Cittamatra

[There are] a couple of things that it seems important to actually go over again. I put it out, but I know there's a lot of stuff that's been put out, and it's hard to understand all this. It's hard to kind of retain it all. And so it might be, for some people -- understandable at this point of the retreat -- that comes up, kind of, "What's actually going on here? What's the point?", etc.

But just a step before that: I just got a note which is also quite important to address, and it says, "It seems from what you said that discovering emptiness and therefore true liberation requires quite a high degree of intellectual understanding. What about people who don't have those abilities, who couldn't hope to understand the complexity? Are they denied any chance of liberation?" This is a really important question. There are, within the scope of the tradition, a huge range of responses in answer to that question -- basically, from a total, total anti-intellectualization, to a very, very sophisticated kind of manipulation of concepts. The whole spectrum is there.

I don't think that it's necessarily dependent on a really sophisticated intellectual ability. I don't feel that. I think a certain just normal amount of average intelligence is what's required. Some of the things, like the chariot reasoning, are not going to appeal to everyone. They're just not, and I knew that when I put it out there. A few of you have come back and said, "I want to do that," which is great. But most people will probably say, "Okay, but, you know, I can't really, I don't really have that kind of mind." And that's fine. That's absolutely fine. Some people would say the opposite, and say that you can't -- a bit like what I was talking about last night -- the most common view in the Dharma is that you can't reach liberation through your intellect, that actually that will get in the way. These two views have been ramming at each other for millennia, absolutely millennia. You know, one says this, one says that, and they poke fun at each other, and they draw little cartoons of the silly monks in the other tradition, etc. It may well be, and I think it's probably the case, that different people arrive at a deep level of insight, deep level of freedom, through different directions. I think it's important to acknowledge that and respect that and be open to that, and then within that, find one's own way. In the end, as someone asked yesterday, it will come down to understanding emptiness, but that might not be a very sophisticated, sort of philosophical way of putting it.

[3:23] I think that's also important because it's very easy to -- again, I've talked about this earlier in the retreat in terms of attitudes, and particularly the attitudes we have to our self and our own practice -- to always look at ourselves and see our shortcomings, what I haven't got. And it's always easy to see, "I haven't got that intellect. I haven't got the samādhi. I haven't got this. I haven't got that." And rather, to see what I do have, and what can be cultivated. Part of the reason why the Buddha put all these lists out is actually to see there's a lot there that we can cultivate. And everyone has certain strengths and certain things that could use a bit more work. But a person would (how to put this?) rely on slightly different qualities in their path. I don't consider myself a big, very sophisticated, intellectual type. I don't. There are treatises written and stuff that would be really, really stretching my intellectual capacity to follow.

Okay. Second thing I wanted to kind of re-explore a little bit is this question of -- and it kind of came up yesterday during the talk -- it's like, what's the point? What's the point of all this? And it can be quite easy in the sort of teachings and the complexity of the teachings, the richness of the teachings, to sort of lose sight of that a little bit. And the point is letting go of suffering. That's the point. So that's always the point of Dharma practice: letting go of suffering, freeing ourselves from suffering, to more, to deeper and deeper degrees, and more and more complete sense of that, and in so doing, actually to be more available to others, to be more available with love and compassion. That's the point of all this -- nothing else than that. I said it on the opening talk several times. It's actually quite important.

Now, mostly so far, mostly, not completely -- this is perhaps why it's been a bit confusing -- mostly, so far, we've just talked about the personal self being empty. And we talked about anattā, and the self-sense kind of arising dependent on clinging, and all kinds of stuff. And again, so what's the point of seeing that? Because I could stop a person in the street and try and explain that they suffer because they're actually empty of self. And it would probably be quite an interesting ... [laughter] interaction, or a non-interaction.

But as meditators and as people who've been exposed to these kind of teachings over a while, we see that suffering needs the self as a kind of centre of the solar system. It's like it needs that centre of gravity around which to suffer. And we see also -- and we've talked about this -- as the self-sense gets quieter, lighter, and more open, more refined, the sense of suffering gets less. Yeah? So there's an obvious connection, or a connection that gets more and more clear. And we also see, if you're doing the anattā practice, when we let go of the identification, something comes up in the experience, and we can see it in that moment as 'not me, not mine' -- well, the suffering gets less.

[6:53] So all this is telling us what most of you have heard over and over and over in Dharma talks, or read over and over, that most meditators would agree: the self is the problem. The self is a problem. Yeah? You're used to that. I mean, if you can rewind your memory a little bit, remember the first time you heard this business about not-self, and how puzzling it was, and hard even to see the connection that self and suffering went together necessarily. But by now, most of you have heard it so many times in Dharma talks and read it that it's almost like we accept that. Now, on this retreat, we're talking about the emptiness of self, but we're also talking about the emptiness of all things, all things. If we just talk about, in a philosophical sense, the emptiness of chairs and tables, very easy to just get kind of lost in intellectual games. It's like, "Okay, the chair does exist. It doesn't." You know, it's kind of "So what?", as someone said yesterday.

