Transcription
So, let's explore a little bit more this question of judgment, this problem, really, of judgment. Just to recap very briefly, this morning, seeing the bigger picture, particularly in the meditation practice, but fundamentally the huge power of mindfulness, the huge power of a calm awareness, a calm noticing of what's going on in the mind. And just seeing judgment, knowing, "Oh, it's judgment." And over time, that, as I said, can create some space from the judgment, some non-identification with it, and the pattern just kind of wears itself out, potentially. So just the basic teachings of mindfulness, and how much power there is in that, how much freedom there is just in mindfulness.
But mindfulness is, by itself, not all-powerful, of course. It's one aspect of the path, one very important, fundamental aspect of the path. It's a very important tool, I'd say an indispensable tool. But by itself, it's certainly not the whole path, and it's not capable, by itself, of completely freeing us. It's just not. It's not. The Buddha taught a path that involves lots of aspects, of which mindfulness is one -- one very central one, but only a part.
[1:52] And so sometimes things like, patterns like judgment, etc., do disappear just through the power of mindfulness. But oftentimes they don't. And we can be mindful until the cows come home, and certain things don't seem to change. So we need to sometimes bring in a more active kind of challenging of patterns like judgment, actively kind of poking at them, I guess, in a way, undermining them, in a way. So this is what I want to go into a little bit.
(1) First of the sort of suggested ways of working, you could call it, first one is, this kind of environment is very interesting. So we've come together for a day, and we're in silence together. Now, you may know some people here, but others, maybe, you don't know anything about them. And it's interesting to notice how quickly, even in the course of a day -- and you know, you could see it much more clearly sometimes on a longer retreat -- but even in the course of a day of silence, how quickly the mind comes in, and we start judging others. We don't know anything about them, and we're judging.
And sometimes we forget that, in this case, because of the silence, we know very, very little about what's going on in that person's life, what piece of news they may just have heard, what they've just found out about their health, or a health condition they're struggling with, what the situation at work is. We know very, very little. And somehow, the sort of arrogance of the mind comes in, and it just makes these judgments. So, very simple: sometimes we just need to remind ourselves that we don't know. And even when we're talking with people, there's a lot we don't know. So just reminding, "Ah, I don't know the whole picture here."
[4:00] And we can judge all kinds of things: judge the way they dress, the way they walk, the way they eat, the way they talk, the way they don't talk. [laughs] Anything, the mind can grab hold of and judge. Just a little bit of a reminder: "I don't know the whole picture. I know a miniscule amount." That's the first one.
(2) Second one is, in the Buddha's words, this funny, funny English translation -- he says, when there's judgment of oneself or another, "Remain percipient of the beautiful. Remain percipient of the positive qualities." So what that means is, when there's judgment, when there's negative judgment of another, or of oneself, the attention is kind of like a magnet. It's being pulled into that piece of the picture, that piece of the other person that we're judging. And we just keep seeing that, we just keep seeing that. Attention keeps going there, like, sucked into it. And the Buddha's saying, remain perceiving, draw the attention, keep drawing the attention to what is beautiful. Now, we can do this in ourselves. Oftentimes we start judging ourselves, and we forget everything that's beautiful, everything -- all the kindness and all the lovely intentions we've had, etc., whatever it is. Same with others.
Now, we know this, but it's actually a practice. Find something, reflect, something in this person that is noble, that is lovely, that is good -- at the very least, that's not bad. And just keep bringing the mind there. This is mind training, heart training. So, (1) reflecting on how little we know; (2) second one, remaining percipient of the positive qualities.
(3) The third one: if we find ourselves judging another person, to recognize in that moment that, as I said at the beginning, judging, that a mind full of judgment is actually painful. So when there's a current of judgment running, that -- holding that in the mind -- is actually painful. It's suffering for oneself. And just, if one's not sure about this, to really feel inside and say, "How good does this feel right now? How do I feel? How happy am I? How at ease in the body and in the mind?" Connecting with that sense of pain, of suffering, and instead of focusing on the other person, turning towards oneself. Connecting with that pain and suffering, and feeling it, really feeling it, knowing it as pain, knowing it as suffering, and then giving to oneself compassion. So actually not being so concerned with the other person, giving to oneself compassion because it is painful.
