Well Rounded Meditation and Generosity | In Conversation with Beth Upton

Posted byjosh dippoldPosted inBuddhism, Conversations, dharma, Information, meditation, Podcast, questions, wisdomTags:, , , , , ,

This is a March 19th 2021 Zoom interview/conversation/teaching (experience)/chat with Ms. Beth Upton.

For the video version I imagine some of this could appear awkward especially for the audience. While I seem to handle awkwardness with indifference, Beth graces with gentle and pleasant speech.

From BethUpton.com:

I have been teaching meditation since 2014, and the more I teach the more I love it. If there is one thing that I have learned in my years teaching it is that we are all different, with our own strengths and weaknesses. In order to teach well, I need to get to know each student individually, guiding each to tap into their own innate wisdom, offering instruction that fits each student’s unique circumstances.

The ten years I spent as a Buddhist nun afforded me the great privilege of being able to practice meditation in much depth and detail. I was blessed with masterful teachers and all of the support I could have hoped for. I spent five years in Myanmar training diligently in the Theravada tradition under the guidance of Pa Auk Sayadaw. I then spent a further five years training in several other methods, and spent many months doing long solo retreats in various caves and forests.

The opportunity to practice meditation so comprehensively has been the greatest gift of my life. My passion is now to repay that debt of gratitude by providing the same opportunity to others.

Since deciding to disrobe in 2018, I have been on a sharp and wonderful learning curve, reintegrating the challenges of western lay life into my Dhamma practice. Through this process not only has my appreciation of the Dhamma grown deeper, but also my understanding of the students I am teaching.

As well as teaching meditation I am also enthusiastic about building community. Over the past years I have been leading Sanditthika Meditation Community in the caves of Almeria, Southern Spain. I am also finding ways that we can support each other wherever we may be in the world. I am also finding ways that we can support each other wherever we may be in the world. If this work interests you, I welcome you, either online, or in person, or both, to join our community.

End of Beth’s website bio. [Video correction: the end of a portion of Beth’s bio]

Amongst Beth’s copious wisdom teachings a big thanks goes for furthering my training in mindfulness of speech and presentation.

Be aware that audio challenges may be from me adjusting the zoom volume without monitoring the audio level for the screen recording.

Some of the topics we get into include:

As we run out of time, I dangle a question about arhatship, so I include it here with a few pro and cons not included in the video:

What are the pros and cons for revealing and then discussing arhatship — for both lay and monastic — while mentioning and considering the relevant monastic rule(s) surrounding this? Also how are the Four Stages of Enlightenment verified?

  • Cons:
    • lay community may be more likely to ignore other monastics/teachers
    • followers could end up boosting personality (in their own minds) thus detracting from their practice
    • more desire for Dana to arhats for greater merit
    • risk of locking in particular arhat’s experiences as litmus test, benchmark, and/or “this is the way arhatship is, not what so-and-so says about it”
    • stirring up politics — what country/monastery/tradition has most arhats.
    • could attract jealous detractors and those denouncing validity of attainment
    • potentially inciting unwise external comparisons perhaps leading to overemphasizing striving for attainment, or the opposite of giving up because it seems unrealistic and so far away
  • Pros:
    • proof that it’s actually possible (in this very life) and not hearsay
    • inspiration for practice
    • demystifies
    • perhaps more helpful advice available for those closer to the arhat stage in their path
    • could better settle wonderings about what it would be like to interact with an arhat and how an arhat would experience such and such
    • more authoritative perspectives
Audio only version — Well Rounded Meditation and Generosity | In Conversation with Beth Upton

Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:

[Music]

this is the march 19 2021 zoom interview and chat with ms beth upton

for the video version i imagine some of this could appear awkward especially for the audience

while i seem to handle awkwardness with indifference beth graces with gentle and pleasant

speech now i’m going to do something unorthodox even stranger than my various looks of

neanderthal wild man deer in the headlights stony spaced out blissed out

looking at my watch as to not disrupt the screen recording to see the clock shifting about on a

crackly wicker chair etc what i’m going to do now is read verbatim parts of beth’s website

bio as it’s written in the first person i’ve been teaching meditation since 2014

and the more i teach the more i love it if there is one thing that i’ve learned in my years of teaching

it is that we are all different with our own strengths and weaknesses in order to teach well i need to get to

know each student individually guiding each to tap into their own innate wisdom offering instruction that

fits each student’s unique circumstances the 10 years i spent as a buddhist nun

afforded me the great privilege of being able to practice meditation in much depth and detail i was blessed with

masterful teachers and all the support i could have hoped for i spent five years in myanmar training

diligently under the tarabata tradition under the guidance of sciento i then

spent further five years training in several other methods and spent many months doing long solo retreats in various

caves and forests the opportunity to practice meditation so comprehensively

has been the greatest gift of my life my passion is now to repay that debt of gratitude by providing the same opportunity to

others as well as teaching meditation i’m also enthusiastic about building community

over the past years i’ve been leading the sandy tech meditation community in the caves of almeria southern spain

