This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Med: Experience vs Thoughts Our Stories (2of5) We Use Stories to Help Make Sense of the World. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Experience versus Thoughts; Dharmette: Our Stories (2 of 5): We Use Them to Help Make Sense of the World - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 17, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Experience versus Thoughts

Okay, so we'll start with a guided meditation, taking a few longer breaths than we normally would as a way to just help connect with the body. And feeling what it feels like to have these bigger breaths—feeling the stretch and the release of the stretch. Maybe there's a little bit of ease and relaxation that comes with the exhale.

Allowing the breath to return to normal; no need to control the breath, just trusting that the body knows how to breathe.

Then feeling connected to our sitting surface. We're here, feeling the pressure against the buttocks, pressure from the couch or the chair or the cushion. Pressure on the back of the legs and feeling whatever the feet are touching.

It is really helpful to establish this foundation of our sitting surface at the beginning of a sit. It helps emphasize that we are here and now, and there's a way in which the posture can rise out of that foundation, with the spine straight and upright. Of course, it's fine if you're lying down also.

If you're using a backrest, feeling the pressure against the back and the pressure on the body.

And doing a gentle body scan, tuning into the sensations on the face: around the eyes, around the jaw, maybe the face itself. The shoulders, allowing them to be relaxed away from the ears. And the chest—is there a way there can be some softness in the chest? And the belly, letting it relax, soften.

Now that we've settled in a little bit, I'd like to ask you to feel the sensations in the right hand. There are two kinds: maybe the sensations of what the hand is touching, whether that's warm or cool, soft or rough; and the sensations of having a hand—maybe that's more like a tingling or somehow a vibratory sense. The experience of having a hand.

Those are what I would call the direct experience. And in contrast, you can think about hands. Think about evolution—having opposable thumbs turns out to be mightily helpful. The hands of a child are different than the hands of an adult; different sizes, maybe a little bit softer and pudgier. And then just noticing that thoughts about hands are not the same as experiences with hands—distinct from the direct experience.

We can notice during this meditation period how sometimes thoughts are predominant and sometimes direct experience is predominant. We'd like to give emphasis to experience: experiencing the sensations of breathing. Feeling into the body's movements as breathing happens.

If the mind is lost in thought, we don't have to make a big story about what it means for us as meditators. We just begin again with the experience of breathing.

Dharmette: Our Stories (2 of 5): We Use Them to Help Make Sense of the World

Good morning, welcome. Today I am continuing this exploration of the topic of stories. In that guided meditation, I tried to highlight the difference between thoughts that we have and direct experience. We can notice that thoughts, of course, are in different places and different times—future, past, complete fantasy—whereas experience is just right here, right now.

Another distinction—maybe it's so obvious that it isn't even worth mentioning—is that there's a way in which thoughts use language, whether it's words or images, whereas direct experience itself isn't so much a language; it's just an experience. When we put our hand and touch our sitting surface and just feel—moving our hand across the surface—there are just those sensations. Whereas if we were to describe it, we're a little bit removed; we're using language to describe it.

With that as an introduction, I'd like to tell a story that comes from the Pali Canon¹, from the suttas. I'll talk a little bit more about the role of stories, or how humans use stories, after I give the story.

This story is about Mālunkyaputta². For those of you who are interested, this comes from Majjhima Nikāya 63³. Mālunkyaputta was a monastic under the Buddha. One time, he goes to the Buddha and he says, "You know, I'm really not happy that you haven't explained everything, and I'm going to disrobe; I'm going to abandon this monastic life and become a layperson⁴ again unless you answer these ten questions."

These turn out to be metaphysical questions. Some examples: Is the world finite or infinite? He has these questions about space—how much space is there in this universe of ours? Mālunkyaputta also asks, "Is the world eternal or not eternal?" He's asking about time. He's also asking what happens to Buddhas after they die—where do they go? Do they exist or do they not exist?

You can see that these are the types of questions that are only in one's mind in terms of wanting to know the limits of time and space and what happens after death. There is a little detail that I kind of like in this story: I feel like Mālunkyaputta is a little bit sassy. He says to the Buddha, "If you don't know the answers to these things, then just simply say you don't know." He's goading the Buddha a little bit, suggesting that the Buddha doesn't know.

The Buddha replies, "Well, did I ever promise you that I was going to answer all these questions if you ordained? Did I promise anyone that I would give all the answers to every single metaphysical question they could come up with if they ordained? No, I never made that promise." In fact, if somebody were demanding that they would not ordain until I had answered all their metaphysical questions, they would never ordain; they would spend the rest of their life unordained and they would die unordained.

The Buddha says, "I don't answer these questions because the answers to these types of questions are not helpful. They don't lead to peace, they don't lead to insight, they don't lead to awakening." Just having the answers to these types of metaphysical questions—and I might say, having a story about what happens after death, or a story about the limits of the universe—isn't helpful. Instead, it's about what can lead to peace, insight, and awakening, which is direct experience.