[7:10] Something potentially quite interesting can happen there. When we give compassion to our self, something in our self begins to soften, because that's an effect of compassion: it begins to soften the heart. The heart softens. And as the heart softens, the perception changes -- the perception of the other person, in this case. Why? Because the perceptions that we have are dependent on the state of the heart. When the heart is hard and brittle, we have a certain perception of ourselves, of the world, of others. When we're softening the heart through giving compassion to our own suffering in that moment, the heart is softened, and the perception softens, and the judgment softens with it. The judgment of another softens with it. So (1) reflecting on how little we know, (2) remaining percipient of the beautiful, the positive qualities, (3) giving compassion to oneself.
(4) Fourth one is a little bit kind of adapted from the teachings of Śāntideva, who was a great Indian saint and mystic of, I think, the eighth century -- one of the great Mahāyāna teachers. In this way, you find yourself judging another person, and then using the imagination a little bit, and imagining a third person who is judging you about the same thing. So for instance, in a kind of meditation environment, we talk a lot about mindfulness, and then we might judge: "Ooh, look how they're not quite doing it," whatever it is. And we can imagine this third person who maybe just strolled down from his or her cave in the Himalayas, where they've been installed since they were three months old, practising ... [laughter] For sixty years, twenty-seven hours a day, eating snow only once a week. And they come down and say, "That's not mindfulness. That's ..." [laughs] So you're judging this person. A third person is judging you. And it's a little trick, you know, it's a little game, to use the imagination. But what can happen is one just realizes the complete futility of judging. You can always find someone who's kind of better than you at something. And just to use the mind in that way, it almost like deflates the whole structure of the judgment, of the judging mind. It's just futile. It's completely pointless, completely empty, really. So (1) reflecting on what we don't know, (2) remaining percipient of the positive qualities, (3) compassion to oneself, to soften, (4) imagining this third person who's judging.
(5) And the fifth one (and this sometimes takes a little bit more quiet, but maybe not), reflecting, using the reflective mind, and say we're judging another person, realizing that, in a way, this person and their behaviour or their speech, whatever it is that we're judging, is in a way, you could say, a kind of unique expression in the universe -- just how they are. We may not like it. We're judging it, so we don't like it. But there's something kind of, again, miraculous, mysterious about just that thing manifesting, realizing the radical diversity of life, of existence. There's unimaginable diversity of expression, the uniqueness of expression. And reflecting, "Would I really want, really, a universe my way exactly, if I was in charge of the universe? Would that really be a good idea?" [laughs] And at first, we could think, "Well, yeah!" [laughter] But if you actually reflect on it, something about -- we're living in this universe where we don't have control of all the manifestations. There's something actually more precious about that. Would I really want to run things my way?
[11:37] So I'm just putting those out, in a way, to begin with -- ways of working, as I say. Mindfulness -- hugely important. And then more active ways of challenging. But there are two that I want to particularly go into, two more ways. All that's great, what I've just said, but these two are more like the kind of heavy artillery, bringing that in, which is sometimes what's needed in the case of judgment. (1) So the first one is the mettā practice, and I'll explain what that is. (2) And the second is looking again at this question of self, and how I said the self gets wrapped up in the judgment.
(1) So the first one, the mettā -- some of you may know this word. Some of you may be new. Mettā is a Pali word. Pali was the language in which the Buddha's discourses were recorded. And it's mettā, and it usually gets translated as 'loving-kindness,' or a kind of deep friendliness to all beings, including oneself. And the aspiration is a kind of unconditional friendliness, meaning it's not dependent on liking the person or them doing us a favour, or them telling us we're great. It's actually unconditional. That's the aspiration. It's also boundless in the sense that it doesn't limit. It's not limited to those we know or those we care about, friends or family. It's actually boundless. That's the aspiration. So it's quite a high aspiration. This is what we move towards developing in practice. And there are, someone was asking earlier, there are many techniques to develop this.
And so, one of the techniques is repeating phrases that embody the intention of this kind of loving-kindness. So, "May I be well. May you be well. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May I be peaceful," etc., whatever the phrases are. It's important to see what's going on in this practice. We're slowly and gradually, in a non-linear way, we're reconditioning the mind and the heart. So as I said earlier this morning, the mind and the heart -- there's a lot in there, tremendous amount in the mind and the heart, that's about habit. And with the mettā practice, developing that slowly, over time, we're literally reconditioning those habits. That reconditioning is a big part of what meditation is. Okay, it's not all of it, but it's a big part of what meditation is. We're retraining, reconfiguring the habits of consciousness.
