Transcription
Okay. So to continue this exploration. I talked this morning quite a lot about mindfulness, in a way the fundamental aspect of this particular path, one of the fundamental aspects of this particular path. But anyone who has dedicated themselves to this path for a little while will realize that mindfulness cannot do everything, and mindfulness alone is simply not enough. It would be lovely if it was, but that's just not the case. So we find ourselves diligently bringing mindfulness to what's difficult. Sometimes it is all that's needed. Sometimes it's only part of what's needed. Sometimes we bring it to what's difficult and it just isn't enough to help. Mindfulness, or seeing of what's difficult, sometimes isn't enough. Sometimes we even notice that when things are difficult in body or mind or emotion or environment, our attention kind of gets sucked in there like a magnet, sucked into what's difficult. Our attention, not always but oftentimes, tends to be pulled towards what a problem is, towards a problem in life, and not always in the most helpful way, not always in a helpful way.
Sometimes it turns out, if we're really honest and really careful in our investigation in this area, sometimes it turns out that our attention is actually part of the problem. Our very attention to a difficulty is actually part of the problem. As I mentioned briefly this morning, there is such a thing in Dharma practice as what you could call skilful non-attending. [laughter] Skilful ignoring, in a wholesome way. Learning not to pay attention to this. Even though it's jabbering away and demanding attention, just learning to look the other way. That's actually a big part of healing, can be. There is mindfulness. There is non-mindfulness. Kindness. What's the place, the significance of kindness, alongside the mindfulness? Huge significance in this area, in terms of healing emotionally, in terms of working with our emotions. At least as important as the mindfulness is the kindness.
When the Buddha talks about mindfulness, it's actually not separate either from kindness or from wisdom. Right from the beginning, when he talks about what it means to be mindful, he uses these odd phrases -- "see the mind in the mind," or "see the heart in the heart." It's an odd phrase. What it means is if there's anger, if there's fear, if there's joy, if there's peace, if there's sadness, see that as the weather of the mind, the weather of the heart right then. See the mind in the mind, the heart in the heart, or see the heart as the heart, rather than seeing the self in it. Right from the beginning in the mindfulness he makes that distinction. See if you can pay attention, if you can be mindful in a way that doesn't see things in terms of self, doesn't bind oneself in a definition and constrict oneself tightly with a definition: "Just because there's anger around, it means I'm an angry person, or there's depression around, I am a depressed person. I'm this or I'm that. Or there's joy, I must be enlightened" or whatever. [laughter] To be really vigilant right from the beginning about how we -- we have this compulsion to define ourselves, and can we actually just jettison that? This is a practice. Right from the beginning, can we practise seeing it's just the heart? It's just the heart. It's just the weather of the heart. It's just the conditions of the heart right now. So worth it and so much a part of what mindfulness truly is, but we need to be conscious of adding that in.
Sometimes -- another example -- we find ourselves in a situation with someone else, and they're suffering a lot, and for some reason we're not feeling anything, no empathy, no compassion, just, "When are they going to stop ...?" [laughter] Of course, we don't say that. [laughter] But this is the nature, this is what it is to be a human being. Sometimes we don't feel anything. And again, what happens? What can happen, we tend to think, "What's the matter with me? Am I some kind of ogre? Some kind of heartless monster?" See the mind in the mind, the heart in the heart. That's just the conditions right then, no empathy. There are often very interesting reasons why that's the case. Don't make a definition out of it, a self-definition. But anyway. The first thing that needs to be in place, the first aspect that needs to be in place, is this mindfulness, and all the richness and all the beauty of that. But there are other aspects, and I want to draw them out today.
Firstly, the whole area of cultivation. Cultivation of what could be called beautiful and helpful qualities of mind and heart. So we talk about loving-kindness, we talk about compassion, we talk about generosity, we talked about equanimity, calmness, collectedness of mind, this word samādhi. All of these and more, these boring Buddhist lists that the Buddha seems to be always going on about [laughter], there's a reason he's going on about that. There's a reason. It's the treasure. It's absolutely the treasure of a human being. More than anything else in this world, these qualities are your treasure, your potential treasure, available to everybody. Of course we tend to think of other things as our treasure, material investments in this and that and security. This is the real treasure, all these lists. That's why he keeps going on and on and on about it.
For some reason -- I'm not going to go into that -- we tend to overlook the significance of cultivation, and perhaps sometimes overemphasize the relative significance of mindfulness. It's a bit like two wings of a bird. Can't really fly with just one wing, with the mindfulness. Needs the cultivation. At least as important, at least as important. So all these qualities, as I said -- loving-kindness, compassion, generosity, renunciation, equanimity, calmness, they go on and on, devotion, for some people. What is it in our life and in our practice to explore what these qualities mean for us so that we translate them from this boring list, like chewing cardboard, translate it into something that's really personal and meaningful for me? Loving-kindness, I know what that means, I know what it feels like to me. Make it personal. Understand what it is that I need to do to cultivate them. Wonder, awe -- beautiful qualities, qualities that, unfortunately, they're often a little bit strangers to us. How do we develop these in our life? So important.
