Being with Being
Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own.
Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try.
As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already.
Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.
Being with Being
The Great Together Interdependent Arising Party - Simply Settle Series
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Typically, there are those things on one list of what is nice and pleasant and spiritual or “good meditation.” And then there’s the other list. And there’s a feeling that what we need is to take what’s over here and change it to what’s over there on the better list. When it doesn’t work, we can get caught in a layer deeper of distress. That hurts.
We’re taking some aspect of ourselves, some aspect of our experience, and saying, “Go away. You’re not allowed into the altogether party.” And I’m actually not even gonna look into my own experience and see the altogether party while you’re around. I’ll wait until you go away first or fix yourself first, and then I’ll look, because then I feel like I’ll find something good and together and nice. As Patrul Rinpoche says, “This is not the genuine view; it is favouring the good and rejecting the bad.”
But what if, underneath it all, instead of that kind of existential, fundamental striving, there can be more of this trust that everything, every arising, shares the same nature? The great party. The great together interdependent arising party. And when we let ourselves settle directly into the very nature of whatever is arising, it doesn’t change it. It was all already always that way. And yet our experience of it can shift. It’s the non-shift shift.
Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing
Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me.
What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality.
So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience.
Thank you for Being with Being.
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So we are here in this last of our stepping stones in this exploration of patrol rimpochets. Two words really simply subtle and a way of approaching those two words that can be simple can be direct and immediate and we can start wherever we are and without, as I've often said, making any claims of this explorations that we've been doing together leading to what Pachel Rimpochet was was getting at, what Dokchen teachings are pointing to offering this as someone who really needed stepping stones. And maybe in a way as we'll get into today, because the final kind of stepping stone in this dream, as we were talking about the discussion, the end of last session, is how we can apply this view, apply the felt experience of simply settle, apply it all to everything, where everything can include those things on the on the on the list of what we like and what is nice and what is pleasant and even what is spiritual or good meditation, and then there's the long list over here of um what we tend to feel needs needs us to take what's over here and change it to what's over here and kind of implicit in that dynamic, which is understandable, natural when we've done series about dissolving pain in nature's flow. It's not like oh goody, I'm I'm in pain, I don't want to uh touch that or change that. I just it's but at the same time when we have that view that attitude that the way to relate to this, say pain, or um, today we might talk about agitation or doubt or just feeling negative about ourselves or a circumstance or whatever it might be, if we're approaching it from that sense of then we've set up a this versus that, we've set up a kind of inherent this has got to be different, and depending on so many factors, you know, if you can get some traction with a certain method or technique and bring it over to this side, yay! You know, it's working.
SPEAKER_00I'm good at this. And when it doesn't, then more we can get caught in that almost a layer deeper distress, kind of a more fundamental kind of striving or pushing towards, pushing away on the inside with our own experience. That hurts. And that can make one feel like a failure.
SPEAKER_02And I know for many years and in many ways, with some of the things that I work with, with my brain or my health, or who knows all the factors, and maybe all the factors don't really matter so much, but what led me to really almost need in a way a direction like simply subtle or like Master Wanchel Park teaches, and the Taoist tradition points to that sense of wu-wei. So instead of a trying to cultivate or block or change or alter this to go over here and be better, that there's actually an underlying way that nature is, and for all we know, and I don't claim to know, but for all we know that underlying flow togetherness, freedom, and wholeness of how nature unfolds is shared by that interdependent arising of how mind too is flowing, is arising, and when we approach our experience with that view, then it's less like there's these two lists, and I need to get this negative unfortunate, really hard to be with things sometimes over here to make it over here, and instead it's like underneath it all, instead of that kind of existential fundamental striving, there can be more of this trust that everything, every arising shares the same nature. And when we let ourselves settle directly into the very nature of whatever is arising, that it doesn't change it.
SPEAKER_00It was all already always that way.
SPEAKER_02And yet without it being a shift, fundamentally, our experience of it can shift because we're now feeling the inherent in Buddhism Pachal Rinpoche talks of it as emptiness.
SPEAKER_00And that can seem like, ooh, I don't know about emptiness and but what if we just say it's it's the flow of nature and it's arising together, and it has these qualities of togetherness in how it flows and how it unfolds that when we settle into that level of perceiving nature, whatever the content of that experience also has that underlying experience within it, and many sessions ago we'd kind of played with that, like we were just talking about like laying down our weight, laying down the burden physically of our body, and the paradox of how it's already laid down nature, you know.