i’m also finding ways that we can support each other wherever we may be in the world and that’s the end of beth’s bio

amongst beth’s copious wisdom teachings a big thank you ghost for furthering my

training and mindfulness to speech and presentation be aware that audio challenges may be

for me adjusting the zoom volume without monitoring the audio level for the screen recording

some of the topics we get into include life of the theravada buddhist monastic in southeast asia

generosity and a gift economy and giving culture relationships community lack of

community advice for establishing a daily meditation practice meditation trends what best meditation

interviews are like in a mini example interview for my current practice samata vipassana and super mundane or

psychic powers and without further ado here’s beth and i and hi beth how are you today

i’m okay thank you yeah i’m good right on well i’ll just tell people a

little bit about uh how i found beth before i let her introduce herself

um i was reading this book practicing the genres

and it’s uh it’s it’s basically steven snyder and

tina rasmussen’s um i guess journey through practicing the genres with venerable pacquiao cyado so i just

thought i would google to see what uh venerable seidel looks like and one of beth’s

videos that she did she doesn’t have too many videos posted on online uh but she did a small interview type

thing with with venerable um and that’s how i that’s how i found beth so

beth what would you um how could you what would you like to enter how would

you like to introduce yourself hi i’m beth i don’t know

it depends what you want to know i mean when you were speaking about that video it reminded me of it was only about a year ago that i made

that video and i was planning to be back in asia apart like now but i couldn’t go because of

the lockdown and i have this feeling of oh i hope i get to see him again times like that are really precious

where we get to sit and listen to the dharma from him

so for anybody that doesn’t know could you explain um maybe talk about him um

you know um your bio says that you’re that you that you were um a monastic for ten

years right and disrobed yeah that’s right so

um i was interested in like in my early 20s in meditating more

i had sort of looked at other things to do with my life but none of them caught my interest and i wanted to find a place to meditate

and was looking here and there i tried a few places in thailand was looking at a few places in

myanmar and when i turned up to park actually parkside or wasn’t

there at that time about something really felt right about the place that i could

ask any question i wanted and usually get a really satisfactory answer

one of zero’s students was teaching a teacher called sir or avatar who’s

an incredible teacher i would encourage you all to go and practice with him so i met

him and i was like he knows i should i just stay here and listen to him

and so i did and um in that context it really made sense for

dana’s and then and i i made this determination to myself i’ll stay until i’ve learned the essence of what

they’re teaching here and i did and i think

so far it’s like the best few years of my life i really adored monastic life and then after some

time part of zero came back and i also spent time

so you know not people not too many people can in the general

population probably encounter too many um experiences like you’ve had right

i mean i’m sure it’s not totally uncommon but perhaps people would like to know or

may be of interest if you feel it’s of interest to know kind of like daily life daily monastic life

and maybe some of the the precepts the excessive not excessive the the numerous precepts

that were required how those might be relevant how they might be helpful

uh and challenging at the same time and then maybe a transition to lay life and how

that process went that’s a lot there all in one question

um so daily life is like your full-time job is to meditate

so if you stick to this schedule they have like a schedule then i think it’s five or six

meditations a day and they’re like an hour and a half long each but

me and some others prefer to make our own schedule but usually when we make our

own schedules because we want to do more and although meditation is a full-time job probably the biggest complaint

amongst the people there is i haven’t enough time for meditation oh i want more time for meditation

because it’s also life the way that part of auxiliary teaches is very

detailed and very profound so it’s what we can’t learn all in

10 days or in three months most of the people if they want to learn

those teachings comprehensively they need to stay for years so life comes in and

there’s things to do friends get sick sometimes people come to visit or things happen

and so this was like the the main struggle is to find enough

sound bizarre now but to find enough time for meditation because we become very sensitive to

distractions as for the preset so as a nun we had 10

only the monks have 227 but lots of those 227

in essence are contained within the ten if we’re keeping the ten very

diligently and so the first five are rooted in

our wish not to do harm so not to kill not to steal not to do

any kind of sexual conduct and then not to lie and not to take intoxicants

and then the next five precepts is more based in restraint so

we keep the precept not to eat in the afternoon not to watch any kind of entertainments

or singing or dancing not to beautify the body and then not to

use high or luxurious beds and then the last one is not to use

money and that last precept really revolutionizes the life after 10

years we stopped to see things in financial terms and

our values come somehow into line with the dharma you mentioned about disrobing

so one of the main things i noticed when destroying was having to re-engage with money and

seeing how that interaction with money started to distort my values almost instantly so for example i could

eat this or i could eat this and rather than

as a monastic i would reflect on gratitude to the donors and humility and

gratitude of the body and the importance of the practice and if i was in a lucky situation as

monastic to have a lot of food then i would tune into what my body needs

but when we’re buying our food we tune into oh that one costs four pound fifty

that one’s only three pounds it’s really messed up there’s just a little example

but so many ways of the influences on how i would use my

time yeah really distorted by finance

so let’s talk about that a little bit um i know um if i’ve heard you talk about kind of

