Transcription
Practice, a life of practice, is very broad, extremely broad, and probably impossible to explore all of that breadth at one time. So hopefully we have a long life of practice, and we can explore this aspect, this avenue. In the broadest possible brushstrokes, we could draw out three avenues of practice. Very, very broad brushstrokes now.
One avenue is learning how to be with our experience, how to meet our experience, how to accommodate our experience -- especially that experience that's difficult, whether it's of the body, of the emotional life, of the mental life, of the external circumstances. That we are willing and able to open to that, to hold that experience, to draw close to it, to listen to that experience, whatever it is. That we're able to be with things as they are. And that's a huge and lovely part of practice. Sometimes that's what people mean when they say "vipassanā practice."
Actually, I don't think there's such a thing as vipassanā practice. I think it's even broader than that, and it would include what I would call the second avenue here. Vipassanā means to look in ways that bring freedom, to actually look at the present moment experience in ways that begin to unbind and loosen the suffering. So finding sometimes just a little bit of a different view of an inner or an outer experience, in the moment, so that the suffering goes out of it. Sometimes a radically different view. And practising those different views so that the suffering goes out of experience, to a small degree, to a great degree, or completely.
In this very broad brushstroke picture, the third avenue, we could say, is the whole realm of cultivation. Now, of course, these aren't separate, and they intermingle. The third avenue is the whole realm of cultivation -- cultivation of calm, of samatha, of samādhi, what we're talking about here, depth of consciousness, cultivation of love, of compassion, of generosity, of patience, all those lists that the Buddha goes on about. And in, again, a very broad brushstroke, that makes up a life of practice. And of course there are many more avenues than that.
On this retreat, focusing mostly on one particular avenue. Any avenue in life, any avenue of transformation, of growth, whether it's meditative or otherwise, any avenue, any practice, any technique, any orientation will have its benefits and its pitfalls -- any of them. And it's a real maturity to not only realize what the benefits of one's particular avenue are, but also what the pitfalls are. Oftentimes we can point out the pitfalls of someone else's way they're practising; we're not so aware of what we've chosen. So each practice has its pitfalls. There's no such thing as the perfect practice, the perfect way, the perfect avenue, the perfect way of practising.
There's this third avenue, we could say, of cultivation, and within that, this retreat is focusing on one particular cultivation, which is the cultivation of calmness. And then, within all that, what I would like to talk about tonight is how this deepens, the possible depths of this particular cultivation. So what I want to talk about is what's called the jhānas. Some of you may be familiar with this word. I want to talk about jhāna or jhāna practice. So jhāna is another Pali word. Lovely word. Dhyāna in Sanskrit.
I'm aware that for most of the people in the hall tonight, most of you, not all of you, but most of you, 90 per cent of what I'm going to say is not in the realm of your experience yet. Really, in a way, you can kind of just sit back and hear. It's like a slideshow of the outer limits of the solar system or something. [laughter] You don't have to worry about any of it. I just want to, in a way, paint a picture, a little bit of a map, and give a very broad brushstroke overview of what this, how this practice unfolds.
To me it's very interesting though. Just as a precursor, it's very interesting what happens sometimes in people's consciousness when we hear about experience or realms of experience where we're not there yet, what can happen. So tonight, as you're listening, perhaps just to notice that. Notice what goes on. Sometimes we hear something, and the reaction is, "Ugh, what I'm doing is completely useless." Rubbishing one's own practice, dismissing what one has as irrelevant. "Only that is important." Or we feel bad about where we are, or we just snatch after that. Or sometimes, often the case, and I've been sitting in this hall, you know, there, looking this way, and the teacher, the speaker is speaking about something very profound, and for some people, there's just a disconnection. For some reason, it doesn't seem to apply to them, doesn't seem to have anything to do with their life: "This couldn't possibly be relevant to me." And sometimes a person's not even aware that this is going on. They sort of start, you know, doing their nails [laughter], and looking out the window. Sometimes a person isn't even aware it's going on. For some reason, some disconnection comes in. So all I'm saying is, I think it can be a loaded issue. Maybe it's irrelevant, I don't know, to everyone here, but I'm just saying it, because I think sometimes it can be quite charged. And so to include that in the awareness, and just see: what happens inside?
So, jhāna practice -- what does it mean? This word, jhāna, it used to be, in the old translations, it used to be translated as 'trance,' which is a terrible, terrible translation. It gives all kinds of strange sort of cross-eyed imagery, and turbans and I don't know what. [laughter] It's better translated as something like 'absorption,' 'meditative absorption,' or something like that. So this is really, again, it's what happens when the samatha really begins deepening. This is a very short retreat, so I'm painting a picture of possibilities, possibilities in the future.
So the Buddha went into great detail about this, very, very precise, and quite rare in spiritual traditions, that degree of precision about states of consciousness. And that's, in a way, what jhānas are: they're states of consciousness. He outlined eight states of consciousness that are particularly, he felt (and of course I agree with him), relevant, really, really helpful, transformative, leading to liberation, leading to freedom, leading to immense well-being.
So, very, very broad brushstroke with this, just to give a description.
