Dependent Origination, Awareness, and Time

As I said yesterday, in a way, this is sort of Part Two of yesterday's talk. What I really want to focus on tonight is time, consciousness, and dependent arising, and particularly kind of the first four links of dependent arising, or the beginning links of dependent arising, and hopefully explore that a little bit. Now, it's quite a lot to put in one talk. And please, I hope you can remember everything I said at the beginning of the talk last night, which I'm sure you all remember perfectly well. [laughter] So I'm not going to repeat it. But no pressure here, no pressure. I'm painting a map, painting a map of possibility, possibility for practice. There's no pressure. But don't underestimate what is possible in practice. Really don't underestimate what is possible. Sometimes I'm aware -- I might say something, or another teacher might say something that sounds so outlandish and so far removed from where we are. But really don't underestimate what is possible if one goes about things the right way and develops a practice in the right way.

And some of what I'm talking about tonight, particularly ... Well, actually, most of what I'm talking about tonight, for instance around time and the deepening of the understanding of the emptiness of time -- actually, you know, I'm presenting it in one talk, but it took me years to kind of explore all this. So I'm really painting a map. But I do feel -- maybe this is personal -- I do feel that there's something about understanding time and the emptiness of time that really is a very, very powerful key for realization, extremely powerful. For me, it's actually more powerful than anything else. Now, that might be just individual. It might be my personal sense of direction with this. But I feel that in one fell swoop, it kind of takes care of a lot of things.

So time, consciousness, and dependent arising. Mostly, human beings, as I said last night, we tend to ascribe inherent existence to things unless you really, really are trying not to, and deliberately concentrating on the emptiness of something. And time is one of those things -- it's not a thing, but time is something that feels as if it has independent existence. It feels as if, no matter what, no matter about me, whether I'm here or not, what's arising, whatever, time just marches on. Okay? And this is the felt notion of time that we have as human beings. As one philosopher said, it's a kind of "vessel of existence."^[1] It's what kind of is there, and things and events and situations happen in it, in that vessel. And so that's the intuitive, felt sense of time. That's how we relate to time. And we give it inherent existence. This is what I want to kind of explore a little bit, a part of what I want to explore.

And let's start with our old friend clinging, where we often start a lot of these kind of probing journeys. What we notice, as human beings, is that when we're clinging a lot, when we're in a situation or moment of clinging a lot, not only is the self-sense stronger -- and all the rest of what we talked about: suffering, etc. -- but also, have you noticed the time-sense is stronger? Have you noticed that? So think about when you're queuing for something. There's a sense of time being quite prominent in consciousness, if you're queuing and there's a kind of pressure there. Or as I'm sure we all know, sitting in meditation, and the teacher's at the front or whoever's supposed to ring the bell, and "When is that blooming bell going to ...?" [laughter] "Going to ring?" And there's a whole sense of the time-sense. Because of the resistance to the practice, or there's pain, or there's restlessness or something, the time-sense itself is built up and becomes more substantial, more significant, more prominent to consciousness. Or again, the kind of opposite end -- you're dreading something. You've got to give a presentation at work, or some big thing is coming around. It's like the time, again, is so strong, it's almost thick. You can sort of feel the time.

And the reverse is true, of course. As we cling less, the time-sense tends to quieten down, tends to die down. And so you can see this no matter which of the approaches you've been using from this retreat -- so for example, the Cittamātra, open awareness, just letting everything belong, letting things go, or relaxing the push and the pull, or 'not me, not mine,' whatever it is. There might be moments -- and again, I'm just painting a map -- but there might be moments at times where the time-sense either gets a little less prominent or a lot less prominent.

[5:35] Now, the first way that begins to happen for consciousness is that the sense of the past and the future begin to feel as if -- it's like, a person often comes after some meditation and says, "The past and future -- they don't really exist." It's almost like we see that in the radiance of the present moment, in the aliveness of the attention of the present moment, the past and future are just kind of fabrications. And so a person often feels like they're not really real, and all that seems real is the now, the present moment. And that's fantastic, and it's a wonderful start. But actually, you want to also go beyond the now, beyond the sense of the now and the present being something real and independently existing. And that, I would say, we need to do. Or rather, put it this way: there's no awakening without that going beyond the now. Something hasn't yet been understood to a deep enough degree. So it's something that we need on the journey to awakening. And could it be, could it be that actually, along with everything else, time is also a dependent arising? So rather than "the thing in which dependent arising is happening," time also is a dependent arising. [laughter] This is what I'm going to go into in the talk.

So ... [laughs] I was talking to someone today, and I threw this out earlier: it's said that you don't really understand dependent arising and emptiness unless your jaw is hanging open and touching the floor. In other words, it's so radical in its implications about the nature of reality, about what is real and what isn't. You know, to say that time is a dependent arising is quite something. Let's go into it.

Yogi: Physics ... [?]

