Transcription
I'd like to talk tonight about God and the ultimate truth. So obviously this is a subject that has kind of gripped humanity for millennia, and been discussed and debated and theologized and argued about and gone to war over, etc. So can only really touch on some aspects. But wanted to perhaps begin to bring a little bit of a Dharma perspective, or what might be a Dharma perspective.
Also, right away, very aware that having said that, there's probably quite a number of reactions in the hall. Some completely turned off by the word, just don't want to know, find the actual idea of it repulsive, not a good feeling associated with it. For some there has been, in the past, perhaps in childhood or some other time of life, some hurt associated, around either formal religion or the idea of God or the way that was transmitted, came into one's life. So I'm also aware of that. Some people are not particularly repulsed or hurt, they're just not interested, and that's fair enough of a response too. [laughs] Some people are very interested, very interested.
All of that, all of those responses, may change in one's life and may change very unexpectedly in the course of one just growing, opening as a human being, inquiring into things. And it's certainly not my intention tonight to change anyone's view, or convert anyone to this or that, or argue with anyone about anything, to prove or disprove or anything like that. That's not the point. I would like to, as I said, just explore and bring some questioning into this area from what might be one Dharma perspective. What does this whole idea, notion, sense, perhaps, of God -- how does it affect our mind and heart?
So to use that phrase again, in this tradition, the vipassanā tradition, the Insight Meditation tradition, there's not a lot -- well, first of all, we don't talk much about God at all. [laughs] But there's also not a lot of emphasis on devotion. So some other spiritual traditions, a lot of other spiritual traditions, it's quite central. Even some Buddhist traditions, it's pretty central, it's a pretty powerful and important aspect of that path. And devotion, as an energy, as a quality of the heart, as a manifestation in the heart, devotion to something larger, something vaster than the self or what's immediately apparent, that opening of the heart can have, at times for some people, tremendous power to it, tremendous transformative power. And I'm not necessarily equating devotion with ritual either. So again, Gaia House actually has more ritual than it did have years ago -- so these statues have appeared, which is sort of huge actually. [laughter] There used to be nothing at all. Some people bow and some people don't, and this and that.
But I'm actually not equating devotion with ritual. Can be that a person's heart is bursting with a sense of devotion and there's no outer sign of that. There's no bowing. There are no bells and smoke and whistles. Or it can be that there's a lot of ritual, and the heart is actually not that open in devotion. So I'm talking about devotion separate from ritual. But that power of devotion, this opening of a sort of movement in the heart, a current in the heart, towards something vaster, the power of that to heal and transform the heart is enormous.
As I said, it can come quite unexpectedly in one's life. Some people will have always had that kind of personality to move towards that or be very comfortable in that kind of tradition; other people, it's very unexpected. For some, there may be a period of practising with mindfulness, with awareness, or otherwise investigating into oneself and working on a kind of healing practice, and something happens, or can happen: as the heart opens in healing, some other energy is able to move in there, and can only kind of find its home and its expression in a really deep sense of devotion. So you get this devotion as a transformative energy, bringing healing and bringing heart opening, and in some cases, healing and heart opening bringing a sense of devotion.
And sometimes -- what I see for myself and for others -- it's only the quality of devotion that is actually capable of a certain power. It's only that quality. I'm not saying it's a necessary quality; for some people it's not necessary, and they will go through their whole lives, and it's just not something, this whole notion of God or certainly devotion, it's not something they go near. Sometimes it's only devotion that is so powerful, for some people, some of the time.