(1) The first one, what's called the first jhāna is, coming out of what we talked about yesterday and what's already in some people's experience, this pīti, this pleasant physical sensation that's happening in meditation. What happens is that the meditation progresses and the pīti gets more and more common and begins to build. At a certain point, it becomes quite steady and relatively strong. It could be very strong. It could be not so strong. The actual strength is not so important. It becomes quite steady, and at that point, a meditator can learn, with practice, to take the pīti, the pleasurable sensations themselves, take that as an object of concentration. Leave the breath. Some teachers say keep the breath and mix it in with it. I'm happy to go either way, and maybe it's good to learn both ways.
Take the pīti, and in a way, take that as a focus, absorb the mind, the consciousness into the pīti, meaning just really get into it, really enjoy it, and allow it, encourage it, learn how to make it suffuse the whole body. So the Buddha's words, direct translation, "saturates and suffuses the whole body, leaving not a spot untouched."[1] Drenches the whole body in this pīti. So everything, all the normal body sensations replaced with pīti, with this pleasure, and one, as much as possible, surrenders to it, opens to it, enjoys it, sinks the mind into it, and maintains that as a state. It's really, really nice.
People progress at very different rates with this. It's usually a matter of months, whatever. It depends on what the conditions are. At whatever rate. And again, it's just the conditions that are coming together; there's no judgement there.
(2) After a while, this pīti transforms, and what was an intense physical feeling with a sense of background happiness, the happiness begins to come to the fore. The physical feeling is still there, but the happiness begins to really take prominence -- an incredibly fulfilling happiness. These are very altered states of consciousness, outside of the realm of our usual experience, so we don't even usually come close to a happiness like that. Intensely fulfilling happiness. It could be very bubbly, or could be quieter, and a whole range in there. Immensely fulfilling happiness, with love in it and all that, and the pīti is still there, the physical feeling in the background.
And again, one learns how to sustain that, suffuse the whole body and the whole mind, in a way, with that, and kind of surrender and enjoy and plunge into it in a very full way. And there's lots more to say about each of these. I'm just kind of whisking through in a way, the bus tour of jhāna.
(3) After a while, that happiness, it's almost like the heart has drunk its fill. It feels in complete fulfilment. It's really completely satisfied with the happiness. And what happens then is a kind of profound contentment. It's really a fulfilment there. And that contentment takes prominence, and that contentment deepens into an almost otherworldly sense of peacefulness. At first in here, but then a sense of peacefulness actually expanding out, in a way, to almost seem like it's embracing everything. Profound tranquillity.
So all those picture ads that one sees sometimes of, you know, the holiday in the tropics, or Greece, and the nicely bronzed couple lying on the beach with the Campari and all that -- it's supposed to make you feel like this really feels. [laughter] When you get to the beach, it's often, "Mm, not quite it." This is somehow touching the being at such a profound level of tranquillity, of peacefulness. The whole being, almost the whole world seems bathed in that. And it's not necessarily that these states are limited to the sitting meditation; they can kind of spill over. These qualities can spill over into any posture at any time really.
(4) And then that tranquillity matures and deepens and sort of descends into a stillness, a complete stillness of being. Extremely bright, extremely present, but immensely still. Nothing else really going on except stillness, and again, the whole body has become kind of dissolved in that stillness. The whole mind, in a way, has become dissolved in that stillness.
(5) And then that, too, can, for some, deepen, and a state of immense and actually infinite spaciousness. This is the fifth, what the Buddha called the realm or the sphere of infinite space. And all sense of physicality, all sense of form disappears, and there's nothing but space. Nothing but space, infinite space.
(6) That, too, can deepen, and the space becomes as if it's, in different ways, sort of a manifestation of consciousness, as if consciousness itself is infinite and spreading infinitely throughout the cosmos. So this has its parallels in other traditions, in cosmic consciousness and that kind of thing. And there really is a very real sense that consciousness is not in here, somewhere in here; it's actually spread in some extremely mystical but very real way throughout the cosmos, throughout the universe. At deeper levels of this, everything is consciousness -- a piece of paper, the floor, the walls, the birds, the trees. It's all consciousness, animate or inanimate. Truly remarkable states of being.
(7) But even that can deepen, as consciousness, in a way, gets absorbed in a sense of what's called infinite nothingness. The only thing that's there is an overwhelming sense of nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing inner and nothing outer. And that may sound incredibly bleak, or scary, and to some people it is at first, in the same way that the pīti can be scary at first. But one learns how to find a home in these states, and absorb and be transformed by them, drink their fruits.
(8) And the last one, the eighth one is even that sense of nothingness disappears, and you're really at the borderline of what language is capable of communicating -- something called the realm of neither perception nor non-perception. The mind is not even resting, the awareness is not even resting or conceiving of a nothing, of a nothingness. It's sort of as if light is coming through a room and not landing anywhere. There's still a subtle sense of being in that state, but there's not really anything perceived in that state. So all this -- and I'm very aware it may sound completely abstract, like, "I don't know," and in a way it is. It's way beyond what our normal, conventional, common experience is.
That's the briefest possible descriptions -- as I said, the bus tour. Each of them have particular insights, and this is where, for me, it gets very interesting. In the second jhāna, this happiness, one goes in and out of this remarkable happiness. And after a while, the being has tasted of that happiness so deeply, and in a way, frequently, that the compulsive pull of sense desires -- "I need to have pleasant food. I need to have this or that. I need to have whatever it is" -- it just pales in comparison, for good in one's life. It completely relativizes the place of our addiction to sense pleasure. That comes out of the happiness, for a lot of people.