But the question -- and I've said this before, but it's really worth saying again -- is what do you suffer with? So here we are, twenty-one people or however many are in the room right now. What do you suffer with? What are you suffering with? What makes you suffer in the course of the day and in your life? For everyone, it's going to be slightly different, what I think, "Oh, it's this, or it's that." What we're saying is that thing is empty. So it might be your self and your self-sense, and the way you think about yourself and compare and measure and judge, but it might be like an emotion, like anger, or fear, or frustration, tiredness. Those things, those emotions are empty. Or we find ourselves in life craving something. It doesn't look like suffering, but we enter into a relationship that, sooner or later with that thing, causes suffering. So I want a really tasty meal. It's important for me to have a tasty meal. Or I want to be in a romantic relationship. There's craving there. It doesn't look like suffering from the outside. But those things, too, are empty, in the same way that the self is empty. Or you feel stuck in something. I feel stuck in a long retreat -- it's like, "Goodness me, I'm scratching the days on the wall like a prisoner." [laughter] Or you feel stuck in a relationship, you know, the other side of it. I feel stuck, or in a job, or in a terrible situation, or in a storm.

Yogi: Rob, could you just, when it comes to feelings, make it clear what you mean when feelings are empty? What's that mean?

Rob: Part of the confusion is that we haven't actually talked so much about why a feeling is empty. All the teachings are so connected that kind of planning how to teach this ends up being quite difficult. And as I said, if I could just kind of go blooop and you had it all at once, that would be great. But we've chosen a certain path through it, which means that some things won't be quite clear. And at the end, it's all going to come a little more clearly. The practice we started today will be the first kind of real inroad into that. Okay? And I'll go into that in this talk. And suffice to say that next week, we'll be going much more into that: what does it mean to say that anger is empty? Okay, so it's 'not me, not mine' -- that's one thing. What is it to say that it's empty, or fear is empty, or sadness is empty? And we will definitely go into that more.

Same with pain -- pain, too, is empty. Being stuck in a painful body -- empty. It's not something that exists inherently. Cold, you know -- and we talked about just things on the other end of the scale: things like countries; Scotland, I talked [about] in that talk. It's kind of more obvious that that's empty. As Abby's question, it's a little bit more difficult to see that an emotion is empty. And that goes all the way, as I talked in that introductory talk, all the way from gross things that will be quite easy to see, like Scotland, all the way through self, emotions, da-da-da, all the way down to things like space and time and awareness, which seem such obvious realities of our world, taken for granted.

In this retreat, very ambitiously, we're going to try and cover all of that. We're going to try and address it all, or at least give you the tools that one day, you might actually, in your meditation, really be able to see the emptiness, in a very real way, of those things. So what we're doing is learning to see in different ways, different approaches, the emptiness of all of them. And that takes time. It takes time. There's no question about it. It takes time.

[11:42] Let's look at this a bit more. The mind, or we could say delusion, gives phenomena solidity. It gives them substance. It gives them a concreteness. So whatever -- whether they're external phenomena, seemingly external, or internal phenomena like a pain, or like a heartache, or an anger, etc. -- the delusion of the mind gives them concreteness, solidity, substantiality. Now, that already is a statement that most of the six billion people in the world would question -- wouldn't see that, wouldn't agree with that. But that's what we're exploring on this retreat. How does the mind give things this seemingly independent and real sense of solidity, substantiality? And then, giving it that thing, then it suffers over it. Or it craves this thing that seems to exist solidly and independently and real.

And so one gets, normally enough, responses to this: "No, but it's there. It's right there. I feel it. Are you trying to say that I'm not feeling a headache? Are you trying to say my knee pain is not there, my back pain that I've had so long is not there? You're trying to tell me this anger is not there? You're trying to tell me I'm not feeling fear? Are you trying to tell me I don't have a head?" And that's a very normal response -- I was going to say of humanity, but basically it's a response of delusion. [laughs] But it's very normal because everyone agrees on it. And in response to that, we still say the deluded mind, in its delusion, gives solidity, gives substantiality, gives concreteness to everything, absolutely everything -- everything, everything, everything. We want to understand that process and expose it for what it is: something that's not real.

Now, the practice we started this morning is -- I just said with Abby -- it's one inroad into that sense of giving things less substantiality. I don't know, could you even taste that today, a little bit? Yeah? Good. Okay. So you get a sense of, at times, the mind is not having this sense of substantiality that it usually has, whether with outer things or inner things. This is the beginning of shaking the whole kind of scaffolding of saṃsāra. It's a beginning, you know, the earthquake starting to rumble of this whole structure. And we will explore other approaches, too, but this is where we're beginning, often because it's kind of one of the easiest -- for meditators, anyway.

So it's actually, I realize -- I think in one of the talks I sort of put it out as a question a little bit. We didn't maybe hang out on it long enough. And I said, I asked, is it obvious to you that we suffer because we see inherent existence in things? Is it obvious to you that we suffer because we don't see emptiness? Is it obvious to you that we suffer because things seem so substantial? Because I actually don't think it's obvious, and I don't actually think it's obvious to meditators. It's not the same for us. We haven't been barraged by it as much in the teachings as the emptiness of the self, as I said earlier. It's actually not obvious. Now, for some in this room right now, it actually might have reached the point of obviousness. And for others, it's actually got quite a long way to go before it's obvious. And some meditators might come in here -- people come and listen, and some of you might be thinking, "Why? Why is he going on and on and on about this?" [laughs] "Just going on and on and on about emptiness?" Because it's not obvious. That's why I said it's counterintuitive. It's not even obvious that that's why we suffer, because of the emptiness of things.