[14:35] And sometimes we object to that as a sort of agenda of meditation, for different reasons, but just important to point out, the Buddha did really talk about that. Right Effort means the effort to cultivate what is beautiful, what leads to happiness, in this case loving-kindness, and to let go of what doesn't, to let go of the judgment. So again, not just the mindfulness, not just noticing and kind of hoping that it will go away through mindfulness, but actually deliberately cultivating a different pattern.
So this mettā practice is extremely powerful, extremely powerful over time, and it's important to see what we're doing. In a way, you could say, with the mettā practice, one is planting seeds of intentionality in the mind, in the heart, in the being, the way a farmer or a gardener plants seeds, and plants lots of seeds. In this technique, every time we say those phrases, that seed is being planted. The seeds are being planted. And those seeds are in the ground, underneath, and then they come up. They flower. They blossom when they do. Some blossom, you know, five seconds later, some five years later. And in a way, the farmer and the gardener have faith in nature. Put in a lot of seeds, and just keep doing that, just keep doing that, keep feeding that intentionality, planting the seeds of intention. And over time, those intentions, they bear fruit. But we're not so in control of the time.
[16:29] So sometimes, the mettā practice -- it gets looked on as a little bit of a 'baby practice,' sort of, "Well, you know, if you can't really handle insight meditation because you're sort of not quite together enough, go over there, be quiet, and do a little mettā practice, and then maybe you can join the grown-ups." [laughs] It's really not like that. It's absolutely not like that. It's, I would say, just as powerful, just as powerful in its transformative and liberating effects. Really, really a powerful practice.
(2) So there's the mettā practice, and then there's this question of self that I talked about. And some of you were actually at the talk last night, and I went into, a little bit, this question of self and looking at self. So I'd actually like to pick it up again -- it doesn't matter if you weren't at the talk last night -- and again, say some, fill this out a little bit. So earlier today, we said, when there's judgment, the self is wrapped up in that judgment -- "I am terrible. You are an idiot" -- versus just discerning, "What's helpful? And what's not helpful? What's leading to suffering? And what's not leading to suffering?"
But this self being wrapped up in the way we look -- it's something that's extremely, deeply kind of woven into consciousness itself, at a very deep level. So right off the bat, I say, "Okay, I need to look into this question of self," but not at all to underestimate how deeply it is woven in. So part of being human and having a human consciousness is that looking at ourselves and others and the world in terms of self is almost natural. It's so ingrained. So we do look in terms of "I am like this. I am like that. I am this kind of person. You are like this, like that." We do habitually look that way. And it's -- what the Buddha say -- it's actually part of the fundamental delusion. It's part of what he would call 'ignorance' or the human condition. So not to kind of judge ourselves that judgment is coming up, because looking in terms of self is an extremely deep programming. And we do this. We look in terms of self, even when we have the best intentions, and there's really a lot of integrity there, and a lot of wanting to understand ourselves, and interest and curiosity and eagerness to work. Even with the best intentions, we still tend to look in terms of self.
[19:25] So a little while ago, I was teaching somewhere, and was in a small group situation. And a man was asking, describing how he felt. And he said, "I'm really stuck. I'm really stuck. There's a lot of old conditioning that I'm bumping up against. And I'm really stuck. I can't move through it. And I feel I'm afraid to move through it, this old conditioning. I'm stuck against it, and I'm afraid to move through it." And we had a little bit of a dialogue, and I sort of asked him, "Well, what's the actual experience?" And he said, "I'm stuck. There's old conditioning, and I'm afraid to move through it." And I said, "What's the actual experience?" And eventually he said, "Well, there's a kind of tightness here. There's a kind of tightness in the belly." And I just, encouraging, "Could you actually just see it as that, without this added layer, added interpretation and view, 'I am stuck. There is old conditioning. I am afraid to move through it'?" Sometimes the language of "I am stuck. There is old conditioning. I am afraid to move through it" -- that language and using those structures and that kind of way of looking is extremely helpful, can really be helpful.
Sometimes it's really not helpful. Nothing is really coming out of using that language. And much more helpful: very bare attention to the actual experience, the bare experience, which was just this kind of pressure and tightness here. Seeing it that way, and he began to have a little more space around it, a little more ease around it. But tended to look in terms of self and the whole self-story, and the past of the self, and the future of the self, and all that whole package. And it was really just a burden, and kind of taking up a lot of space, and not helpful in terms of moving through, not helpful in terms of freedom at that time.