The Buddha continues within this story and gives another story—a simile, which we might understand as a story. This is the "Simile of the Poisoned Arrow." The Buddha says, "Suppose there was a person who was injured by a poisoned arrow, and his friends and relatives bring a doctor to help remove the arrow in order to save his life. But this person refuses; he doesn't want any help from the doctor until certain questions are answered." These are questions like: Who shot the arrow? Were they tall or short or of middle height? Do they live in this city, or this town, or a village? What kind of bow was used? Was it a longbow or a crossbow? What kind of bowstring was on the bow? Was it made from fiber, or reed, or sinew? What kind of feathers were on the arrow? Were they from a vulture, a heron, a hawk, a peacock, or a stork? What kind of arrowhead was it—spiked, razor-tipped, curved, barbed, or lancet-shaped?

In modern times—and I'm assuming also thousands of years ago—these are irrelevant questions. Here's a person who's been hit with a poisoned arrow; there's poison going into them, they're soon to die, and they're wondering whether the bowstring was made from fiber, reed, or sinew.

The teaching point from this sutta—both Mālunkyaputta asking these questions and the Simile of the Poisoned Arrow—is that having answers and stories about so many of the things that we have is not the way to awakening; it isn't the way towards liberation. Instead, there's a real encouragement to focus on direct experience that we can have through meditation, ethical conduct, or the way that we're showing up in the world. Rather than becoming attached to having the answers to all of our metaphysical questions, or knowing everything—rather than being attached to speculative views⁵ and stories—there's this real emphasis on just having some clarity about what's actually happening; some mindfulness about what's happening in one's life.

That's the usual framing of this story that we find in the suttas. But I also want to zoom out and look at this story from a different perspective and ask: why would Mālunkyaputta and this poisoned arrow victim even want to know all these things? What's the reason? I know that this is a teaching story, but I want us to look at things from a different way. Why would they want to know whether the bowstring was made out of sinew or fiber? Why would they want to know whether space is infinite or finite?

Because they're trying to make sense of their experience. They think that if they have more information, they'll find freedom; they'll be at a little bit more ease if they just understood better. In some ways, they kind of want to create a story about why it happened. Maybe Mālunkyaputta was just having a lot of doubt; maybe he was having a "doubt hindrance" attack and he had this idea that, "Well, maybe if I just had some more confidence in the Buddha and his teachings, then this would be easier for me. Maybe if he could prove that he really was awakened by knowing the answers to these questions, it would be a little bit easier for me."

This is what humans do. We want to use stories to make sense of our world. We want information; we want to feel like we understand. Maybe there's some way in which we feel like we can control things if we understand them.

David Loy⁶ writes, "The world is made of stories." He's saying that we're creating our world with our stories. We can even think in modern times how we have this current news cycle which is just never-ending. Something happens, and then there's endless speculation immediately after. People are getting paid to be on air and speculate about the details and the motives, trying to make sense before any of the facts have rolled in. They're just speculating, trying to help us make sense of why this happened.

David Loy points out that it's not just the news cycle. He talks about other ways stories make our world. There's this long list which I like, because it really points to how pervasive this is: The stories that make our world are creation myths, folktales, and fairy tales; 17-syllable Japanese haiku and three-day Indonesian shadow-puppet dramas; novels—romantic, fantastic, graphic; television soap operas, newspaper features, op-ed articles, internet blogs, talk-show chatter, office memos, obituaries, and birth announcements; "how-to" manuals, how you're feeling this morning, what happened during your vacation, and what you're planning for the weekend.

He's saying these are all the ways we're using stories and narratives to pull together our experiences. It highlights the difference between an actual experience and the words, language, and narratives we use to explain them.

I would say that freedom lies in recognizing stories as stories. The problems lie not with stories themselves, but how we identify with them, or how we are just believing them and assuming that what we're hearing somehow is an accurate representation of experience. Unaware that our stories are stories, we usually experience them as "this is just the way the world is." We take for granted that the world we experience is being reflected in these narratives and accounts.

Because our stories—our ideas about the world—strongly affect our perception of reality, the way that we are interpreting or understanding what's valuable, what's possible, what's good, or what's bad are all dependent on these stories that we are telling about our experience.

"Don't believe everything you think." But we don't want to dismiss stories, either, because it's a way that we are trying to make sense of the world and our experiences. Instead, I would say the way forward is to recognize that there are experiences, and then there are the narratives we create about experiences. They both are important, they both have a role, and they are distinct. It's helpful for us to keep that in mind as we practice for more freedom, more ease, more peace, and awakening.

Thank you. Today, you might just notice what kind of narratives you are pulling together. Of course we are, but can we recognize that they are narratives—explanations for experiences that we had—and that they're distinct?

Thank you, and I'll see you tomorrow. Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the day.

Reflections

It's lovely to see your comments. It's so great to practice together; it makes a difference. Thank you.

Maybe in the same way that I know there's a little time delay between when I say something and when it shows up on YouTube, I was thinking there's a gap between direct experience and the narrative around it. There's a little gap. You guys might be able to see me, but you don't know what I'm reading or what I'm seeing just because of this delay.

May we all be well.