Transcription
Welcome to Gaia House, and welcome to this retreat. Lovely to see so many people here, so many people interested in developing calmness. It's interesting to me, living at Gaia House -- retreats come, retreats go, and one's more or less involved and that, but just keeping the sense alive, a very alive sense how precious the opportunity is to be able to be on retreat. Especially nowadays, to be able to devote this kind of time to looking inwardly, to developing what is beautiful -- very precious.
That movement or practice of retreat, of setting aside a period of time to look more deeply, to be in silence, to be in solitude, that's something that has been around as long as humanity has been around. It's really, really an ancient tradition, prehistory, pre-written word, pre- even maybe oral tradition, I don't know. It's like human beings have a sense, maybe a dim sense, maybe a strong sense, of the possibilities in life, the possibilities for themselves, possibilities of consciousness. And it's almost as if that is a river that runs in a human being and leads us, beckons us. And in humanity, it's also a river. So in a way, we come here to this retreat, and we're stepping into that stream that's already existed. Beautiful stream over thousands and thousands of years, of people willing to dedicate time to deepening, to opening, to looking more deeply into life.
So this retreat is a samatha retreat. It's focusing on samatha. The translation means 'calm' or 'tranquillity.' That, too, is something, it's not a specifically Buddhist thing, and no one has any proprietary rights over calmness; it's just a human quality. Again, the movement throughout humanity towards calmness, to develop calmness, predates the Buddha. It's something that also the Buddha stepped into that stream. In a way, we're here for five days together, but samatha, the deepening of calmness or tranquillity, of that kind of collectedness, is really an art that lasts a lifetime. It's infinitely developable. We're here for a few days, so we're just going to make a beginning into that, beginning into learning some skills, hopefully, to develop calmness.
As I said, we're here for five days. It's something that people devote weeks to, months to, in many cases years -- years letting that deepen, looking into that, allowing the consciousness to expand, to refine, grow brighter. In the Insight Meditation tradition, which is the tradition that most of the retreats at Gaia House are sort of based on, really, the calmness does receive some emphasis. This aspect of calming the mind, developing a kind of collectedness, it really does have a central place in that. But it's not so prominent. It's not something that's given too much emphasis. And there are all kinds of reasons for that, and that's fine. It's a beautiful way of practising, insight meditation.
But if one goes back to the teachings of the Buddha, which this tradition is based on, one finds enormous encouragement to develop calmness, develop samatha. And he says things like, "The pleasure of calmness, that pleasure, that is a pleasure I will allow myself."[1] Or, "This kind of pleasure, the pleasure of calmness, of tranquillity, should be pursued, should be developed, cultivated, should not be feared." So he's quite active in his encouragement of really learning to develop this skill very well, to give a lot of attention to this skill, this art, over one's life. So it's a journey, and it's an art, and it takes time. But over time, and who can say how much time, we do find a kind of lovely abiding in calmness. There's a sense that tranquillity, samatha, really is a beautiful dwelling place for the heart, for the being. It's very healing. Has enormous healing potential, calmness, through the being. Healing for the mind, healing for the emotions, healing physically. It's very nourishing.
And there's huge insight that comes from the practice of calmness. So in the tradition of Insight Meditation, that's what we really focus on, this development of insight, development of seeing clearly, seeing deeply into life in a way that brings a sense of freedom, a sense of letting go of suffering in one's life. But calmness itself brings a tremendous amount of insight. It's also, we could say, the best possible soil for that kind of clarity of insight to take root in. So the best possible inner conditions will be conditions of samatha, to see clearly, to see deeply into life.
And it's interesting. I just had a quick look at the forms, and I know some of you are very new, and some have a lot of experience, and everything in between. So it's interesting to me, anyway: we tend to think of insight being the only thing, insight meditation, that sort of path, as being the only way that the Buddha taught, but it seems to me that he taught at least three different paths leading to this kind of very radical liberation in life, radical freedom from suffering in life and stress. One was certainly through insight and that kind of looking. One was through the development of loving-kindness and compassion, joy, equanimity, that whole path. And a third path is the development of samatha, the deepening of calm. Somehow, for whatever reasons -- we don't need to go into them -- we've sort of put all the eggs in the first basket of insight meditation, and the other two, the development of loving-kindness, of compassion, etc., as leading towards this kind of very profound liberation in life, of calmness leading towards that, we've tended to maybe not be so aware of that, not put so much emphasis on it.
