The Three Speed Transmissions
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Excerpts from http://kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/
The Three Speed Transmission
People do contemplative practice for different reasons. Some people want to be free from suffering. Some people want to have interesting experiences. Some people want to find out what is true. For me, the best reason to practice is to find the happiness that is not dependent upon conditions. When happiness becomes your baseline, it frees up a lot of energy to be free, have interesting experiences, and find out what is true. In actual practice, all of these things are likely to happen to anyone who commits to contemplative practice, so you get to have your cake and eat it too.
Below is a prescription for the happiness that is independent of conditions. I call it the 3-Speed Transmission. It's like driving a car; when you are cruising along and everything is fine, third gear is the place to be. But sometimes the going gets rough and you know that if you stay in high gear you'll stall out. That's when it's useful to be able to downshift.
In pedagogy (the science of teaching and learning) there is a concept called "scaffolding." It means offering students a way to build their understanding step by step, so that each new understanding fits into what they've already learned. It's like building a scaffold around a house; you can climb up the scaffold to reach the high places you haven't finished building yet. If learning is carefully scaffolded, there will always be something to hang each new bit of learning on as it comes in. This association of each new bit of understanding with what has gone before helps you to retain knowledge better because anything you learn within a larger context is hard to forget or confuse. Later, as we shall see, the understanding we are most interested in is not related to knowledge in the usual sense. And it doesn't need anywhere to hang. All of the scaffolding is only a temporary device to help you find the confidence to abandon the building project entirely and find that you already are the happiness you seek.
The most gifted among you may find that you can just stay in third gear nearly all the time. For you, the happiness that does not depend on conditions may become second nature as soon as it is pointed out to you. For many of us, though, the conditioning to live in our thoughts is very strong. In that case, it's helpful to have 2nd and 1st gear so that when things get tough or confusing we can still do a practice that is accessible and that doesn't leave us feeling overwhelmed.
So, without further ado, here is the 3-Speed Transmission: (First I'll present the thumbnail version, then elaborate on each theme.)
3rd gear: If you can just let it be, understanding in your heart and in your bones that the happiness and peace you seek are your own true nature, then let it be. This is known as recognizing buddha nature or dwelling in buddha mind.
If you are distracted and unable to rest in buddha mind, downshift to:
2nd gear: Ask "Who am I?" until awareness turns back on itself. Cultivate the "witness," becoming absorbed in the perspective of awareness taking itself as object.
If, for whatever reason, dwelling as the witness isn't feasible, downshift to:
1st gear: Balance investigation (vipassana) and concentration (samatha). Use mental noting until the noticing is automatic, then just concentrate and notice. The genius of vipassana is that there is never a time when it can't be done. So it's the ultimate safety net and 1st gear practice. It also has the feature of being effective all the way to arahatship (the Fourth of the Four Paths of Enlightenment as described in Theravada Buddhism). So, it's by no means a low-grade or substandard practice. Quite the opposite, it's a very sophisticated technology of enlightenment. Used correctly, together with the other practices listed in this recipe, it's a rocket ship to the moon.
For an more in-depth description of each of the 3 Speeds, click on the links (menu at upper left of every page on this site) labeled 1st Gear, 2nd Gear, and 3rd Gear.
Kenneth Folk
July 2009 -
Goals
Anytime you embark upon a program of study, it's a good idea to have goals; if you decide to practice the 3-Speed Transmission, it will be helpful for you to know where you hope to end up. Do you want to be free from suffering? Do you want to be a meditation master? Do you want to know what all the fuss is about? Do you want to experience altered states of consciousness? Do you just want to be happy?
May I be so bold as to tell you my view on this? Nothing you can get or become will satisfy. I set out twenty-seven years ago to get enlightened and to become a meditation master. I feel that I have achieved both of those goals; the Four Paths of Enlightenment of the Theravada Buddhists all make sense to me now. I can access all sorts of wonderful jhanic states whenever I want to. I can manifest an astral body and fly through the air and dive into the earth. It's all very nice, and if you dedicate yourself to this practice, you'll be able to do it too. But the happiness that is independent of conditions has nothing to do with any of that, and the happiness that is independent of conditions is what I would most like to share with you. So, here are some goals for each of the 3 Speeds, understanding that in the end you can do no better than to surrender to what is already the case in this moment.