When we use the word God, when we think about God, when we hear that word, what immediately comes to mind for many of us is actually beliefs. You believe in God or you don't believe in God or whatever. And for some, and again speaking for myself, when we have the opposite kind of approach -- so epitomized somewhat in this tradition, but sort of taken to extremes, say, in the teachings of Krishnamurti -- many of you will be familiar with this Indian teacher who died fifteen years ago or so, I think. His approach was uncompromising: no beliefs, no assumptions, scrap all that; it's baggage, it's a veil, it's getting in the way, it's nonsense, etc. Just have faith in the power of attention, the power of investigating life and experience through attention. And there's a kind of really 'back to basics,' sort of almost ruthless, clean honesty with oneself and with life. And that's, I think, for many people, that approach -- no assumptions, nothing, we just rely on the power of attention, of my attention to life -- for some that's extremely attractive. And when we think of beliefs and belief in God, we might immediately think, the immediate image is old man, beard, cloud, sitting. [laughs] Dishing out favours if you ask him nicely enough. And that may be the first image, a kind of kids' image of God. But for some people, that actually exists. As a grown-up, it exists.
Life is difficult. And because life is uncertain -- we touched on this today -- there is fear in life, often. There is fear. And so when there's fear, there can be the movement to seek comfort. We've touched on this. It can go to the image of a deity who will look after us by supplying certain favours or whatever. And of course it can go the other way, and this is where a lot of people have been hurt -- the image of a judging deity, and then there's fear in relationship to that deity. So this God is sitting on a cloud with a book of judgment, and you're going to hell, etc. We're all familiar with that.
However, I have to say, from moving in different spiritual circles over the years, it's quite remarkable, even for people who believe in a God that judges, if that fear and the sort of guilt and the whole thing from it is actually not too neurotic, it somehow can lead to compassion in some cases. It's quite striking. I've reflected on this, and sometimes I think that perhaps innate to human beings, innate to the heart of human beings, the consciousness of human beings, there is maybe a deep-seated capacity for almost what I would call spiritual genius, in the sense that it can take any idea, any concept, no matter how almost ridiculous and kind of obviously bearing little connection with reality, even an oppressive idea, and somehow turn that into a treasure in the heart, somehow, because of some relationship with it, or some seeing it in the right way, or some surrender or something. I'm certainly not saying that happens for everyone at all, but I have seen, I have known people like this. There's that capacity to take something that just seems completely off the wall maybe to most people nowadays and somehow turn it into a treasure.
So it's interesting, reflecting on some famous people like Mother Teresa, for instance. I know sometimes people do find fault with her for certain things or whatever, but you have to kind of look at that life and kind of say, "Wow." The extraordinary outpouring of compassion there and sensitivity. And she pretty much believed that everything the pope said was absolutely true. It was just she didn't question it. It was gospel truth. And something in her heart was able to take all that and just transform it. In come these ideas and these beliefs, and out comes, in a way, pure gold.
To quote Jesus, "By their fruits you shall know them." So we can argue with the belief, and this belief and that belief, da-da-da-da. Look at how a person's living. Is the fruit compassion? Staying with beliefs for a second. To ask, again, what's behind a belief? What is behind a belief that we can have? Is it fear? Are we believing, wanting to believe something because we're afraid, afraid of life, afraid of death, afraid of the unknown? Or is it based on experience? That actually doesn't go for this realm of God; it goes for everything. It's interesting to reflect on what are the beliefs I actually have about life. Often we're carrying around a huge sack of unexamined beliefs and assumptions about life, ourselves, others, experience. And very important in our life to open that sack and have a look, and say, what is it that I'm believing? And is it based on fear? Is it based on what I know to be true from experience, what my experience seems to be telling me? Or is it based on just believing what parents or society or whatever else -- is it just handed down? Are we believing because of that? This can be for anything. Even in Buddhism -- do we believe in reincarnation or rebirth or whatever you want to call it? Where's that belief coming from?
