Transcription
Last night, I talked about working with the hindrances, and how very much the development of samatha, deepening in samatha, involves working with that which is difficult, working with the hindrances, finding a skilful response to all of that. So tonight and tomorrow night, I want to explore a little bit more how samatha develops, how we can develop in that whole path.
So right away, there's this word samatha. And I'm translating it mostly as 'calmness' or 'tranquillity.' I think that's the correct translation. There's a similar word called samādhi. Both these words bear similar concepts, sometimes get translated as something like 'concentration.' And that's the typical word we use: "I want to concentrate." To me, it's not the most helpful word, because it tends to suggest one of two things. One, to me it suggests something like concentrated laundry detergent or something: a lot of stuff in a very small area, packed very densely. And we can tend to think of concentration that way, as a kind of microscopic narrowing down of the attention. Some meditation traditions in Buddhadharma, some meditation traditions really talk about concentration that way -- it's a refining of the microscope of attention.
But I think these words, samatha and samādhi -- which usually get translated as 'concentration' -- actually mean something broader than that, and something a little different, or actually quite a lot different. What it means really to me is a kind of calmness, certainly, a collectedness of mind, a kind of unification of the mind and the body and the consciousness. Perhaps 'depth of meditation' is a very good way of putting it. There's a deepening of the meditation.
Another possible thing, or idea, quality that we think of when we hear the word 'concentration' is just staying, sticking on one object. And certainly that can be part of what samatha and samādhi means: just staying, in our case, in this retreat, with the breath. But it could be anything. It could be the body sensations, or the mettā, or whatever. And that's a part of what samatha is, a part of it. But again, samatha is something much broader. It's certainly a kind of stability of mind through staying with one thing, but it involves something much more: a kind of real sense of well-being, calmness, depth, brightness, energizing.
When we go into it, and what it means, and what it means for us in our life, and what it means experientially, in the long kind of picture, there's a whole range of states of that deepening. So it can just deepen. And the Buddha kind of classified a number of very discrete states, noticeable states. That's very helpful, and tomorrow I'm going to go into that a little bit. But we can also just think about it as a continuum, so we're just deepening. We don't need to kind of classify it in any way, measure it in any way. It's just a deepening into calmness. And this development of samatha is really -- maybe just from the couple of days here, you can get a sense how it could be a lifelong exploration. There's so much to this. There's such a richness to it, such an art to it, that in a way, it really is a lifelong dedication to exploring the depths of consciousness, the possibilities of consciousness.
As samatha deepens, there's also an expanding of the perception. The usual perceptions that we have in life, the everyday, normal perceptions which we take so much for granted -- and I'll go into this much more tomorrow -- as it deepens, they begin to get questioned. So this lifelong exploration is not only into the depths and the possibility of consciousness; it's also into the whole question of reality and perception. And with all that comes a profound rest to the body, to the being, to the heart, to the mind -- immensely valuable. Through that comes an availability to ourselves, to life, to others.
What I might call 'receptivity' is also a factor that is, in a way, awakened and opened as the samatha deepens -- just a sense of being in life in a more open way, open to receive the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of life at deeper and deeper levels. This is really, really precious in our practice. And in general, a whole range of fresh discoveries and perceptions that come out of this, out of the deepening of samatha.
To be a human being is an amazing thing. It's absolutely incredible. We have this capacity to develop skills more than any other certainly creature on earth. We have the capacity to develop skills over an enormous range, the kind of skills that a human being can develop. And it's quite amazing if one just reflects for a second. Some of them are absolutely beautiful -- you know, wondrous skills of a dancer or an athlete, a footballer, or a musician. Incredible, beautiful. And some are just not helpful, and some are just a bit weird. So, I don't know, when you were a kid, did you, or maybe you still do, you could pile coins up on your elbow? Have you ever done this? And then you do this, and you catch them. [laughter] You can get really skilful at this. If you look in the Guinness Book of Records, I think the record for how many coins is something like 134 or something ridiculous, 10p pieces there. You think this person must have had huge hands, but. [laughter] Amazing, but kind of, so what? What do we have at the end of that? We have in our life a limited amount of time. Our time is short and limited. And we have a limited amount of energy. What are we going to develop as a skill? What are we going to invest in in our life? This is a really important question. What is worth developing, and worth investing in? We can invest in and develop all kinds of things.
So to learn the skill gradually over our lifetime of collecting the awareness, gathering the energy, stilling the mind, that brightness, that depth, that opening -- this is really a skill worth developing. Really, really. It's interesting how easy it is to underestimate the power and the significance of that. I've touched on this repeatedly, but it's still quite interesting to me how much I feel like I still need to say it, even though it's a samatha retreat and I assumed everyone would kind of be up for it, but. The Buddha said repeatedly, as I've said many times, "This is a pleasure I will allow myself. This is a pleasure to be pursued, to be developed, to be cultivated, not to be feared."