I will suggest some goals that I believe make sense at each level of the 3-Speed Transmission and you can accept or reject them and come up with goals that make sense to you.
1st Gear Goals: Balancing Concentration (samatha) and Investigation (vipasssana).
There are two distinct but intimately interrelated aspects to this practice. One is to master a number of altered states and the other is to progress along a continuum of physio-energetic development until you reach the point where you feel you are no longer a slave to this developmental process. With that in mind, the goals I suggest for 1st Gear are:
1. Become familiar with the samatha jhanas, including the four rupa (material) jhanas, the four arupa (immaterial) jhanas, the Pure Abodes (suddhavasa), and Nirodha Samapatti.
2. Move progressively through the Four Paths of Enlightenment until you reach Arahatship (Fourth Path), at which time you will not longer feel that there is anything more to be done in this regard. You won't stop developing after that, but you will feel that you are off "the ride" that began with your first spiritual opening.
2nd Gear Goals: Dwelling as the Witness
The "Witness" is both a transitional practice designed to help you attain 3rd gear and a way to maintain a connection with what is truer than your thoughts as you go about your daily life activities. As such, the goal here is simply to identify the "I" sense in your own experience, learn to become absorbed in this apparent witness and continue to practice in that way. Eventually, even the Witness dissolves, leaving only pure non-local awareness, which pervades and is not other than the entire manifest universe. Even after gaining unfettered access to 3rd Gear, however, you may find the witness to be an extremely empowering tool for remaining sane during all the waking hours of your day. This is because 3rd Gear, the non-dual experience of primordial awareness, is best done when you don't have any other cognitively demanding tasks to attend to. For those of us who live as householders, balancing awakening and family life, the Witness can serve as a bridge between ordinary dualistic consciousness and the unborn.
3rd Gear Goals: Be as you are.
The goal at this level is the happiness that is not dependent upon conditions. This means that no matter what is going in your life, be it good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, there is deep, abiding happiness. This comes from realizing, in this moment, things as they really are.
May you come to know the happiness that is independent of conditions.
Kenneth Folk
July 2009 -
1st Gear
First Gear: Balancing Concentration (samatha) and Insight (vipassana).
My first spiritual opening came in 1982, when I was 23 years old. It was a glimpse of what I now call "the Witness" otherwise known as 2nd Gear in the 3-Speed Transmission. This first, powerful awakening to the fact that there was a deeper reality than my habitual way of seeing the world completely changed my life; having had a taste of this deeper reality, all I wanted to do was "get it back." I began reading everything I could find about meditation, enlightenment, and spirituality, hoping to find a way back "home." All of the authors I was reading said that one should meditate, so I did. But the models of enlightenment I learned about in the books did not satisfy me. It seemed that there was some nebulous, airy-fairy kind of wisdom that Zen masters had, but that couldn't be explained. If you did Zen meditation, maybe it would happen to you too, but there was no guarantee, and in fact the odds were against it.
So, when I met a Theravada Buddhist teacher named Bill Hamilton in 1990 and learned about another way of modeling enlightenment, I was immediately hooked. According to Theravada Buddhism, enlightenment is a clearly mappable, linear process that is reproducible from one practitioner to the next. "Insights" arise in an invariable order, and it is possible to place yourself on a map of attainment and see where you have been and where you are going. This was just what my rational mind wanted to hear! Having grown up in a culture that sees everything as having a beginning, a middle, and an end, I could easily wrap my mind around this map of progressive development and get to work. My new teacher was honest with me about where he believed himself to be on the map and spoke of the meditation techniques and the fruits of the practice in such clear terms that I had no doubt I would be able to succeed within this system.
Theravada Buddhism describes four Paths of Enlightenment, each of which builds upon one before it. When I met Bill Hamilton in 1990, he let it be known through broad hints that he considered himself to have attained 2nd Path and was working toward 3rd. The more I practiced the vipassana (insight meditation), the more my faith in this system was verified. The insights into suffering, impermanence, and no-self came fast and furious, just as my teacher and the old texts said they would. The main point I want to make here about vipassana meditation is that it performs as advertised and a diligent yogi truly can progress through a series of stages that were already clearly described and mapped over 2,000 years ago. This is an exciting and dynamic process that brings benefits much too numerous to describe here.