[21:46] For those of you who were here last night, I was talking about picking up certain views, and using them if they're helpful, when they're helpful, and then putting them down. And picking up another view when it's helpful, and [putting it down] when it's not. So we can use that language -- "old conditioning, patterns, fear of moving through, I am stuck," etc. And we can put it down and use a different language. And there's a real skill and maturity in doing that, being able to do that.
And I have a good friend who -- similarly, she spent seven years in India in her twenties and thirties, and almost all that time devoted to Dharma practice, devoted to meditation, either sitting meditation retreats and visiting teachers, or helping out, managing retreats. But very much in that, just doing that. Seven years. And felt, you know, towards the latter part, there was some degree of freedom. She would never say anything, you know, major, but some degree of freedom, like a lot had been let go of, and a lot of freedom came in. Then moved back to the West, and sort of gradually discovered, "Oh, there's still quite some stuff there," you know, some stuff around anxiety around money, and this aspect of life and other aspects of life. And we were talking about it in the context of quite a long conversation, and she was saying, "Well, I just see, it's where I am. It's where I am." And this is just an example of a very light way of using self, seeing in terms of self: "where I am."
So it's important to see what qualities are in the mind and in the heart. Is there fear, or is there not fear? Is there freedom, or is there not freedom? Is there openness, or is there closedness? It's important to see that. Again, discerning, discerning. But how much self are we making around that, and then kind of concluding about where we are, who we are, how we are, defining ourselves based on what qualities are in the mind or heart at the time?
[24:10] So the Buddha talks a lot about this. He says, in the Pali, "See dharmas in the dharmas" -- meaning, see these qualities of heart or mind, see them as that.[1] See dharmas as dharmas. See qualities of mind and heart as qualities of mind and heart. Do not see qualities of mind and heart as self, as how I am. So it's a subtle shift, but it's actually significant.
A little while ago, at Gaia House, there were two retreatants, almost reporting exactly the same things, experiences, at the same time, roughly. And were reporting, beginning to notice, because there was more mindfulness, beginning to notice all kinds of not-so-pretty thoughts and intentions come into the mind. So one of them was just, they were out for a walk, and they noticed this squashed animal, and there was just this sense of kind of glee. And just a moment, just come into the mind, sort of glee that this animal had been killed or something. And different examples of that kind of thing. And in one case, it was actually a lot of self-destructive thoughts came up, wanting to kind of sabotage oneself in different ways.
Again, though, can we just see that as a thought or an intention coming up, and not so much define ourselves around it? So in these cases, the immediate tendency was the mind to come in and say, "Oh, I'm evil," or "I'm much more ... I'm bad. There's something bad in me," or "I'm a self-saboteur," or whatever it was. Immediately, the tendency is for the mind to identify with the thought, with the intention that comes up, and just take it as a definer of who we are and how we are.
[26:19] The more we do that, the more we kind of crystallize and contract a self-view around what comes up, the more we actually have a fear of ourselves. We're actually afraid of ourselves, afraid of our past, afraid of what we might discover in there. So in this case, there was, "Whoa, what is in here? Now I'm here at the meditation retreat, and I'm looking at -- goodness me! Do I really want to look in there?" And actually, sometimes people -- the feeling is, "Maybe there's an evil monster inside me. And now I'm really beginning to see. Now I see the truth about myself."
If we have that kind of thought, it's going to be extremely painful. That kind of belief -- it's extremely painful. Not to trust ourselves, to view ourselves with suspicion and with mistrust and with that kind of judgment -- very, very painful, almost sort of an existential pain in that. And there will be fear there. We will be afraid of ourselves, and afraid of what we discover within ourselves. So this is not uncommon stuff that I'm talking about. This is part of the human condition, that we often are afraid of ourselves, and afraid of what might lie within us. Part of the reason that meditation is actually not that popular is, a lot of people just, "Well, I'd rather not know, actually, kind of what's in there." The assumption is, "It's going to be pretty dark and not so nice, and I'll feel really bad about myself."
The more we see that way, the more fear there is. And we actually give solidity to that evil monster, or whatever word you want to use. We give solidity to it by the fearing itself. The fear itself gives it a kind of reality and solidity. So we need to see that monster -- or even if we have a sense of a monster inside (and I'm using that language; please find your own), we have to see, that's ephemeral. There's nothing to it. It's an illusion. You actually have to stare it in the face and look and just -- it's almost like the looking just goes right through it because there's really not anything there, substantially speaking. It's an illusion.