So we think of the path and we think of insight meditation, but as I've said, there's a number of paths which the Buddha laid out. Insight meditation is certainly one of them, leading to liberation. The practice of loving-kindness and compassion and the brahmavihāras, also a path leading to full liberation. This hasn't got the same kind of airplay yet. Also, the third path that the Buddha outlined is samatha, leading to complete liberation -- not something that is in the consciousness much in the Dharma in the West yet.
And so there is that, leading to the insight, and also as I've said, this sense of well-being, of healing, of the quality of life, a sense of awe and wonder coming in very much. Aliveness. So maybe, we're talking a lot about the sitting practice and working with the breath, and very much that's the technique that I'm trying to get you established on a little bit. We were also talking about the walking. So there can be samatha in the walking, a real collectedness in the walking, or a presence there, steadiness of presence. We might be walking up and down, on the walking path, and a car drives up the drive, or leaves Gaia House, or whatever, and the attention just, "Who's that? Who's coming? What is it? What's going on?" And somehow, we aren't realizing it, and we're just there. And we say, "So what if I look? So what if I look up? What difference does it make?" And of course, ultimately speaking, it doesn't make any difference. Who cares? I don't care. It doesn't really make any difference. But we may be missing out on the deeper kind of treasures by not developing the samatha.
There's also an aspect that -- how to put it? -- if, for example, we're sitting, and there's an itch going on, and the impulse is just to scratch it. "What's going on?" One just scratches the itch. The mind is just moving, moving to what's calling it, moving to where it seems to need the attention. Being pulled, basically, usually by greed or aversion. And it'll be pulled in impulsive reactivity. Again, of course it doesn't matter if we scratch an itch, you know. It's not really the end of the world. But scratching an itch impulsively, reactively, is a kind of microcosm of a bigger impulsive reactivity which, in our lives, and on a global scale, is not that different from what happens when nations are a little bit puffing their chest up, what we've got going on with Iran and the hostages and all that. The ego is kind of like an itch, and we need to pump it up, and we're reacting to someone saying or not saying, or something to our ego. It's the same movement of impulsive reactivity.
Through the samatha, we're learning actually not to be so pulled, not to be so pulled. It starts with small things -- itches, pains, whatever -- and eventually, it becomes this genuine non-reactivity in life. How much of the world's misery, how much of the conflict, the pain that human beings cause each other, is actually down to this, that kind of impulsive reactivity? Whether it's anger, or someone putting someone else down and then needing to react, whatever it is.
So this development of samatha has many benefits. I'll touch on them tonight and tomorrow. One of them is what we might call -- it's a strange word in a Dharma setting, but personal power, in the sense of how often have we been in a situation, a relationship or a difficult situation with another, and we feel like we're not able to actually stay with our truth, and stay steady, and say what we need, or communicate our truth, or whatever it is? The being is too shaky, too flimsy. There's a way that strength comes into the being, power -- not as power over, but just as power in oneself. That comes into the being through the samatha practice, one of the ways it comes into the being.
And certainly anyone who's tried to or been involved in a creative project that takes a long time -- if you write a novel, or write a symphony, or something that really takes a steadiness of effort -- the samatha is hugely important for that, just showing up over and over. This samatha, what we're doing here, has a way of working into the being, and giving it a kind of steadiness of showing up. One just shows up every day with whatever it is, the creative project, whether it's artistic or otherwise. Similarly with service. How easy it is to waver when we're involved in service work because there isn't quite that strength and that steadiness.
And of course, samatha has huge implications for insight, massive implications for insight. If you've done some insight meditation, how common it is for -- maybe everyone who's done insight meditation knows this -- you're on retreat, you see something: "Yeah, I understand impermanence. I really see it," or "I really see this pattern, this particular psychological pattern that I get into. I really see that. I really understand it." And then the end of the retreat comes, and we leave Gaia House, and very soon it's just crumbled, it's just gone. Where's it gone? Why didn't it stay? How common this is. There's something about samatha that, to use Jesus's analogy, the seeds of insight are landing on fertile ground, and they can go deep and really take root, so when we see something in an insight way, it's actually making a difference in a way that lasts in our life, in a way that's not fragile.
It's also, as I've said, the prime kind of soil for us to have insights in the first place -- a mind that's deeply calm, deeply receptive, open, malleable, bright, tender, sensitive. This is the kind of mind that has insight very easily, very intuitively and quickly, and not just on the mental level. So insights come, and they really stick. And we could say, on one level, we hear a lot of talk, or hopefully we hear a lot of talk in Dharma circles about this idea of non-self, anattā, this no-self business and emptiness and stuff. It can be very, very hard to understand that without some kind of more deep samatha -- very, very difficult.