Each of the four Paths of Enlightenment unfolds through a series of sub-stages, called the Progress of Insight. Once you have completed all 16 stages of the first Progress of Insight, you have, by definition, attained to the First Path of Enlightenment, at which time your understanding of your relationship to yourself and your experience is permanently altered in subtle but profound ways. This new understanding further deepens during the 2nd Progress of Insight, which looks and feels similar to the 1st and culminates in 2nd Path. After this, the Progress of Insight speeds up and cycles repeatedly. Eventually, 3rd and 4th Path are attained, resulting in what the Theravada Buddhists consider "full enlightenment." The kind of thumbnail sketch I've provided here makes this all sound fairly straightforward and perhaps even easy, but most people will not find it so. To reach the highest levels of enlightenment within this system requires a tremendous amount of concentration, which in turn requires great dedication and for most people many years of dedicated effort and considerable sacrifice. Nonetheless, it is possible and well worth doing; balancing concentration and insight brings about what I call "physio-energetic" development, a kind of human development that seems to be optional. In other words, the majority of people on Earth will not develop their potential in this arena and many will not even believe that such a possibility exists.
For more on the Progress of Insight and developmental enlightenment, click on the links (menu at top left) called "Progress of Insight" (parts 1-5) and the other links in this section.
Kenneth Folk
July 2009 -
2nd Gear
Dwell as the "Witness."
2nd Gear in the 3-Speed Transmission is "dwelling as the Witness." The first thing to know about the "Witness" is that it isn't what it appears to be. In other words, although there is, in every moment of conventional experience, a sense that there is an "I" who knows the experience, this "I" is actually a fiction, a fabrication of mind. One way to see through this apparent watcher is to become absorbed into it, understanding that it will eventually collapse of its own accord. Ramana Maharshi referred to the Witness as "the stick that stirs the fire and is eventually consumed by it." When the Witness dissolves, you will find that you have naturally arrived at 3rd Gear, the direct apprehension of buddha nature in your own being.
With this in mind, dwelling as the Witness is seen as a transitional step. It could be said to lie halfway between 1st Gear and 3rd Gear, halfway between the object-oriented practices of concentration/insight and the complete surrender to what is, also known as non-duality. Since it takes a great deal of concentration to become absorbed into the sense of "I," this practice kills two birds with one stone; it serves as a transition to recognizing buddha nature while at the same time strengthening your ability to concentrate. As concentration is essential to progress through the Insight Knowledges (ñanas) and Realms of Absorption (jhanas), this technique of dwelling as the Witness is a very streamlined way to both Realization of what is always already the case (3rd Gear) and developmental enlightenment (1st Gear).
How to dwell as the Witness:
As you go about your daily life and as you sit on the meditation cushion, ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" Don't try to answer it with trivialities like "I am Joe," etc. The question is just a pointer to get you to notice who it is that seems to be having this experience. As you ask this question, "Who am I?" you might get a flash of something like "I" as an answer.
"Who am I?"
"I, that's who! I am I!"
OK, that's what we're looking for. You don't have to go beyond that. That sense of "I" is the very Witness we are seeking. You don't need to debunk the Witness. This is a self-debunking practice; all you have to do is become absorbed into this sensation of "I, I" and enjoy it. You will find that it is very enjoyable indeed, as this apparent "I" has no stake in anything that goes on; it is just an impassive witness. Continue to become ever-more-deeply absorbed into this sense of "I", understanding that someday it will dissolve of its own accord, leaving only pure, non-local awareness. At that point, you will have arrived at 3rd Gear.
One of the things I most want to communicate to people is that when we talk about the witness we aren't being poetic or metaphorical; the "witness" is a clear, discreet, recognizable, and reproducible state that can be mastered with practice. Once mastered, it becomes one of the most empowering tools in a yogi's toolbox. Not only does it pave the way to direct realization of the non-dual, it is valuable in its own right as a way to maintain a connection with awareness while going about daily life activities.