Now, a fact of the path, a promise of the path, is we can develop them. We can develop all of them, deeper and deeper, more and more fully. It's not linear, and it's not easy. In other words, one doesn't just ascend gradually into the blissful heavens of loving-kindness, you know, without giving it a second thought. It's a very non-linear process, and it's not easy. It's not easy to transform the heart, transform the consciousness in that way. But slowly and gradually, over time, with the cultivation of these beautiful qualities, something happens in the being. A number of things happen. The first one is a strength comes into the being, a strength comes into the heart. Now, anyone who's just been alive for, you know, more than fifteen years realizes that just to be alive, to be a human being, requires a certain amount of strength in the heart. Certainly to travel the path, to travel the spiritual path, requires strength. To work with emotions that are difficult requires an enormous amount of strength in the heart. Oftentimes it's a quality that we're lacking. Something difficult comes along and we're just keeled over. These qualities to be cultivated, inherently as part of what they are, they bring into the heart in this very gradual way a genuine kind of strength. It's not a brittle strength. It's not a rigid strength. It's a pliable, deep steadiness and stability of heart. Absolutely indispensable quality for our lives, for our practice, and for healing.
[10:41] Alongside the strength, all these qualities that I listed and more bring something else. And again, very non-linearly, very slowly, very gradually, they bring happiness. They bring joy with them. We cannot talk about emotional healing in a complete way without talking about happiness and cultivating happiness. It's not just about turning the attention to what's difficult. That could only ever be one half of it. How do we cultivate happiness? How do we open the heart in joy? So important, fundamental question. Happiness is an interesting word. I'm aware that it pushes some people's buttons, and just the word kind of, for some people, turns them off, makes them cringe. Substitute a word that works -- joy, well-being, whatever. Sometimes the word 'happy' just sounds very superficial. "Happy, happy, happy!" [laughter] But this here is another question in terms of view, a question for all of us: what am I equating with depth? What is my view about happiness? Do I consider happiness superficial? Do I consider difficult emotion deep? This is a very real question. Am I operating under that view, whether consciously or unconsciously? And is that the case? Certainly that's not the way the Buddha looked at it; he actually talked about deepening as deepening in happiness.
I have a very good friend, she's still a good friend, but when I lived in the States, she and I were, at the same time, in sort of concurrent processes in psychotherapy. We would get together and hang out and stuff, and sometimes she would come over and I would ask her how she was. Oftentimes she was struggling. She was really going through a lot and looking at a lot of stuff, and she would say so. Other times, I would say, "How are you doing?", and she would say, "Well, I'm okay, I think. I think I'm happy ... Maybe I'm in denial." [laughter] It followed on about three or four seconds later, with all the best intention. It was just this questioning of happiness and -- could it really be real? Could it really be something deep? With these qualities that are listed and happiness, they go together. A heart of loving-kindness, a heart of generosity is a heart of happiness. It's actually relatively simple. It's quite simple. When those qualities are in the heart, there is happiness.
I remember years ago, the beginning period of a process in psychotherapy, I felt very, very unhappy, and very, very stuck in a certain -- what seemed to be a certain kind of place. It felt, to me, as if my personality had been sort of built wrong, put together wrong. There was some kind of structural misalignment or something. It felt twisted inside, and I could see all the difficulties I had, and they all seemed to be coming out of this wrong personality structure. I felt like I needed to change that and put it back into shape somehow, and I didn't know how, and it seemed impossible. I felt so stuck. It seemed completely impossible. And I felt really, actually ... tormented is not even a strong word; I felt really a lot of pain with this because I felt so stuck and so unable to shift it.
One day, I got up in the morning and felt this pain, and I just decided to do the loving-kindness practice. I sat in the morning, "May I be well, may you be well, all beings, may you be happy, may you be peaceful," and just kept at it. But I didn't stop when the meditation period ended. It was a Sunday and I didn't have to work. I just kept doing it. I had my breakfast and I had a shower, and I went to the grocery store and got my groceries, and to the woman behind the counter, "May you be peaceful," not out loud ... [laughter] I should have done. But anyway. I just kept it going, clinging to it. I was so unhappy and in such a difficult space inside. Clinging to it literally like a person who's been washed overboard in a storm and is clinging to a piece of wood, I just kept it going hour after hour. I went to walk in the park and I sat in the park, one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours.