What's happening when the mind is quietening down and calming in samādhi, in a way, the gross levels, the gross activities of the ego and the self are getting quieter. It's just like putting them to sleep a little bit, and experiencing this moment, this life, without that hyperactivity, that frenetic activity of the self, without such a built-up self. So in a way, the samatha is giving us a taste of what it is to have the self be less and less prominent, less and less active. And similarly have the world and the world of experience and separation and this and that be less and less prominent, and less and less active. We'll talk about this tomorrow night, but there's a real link between the samatha deepening and very deep insights into emptiness deepening.
As I pointed out at some point, the first thing that usually happens when we sit down to meditate and say, "Okay, calmness, great. I want some of that," is we notice that's not what the mind does. It's not calm. There's a lot of agitation. There's a lot of thinking -- tomorrow, yesterday, this and that. In a way, as I said at some point, we have lifetime habits of inattention, lifetime habits of not being present, of not being collected. Slowly, slowly in this practice, it's a very gradual practice, and the most basic level, just the steadiness that's expressed by just showing up to the sittings, the commitment, just that is giving a steadiness to the heart and the mind. Just that much, just showing up, just being here, just putting in some effort, at the most basic level. It's not insignificant.
That steadiness, again, works its way into the being, and brings a kind of strength with it, just from showing up. Anyone who's trying to live in an honest way, in an open way, certainly anyone who's walking the path knows that it's not easy. We're absolutely challenged on this path, challenged to live with openness and integrity, and we need every bit of strength that we can get -- a strength that's pliable. Not a rigid or brittle strength, but a strength that's open, and in a way, tender too. And I think we often don't realize the significance of that and how much we need it.
So oftentimes, in insight practice, etc., we hear, "Let go, let go. Just let go. Don't be attached," etc. And, you know, wonderful, but we find it's actually very difficult to let go. It's very difficult to let go. How much we're aided in the letting go by a sense of well-being. As much well-being as there can be, that's the degree to which the letting go is aided and enabled. When we feel that there's some sense of inner resource, it's much easier to let go of things, inner and outer. Much, much easier. I see this over and over and over with people. And oftentimes people have done decades of meditation -- very, very little emphasis on cultivation, and most of the emphasis on just being in the present moment. And there are just patterns that repeat for years and years and years. Not enough leverage from the inner resources to let go, not enough sense of okayness from which we can let go.
And so, I'm actually not going to go into -- we've been talking a lot about technique on this retreat, so I'm not going to say much more about, in technical terms, how it develops, because I was giving a lot of information about that.
When the Buddha was asked, "Okay, what is it that helps? What's the most significant help for concentration, for samādhi, for samatha?", he didn't blink, and he said "Happiness." Happiness is what's called the 'proximate cause.' It's the thing that most supports a sense of samatha deepening, of calmness deepening. At first you think, "Ah, that's strange."
Happiness is certainly the fruit of samatha. And a little while ago -- I can't remember when it was; a few weeks ago -- I was reading this article in the newspaper, and they'd just done a series of tests measuring electrical output in the brain with meditators and non-meditators. They found a significant difference between the meditators and the non-meditators -- finding, I think it was, that the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated with positive emotion, gets a lot of stimulation of its activity in an ongoing way. And the right prefrontal cortex, which I think is negative kind of emotions, gets subdued.
They also found, interestingly, that at about 10,000 hours of meditation, there's quite a dramatic sort of quantum leap. [laughter] I say this to encourage you. [laughter] Me and one of the managers a little while ago, we did a little of the arithmetic, and 10,000 hours is quite a lot. So you're certainly not going to get up to that on this retreat, but to experiment. Apparently there's a dramatic kind of shift that happens. I don't know. [laughter]
Of course, people of practice have known this for yonks. I mean, it goes back to the Buddha, and before that in fact. But it's also something that a person of practice, a person dedicated to exploring this, there's no question about it. I read that article, and it was like -- there was nothing at all surprising in it. I didn't know about this right/left thing, but. It's very clear to a person who dedicates themselves to practice in this way. Happiness is the fruit, certainly. But the Buddha is saying happiness is also the basis. And this is why I said right in the opening talk, and keep repeating it: look for, nurture, encourage a sense of appreciation when you're here. It really will feed the mind calming, settling down, deepening. It will feed that sense of happiness. And actually any practice you do, any meditative practice you do needs that support, some sense of a sense of well-being on which to rest.
So we need to think about gratitude, appreciation, looking around us and taking in what's beautiful, what's wonderful, what touches us. It can be, as I've said, appreciation for what's here, what the managers give us, the wonderful work they do. It can be gratitude for one's life in general. It can be love of the teachings for some people -- just love being in a Dharma environment, love hearing the teachings and practising. Nature, as I keep saying, opening to nature, taking that in -- hugely significant. Love of simplicity, or feeling nourished by the simplicity. General kind of receptivity. So again, receptivity as a fruit, but receptivity as a base. Including the sense of connection with others here practising together. So going back to what we were talking about -- eye contact, should we or shouldn't we? Is it a good idea or not? For some people, it will just be distracting. For others, it's extremely nourishing. It brings a sense of connection. We want the juices to flow in the heart. The more there is that appreciation, that gratitude, that sense of loveliness of connection, the more the samatha can deepen, and the deeper the freedom that's accessible.