[15:56] So it takes a certain level of insight to actually see what the problem is. To actually see what the problem is takes a certain level of insight. Also, I was saying yesterday -- I mean, it's an insight, but it's not a particularly profound insight to see that because everything is impermanent, we shouldn't cling to things, because they're going to go and change on us. That's standard Dharma teaching, right? It's like, things are changing. If you go ahead and cling to something that's changing, sooner or later it's going to change in a way that you don't like, and you're going to suffer with it. So in a sense, that's a lot more obvious. But this suffering because of inherent existence, and because we cling to things that we believe have their own independent reality -- that's less obvious.

There's a story, I think, about a Theravādan monk, and someone asked him, "Why do we suffer?" And he said, "Why do you suffer? Because 95 per cent of what you do, you do for yourself. And there isn't a self."^[1] What we're adding to that is, because everything you do, everything we do, everything we think, believe, etc., everything we react to, and everything we suffer over, is based on believing in an independently existing world that exists independent of the point of view and the mind -- inner world and outer world, everything, so including even the elements that we would take to make up a self, like feelings and emotions, etc., consciousness, all the rest of that. And we base our life on that seemingly independent solidity. It seems so obvious, so taken for granted, and that's what we're beginning to question.

So how's that, just that?

Yogi 2: Helpful.

Yogi 3: I'm struggling with something.

Rob: Okay. I'm just aware of time. We're going to have a question and answer tomorrow. No, I want to know if it can wait until tomorrow or not. Yeah? Okay. So we'll have a question and answer period tomorrow. Just looking at the clock, so ...

[18:26] Now, as the retreat goes on, we're actually going to add to this -- or rather, extend it. And we're going to realize that not only does the deluded mind give a solidity to things that they don't have, an independent existence to things that they don't have, it also, unbelievably enough, actually builds experience. To borrow words from the Buddha, it 'fabricates' and 'concocts' our experience of anything at all. And again, we have a sense as human beings, as unenlightened human beings, that the world exists, and we are aware of it, and it exists independently. What we see is that the deluded mind actually builds and fabricates and puts together, causes to arise, the world, the sense that we have of the things in the world -- inner things and outer things. So all those things, when I asked you, "What do you suffer over?", the mind is building the experience of those things. It's fabricating and concocting the experience of those things. Tiredness, physical pain, fear, anger, sadness, the physical objects in the world, the other things that we don't feel like we suffer over, the lovely things -- the mind is building and fabricating it all.

Yogi 4: Death?

Rob: Death? Yes, in a way, yes. To really see that is a very, very deep insight, very, very deep, to really understand that process.

Okay. So all that's in a way of, like, recap and kind of re-entering the whole thing. That seemed important. Up to now we've been mostly doing -- most people have been doing the three characteristics practice. And as I keep asking you, how does it feel when you do it? What happens when you do it? Most people seem to report, "As I do that, suffering decreases." There's a kind of letting go. And with the letting go comes a kind of equanimity, we could say, going back to one of Frances' questions a while ago. The mind gets more kind of peaceful, more steady, less fragmented and pulled this way and that, because the three characteristics are ways of looking that let go of suffering.

But another thing that might happen with that is, it might anyway, as we contemplate the three characteristics, begin to open up the consciousness in the kind of ways that the guided meditation this morning was trying to guide the consciousness towards. It might anyway open up more of a sense of space in consciousness, more of a sense of the insubstantiality of things. Okay? So three characteristics practice brings equanimity, and can bring a sense of this spacious awareness, this sort of big, spacious, imperturbable awareness.

Causality often works both ways. So when there's equanimity, it's much easier to see the three characteristics. When there's that calmness that steadies the mind, it's very easy to see impermanence, let go of the relationships, see things as not fulfilling, see them as 'not me, not mine.' And the more we get a sense of that beautiful space of awareness, the easier it is to see three characteristics, the easier to see equanimity. So all these things are feeding each other. They're feeding each other mutually. And we can actually take advantage of, as practitioners, we take advantage of that mutual feeding. So you can be in this space and use the three characteristics to deepen it, or you can focus on the space, just to focus on the space and enjoy it and let go, but it also feeds the three characteristics seeing.

You can also -- I'm just recapping what we did this morning -- so you can enter it like that. You can enter it via the listening. We start opening up to the listening -- very helpful -- and in that way, allowing the space of awareness to open up, using the listening to really help that. You can do it with your eyes open or your eyes closed, not important at all. And what it's moving towards is a kind of sense of a global awareness, an awareness that's almost like a sphere of awareness that can get very, very vast. And that awareness is encompassing everything.

