Habit-Seeds

When sitting on your cushion you witness your own responses and they mostly relate to memories of events. If you carry on your practice through activity you witness your responses in relation to an instance of the now, a perception of the now. When doing your work period with someone you may form a view as to whether they are doing their share, whether they are doing more than their share and thereby showing you up, or maybe they are not doing something quite as nicely as you would do it. You find yourself with a viewpoint arising, a judgment. If you reflect on this you might find, “I tend to have this judgemental view of people who are doing things more nicely than me, or less nicely than me”. Our tendencies are revealed during these moments of minor interaction that we have with others on retreat; just passing things up the meal table; doing work periods; passing each other in the corridor; or failing to pass each other because someone is just staring into space and you can’t get past. These low-level interactions generate responses in you and, because you are a practitioner and you are paying attention in that very moment of interaction, one of your habits is revealed to you, one of your conditioned responses.

What do you do with that? Firstly, you just observe it, experience it. You might notice that this is rather too generalised a behaviour, and it’s not really appropriate for this moment. “It’s what I tend to give rise to but that’s not serving me very well in this moment, and I recognise that often it doesn’t serve me well. It’s a rather old stale behaviour from a different life circumstance many years ago, and I’ve just carried it on, on autopilot. Hmmm. I hadn't noticed that I was doing that.” This is what I mean when I say that sometimes it can just evaporate. When you see yourself responding like that, and you realise you have done it so many times without noticing that it wasn't very satisfactory, but now it’s seen through and, oh, there’s also distaste with it. Maybe it tends to arise again on a future occasion, but now this distaste is to the fore and you think, “I’m not going to do that again” or, “I’ve caught myself about to do that again”, and it doesn’t happen anymore. Or, “I did do it again but the experience of that reconfirms that I don’t want to carry on doing it”. Through this awareness of what’s arising, through the clarity of awareness that the practice can bring to each moment, these habits are seen and released.

Let me clarify how I am using the word ‘habit’ – I am referring to a very broad range of phenomena. I’m using the word ‘habit’ because of the connection to the word samskaras – ‘habit-seeds’ and ingrained behaviours – but it’s much wider than that. It’s not just habitual behaviours and actions, it’s also habitual attitudes, habitual thought patterns, fixed views, rigid ideas. It’s assumptions, which are a form of fixed view. We have assumptions about how things are. We have assumptions about how other people are. Because they are assumed they are sort of internalised, and we just use them without questioning them.

When I use the words habits I am also including prejudices which are a sort of assumption. You might think “I’m not prejudiced”, but we all have what we can call pre-judgements, we make a judgement before we have all the information. Again, it’s part of our biology. It’s been demonstrated that we form an impression of people within the first two or three seconds, based perhaps on their hairstyle, or the expression on their face, or the type of clothing they are wearing and the social class that we impute based upon that. We form an impression as to whether we want to get to know someone better or keep away from them. And it’s all over in a few seconds. It becomes internalised and after that it takes quite a while before the view can change, and such a change requires quite a lot of new information through encounters which we may not be willing to have if we have formed a negative view. Within just a few seconds we have formed a pre-judgement of this person whom we hardly know – an impression that has become fixed as a view. We do have prejudices, sorry to tell you that, but we do. This is part of our fixed views and fixed ways of being, and you can catch this out in your own experience.

This is the value of the practice – by being clearly present in your own experience you can catch out your behaviours, your attitudes, your views, your assumptions, your rapid judgements. Does that sound a bit nicer saying ‘rapid judgements’ instead of prejudices? Rapid uninformed judgements, yeah, but that’s what they are. And you notice yourself doing it. It happens on retreat too. You are sitting with people in this room that you have never spoken to, never really met, though you’ve seen them across a meal table, and you’ve seen them across a meditation hall.

It sometimes happens that when you eventually hear someone speak it completely contradicts the view of them in your mind that you didn't know you had formed. You’d formed an expectation and a view and it gets completely turned upside down.

This is why Dogen and the Buddha both tell us to look inside. This is why I’m pointing you towards illuminating the mind. This is why Hongzhi points towards ‘silent introspection’, contemplating your own ‘form’ in the wider meaning of form than just the body… the being. Look into your being, experience it in the now. Notice your tendency to experience it framed in past experiences… “this is like that, it’s like that time… I know what to do, I’ll do this”. Instead, notice it fresh. This moment is fresh, this moment has never been here before.

There are similarities to other moments – you’ve sat on the same cushion before, maybe even in the same posture. But there are also differences: this moment is different; this person you are meeting, or somehow relating to, or avoiding relating to, is different. There are similarities but there are also differences. Maybe your mood is different, maybe their mood is different, maybe their life circumstances have changed since last time you met, maybe yours have changed. There are similarities but there is a complete uniqueness, newness, freshness about this moment.

Bringing old judgements and habits to the moment is only really an expedient means of getting through life when it’s complicated and busy. We need them, we really do need these shortcuts and habits. It really wouldn't work if you needed to get out of that door to go to the toilet but you hadn't internalised how to open a door, or what a door handle was, or how a door latch worked, and you had to work it out from first principles every time. How to open your car, how to drive it. We need certain habits and learned behaviours. But we also need to learn how to step out of them and not be trapped by them.