this vision of generosity too so and then also you were

in um in an econ major right in in university uh so i mean maybe that

ties into it somehow but i also i mean i i love this idea of of gifting and

generosity and you know if you want to talk a little bit about why you know generosity is so important

and then also kind of like your vision for it and maybe which what was inspiring of that vision and

you know um there’s interesting too if anybody’s up on culture in the in the states there’s

something called burning man i’ve never been but i’ve heard they have a gift economy there so i’m curious if you have any thoughts

if you’re familiar with that and you have any thoughts on how something like that might tie in

so it’s a lot there yeah yeah i think we see um quite a few inspiring

examples of gift economy working and what we notice is that they work when there’s a strong sense of community

so to use a rather ugly economic term the social capital needs to be quite

high in order for gift economy to work um sometimes

i feel of economists like if they can put a definition on something they feel like they’ve trumped it

like never mind the whole of human relationships and society and community we’ll call that social capital and now

we know better got it pinned down nothing else to figure out it’s all taken care of now yeah yeah

all right yeah um anyway yeah my my degree was in

economics and sort of killed my spirit

um and then i was immersed in this what we call like a dhana economy now in

the west i think they’re calling it gift economy and

i would also encourage you all if you’re interested in this topic to look at the work of charles eisenstein who

writes about very brilliantly very with a lot of clarity

um so one of the main things like if we really get to the root of

what money is is saying i’ve given you something and you’re hereby obliged to give me

back something of the equal value in return

that’s that’s this whole purpose right like and it might have to go by the buy so

i’ve given you i don’t know what two cows and you don’t have whatever but you’re going to give it to joe down the road who’s

going to give me something might go by the buy but the basic premise is one of entitlement i’ve given

you something and i want some kind of guarantee i’m getting mine back

and so what diana economy does is frees us from that obligation

and that allows a purity of intention to grow so i’ve given you something because i

wanted to give it and i trust if we’re all in that spirit

then minds come into me when i need it

and it’s putting that onus on us all to support the things that we

value to support the things where we see need and on receivers it’s putting the owners

on us to be worthy of receiving

so yeah that’s really like at the heart of gift economy for me there’s there’s much more nuance and much more

detail to speak about but that’s really why it’s such a foundational piece for

dharma what i hear in the west there’s a lot of people thinking that gift economy serves only as a means to access so if

it’s by donation then even poor people can join

but it’s really such a small small piece of the puzzle that access about them didn’t uh the

buddha say something like even if you have just give even if you just have a little i’m not exactly sure if that’s

if that’s right or not but yeah it’s it comes down to the intent right and also at the root of it money

is an idea so it’s kind of like rewriting the idea of money

in a way i feel um yeah yeah i mean the other thing with

money is as i was saying before it’s grossly distorting the value

so we have money or not money but let’s say price we have price as a function of massively

distorted supply and massively distorted demand

and so the number values that we put on things the prices that we put on things so

grossly horrifically distort their true value

and when we engage in that system we legitimize it

yeah it definitely can right i mean i’m sure there’s some accurate i mean there’s just so much to

say yeah i’m sure some of it’s accurate some of it’s really distorted you know and then how

all that’s gamed and i mean it’s such a huge topic uh possibly we can explore uh more some

other time um but yeah that’s this

the spirit of giving the spirit of generosity and how where the place that comes from like the

buddha said was a teaching to rahula where you notice how you feel before you give

while you’re giving and then after you give so um okay so

now i guess we can talk a little bit about what you do now um uh your work with with folks

and whatnot yeah so it’s it’s a strange time to ask

me that question because we’re just coming out of a pandemic so it hasn’t been the year that i was

envisaging 2021 actually no 20 going into 2020

i was complaining to my friends embracing myself because i had this crazy schedule lined

up or changing country maybe like 17 18 times to go and lead retreats in god

knows where and i’m so done with so much travel that i’d start

to feel kind of physically repulsed by uprooting myself yet again and engaging with a new community new

group of people so i haven’t done that that’s probably on the cards for the coming year

um but i at least i’ve had a break and what i have been doing is teaching mostly my

existing student base advising

and experimenting with online retreats which is something i never before thought i would have done i

would have argued you down if you had told me that i would be spending so much time on my

lap although it’s definitely it’s not as good as teaching in person and i very

much don’t want it to become a new normal i’ve had to admit that it is definitely better than nothing

and so that’s mostly what i’ve been doing now and

just as things start to ease i’m going to move back to teaching in person so my

first in-person retreat for almost a year will be through april and joshua tree

very cool that’s kind of the nature of i mean maybe this is a gross over generalization but it seems like a lot

of brits they they they’re world travelers right you know historically too

um are we i don’t know we’ve got the east india company right let’s break base i don’t know yeah

we did that sorry so you also do um you also do

besides teaching you also do interviews right well at least online here too and by the way i’ve

attended two uh full online sits or full day online sits with with beth and

various communities she has online and i’ve really benefited from those so thank you again for those and so it but