We want to get a sense of that space. We want to really get a felt sense of that space of awareness. Get a sense in particular of how it holds and embraces anything effortlessly. So whatever comes up is going to be smaller than that space. Whatever comes up -- it's like awareness can embrace it, can hold it without any problem. You don't have to do anything. It's just, anything that comes up, in its nature, is going to be embraced by awareness. And the sense of that awareness as something, if you begin to tune into it and let the heart actually feel it, let the heart really come into resonance with it, a sense of it as being something really imperturbable, unshakeable, unfazed by whatever arises in it -- beautiful, ugly, whatever. It's unperturbed. It's steady, unshakeable. And the sense that everything, all the phenomena of our experience are arising within that awareness. Within that awareness -- so usually, conventionally, we would speak, a human being usually has a sense of (one of Bridget's questions) the awareness somehow being in here. That's the conventional sense, and everyone would agree with that -- it's somehow in the eyes, in the ears, in the brain. But begin to have a sense of actually, instead of the awareness being in here and looking out at the world, the world being in a vast awareness. Is this resonating? A little bit?

And the sense of phenomena being within that, having their life, their birth, their life, their death within that, and even more, arising out of that. I'm talking all about a meditative sense that can be deepened and cultivated. So it may not be there in one sitting, and we've just started this, what I'm talking about. I'm a little bit hesitant, because I'm kind of outlining the progression of a practice which, if someone was working with me alone, I probably wouldn't do. I would more feed off what they were telling me. But here we are as a group, and I'm going to throw it out. More the sense of phenomena arising out of that awareness and fading back into it, as I was saying in the guided meditation. And it's almost like letting them belong to that space, letting them belong to that vastness and that unshakeable space of awareness. So the space, in a way, the sense of the space of awareness, the sense of this vastness of mind, comes from letting go, and it also aids letting go. It comes from letting go in relationship to experiences, to phenomena, and it aids letting go.

This takes time. It takes time to evolve, but gradually one begins to kind of pay more attention to the space of awareness as a kind of backdrop, background. That becomes more prominent than the actual things that are happening in it. So I might have sensations and sounds and the odd cloud of something that moves through. But it's almost like, instead of being preoccupied with the objects of experience, one takes, one lets go of the usual preoccupation with experience and is kind of tuning in more to the sense of what experience is taking place in.

And as I said, sometimes when it goes deep, when it feels deep, let the heart get a sense of the unfathomable peace that can be there at times, and the sense of that space having an unfathomable peace to it. It's almost like you can't get to the bottom of it, something so imperturbable about it. Bear in mind I'm talking about a practice that takes time to evolve.

Now, I introduced this this morning, and it may have clicked for some people and may not. But at a certain point, one also gets the sense that everything that's happening is kind of not really separate from the awareness in terms of the sense of being a separate substance. It's almost like everything is an impression in awareness. All of it, impressions in awareness, impressions in awareness -- whatever it is, it's just an impression in awareness. I think I used the image of a reflection on a lake. It's just insubstantial, and in a way, of the same substance as awareness. Now, that will be a sense for most people that arises kind of organically, slowly out of this way of meditating. But it's also something that you can nurture a little bit by even, again, just suggesting to the mind, "Just an impression in awareness, just an impression in awareness." Just a whisper of a suggestion.

And again, what we're doing is reorienting the view. So if we backtrack to heaven knows which talk, we're learning different ways of looking, different ways of looking that bring freedom. And this is a way of looking that brings freedom.

Yogi 5: So Rob, all these impressions -- they will be without actual form and labels?

Rob: You don't, you definitely don't have to label them as that's "this" and that's "that." If a label arises, it's fine. Some of them will feel very formed, like, "Oh, it's definitely a very clear sound, or this or that." Others will feel much more amorphous. Now, that's actually quite an interesting point, and I'll pick this up later in the retreat, about how solidly formed things appear to us and why that is. But is that okay for now?

And I also threw this out towards the end of the guided meditation: when you're in that space, even the self-sense -- you have a sense of a self in that moment -- that's actually just another phenomenon, just another impression in awareness. So you can actually let go in that sense. It's just another phenomenon. It's just another impression -- the sense of the self in that moment.

Now, I don't know how it was for you today -- probably quite mixed, as is always the case -- but sometimes, doing this practice, one actually feels quite a letting go. Did that happen for anyone? Good. And in that letting go, there can come a sense of peace, or even bliss, or freedom, or just lovely, lovely feelings, or a sense of real clarity. And when that happens, you've got a choice. We touched on this in the samādhi talk. You've got a choice. You can just enjoy that, and just kind of bathe in that and enjoy it. Or, guess what? You can turn the same viewing on that. This sense of freedom -- just an impression in awareness. This sense of peace, this sense of happiness -- just an impression in awareness. And the whole thing can keep going. Do you get it? But that's your choice, and you can play with it.

As we do this -- please remember, it takes time -- things, experiences, objects of awareness, begin to feel and seem less substantial. Did I already ask if you felt that? [laughs] Did you feel that at all, that things were losing some of their substantiality?

Yogi 6: Sometimes it's almost like they were sort of ghosts, and almost not -- at one point, it was a bit sort of bland and empty, not always peaceful, and maybe, in a sense, quite boring, almost. [laughs]

Rob: Okay, all right. It will be ...

Yogi 6: That felt like, you know, nothing ... [laughs]

Rob: Yeah. Well, there's no ... Okay, that's an interesting point, because we're actually addicted to drama as well. When we let go and things become less substantial, the level of drama decreases as well.