So what's behind the belief? And then this other question: does belief, in this case does belief in a God, does that lead to an increase in the openness of the heart, an increase in compassion, an increase in fearlessness? What I see is that sometimes it does and sometimes it really doesn't. But it's true that both are there. For some people, it's extraordinary fearlessness, compassion, etc., that comes, openness. And some, we just see it looking around the world and the history of the world, obviously it doesn't. But it's important to ask the opposite question: does non-belief lead to openness, fearlessness, compassion? To me, it's absolutely not at all guaranteed that it does, not at all. When we say "non-belief," what do we actually -- again, what are the unexamined beliefs that we're actually calling "non-belief"? So is non-belief really belief in scientific rationality, which has become the sort of common coin, accepted view of how things work at this point in human history?
Or perhaps more important even than that, Dharmically speaking, does my non-belief in God or someone's non-belief in God, does that actually equal a kind of nihilistic belief? "There's nothing out there. There's no point in life. There's no ultimately true right or wrong. No values." And then just a hair's breadth spilling over into, "Well, might as well get the most pleasure I can during this period of life." And in a way, consumerism is, you could say, the fruit of that kind of nihilism, in a way. I was reading -- I can't remember, I think it was in Resurgence magazine -- and it said something like, "There's no coincidence that societies with a high level of consumerism are societies with a low level of religion." It's like, "Oh, that's interesting, isn't it?"
And I think that kind of nihilism -- I could be wrong here, but sometimes I have a sense that that kind of nihilism is actually a bit of a ... what's quite common nowadays in society. Say if you go back to medieval times, everyone believed in God; it was just a given. Nowadays we don't have really anything central that way. Sometimes what that actually translates as in the life is a kind of relative pointlessness to it all. Might as well just maximize the pleasure for me and maybe a few people around me.
When we think of God, again, we think of a great being, or the supreme being, or great beings if we believe in more than one. And actually this has its parallels in Buddhist tradition as well, especially Mahāyāna tradition, where they talk about bodhisattvas. So a bodhisattva is someone who has decided to devote themselves, out of compassion, to all beings, to the liberation of all beings, and they've made a radical commitment to do that. In their sort of more archetypal forms, they're actually embodiments of certain energies, so you have the bodhisattva of compassion, the bodhisattva of wisdom, etc. And it's interesting. I was reading in a history of Buddhism that when the missionaries went -- I can't remember if it was Tibet or Mongolia, but they got there, and they were explaining the sort of, basically giving catechism classes or whatever, and all the locals were sort of falling asleep. And when they got to the bits about Jesus and the stories of his life, they would suddenly be completely awake and really gleeful and really touched and sort of devotional. This puzzled the missionaries. They somehow found out that they would just hear the story of Jesus and they could fit it right into their scheme: "Oh, he's just another bodhisattva. He's the bodhisattva of compassion." And it was fine; it fitted right in.
But again, is it helpful or not? Is it helpful or not to believe in this kind of being and their pure manifestation of a certain kind of energy? (So in Jesus's case, compassion, or the bodhisattva of compassion is Avalokiteśvara, Tārā.) Is it helpful or not? There are practices that, in Buddhist Dharma, in the Tibetan tradition especially, one is actually contemplating the qualities of love, of wisdom, of compassion, of this bodhisattva, and calling upon that deity, calling upon the energy of that, and somehow, a person dedicates themselves to this kind of practising, and it actually finds its way into the heart and out of the heart, into and through the heart. One begins to really embody those qualities. And one sees this in devoutly practising Christians and devoutly practising in some Tibetan traditions as well. Is it helpful or is it not? The Buddha said, "That which you dwell on, that which you meditate on, is what you become."[1] In a way, part of the model of Jesus is something to aspire to, and the same with the bodhisattvas. It's like an ideal for the heart to aspire to, to become Christlike.
And then with this idea of a great being, or great beings, or a supreme being, there's this very beautiful orientation in someone's practice that can come. It comes from when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane just before being captured. He said to God, "Thy will, not mine, be done." And for some people, I'm aware as I'm talking, again, some of you are just, "Pff." And some people, maybe there's something that touches. I don't know. But this as a practice, from a Dharma perspective, what's going on there -- letting go of the self-centred desire. This has its obvious parallels in what we've been talking about over the days here and the Dharma. Letting go of the self-centred desire over and over in one's life. "Thy will, not mine, be done."