It’s too easy to coast along on an autopilot of old ingrained habits which sort of work most of the time, and if we get into trouble then find a way out of it. As opposed to thinking, “this moment is a new moment, absolutely literally new, it’s just arrived. All the old moments have had their uses, I’ve learned stuff from them, but maybe if I’m fully present and attentive and aware I’ll spot that in this moment the old habit doesn’t fit. There are enough similarities for the old habit to offer itself, that seed begins to sprout. But no, not this time, a better way of responding, a more appropriate way of responding offers itself from the moment.” With the mind fully illuminated you are fully aware of the moment and your response fully fits the moment as well as is possible. With the mind silent, the old habits quiet, the appropriate response for this moment can arise, and for the next moment, and the next. See if you can spot this possibility for yourself, of allowing the moment to bring what the moment brings. If it evokes a conditioned response, that response does not have to be put into action – it may not be appropriate.

You may spot that some of the patterns you have been following have an origin in your history. You may or may not recognise or understand the origin, or you may not be in contact with it, and that’s ok. Or you may be very clear that you adopted that strategy in response to a particular life difficulty. It may be that you are not experiencing that life difficulty anymore, maybe you are no longer living with that difficult person that evoked that response in you, maybe this coping mechanism is no longer helpful. Worse than that, maybe the conditioned response is dysfunctional.

I once was talking this way to someone on retreat. This was someone who was obviously very intelligent and smart. Actually she used the word smart about herself quite a lot, but, honestly it was true, she was obviously very sharp and bright, she had a way of working out everything. Except, well, what about things that cannot be worked out? She was not so good on those. She didn't like it when I pointed out that her smartness was dysfunctional when relating to others on a feeling level, because it didn't work there for her. Even what we might call our positive qualities can be dysfunctional too. They get in the way and we rely on them too much. It rather stung her when I said that but later on in another retreat she said, “It really hurt me when you said that but you were correct, I see it”.

Even what we think are our good habits can be problematic. Often our so-called good habits are trying to be nice, trying to be light, trying to impress, all that stuff. How about being authentic? How about being now? How about being real? That means being real in this moment which is new. A past programme doesn’t cut it. We have the past programmes available for when life is fast-moving, for example if we are driving and we have to get there, and all the rest of it. We have these rapid responses, and for practical reasons we often have to make use of them. But not all the time – we can be aware of them, questioning them, and realising that “I’m doing it that way because that’s how I get by, but something’s not quite right, is it?”

Maybe we can find another way. This doesn’t mean we have to give up all our old habits – we are very well-skilled in them, well-rehearsed, and they have their uses. But we mustn’t feel impelled to use them regardless. This is the alternative translation of samskara as volition or impulse. We may feel impelled, compelled, to do things in certain ways. There may be a story in the back of the mind that this is a safe way to do things – you’ve done it this way lots of times and you’re still here so it’s good. Or, maybe it’s good enough, but it’s not actually good – that’s different.

This whole business of looking into the mind is looking for how you tie yourself into knots. It might be at a very basic level, of misperceiving, of taking a sensation and drawing the wrong inference, the wrong perception. That happens, but we learn from those and we tune ourselves. Much more complex is the next stage of ‘volition’ or ‘impulse’ or ‘habit’. Really really complex. But this is what we see if we look into the mind. We see our mind holding certain views, and defending them, holding them quite rigidly perhaps. We find ourselves impelled to act in certain ways which, even if we know they are not quite really ‘it’, feel safe and familiar. The more we confront ourselves with this, and this is where the word ‘confrontation’ really comes in, the more we confront ourselves we may acknowledge that we are doing something that seems safe and familiar and adequate, but is not good enough, there is scope for change. Sometimes the change just happens, because it’s untenable to continue the same way. Sometimes it’s a bit stickier – sometimes the sense of safety traps us in to wanting to continue the same behaviours. Even though we now sense there is a degree of dysfunction, there is still some sense of safety in hanging on to past habits. Particularly if we don’t quite know where this behaviour came from it can be hard to let go of it. This is why it can be useful if we do know, and recognise it. “Well, it arose in that particular situation and I’m just not in that situation now so it feels safe to let go of this”.

However that information is not always available to us. It might be that it is just be an accumulation over time from multiple small events, rather than an individual event that we remember. We may have a misperception of an event such that the event itself, even if we remember it, doesn’t seem relevant. It may have been just a childhood misunderstanding of some situation. We may be left feeling it’s a bit difficult to let go of something even though we know it’s not right. It’s left a bit stuck in the mind, it’s left a bit stuck in the behaviour. How to handle that?