Ānanda, who was, as some of you know, he was the Buddha's cousin and his sort of attendant, his sort of right-hand man. And I think it was after the Buddha died, and Ānanda said, "Of all the people, men and women who have come to me saying, 'That's it. Done it. That's the end of the path. I've realized the end of suffering,'" what's called an arahant, a fully enlightened being, all the people that came to Ānanda and said that, he said there are three types, three types of people, and that covers all of them. "The first type is a person who develops samatha, develops calmness first, and then develops the insight. The second type is a type who develops the insight first, and then develops the samatha, the tranquillity. And the third type is the type who develops them both together."[2] So in other words, he's saying there's no option, there's no way out but to look into this over our lifetime.
So sometimes it's possible that we come on retreat, or a retreat like this, and we have a sense, "Well, it's a bit selfish, or it's a bit self-indulgent," and maybe -- you know, I don't know what's happened in the days coming up to the retreat, if friends, family, etc., "What are you going to do that for? It's a bit selfish," or whatever. Or sometimes we're very clear about our aspiration, that we are involved in spiritual seeking, involved in the path because we care about the planet, because we care about the plight of the earth and all the inhabitants of the earth. That can be and is for many people very central to their whole path and their whole reason for practising. So it can seem, when I'm just developing this calmness, that it has kind of nothing to do with that, has nothing to do with action and service and giving and that kind of thing.
But there's something about developing this inner resource of tranquillity, of calmness, of brightness of mind, strength of mind, that's a real resource for ourselves and for others, tremendous resource in life. And it may be hard to see, but as we develop this, the more we develop this, basically the less needy we become. We need to actually consume less. We don't need this and that and that. Why? Because there is that inner reservoir, this inner resourcefulness of well-being, of calmness, of joy. Become less needy and less greedy. And that has its impact, of course, on the planet. We also become more available, much more available for ourselves and for others.
So obviously I don't have to spend much time kind of selling samatha to you, because you all signed up for the retreat. When we ask ourselves, "Okay, it sounds like a great idea, a great project, sign me up," and then we wonder, "Well, how do I develop it?" Sometimes in our life, it seems like calmness, tranquillity, is kind of random. It's like you wake up in the morning, you don't know what's going to be there, or later on in the day. It's just moods come in and they come out, mind states come in, come out. It can all seem pretty random. Or it can seem that the mind state is totally dependent on what comes to us externally. Someone says you're an idiot, you didn't do that very well, or says you look 43 when you're really 41 or something, and ... It can seem either that the mind state is random or that it depends completely on what's coming to us. What the Buddha emphasized over and over again is that mind states, especially calmness, is developable. We have the ability to learn this skill, to cultivate it.
So that's what I want to go into over the days here. And how does calmness develop? How can we develop this skill? How can we walk the path of this art? It actually has to do with a lot more things than meditation, a lot more things. It has to do with, in a way, our whole life. Everything touches on calmness. Everything, everything, everything in our life. This retreat is a little bit unusual for a number of reasons, just a little bit unusual. Partly because we're very much focusing on developing a quality like calmness. Partly also because in a usual insight meditation retreat, the teacher, I would talk about one's whole life, and the whole range of experience, and bringing insight and clarity and awareness and compassion into all of that. This retreat's a little bit different, because mostly what I'm going to be talking about is meditation and meditation techniques. Really want to get into the nuts and bolts of that, and kind of the subtleties of that, and really hopefully so that we can get some of the tools, kind of the tools of the trade of calmness.
So if we just talk about meditation for a few moments, the kinds of meditation that lead to calmness are numerous -- I mean, absolutely staggering number. Wouldn't even want to hazard a guess how many different techniques. Even within traditional Buddhist teachings, there's loads. So the development of loving-kindness, of compassion, of equanimity, working with the breath certainly, sweeping the attention through the body can lead to calmness, insight practice itself can also lead to calmness. It's massive. And even within the breath, kind of breath meditations, there's a whole range of approaches to breath meditation.
I don't really care, personally, about any of that. I don't really care what technique one uses. In general I don't care. It's fine. If it's leading in that direction, it's fine. However, for this retreat, I'm going to focus very much on one technique and really developing that, and one technique, using the breath and the whole body and kind of going into that a lot. Like I said, I don't really care. The calmness is the important thing, not the technique. But for the sake of this retreat, if you already have a practice, you're already used to something, I would just ask and encourage, in a spirit of exploration, in a spirit of experimentation, in the spirit of letting go and non-attachment, just to kind of let go of whatever technique you're used to with the breath or whatever else it is and just to try what I'm offering. Like I said, I don't really care, so if after a couple of days it's really not working, let me know and we can finagle a deal. [laughter] And figure something out.
