THE THREE DOORS TEACHINGS ARE ELEGANT AND SIMPLE During the Taste of The Three Doors weekend in the Netherlands, June 14-16, Ton Bisscheroux talked to Marcy Vaughn, teacher of The Three Doors Academy, and Kallon Basquin, Director of Operation of The Three Doors Academy. Here is a transcript of their dialog. Ton: Can you speak about the difference between psychotherapy, Buddhism, and The Three Doors? Kallon: There are many paths to working with our pain. In psychotherapy we work with the mind to overcome suffering. There is a focus on the story, on what we know as relative truth, like “I have always been this way,” and it gives many people relief to tell their story. So it is not that we are judging psychotherapy, but we make a distinction. Marcy can explain how we work in The Three Doors with suffering. Marcy: In The Three Doors we have an emphasis on the Inner Refuge. Entering the Inner Refuge through the stillness of the body, or hearing the silence of inner speech, and recognizing the spaciousness of mind allows us to recognize the spell of our inner talking, and allows the story that often constricts us to release, to open. Your nature cannot be contained by a story and it cannot be told by your voice. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves hold us and keep us from discovering the deeper nature of our being. It is not that we are against stories, but when you ‘host’ a story it will release its hold on you. A deeper capacity becomes available. Even a simple story like “I am sad today” is just a story, because there is no ‘today,’ there is just ‘right now.’ So if you embrace your sadness right now and you completely allow and feel how it is right now, in this moment so fully, does it remain in the same way? It is quite possible that it does not. That is what you discover. But the story would keep it remaining: “I am so sad today.” We take this kind of thinking for granted all the time. We talk that way all the time, and we hold patterns that prevent us from other possibilities. In that sense we are very interested in how stories work and how they fall apart, how we discover openness as a result.
Kallon Basquin and Marcy Vaughn in Exloërveen.
Ton: So, instead of going into the history of the story, you ‘host’ it. Kallon: It seems a simple distinction. Conceptually we can understand it, but to practice it experientially… The trade secret of The Three Doors is how to practice. Ton: It is very special to be here in this ‘Taste’ weekend, but for people who do not participate in The Three Doors Academy or in a ‘Taste’ weekend it is difficult to understand. Kallon: It is elegant, simple, and extremely penetrating. Marcy: I experience it that way too. It is easy to forget how direct you can be with your experience. Even when we say “I am sad today”, who is that ‘I’? You can actually turn your awareness to the ‘I’ that is sad, and if you are present, even that sense of oneself will shift. And when you allow that and you recognize that, it introduces another experience of yourself — being. I think of it as wonderful medicine. Ton: I noticed you talk of the ‘essence’, the true nature in people. Yesterday you said, “When we see pain in another, compassion or love is our first response.” I thought, “That can't be true, because my normal reaction is contraction.” But later I realized that you are right, that it is the natural response, but for me it is more familiar to react by contracting.
Going beyond
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