[28:38] Can we begin to train ourselves to look in a different way? That thoughts and intentions that arise -- in a way, they just arise in the moment. This is much easier to see when the mind is somewhat calm. But we can begin to see. They just kind of arise. A thought pops out of nowhere and disappears. Or an intention, whether it's a good intention or a harmful intention, whatever -- just arises out of nowhere and disappears. And we want to train ourselves. Again, and this is non-linear. It's something that happens gradually over time. Train ourselves in being able to see our inner experience that way, that it's just something that's arising out of nowhere, disappearing into nowhere, and to experience that sense, because then we're seeing it not as 'me, mine,' not as self, but just as something that's coming and going out of nowhere. Don't need to get identified with it.
So from the Dharma point of view, which means the point of view of freedom, really, the point of view of peace in life, it's actually not so important whether negative thoughts or intentions arise. Whether they arise or not is not so important. But what is important is two things: (1) the response we have to them, and (2) the view that we have about them. The response and the view. So their arising is not a problem, really not a problem. Even the arising of a thought, "I want to kill this person" -- it's not a problem.
(1) So response and view are important, 'response' meaning we always try, we train ourselves to try to choose a response, an action that is not, you know, murderous, not harmful, or a speech, the way of speaking that's not harmful. So the response. This thing has arisen. It's a harmful intention, a negative intention, or a negative thought, whatever. What's my response? What's the action? What's the speech that comes out of it? And we choose what's not harmful, and we train ourselves to do that. That much is important. The response is important.
(2) The other thing is the view that we have about them. So am I viewing them as self, as 'me, mine,' and as implying that I am a bad person? Or a fantastic person. So this is the piece we talked about last night: can we practise looking and seeing experience as 'not-self, not me, not mine'? It's really a practice. And in a way, it's counterintuitive, because you say, "Well, who else is having a thought? It's here. I'm having a thought." But we practise looking in this way. And over time, the fear of ourselves, the fear of life just begins to subside because there's no basis for it any more. Or put it this way: there's less and less basis for it.
And with judging ourselves negatively, it's not so much that, you know, we replace "I am an idiot" with "I am brilliant and fantastic." We actually need to let go of the whole package. So for there to be real freedom, both are let go of. Any kind of judgment or assessment of oneself in that respect is let go of. It's like, some of you may know the teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh, has this analogy of, if you don't like one end of a stick -- say, you don't like the left hand of a stick, left side of a stick. So we don't like the bad side of judgment. We feel the pain of that when we call ourselves idiots or stupid or unworthy, or this or that. We don't like that left hand, so we chop off the left-hand side of the stick. And then what have we got? We've got a shorter stick with a left and a right. And we chop off the left again, and ... you can see where this is going.[2] There's no way of letting go of just one end of the self-judgment package. If we just let go of the negative, it's just a matter of time, and think, "Well, I just grab hold of this 'I am fantastic,' end, 'I am brilliant, I am ...'", whatever. It's just a matter of time before the whole dynamic reasserts itself, because we've still got a stick. In that analogy, we've still got a stick. So we're letting go as well of identification with the positive. So there's a beautiful intention. There's a beautiful thought. Can we also see that as 'not me, not mine'? It's not, "Ah, now I see, you know, this is my true nature."
[34:01] In these kind of situations, we talk a lot about, a tremendous emphasis on mindfulness and awareness and attentiveness and being present. It can be, very understandable, because we do that, we're, in a way, elevating the importance of mindfulness. And so, where does the judgment go? Where does the self-judgment go? It goes around mindfulness. This is very common to see on longer retreats, when there's really very little happening except the encouragement to be mindful, and then we start judging ourselves around whether we're mindful or not, because we're emphasizing it and talking about it. But in a way, mindfulness is also just a condition that's not-self. It's not something that we can take to own or identify with. When the conditions are there, mindfulness is there, awareness is there, presence is there, brightness is there. When the conditions aren't there, it's not there. It's actually not saying anything about me. There's nothing for me to beat myself up about when it's not there, or to say, "Wow, aren't I great?" when it is there. It's just a condition. It's not-self.