It's hard to say what comes out of the first jhāna, the pīti, what comes out of that. I think, for me, maybe it's just a sense of possibility, what the possibilities of consciousness might be, of a consciousness not caught up in the hindrances, not caught up so much in issues. I'm not sure.
The tranquillity, the peacefulness, the profound peacefulness, in that state, there's a sense of not needing or wanting anything at all to be in any way different. No pressure on self, no pressure on the world to be at all different, not one hairsbreadth different. A genuine sense of wishlessness comes in there. And the insight is, one sees true peace is not so much in getting what I want, but it's in the letting go. It's in the wishlessness. It's in the non-wishing. And that's not just a kind of intellectual, "Yeah, yeah, that's a nice Dharma thought." Somehow taken in. This is really the fruit of all this stuff. It's somehow got into the cells, taken in in a way that is really learnt, and learnt in the body.
The fourth jhāna, this immense stillness, is a hugely powerful state, immense power in the mind there, immense strength in the mind, strength that we really need for our life. There's a sense of very, very deep rest there. The whole being, mind and body, come to a complete rest, deeper even than sleep. The sense of the self at that point is also extremely quiet. I mean, it's quiet in any of this, but it's extremely quiet. There's barely any whisper of a self-sense. We're getting a very real sense of what, maybe, life might be like when we're not so much living it from the self, and a sense that, in a way, one has to let go of the self to reach a profound peace. It's also what the Buddha calls equanimity. It's very steady, that state.
In the realm of infinite space, the fifth jhāna, there are many insights. One is just a sense of spaciousness that comes deeply into one's life. The other -- I feel it's very significant -- is it begins to impress very deeply on consciousness a sense of oneness as a real reality, as a real fact of life. So this sense of separation -- me here, you there, this table here -- begins to dissolve. We enter in a very real way into a whole different perception of reality, and reality as oneness. In this state of infinite space, it's primarily a kind of physical oneness. So all that stuff we hear in science, that all the molecules in this room that we all are made of, the different atoms and molecules, they all originated in the same Big Bang of some big star somewhere, and the atoms drifted into the solar system, etc. -- that's sort of a nice scientific thought, but it becomes a very real, heartfelt, overwhelmingly heartfelt reality at that point. Or that we all, everything in the universe originated in the Big Bang, was literally one, at one point. Very mystical kind of understandings, a whole different opening. Again, as I'm saying this, I'm not actually sure what the reactions are, but just to be aware.
In the sixth jhāna, infinite consciousness, that oneness goes beyond the physical, to an even deeper sense of oneness where it's all one consciousness, it's all one mind, this cosmic consciousness sense that's sometimes found in the Hindu tradition.
The seventh jhāna is extremely significant in terms of freedom. One goes into this and comes out, and the sense of different things, or things existing -- either inner things like thoughts and emotions, or outer things -- begins to not be taken so seriously. We lose our complete belief in the reality of things. Infinite nothingness, infinite no-thing-ness. The reality of things is dissolved, is punctured. And of course, we're still perceiving things outside of that jhāna, but if we question enough in it, and if we go deeply enough in it, we really begin to question. The level of freedom that comes into one's life at that point is profound and extremely expansive.
In the eighth jhāna, the last jhāna, it's the sense that everything, even the sense of nothingness, everything is a perception. It's just a perception. It's a built perception. That's not to say it's not real, but it's just to say everything is a perception. And that relativizes it. So even suffering, it's just a perception. And there's a sense of immense relief and freedom with that.
That's the bus tour.
To make this practice transformative on a deep level -- sometimes people slip into these states in a vipassanā meditation, or occasionally in the shopping mall or whatever, occasionally (admittedly rarely). But if we're talking about samatha practice and jhāna practice, then one really wants to be able to enter into these states and remain there. They're less and less random events that one can't control, or they just come up for a few seconds or minutes or whatever. One really enters and remains in this state and sustains it.
This may sound -- I mean, probably it all sounds, I don't know, already far-fetched -- but it's possible, and again, there are people even in this hall right now, it's possible that a person can learn, with practice, to move at will between any of these eight states. And so one just has, one just says to oneself, "Happiness," and the happiness appears, and one can enter into it. One says to oneself, "Nothingness," and everything becomes nothing, and one can enter into that, and can ping-pong around, by intention, by will. One can enter into it and leave it and stay there, etc. The Buddha talks about mastery. And as I said, this is a very real possibility. I don't know how it sounds, but it's a very real possibility, with practice, with the right work, etc.
So if we talk about deep samatha practice, and we talk about jhāna practice, there's a huge debate been going on about this, especially in Western Buddhism, for the last thirty-something years, whether there's any point in this, whether it's a distraction, whether it's an attachment, etc. Or another question is, how much of this is a jhāna? For instance, some of you have been experiencing some pīti. How much? What makes a jhāna?
There are two factors that I feel there's a bit of confusion around [in] this area. One is how strong, let's say, the happiness is, or the pīti, or the tranquillity or whatever, how strong that is. So it can be extremely intense, or it can be much, much more subtle The other factor is how much absorption there is, how much we're so into this state, this happiness or whatever, that we actually don't notice anything else, that we don't hear anything, don't feel anything in the body. Some teachers will say, "It should be that someone could come and chop off your head, and you don't even notice." [laughs] I think that's a little over the top!
