In this passage Ken teaches students how to meet emotional reactions through the body, by feeling directly instead of analyzing.
To convey what he means by direct knowing, he shares an anecdote of Uchiyama Roshi’s about a nesting bird. How does a mother bird know when to turn her eggs? She doesn’t calculate or analyze, but simply turns the eggs when she feels too hot. This bird teacher reveals a way of knowing that isn’t the least bit conceptual—it’s embodied, responsive, and utterly natural.
Ken's approach blends precision with warmth and humour and the hallmark use of teaching stories. This particular story has stayed with me for years, and whenever I bring it to mind, something in me settles. Attention drops into the body, the mind quiets.
Go to your body. What’s your body saying? What’s your body experiencing? And you use that direct attention into the body. It grounds you. And from there, you have a basis in which to begin to experience emotional reaction without being completely consumed by it.
So, by going into the body first you establish a base of attention. Then you can start experiencing the reactive process itself—in Charlotte’s case the fear and the sorrow. And then all of the stories and associations, which usually have nothing to do with the situation.
So, you develop this ability and you become familiar with that process. And then you’re having a conversation with someone, and you can sense yourself getting a little on edge. [Finger snap] Go to your body. And you’ll be quite surprised what you’re gonna find there. And you go, “Wow!” and maybe it is like the body’s ready to charge at this person. “Oh. I’m angry.” Or, “I gotta get out of here.” And your body’s right; this is a dangerous situation. You go, “Oh, okay.”
Then you can start experiencing your emotional reactions. You may find that they’re quite different from the story that you’ve been telling yourself, and the stories that we use to manipulate everything to conform to our conditioning. Emotion always trumps reason. You can always rationalize anything. That’s why I say, go to the body. You stand in the body. Right there, you’re going to be more present.
And if you can experience your emotions and not act on them, then you have a chance of seeing what’s going on. It can be very useful once you notice that little feeling on edge, you’re grounded in the body, just to ask yourself, “What’s going on here?” That’s going to key your own investigation, and again I encourage you not to analyze. The understanding that we develop, or uncover, in Buddhist practice is a direct knowing. It’s a direct knowing. It is not a deductive knowing, which is always a product of the intellect. You can’t trust it.
Uchiyama Roshi talks about a bird sitting on her nest. And the bird sits on the eggs, and every now and then she gets up, turns all the eggs over with her beak, sits down again. Amazing. Now, this raises a question in science: how does she know when to turn the eggs over? What kind of biological clock mechanism is there? Well, after a few investigations, they discovered there was no biological clock. She just gets too hot. [Laughter] So she turns the eggs over, now she’s cool. The result is that the eggs are evenly warmed and they hatch properly.
That’s the kind of sensitivity that we develop here. You’re so in touch with your own experience, so totally in touch with your own experience, that by responding to that you actually respond to what is appropriate in the world.
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