And so people with this practice do that over and over, and ask themselves in a very deep and earnest way, "What is God's will for me in this situation? What is God's will for me in this situation?" And there can be with that a very deep and beautiful listening, listening for that, listening for the direction. Something very lovely in that. And it can also get twisted. And in a way, to ask what's God's will for me is still somewhat self-centred. And where it can very easily go -- and again, talking all paths, all practices will have their benefits and their pitfalls -- where it can very easily go is into this sense of the universe is kind of set up for me, for my self and my satisfaction, my fulfilment. And we have to ask ourselves: is it? Actually is it? And the capacity, again, just from what I've seen in my past, knowing different people, the capacity for delusion with this is enormous. So I actually knew once a psychotherapist who used to talk a lot in this language, and she would say, "What's God's will for me?" And it turned out that God's will was for her to charge I think it was almost $3,000 for two hours of psychotherapy a week. [laughter] "God wants me to make more money," she said. Other instances -- someone involved in buying property and then doing it up a bit and selling it at a hiked-up price, sort of listening for God's guidance about which property they should buy, as if this God has nothing better to do [laughter] than to kind of take care of your profit margins.
So I remember a very beautiful and very gentle old Trappist monk, Father Thomas Keating, lives in America -- he might be dead now; I don't know. And he used to say, "People make such a fuss about this, God's will. It's very simple: God's will is always love." It's just you do the loving thing. It's simple. It's not so much about self and what will be best for me. How easily "thy will" actually becomes "thy will as long as it's what's good for me."
If we cast our minds back in history, from what we're told, medieval times, etc., God was indisputably, no question, the most powerful force, the most powerful thing. There was nothing above that. It was pater omnipotens. Completely all-powerful, no comparison. And it was also, in a way, supposedly a person's primary orientation in life, to be oriented towards God. Again, something very beautiful in that. What does it even mean to be oriented towards God? And so, if we think what am I oriented towards, what for me is the most powerful thing, one of my teachers used to say, "What's my God?" What's my God? And to be really honest about this. And for some, it's truth, my God is truth, the search for truth. Or my God is compassion, the life completely devoted to compassion, or that's the orientation, that's the compass bearing which one keeps coming back to. Of course one strays from that, but that's the orientation. Beautiful, beautiful. And that's the God, that's the most powerful force in life.
But again, to repeat something I've said probably every day here, if we're really honest what are the most powerful forces in our lives, sometimes it is just these petty little things -- just want to be a bit more comfortable, just want things to be a bit more convenient, a bit more sense pleasure. And again, that's very human. But what is it, what would it be, to go through one's life, be on the deathbed, can't do it again, and look back and have a moment of clarity and realize, "Wow. 90-something per cent of the choices I made, the tiny little choices and maybe even the bigger choices, were just about those petty little movements. What did that obscure, and what did that block?" So in Dharma language, the Buddha talks about kilesas as sort of torments of the heart or obscurations, so greed and aversion and delusion. It's like, how much of our choices in life are coming out of that, fear, that kind of thing? Is it actually, if we're really honest, has that become our God?
Sometimes on the occasions when a Buddhist teacher is asked about this, different responses are given. One very nice one is that there is only one divine, and that is in the human heart, that's in the capacity of the human heart. And the Buddha talks about -- which I touched on at some point, I can't remember -- the brahmavihāras, so these four qualities, capacities of the heart. The actual translation of brahmavihāra means 'divine dwelling,' 'divine abode.' That one cultivates loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and joy in the joy of others, and equanimity as qualities of the heart which actually are divine. They move into a feeling of something sublime and divine. And the only real divinity there is in life is there, in the human heart filled -- or maybe even non-human as well -- in the heart filled with those qualities. That's what divinity is.