These two factors, the strength of it and the degree of absorption, there's the assumption, obviously, that it has to be really, really strong, and completely absorbed, and that's what jhāna is. And there's this question: when is it jhāna, and when is it not? To me, it's a completely irrelevant question. It's just not asking the right question. What's more important, what the Buddha points at, is a steadiness of the state, a steadiness, and this completely pervading the whole body. Those factors are important.
It's very easy, very easy for people to hear about jhāna or want to practise this way, and suddenly it's this thing that we want to attain, or this thing that ego or self wants to wrap itself round and define itself or whatever in that way. So we assume -- or we might assume; put it that way -- we might assume, it's common to assume, that "Of course, so-and-so says it's jhāna if you can still hear something. Some other teacher says it's only jhāna if your head can be chopped off and all that, and you don't recognize." And we assume, "Well, the deeper one must be true. That must be better. That must be the real thing."
But to quote Jesus, "By their fruits you shall know them." There's a point to jhāna. Something should be coming out of it. It's not some stripe that we give ourselves or something. It should be leading to insight, and peace, and well-being, and that kind of fruit in our life. If it is, then it's working. Then it's it. If it's not, then kind of, "So what?" And it may be -- I don't know, because I don't have enough experience talking to enough people -- that someone is extremely absorbed, and no insight is coming out of it at all. So how do we know if it's jhāna? Well, how do we know if a tree's an apple tree? If it gives apples. And the fruit of jhāna is insight, is peace, is well-being.
A lot of the fruits of jhāna, a lot of the benefits are just kind of extensions of what I talked about yesterday, and probably in the opening talk, about the extensions of samādhi. But I'll just go through there and expand a little more. Huge, very real confidence comes into one's practice, just even tasting a little bit of this. And I don't know -- maybe for some people even in the very short period of this retreat, hasn't been any jhāna or anything, but it's just having the sense of, "Something's possible. Oh."
When we can develop a confidence, a very real confidence that our happiness, we are able to be happy in and of ourselves, we're less dependent on the outer circumstances being exactly how we want them to be. There's a very real sense that we have a reservoir and resource of inner happiness that is less dependent. That gives, in one's life, a huge sense of confidence, about moving into new areas, about moving into the unknown, about losing this or that in one's life. There's just the confidence: I know happiness can be there. Tremendous for the lessening of fear, and the opening in that way in one's life.
It brings confidence in oneself, brings a confidence in the Dharma. We begin to go through this, even just a little bit, and you see, "Oh, yeah, my experience corresponds to what the Buddha's talking about." And then you go, maybe the next stage -- maybe the happiness opens itself up. Then you realize as well, "Oh, that's what he said too. And look, it maps one after the other." And then it begins to come, "If this is true, maybe the third one's true," etc. The Dharma can seem very abstract, especially if you read the original discourses. It can seem like, "This has nothing to do with my experience. I don't know." And we can be very unsure about the whole project of Dharma. But as one begins to tread and to taste the fruits in a very real way, one really begins to have faith in the whole thing, and in a way, in everything that the Buddha said, in a very experientially based way.
And as I said yesterday, tremendous soil for insight. It's the most prime conditions for insight to grow, is out of this very bright, very awake, receptive, pliable, malleable, soft, open mind that comes out of jhāna. Extremely wonderful soil for insights. Insights just begin to arise spontaneously, for most people, just spontaneously. One doesn't even have to go hunting them. Very deep insights come. The quality of life, the whole quality of life begins to take on another dimension. There's a kind of disenchantment, gradually, as I said, with the sense pleasures, but with really everything that does not lead to freedom, everything that's kind of not really helpful. We're just less pulled by it, less enchanted. Tremendous healing, tremendous healing. Of course, not all healing comes through just deep samatha. And I talked right at the beginning of this talk of the whole broad range of practice, so that there's dealing with the difficult, and listening to that, and exploring that, and uncovering that, and learning how to take away what is supporting difficulty. And then there's also tremendous healing that comes out of these very lovely, very deep states.
Intuition, all kinds of intuition flower. Particularly intuition about insight, about practice, about ways to practise, about how practice works. Sensitivity -- all this is increasing. Receptivity. The whole sense that typically we have as part of the human condition, viewing the problem, a problem that I'm having as being something out there: "This situation is a problem. What was said, what they said to me is a problem. This illness in the body is a problem. This emotion is a problem." That whole view of a problem being out there begins to be undermined, and again, in a very lasting way. We lose the grip of that view, that belief that problems are out there.
And then there's -- difficult to explain, and don't really have time to go into it -- but this word 'emptiness.' What it really means is that all this, inner and outer, all this world, all this field of experience is not real in the way that it appears to be real. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's not a nihilism. It's not real in the way that it appears to be real, as totally solid and inherently existent. This is the most difficult topic in the Dharma. We don't have time to go into it tonight.