SPEAKER_02We're already the fullness of our of our body weight is already going into the earth. We can't we can't do anything to give it more, and the earth is already uh, you know, 100% matching the fullness of all that force of our weight with equal amount of support, tremendous amount of support that we tend not to feel at all, or to feel less fully. So all that's already going on, and yet when we lay down, as we'll do in a moment here, to start a practice once again, we can appreciate it. There's there is something where we can simply settle into that mutual flow of nature, body, and earth, and our experience shifts, even though the nature hasn't shifted, or just feeling the nature. And same here with like our you know, if say we had say we had even a cast and we had to hold our arm in this position, and we had injury, and there was tension, there was tightness, and that was not gonna change in uh even an hour-long meditation session. And that the shift is not from here to ah, here or something different, just right even in that experience, you can simply settle right into the flow of nature as it is, and that that itself it's the non-shift shift, and so today's session will be an invitation to work with something that is more on this list for you, and if there's nothing in particular that's uh feeling present for you in this moment, I bet a bunch of thoughts might come up in practice. Well, the mind tends to think, and you can always go to what we were uh exploring last time to settle into the restless thinking monkey mind when it's thinking, and so for a moment here, just becoming present if you'd like to close your eyes, you're welcome to do so.
SPEAKER_00And just taking a little bit of time here to become present more to the fullness of your inner experience.
SPEAKER_02And if you're lucky, maybe you'll find some agitation, some aspect of agitation or feeling ill at ease.
SPEAKER_00Maybe feeling kind of vacancy, deficiency, or a lack of focus.
SPEAKER_02Name a few things that Pachol Rimpache speaks up aspects of experience where May typically and Pachel Rimpoche nails me on this one, be like, oh I'll I'll meditate, I'll I'll look I'll look another time when I'm feeling a little better. And where today we'll actually feel that sense of hmm, this is something that is very fertile ground for practicing simply settling directly into this too.
SPEAKER_00That will help support us in what it may be like to simply settle directly into this agitation, lack of focus, ill at easeness, deficiency, negativity, even physical or emotional hurting, whatever it might be. Maybe even with a couple of sighs, and it's letting go of the the breath and letting go of tension from the body. And what's nice about this first step is laying down the burden here of our body to the earth. It has a a direction, like oh, I'm gonna lay downward. Lay it down.
SPEAKER_02The response of our body as we lay down, and parts of our body begin to feel they can let go, release, relax.
SPEAKER_00Then we almost find ourselves simply settling further. The support from the ground can become more evident right here. Being right here is very conducive to simply settling further in a way. We lay down into support. Even at the level of physics, action reaction, one inseparable event interdependent to that extent. So instead of thinking of the body simply settling to the earth, what if we experienced simply settling into that mutual horizon that inseparable, inseparably interdependent horizon together.
SPEAKER_02It's not a doing, not a altering, not a shifting, not a blocking, not a cultivating as what we were practicing before.
SPEAKER_00Exactly the same experience as before.
SPEAKER_02Might notice with this a teenage student who was like, I'm becoming one with the floor.