Something happened at a certain point. It was probably around three hours; I don't know. I was extremely unhappy, and something began to shift. The unhappiness lessened, and I began to get just the glimmers of happiness, and that began to grow, and I kept at it, and the happiness began to grow, and I kept at it. It grew and grew until I was sitting in the park beaming, radiant with happiness. In a way, that's not a very remarkable story. But because it was so black and white, the unhappiness and the happiness, a coin dropped for me that has never since gone back. It was so clear. I was labouring under the illusion -- I wasn't even aware of it -- that I needed to restructure my personality in order to be happy. I wasn't even conscious that I was thinking that. I couldn't be happy until I restructured some deep personality structure. In those three hours, I wasn't restructuring anything. All I was doing was cultivating a heart, in that moment, of loving-kindness, and there the happiness was. The happiness is dependent on the qualities present in the heart and in the mind in the moment. Happiness is dependent on the qualities present in the heart and mind in the moment. It was so black and white, so clear.
So mettā's a very good example of a quality that leads to happiness. Generosity, mettā, compassion, all of them. And just a word about the mettā. I remember when I lived in the States being part of a residential meditation centre, and one of the things I did was -- there were lots of classes offered there, and in the evening we had I think it was an eight-week class on loving-kindness, on mettā, once a week for eight weeks. I went along, with my teacher Narayan. About the seventh or the eighth week, a woman in the class asked Narayan, "You know, I've been going through such a lot of difficult stuff recently, really a lot of pain and struggle, and I just feel like hunkering down in my own little cocoon of loving-kindness towards myself, and just kind of wrapping myself in loving-kindness." In the class, we'd gone through starting with the self and gradually to all beings. She said, "I just want to wrap myself in this cocoon. Is that okay?" And my teacher, Narayan, didn't blink, and just said, "No." [laughter]
I was quite taken aback, because, you know, it sounds great. And there wasn't much of an interaction, I don't remember. But afterwards, I thought about it, and I thought that, you know, oftentimes in people's practice, it's actually very important to give a lot of loving-kindness to oneself. It's actually a very, very important part of the path, and that can last quite a period. But there's also a connection here that we need not to overlook. Sometimes the more self, the more self-preoccupation, even if it's under the guise of spiritual work or psychological work or whatever, the more self, the more suffering. The more self-preoccupation, the more suffering. And sometimes the point comes when it's time to open out, open out the awareness away from just this, me and my process, my problem, etc. Too much self-preoccupation just increases the dukkha, increases the dissatisfaction.
[20:00] Okay. So there's mindfulness. There's the whole huge, important area of cultivation. There's also -- I just want to touch on this briefly -- the whole area of work done with another person off the cushion. By that, I mean the whole modalities of counselling and psychotherapy and psychology and meeting with a teacher, meeting with a good friend. Interpersonal work in that way. I can only really touch the surface of this, but I just want to say a few things. A general point to start with. Whatever path we choose in this life, whatever paths we choose, whatever practices, whatever techniques, whatever traditions, they're going to have their particular benefits, benefits particular to that path, and their particular pitfalls. This goes certainly for insight meditation, for working with the breath, for loving-kindness, Insight Meditation tradition, Theravāda tradition, Buddhism, the whole shebang. Whatever we choose has its particular benefits and its particular pitfalls. Part of a mark of maturity in practice is being able to recognize what are the particular pitfalls of the paths and the techniques that I have chosen. Sometimes it's quite easy to look at someone else's practice and say, "Oh. Better watch out because ..." But do we actually know what our particular path, what its benefits are and also what its pitfalls are? So everything has that.
What's, perhaps, available in the dynamic between two people or a group that's maybe not so available just by oneself on the cushion? Well, one thing that jumps out is we can learn skill in relating. That's a potential possibility. Of course, there's some carry-over from the cushion. But hopefully with someone who is skilful in relating, relating well and deeply and intimately between two people, we can actually begin to learn that skill. Oftentimes in our life, we find ourself with difficulties in relationship, difficulties in intimate relationship and being close with someone, sustaining that. We tend to think there's something in here that needs fixing. What about if we look at it as learning? I need to learn skill in relating. It's a different way of looking at it. I need to learn skill in relating. And again, it's a skill that it's possible to learn it. We can learn skill in communicating, to communicate what might be difficult to communicate, or what's lovely to communicate, love, but oftentimes we shy away from expressing love. We can learn to communicate love, learn to communicate anger in a skilful way, "no" in a skilful way, setting boundaries in a skilful way. A lot of these things are areas where many of us weren't schooled that well in them, so we actually need to relearn them. Rather than thinking, perhaps, there's some feeling that I need to re-feel, actually need to relearn a skill or skills in relating and communicating.
