Dharma Talk: What is not spiritual materialism?

Here is the latest in the series of talks from the class I lead each Tuesday in New York City:

"What is Not Spiritual Materialism?"

Stream the file here:

jaytek.net/KFD/04%20NYC%20Talk%20-%20Wha...0Feb%208,%202011.mp3

Or download the file here (other recordings also available):

jaytek.net/KFD/

May you awaken in this lifetime.

This was a very beautiful talk. Probably the most compelling (for me) one I've heard yet. This is quite helpful for me right now.

Thank you very much for posting these.

I'm glad you liked the talk, Jayson and Nadav!

This was a fantastic talk. It was very interesting to hear Kenneth talking about Trungpa's ideas on spiritual materialism. After I hit the dark night in my early 20s, I drifted to one of the Trungpa centers and started reading this stuff. It was a revelation. I thought I had "gotten it," but clearly there is a very big difference from nodding your head at these points while you're reading the book, and actually, truly letting go of your preference for pleasant states and aversion to unpleasant ones. Complaints about an unpleasant sit are woven throughout many of my KFD posts. More recently, it has been "damn, seems like I should have attained Stream Entry by now. What am I doing wrong?"
Spiritual materialism in action.
Hey, that sounds like a Trungpa book!
Anyway, Kenneth's points about the present moment really being it--ha! Who would have thought, right?!

Thanks for posting another great talk.

Again it was clear, simple, precise and informative.

This is now the cutting edge of my practice. Steve ONE TASTE!!!!

Thanks! What about a podcast for these? I can help set one up using Wordpress if you like.

If you're going for a podcast idea then feel free to give me a shout if you're needing ident music and/or any production and engineering work as I've got a pretty good setup here for that sort of thing.

Yes please, podcasts!

Wow - what more can I say? Wow. That spoke right to me. Thanks.

Very good, Kenneth. Thanks for this.

I just wanted to add my praise for this talk. I listened to it on my lunch break the other day, sitting under the trees on a unnervingly warm February day here in London. It articulated several things that I had thought I'd understood, but clearly hadn't, and drove home the real reasons for practising the meditative path. It managed to cut through swathes of dogma and romantic thinking but still leave us with a promise of something immensely valuable and worth striving for.

If Kenneth is happy to let me do it, I might try to transcribe the whole thing when I next get half a chance.

Thanks, Everyone. And thanks Andy for offering to transcribe the talk. I would be very grateful; we could post the transcription along with the audio. This particular talk is also my wife's favorite.

This talk on spiritual materialism is having great impact on my current practice, it is very awakening, very refreshing. Im integrating Noting with such ease after this talk.
I was stuck for long time in the Calm-abiding (Shamatha which aint bad but without vipassana leads to dreamland) practice which was very much into relaxing and calming but not much into seeing things as they realy are, and I would have many "bad sessions" which is just bulloks and is to be Noted
Thank you Kenneth thank you.
May we all be happy at heart

Hey Kenneth. Nice talk! I listened to it twice in a row.

I get the impression that 'spiritual materialism' as you explain it is sometimes what I consider sila practice - is doing metta meditation to be more compassionate spiritual materialism? I would say yes, but that is no reason not to do it.



"As I read the book, on every page I kept getting busted for being a spiritual materialist - I was always trying to get something out of this (meditation). And I kept thinking, "if I keep reading the book, I'm gonna get to the point where he (the author) will explain what is NOT spiritual materialism; so that then I could get THAT." - Kenneth

So true.



You say that there might be two 'movements' or phases in a yogis /career practice. The first has to do with manipulating experience, getting into pleasant states, "getting enlightened". The second movement involves being interested in even the unpleasant aspects of meditation and avoiding the temptation (to manipulate experience) to have pleasant meditations - meditation stops being a practice to "cultivate any experience whatsoever".

I'm trying to understand this better: Is this form- and formless practice? 1st gear is form practice concerned with objects, 2nd gear is form practice concerned with subject and 3rd gear is a formless 'practice' (dzogchen, mahamudra, shikantaza, choiceness awareness, etc.)?



"The reason I teach the techniques of noting and concentration - the states and stages - is because if you do those practices you get more and more likely to have what happened to the woman waiting for the bus ('spontaneous enlightenment') happen to you." - Kenneth

"Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone" - Baker Roshi

"The body is always in the present; it's never in the past, never in the future - unlike your thoughts. The body is right here, it's very reliable and it keeps you honest. So in this moment of paying attention to what's going on in this body, I'm present! (...) And as I keep looping back around into this moment, via the body, something remarkable happens: I forget to suffer. The question of suffering or not suffering doesn't come up." - Kenneth

Is this 'non duality', Kenneth? I do not explicitly use the body as an anchor, but I believe whatever I do has the same result.

One way of describing the result is that the distinction between subject and object fades and there is only the 'verb' in-between subject and object: experience happens, alone - there is only awareness, of itself. And when there is only experience, one is cresting the wave of the moment; staying at the razor edge of 'now'. There is no suffering - it is, as you have said, 'upstream' from suffering.

Is this what you mean? I feel like I'm entering into a realm of being/experience that I don't know how to express yet. I realize I'm asking for a lot of boxing, categorizing, defining or rigidity here - I'm trying to empower myself with language so I can somewhat communicate this new realm of experience.

This quote from this talk is hammering it down totally Beautiful, just beautiful, thank you Kenneth.

"The body is always in the present its never in the past never in the future, unlike your thoughts, the body is right here very reliable and it keeps you honest and by paying attention to it Im present ... and as I keep looping back around into this moment via this body something remarkable happens, I forget to suffer"-Kenneth Folk