As I've touched on several times, as well, we seem to have this, in a way, magnet towards what's difficult, and part of what samatha is doing, part of where happiness comes in, is we're retraining that obsession with what's difficult, and just taking the mind, "Okay, this is difficult. I'm just going to find something okay, or pleasant, or just comfortable," and just keep the mind there as much as possible, as a way of nourishing and healing. Don't always have to be pulled into the problem. And this is really a habit, and habits are things to be retrained. They can be retrained. So usually, as I say, we're either pulled into what's difficult, or we're fleeing it in some unskilful way -- refrigerator, TV, beer, whatever it is.
Again, feeding the nourishment of well-being. We're here together as a community of practitioners. We're a community practising together. So it can be that we come to Gaia House, and "I want my peace and quiet. I want to get some samatha. I want to get some concentration," and I'm not seeing this bigger picture of us all practising together, how precious and how beautiful that is. If I'm too much into "My calm, my quiet, don't bother me," I will strangle the life out of certainly the happiness, certainly the sense of well-being, and certainly the samatha. I just squeeze the life and the joy and the juice out of it.
Sometimes, it's worth just reflecting, if the other people here -- who, when we're in a moment of aversion, can seem very troublesome; we wish they'd all kind of go away or just be quiet or just leave me to it -- reflecting that if they weren't here, I wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be here. There would be no retreats. There would be no Gaia House. So just a little bit reflecting on what a necessary coming together this all is.
Okay, so in time, gradually, this samatha, this samādhi begins to deepen, and it doesn't deepen in a linear way. There's no such thing as someone descending this smooth and well-oiled slope into the depths of bliss and luminosity, etc. And if someone comes into an interview and they report that, I'm highly sceptical of their experience and what they're saying. As I was talking about last night, learning to expect the waves, very much learning to expect the ups and downs. It's part of the deepening process. Learning to accept the fact of the hindrances being there. Learning to work with them. Learning sometimes just to see them out, just to ride them out.
I've said this twice now, and I'll say it again: with the hindrances, as much as possible, not to be taken for the ride, into the story, into the proliferation of all the, "It's about this, and I need to do this and that, and this needs to happen, or this doesn't need to happen." Can we just see it for what it is, the energy? And almost just feel it as an energy, in the body perhaps, an uncomfortable energy. As much as possible, out of the story. As much as possible, too, out of the self-evaluation: "It means that it's all gone wrong. I can't meditate. I'm useless. I'm a failure." Just recognizing, not taking it personally, bringing some kindness into the practice, some kindness in relation to all of this.
What happens when that non-involvement in the hindrances is accessible more and more? We begin to see, and to learn, and to be able, that we don't always need to give a significance, or a reality, or a kind of solidity to something that's going on, to concepts or to things, even if they're things that seem kind of helpful on a psychological level.
Something that someone was saying to me the other day, not on this retreat: "I don't know who I am, and I don't know myself, and I'm not manifesting as an adult yet," and a whole range of psychological ideas about where she was, or where she wasn't. Some of that may be extremely valuable at times, you know, to talk in terms of self, and growing up, and what we're manifesting in the world. Are we able to put all that down? Are we able to say, "Actually, I don't have to look at what's going on right now like that. I don't have to get involved in that whole swirl of concepts about that, even if it seems psychologically valuable"? Do I have a choice? Do I have a choice, so that I can pick it up, and it can be useful, I can work on that level, and find some healing, and some growth, and some transformation on that level, and I can also just put it down? Because even those kind of concepts, they can be helpful, but they can also just be leading to suffering, to dukkha, to entanglement. Like I said yesterday at the end of the talk, that side of the samatha, just letting go of the hindrances, is the kind of unsexy side. It's not particularly glamorous, but huge in the kind of relief and space it brings into the being.
When we come to a practice of collecting the mind, of samādhi or whatever, it's very common either before a person even starts, or during the course of it, to have some objections, and feel like, "I don't know about this. You know, I'm really not sure." There are about five that are very, very common. I want to go through them and explore them a little bit, reasons why it seems like this is not such a good idea, and maybe I should just go to an open practice, and be with what is in the present moment. So they are: the tightness that can come into a practice like this. That's the first one. The second one: the relationship with goals, and goal orientation, and the possibility of striving. The third one: the possibility of attachment, that we can get attached to any kind of pleasure or calmness. The fourth one: the possibility that just paying attention to one thing, and developing pleasure and enjoyment in that, we may be suppressing some other emotion or some difficult emotion that we need to feel. And the fifth one: how on earth could it be possible that enjoying myself in meditation could possibly be good for me?