In a lot of Buddhist traditions, in the Insight Meditation tradition in particular, in some Zen traditions, in a lot of traditions, when there's the meditation on the breath, there's often a strong encouragement not to control the breath. Right from day one of the breath meditation, it's like, "Just don't control the breath, don't try and make it any particular way. Just however it is, let it be that way." I've actually never had anyone been able to tell me, in twenty-whatever years of practice, why that is. No one ever gave me a reason that satisfies me. I think sometimes -- what I'm getting at is we're basically going to be controlling the breath a little bit. I think one of the concerns that people would have with controlling the breath is that there's this assumption, perhaps, my guess, that if you control the breath, you're feeding into that habit and that predisposition of controlling life. We do have a kind of addiction to controlling, manipulating, fixing everything so that it goes according to how I want it.
But to me, it's a little bit unexplored here. I don't think that working with the breath, developing a breath that really feels good, nourishing, energizing, soothing to the whole body, I'm not sure that that necessarily leads to an increase in the kind of control-freak mindset. I really would question that. We could go into this very deeply, but just to say something very short right now. We can feel like we're not controlling. I mean, very deep insight, we can feel like we're not controlling, in life or with the breath or whatever, but there's often a very subtle controlling going on. And to begin to explore this whole area of control, it's almost like we see more clearly the whole picture of control and letting go of control, and we see what that is.
Sometimes also in certain traditions, in insight meditation as well, there's a strong encouragement, "Be with things as they are. Don't change anything. Just be with how it is," as if that had some kind of ultimate significance, or as if that was the goal of the path -- the goal of the path is to be with things as they are. And it's absolutely not the goal of the path. The goal of the path is something much deeper, much more freeing, much more radical than that. So certainly there's a real beauty, a lovely beauty in the approach of not going to change anything, not going to fix anything, not going to make anything less or more, just hands off, openness and observing. Beautiful. But it can only ever be one strand of the path. It can only ever be one strand. Because this being with things as they are without interfering is not the goal. It's also not even the ultimate truth of things.
So in a way, we are moving towards something here. We're interested in developing something. We're not just passive observers. We're interested in developing calmness. As I said, usually I would talk a lot about the whole range of one's life experience and bringing insight into that. I'm just mostly going to talk about meditation. Similarly, with the meditation interviews that we'll have, there are a lot of people here, so we're just actually going to have groups for the most part, group interviews. Usually in an insight meditation retreat, if you haven't done one before, anything goes -- well, not anything, but almost anything. So you can speak about anything you want in an interview, anything that's happening in one's life, and bringing insight into it, bringing that openness of inquiry into it. This retreat, somewhat of an encouragement just to really bring the meditation practice and the technique and just to bring that into the interview and really focus on that, really get into that over these days.
Also -- I honestly thought this was going to be a tiny retreat, so I'm quite surprised that there are so many people here. Because it's only possible to do group interviews, one of the things that potentially happens in groups, and especially in groups when the meditation is kind of, in a way, trying to develop something like calm, is this terribly painful pattern that we have in life of measuring and comparing our experience with others. It will be groups of eight or so in interviews, and a person can be shy about saying, "Oh, well, they seem to be doing great, and I'm still struggling with whatever." Or a person can feel too shy to say that it's going really well or whatever. How much, how much this comes into our life, and the self and the ego wrap itself around anything, any social situation, that's basically just there for the sake of learning, for the sake of compassion, for the sake of deepening. Somehow the self comes in and makes a problem out of it. And it's very understandable. So in a way, I guess I'm just mentioning this to say please, an encouragement -- I'll say this again -- just to let that go, and just to kind of let go in the interviews and speak one's truth and how one is. It can be okay that there are people with different experiences, and levels of experience, and practice histories, and all that. It doesn't have to be a problem. Maybe just to watch what happens in the heart around that.
I don't know if it's an exclusively Western thing. I've practised in some Eastern environments and they don't even blink about -- a group of people with very different experiences, just reporting their experience to a teacher, it's just not an issue. It may be a Western thing. I don't know. But please don't be shy about that. Hopefully there will be some time for question and answer sessions as well as interviews. So I hope there are going to be a lot of questions. Sometimes I'm a little puzzled why there are so few questions about sort of basic meditation technique. Sometimes a person thinks, "Oh, I just need to follow the breath and that's it." But really can that questioning be very alive?