One of the other skills is learning how to defuse negative thought patterns, that we find ourselves in loops of negative thoughts and beliefs and awash in them, whirling around in them. One of the things that sometimes another person can help point out to us is where we're stuck in that and how to disentangle from that. Of course some of that is very readily available on the cushion just in ourselves. All that's available. Sometimes, also, in relationship with another person, something else -- it's hard to kind of describe it, but it's possible that through a loving, healing relationship with another, we can actually learn to love and celebrate ourselves, to celebrate one's own uniqueness, one's unique manifestation in this world -- something very particular: this body, this heart, this expression. To really cherish that and appreciate it and celebrate it. So the mettā is a fantastic practice. What I'm talking about now is just a slightly different aspect or energy that's sometimes drawn out more through another person reflecting that back to us, showing us our beauty, showing us our loveliness. Ideally, it's what, in a healthy parent/child relationship, should be there. The parent delights in the uniqueness, in the beauty of the child. And oftentimes we actually have lost that relationship with ourselves and replaced it with often its opposite or just an absence. To rekindle that, something very precious and beautiful that can be really aided through work with another person.
Now, some of you may be listening and thinking, "Well. That sounds a bit like self to me." And if you're very into the Dharma, you're aware of this whole important and deep teaching of the Dharma about the emptiness of self, not-self, etc. But please, to remember in this area -- it's a very important area -- there is the view that we can pick up and look at things, look at our experience, look at our life, in terms of self. And we can pick up the view and look at our lives and our experience in terms of not-self. They're both valuable. They're both valuable. Certainly a lot of the depths of meditation practice is concerned with this not-self business. We don't even have time to go near that today. But concerned with this emptiness of self. But it's not that we always, exclusively, only want to look at things in terms of not-self. They're both available. And again, perhaps one of the marks of maturity in practice is being okay and free to move between the two, and pick up the view of self and use the language of self and use that way of looking and also to put it down, which is what most people can't do, put down the self, put down that way of looking, and pick up the other view, not-self, and put that down, and be able to freely move between the two. There's a real maturity in practice there.
I talked about potential pitfalls. I touched on this earlier. Too much self, too much self can become just another form of self-obsession, self-preoccupation, even if it's dressed up in fancy spiritual or psychotherapeutic garb or whatever. It becomes just another way of wrapping oneself in self-concern. Sometimes many people approach a process, in therapy or whatever it is, needing to learn or to relearn to set boundaries, to speak one's needs, to ask for what one wants, to be strong in that way. If I think back twenty years or so, I not only didn't know how to ask for what I need or say what I need; I didn't even know what I needed. I was completely out of touch with the feeling of my own needs in life and my own desires. So I needed first to reconnect with that, and then to learn to express that in a way that was true to myself and could be heard. Too much emphasis on that, important as it is, and the balance can slip over into a kind of inner climate of entitlement. [laughter] I've seen this. I can see it. A person -- too much of that, and they start to feel like people owe them money just to spend time with them or something, or whatever, all kinds of stuff. In a way, you could say our culture is a bit of a 'me' culture. We're living in a 'me' culture. Very easy to just use whatever we're doing spiritually and psychologically as just another way into reinforcing the 'me' culture.
[30:04] So again, can there be freedom with all of this? I need to learn to communicate, to communicate what's difficult. I need to learn to speak the truth, to stand up in the truth. But Dharma also talks about letting go. Just letting a situation go. Am I free to do both? Where is my propensity? Is my propensity to just say, "Oh, it's okay. Everything's okay!" and ignore my needs, ignore what needs to be spoken, out of fear, out of disconnection? Or is my propensity to always pick something up and always express anger? And learning to practise, as one Thai teacher used to put it, practise in the direction of one's attachments -- meaning go where you need to go, do what's opposite to the habitual way of doing.
Just very briefly. Sometimes, in some cases, when there's been a long, very involved process of healing, for some people there can be a lot of anger. Particularly we look back on our childhood and there's anger at the parents. Sometimes one feels like one's reconnecting with an anger that one didn't dare to feel beforehand. But sometimes there can be -- sometimes there can be an over-attachment to that. I speak from experience as well here. We almost feel like it's so precious to have reconnected with the anger that we don't want anything to prevent us experiencing and expressing that anger, that that's the truth and we need to cling on to it, otherwise I might lose myself, lose my truth. But of course, with the parents, there's liable to be gratitude, too -- all the things they've done. No matter what mistakes they've made, there's bound to be gratitude too. Sometimes we can be over-attached to either one of those, either afraid of feeling anger -- and oftentimes, for people drawn to this kind of practice, there is a bit of a ... anger is not good, not spiritual, doesn't look good. [laughter] But sometimes it can swing the other way and we're actually afraid to let go of the anger because we feel we might be losing ourselves, whatever that might mean, losing our truth, and afraid to feel the gratitude. Are we free to feel both? Are we free to move between the two?