And that's great. It's great. It's wonderful. And for some people, that's fine: "Thank you very much. I know what to do." That's okay. But for people who really then devote themselves to these practices, really devote themselves to developing mettā, compassion, joy, equanimity, what can happen, can happen, for some people, is that the sense moves -- of love, of compassion, of joy, of equanimity -- from being in here, in the heart, it starts to grow. Can happen for some people. It's actually not as rare as it might sound. Starts to grow, and a person begins to sense and perceive that there is a love in which they are existing, in which all things are existing. There is a compassion or a joy or a peace in which they sit and walk and move and all things sit and walk and move. Not as rare as you might think. It's actually moved way beyond this, if one really devotes oneself to these practices. Can happen. And there's a sense of receiving that from the universe, as if those qualities, love and compassion and joy, are woven into the fabric of the universe. And it's a very powerful perception, and very healing and transforming perception. And can go even deeper -- can be not only is that something holding the universe, but actually all things are of that substance, all things are of love, their true nature is love, their true nature is compassion or joy or peace. Can be -- we're talking about very deep, mystical experiences, extremely striking, extremely beautiful.
And it can be in a state of meditation, but it can also last afterwards, in a way that there's a kind of afterimage of it. So one's walking around, not in meditation, and has that sense. For some, occasionally it happens to people outside of meditation; I have a friend who used to meditate very, very rarely, and she was in a restaurant, just in a work day zipped in to have lunch, and ordered whatever it was, and was waiting for the waiter to bring it, and then suddenly she said it was like, "We were all inside God." And this is not a very religious person or anything. She was like, "Why isn't anyone talking about this?" Mostly, though, it comes from practice. And in that, there is a huge sense of oneness. Everything is of the substance of this love and compassion.
I want to interject something. It can be hard, I know, sometimes when you hear about some states and you think, "Well, I'll never get there," or "It's way beyond my reach," or "I don't even know what he's talking about. I'm just trying to stay with two breaths in a row." [laughter] I'm aware of that. Please, just to notice, notice the reaction. Again, does it have to be about self? Can it just be heard? But just to notice what happens in the mind when you hear this kind of stuff.
Sometimes that sense can also happen with awareness, that it's actually awareness that seems to expand and not just be in here, and again everything is of the fabric of awareness. These are profound mystical states, but they are available to a human consciousness. And a person, a dedicated practitioner, can go in and out of this, in and out of this, in and out of this sense, remarkable sense, and can begin to wonder -- because at first you might hear that, and you think, "Okay, something's happened in the brain, and they're just weird. It's like taking some drug or something," you know? But a person goes in and out and begins to wonder, "What is real? What is the real way things are? Is it this normal kind of thing, me here, you there, humdrum, just trying to get through the day? Or is it this other sense?" Can be that a person gets stuck in one of these places and kind of takes that as what God is, God is the ultimate truth. And you hear phrases like, I think it was St Paul or St Peter, I can't remember, "God is love," Deus caritas est. And it's a very strong mystical experience; it's very real. But a person can get stuck at that level and say, "Done. Finished. Found God. That's it."
If one keeps the questioning alive, though, what happens is one notices, one goes in and out and in and out of this state, of these perceptions, and one begins to ask, "What's real?", and maybe the so-called normal, everyday, what everyone seems to agree on view of things, and this mystical state, maybe they're equally real or equally unreal. Maybe they're both just views. They're views, perceptions, arising dependent on conditions. And in a way, that's what Dharma practice is pointing to, this emptiness of perception. That means that no perception, in and of itself, is real. But that doesn't mean -- sometimes a person can hear that and think, "Ugh." There's a kind of disappointment in that. Emptiness is not nihilistic. It's difficult to understand. Emptiness is not saying, "It doesn't matter. It's not real. Forget it."