Okay. So a few things, in a way, outside of the meditation -- not really outside, but. If you've not been on a meditation retreat before, if you've not been to Gaia House before, there's not really much happening here particularly. It's a pretty non-eventful kind of place, sitting and walking, a couple of bells go, eating and sleeping. That's like that for a reason. When it's quiet like that, we can focus on what the deeper intentions are in life. So sometimes we don't even know what the deeper intentions are, but just being here, there's a sense of that movement. Maybe it is very clear. But to have intentions, to be awake to one's intentions towards freedom, towards knowing what the truth is, towards a heart of expansive love, towards developing peace, towards developing happiness -- these are what the Buddha would call noble intentions. They're beautiful intentions. They're intentions of which we can be proud. They're also, you might translate it as 'ennobling.' Just having those intentions and acting on them actually brings a kind of beautiful nobility into one's heart, into one's life.
Intentionality, intentions are an extremely powerful force in our life, extremely powerful. Sometimes we don't quite see how powerful they are. Everyone showed up here, we're all here, so there was that much intentionality to show up. But intentions are not -- unfortunately, or maybe fortunately -- they're not permanent. We can have lovely, "I really want to go deeply into this retreat and apply myself and develop some calmness and be in the silence," etc., great, and then a little time goes by and we forget, or it's just gone, or it's slipped somewhere else. And you know, it's interesting to see where it slips to. It's rare that I've come across a meditator who has started out with a good intention and then reports it slipping and they say, "It's slipped, but now what I really want is complete world domination" or something. [laughter] It doesn't go places that dramatic. We barely notice the slip it makes. It just goes, "I just would like to be a bit more comfortable," things just being a bit more convenient or a bit more secure. How much intentionality in our life is towards that, a little bit more comfort, convenience, a little bit more security, a little bit more pleasure? And it's fine. It's just that, is that sapping away, is it eating away at the deeper and more positively transforming intentions of our life? So in a way, part of being on retreat is to be aware of the intentionality. And it's always going to be coming and going and shifting, and just to be aware and to kind of encourage it to get back on track. It's just a small shift.
So on any retreat, and perhaps particularly on this retreat where we're developing calmness, we want to kind of support that intentionality, really want to support those beautiful intentions and ask: how can I support these? One of the factors that's really important is taking care of one's heart, in one's life but especially on retreat. What do I mean by that? In a way, we could say that to take care of one's heart deeply, truly, is the whole path. That's what the path really means, it means to really take care of the heart. But it's also -- the Buddha puts it also at the sort of basis of the path. It's like there has to be a certain amount of just taking care of a general well-being, sense of well-being. That's the basis, that's the foundation on which then our practice rests. So that's an interesting question. How does that get there? How do we nourish that?
Some of this is about the qualities of, say, appreciation and gratitude. So often it's the case that our mind slips from a sense of appreciation and gratitude, and this is understandable. It's actually a very normal part of the human condition. Can we kind of nourish that fire a little bit while we're here? So that might take, it might take various forms. It might take just reflecting on what's here. This place is, in a way, it's amazing. So much is here. There's very little we have to worry about in terms of food and shelter and warmth and all that. The whole environment is set up. There are managers and there's staff and volunteers and teachers. Everything is coming together, a tremendous amount of work to create this environment. Sometimes being on retreat, it needs a kind of opening to that. One opens the eyes. So not necessarily just looking down at the feet all the time and not seeing what's around. Seeing the loveliness that made this possible, allowing some gratitude for that, actually reflecting on that. Or could be in one's life, what has enabled one to be here. A little bit of reflection from time to time on this is really nourishing to the whole sense of being on retreat.
The power of nature, in terms of appreciation and gratitude. So almost all the retreats at Gaia House, we don't say don't go beyond the front gate. Please do find some time every day for a walk if you can. If you got here early, maybe you went out, but if you haven't, it's very beautiful around here. To be outside and let that in, let the nature in, let that into the heart and let the practice be nourished by that. So appreciation and gratitude.
Second thing that really supports our whole being here is the silence, the atmosphere of silence, the climate of silence. So some people have a sense of the power of this, and for others it can be just a little strange at first. We're quite lucky, in this tradition, that there's an enormous amount of talk, we talk a lot about technique, and as I said, I will talk a lot about that. Some traditions, there's very little talking about technique. Some monastic traditions, there's no teaching at all. The monks or nuns are just kind of left to get on with it in themselves in an atmosphere of silence. And yet, oftentimes one meets those monks or nuns, tremendous transformation has taken place (over the long term, usually). Just from the power of silence. So something about it can perhaps seem a little weird. I guess I would just really wholeheartedly ask, almost beg you, to kind of surrender to the silence. Just really let yourself be in the silence, let the being open out to the silence. Tremendous power in there in terms of peace, in terms of calmness, in terms of transformation.
By keeping the silence, we're also of course supporting each other. It's
creating an atmosphere of calm, of quiet, where all of us can deepen in
practice together. So it's a gift to ourselves and to others.