you also do um interviews right um meditation interviews online through zoom

like through uh maybe an hour to begin with and then half hour for anybody any for meditators and then also maybe

we can um you can talk about that but also talk about what your interview what that interview

process is like usually and then what about your interviews with your teachers and if there’s any like similarities or anything worth

mentioning there yeah yeah so

i don’t really like to teach a group i don’t like to teach sort of a

one size fits all or now we’re all going to do this because everyone’s different everyone’s at a different place

in their practice and also people have different strengths and weaknesses and so i like to teach people one-on-one

so as you just explained i at the moment i’m doing that by zoom

and it’s probably something i’ll continue into the future as i lead retreats in different places

sometimes the keener of the students who want to

maintain their practice after the retreat if i just leave i have i have nothing to

offer but now i can say okay i’ll just keep teaching you by zoom so this is one

actual like silver lining of the past year i think that i’ve okayed myself with

with doing that work and what was the second part of your question oh europe well i’ll just make a

comment real quick there too and i feel pretty much yeah i feel pretty much the same way about zoom you know

there’s opportunities i probably wouldn’t have had otherwise and with people from all around the world

but also yeah it does it’s it’s it’s a faint you know um simulation of of of real life you know

um it really is uh so it’s just so much more powerful to be in the presence of another human being

you know in the flesh obviously so but yeah yeah what how how do you remember some of your

interview styles of your teachers and and whatnot yeah so they

are the same in that they’re teaching everybody individually um but they’re different in personality

and in different ways you know the teachers i’ve learned from so part of is really a master

one of my friends who is also a student described him as being like the wind element in that

he’s very pushy but it’s somehow supportive and that’s quite true like he really

pushes hard to get the best out of people but there’s such a strong loving presence there that he can pull it off

maybe if somebody else tried to be so pushy without that strong meta and that

strong spiritual presence just feel stressed but my experience

with paul said or that he’s also been very supportive and then among

the teachers who teach within the park institution let’s say so parks here or

senior teachers under him they each have their own

personality i think that they bring to the teaching so that the content is quite the same and when i’ve

started teaching in the west probably there i also have my own personality which is different i think

maybe more i hope maybe more

relatable to westerners maybe i’m i’m not coming from

this um very traditional patriarchal culture i’m using a vocabulary that feels more

natural to people but also in the content what i’ve learned is there’s

need for more support on the basic so part of zero’s teachings are really

like getting interesting for the students once they already have ghana concentration

and then that’s where parks it gets really enthusiastic and there’s loads to say and those to do but

there’s not so much guidance for the students who are not there yet mostly just

keep on focusing on the breath patient more time on the breath less distraction that can be quite a

frustrating place for meditators to be so i’ve practiced some other methods

i’ve learned from different teachers and also just through my own practice and things that have worked for me

through listening listening a lot to the students find more to give

on basic so you’ve got the best of all worlds here you’ve got you know deep deep practice in the east

with you know probably the world’s premier meditation master right and then you’ve got um you know you grew

up in the west so you’re familiar with western culture and now you’re you’re

getting more into the basic style too so i mean that pretty much covers all the bases as you know i would think so that’s that’s

cool um so maybe we can actually do a little example uh

mini uh meditation interview just to kind of give a sample of anybody that’s interested in what it might be like

obviously it won’t be representative of a whole you know so um but before we get to that let’s see

um what about so yeah general advice and encouragement empowerment for meditation practice

yeah since we’re on this topic so you know at pretty much different skill levels if you want to mention anything i mean one

of the things uh here again again and again is trying to establish a daily meditation practice

right from folks and how to do that yeah that’s a hard one so

one of the really important points to learn is that the mind is habit forming

and so what we want to do is like put in the effort early on to make it a habit

and then it will become easier in the future so if we can usually i say to the

students do the amount that you can realistically do every day

so better like if you can only do 15 minutes a day do that but do it every day because the

mind will get into the habit um rather than saying no i’ll do an hour but then you only end up doing it once a

month so do what you can realistically do every day

and then i need to get really clear about what we’re wanting from our meditation

practice in daily life so how are we are we stressed and

burdened and we’re looking for a practice to give us some calm or are we bored and we’re looking for a

practice that will give us some growth or yeah whatever it might be

are we in stressful relationships and looking for some self-nurture what how really we wanting

our practice to serve us and then we can look for a practice that will

go some way towards meeting those needs and then we want to use a meditation

object that is not too subtle this is one of the biggest mistakes i think of meditators in daily

life is that they go in with a lot of shoulds i should be able to focus on this for a

long time and experience this we need to take a look at our mind and i like this

if you’re trying to make a buddha statue from a lump of wood and you know you get a chisel and you

lob off the corners you get it vaguely person shaped and then you take a finer chisel and you put in a

few of the details get the arms and legs going then you get an even finer chisel

and you start to carve in the details maybe the fingers and the nose

then maybe you’ve got some sandpaper and eventually a polishing plus if you want to make a buddha statue

you’ve got a big lump of wood and you go in with a polishing cloth you’re going to be there for a really long time