SPEAKER_00Feel free to become one with the floor. And in that wholeness of simply subtle. Like we got into last time, there's not a direction. Oh, settling down. It's not downward. It's not upward. It's not in a spatial direction. And last time we coined a phrase of isward, simply settling isward to that interdependent arising. Not just one and done. It's ongoing. Simply settle into mutual flow. May notice pockets of holding, tension, release, even as the hands were always mutual flow. And then some other sessions, like the Taoist meditation series, and go through other steps to help us feel how this body we often treat as a AU object is comprised of all of these flows of nature, flows within flows, all interdependent arising. So gently spreading all the fingers just a little bit. All the way to the very, very speck of your fingertips, touching the very speck of air just beyond it. Hands don't need your eyes, and allow the hands to fill with that inherent vibrancy of presence that is both awareness and body right in the very space where you experience your hands. Let all of your body all at once join your hands in this experience of being such a practically infinite, fine free flow of nature, all interdependently arising, all at once, filling you to the very edges of your body. Space around in between your legs, the air that encircles, envelops, and touches the outline of your body all around. Shot through with awareness in every point of our experience already. All arising together, all already permeated in our experience. Eye awareness. Even just stop saying that because it makes it two things. Just the invitation to let dissolve that seeming separation of mind perceiving and object perceived so that it all is as expansive as we would like, filling the whole room already, all the sounds of the room, silence of the room. How do you settle directly into something so flowing as a sound? Maybe our body is actually just as flowing in a way. Maybe we've already done it. Maybe we've already not done it. Sometimes sound can have a lot of content, like speech, or just identifying it's this or that, whatever the content of it to settle directly into the very flow of its arising. Simply settle into its arising. Actually, even catching that. Where? What's the direction? Even catching yourself trying to settle outward or settle inward to seek. Maybe just remembering what it felt like to simply settle into mutual flow. Inseparability of lay down and support along your back body. Now that didn't have a direction. That didn't have a doing and allow that to guide your own experience here, settling into the arising of sound or the arising of barely perceptible no sounds. More than welcome to do so. Or may like to come to sitting. Interdependent arising, whatever content carried by the flow of thinking.
SPEAKER_02Probably sneak in.
SPEAKER_00A little more can easily sneak in. That holding of a breath as we thread a needle. Maybe letting the forehead be soft, the space between the eyes feel wide. And remember that thinking here of mind. Spin out into some inner form negativity, inner criticism, doubt a million faces of not enoughness that typically we might not want to look at. Maybe it'll just blow over. Maybe this other technique will make it go away. Maybe I can just skip by without having to really come face to face with this. Interdependent, empty, and we can simply settle into without altering it in any way. In a way simple, beautiful, maybe at times seemingly terrible, as in terrifying encounter of no exceptions none. So my resistance to simply settling, I get to settle directly into the flowing horizon of that resistance. That I'm getting it, that I could ever get it.
SPEAKER_02I'm ever capable is all too always this very same, seamless, free flowing, interdependent, arising, empty nature.
SPEAKER_00Doesn't mean focusing. Doesn't mean excluding. All of nature, all of what we call experience, and that the value of looking when we are ill at ease and unfocused, hurting negative, is how else are we going to not just theoretically but really practically come to know and live from that knowing of no exceptions. Into that into what's easier, into what's harder so that gradually we have that experiential trust that there is the support of what is and its nature. Whatever way feels right to you. More will come out. And also that there's an underlying way of nature that has this inherent togetherness, and also for the many traditions and teachers, and poets, and artists, and human beings who have helped make it a little more accessible, and especially to Master Wanchel Park, who gave me this framework where yeah, it's Taoism in a way, and it's something I can just touch and feel and understand. Let me get traction on something, some togetherness, some feeling of what it's like to have that woo-way direction than not doing.
SPEAKER_02And then you know, specifically for this series, the inspiration of Pachal Rampochet's liberating meditation, and I were encountered and was able to relate to because of the embodied readings from an AJSR, with gratitude in those directions, and to you all, as I've said, I I wouldn't have dared do such a thing like this series without the trust that you will take these explorations in your own way that they might help you in your own lives.
SPEAKER_00Now let's get to those comments.
SPEAKER_02It's kind of interesting as we continue to practice this way. So like when I get self-conscious and I'm like, uh, I simply settle directly into the self-consciousness. Let's see. Vagamon a David.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_03But I frequently become one with a four, but uh often I'm believed to be able to become freaking with uh let's see if I can get this so much like coming in and out. Um it's a great experience.
SPEAKER_02I was teaching some Tai Cheach at some high schoolers and we had to lay down and support and tell you about physics of it, it's one event inseparable, it's um one young woman who is like so peaceful. I am one with the floor, Marta. Great to see you, Swiss are Emily Charlotte floating by the L O L David, yes, you for joining.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for all the support here. Well, welcome. Welcome to all the people here who are new and free.
SPEAKER_02Oh very cute dog picture, vote. Welcome back, and if there's anything that um this is your final chance for any questions about these stepping stones, because you know me, it's uh we're never gonna be doing the same thing again.
SPEAKER_03It's always the same thing.
SPEAKER_00Speak now, forever hold your peace. You might be collecting your thoughts or writing it out.
