Ken: And what I found is that at some point—and for most people this is after five to eight years of practice, though there’s often another wave around ten to fifteen years of practice when it’s usually deeper and more painful—people who have been trained that way find themselves struggling with the transition, which I like to call making the practice their own.
And it’s a difficult transition because around that period they’re beginning to feel the divergence between what their heart is seeking and this system of practice. And it’s very uncomfortable because they feel that by listening to their heart they’re in some sense either checking out or even betraying the way that they have been trained. And because there are often very significant emotional ties both to teachers and colleagues as well as, frequently, to the material itself, to the scriptures and texts, this questioning initially is usually engaged very, very tentatively, with considerable trepidation. And for good reason. Not infrequently the way many of these organizations and institutions function is that when one raises certain kinds of questions unless one has a really very, very good mentor—and they do exist, fortunately—but in many cases you start asking questions that aren’t customarily asked, and one finds one’s relationship with the whole system changing, sometimes extremely rapidly, which comes as a shock. Sometimes slowly, but you just find yourself being eased out in some way. And for reasons you can’t really figure out because “I was just talking about these questions.”
And now as I said this isn’t universally the case because there are some teachers who really are very familiar with this and are able to provide the right kind of guidance and support through such a transition. And if you happen to have contact with one of those, somebody like that, then treasure them because they’re really wonderful.
But what I’ve come across frequently is people who’ve found themselves outside the tradition of their training, not quite sure how they got there. And at the same time dealing with sometimes quite deep feelings of having betrayed something, but they’re not quite sure what. Or having violated something but they’re not quite sure what. And most of the people I’ve encountered, and I’ve worked with quite a few in this, they haven’t betrayed anything. They haven’t violated anything. What has happened is that they started listening to their own spiritual questions. And they frequently start letting go of certain practices and forming a relationship with particular ones that really mean something to them. Or they may go in quite different directions for a while. But now they’re really engaging in their own spiritual search. And it wouldn’t be incorrect to regard that first phase of their path as learning a lot of stuff, developing a lot of skills, developing abilities which now makes it possible for them to do this more individual search and questioning.
It’s very unpredictable but usually it’s probably over a two to four-year period, there’s a letting go of a lot of assumptions and ideas and tacit understandings, which were part of the institutional setting. And they’re replaced by something that is personally more vital, more visceral, and in many respects, more alive. And alive because there’s a different level of personal engagement. And this is where one moves out of the manufacturing process or a systematic process of, “Do this practice and then this one, and then this one,” into a much more exploratory way of practicing. And it’s important then for the person to be able to find the resources that they’re going to need. And in this process they’re going to re-examine almost everything that they’ve done. And in that process some stuff will fall away as not relevant, and other stuff, as I’ve said before, will take on a renewed vitality, or actually a new vitality.
Now if you look at the lives of most of the great teachers this is exactly what has happened. And it’s often buried in flowery language in the biographies. But most of the really great teachers, the ones who are regarded as holding the tradition, came to that position by doing very untraditional things. Milarepa who is revered in all of the different schools started off by killing 37 people. And it’s not exactly a traditional spiritual path.
Here Ken describes shifts that can occur in waves. You begin to sense a divergence between what your heart seeks and the form your practice has taken. While this can be unsettling and may feel like disloyalty, Ken offers reassurance that this may be sign of engaging the path more deeply because the years spent learning, practising, and trusting a tradition have honed the discernment needed to listen to your own spiritual questions.
When I heard this passage, I could sense this at play in my own life. My first teachers gave me immense gifts. They explained the Dharma, introduced practice forms, and opened the door to the living tradition. A pilgrimage to Tibet and meeting Lama Achuk at Yachen Gar helped me understand that dharma is my life. Yet, once home again, I found myself longing to hear teachings expressed directly in English. Over the long period that followed, I experienced difficult feelings of traitorousness and uncertainty. Eventually the search led to Ken, and he helped me navigate the transition. From the start, he encouraged me to trust my own experience.
Over the years this has continued to unfold in unpredictable ways. The sailboat of practice has passed through storms and languished in becalmed waters before catching the wind once more. And recently I've found myself deep in a second wave of making practice my own.
"So, Ānanda, you should all live with yourselves as your island, yourselves as your refuge, with no other as your refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other as your refuge."—Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (DN 16), §2.26, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Dhammatalks.org