Yogi 6: Yeah, there are no hooks. There's nothing to hook onto.

Rob: Absolutely. Are you getting this, microphone? It's getting a very good Dharma talk. [laughs] It's great. There are no hooks, there's no drama, etc. That's an acquired taste. It's an acquired taste. And at times, it might feel like, "Hmm, you know, where's the drama?" At other times it will feel lovely. And we acquire the taste for it, and it becomes such a deep resource in the life of just, "Ahh," letting it all go, feeling that freedom, that simplicity of that, that non-drama of that.

And at times, if it feels too bland and too cold -- we talked about this earlier in the retreat -- you can look at the coldness as just an impression in awareness. It's almost like it can do anything. It can look at anything. And as things get less substantial, it's more and more likely that it will seem as if the substance of things is actually the same substance as awareness, the same substance as the mind. They begin to kind of coalesce, like it's all just waves in one ocean, etc. This is a gradual transition.

Now, what else happens? Well -- and again, please remember, it's a gradual practice -- one of the things that can happen is, love starts coming out of it. Love starts coming out -- in a very natural way, and again, not always, but it can be there. There's a kind of sense of oneness and unity of all things that very organically can arise out of this practice. Partly it's because there's space for everything. There doesn't have to be conflict between this thing and that thing. Everything can be there, embraced by awareness, held in awareness, effortlessly. Partly it's also the sense of that awareness is not so much my awareness versus your awareness. It's not so much mine and yours. That begins to get a little bit quiet. But also because everything begins to feel like one substance, one texture, after a while.

Now, it's very interesting teaching this as a practice. For a while, I really thought a person needs to fall in love with this. You need to fall in love with the sense of this practice if you're taking it on. Remember, this practice, like all the others, you don't have to do, just like you don't have to do the chariot or all of the three characteristics. But I used to think, and I'm actually not sure what I think now, that a person needs to fall in love with it, because what happens as you learn to go into it more and more is this sense of the awareness itself and the space itself becomes so prominent and tangible in the sense of things that we really get the sense of it as a kind of Ground of Being. Everything is arising out of that. It's a Ground of Being. And we hear in the teachings about an Unconditioned. We talk about conditions, and conditions being impermanent, and the sense is of this thing just being there in this totally serene, unshakeable vastness. And one thinks, "Is this the Unconditioned?" And you will find teachers in the Buddhist tradition who say it is. And in a way -- I don't know; this is where I'm not quite sure now in teaching -- in a way, maybe ... I mean, what I'm saying is actually it's not. [laughter] I'm just going to actually say.

So when I was planning this retreat, I was thinking, "Should I give them this practice, and then let them really get into it, and then burst their bubble at the end?" [laughter] So I've plumped for bursting your bubble right at the beginning, because I've actually seen that people can still get a tremendous amount from this practice, so much insight and freedom, without actually latching on to it as the ultimate reality.

People can give it all kinds of names. And it will be tempting, if you really get into it -- there's such a sense of beauty. There's such a sense of freedom. Such a sense of openness, love comes out of it. So, you know, Ground of Being, Unconditioned, the Cosmic Consciousness, Awareness with a capital A as something inherently existing, Big Mind, One Mind, God, the Absolute, etc. -- it's all there. And you can really understand why some thousands and thousands of meditators over the years have felt that and fallen in love with this and given it that sense of ultimate status. It's early days, obviously, with this practice, but as it deepens, one can really, really have that sense.

Yogi 7: Is that just while one is sitting, or is that something which carries over into the everyday?

Rob: Yeah. No, you can develop this -- I'll talk about this later in the talk -- you can develop this practice so it can be almost ongoing, almost uninterrupted as a state of awareness. And you can kind of flick it on and off like a switch, even, you know. But some people who would -- if you believed it was the Unconditioned, then you would be trying to have it be uninterrupted, a little bit. And I know people who do that, and they're actually very good at doing it. And you look at them, and they're lovely, radiant [beings]. A lot of love comes out of it, a lot of freedom, lot of serenity, etc. Is it the Unconditioned? Is it the ultimate truth? No. And we'll get to that, and it's partly why this retreat is so -- there has to be so much in it. Anyway, I'll get to that. But yes, you can do it in all kinds of situations, and if you get really good at it, you can do it while you're talking and this -- you know, all kinds of stuff.

[37:11] What's interesting -- well, a lot of stuff's interesting here, but rigpa is another name people give to it sometimes. What's interesting here is that a really dedicated meditator, doing a number of different kinds of approaches to practice, will notice that at different times, the space opens up and is coloured in different ways. So sometimes it's almost just a sense of silence. It's just silence that kind of embraces and holds everything. Sometimes it just seems to be a sense of space, just pure physical space, inner and outer. Sometimes it feels like awareness. It's awareness that's vast and holding everything. Sometimes it feels like love, feels like love that's permeating the whole universe and kind of holding everything. Sometimes it feels like compassion. Sometimes it can feel like joy. Sometimes it can feel like peace. Sometimes it can feel like nothingness. A really dedicated meditator will actually go through all those different colourings. It's possible to know them all and actually get familiar with them all, even. For our purposes on this retreat, the most important one is seeing it as awareness, the sense of awareness being something vast and holding all things. But that fact, that it can take different colours, should bring up a little questioning: maybe it's just a perception that can be coloured, that actually is still conditioned. Okay? And in fact, that's what it is. But I don't want to say this in a way that you -- if you're choosing this practice, I really want you to get a sense of the beauty of it. I really want you to get a sense of how much it can touch and heal and open the heart as well.