SPEAKER_02Let me uh post this is uh on insight timer. So this is uh summon IJSR has this wonderful reading, and it's uh it's labeled as uh Dzogchen Pachovin Peshay self-liberating meditation there on her profile and us to really allows allows us to uh savor more of the meaning behind the words, Emily, lots of thoughts jumping around as usual, but by the end of the hour I felt that I was able to settle with it all. Feel it is flowing together, like the example you gave of sound, filling directly into the flow, it's arising, as you said.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for The observations and the comments that you regularly make. They show what is possible with like this non-shift shift. Where there is this amazingness that the way of nature is this together. This whole together arising together.
SPEAKER_02And sometimes when we feel unsettled and are racing thoughts. Oh, there's such a hindrance to me feeling the peace of meditation and Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Letting me be a good meditator. Letting me realize the emptiness of mind. Or just you know how can my mind chill out for just half a nanosecond?
SPEAKER_02And when we less try and shift it and more feel into the way, the underlying way that it and everything else is, then its nature gradually becomes revealed, so that even the racing thoughts are part of it.
SPEAKER_00So nothing shifts in a way and our experience of it shifts.
SPEAKER_02David, I'll never take the word simple so simply again. It's a complex thing to appreciate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's interesting. David, feel free to say more about that if you'd like.
SPEAKER_02One possibility, and this is, you know, like how many stepping stones did we go through? I didn't even count, but you know, I was kind of offering that progression so that we could come to where it's not like the aim or thoughts or any experience. There was quite a few stepping stones, and then even like part way through, I was like, oh yeah. And there could be more stepping stones, too, of the you know, in Taoist meditation to help us, you know, feel more of the subtlety of being.
SPEAKER_03I don't I'm not even wanting to go through like the the stepping stones. I don't even want to list them out and numerate them and they're flu very fluid anyway, but yeah, it's super complicated.
SPEAKER_02And one way one way to kind of relate to things like the stepping stones or um some of the practices that we do is that um we we nature is not complicated. The underlying way of nature is not complicated, all this flow arising together is it's just the way it is, simple.
SPEAKER_00There's no exceptions.
SPEAKER_02I mean, hallelujah. As soon as there's one exception, then that adds a whole layer of complications. So maybe it's actually our various habits of perception, our various habits of holding ourselves, our various habits of relating that have become complicated and have become kind of limiting in a way. And so we go through these, you know, processes or aspects so that we can address those complications that have accumulated just as being a human being.
SPEAKER_00Being a human being that's been around the block a couple times, many of us.
SPEAKER_02You know, the the nuance here is that seems so you know complicated. Maybe, maybe it's because of the unwinding and the undoing that we're allowing for here rather than the nature being complicated. Let me check in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I'm with you, Emily, and I wouldn't even say that.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm not I'm not steeped in Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist practice, tradition.
SPEAKER_00I'm not an expert in emptiness. I don't know what they really mean.
SPEAKER_02To me, the very word, especially the translation of it, is uh let me say not my favorite.
SPEAKER_00What would we say just it's nature's flow and even from you know, like we start with action-reaction, it's it's an interdependent arising, and it happens at very, very fine free-flowing scales, like we were talking about the other day, the fractals of flows with an ever finer flow. And I I like uh Nagarjana who talks about, you know, there's no final flow that you can be like, this is the flow, this is the fundamental part.
SPEAKER_02That free falling into the free flow of ever finer flows that I mean who know I you know consciousness, mind who knows what all that is about?
SPEAKER_00I don't think we've begun to touch it scientifically for sure. I don't I don't know the inner experience of enlightened masters.
SPEAKER_02Maybe we can't know their subjective experience of mind or emptiness. But it certainly just seems like if we allow these ever finer flows are just fine, fine, finer, finer, finer, and then the this amazingness that these flows can carry content. Information's not a very feeling for world word, but it's it's information, right? It's we have sounds, and those sounds can carry content of meaning.
SPEAKER_00Encoded in this fine free flows, there can be meaning of perception and experience, and that actually everything that is in our experience is that and that it's just unfolding all together, this inherent togetherness. That's it certainly has resemblances to the interdependent arising and that sense of no layer of reality that we can say this is this is it, you can't go any finer.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I just tend to be like, oh experientially, how do I connect with that as all this togetherness rather than oh emptiness is this real tough concept in Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy, and it's esoteric and difficult to grasp, and I need to somehow bring that into my life. David, settling those racing thoughts is usually so hard for me, but it's interesting to not feel like I have to. That they are part of me that I can feel I can take with me rather than trying to leave them in the next room.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if we just even think of our thoughts like children.