So, two ways of working with this business of beginning to let go of the self-identification:
(1) One way is, we cultivate this sense, a way of looking that I described, seeing something as just a thought: "It's just a thought. It's just an impulse. It's just an intention. It's not me or mine." So one teacher has an analogy of the night sky, a pitch-black night sky, empty night sky. And suddenly, a firework: [bursting noise]. And bright colours and amazing patterns, and it's like, "Wow! Look at that!" And we get -- this is what happens in our consciousness. There's a thought or an impulse, and we get sucked into that, and we go, "Wow!" And we don't see the kind of -- it's just coming, it's bursting out of nowhere, and then it disappears, like the firework just fades into nowhere. So intentions, thoughts -- everything that we judge ourselves by is like that. Can we begin to see our experience that way? It's just coming out of nowhere and disappearing into nowhere, and it's 'not me, not mine, not-self.' So that's the first way.
(2) The second way is, rather, seeing the whole web of conditions, the whole kind of array and complex patterning of conditions that come together in any moment to make that moment, to make anything that I say or do or think. So what do I mean? I mean, sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where you have to present something at work, or we're in a dialogue with someone. We say something, and it didn't go very well. You know, we say, we appear stupid, or we say something stupid, or we do something stupid, or whatever it is. And this is, you know, part of being human. What tends to happen -- again, we see it in terms of self. Here I am, supposed to give a Dharma talk or presentation, whatever it is, and blugh, there it was, and it really didn't go that well. [laughs] And we tend to see, "I'm no good at this. I'm no good." Can we see, "What are the conditions, inner and outer, that come together in that moment to make the expression?" So maybe there was a lot of tiredness around. Maybe there was something in the environment, the other person or the people or the work environment, that was extremely pressured, or just a little bit pressured. Maybe there's agitation around. Maybe there's fear around. These are all what we call 'conditioning factors.'
[38:17] So what's expressed in the moment, and sometimes even what's thought and felt in the moment -- so we say, "I shouldn't feel such-and-such emotion" -- all that arises because of this interplay of conditions, inner and outer. We tend to see it in terms of self: "I feel angry. Therefore, I'm an angry person. Oh, I shouldn't feel angry." We don't see, "Well, there were all these other situations: I was really tired. I was irritable. They were doing this. There was a pressure in the environment," etc. All the conditions together make the action, the expression, the moment, the experience in the moment. We see this for ourselves, and we see it for others, and we judge others, and we don't see the conditions, again, that are coming together for them, some of which may be visible to us, many of which aren't. But their actions, their expression, what they're going through is also coming from this interplay.
Now, we can hear that, and we say, "Well, yeah, that's pretty obvious." Maybe it's obvious. It is. You know, hopefully it is. But the thing is, again, the habit of human consciousness is to see in terms of self, and so we don't do that. We don't do that. All this, all that I'm talking about, is practice. We need to literally train the mind and heart to see in different ways. Sometimes it means reflecting on, "Well, what were the conditions in that moment?" I'm judging how I did, what I did in some moment. What were the conditions? Let me backtrack. What were the conditions that led to that? Or in another person. Really reflecting on it, and training the mind to make the shift from seeing in terms of self to seeing in terms of conditions.
And sometimes we can't do that on our own. We really need a friend or someone we trust, or someone we trust their perception. We really need to ask them, "Can you help me? What am I not seeing here about the conditions that fed that? All I'm seeing is that I'm an idiot, I'm a schmuck. Or they're an idiot, they're a schmuck. Help me to see." And sometimes a friend can help. But to train. This is one of the most worthwhile shifts that we can train ourselves to do: to see in terms of conditions rather than in terms of self. So it may not sound like a big deal, but to train the mind that way, really, really significant, a really worth it shift. And of course that doesn't absolve our responsibility from how we act and how we speak in the world. Of course we still have that. So there are these two ways, as I said: (1) seeing it as coming out of nowhere, disappearing into nowhere, 'not me, not mine,' or (2) seeing it as coming out of all the conditions that come together, also 'not-self, not me, not mine.' And this is really a journey and a practice and a training.
[41:23] When the Buddha talks about the human condition, in a way, he talks -- one of the metaphors is that human beings have seeds in them, all different kinds of seeds. And three very powerful seeds, and very deeply ingrained seeds that keep coming up are the seeds of greed, of aversion, and of delusion.[3] And in a way, just seeing that that's the case, for ourselves and others, makes a huge difference. This is part of the human condition, that these impulsions of greed, of aversion, of delusion just keep coming up, keep coming up.