Okay, so let's take these in order. (1) The tightness. Sometimes a person will feel, "I keep trying to work with the breath," and we've worked with the different kinds of breath, and lengthening the breath, and finding a nice breath, or just staying with one object -- it can feel a bit cramped, as if the whole thing is becoming a bit cramped. If then a person gives up, and says, "I'll just go to an open practice. I'll just be with whatever arises," what will happen at that point is, "Ahh! That was a relief!" And that will feel like, "Okay, this is obviously the better thing to do, is to just not do that," and just let go of what feels like a contraction around being with one thing. But maybe that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Is it possible -- it's not necessarily easy, but it's part of the art, part of the skill that's developed here -- is it possible to learn to practise this this way with the samatha, learn to deepen the calmness, and not get too tight around it, or perhaps not get very tight at all? If we talk about samatha/samādhi as qualities of being, they have, it has a softness in it. It's not rigid. It's not brittle. It's not tight. It has a quality of a real tenderness, softness in it.
Like I said at some point today, can there be a slightly bigger sense to the awareness, almost a backdrop sense, so the breath and the breath energy, the energy in the body are foremost? In the background, one's aware of the whole body, and what's the relationship with the practice. Am I getting too tight? I can notice that tightness come into the body. So I actually feel it as a physical contraction, and then just relax it. Just relax that tightness.
The Buddha says "sensitive to the whole body" for a number of reasons. One of them is obviously the pleasure that we're getting from the breath energy. The other one is that we'll pick up on this kind of, "When am I getting too tight in relation to the practice?" And it will be reflected in the subtle body sense, and we can respond to that. So we can feel that tightness and just relax it physically. It's something we can keep in the background of the awareness, and just keep responding to it. It's part of the practice. It's not something extra. If one comes to samatha, and comes to a practice like this, and says, [rolling up sleeves] "Right, I'm going to do this thing! I'm going to ...!", and grits the teeth, and rolls up the sleeves -- again, squeeze the life out of it, squeeze the living daylights out of it. It's not going to work. There has to be, as much as possible, from the beginning, a responsiveness to the quality of, the presence or absence of, that softness in the practice.
And again, as I've said, an atmosphere of kindness, just as much as possible. It's not easy, I know, sometimes, but encouraging a climate of kindness within which all this deepens. So that's another factor that we want to check, alongside the tightness: what's my relationship with myself doing this practice? Am I getting judgmental to myself? Am I putting pressure on myself? Am I getting irritated with myself? Sometimes that tightness is just there, and one has to accept the fact that there's tightness, and that's enough, and it will ease.
If we get too tight in the practice, what can happen is we're stimulating this restless mind. I talked about this yesterday as well. It's like, an analogy I use sometimes is a half-peeled banana, and the mind is sort of the banana, and we're too tight with it, and the banana just shoots off like that. The tightness will actually increase the amount of thinking that's going on and the amount of following of thought. So this business with tightness and effort and how much is a very, very delicate question, very, very subtle, and it just gets deeper and deeper, or more and more subtle, actually, the deeper we go into the samatha practice. So there's the tightness.
(2) There's the objection of goal orientation. This is huge for people. This is huge, this one. And in a way, I think it's a very large question, perhaps in the Dharma as a whole, and it is curious where we are as a whole Dharma community in the West on this question of goals and striving, and are we trying to get anything or not out of practice, and does it have a goal, and all that.
Bringing, as much as possible, an intelligence and a sort of integrity of questioning to this. So it seems to me goals are a part of life. They're just all the time in life. Can we learn to be with goals in a way that feels okay? Rather than throwing all the goals out, can we learn to be and relate to goals, and move towards goals and aspirations, in a way that feels okay? At 12:30 every day, the lunch bell goes, and then it's pretty much everyone's goal to get up and go to the lunch hall. Where's the problem in that? And then the food's on the plate, and the goal is to get it onto the fork or the spoon, and into the mouth. Not necessarily a problem. Or certainly if you're involved in a friendship or a relationship long term, one's kind of working with something, and towards something, both, and it takes a lot of work and a lot of time. There's a sense of direction, aspiration there, responsiveness.
Sometimes we just want to say about practice, "We shouldn't have goals. Shouldn't have goals. That's not spiritual," or whatever. And again, to really question this. Am I saying that? Am I saying we shouldn't have goals? Is one saying that? And what it's really about is the pain of the self, and a lack of self-esteem, or a lack of feeling of self-worth, of self-doubt or whatever. When there's a goal set up, what happens? The I, the self, feels itself in relationship to that in a negative way, in a lower way, and the weight of that, and the pain of that. How much is that coming into our whole view of goals itself? Because if it is, it's actually a distortion. It's very understandable and common. It's actually a distortion of the whole fact of things.
And it's difficult. It can be difficult to work with this, but can there be perhaps an appreciation for what is there in the practice? Sometimes, you know, in the interviews, you hear someone's got such-and-such an experience, and it's not where we are, or I say something, whatever. Can we keep with an appreciation of what we do have? Some sense of peace, some sense of well-being, some sense of pleasure and enjoyment, versus what we don't have.