Sometimes a person in practice is beginning to get a sense of that, of the not-quite-reality of things, and for some people, this is extremely scary. The very ground of existence begins to tremble, and they don't know on what they are standing. For some people, it's great. It's just "Yahoo!" right away. I don't know if they're in the minority or the majority. I think it's the minority. For most people, it's quite scary. And the well-being, the healing, the loveliness from these deep states of samatha, samādhi, help to ease one into that, into kind of accepting the not-quite-reality of things, the emptiness of things, accepting that mystery of things in a way that's not so existentially angstful for the heart. And that's extremely significant, actually, because then we feel like we can progress, looking the truth deeper and deeper in the face, without this kind of keep having to turn away, or back off, or slow down, or just kind of stop practising for a while. There's a very real sense that we can just keep looking, and uncovering levels of truth, or whatever you want to call it, with an ease, with an opening, with an accommodation in the heart. This is an immense gift.
A year and a few months ago, we had a retreat, a three-week retreat on loving-kindness and compassion as a path to awakening, and there was quite a lot of samatha. As I said, samatha can come out of loving-kindness and compassion too. There was quite a lot of samatha for many of the people on that retreat. One of the retreatants said to me at one point, probably two weeks or so through, he said, "I'm getting a lot of nice, deep, calm states." I don't know if it was jhāna or not; I didn't really go into it, because I wasn't that interested at that point. But he said to me, "It seems to me that I'm better off practising without samādhi, without samatha, because that will apply more to my life. Because when I go out, I'm not going to have all these fantastic states of calmness. So I need to learn how to practise when I'm agitated, when my mind is thinking a lot."
And you can see a lot of integrity there, in the thinking. I didn't ask him how he was planning to distract himself on the retreat. But the point, there is a tremendous -- it's true, what he said. We need to learn to practise in both modes. You can't rely on just being in very deep states of samādhi all the time. So we need to learn to practise, as I said right at the beginning, when there's difficulty, when there's agitation, find our way with that, open to that, navigate through that. But not to underestimate the carry-over effect from samādhi, from samatha. It really, in a way, it gets into the cells, with deep practice. It gets into the cells, and will have a transfer effect when there's agitation, a lot of thought, etc. So both are fruitful, and this is partly what I was saying about the breadth of practice. Both are fruitful. We need to be able to practise whatever the conditions, inner or outer.
Okay, then last night, I touched on this factor of whether all this leads to attachment. In a way, as I was explaining how the jhānas unfold, one ripens into the other. And when, for instance, we move on to the tranquillity, well, the pīti and the happiness are -- we become less attached to that. We've got a new toy to play with, in a way. They, by themselves, let go of the attachments, and they're a huge, as I've said already, a huge lever in letting go of our other attachments in life, our less healthy attachments.
Reflecting on this, it seems to me there are three ways that attachment does and could arise to deep states of samatha, to samādhi. The first is to the pleasure of it, and this is often what we hear: "Don't do that. Careful of the pleasure, because you'll get attached to it." And people do get attached, but it seems to me that the attachment is much more common when the experience is rare. So if we just have one or maybe two instances of this in the context of a retreat or some other situation in our life, it's like, "What was that? It's so different. I want to get that back." If there's a skill developed, and one moves, say with the pīti, and it just becomes something that's accessible -- you know, not all the time, but a fairly regular visitor in one's life, this pleasure in the body, the pīti -- we actually become less attached to it. It's like water or something -- we are actually attached to water, but it's not a problem. It's not a problem, because we know, "Well, I'll just turn on the tap." So when there's a lot of it, there's less attachment.
The second way that one might get attached, one might get attached to the pleasure, might get attached, the ego gets puffed up: "Look what I can do!" And again, very understandable, very normal even. Again, though, only if it's rare. With enough practice, what happens, as you've already seen over the days here, it goes like this -- it's so completely wavy. It's so completely non-linear, the practice. There's moving into what's lovely, and there's being shunted out, turfed out by the hindrances. And that just happens over and over, over and over, no matter actually what depth one gets to, to a larger or smaller degree. One cannot maintain these states all the time, no way.
What one sees, though, over and over, is that it's actually nothing to do with me. It's nothing to do with self. It's not me being clever and kind of gifted, or this or that, or whatever. When the conditions are there, there is this state. When the conditions aren't there, no state. When the conditions are there for the hindrances, the hindrances are there. When the conditions are not there, no hindrances. And one really sees it in terms not of self, [but] in terms of conditions coming together. And the whole way that the ego might get attached to all this is just gone. This should happen, and if it's not happening, it should be something one reflects on.
Attached to the pleasure, attached to the ego-sense. The third way is, I think, the most insidious, and in a way, it doesn't get talked about much. It happens in the much deeper states, say the last four or five jhānas: attachment to view. 'Attachment to view' meaning a sense of consciousness being infinite, of the real nature of things being consciousness itself, that kind of thing. It's an extremely powerful perception when it comes, and there's a very real possibility that one takes it as the way things are, as the truth of things.
One of my teachers used to say, Ajaan Ṭhānissaro used to say it's actually really helpful to explore all this. It's also not necessary to explore all these states. It's just a possibility, one of the possibilities, but it's not necessary. So like I say, when you're listening, it's just a kind of slideshow of what's possible. But he used to say it actually can be very helpful, because one might slip into one of these states in insight meditation or something, and think one has discovered something ultimate, because one hasn't had enough experience seeing, "Oh, it's just infinite consciousness" or whatever. "It's not actually ultimate yet." So knowing what is and what is not ultimate -- extremely significant.
