local intensity, of course that becomes very salient.
It
But at the same time, you're zooming out.
Now one of two things will happen.
Either there will be
and with the zooming out, you will be able to detect that and open up to it and facilitate that.
The
That's fine.
It's not
But it is
An important principle in mindfulness is we only ask you to attend to what is available in
so don't worry if you don't detect any of that subliminal spread.
But here's the subtlety of the technique, the
If you spread your awareness over the whole body, zoom out while you zoom in,
then even if there's not a
the movement of your attention over the whole body greases the rails for the
You may not
but you're giving the very
That's one possible strategy for doing it.
I tend to try to get the local splash and the global ripple.
Then at some point, I start to freak
Where does the freakout come?
The freakout is in the subjective system.
I start to go, "Oh my god, oh my god, no, no,"
and I start to get disconcerting images of being stabbed and burned and what have you.
Then the emotions start to come up in the body.
There's a subtle hint of teariness locally here.
There's a kind of cold fear thing that pervades the body.
Subtle, but subtle is significant.
Those See In, Hear In, and Feel In reactions are natural.
If you can
If you
Instead of See In plus Hear In plus Feel In plus Feel Out, you're going to get See In times Hear In times Feel In times Feel Out.
That's why, if you've ever noticed, it's like,
"I can handle it, I can handle it, I can handle it, no no NO NO, I CAN'T handle it."
It's not
It's not like it grows like this; it grows like this.
That's because things are starting to cross
But if you have enough
...they don't tangle and reinforce each other, then actually, it just grows linearly.
Yes, it gets more and more and more, but you don't get this snowballing overwhelm.
It just grows grows grows grows grows grows grows grows grows and then [makes a crashing sound] something happens.
And then, grows grows grows grows grows grows.
And then it just flows flows flows flows.
And then, yeah, you go through another cycle and it gets a little more.
And then it flows flows flows flows, the
It's scary, because the ordinary ordering principle is
The ordinary ordering principle for the body is—get comfortable.
The ordinary ordering principle for the mind is—get answers.
And, you can't do either.
Those are just
The mind can't process.
In fact, your eyes are sort of rolling in your head and you're right on the verge of passing out.
But,
You're getting an immediate reward.
Once again, this may sound radical, but half the people in this room have
Remember back, if you had kids.
It's just a matter of doing it in a really systematic way.
That's a
If we appreciate it to the extreme, just as it is, then at some point it becomes flowing space.
Gradually gradually gradually, you work your way up to this.
It's the homework assignment you've got the rest of your life to turn in.
And, you don't have to do it if you don't want to.
You can just follow the path of bliss, the
That works too.