Sometimes the objection to goals is more from the kind of almost philosophy of non-duality: "Well, if you set up a goal, you're really setting up a duality. You've got this goal, and then you're in duality, and when you're in duality it's a problem." There's some truth to that, but again, really, really not throwing the intelligence and the integrity of questioning out on this one. To really understand non-duality at a deep level means yeah, there's no goal, but there's also no "how I am," no "how it is."
So usually what happens, a person says, "I'm into non-duality. I'm just into being with what is, or just how it is in the present moment, not setting up a goal, because that's dualistic." A more authentic and deeper understanding of non-duality: no goal, no how it is. Both are empty. There's not even that reference point of how it is in the moment.
That may sound completely abstract, and partly the reason is we don't have enough samatha to understand it. Paradoxically, seemingly, the development of concentration, the development of this depth of meditation, is actually what enables us to understand a real, authentic, deep sense of non- duality, in a very real way, rather than just as a concept that gives reality to how things seem now, which is not the reality. So, there's the tightness, there's the goal orientation or the striving.
(3) The third possible objection is the question of attachment. I'll touch on this tomorrow as well. Samatha does not lead to attachment. It really doesn't. I'd say most of the time it doesn't, put it that way. This is my experience for myself, and through other people, many people I've worked with.
And it's interesting: we can make a fuss about being attached to, say, pleasure and enjoyment or comfort in meditation, or calmness, but we barely blink when there's attachment to wanting to live in a nice house, or this or that, or a role, or nice food or whatever. Somehow that's okay, and we don't really challenge that, but when it comes to someone's hearing that maybe it's good to develop some enjoyment in the meditation, it's like, "Well, hold on, hold on!" [laughter] That's what I'm saying about the integrity of the questioning, and the intelligence of the questioning. Can that be there?
So oftentimes I say to people when we're working on samatha, it's almost like, it's very curious, we need a sort of flashing neon light in our minds: "Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy." [laughter] (5) We can really trust that this is okay. This is the fifth one. I'll talk about this tomorrow. It really does lead to all kinds of fruits. I've already mentioned some, and I'll say more tomorrow.
My teachers, more than one of my teachers, would tell me, "Get attached. Get attached, Rob." And at first, I was so surprised, it was like, "Really?" [laughter] I didn't quite believe it. But one can get attached, because what happens is, one gets attached to a certain level of samatha, and then the whole meditation matures, deepens to another level, and that first level seems -- actually I've got attached to something else. It ripens, and we let go of a stage where we were attached before, and then we let go and we let go, and it moves on and on and on, and -- possibility -- to the end of all attachment, absolutely.
Slowly and gradually, and as I said, in a non-linear way, absolutely a non-linear way, over time (and this is a very short time, this retreat), but over time in our lives, we do begin to be less enticed by the sort of usual stuff that we're caught up in. The usual swirl of thought and emotion and this and that, and obsession about the future and the past, slowly it begins to lose its appeal. And we begin, almost like an acquired taste, we acquire the taste of calmness, of that depth of well-being. And it really is an acquired taste for some people. It really is something they need to acclimatize themselves to. But soon, or in time, it can be like, a thought begins, and we're in practice, and we don't even feel it's necessary to finish that thought. How interesting could it be anyway? It's just a thought. Most thoughts, you know, you've had them about 10,000 times before. It's very rarely creative, very rarely that helpful even. [laughter] Better just, "Yeah, whatever," just let it go, and one develops that capacity. It's just lost its pull. It's just a thought. Nothing is there at the end of that thought. There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of thought, absolutely not. But one knows: keeping with the steadiness, with the energy in the body, and the well-being, absolutely.
We talked about being open to the pleasure, open to the enjoyment to whatever degree in the meditation, whatever degree -- the comfort, or enjoyment, or pleasure. For some people, what happens is that energy begins to build, and either in a sudden way or in a gradual way, it kind of a little bit opens to something else, and it's called pīti, which is a Pali word, the language of the Buddha. Pīti, usually translated as 'rapture,' sometimes 'bliss,' sometimes 'ecstasy' or whatever. What it means really is any kind of pleasant feeling in the body, pleasant physical sensations arising, for our purposes now, from meditation, but actually can also come listening to music, or being open in nature; can come from a lot of different things.
This has a whole range of strength, a whole continuum. It can be very, very subtle, just some nice feeling somewhere in the body, really not that dramatic, to an absolute thunderbolt of lightning shocking through the body that is almost overwhelming in its strength, or floods of ecstasy. It can be anywhere on that continuum. In a way, in a very real way, the strength is not so important. We're not that interested in it being all that strong, necessarily. One of the reasons that I'm working on this particular technique for this retreat -- and as I've said, it's really not a big deal; you don't have to do this technique in one's life, it's just something I'm presenting -- is that this energy movement in the body that we've been working with, this qi in the body, there's not a big leap between that, and the pleasantness of that, and the pīti. So it kind of lends itself to the cultivation of this pīti, of this sense of physical pleasure. So that pleasure, it can be kind of a tingling, can be waves of a kind of nice feeling, of bliss, or can be a lightness, some sense of rising. Any physical pleasure at all. It can come in many different forms, and as I said, it can be strong or weak.