The way we're working is taking one object. In our case, the breath, but it could be mettā. It could be anything. And developing that steadiness, developing the collectedness of mind, and then that deepens. It's also possible that vipassanā meditation, being with things in that openness, looking at things in different ways, being with the openness of experience, actually also leads to the jhānas. There's a way that can happen. The jhānas are actually a product of letting go. It's not so much about concentration; it's about letting go. When there's a lot of letting go, very deep letting go, some or other of these are a potential. So when we're doing insight meditation or whatever, what we're really doing is letting go of clinging, or what we should be doing is letting go of clinging. And if we let go of a lot of clinging, some state like this can be there as a potential. Or we might be letting go of ways of perceiving, and shifting into other ways of perceiving.
And again, just to paint a picture: it is also possible that one, with acquaintance with all this, one develops a skill of working in insight practice, and using the insight practice to move into the jhāna. It's almost as if filtering out -- one lets go in insight practice, and a happiness comes, because one has let go, because there's more openness. And then kind of filtering out that happiness from the experience, and collecting it, and moving into, in that case, the second jhāna. So like I said at some point yesterday, jhānas are more to do with letting go than it is to do with feverishly holding something in place, which it might seem like at first. It's more to do with letting go, letting go, and it's almost like one lets go of more and more, and less and less appears in consciousness.
I'm aware, to go back to what I said at the beginning, there's probably quite a range of reactions to all that in the hall -- some people fascinated, some people completely disinterested, bored, some people horrified maybe, some people feeling bad, again, about -- all that. I'm just painting a picture of possibility. Just painting a picture of possibility that's out there, you know? All that that I've talked about today is a huge chunk of one of these avenues. And probably, for most people, that's a good chunk of time developing all that. And certainly if you're talking about that level of mastery, you're talking about a long time of really dedicated practice.
But it's something that one can, in a way, pick up and put down. So a person can be on retreat for a while, and get to a certain place (this isn't a guarantee, of course), but get to a certain place in this deepening, and put the bookmark in the book at that point, and go off and live one's life for a while, and come back on retreat, and almost, within a few days, open the book at where one has left the bookmark and carry on the journey. Of course that's not a guarantee.
But I think the main point I want to say is, perhaps what I want to say is: hear this how you like. Hear it how you like. If it's not interesting, if it's even somewhat repulsive (which might be possible for some people), that's okay. It's not necessary, all of this. But for some people, it might be interesting. It might be fascinating. And what I would like to say is that it's a very real possibility. And I feel that it's, in a way, a duty to put out what the possibilities of practice are, so that it's known, "This is a possibility. This is a possibility for us as human beings," and we know what the possibilities of that breadth of Dharma are that I was talking about in the beginning.
Let's have a moment or two of quiet together.
[pause]
So tomorrow morning there will be a time for questions. There won't be any interview groups. There will be a time for questions and answers in here, all together. Perhaps we could take a few minutes now. I don't know if that brought up any questions, or if there are any questions about the practice right now?
Q1: samatha and kindness
Yogi: I just wanted to ask you if you could say a word or two about how this samatha practice can help you become kinder?
Rob: Yeah. In its beginning stages, what we're mostly talking about here, in a way, we need a certain degree of calmness to be kind. We need a certain degree of openness and presence, and kind of that receptivity. It needs to be there. If we're too caught up in our own kind of angst, our own worries, our own agitation, we're not present. We're too, in a way, self-absorbed, in the wrong kind of way, and the kindness can't be there. So in a way, a climate of letting go of the usual entanglements allows a natural kindness to come up. Kindness, in a way, is a natural state of the being when it's not entangled in that sense.
As one gets deeper and deeper into all this stuff, one of the things that begins opening up is -- well, two things. One is, there's more and more of that sense of well-being, and it really is as if one has enough, one has enough, and it begins to overflow. One doesn't feel like I need to be looking after myself all the time or I'm a beggar in any way. There's literally enough, and one can feel like one can give; one's more present to give.
As it gets really deep, this business, touching on what I've talked about tonight, the whole notion of separateness, as I mentioned, begins to really be questioned, really at a very deep, meaningful level, begins to be questioned in one's life. The whole notion that I'm here, and you're there, and we're fifty or whatever separate people in the room, begins to be questioned. It's not that one doesn't perceive me and you and all that, but as a reality, it begins to be questioned. When there's non-separation, the kindness is a matter of course. It's natural. Does that answer?
Yogi: Yes, thank you very much.
Q2: pitfalls of samatha
Yogi: You talked about all the different paths having pitfalls. Could you talk about samatha's pitfalls?
Rob: So, I said all the different paths have pitfalls; what are the pitfalls of samatha? I suppose there's a way that, when one's practising samatha, it's possible in the initial stages that one does get a bit self-protective and that kind of thing, a bit into preserving one's own -- "I don't want to be bothered, and don't interrupt my meditation," that kind of thing. That's one of the possible pitfalls. Another is any of these attachments, like I said -- but hopefully they'll be cleared up with that kind of questioning.