and so oftentimes the best thing that we can do for the depth of our practice is to go in with a really coarse

object of course object here could be if you’re practicing with the breath

maybe counting you might use a mantra you might do some walking meditation

but if those things are still too subtle for you if you’ve got hectic by a connective hectic mind then

go for something even coarser which means go for a silent walk in nature turn off your phone put it down go for a

silent walk in nature for some people that course thing will be taking a nap

just switch off the noise take a nap or lie down in a dark room on your back

with no stimulus and don’t even try to do anything else and that might be your really coarse

chisel and then you’ll notice some calm come in and you can go to something more subtle

so that’s probably the three biggest pieces of advice i have do

what you can realistically do every day build a habit get clear about what you’re wanting your

meditation to do for you in your daily life and then don’t choose an object that is

too subtle that’s that’s so great because that the the practical one i haven’t heard before

about the the gross and subtle things because yeah it’s just some people just aren’t you know yeah to

go straight into the subtle that’s like a certain thing yeah that people are dealing with it’s true

especially for people who have practiced on retreats and their practice in retreat has been very subtle

and they’re wanting to carry that into their daily life and some stubbornness or maybe pride comes in

they think no i don’t want to go back to whatever it is more coarse thing but they’re doing themselves the

disservice there when i’m in london i practice the counting method a lot

the um the other thing is yeah once once it’s a habit it’s no big deal anymore you know it’s like brushing your teeth i

love that metaphor too you know you could skip a day but you really wouldn’t want to right it just it’s no big it’s not it’s not it’s like

putting on your shoes or whatever other habits you have right so it’s it doesn’t even become an issue really

so much anymore so now like sometimes people ask me about my practice in daily life

and it doesn’t feel like practice it’s just what my mind does in gaps is focus on my breath or go

to something past an object if i’m sitting on a bus or walking down the street and no one’s talking to me

because of force of habit because of force of training so let’s talk a little bit about the um

the the core practices there uh samatha and vipassana and uh how it how they differ in the

east and west um you know and then like what would you give as um relevant

advice um and experience for practicing each of the ones um and then yeah and well and then maybe

what do you think about combining the two so i think we should first start off with giving your definition of something

right yeah so there are two different ways

of focusing the attention when we’re practicing sanitary we’re

focusing the mind on one unchanging concept for a long time

and the purpose of that is really to develop this strength and focus of mind and along

with that comes a lot of bliss which is sort of the counterintuitive

part that when you sustain your attention on one thing for a long time

you’re no longer paying attention to the body to the sounds to the time

you’re losing all of your diversity of perception of the past of the future it becomes incredibly blissful but the

point there isn’t really the bliss the point is that we can hold this subtle object for a long time

and sometimes i give this similarly if you have a pipe of water with a lot of holes in it

it might be a simile from the buddha i’m not sure if you have a pipe with water and a lot of holes in it

so all of the water is coming out of the hole so hardly any any of the water is coming out the end of the of the pipe but if you

start to plug up poles then you get like a power hose you get like a laser shoot of water

so in the same way our mind has all these outlets thinking about the past thinking

about the future engaging with the senses the sounds what we see who said what

and when we start to plug up if you like those outlets when we don’t allow our mind to

flow out in those ways mind becomes really powerful so that’s amateur practice

we develop sanitary practices not for the bliss but for the tool to have that very refined very powerful

level of focus and concentration and with that concentration we can then

practice vipassana vipassana is also sustained attention by

a sustained attention on the impermanent suffering and non-self nature of all phenomena

so it becomes with personal meditation when we start to see the momentary

arising and perishing of either materiality physical things or mentality

of the contents of the mind when we see the momentary arising and perishing here arising and

perishing it doesn’t mean changing changing like a river it doesn’t mean yesterday

was thursday and today is friday thursdays perished and friday’s begun

or a few minutes ago i was cold and now i’m warm oh it’s impermanent or the pain was

there another pain has faded this is a type of impermanence but it’s not the impermanence that we’re

speaking of when we speak about the panasonic when we speak about the past now we’re speaking about things that come

into existence and split second later and no longer existing coming into and

out of existence so when we can observe things on that level of subtlety that’s where vipassana

starts some people are able to observe that momentary arising and perishing

with what we call access concentration access concentration is a level of

concentration that’s just before the china stage it’s also a very deep sustained

attention but it’s not quite yet full absorption but most of the meditators in my

experience they find it easier to practice your personal well if they already practiced deeper

summative practice into the vaginas the vaginas there just mean that when we’re focusing on this one

object for a long time that it’s unbroken

that the concentration is and what about the differences because

it seems like in the west you know there’s more of a culture among buddhism and

and meditation with more on vipassana but if i’m getting this right kind of in the east that’s taught later right the

most a lot of teachers teach a full grounding and um insomata practice before

going into vipassana i think what we see in the west in general is a dumbing down to say the least yes

yeah we see a dumbing down and then which is you know it’s not entirely bad it’s like i said when i

started teaching in the west i also realized i need to teach more on the basic but what we then have is rather than