And so we can see, sometimes we're judging another person. We look at what they've done or what they've said. We say, "I never ... I'm not like that. I never came anywhere close to doing anything like that." And it's true. Probably no one in this room ever came close to murdering anyone. But we look at that. What we can train ourselves to see is the commonality. So okay, we didn't murder someone. We didn't -- whatever it was. But I, too, have acted out of greed. No question. I still do. I, too, have acted out of aversion. No question. I, too, act out of delusion. And going back to a more fundamental commonality, and just seeing that the seeds are present, and the conditions differ around those seeds which cause a certain behaviour.
So this journey, in a way, you could say, from judgment, judging mind, to letting go of judgment, freedom from the judging mind -- it's really transforming a habit of judgment. And that happens, you know, just from my own experience and working with others, it happens in a number of -- well, in two obviously different ways.
(1) Some of it can happen extremely suddenly. I mean, sometimes, it seems hard to believe. Sometimes it's like those big, huge shelves of ice off Greenland that are just disappearing into the sea now. Just a huge chunk of this whole structure of judging can just, whshoo!** It's a real possibility for people practising in the right way. That can happen. That's the power of practice.
(2) But probably more often, I don't know, probably more often for people, there's a kind of gradual shift, and gradually in the life, the judging mind -- it just loses its power, and it's quietened. Sometimes in that gradual process, it goes through quite an interesting sort of intermediate phase, where the habit is so strong and has been going so long that, for instance, "I'm an idiot" -- the thought might still come up, but it's completely empty of power. It's just completely floppy. [laughs] It has no power, no substance to it. But because it's such a habit, it's just been going, it's kind of running on zero fuel. It's just the momentum's keeping it going. And then after a while, even that goes. Then the thoughts just don't arise any more. But it can, in the gradual movement of this, can reach a place where it's just going, but it's running on empty.
[45:02] Okay, finally, I want to touch on -- I just want to look again. We talked about -- well, we talked about quite a lot: place of mindfulness, different strategies, this difference between discernment and judgment, power of mettā, and looking at the question of self. What else? What else do the teachings bring to bear on this? And actually there's quite a lot. I want to pick out one more piece.
Yogi: How about emotions? You've talked [?] emotions which come up [?] ... mind and thoughts?
Rob: Everything that I said about mind and thought will go for emotions as well, yeah. But why don't we save it for the discussion? And we can talk more about it, a little more. But everything that I've said goes for that too.
So I want to go back to this piece about judging and discerning that I was [talking about] near the beginning. Judging and discerning. I want to read you something from -- it's a really beautiful passage from the Third Zen Patriarch. Some of you may be familiar with it. It's quite well-known. It's one of the treasures of the Dharma, I think. And it's speaking to, in a way, going beyond even discernment. Remember those distinctions, discernment and judgment, discernment being just making a discernment between what's helpful and what isn't -- speaking to going even beyond that. He says:
The Great Way [or the Great Truth] is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep [nature] of things is not understood the mind's essential [peace] is disturbed to no avail. The Way [the Truth] is perfect like vast space ... nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.[4]
So I always found that very beautiful. It's from the beginning of quite a much longer poem. And if you do get the chance to get hold of a copy, it's really, really lovely, and for me, something that one keeps rediscovering it at different sort of stages of practice, and rediscovering, learning, seeing it anew each time, something very, very beautiful.
[48:07] What's he getting at here? What's he getting at? Is it possible that we could even let go of this discernment too? Is there something with that too? And there are many ways to approach this, many angles, many possibilities. I'm going to talk about two, briefly.
(1) One is -- and it's the more popular one in practice circles -- regarding everything as kind of equal from the point of view of awareness. So to say that, like that analogy of the sky and the fireworks, the sky doesn't kind of care what happens, what the fireworks look like, whether they're good fireworks or bad fireworks, whether they're ugly or pretty. From the point of view of awareness, or you could say the mirror of awareness, everything that comes in front of that mirror -- it's the same to the mirror. It's the same. Cold and heat, and this and that -- it's the same. From the point of view of awareness, it's the same. And we can begin -- again, this is a possibility of practice: we can actually start practising seeing things from that sort of standpoint of awareness, not making such a distinction between this and that. And one can pick that up as a practice, and take it, again, on a journey. And it's a tremendous amount of freedom, and can go through different aspects, but tremendous amount of freedom in that.