I actually feel that samatha's maybe got less pitfalls than some other paths, you know, but probably that's quite a rare view to have in the world. Mostly the pitfalls would be attachment in the different kinds of ways. But nothing exists in isolation, so that if one is doing samatha, one is, I hope, bringing in questioning and insight at the same time, and reflecting on one's experiences, and what it means about everything. It is possible, I've actually met people who seem to be able to do all this and there's very little questioning. And then, yeah, it's pretty strange what comes out of it. It can be quite off balance, in either insensitivity to others or very strange ideas about what's real and what isn't real and that kind of thing -- not in a sort of schizophrenic way, but in a sort of what's ultimate truth and what's not. But hopefully, like I said at the beginning, those paths, those avenues are not really separate, so hopefully there's all the time this insight and this questioning coming in. The way that samatha itself would lead very deeply to liberation or whatever is when it's used with very strong questioning and one is really reflecting on all the experiences, and questioning what they mean, what the implications are.
Q3: jhāna practice off retreat
Yogi: You talked about the possibility of being on retreat, practising, going back to daily living, and back on retreat. Was there any suggestion with that that this is a practice that you wouldn't just also develop in your daily sitting, alongside your normal life? And given that there are these kind of mind states that aren't quite [?] from general perception, whether that's something that you think needs some support structure to sort of pass through.
Rob: Could everyone hear that? The question was about whether these states that I talked about tonight, whether that's accessible in everyday life, or whether we would need some kind of support structure for that. Is that ...?
Yogi: Yeah. It's sort of two questions -- whether it's something that will just develop in daily practice, and secondly, whether because of the [?].
Rob: Whether it would develop in one's daily practice outside of retreat -- for most people, my sense is not. Maybe the first one. Maybe a little bit of pīti. Not more than that, very rarely. I do know instances of people, though, who are quite remarkable in what they can access, but it's very rare. It's very rare. Mostly it needs a retreat environment. And by the second question, 'support structure,' do you mean a retreat support structure, or do you mean people to talk to?
Yogi: I mean, if you were practising that in daily life, and it was happening, would that, in a way, would one feel safe going through that without a support structure?
Rob: Oh, I see. Would one feel safe going through all this in daily life without a support structure? I think if it was happening, if it just happened out of the blue, if nothing much ever happened in your meditation and you suddenly found yourself in infinite nothingness, it would probably be quite freaky. [laughter] And I know that's definitely happened to people -- not in their daily life, but on retreat, even; nothing much happens, and then one day they're suddenly in this void of nothingness, and it scares the living daylights out of them, basically. If one's going step by step, then it's similar to this bath analogy that I was giving before. You're getting a sense that, "This is okay. I can trust this," and a sense of it being okay, and the next stage and the next stage. There's really a sense of, "Yeah, it's okay." And that gives a kind of softening to the whole process, if that makes sense. But all this stuff is probably -- if one was going through any of this, it's probably something you'd want to talk about with someone, just because it's so kind of "Wow!", you know? You'd want to be sharing, and learning, and making sure, and just, yeah. But it's not like you would feel mad or anything.
Q4: other recommended practices, conditions that need to come together for jhāna
Yogi: To continue this after the retreat setting, with this kind of practice, would you recommend any other particular kind of meditations to get onto?
Rob: Anything, really. You could hook this up with anything. If you're just interested in deepening the samatha, then I would just do this, and maybe mettā practice, for instance. But even, as I said, using -- if you're using vipassanā in the right way, it should be leading to letting go, and that letting go will feed the samatha. But it will, if you want to have two practices in your life, you could have any two practices, and they would be very compatible, yeah. Does that answer it? I'm not sure I'm getting quite what you're saying.
Yogi: Yeah. It's just following on from Rebecca's question just now, given that it is possibly difficult to do out of a retreat setting. If there could be some kind of grounding element that would make it more ...
Rob: It's not difficult because it's not grounding; it's just difficult because they're difficult. They're very subtle, refined states to access, and it needs a lot of conditions to come together. It's not difficult because it's disorienting in any way or ungrounded. So it's really just a matter of how much letting go can there be in one's life outside of practice, how much practice time, how much is built on retreat -- all that kind of stuff. So a lot of different factors have to come together.
Q5: why are there so few retreats on samatha and the jhānas
Yogi: Why do there appear to be so few retreats on samatha and the jhānas?
Rob: Yeah. Is the tape on? It is. [laughter] No, I'm kidding. [laughter] Partly it's because it's a very difficult practice. So this whole retreat was an experiment. I viewed it as an experiment. [laughter] Don't ask me whether it was a success or a failure. [laughter] My sense was a lot of this stuff is more accessible than is generally known. And I just wanted to present the beginnings, and people have a sense that they can begin on something.
To really get into it, I mean, my sense was, if I was going to do a real samatha retreat, I would make it a month-long period, so that people can really get a sense of, "I can know what the first jhāna really is," and have some sense of mastery with it, and just really get into it. So partly it's that -- it's the length of retreat and what's required. And partly -- it's all kinds of things, you know. People are going to move at very different rates. And there's going to be this question, which I talked about, of people measuring and feeling the pain of that -- which is difficult; it's difficult stuff.
Then there's a whole kind of historical thing about how the Dharma has been transmitted to the West. And it's just that the particular traditions, in the thirty or thirty-five years of the Dharma in the West, that are prominent in the West, the particular traditions -- I'm not going to name anything -- those particular ones are almost anti-samatha practice, anti-jhāna. And those traditions have had a huge effect on the whole way that Dharma has spread in the West.