Okay. Mindfulness, cultivation, certainly the possibility of working in relationship with other people. What about the views that we have or hold of the healing process? How are we viewing the healing process? So this is really, really important. Again, to ask oneself, to ask oneself these questions. Am I viewing the healing process such that I believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that I just need to pinpoint a cause for my emotional pain? That I need to trace it back, this difficulty I have, this pain I have, this whatever it is? I just need to trace it back in time and find some incident or some environment or some situation and say, "Aha. That's where it started." And somehow in the remembering of an event or a situation or an incident, in the remembering or in the pointing to a cause, in the knowing of the past, that will bring healing. Am I assuming that, if I'm involved in the healing process? Because my experience, and the experience of people I work with, is it may do but it's absolutely not necessarily the case that that will bring healing. It's just not the case. So it may do, but it won't necessarily bring healing and transformation just pointing at a cause and remembering an event, or even a series of events.
I remember from my own process when I was in psychotherapy, I would experience these memories that came up, of quite early trauma and abuse, and there would be a lot of tears with them, a lot of catharsis, very opening, one memory and then another one, spaced over time. And a lot of catharsis, but after a while, I began to wonder, "Well, where's the transformation? I'm remembering a lot. I'm crying a lot. I'm feeling a lot." And yet, after a certain amount of time -- I was very patient, so it was quite a long period of time -- I just began to wonder, "Where's the transformation here? Where's the healing?" At first I thought there's probably just one more memory, the really big one. [laughter] The really big painful one where that's the core one, and when that comes up, then it will just release. So I kept on, very dedicatedly. But after a point, I just began to question the whole process. Is the healing and the transformation in the remembering, in the pinpointing to the event?
So to question these views in ourselves. Now, whether or not we feel ourselves to be involved in a process of emotional healing -- because some of you may feel like, "Well, it's kind of interesting, but I had a very happy childhood and I don't really feel like there's a lot of healing that needs to happen." Fine! [laughter] Still, there's a very common assumption. The assumption or the view is of stuff coming up. I want to go into this, and I want to tread very carefully here. I would say it's become an almost culturally accepted assumption that we have stuff from the past kind of buried somewhere in here waiting to come up. One falls in one of two camps: either reluctantly wanting it to come up and heal, or thank you, no, very much, I'll just stuff that back down and make sure it never does. But generally speaking I think it's actually quite culturally accepted to a certain degree. You could stop probably a lot of people on the street and they would say, "Yeah, I pretty much see things that way."
When we're practising, or just quiet in our lives, sitting in meditation and just quietly watching the breath, or quietly with experience, and then something happens -- some agitation comes, tears come, and they seem to be coming out of nowhere, or a memory might come even, or rage comes, or some strong disturbance comes up. If we're dedicated meditators, we try and be with it, we try and open to it, we try and explore it, and it comes and it passes. After it passes, we're relieved. There's a lightness. We feel literally lighter. We can look at that and say, "Stuff came up. It seems pretty obvious stuff came up. I was sitting here minding my own business and the stuff came up, and it was difficult and now it's gone and I feel lighter for it. It's gone now." This view is very common, as I said, whether we think of ourselves as having something to heal or not. I want to tread very lightly here, because there can be a real benefit in looking and seeing things that way. There can be. So I absolutely want to say that.
But it really bears further investigation. It's a view that goes back thousands of years. The Buddha was once walking and came across a monk from a different tradition who was standing there. I can't remember if he was standing on one leg or two legs ... or none ... [laughter] ... or three. I don't know. It's irrelevant. He was standing there and the Buddha said to him, "What are you doing?" And he said, "I'm standing here, and by standing here I'm allowing my old karma to burn its way out. I'm just standing here, and I'm opening up, and I'm allowing all my old karma to burn out. When it's all burnt out, when it's gone, that's enlightenment. I'll be enlightened." The Buddha said, "Really? How's it going?" And the guy said, "Well, I'm not really sure." "Okay. How much have you got rid of?" "Not really sure." "How much have you got left to go?" "Not really sure." "How will you know when it's all gone?" "Not really sure." And then, in one of his somewhat uncharacteristic caustic moments -- he was capable of them, certainly -- he basically says it's a stupid practice. "Stupid practice. Pointless. You're wasting your time. You're completely barking up the wrong tree."[1]
Some people still have that view, again, either consciously or unconsciously. It can be, and I know people, that it's their sole view of what practice is. One just sits, and one is aware and open and allows the old karma to burn out. It's unpleasant, and that's how you know that it's doing you good. The more misery, the better. [laughter] It's on its way out, and if it's really miserable then you really know you're getting rid of a big chunk of it. If you feel okay, well, you're not really ... Most people, if that's the only way you look at practice, it's just a matter of time before you get fed up and go off to a tantra course in Tahiti or whatever. Silly comment! Some people, though, they keep it going. They keep it going for decades with a lot of commitment. But it really bears further investigation. I want to come back to that in a few minutes.