Yogi 8: Is this one of those things that you talk about being good to hang out in for a bit?

Rob: Yes, definitely, very good to hang out in and really get very, very familiar with. Yeah, not to rush through. For most people, not to rush through, to really get used to hanging out in it. And it has an effect on the heart and on consciousness, on the cells and on the being, long-term, if you can get to really know it and get very familiar with it. And there's a lot of insight that comes from it, a lot of freedom, a lot of peace, a lot of love, as I said. So yeah, hang out. Different people will hang out in it for different amounts of time. We're not actually going to spend that long on it on this retreat, although a person might have it as their principal practice from now on, and I would say great. But even that's not really that long. It's another three weeks or whatever. It's not that long.

But what you have here is actually a sense of awareness. You have a sort of image or sense of awareness. This global sense of awareness, you could actually kind of go one step backwards and say, "Well, that's also happening in awareness." Okay? Awareness -- it's like, awareness seeing itself is actually impossible. So it would be like a fingertip touching itself -- it's one of the analogies. So this sense I have of awareness is actually a perception and a conceptual image of awareness. What if I -- and not to do this right off; you really need to let the practice build up, probably over some time. But then, what if I had this sense of global awareness as an impression in an awareness that I could not see? Do you understand? You're doing a double whammy on it. You're taking one step backwards. Okay, here I am with the sense of awareness. It's opening up, and that sense is a sense of space or whatever, and the sense is that's awareness. But actually that's a perception of something that I'm labelling 'awareness.' It can't be awareness itself. So if I then say, "Well, that perception of space, of the sense of a spacious awareness, is actually happening in awareness," I'm looking at that in the same way. And see what happens. A very, very powerful shift. But I wouldn't even try it right away. You need to get really, really familiar with the initial sense first.

Yogi 9: Just like the fifth and sixth jhānas?

Rob: Okay. Is it like the fifth and sixth jhānas? It's an important question as well. It's related -- put it that way. Or put it this way: there's a whole constellation of states around both the fifth and sixth jhānas that are very similar, like I say, coloured this way or this way or this way. They can be more or less open to other senses. So you could be, as we did this morning, still listening, still feeling body sensations, but there's a big sense of space. Or it can be that the sense of a space gets so strong that everything else fades out, and there's nothing but space, and then it's more jhānic, kind of strictly speaking. But there's actually a whole constellation of states, which again, for someone really caring about this stuff, and caring what true awakening is, actually need to kind of see, "Well, what's the difference between ...? And what's ...?"

Yogi 10: They don't ... [laughs]

Rob: If we have a lot of questions, the talk will go late, which is fine with me, but I want it to be fine with everyone. Is it? Is it fine?

Yogi 11: Just one question. [laughter] Rigpa, as far as I understand it, is not a state. So I don't understand what you're saying.

Rob: No. Okay. So rigpa is a word from the Dzogchen tradition, and I'll come to this at the end of the talk. In the Dzogchen tradition, it goes with that phrase I put out in another talk, "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." So some people will refer to what I'm talking about as rigpa, but it's not the real rigpa in the sense of the more ultimate Dzogchen view. But it's around as something that we'll pick up as the meaning of rigpa, and even be taught that way as a sort of provisional view.

Yogi 11: Ah, I never was taught that way. Can I just quickly ask? My sense is that you said it's a perception, this vastness, sensed by awareness, but it's not awareness itself. So if you're aware that you're aware, where's the end? What's the last stop?

Rob: Okay. That's what I'm saying. You could -- that's one way of trying, getting this sense and then just trying, seeing that as something in awareness, and just see what happens. We're going to talk more about this towards the end of the retreat.

Yogi 11: Seeing the vastness as something that you're aware of, a perception in your awareness?

Rob: As something in awareness. Okay? In the same way, and just see what happens. But towards the end of the retreat. To understand the actual nature of awareness is something -- it's the last thing to understand, put it that way. To actually understand that awareness has no inherent existence -- that's something very, very profound, and we're working up to that on this retreat. Okay? But yeah, it's very, very subtle, and quite difficult to understand.

[44:36] All right. So this morning, I briefly said there were two kind of emphases with this practice. That's one that I've just talked about -- it's very much opening up to this, letting this sense of the space open up, and then tuning into that and using that as something to let go with. Second approach -- and they overlap. Or the second emphasis, really -- these overlap. In the tradition of teachings there's something called Cittamātra, the Cittamātra stream of teachings or tradition, in a way. And it translates -- Cittamātra means 'Mind Only,' so 'Awareness Only.' So it's related to this sense that kind of there's nothing else but the substance of mind.