I think that for people really, really dedicated, and these are possible experiences, one needs to let those perceptions actually transform the heart. One needs to not start disregarding them right away, saying, "Oh, they're impermanent. I shouldn't get attached," and whatever. Actually be in that state over and over until the heart is opened and transformed by it. If this is difficult to listen to, just hear it as a kind of listening to what the possibilities are. That's all. It doesn't have to reflect on anything other than that.
If we, in a way, don't get attached to these perceptions, what happens? Buddhism says, "Don't get attached to this. It's impermanent. Don't get attached." If we don't get attached, what happens is we go back to the default conventional view: I'm here, you're there, humdrum, getting through the day. In a way, one of my teachers used to say, "Get attached to all this. Get attached to it." It's only in the getting attached that it can actually transform the heart, transform the understanding and the perception.
If a person is really dedicated to God or to the truth, and starts with a sense of God, I think there will be an evolution of that sense of what God is, over one's life, over one's practice. There was an interviewer doing an interview with Mother Teresa, and he asked her, "So what do you say to God when you pray?" And she said, "Nothing. I just listen." He said, "Oh. What does God say to you?" And she said, "Nothing. He just listens too." [laughter] Before the interviewer could ask anything else, she said, "And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you." [laughter] There is a sense that for people really going into this deeply, the notion, the sense of God, will transform. It has to transform.
In terms of Dharma, one of the very interesting ways it transforms or can transform is -- how to put it? -- Dharma teachings question the reality of this personal self, of this ego, of this sense of self that we have. When there comes a point in practice when that personal sense of self is actually not believed in the normal way any more, it's just not something one believes any more, then what will go as well is the sense of a personal God, with whom one can have a personal relationship. To the degree that one doesn't take so seriously the sense of personal self, the sense of a personal God will decrease. I read a book and I couldn't remember the name of it, but it's a very interesting book by this devout Catholic woman called Bernadette Roberts, and it's about -- without understanding anything about Dharma teachings and emptiness of self, she just falls into these states of loss of self, and through that, through going in and out of that, finds her personal relationship with a personal God just waning. What can then begin to take its place is more of an impersonal sense of God, more of a mystical sense of God -- so, for example, in the sense of love or cosmic consciousness or whatever.
There was a Christian mystic called St John of the Cross, one of the greatest Christian mystics, Spanish. I think he lived in 1500-something. He had a phrase -- he had two phrases: 'dark night of the soul,' which has become quite a famous, quite well-used phrase, and something else called 'dark night of the sense.' And what he's referring to is what I talked about at the end of the talk last night, this dispassion that the Buddha talked about, a sense of the things of the world no longer really doing it for one. Individual things are not it, are not going to fulfil, this thing, that thing, no matter how colourful and whatever. Somehow, in his language, the soul has -- well, in his language, actually God has taken away the pleasure of those things to some extent, and there's a dispassion with those things, the dark night of the sense.
There's another Christian mystic called Meister Eckhart, who was earlier, a German mystic, and also one of the great Christian mystics. He had this funny phrase. He used to say, "Abandon creatures."[2] What he means is abandon that which is created, and anything that you realize is created, is of time in that sense, abandon it, let it go, let it go. So you can see this has a lot of similarities with what I was talking about last night, just letting go, letting go, letting go that the Buddha talked about. And to fill in a little bit and retrace from last night, when we abandon in this way, when we let go of things, what comes is what the Buddha would call equanimity, a state of equanimity. The deeper we let go, the more equanimity, the more stillness and calmness and openness of being comes.
In that, also what can happen, because we're not so invested in pushing away what we don't like and pulling towards us what we do like, we're not building things up, building experience up through this push and pull, and so, as I said last night and today, there's a fading of the experience. There's a changing and an actual fading of the experience. So in states of deep equanimity or deep abandoning creatures, as Meister Eckhart would say, creatures actually fade. They fade from consciousness. Things, experiences, fade from consciousness. One is left with a sense of backdrop of experience, the backdrop of experience, the sound of silence, of silence itself.