Why does it come? It's a very curious thing. Sometimes it's almost like the mind is rubbing against the breath, and it's causing this kind of gathering of energy, by just being there with the breath, or the mind is acting like a kind of capacitor, like an electric capacitor. It's storing energy, and because it's not being so distracted, and losing energy going to this and that, actually gathering energy. And then this energy begins to manifest physically, however it does.
Pīti sometimes is translated as 'interest,' so there's also an increase in interest at that point, sometimes even excitement. As I said, it doesn't always come just from meditation, and certainly not always just from concentration. It can be also from a general openness of heart and openness of being. That's why, when we're listening to music, or in nature, sometimes, for some people, it comes then. Or one's just, the heart is open, the channels of energy are open, and it can manifest, because the actual condition for pīti to arise is not so much concentration, staying with one object, as it is a non-entanglement with things. Not so entangled in past, future; not so entangled in what's going on in the present even. We have a relationship of non-entanglement. In that non-entanglement, this nice energy can arise.
I'm aware, saying this -- as I said, some people get it, some people don't, and in a way, it's just a matter of time. Not to grab too tightly to this, and any sense of achievement, or this, or that, or I haven't got it, or I have got it. Can we just, in a way, hear this as one possibility? In a way, all it is is the comfort I've been talking about, the little bit of pleasure that I've been talking about, the enjoyment. It's just that building and building and building. You don't have to make too much of a thing out of it. But if it's there, if that pleasure and that enjoyment are there, and a sense of pīti is there, it is something we want to encourage. We want to kind of nourish it. And it will deepen into other levels I'll talk about tomorrow.
Sometimes this sense of settledness in the meditation, or openness and maybe pleasant energy, is really quite fearful for people. There's quite a lot of fear comes up, or a kind of trembling with it. If the fear's really, really strong, really strong and also overwhelming, at that point, you just have to stop, take a few breaths, and maybe explore the fear in a kind of insight meditation way, actually be with the fear. If it's not too strong -- and this is quite common -- one finds oneself again in a situation where there's both a kind of pleasantness and a fear around, and if it's not too strong, without pushing the fear away, is it possible to just lean over the awareness into what's pleasant, and just enjoy it, and learn that we can trust it? So an analogy I used in one of the groups, it's a bit like you run a hot bath, and you're not quite sure how hot it is, so you put your toe in. It's okay. Then you put your foot in. That's okay. Then you put a bit more of your leg in. That's okay. Eventually, the same with the pīti, same with this pleasure in meditation: it's like something we can just open to and surrender to. Nothing in it at all to be afraid of. Something absolutely we can trust. But it may take time.
One of the other factors, [reasons] that fear can come up, is because as the samatha and the samādhi deepen, there can be less of, as I've said before, less of this very active sense of self. We begin to lose the sense of who I am. Who am I? Someone wrote a note: "Do I need to investigate that?" Not really right now. It's almost just getting used to a sense of being without such a prominent sense of self. Less sense of a doer, less sense of that. For some, that less sense of self is not very far from a kind of fear of annihilation of self. Who am I when I let go of the usual kind of thicket of thought and construct, and all that, that I usually take myself to be? Who am I then? It's a bit like dying for some. So again, nothing to be afraid of here. It's something we can gradually get a taste for and learn that we can completely trust it.
So again, a long talk. There's a lot to communicate on this retreat, so I apologize if it's long, but hang in there. [laughter]
A quality of deepening of samādhi, of samatha, it should have love in it. Again, it's not this kind of self-enclosed, removing everything, brittle, raw, that we put around consciousness, and just shutting everyone and the whole world out. Actually, in the tenderness of it, in the softness of it, in the openness of it, it has a quality of love in it. Sometimes even that pīti that someone was reporting today, it seems to have a love in it. Love for self, certainly, for others, for nature, for life, for everything. And this quality of receptivity, of openness, of openness to the mystery of life. It should have those qualities in it.
I have come across occasionally, very occasionally, people who are able to really deepen the samatha, sometimes to extraordinary depths, and somehow they've managed to do it without that quality of love in it. And in a couple of cases, something happened; suddenly something happened. In one case, there was a health crisis, quite a strong health crisis, and the whole thing crumbled. Because it was brittle, the whole thing crumbled, and the person's practice, and their insight and the whole package, just went out the window. But when there's that, and speaking also from personal experience, when there's that softness there and the love as part of the samatha, there can be something like a very severe health crisis, and somehow it just sustains through it. It really carries, and it works.