them giving a new name to that basic that they’re teaching they call it vipassana or they call it

jhana it’s not jhana it’s just they had some blissful feelings or

some light arose in their practice but they call it ghana and in the same way they will

focus on the sensations in their body and they call it vipassana

so it’s not but the practice they’re teaching is good there’s nothing wrong with the practice

they’re teaching what they’re teaching is usually basic awareness practice a basic acceptance

practice and non-judgement and non-aversion so all these things may be like foundational skills of the mind

but we can’t say yet that we’ve got into ghana or into the past

i think it’s a good way to put a birth yes um so can you endorse any particular methods uh

meditation methods i mean generally speaking i know we talked about how you know individually would probably

be better and then also what do you see as like trends is are there any trends you can see kind

of in people’s practices either in the teachers that you’ve studied under or meditators you’ve worked with or just in

the general culture at large

yeah i think for endorsing any practice it really does depend so much on the individual

especially with teachers because a lot depends on personality

and mostly i feel grateful that we have so much diversity there

because we don’t have the buddha anymore to come along and be the perfect teacher for each person

but where we lack the buddha we have diversity and so

maybe amongst all of these teachers there’s enough for everybody to find the part that they need at the right time

and there have been times when i thought wow really how could anybody find that

teaching beneficial no need to name the teaching though but like really people are following that and but then

maybe some years down the line i thought oh wow there’s like that little piece that i can take from that and i’m really

grateful that person’s teaching so i think we need to

you know mostly hold the diversity of teachings that we have with gratitude and

really with cooperation because it’s it’s very ugly when we see teachers

you know like in competition with each other this is not in the spirit of the

diamonds and at the same time if there’s really wrong wrong

things then we need to call it out like if we see teachers abusing their power or

engaging in things that obviously cause harm then we have a responsibility as a community

of teachers and students to call this out yes absolutely and um just on the

everyday day-to-day it’s it’s it’s kind of like balancing you know honesty and self-honesty with how we’re

actually taking it but also having gratitude like you were saying for um for the diversity of practice as well

yeah um you asked me something else there and i’ve forgotten because you keep on asking me oh i know right i

was like trying to cram everything in as much i think it was kind of trends trends

overall trends yeah i noticed that coming down trend

and i think the teachers don’t realize the damage they do with misuse of vocabulary

because like i said the practice isn’t what they’re teaching is good and helpful

but it’s not let’s say jhana but they’re calling it janna or it’s not the passenger but they call it the passenger

so the danger is the more people call that basic thing the persona the fewer people ever strive to practice

actual vipassana and before you know it those practices are lost in the world and it’s very difficult to correct people if

they think they’ve done something and you tell them sorry no that’s not it oh you thought you were at this stage

no you you’re not even at stage one that’s a really difficult conversation to have with people who

have believed what those initial teachers have told them it’s really tough it’s really

challenging right well a lot of people just aren’t even open to feedback where actually i feel that honest feedback

from someone you respect is more valuable than a pile of gold because you can always make more money you’re not always going to get honest

feedback from some where can actually help your practice and help other people as well right so yeah and then language

is so important i mean that’s why i asked at the very beginning your definitions of summative of the pasta right the semantics and not

only do you know does do the definitions of words change throughout time as well

um it’s a very kind of convoluted process sometimes too and then misunderstandings

and clarification it’s just so vast and complex can be but it can also be very simple

too they they they’ve started calling some experiences soft jhanas and other

experiences like real chanas because nobody had the heart to say to the soft

dhana people that’s not janna amaze you had a lovely experience and it’s wholesome and it’s good but

it’s not jhana but it seems like people are too nice or i don’t know like on the

kindness truth balance it’s too far towards you know in the culture i can see a lot

of benefit or some some benefit and and some of the um you know some of the

culture of oh what what is it called political correctness but honestly for

the most part of that it’s self-censorship people it’s people self-censor

themselves a lot because they don’t want to be perceived as being you know unkind or

some kind of offensive but i would say that anybody that’s even remotely concerned with other people and

coming off with that impression and they’re not getting satisfaction from uh um you know offending people then they’re

not being you know uh offensive or you know um

insensitive you know are are um yeah so if you have if that

concern or that that even that that intention or thought comes in it’s it’s not a lot of people hold back

what they would actually say they could um benefit because of this culture of political correctness well that’s i mean

that’s kind of the con of it right i mean we’ve already we’re already um we’re already so familiar with um a lot

of the the so-called benefits of it i guess there are but i yeah i don’t want to get too political

here but uh you know that’s uh that’s that would be one criticism i have out of it as well

of that so another big trend i see or i have some bias here because

people tell me things but maybe like they know i have this in trance already but i hear a lot from

my existing students about how they feel a lack of community this i hear really often

like what does sangha mean to us here in the west it might not look like this monastic lay

division but there’s seems to be a real lack of working together a lack of communal space and then

i run this little community down in spain i say i run it my very good friend dia is running it in my absence because