It’s basically the same message of, “Let through, Let be, Let go”. It hangs around in the mind and you let it be there, not chasing it away. Or if does go away then you don’t chase after it hoping to force a resolution. You let it drift away. It’ll come back. And all the other stuff comes too. This is where the non-selective nature of this practice is very important, the openness, the evenness. Let through whatever comes into the mind even though it seems quite trivial or irrelevant, just a bit of white noise. You are not in a position to judge whether it is relevant. Quite often what comes through, eventually, is a supporting story for the first story, like your reinforcing evidence. Sometimes there are three or four or five stories tangled together. The key may be something which is so trivial that you overlook it, you can’t imagine that it’s significant. And maybe by itself it isn’t, but it’s that last bit of ‘evidence for the prosecution’ that makes you feel you must carry on behaving this way. It feels unsafe to do otherwise. But once you see that little thing in relation to the others, in the context of the others, you think “Oh, that was so obvious I never really looked at it properly but now I see that it’s been locking me in”.

Of course this is just a way of putting it, it’s different for each person and for each issue. But when something seems stuck it can be that just allowing this open flow can lead to it unsticking. The missing pieces of the jigsaw come into view because you allow them to flow past awareness. At some point, in front of your eyes, the jigsaw fixes itself. “Ahh… ohhh… I get it now, I didn’t get it before”. You couldn’t get it before because some pieces were missing. But if you allow the mind to flow, then the pieces appear. Whether they will appear in five minutes or five years… who knows? But just keep doing the practice and stuff shifts and makes sense, and the sort of sense it may make is a sense of, “this isn't right to carry this on. Even though I’m a bit scared of changing, the thought that I might carry on like this is even more horrifying”. The scales tip. “It’s not tenable to carry on like this, even though I’ve not found an alternative strategy that feels better or safer. I can just see that this way of being, this fixed view of mine, this attitude I hold, this way I lash out or this way I hide, it’s not good enough and has to stop.” And then the next moment comes and you may find a response which feels a bit fresher, a bit more appropriate, a bit newer, and maybe also a bit scary because it’s untested. But even the untested scary one is better than carrying on the way you’ve carried on. You find it possible to change. You find change inevitable.

This is where this investigation of self is taking you, and it goes very deep. Ultimately it goes all the way because, as the Buddha discovered, when you cut off all habitual thoughts and tendencies you live fully present. It doesn’t mean that you forget the past, it doesn’t mean that you become stupid and repeat the same mistake every day. You bring the learning from the past with you, but you’re not bound by it. You’re free to find a fresh response in this moment. You are fully informed because your awareness is wide open. Total illumination.

This practice is an invitation to dig deep inside into unknown layers. Maybe to say ‘digging’ is too active, that sounds like you’re directing it and striving. It’s more like allowing the lemonade bottle to fizz and to fizz and to fizz until the very last bubble comes out. But you’re paying attention because you need to see these bubbles. This is where the metaphor breaks down because the ones you don't see sneak around the bottom and come in again. Yeh. You have to see them to see through them and discharge them. If not, they have this habit of going round and round.

You are journeying into the unknown. In relation to the practice, and to the retreat as a whole, John Crook sometimes used to use the image of the 19th century European explorers in Africa, their ‘journey to the interior’ – they had absolutely no idea what they were going to find. Or maybe it’s the early sailors who thought they lived on a flat earth but nevertheless sailed west, knowing the possibility that they might fall off the edges of the earth, not knowing what they were going to find. You don't know what you are going to find in your own mind. There is stuff that you have repressed there for years. There is nice stuff, by the way, as well as nasty stuff – you’ve not allowed yourself some stuff that you feel you haven't deserved yet. There is stuff that’s been repressed, stuff that’s just been forgotten, simply forgotten or overlooked or which didn't register as particularly important at the time yet somehow it is a crucial part of this jigsaw that is half-assembled in front of you but still doesn’t really make sense. Just allow it all to flow. Take the risk of being open to what’s there. Be prepared to be shocked and ashamed and surprised and upset and overcome with joy or laughter or anger or tears. Or just bemused… “Have I really been doing that, good grief, huh”, and it’s gone.

Anything can arise… very open. We don't know. I certainly don’t know what you’ve got in you, you’ve hidden it too well up until know. You might have a clue, or you might have absolutely no idea at all. That clue might be inhibiting you because you have a fantasy that it’s going to destroy you or overwhelm you. If it does get overwhelming, we are here to support you. We’ve got various tricks to rescue people who need rescuing. That’s partly what the interviews are for, and that’s partly why we offer extra interviews when required. We’ve got various tricks for if it does seem to be getting out of hand for you. Actually it's safe but you might find that you’re not tolerating it very well. There may be an appropriate limit to self-confrontation… take a break, we can rescue you.

If you have trust in that then maybe you can allow yourself to go as deep as the mind will go. No need to hold back. You may need some courage, you may need to confront some fear, you might need to take risks. But think of the alternative. What’s the alternative? Carrying on the robotic habitual behaviours that have been trained into you by life experience. Anybody volunteering for the robot life, or would you prefer the human life? Which one do you want to go for? Being fully human. Remember that the Buddha was a human. I know that some Buddhist traditions present him as a god but that is more as an inspirational character. The Buddha was a human being who walked on the earth, ate food, went to the toilet, slept, you know, human. Fully human. Fully present. Fully being. And he’s inviting you to follow the same path, and I’m also encouraging you to do so.