(4) Okay, last thing that I wanted to talk about was this fourth objection, which was: could it be that I'm suppressing something? Might it be that there's some emotion, some difficulty, some whatever it is, grief or anger or something that I need to feel, and that just being with one object, or just being with a sense of pleasure, is actually suppressing that? So this question is coming out of a real care, and integrity and care. But what I would say is it's perhaps a very complex question, a very delicate question, and just maybe not to jump to conclusions about it. Not to rush, and not to get into too many quick assumptions about it.
For many years, I was working with a model of, "I need to be with everything that comes up, because it's coming up. That's what's there, and it's a kind of inner truth, and I need to be with it." And then I started developing a little bit of samatha. No great depth at that point of the samatha. And I was, at that time -- this is when I lived in America -- feeling a lot of, years ago, a lot of anger at a particular person, for some things that had happened in relation to me and some other people, quite severe things. And a lot of anger kept coming up.
Then one day I was at the meditation centre, in an evening class, meditating. Some degree of samatha, nothing particularly extreme or out of this world at all. Some quietness, some settledness, some sense of enjoyment, calmness there. Memory came up of this person, and the beginning of the anger, the beginning of the anger. And I just saw -- it was almost like the anger was a seed, and it wasn't, you couldn't even call it anger at that point. Because of the samatha, because there was the calmness, it was very clear: there was a non-building of that anger, a non- kind of drawing it out and pumping it up and injecting energy into the anger. It wasn't a suppression that was going on. It just didn't have -- the conditions that were usually there to build and inflate anger were just not there in that moment. So it just came up as a moment, and disappeared.
It was kind of a non-event. I mean, it's a sort of non-event story, but it was a real turning point for me. It was very clear: the anger, what I'm calling anger, and it was really a lot of anger, doesn't exist -- as I said, to be quite careful with this, but I just want to present one side of the picture -- it doesn't necessarily exist as a pre-packaged, ready-to-use kind of entity, as anger inside. It takes conditions in the present, conditions of responding in the present, to make it what we would call 'anger.' So in a way, it's challenging a lot of the views that we as twenty-first-century psychotherapeutically informed people might have. Very delicate question. I'm not saying one thing or the other. I'm just saying maybe there's much more to this than we think, or that at first seems. It's the samatha, in a way more than anything else, that begins to unpack some of the complexity of our emotional life, some of the richness of it, and the kind of paradoxes of it, in a way.
Similarly, I remember a work retreatant a while ago who I was working with, and she was reporting something difficult coming up, and some whole constellation again of some emotion. I can't remember what it was. And also some calmness. And it would go back and forth. I suggested, "When there's the calmness, why don't you drop in a few thoughts of that difficulty, and that whole mess of that? Just drop in a few thoughts." So she went away, and she came back and she said, "Amazing! When there was the calmness, I dropped it in. Nothing happened. Nothing happened." The conditions to make what seems like the issue that's necessary, that's there somehow, in the psyche, in the body, waiting to come out, weren't there in the present moment to create that. So what we call our issues emotionally and psychologically, sometimes -- and again, being very delicate here; it's a complex issue -- sometimes it's that they need the conditions in the present, and we see this very clearly, going in and out of it with the samatha practice.
So in Dharma language, we say the issues themselves are empty. They lack inherent existence by themselves. They need something else. They need me to be reacting to them in a certain way to build them up. We probably need to see this over and over and over to really begin questioning our views around all this.
Usually we think of samādhi, of depth of meditation, of samatha, we usually think of it as something we're kind of, you know, frantically trying to get together, and hold this nice energy, and hold this calmness, and kind of build something up and hold it in place like that. We usually think of samatha as making something. It takes a lot of samatha practice to actually realize: it's the opposite. What's happening as the mind deepens in meditation is that we're literally making less and less. We are fabricating and constructing less and less. I don't know how that sounds now, but it actually turns out to be one of the deepest insights, the avenue of deepest insight there is in the Dharma, into how things get built, how things get fabricated. We begin to see it through the samatha practice.
And then, as I said, we have a choice. We then have a choice. We can use certain concepts, or go into certain emotions and explore them, or we can let them go. We understand that they're actually empty. I can go into it. I can use the language of self. I can work on this thing that seems to be there, or I can let it go. There's healing, there's emotional healing in both of them -- both the going into and working with on the psychological level and the level of self, and in the level of not going into, and on the level of just knowing it's empty and seeing it's empty.
It's this emptiness, and understanding emptiness, not just of emotions and issues, but of everything -- that's where the samatha is heading. And this is something, again, that has got very little airplay in the Dharma culture. There's a real relationship that I'll talk about tomorrow: the depth of samatha, and the depth of really deep understanding. It's that deep understanding of emptiness that brings the deepest freedom, and that's something that's available to us.
Okay, so let's sit for a bit together.