I think of an hourglass, turned on its side. On one side of the hourglass is the non-dual. If all of the sand has gone to that side, there is only the perfection of primordial awareness, which pervades, includes, and gives rise to all things. This is the most precious jewel of all the Buddhas, but does not lend itself to productivity or even functionality in modern daily life; we can only practice the non-dual when we don't have any other cognitively demanding tasks to attend to. On the other end of the hourglass is duality; when all the sand has moved to that side of the glass, the apparent self has completely lost touch with the greater reality and sees itself as cut off and separate from the whole. Although it is possible to be extremely productive in terms of daily life activities while isolated in this way (indeed, most people will spend their entire lives in the thrall of duality), the price to be paid for such a productive life is a horrendous amount of suffering. In the middle, in the narrow part of the hourglass, is the Witness. Experience is somewhat limited here, consistent with the narrowness of the glass; everything is seen as self. There is only pure subjectivity. All of the usual objects of consciousness are present, but they are not seen as Other. As such, the Witness is upstream from suffering. In other words, suffering, which is part and parcel of our ordinary dualistic condition, has not yet arisen during the witness state. And yet, unlike the full experience of non-duality, it's possible to do most daily tasks while dwelling as the Witness. Tasks that require dualistic thinking (writing this message, for example) can be effectively accomplished from the witness state, and with practice it gets easier and easier. The flexibility of the witness state, lying as it does halfway in between the dual and the non-dual, makes it possible to remain functional in daily life while staying poised at the very gates of primordial awareness, ready to tip over at a moments notice into what the Dzogchen masters call The Great Perfection. Because of its ability to serve as a bridge between the unborn and the manifest along with the practical value that goes along with that bridge status, I can scarcely imagine a more useful or empowering tool for those of us who have chosen to pursue awakening while living as householders.
Kenneth Folk
July 2009 -
3rd Gear
3rd Gear in the 3-Speed Transmission is the moment of recognizing buddha nature in your own being. From this point of view, there is nowhere to go and nothing to get. The happiness you seek is your own true nature and it is only your attempt to become or to create or to investigate that distracts you from seeing this.
You can stop now. Stop trying to figure it out. Stop trying to get enlightened. Stop concentrating. Stop investigating. Stop meditating. Stop trying to stop.
Be as you are.
Your true nature is not "you." Neither is it other than you. It is not the "Witness." It's not your True Self, or a Big Self that subsumes your small self. Your true nature is the true nature of everything. Your sense of self arises and simultaneously vanishes within this simplest of realities, as does the entire manifest world. The simplest "thing," that which cannot be further reduced is pure, empty awareness without time or location. It has no shape or size. It does not change or diminish. Its only characteristic is awareness. It is empty of self, inherently existing and intrinsically aware. Let's call it Primordial Awareness.
There is nothing outside of this. Primordial Awareness pervades and gives rise to and is not other than the entire manifest Universe. You don't have to do anything to be it; nothing you could do would make you other than it. You can't mess it up or tarnish or stain it. You've never been apart from it. In order to recognize it, you have only to stop adding "yourself" to it. To even refer to this most fundamental of realities as "it" or to call it anything at all, including "Primordial Awareness" is to risk reducing it to a concept and thereby missing it. Nonetheless, having once discovered it and learned to trust it, we feel compelled to share, so we do our best to point using the words we have.
Nothing you can do will lead to this. Nothing you can do or not do will lead you away from this. No amount of meditative attainment or achievement will get you any closer or any farther away. The very act of doing or intending anything is something you are adding to this moment; when you are actively doing something, even something so seemingly innocuous as investigating your experience, you are "compounding" or adding something extra to your experience The Awareness we are pointing to is said to be uncompounded and unconditioned. It's what is revealed when you stop adding to this moment. Recognizing buddha nature in this moment is enlightenment. Failing to recognize buddha nature in this moment is ignorance. To recognize buddha nature in this moment and to train in this recognition and gain stability in it is the happiness that does not depend upon conditions. May you recognize buddha nature now.
May you be happy.
Kenneth Folk
July 2009 -
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