SPEAKER_02And how children feel when they get sent to their room. Go to your room. And how they're you know, they would be excluded, they would be excluded from all of this. The the great party, the great together party. That's maybe my take on emptiness. The great together interdependent arising party. It's party, parties that flow all the way down, and we're gonna take some aspect of ourselves, some aspect of our experience, and we're gonna say, go into the other room. You're not allowed into the all-together party, and I'm actually not even gonna look into my own experience and see the altogether party uh while you're around until you you have to go away first, and then I'll look because then I'll feel like I'll find something good and together and nice. But if you're here still, then I'm not gonna look because, yeah, you can see I I never really grew up, so uh David perceptions can be very limiting. Emptiness for me can be very full, and my perception of the meaning of emptiness has been fashioned by other people's perspectives, so different to mine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it sounds like that sense of uh different perspectives, right?
SPEAKER_02This is it, and I know it, and that's all there is to it. And then sometimes it takes someone else being like, that's not it at all.
SPEAKER_03This is this, you know, they're kind of doing the same same thing, and they're like, Well, maybe I can look at it.
SPEAKER_02Maybe I can look again. Look again. I'm not sure, David. You can let me know if that's kind of what you were getting at, where the fixedness of identity of that thing is that certain way Be loosened up. Emily, there's what we know, what we don't know, and what we don't even know that we don't know. The mystery I think sometimes when Master Park teaches on, say, these three qualities of nature's flow, free flow, mutual flow, whole flow how simple it is, and how so far as we know there's not an exception.
SPEAKER_00Maybe even including mind It's like this tiny, tiny little nugget of something that we could know. It's just like so simple. And there's all the sea of unknowing all around it. And all our many different experiences and perceptions.
SPEAKER_02And that maybe it's just helpful to have a few simple things that we can experience for ourselves, we can understand rationally, consistent with physics.
SPEAKER_00Because there's so few and even those can be held so gently felt like this is the way it is, this is what we kind of our best guest so far.
SPEAKER_02And do we feel that in our own experience? And does that help us find this underlying togetherness in an immediate way?
SPEAKER_00The great together interdependent arising party.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, David, I'm not planning on growing up either. I am with you there. Peter Pans of the world, here we go.
SPEAKER_02David, I need to have the sense of wonder to be surprised by something I thought about differently before. This is just that, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it's like, can simple can simple be wondrous?
SPEAKER_02At some point I'm gonna have to talk about quantum physics because I I see so many people drawn to quantum physics and drawn to the mystery and the awe of it. I even see how it helps people relate to their experience more finely, more freely.
SPEAKER_00And that scientific theory is not simple, it's not even well understood by scientists, but so far as we know it's consistent with what we've been talking about here. So yeah, maybe we can make simple and wonder go together.
SPEAKER_03Or not make them go together, or maybe they can go together. Well, thank you all. Ooh, yes, please. Yeah, you should give a live talk on physics.
SPEAKER_02Alright, well, you guys are egging me on. We have we have metaphysics, we have physics, we have a lot, we have endless adventures ahead of us, and I will be reflecting on where we go next. I am thinking about doing a combination, you know me, foundations, because all the cool stuff comes from the feelingfulness of it, and mixing it with the philosophy, eastern, western, and physics of parts and wholes.
SPEAKER_00Um so yeah.
SPEAKER_02One way to take on emptiness if you so choose.
SPEAKER_03You could be creating the newest energy source. I could be.
SPEAKER_02I could, I could be renewable energy, renewable self-energy. Oh Annette, thank you for saying hi. I missed you floating by earlier. I try and remember the flowers. Oh yeah, of your uh icons as you come on by. So a reminder that there's no Tai Chi uh movement awareness tomorrow. Um and I will be there's they'll continue on Fridays for the next four weeks after that, and I'll be posting um some more twice a week uh explorations like this. So I'll get into something different, as also as you can see, always in a way the same.
SPEAKER_00Why take care of.