[41:20] There's a slightly related point or situation. Remember, we're talking about views of healing, views of what's going on. One of the most painful sort of emotional constellations that a human being can feel -- and I know because I have several good friends with this particular pattern, and also lots of people I work with -- is a kind of very deep sense of rejection or abandonment. Very, very deep. It almost seems to be at the core of the being. And with it, a kind of sense of, again, very deep, almost existential non-belonging. A person with this pattern really feels they don't rightfully belong in the universe; their actual beingness is a mistake. One of my friends put it, "I feel like God made a mistake." Very, very painful. Very deep pain associated with this, and a sense of disconnection with that, disconnection from life, disconnection from the universe. Not that uncommon. Some of you may be listening and think, "Well, that sounds pretty strange," but it's actually not that uncommon. For an example, it's one particular constellation, a very difficult constellation that a human being can have, get into.
What I've noticed with this particular pattern is that almost without exception the person assumes that that's the reality, that actually that's the truth of things that's running constantly underneath their experience. And it's only when they believe they have the courage to let go of their distractions and sink in a little deeper that they contact it, but the truth is really it's there all the time and that's what's real. Almost without exception there's that assumption with it. But what might that assumption be missing? It misses what the Buddha talked about: dependent arising. So something arises, a difficult emotion in this case, whatever, it arises dependent on conditions. Some, certainly, are in the past. But some of them are in the present. If we assume that something is just real, like a stratum running constantly underneath, we're missing what the conditioning factors are in the present. That particular pattern, usually a lot of fear associated with it, and usually just begin to get a whiff of it and there's a disconnection, a fear, and a distancing. Could it be that the distancing and the fear and the disconnecting are actually contributing factors to that feeling being there in the present moment itself? We make an assumption and we don't see what else is going on, and then it seems like, "Well, it is there all the time." It just seems so real. This is a huge part of the Buddha's teaching: what are the conditioning factors -- it sounds like a technical word -- what's contributing in the present moment to give rise to something?
So I want to draw this out more. We've talked so far about mindfulness, cultivation, working with others, the views. And I want to expand this a bit more. The contributing factors, what's compounding something in the present. This has to do with the whole Dharma teaching about emptiness, which I'll just go into a little bit. How do we build things in the present? How do things arise and pass? Humble as it sounds, this ends up being the most significant question in the Dharma. The most significant question. It doesn't sound even particularly sexy or interesting. It's the most interesting question. How -- not just that things arise and pass and noticing that, but how is it that they arise and how do they pass? What is it that contributes, that compounds, that fabricates, that builds their arising and their passing? I want to look at this from a few angles. We can have a view of inner psychological structure and talking in those terms and viewing in those terms, and that can be really helpful. But from a meditative point of view, from the point of view of meditation, all that anything can ever be, all that anything can ever be is an experience in the moment -- some sensations of experience in the moment, an impression or impressions in awareness in the moment. Whatever it is, no matter what the past history or the story associated with it, in the moment, meditatively speaking, that's all that something can be. Do you see that? Does ...? Are we still here? [laughter] Yeah? Okay.
Can we come into that view of seeing things in the moment? An experience is ephemeral. It's just an impression. It's almost like it's insubstantial. When we really get close to the texture of experience, it's actually insubstantial. There's barely anything there. And it's only a moment. Any experience can only ever be in a moment. A moment is always handleable. Awareness can always accommodate a moment of experience, no matter how difficult it is. A moment is always handleable. Can we come into that view of seeing things? What we tend to do as human beings is we tend to add self and add time, and then we've got a huge thing that we stagger under the burden of. Something happens, it's difficult in the moment, a difficult experience, again we bind a self-definition -- "I am like this." And then we add, "It's been so long. It will be ... It's going to last ... When's it going to go?" And then we've got this huge thing. We literally make a thing. We compound, we fabricate a thing out of something that's a barely there experience. Now, of course it's fruitful to talk about things and time and selves and all of that, but meditatively speaking, can we practise going into this other mode, not building?
A bit more about this. As this kind of meditation practice deepens, one of the very real possibilities for a dedicated practitioner is that we can learn to not only be mindful but learn to become sensitive, and more and more sensitive, to the quality of relationship that we have with any experience. Now, the fact is that our relationship is always, to some degree -- it may be very subtle -- involved in pushing away what we don't like and trying to hang on or pull towards us what we do like. So we're always involved in some degree of struggle with experience, pushing away or pulling, push-pull, push-pull, and it's going on all the time. We can learn to be sensitive to that. Gradual process. And also learn how to relax that struggle at deeper and deeper, more and more subtle levels. We learn how to relax the struggle, relax the push and pull more and more, just deeper and deeper.