One of the reasons I think silence feels a little bit weird or can feel
a little bit weird at first on retreat is that socially this is a very
odd situation. Here we are, I don't know how many people in the room,
forty-five or fifty or whatever, and we're here for five days, and we're
not talking to each other, except me to you and you to me. And there can
be, if one relaxes into the silence, if one opens the being to the
silence, almost allows the silence to embrace one, embrace the senses,
that there is a sensitivity that develops that feels a connection to
others, a very deep connection in and through the silence, that it's not
just through the words that we feel connected. So that kind of
connection is also an important thing that feeds a sense of well-being
that will feed the calmness in the meditation.
So many of you, most of you I think, will be sharing rooms. So if you haven't met your roommate, maybe you just want to kind of introduce yourself tonight, later, and just say hello, and agree to just keep the silence for the retreat. That's really a gift to each other, as I said. In the age of mobile telephones, just please maybe switch them off and don't use them, don't use them for five days. Texting is silent. Apart from those little beeps it doesn't make much noise. But it's not really in the spirit of silence. It's not going to nourish the practice in the same way. So maybe, as I said, just turning the mobile phone off and putting it in the suitcase or whatever.
So appreciation and gratitude, silence. Something about simplicity. Again, there's not much happening here. It's a very simple kind of lifestyle for five days. Extremely simple. If, it being Friday night, if there's some business that you arrived with that kind of didn't quite get finished or some ends that need tying up, just see if you can take care of that tonight, either on the mobile phone if you just walk beyond the end of the path at the front, or there's the pay phone around the back. Just see if that can be taken care of, please. And then, please, if you haven't already, to feel yourself arrive here. Just maybe walk around, walk around in the garden at the back, at the front, walk around in the house, just feel yourself arriving at Gaia House, landing.
So the simplicity of the day here, the simplicity of the schedule, is something that we can really, in a way, surrender to, and 'surrender' is I think a beautiful word and a beautiful quality. It's not something that we tend to talk about much in the culture, but can there be a quality of surrendering to the simplicity, surrendering to the schedule? So sometimes we have a look at the schedule and we think, "I don't know. I think I'm a bit tired now, I'll miss the last one or lie in or whatever." Please, an encouragement to really embrace the fullness of the schedule, that quality of surrender. In deep samatha practice, that quality of surrender is actually very important. We can begin cultivating it in all kinds of ways.
So one more little thing. A couple more little things. Most Buddha statues are sitting down for some reason. I don't know why that is. The Buddha didn't place a hierarchy of postures. So the sitting posture is really not a big deal. We're going to be moving between sitting and walking postures in terms of the meditation. Usually there is this complete equality. For this retreat we're going to just very slightly privilege the sitting posture just because at the beginning of samatha practice it does help it. The schedule is quite full, but if you can, either at the meal breaks or some other time, find time for a walk outside and take in the nature, and take in the colour, and take in the air, and take in the spaciousness -- really helpful. If, also, you can find some time in the day for some exercise, that would be good, either if you do yoga or tai chi or qigong. It doesn't have to be anything Oriental. It can also just be bench presses or whatever. Whatever you like. Something to get the energy moving in the body. It's quite related to the deepening of samatha. It might be that you want to get up early and do that, or you find the time in the day to do that. If you can't, if that's too much, take one of the walking periods and take it as an exercise period, okay?
Okay. Just last thing. I think Nick in the opening talk talked about the ethical guidelines, the five ethical precepts. And the Buddha put tremendous emphasis on this. Every retreat at Gaia House has these at their foundation. When the Buddha talked about developing meditation, developing samatha, this was absolutely, unquestionably the foundation. No concern for ethics, no concern for how we are with others, the care, the respect, the love that we live with -- you can forget about meditation, forget about really deepening in it. So it's absolutely a basis of the practice. So Nick went through them: not killing, not harming, not taking what is not given, in the case of this retreat an abstinence from intentional sexual activity, in the case of this retreat noble silence, just keeping the silence, and not indulging in alcohol, drugs, stimulants that cloud the mind.
What a different world it would be if everyone just kept those five. What a hugely different world it would be. So we're here together as a sort of micro-community. And to undertake, to try and follow those precepts is again a gift to everyone here. It's a gesture of love, a gesture of support and respect. It really enables everyone, as much as possible, to kind of let down the guard, so that the being can relax and the calmness can come, hopefully. When we don't pay attention to the ethics in our life, there's not much of a sense of outer peace. If we had to watch our backs here, there wouldn't be much of a sense of outer peace, not much of a sense of inner peace. But the care for the ethics allows that outer peace that allows the inner peace.
Okay. That's plenty of talking for now.