And what happened was a lot of people were experiencing this kind of "Everything is the same substance of mind," and then what happened was a lot of very, very smart people built a theory around it, built theories around it. So actually, when you go into it, it's quite an elaborate sort of philosophy and explanation of stuff, but we're not really going to go into that here. Meditatively, it's relatively easy to enter, and that's why I'm introducing it now. John has decided to take a slightly different route through emptiness -- he's following more the historical evolution. So, funnily enough, historically this came after the teachings that are actually more difficult to understand. But I want to follow experientially what unfolds, or what's easier for a meditator to unfold. But anyway, there's this big theory around it to interpret the meditation experience. What's this sense of things being the same substance? I want to just briefly go into that as a different way in.

This moment of consciousness, this moment of knowing something, in the Cittamātra theory, it's saying there's no proof, when you really go into it, there's no proof that the outer perceived object -- or put it this way, the outer perceived aspect of a moment of consciousness, the object -- exists independently of the inner perceived aspect. So it's like the inner perceived aspect of consciousness and what we see, the object, are like two sides of the same coin, and it's just, "I hear this. I see that." And it's just going like this as two sides of the same thing. And there's no proof that they exist independently. So the inner perceiving aspect of a moment of consciousness, perceiving this, the subjective experience, can't arise without the outer perceiving aspect. And vice versa, you can't have an outer perceived object without an inner perceiving consciousness. Do you get this? They both simultaneously have to be there.

So if we talk about, if we say, "Well, can you have a perceiving consciousness with no object of perception?" No, because that would be a contradiction. What's it perceiving? Can you have an object of perception without a perceiving consciousness? No, because it's an object of perception and it has to be perceived by a perceiving consciousness. So two sides of a coin. You can't have one before another. You can't have one arising and sort of being there without the other being there. But you can't have one side of the coin without another side of the coin.

The analogy that's often given in Cittamātra teachings is of dream experience. So it's like saying, the dream appearance of something can't exist independent of the dreaming mind, can it? It can't exist independent of the dreaming consciousness. And the moment of the dreaming consciousness arises together with the dreaming object. Okay? So I'm dreaming of whatever, and it's together with the dreaming mind. And the dreaming object can't appear before or after the dreaming consciousness, and vice versa. The dreaming consciousness can't appear before or after the dreaming object. So that's an analogy. Now, if that works for you, it's actually very powerful to explore, and we're going to pick up that kind of line of reasoning. That's about, certainly from my point of view, the most I'm going to go into Cittamātra theory, because it's very complicated.

But the other way into this practice that I introduced today is actually being convinced, to some degree, of that view of what I just stated, that they can't be two different things. And actually cultivating a conviction in that. Now, it may be for meditators that the conviction comes more out of the kind of meditative experience. You actually get this sense through meditation that, "Wow, it all really does seem like one substance." But whether it comes out of reflection, as I just did, or out of the meditative experience is not important. It's just kind of being convinced of a certain view, and bringing a certain view into play in the meditation, a certain -- yeah, view. And that view is that the idea of separate, truly existing objects, inner or outer, is just an invention of the mind. It's just an invention of the mind. And it's not even necessary. And then one learns to keep this view going as something present, and kind of rest the mind, focusing on -- this moment of experience is actually empty of any difference of mind and experience. It's empty of them being different things. So that's what 'emptiness' means in this tradition. It's empty of them being different substances.

So in this slight emphasis, the focus is not on the sense of awareness so much or the sense of the mind as something spacious so much -- slightly different emphasis -- and it's more on this emptiness of a dichotomy. Do you understand the distinction?

Yogi 12: Not really. [?]

Rob: In the first way, the first emphasis, what we're doing is letting the space open up, and then actually tuning into the sense of that space, the sense of awareness. In this one, it's a slightly different emphasis. It's a slightly different route in. It's that you're actually looking at the moment of experience and kind of focusing on the sense of "There isn't really a difference in substance between the mind and the object of the mind" in that moment. And that's what you actually focus on. This sense, this view is there in the experience, that there's no difference in substance between awareness and appearances, experiences.

Yogi 13: And awareness sometimes, like, space being an object as well, because sometimes that kind of ...

Rob: Well, that's what can be quite interesting in terms of this going beyond the whole thing. But yeah, play with it all. So anything that you find yourself taking as an object, play with it and see what happens.

Yogi 13: At times it felt like it was just awareness because there was nothing going on in it. But there was still a sense of space.

Rob: Yes, okay. So the space can be taken as an object, as well, and that also is empty. Or you could go back into the old one, and let the awareness kind of fuse with the space, and then have that sense. They're slightly different emphases. Okay? And one does that just steadily, over and over and over, just bringing this view into the moment of experience over and over.

Now, you might find, and you probably will find, that some senses are easier than others. So you might find, for instance, it's easy with listening. But another person might find it's easier with the sight. Or another person might find it's easier with the body. But you can do it with actually all six senses: body, sight, hearing, taste, smell ...

Yogi 14: Sensation?

Rob: Mental images -- the body is sensation, yeah -- mental stuff. So be curious. Which senses feel easy, and which are not? But eventually you can get so it's all of them.

Now, the whole Cittamātra thing is a very rich tradition, and there are types of Cittamātra. It's all very complex, but we're actually keeping it very, very simple. My sense is that's actually best for this retreat. So in these two approaches, there's a slight difference in the kind of view that's underpinning them. One is more of a sense of a space of awareness that's kind of imperturbable and sort of eternal, very beautiful, serene, just there. And the other one is actually more of a stream of momentary consciousnesses, and so that's a different sense of things.