So on one hand, we could relate to any experience -- pain in the knee or whatever it is, sound -- and have a lot of story around it, a lot of proliferation, a lot of building up. We see then that there's a lot of suffering. Here's this pain in my knee, let's say, and I'm immediately thinking I have cancer of the kneecap, and comparing with everyone else, and why me, da-da-da-da-da. A lot of story, a lot of suffering. Not only a lot of suffering, but a lot of intensity of the actual experience itself. The actual experience itself of the pain in the knee will be stronger. It will stand out in consciousness stronger. Now, I can learn with mindfulness -- part of what mindfulness is is just shaving off that story, just coming into the bare experience. Suffering gets a little less. But if I keep going with my practice and learn to relax some of this push and pull, what I notice -- even less suffering. But also the experience itself begins to fade, to blur, to soften, and the more I let go of the push and pull with experience, the more the experience just literally quietens, calms, and fades, dissolves.
I'm talking about quite deep levels of practice now. So there's a continuum. There's a continuum here. A lot of struggle, a lot of story and building up, a lot of push and pull; just a little bit; very little; none at all. When there's none at all, no suffering, and actually nothing happening. Literally -- I'm talking about a very deep level of meditation; I want to make a point from it -- nothing is happening. No experience is arising. I'm not manipulating in any way. I'm not suppressing anything. I'm actually completely hands off. I'm letting go of any struggle with things. Total non-manipulation. And there's a fading of the experience and a fading of the suffering. If we have a model of stuff coming up -- talking about emotions -- stuff coming up and purifying, releasing, and I find that when I let go of the push and pull, the more I let go of the push and pull, the less difficult things are that come up, how can I -- when I talk about purification, as I said, it only feels like purification when it's something difficult coming up. If I feel happy, I don't feel I got rid of that trauma of happiness that I had before. It has to feel difficult. If nothing comes up, I can't talk about purification.
This isn't easy to follow, so I might have to say it again anyway, but. There's a spectrum of intensity of experience and how much we push and pull. I'm saying that as it gets less and less, the experience itself fades and, in the end, no experience. Where on that continuum, which point, which degree of pushing and pulling, reveals the real feeling that needs to come out and be purified? Do you understand? Should I explain that again? Did someone say no? [yogis, inaudible in background] I'll try. It's a difficult point. I'll try again. What I find as a meditator -- I'm talking about a long journey of meditation, years of practice here and going into this -- I find that I can relate to experience, any experience, in a way that actually builds not only the suffering but also the experience itself. If I really get involved, and really reactive, and really all het up, and really involve my story, the suffering is more and the experience is more. I learn to let that go and just be mindful. Then I learn to relax even any kind of aversion to what's difficult, or any kind of grasping on, and I just learn to do that more and more and more.
Doing that is not manipulating my experience. All I'm doing is actually letting go of manipulating. Right at the end of that, or very near the end, you get to a point where actually nothing is arising. If I feel like this view of stuff coming up or stuff being purified, if I'm just sitting there without manipulating the experience, relaxing all the push and pull, I find nothing comes up -- certainly nothing difficult, but then, to a point, nothing comes up -- how can I talk about purification then? And if that's being with my experience in a more real way because I'm not struggling with it, I'm not manipulating it, then how real can the process of purification be? Do you understand? You couldn't say it's not real either. It's just that there's a continuum of how much push and pull there is, and who is going to say where on that continuum reveals the real reality?
It turns out that for there to be any experience at all it actually needs pushing and pulling. It's completely counterintuitive. It's not an intuitive thing. It's completely counterintuitive. Any experience to arise at all needs a push and a pull. Is this making sense? [yogis, inaudible] Good, so I mean the actual feeling. We're talking about levels, layers of depth of practice here. At first -- everyone's experienced a pain in the knee when they're meditating. You can learn to relate to it so that the suffering goes out of it but the pain is still there; it's just some unpleasant sensation, but it goes. As you develop and really relax any kind of subtle aversion to it, the actual experience itself will fade. The actual experience itself will fade. Completely counterintuitive, completely a surprise, extremely significant. It's not just a kind of oddity; it's extremely significant. Any experience is dependent on grasping and aversion and push and pull. It's not what we usually talk about when we talk about mindfulness. We just don't talk about it that much, but that's actually the case of what happens, and the implications are enormous.
[yogi, inaudible] In that moment, when you're able to let go in that way in that moment, if you're skilful enough at letting go, it won't hurt. Yeah. If you're skilful enough at letting go. It's the promise of deep practice, you know. And it has everything to do with the core of the Buddha's teaching of dependent arising. It's extremely significant.