i’ve barely been there over the past year but anyway i founded this little community in some caves in spain and what i

noticed there is that a lot of people

well let me rephrase that actually there’s few people who they have some like nice idea of

what community is like but the work of co-living and of doing the relational stuff

those skills have really atrophied in us because of our very individualistic

lifestyle and there’s work to be done there and if we really want

strong sangha to thrive then we need people who are up for that work and so that’s why

my enthusiasm has shifted a lot towards relational work so that’s really what

i’m putting my heart into this year is looking at ways of bringing the same refined attention of meditation

into the way that we relate sort of with the long-term aim that that will help to foster

more meaningful community beautiful and you know that’s the thing with um at

least even further complex uh com added complexity with this whole

pandemic thing going on right with community it’s it’s a whole different ball game even more

right and one thing i learned about um visiting maba it’s a monastery about an hour from here

is it’s you get the best of both worlds right i mean like you’re saying in the west we’re so individualistic right

for good and ill and otherwise but there it seems like there’s there’s plenty of time for community and

but everybody’s individual life is also respected so you kind of get the best of

both worlds right you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other it’s just kind of like this melding

emerging this that was my experience maybe i can’t speak for anybody else but you know i’ve got the best of both

worlds there it can be like that um i haven’t been to that community but

another perspective on that is that people like communities that they can dip into

contribute little experience the benefits and then leave and usually the only way that’s possible

is if there’s a few people with massive sacrifices keep holding together and

i’m not sure if that’s what’s happening there but that’s what happens often that very well could be dedicated people like you know giving

their giving their blood and sweat and souls to keeping the thing going and other people come along and say oh this place

is lovely it’s nice for a day trip thanks beautiful place and then they’re off that’s a great point beth and uh

you know ed i would say um i want to give thanks out there too because of all the venerables and community

there as well um that said you know about people dipping in and out that’s true

but it’s got to start somewhere too right because if if people don’t even have that sometimes in the west

it’s just there’s like really no sense of any kind of authentic community i mean with some maybe but if you get to

experience it just for a little bit maybe they might be more likely to actually be more immersed in something

like that you know what i mean get a taste and then really get more serious about it as well

instead of not even having that experience to begin with but yeah no i totally get you that’s it yeah and then living on the surface and you

know pretending that yeah it’s something it’s not that’s that’s another thing too right so yeah i think if we really want

to build community then we need to start from a place of acknowledging there’s nothing there for the moment there’s nothing there

honesty so we need to approach it all with the attitude of okay what can i give to

build this thing that currently isn’t there what can i bring and it’s a space into which we mostly give

and then we might be surprised at what we get back in return but to really approach this giving and

not look for where can i go to take and be healed and get what i need because those places

frankly don’t really exist at the moment for us in the west and that’s a great point too it’s like

it ties into generosity right i mean we just we don’t have to be just generous with our money right we can

also be our time our skills our expertise our presence um you know our care our kindness

yeah so so if you if you want to do just like a

like a mini meditation interview here and then maybe a couple other things

but uh yeah we’re we’re running we’re getting close to towards the end here um so what i would say is

uh in my practice right now i’ll just i’m interviewing you yeah yeah right so

yeah go ahead what’s not weird for me or what’s weird

for me to like have your oh yeah recording you’re cool with that

yeah why not i mean i’m recording yeah so but we’ll just you know we’ll keep it

we’ll keep it just uh maybe a topic or two so it is weird but hey you’re weird we’re

all weird right so um like maybe in 2012 when i first

started i was experienced tinnitus like ringing in the ears and that kind of went away for several

years but i’ve noticed it a little bit coming back um here recently do you have any like

thoughts on that advice um is it we pronounce it tinnitus here ah

okay so is it um is it tenses that you experience or when you’re meditating or is it that

that you experience all of the time is disturbing you in your everyday life here recently no not it’s usually

right around meditation time and then um i think maybe in 2012 is a little more persistent for a while

but now it just seems or maybe i’m just not noticing it you know it just everything becomes more amplified when

meditation but i would say definitely it was way more noticeable throughout daily life 2012 not so much now yeah so if it’s

noticeable also in your daily life like you’re walking down a busy street and you can still hear this ringing

then that’s maybe what needs some attention from somebody who knows about that condition

but what we hear a lot from meditators is that when their concentration starts

to deepen then there is start to ring and this is very many meditators i don’t want to say

all but it’s a lot maybe the majority and so my little non-medical conclusion is we

all have ringy ears i know i do but usually we’ve just got

too much distraction to notice here and as our mind becomes quiet we start to notice that that ring so

it’s just another thing to accept and ignore okay

and i guess maybe just one other topic here i have several of them but let’s go into the what about blockages

so i would say maybe energetic blockages i don’t know if you know kind of what i talk about but or what i’m

what i’m mentioning but for me it’s actually starting to clear up a little bit but for for a while it would just be like my

right nostril would be blocked up it would come and go it would unblock you know usually they say

a lot of times air will go in for a certain amount of time on one nostril switch to the other nostril and back and