(2) Second thing is a bit more sophisticated, but to actually realize that discernment, discerning between this and that, any two things, discerning, is actually part of perception. It's part of how we perceive. So some 'thing' and 'not that thing,' 'this thing' and 'not that thing' -- it's part of how we perceive. We perceive pairs of things. So pleasure and pain -- in Dharma terms, these distinctions that we discern between. Calmness and agitation. 'Pleasure' only means something in relation to 'pain.' 'Pain' only means something in relation to 'pleasure.' 'Calmness' only in relation to 'agitation,' vice versa. They exist, like the left and right of a stick, as pairs of dualities, of opposites. Stillness of mind and movement of mind, mettā and non-mettā, kindness and unkindness, mindfulness and distraction, clean and dirty, pure and impure, wisdom and delusion -- all these are pairs of dualities that only exist kind of dependent on each other. Their very definition depends on the opposite. In a way, we say in Dharma, they're empty of inherent, independent existence. They exist dependent on their opposite.
[51:21] So what can happen in practice, one other avenue is that we can begin to introduce a little bit of doubt into the practice, maybe just a little bit, into the independent existence of these things, of what we're discerning. The more we believe in something's independent existence, the more we start measuring in relation to that thing, so the more we believe in pain or pleasure as something independently existent, the more we believe in calm and agitation as a real dichotomy, the more we start measuring along those lines. And that measurement is part of the process of perception, and it will actually begin to draw that duality out to perception. So then we do really notice, "Wow, pleasure and pain really are very different," and everything that comes with that -- all the fear that comes with that. "Calmness and agitation really are different," and all the judgment that comes with that. Because we're believing, we start measuring without even realizing it, and that feeds the perception. We draw out these dualities to perception. So the discernment itself is actually part of the perceptual process. And things begin to stand out to perception.
If we can begin to practise in a way that we begin to doubt the reality of this, we begin to see this process at work, and then reflect, "Well, they're not actually inherently real. They don't exist, these dualities, independent of the way I'm seeing them." When we can reflect that way as we're looking, we're taking away the belief, taking away the measurement, and taking away, in a way, what's feeding the very perception itself of all these pairs. Sometimes the perception just begins to fade. Sometimes it fades a little bit. Sometimes it fades completely. And that's not to say that we will remain free of perception forever, because there's no such thing. But it's more, there's a very deep understanding there that the world, this world of duality is not real in the way that it seems to be real. But it's okay. It's really okay. There's not a problem with it.
[54:02] So all of that doesn't mean that we don't still cultivate what's beautiful and make that discernment. It's just that we don't have the same kind of investment in it as something really real, and that we can build judgment or any kind of problem out of at all.
So just to sum up, practice is something very broad, and there's so -- as we were saying earlier, in the question period earlier -- there are so many different kind of approaches and emphases that one can take in practice, and it's all great. It's all fantastic. It's all good practice. And in a way, what's important is seeing this capacity that we have to learn to pick up a certain way of working, a certain view, and put it down again. And then pick up another one, and put it down again. And be really free in that choice. So one of the great Zen Masters, Lin Chi -- someone asked him, "How do you practise?" And he said:
Sometimes I take away the person [meaning this regarding things as 'not me, not mine, not-self' -- what I talked about]. Sometimes I take away the thing [so what I've just talked about, seeing this emptiness of duality, seeing this 'things aren't really real']. Sometimes I take away both the person and the thing. And sometimes I leave the person, and I leave the thing.[5]
Meaning, completely ordinary way you and I need to talk about this problem: here's this very real thing, relating to it on that level, and like the person I was talking with -- yeah, the self, "stuck with old conditioning, and the fear of moving through" -- that language is completely fine. But there is, in the sort of range of the Dharma, this amazing choice that we have of developing different ways of looking, different ways of moving towards freedom. And it's all beautiful. It's all valuable.
Okay, so that's where I'm going to stop for now. And then, as I said, we have questions and time for discussion later. So now is a period for some walking meditation. And John, if you rang the bell at twenty past, we'll sit a little after twenty past.
E.g. DN 22. ↩︎
Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2007), 59. ↩︎
AN 3:34. ↩︎
Mu Soeng, Trust in Mind: The Rebellion of Chinese Zen (Boston: Wisdom, 2004), 133. ↩︎
Cf. Burton Watson, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 21. ↩︎