From the Dharma perspective this means, as we were talking about today in the question and answer period, that things are empty because they depend on me pushing and pulling and struggling with them, this completely counterintuitive sense of things. Things, creatures, experiences are empty. And Meister Eckhart also says, "The creature does not exist." So again, really following on from last night in a way, this part, the real world, in that sense, is empty. One can have let go of a belief in the personal self to a certain degree; when that becomes established, a sort of disbelief in the personal self as a reality, then the personal self fades a bit, or the personal God sense fades a bit.
At this point, when one actually begins to question the reality of what we call the world and experience and phenomena, even a sense of God as an intelligence in the cosmos begins to fade. Because an intelligence is deciding and choosing between this thing happening and that thing happening, this event and that event, and one has seen in the meditation, this event and that event are not real. They're empty. The real world is empty. And so the notion of God as an intelligence, it loses its importance, it loses its centrality.
So where is one left then? St John of the Cross has this second little phrase, dark night of the soul, which has become quite a common phrase in our vocabulary. Mostly people use it to mean when they're having a hard time about something, they're a bit depressed or this or that. He meant it in a much more specific way, which is: it seems to the practitioner or whatever that God has taken away every nice experience, every beautiful experience that seemed to express God or be God. So that sense of love, that sense of compassion that I was talking about, the mystical sense or whatever. And the soul is left in this quandary. Maybe all there is is a sense of silence. Is it something beyond the silence? Do I need to somehow pierce through the silence? Or maybe is it something in the silence? And silence becomes a very important factor, very prominent feature at this point in one's path, whatever it is, Buddhist, Christian, whatever.
Meister Eckhart also had a phrase, "There is nothing like God. You can't compare God to anything. But of all things, the thing most similar to God is silence." And then Thomas Merton, who was a Trappist monk in the twentieth century, and a beautiful poet and writer and peace activist, and just a wonderful person as well, very mystical, also one of the first people who began to bridge -- sort of began a Christian--Buddhist dialogue and met with the Dalai Lama, etc. He wrote at one point, very beautiful, "My life," his life as a monk in a very austere, silent order, the Trappist order, "My life is a listening [in silence]."[3] He went on to explain, not listening for anything. Not listening for direction, not listening for some kind of information, you know, psychically or something. Something rather in and of the silence itself.
I think it was a theologian, Paul Tillich, who coined this phrase, "the ground of being." At this point in practice, if we're practising the Buddhist way, it can really seem like, "Ah, I know what they're talking about." Everything has faded somewhat. There's just the flickering of experience in and out of this backdrop of silence, of sort of space or nothingness. And it seems like, can seem like, everything is born out of that silence and disappears back into it. It arises and disappears from and into that silence. And one wonders, is that ground of being, is it eternal? And is that perhaps what the Buddha meant when he said there is an unborn, an undying, an uncreated? The words the Buddha used. One thinks, "Well, that's it. It seems to be there whatever. Any experience seems to have that as a sort of context, a backdrop, this silence, this ground of being." It seems to last forever and be eternal in that way, be unshakeable.
But if we really go into the practice deeply, there's a problem here as well, or there's something more as well. If one really, really, really deeply lets go of the push and pull with experience -- just all the subtleties of the push and pull; I'm talking about a very deep insight meditation practice, basically. One is really honing in on the push and pull, and really letting that go and letting that go, letting it deepen, deepen, deepen, opening to the subtler and subtler levels of the way we struggle with experience, and letting it go, and letting it go, and letting it go, very deep, very still, very beautiful. What can happen is one goes beyond time. The actual fabric of time breaks. There's a timelessness that comes. And one realizes, too, time is empty as well. Time is, in a way, dependent on a subtle level of pushing and pulling with experience. This is completely counterintuitive. One of the most basic, intuitive senses we have is that of time. It goes unquestioned: of course time trundles along no matter what I do, and it will trundle along after I'm dead, and before I'm born, etc. It seems so obvious.