forth like that but for me it was just persistent blockage on the right side i don’t know you know

weighs one nostril yeah so it doesn’t it doesn’t really matter like so i

assume it’s not you’re not speaking about like a medical condition like i wouldn’t think so i did have my nose

broke a couple times in childhood nose or something i widen up my nose marble

oh i should check for that i guess but i hope yeah i don’t don’t anticipate any marbles but

you never know yeah so broadly speaking there seems to

be like two different approaches to some mahdi that sort of run alongside each other and

they’re sort of they’re different but they’re sort of working together so one is this theravada way

of focusing on a single object basically ignoring everything else including

the energy in your body or any blockages just continue to focus and what we find is that when we do that

when we do it skillfully then automatically blockages in the body start to release and we can notice if

we’re sitting slumped well immediately our body will without effort it will become erect

um we might have like electric shock of where energy gets

released all types of things can happen in the body where basically we’re coming into balance and that’s the way that i trained so to

ignore basically blockages in the body focus on your meditation object

and allow these things to unravel by themselves alongside that there’s a different

tradition which is to do with the chakras kundalini for example

some yoga practices go into this where you practice specifically on the body to find the

blockages do practices to unblock them and according to those traditions the

result is the mind will concentrate so sort of similar but in one way like

we’re switching what is the practice and what is the result and so this way of working with the

energies in the body is not the way that i trained it i know a couple of my friends come to

mind who are very good at those practices but it’s not what i would instruct and

i’ve got far more experience and teaching the therapeutic way which is just in all those blogs it really doesn’t

matter which nostril the air is going in and out on and as long as you have wise attention

on your breath eventually it will sort itself out it’s kind of good is perfect we if we wait until we have a perfectly balanced

body then we’ll be it’s kind of like a top-down or uh bottom-up

approach right maybe you know yeah you’re approaching it in different yeah different ways so um so i guess we

can go into a couple quick dharma questions here right um i know sometimes the summative stuff is

associated with um you know so-called psychic powers or um

supra-normal abilities oh right yeah and you’re being in england right all the

all the you know the the hinges and and yeah all the so so anyway so what is like the prevailing

well you know like stonehenge and avery hill and oh yeah all the um

the uh yeah all those different um megalithic monuments or whatever yeah call them so

that’s it’s supposed to be a a hot spot for for that i hear but

therefore huh well of course right beth not no so the prevailing gold standard

right now about um about psychic about those kind of things so like what is the kind of theravada

approach i know you know you you have some academics who completely kind of just discard all that and say it’s a it’s

just um you know aspect of consciousness and then you have people with all these detailed

encounters and things like that and then but one thing i hear is that they can be a distraction from the end goal as well

so yeah i guess in a nutshell here what would you say about that

so those practices are definitely possible my teacher park zero teaches them

um but he didn’t teach them for only recently when he was like old he started

teaching them i think because he didn’t want this controversy of like oh why is he teaching this and

it’s you know it’s a distraction but actually

for the meditators who do they experience has been really beneficial because

first of all the concentration that you need the depth of samadhi that you need to be able to do those practices is so

deep and then also those psychic powers can

really add some wisdom to the practice so one of the practices that parks park zero teaches for example is

to see back many many hundreds of thousands of lives or many many world cycles

and there’s something that happens to the urgency spiritual urgency when you’ve seen

the world destroyed by fire and then a new eon is born and there was another big bang and there was another one and

destroyed again and all the humans have been wiped out and here they are back again round and round

and round how many more times do i want to

go around this and we stop sweating the small stuff and not wanting to get political or

imply that like our environmental crisis is the small staff

on a multiple eon scale it is and the big question is like

how do we get out of samsara and that’s a possible thing to do and so

anyway he went a bit of track but each of the psychic powers are giving their new flavor of wisdom

that they’re basically they’re rooted in the dharma also they’re not necessary

for liberation um but we can say like they are helpful

accessories sam vega right that’s the poly word for spiritual urgency right

yeah yeah very much so i so we’re probably just not going to have time to go into i was going to ask about kind of

the r hot ship you know the um kind of the restrictions on that in monastic life

and then how some lay people have come out and claimed our hot ship and what would be the pros and cons to that

you know i don’t think we’re going to have time now are we so leave that as a juicy cliffhanger maybe

for a possible part too so beth thanks for joining uh today and doing this

you like to leave with any kind of information how people can contact you again and kind of what you’re up to would you like

people to know anything else most things is on my website

which is another thing like i did you know in a year of pandemic so yeah

thank you to everybody who helped me get that website done

um so that’s where you can find information about whatever events i have going on whatever

retreats and also if you want personal instruction then you can also

book an appointment with me there and that’s bethupton.com and

also sign up for her uh mailing list too because there’s some stuff that’s not public on there that you will have

access to right um if when you sign up so yeah that’s right

all right beth thanks for joining thank you so much all right yeah lovely conversation

Published by josh dippold

IntegratingPresence.com

3 thoughts on “Well Rounded Meditation and Generosity | In Conversation with Beth Upton”

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