So the question: how much of this push and pull reveals the real object or the real emotion or whatever? So, okay, where are we going to land with this? I don't know if 'paradox' is the right word, but it's something we kind of have to hold all this together. Everything that I've said so far kind of has to be held together. I feel, just for myself, I feel actually glad when I reflect on my meditative process and healing process and stuff. I feel glad that although I was involved a lot in building a lot of stuff through over-effort and over-intensity and certain views, there was a lot of catharsis and a lot of big stuff happening, and now I kind of wonder, well, I wonder how much of all that was real, but I still feel glad that I went through that because other stuff came out of it. There was a kind of heart opening. There was a kind of learning to accommodate what was very difficult. Heart opening to other kinds of feelings, not just difficult feelings, but feelings of deep joy and religious feelings. I don't know that I could always recommend that to someone else, that they unwittingly feed that whole process.
If I believe in the idea of stuff coming up -- and remember, I'm not throwing it out completely; I'm absolutely not doing that, I'm just questioning reality here. If I believe in the view of stuff coming up, that very belief is enough for the whole process to get momentum. Just the belief is not a neutral thing. As a teacher, would I always want to undermine and just say, "You know, it's all empty. Pull yourself together"? [laughter] It's not appropriate. Would I want to even do that too early in someone's process? No. But there comes a time when it's time to question it. Again, what's maturity in practice, if we can use that word? It's not a great word, but. Is it possible to know both ends of this? So I know what it is to be with what's difficult and to open to it and to go through the fire with it, and I also know what it is to question its reality and see its emptiness, so that the view and the mind is pliable, is open, is malleable. And never to say when there's been real trauma to someone, "Oh, just get over it" or something. Tears are necessary and that kind of healing is necessary.
But this release of stuff, which can seem so obvious and so self-evident, it may be never-ending. It may actually be never-ending if it's being unconsciously created and continued in the present in subtle ways just in the process of being mindful, of giving attention. If there's just enough wrapped up in the mindfulness to actually just keep it spinning, year after year, and, if you believe it, life after life after life, it may be never-ending if we don't uncover this process.
So we talk about emptiness, and just a final point on emptiness. Sometimes when we talk about healing, we feel I'm wanting to heal the past, or I'm wanting to heal what's coming from the past, what I remember from the past. When we go deep into practice and into this emptiness in particular, you can actually see that the past, in Dharma language, is empty of inherent existence. It doesn't exist in any real, independent way. You can notice this. When the mind state is very bright and very open and very happy, we look back on the past and our past relationships and this and that, and it seems great, or at least okay. And when we're depressed and when the mind is heavy and dark, we look back and it seems different.
One of the fruits of cultivating all these qualities that I talked about before is that, in the process of cultivating, the mind goes through a large range of happiness and just normal unhappiness, and we see how dependent is the view of the past and present and future on the mind state, because we keep going into these states of happiness, seeing how dependent view is of the past. The past is empty of inherent existence. When we absorb that in the heart, it's genuinely possible to say to oneself that one is free from any sense of burden from the past. It just doesn't seem to be weighing on one's consciousness, on one's being in the present in any way at all. Literally the past has lost its sense of burden. This is a very real possibility.
So just to finish. Where are we going to -- I don't really want to make any specific conclusion here; I don't know that one can. Can we hold all of this? Maybe when we talk about healing, maybe a big part of it is that there's a release of view. There's a release of view, an unbinding, which is the Buddha's word, unbinding of view. So typically we have a view of ourselves or views of ourselves and, as I said several times today, we constrain ourselves, we bind ourselves in that. Big part of healing is unbinding the view of self, unbinding the view of the past. We crystallize, we solidify a view of the past. Unbinding it. Unbinding the view of life. We say, "Life's this way. Life's terrible. Life's unfair," da-da-da-da-da. Unbinding the view. Maybe that has, at its core, a lot to do with what healing means.
Just to finish. As I said right at the beginning, what I really wanted to do was explore this territory a little bit, a few strands; that's all that's possible. What are we left with, in a way? What's important? Can there be both an honesty and a fearlessness in this area? Both honesty and fearlessness. So we're really genuinely honest about what it is that we're feeling, what it is that we're going through. Not hiding from it, not pretending it's not there. And we're fearless in the feeling of it. We're okay feeling what burns. But we're also completely honest and completely fearless in asking, "What is real here? What is going on here, and what is real?" There's an equal degree of honesty and fearlessness in that aspect. And together, it's a life of truthfulness, of courage, and really of integrity. A real integrity in the practice, real integrity in the life.
Okay. Very long talk. Thank you for your patience. So time now for a walking period. And who's got the bell for the next -- James? Could you perhaps ring it at twenty past, and then we'll start the next sitting five minutes later? There will be opportunity for questions and discussion at the end.
MN 101. ↩︎
