My difficulty with dharma talks

Whole Earth Review, Spring, 1994 by Mark Brady

I AM SITTING AT THE BACK of a meditation hall at a children's camp just north of Malibu in Southern California. It is 9:40 AM, October 6, 1993. Approximately two hundred students are here, waiting to hear a dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh. This weekend, six hundred people will flood this small, oceanside arroyo for a Day of Mindfulhess.

I have read each of Nhat Hanh's books as they have been published, and I have practiced his meditations. I am at this five-day retreat to gain direct experience of this teacher whose prose and poetry I find inspiring for its clarity, gentleness, and elegant, simple grace. But today, for this talk, he is ten minutes late.

Presently Thay (teacher) arrives, ushered through a side door by his brown-gowned retinue. As he ascends the small stage at the front of the hall, we all stand and bow, palms together, hands before our faces. After returning our bow, he places what looks like a small electronic recording device in one jacket pocket and attaches a microphone to his lapel. He repeats the process with the other pocket. Then a third device goes on top of the one in the first pocket and another microphone is attached back on the first lapel. This late'twentieth-century ceremony is performed without a word. Finally, after some additional equipment is adjusted and it is determined that the video camera is operating properly, the presentation is ready to begin. But first, two children who have been sitting at the front of this gathering, girls of nine or ten, are permitted to leave the hall to go outside and play.

Through these preliminaries, I am practicing two mindfulness exercises. The first, called Evenly Hovering Attention, was taught to me by the daughter of two Gurdjieff students, Dr. Kathleen Speeth. In this exercise, my head slowly swivels and my eyes survey an arc of approximately two hundred degrees as I take in the whole panorama. The practice is to observe mindfully, as best one can, without judgment. A very difficult practice, in fact, for my mind is perpetually distracted. It asks, for example: "Why are those two children here? Why are they now allowed to leave? And why are they only two? Are they his?"

The second mindfulhess practice is one taught to me by a student of B.F. Skinner. I have a loose rubber band around my wrist. From time to time, as I feel myself becoming drowsy, I stretch the rubber band with my thumb and forefinger and snap it against my wrist just hard enough to get my attention.

The room is hot on this Wednesday morning. Two hundred people are too many to stuff into this hall -- the sign at the front of the room says, "Maximum Capacity: 153" -- and our collective body heat is oppressive.

This particular dharma talk is to introduce the first of the Fifty Verses on the Manifestation of Consciousness. Less than half an hour after the talk begins I scan the room and find exactly the opposite being manifested: the majority of the people present are either slumped on their chairs, benches or zafus, chins on their chests and their eyes closed, or else they are staring straight ahead, transfixed in a manner my daughter has demonstrated at those infrequent times she is allowed to watch TV.

"Do not worry about falling asleep," Thay tells us. "Better to fall asleep than to try to use intellect to grasp these teachings." Immediately, my antennae go up. Wrist-snapping is no longer required. I have heard this exact same assertion before: from Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Werner Erhard, and Baba Muktananda. From several, these exact same words, in fact. At a Dharma Discussion later that same evening, I present my experience and my concerns to a panel I assume are Senior Students of Thich Nhat Hanh.

"During the talk I found myself growing sleepy and I felt as if I was being hypnotized. The room was hot and crowded. And I had to do a lot of work just to stay awake. Now, it troubles me to be attending a talk that purports to invite me to manifest consciousness, to wake up, as it were, while in fact I am being put to sleep."

My concerns are met with the following responses: "Well, you just fell asleep." "Thay told you it is better to fall asleep than to try to use your intellect." "The teachings are very important, but sometimes very difficult for the mind to understand." When it starts to become clear that I (and apparently others in the room) am not satisfied with this response, I am asked to elaborate on my experience.

"Thay was talking very slowly, very softly, repetitively, with long pauses in between. From time to time he would sing verses that sounded like Vietnamese. I could not understand them. It felt like a hypnotic trance induction. Whether he is aware of it or not, these are many of the same elements used in inducing a trance state. And it was not just me. When I looked around the room people either had their eyes closed completely, or they were staring straight ahead, glassy-eyed, transfixed and unmoving."

To this elaboration comes the single short reply: "Go and talk to Senior Student X. He is a hypnotist. He can tell you all about hypnosis and trance."