When one goes really deep into this letting go, one sees that the time, the experience of time, is actually dependent on a certain amount of push and pull with the experience. So the notion of eternal, something, a God lasting forever, is also questioned, because forever implies forever in time, and time is empty. When there's time, there also needs to be, for most people, a creator, something at the beginning of that, to create everything.
So we can, and some people do, talk about what's left. What's left when a person has let go of all, any last trace of pushing and pulling with experience, any last trace of struggle? So extremely deep practice we're talking about now. And sometimes people use the words Unconditioned or Unfabricated. But I'm not sure whether one can really make a thing out of that, an object out of that. I'm not sure. Certainly not to make a duality out of that -- "There's that and then there's all this."
Interesting, the Buddha's approach of the Four Noble Truths, going back to the question the other day. The Four Noble Truths are quite radical because it's not about believing in anything; it's just about where's the suffering, and can I release it? It's just about letting go of any sense of stress or suffering, letting go of this push and pull. Push and pull is basically a form of stress and suffering. Just letting go over and over, and one will come to the truth, the ultimate truth of things.
So in the dark night of the soul, according to St John of the Cross, his view of it was that God has taken away anything that one might put one's finger on and say, "That's God," and point to it and say, "That's God." God has taken that away and left the soul with nothing. And it somehow has to open in that nothing and find the non-thing that is God. And again, Meister Eckhart being the more sort of pushy of the pair says, "Don't wait for that to happen." [laughs] "Abandon God." Just abandon God. I can't remember when he lived; I think it was 1100-something or 1300-something -- completely radical thing to say in that context of, like, thickly together medieval society, completely radical. In fact, he was put on trial for it. St John of the Cross was also thrown in prison.
So in a way, at one level, perhaps what it comes to is that God, or what we would say is God, is empty like everything else. But again, please, emptiness is not nihilistic. It's not, "That's a disappointment." It's not like that. Emptiness is not saying something doesn't exist or it does exist. It's something beyond that. Emptiness is not blah. It's not a case of the blahs. It doesn't bring the blahs. It's not depressing. Rather, one of my teachers used to say the sign of emptiness is joy. The sign of any understanding or beginning to understand or open to emptiness is joy. And I would say the more one goes into emptiness, in a way, the more joy, the more love, the more freedom, and almost paradoxically, the more devotion. There is a sense, a very profound sense that comes of devotion in life. And it's not even necessarily devotion to a thing. One maybe doesn't even know what one's devoted to.
So for some people who make that journey, a sense of a personal God and a personal relationship with God, some people who then go on that journey and go through all that, or some of that, there can be a real grief, a real grief that something beautiful has gone out of the life for a period. For a period there can be a real grief. But is it that it's gone out, or has one just gone deeper into God, in that language?
So by saying all this, I mean, I have actually only an idea of people's relationship with all this in a few cases of people that I know better because they've been here for a while or whatever. Most of you I have actually no idea. And for most people coming to Buddhist ... it's not that much of a burning question anyway, but. It's not my intention to be destructive at all. Sometimes when we talk about emptiness, "This is empty. That's empty, da-da-da-da," and it sounds like, "Well, you've just gone ahead and destroyed everything, haven't you?" Not my intention at all, not my intention. And I don't know if that's really what emptiness does.
So whatever way we look at it, talking about God and the ultimate truth, the word God, the sense of God, the concept of God is absolutely not for everyone. Some people are never going to be interested in it, as I said. But freedom has to be for everyone. We have to be interested in freedom, if we're using the word God or not. We have to be interested in the opening of love, whether we're using the word God or not. And we have to be interested in the truth, whether there's God or not. And maybe in the end, if we really take all this very deeply, it's the same.
Shall we just have a few minutes of silence together?