My guess and my hope is that as the Dharma grows in the West, there will be this broadening that I was talking about right at the beginning, and the very real sense that it's fine to do this. It's fine to do this aspect -- the three aspects, and there are many more avenues. It's fine to do that for a few years, and people will respect, "Oh, you're doing that right now. That's great. I'm doing this," or "We're doing this one together," or whatever. There will be a sense of the breadth, and the samatha and jhāna practice will come into the whole of Western Dharma in a very real way. I don't feel it's there as a sort of collective maturity yet.
Is that okay? Was that what you were getting at? I'm not sure.
Yogi: Yeah, that's exactly what I was getting at.
Rob: Okay, yeah.
Q6: backlash and difficulties arising after one's practice has deepened
Yogi: Rob, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, you know, when practice deepens, there seems to be like a backlash that takes place, and it can really sort of dent one's confidence in the process.
Rob: Could everyone hear that at the back? So there is often, as I think I mentioned yesterday, and you've probably maybe noticed for yourselves, as the samatha deepens, mind collects, and it does deepen -- there's a state that feels more collected, feels deeper. And it all seems to be going swimmingly, as they say. And then boom! Back come the hindrances. Back comes, at first, some issue or other, and a lot of difficulty, agitation. There seems to be, sometimes it can seem like, if not every time, a lot of the time, when it feels like it's deepening -- maybe deepening to just a slightly new level of experience or intensity or whatever -- there's this backlash, and a difficulty, usually in the form of some hindrance or the other, although we may not even recognize it as a hindrance. Why that is, I don't know. Some people call it a purification, as if you're actually somehow purifying. Again, I'd take that very delicately. I really don't know.
What I do know is that it's very common. And at first it can be, as you say, very disheartening. But part of the practice -- this is what I was saying in the first talk on hindrances -- it's the less sexy part. One realizes this is going to happen over and over, and one learns to expect those waves, and becomes more and more able to deal with the hindrances, more and more able to see them for what they are, without them blowing up into these sort of issues -- you know, what I said about these seeds with the fangs and the hooks. We see that process going on, and it's not that the backlash doesn't happen; it's just that it doesn't blow up so much. We take it much less personally. It's just a human thing. Get less involvement in it. And we learn to just kind of surf those waves, so that in the end it doesn't become disheartening at all. It's just how it goes. It's just really okay and part of the process.
That much -- viewing the hindrances as really okay, really not a self-assessment, or a judgment, not spinning into story -- if that's all that happened in samatha practice, and there wasn't any of this wonderful lights and fireworks that I've been talking about, that would be great. That would be absolutely great. And some people, and I think they're in the minority -- this is where I would disagree with sort of what's common wisdom; I think they're in the minority -- some people will never get any of this stuff, but they will keep just deepening and deepening in calmness. And they will still get this understanding of the hindrances, and ability to let them go. And that much is huge -- huge sense of space and relief and ease that comes into one's life over a period of time. So it's really just part of the practice. It takes a while to learn, "Oh, it's just one of these waves, and I can see it for what it is, without getting so sucked into what it seems to be saying about me, or about life, or about another person, or about here, or wherever." Does that make sense?
Yogi: Yeah, it does. Thanks.
Rob: I think last one.
Q7: how much practice it takes to attain jhānas
Yogi: I wonder how to understand how accessible those states are, from the point of view of a beginning meditator. Of course people differ tremendously in their readiness and their abilities, but should a meditator think, "If I practise an hour a day for five years, maybe I'll be able to attain the jhānas"? Or do I need to become a monk or a nun? Or ten years of intensive daily practice, and then perhaps attain the jhānas? What kind of realistic aspiration could we have to attain states like that?
Rob: I would say that either of those is too extreme, and as usual the truth is somewhere in the middle. And as you said, people vary tremendously -- the conditions that a person is bringing, the teaching that someone gets, the orientation that someone gets, their own state of physical well-being, all this stuff. Your digestive system has a lot to do with it, you know. Really. The Buddha said this. [laughter] And I know! [laughter]
If you meditate -- what was the first option? One hour a day for five years? I don't know, you know! I wouldn't even think that way. It's more a sense of this is a possibility. At some point, it may become more or less interesting to one. And it's why I haven't mentioned it until now, and in a way, we've just been talking about deepening the samatha, tuning in on the comfort and the pleasure, and that will take you. It's like, just to be where one is and let it unfold. And then it may be something to move into. Usually if I'm teaching jhāna practice, I don't even use the word jhāna. Because again, it's just something the self will grab around and will make a thing of and make a whole big deal about: "Have I got it? Haven't I got it? Is it da-da-da-da-da?" It's more like, "How's the pleasure doing? How's it feeling in the body? What's there? And let's talk about building that. Let's talk about nourishing that. Let's talk about getting really connected with that." Otherwise, it's just, it's not that helpful. So it's more like, be where you are, and build what you have, and see what's possible.
I don't know if that's maybe not a satisfying answer, but I don't think one needs to be a monk or a nun. I think one needs to take practice seriously, certainly, but I don't think one needs to be a monk or a nun, absolutely not.
Okay, very last one.
Yogi 2: It's not a question -- it's just, really it's only based on conditions, anyway, isn't it? And you said the conditions can come together at any time.
Rob: They could, but the conditions are inner and outer, and past and present, and all kinds of things. But yeah, it's basically based on conditions.
Okay, I think, enough. Let's have just another moment of quiet together.
AN 5:28. ↩︎