Yogi 15: What's more useful? Both?

Rob: Both, I would say, both. And yeah, it's interesting. I would say both. I mean ... No, both. Yeah. You might have a favourite, and I would say go with your favourite for now, but yeah. The one that is more the eternal space kind of thing lends itself more to the language of God, and Ground of Being, etc., the other one less so. But they're both really, really helpful, really, really useful. Yeah? And both really beautiful.

As I said before, this is all provisional. It's not the final arriving point. It's a stepping-stone for many people. It's a stepping-stone to a more full and deep understanding of emptiness, and a more full way of being able to meditate with it. But huge amounts of letting go available here, huge amounts of freedom, peace, love, and insight as well. So again, I threw out this question -- still there -- for the three characteristics: what happens when you do this? What happens to things? What happens to your sense of things? It's important. But it is not, not, not, not It with a capital I. And you do hear people, a lot of people (I mentioned in another talk; I can't remember which one), that it's actually, in one form or another, it's probably the most popular form of -- it's a very popular form of meditation nowadays, and very, very common for people to actually feel like they've arrived at something ultimate there. Or to use the language that emptiness is the same as space, or emptiness is awareness, etc. So it's tricky. As I said before, it's actually tricky teaching this. Like, when do you take that away from someone? And if we go back to Rose's question, in the Dzogchen tradition they have this beautiful, beautiful aphorism: "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." Now, as I said, I've punctured your view already a little bit, but there's something about trusting this experience, really, really opening to it.

[56:14] Just to say a little bit more about the approach: if you're doing the second approach, the mind is a stream of moments of consciousness with a knowing aspect and a known aspect. And this whole approach begins to question the belief and the idea of a world out there. It really calls it into question. And what one's focusing on is, each moment of experience is empty of a difference in nature of the perceiving awareness and the perceived. So it's almost like awareness is actually the content of experience. It's actually the substance of experience.

Or another way of putting it is, all experience is basically a manifestation of mind, a manifestation of awareness, a manifestation of mental energy. And if you're using the second approach, the second emphasis, really -- it's interesting. You can work in quite a narrow way still with awareness, and focus on one object, and look at it. Or again, you can work in a very spacious way, eyes open, having a real sense of space, and the whole of this sense right now is the same substance as awareness. And as I said in response to Rich's question, eventually you can turn this on and off. You can just click it on and click it off. Or maybe it's more like a fade switch. But you can just develop the skill to go into this mode of seeing things, and it becomes quite familiar, and we want it to become familiar, if you're developing it. And as you do it, things begin to lose their sense of substantiality, and they feel more empty.

But as I said, 'emptiness' has a specific meaning in Cittamātra, and it means 'empty of existing as something other than the play of awareness or the substance of awareness.' So it's like dreaming you're being chased by a tiger, and then realizing it's a dream.

Yogi 16: Could say all that? Empty of existing ...

Rob: Empty of existing -- objects, all objects, inner and outer, are empty of existing as something other than, you could say, the play of awareness or the substance of awareness. Okay?

So I don't know. That was how I chose to play it, okay? Saying this isn't the final deal. Probably some of you, anyway, would have had some real questions about those kind of statements anyway. But that's what I'm doing, throwing it out there as a really, really beautiful and deeply freeing way of practising that you can cultivate, we can cultivate. Really has a lot of peace in it, and beauty.

Yogi 17: When you say all your experiences manifest -- they could be seen as the manifestation of mind, can mind be seen as a manifestation of experience?

Rob: Can mind be seen as a manifestation of experience?

Yogi 17: Can you have one without the other?

Rob: Well, Okay. How would -- yeah, it's interesting. Mind is given primacy in this. What would it mean to say mind is a manifestation of experience?

Yogi 17: Don't know, but I -- we see it as like too kind of one-sided ... [?]

Rob: Yeah. And that's the problem that some people will come to in this practice. If you practise it for a while, something, for some people, will come in the being to feel like, "Hmm. It is too one-sided." I remember getting quite into this and hearing a lot of teachings which seemed to keep saying that. And something in me, feeling all the freedom and the loveliness, but something just feeling uneasy with that one-sidedness of it and that. And so, what's called the higher view is Madhyamaka, and particularly Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka, and that questions this one-sidedness and says, "You can't say there's nothing out there at all." Not only that, but it goes further and says, "The mind, too, is empty." So all this is empty [taps something], but the mind is empty, and that's the real meaning of rigpa, it's that knowing, knowing that, or the real meaning of the Dzogchen view. But that's much more difficult to get to as a meditator, to realize that the mind and awareness is also empty.

So it's funny. Different people will be bothered more or less by this. But you can still really, even if -- it's funny, you can even not accept it, but still really use it as a very, very deep meditation tool. It's just a way of seeing that you're kind of getting into. Okay? Yeah? So I'm going through things in the order which it's easiest to access in meditation for most people. And that won't be for everyone, but that just seems the best way of kind of presenting things.

Okay? Let's have a bit of quiet.