Rob: Yes, but to live that, in a way ... [laughs] You can talk to me, you know? [laughs] In a way, what makes a big difference is understanding that here. [taps chest] So again, lovely -- what I know (very little) about it -- lovely what physics is exploring. And in a way, a lot of this is very related to physics and quantum and Heisenberg's principles and all that. But it's a different thing, as I keep saying, to see it intellectually, and then see it in meditation, and see it so it's in the heart. And then that brings a different level of freedom. So what I want to do is perhaps throw out a lot of ways of looking at time. And not everyone will like them all. Some are analytical, some are not, etc. But I just want to offer. I think that in what I'm throwing out, eventually there'll be something for everyone here.

Let's start on a relatively -- not superficial, but simple kind of way of framing it. So we talk about time, and we talk about past, present, future, past, present, future, past, present, future. And in a way, the present depends on the past and the future, in the same way that the middle depends on the left and the right. Do you see that? As concepts, again, we're back to this kind of relativity of concepts. The present moment -- all of them are interrelated, interdependent. So past depends on present and future, the notion of a present depends on past and future, the future depends on past and present.

Oftentimes a practitioner will say the past and the future are illusions. But because they're interdependent, that actually means that the present must be an illusion as well. It can't be any less of an illusion, because it's dependent on what's actually an illusion. The present is the present only by virtue of kind of existing or taking its place in between past and future. That's what makes it the now. That's what makes it the present.

Okay, so yesterday I talked about Gampopa and his three reasons why inherent existence of awareness doesn't really hold water. And the third one is asking whether this consciousness, this awareness, this mind that's supposedly inherently existent exists in one moment or in many.^[2] So it's another one of these funny analysis reasonings. I'm going to throw it out. Now, to me, this is very, very powerful. Again, it might be just individual. I find this extremely powerful. It's not too complicated, and it's quite quick if you can use it.

Let's talk about time first, and then we'll translate that to consciousness. This present moment which seems to exist independently -- is it one moment or many? Is it one or many in its nature? Okay? Is it one or is it many? Let's say, if this moment is one, then either this moment is divisible into a beginning, middle, and end of this moment, or it's not. If it's divisible, then what was one moment has actually become three moments, because when time is at the beginning, it's at the beginning, and it's not at the end. And when it's at the end, it's not at the beginning. And when it's in the middle, it's neither at the beginning nor the end. [laughter] Okay? So if it's divisible, it's become three moments and not one. But if we say this moment can't be divided, what that's saying is it's so infinitely small that it's actually not existent, and it can't have a beginning and an end, because that would be two parts to it. And if it doesn't have a beginning and an end, it means that you can't actually arrange moments in order, because the end of this moment has to go next to the beginning of the next. Do you understand?

Yogi: No. [laughter]

Rob: No? If we say the ... [laughter] If we say the moment can't be divided, that means it doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end, which means that I can't arrange ... How am I going to know what order to arrange moments in? Because if I'm arranging things in order, the end of one moment needs to touch the beginning of the ... Yeah? Okay. So I can't arrange moments in order of time and something happening.

So then I go to the other option, and I say, "Okay, the present moment is actually many moments. It's not one." But 'many' can only be many ones. It can only be an accumulation of ones. And if it can't be one because of what we've said before, then ... One moment doesn't exist means many can't exist. So what you've got is a moment not being one and not being many. Something that's not one or many can't inherently exist. Do you want me to say that again?

Yogis: Yeah. [laughter]

Rob: Okay, let's start at the beginning. This moment -- we're going to ask, "Is it one or many?" Okay? If it's one, then either it's divisible into a beginning, middle, and end, or it's not. Okay? Then we say, "If it's divisible, then what's happened is that one moment has become three moments." Okay? Because when time, so to speak, is at the beginning, it's not at the end of that moment. And when it's in the middle it's neither, etc. When it's the end, it's not the beginning. So it's not one, in that case. But if we say, "Well, the moment, this moment, this present moment can't be divided," then what you're saying is it doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end. It's so infinitely small to be non-existent, and if it doesn't have a beginning and an end, it means that you can't arrange moments in time, because beginning and end need to move, need to be arranged back to back. Okay? So then we go to the other option and say, "Okay, it's not one because it can't be one. We've just seen that. It must be many." But for anything to be many it must be an accumulation of ones. That's what many means, right? It's many ones. But if there are no ones, it can't be many because I've got nothing to accumulate. So it turns out that something like this moment must be one or many, but actually it's neither. It can't be either. Well, what do we conclude? This moment, this present moment has no inherent existence.

Now, I'm aware that sounds -- I assure you, this all took me a long time to get. But it's actually not too hard if you want to grapple with this particular reasoning, not too hard. And once you've got it, it can be very quick and very, very powerful, I find. And so to remember: this is a practice. What happens is you grapple with the reasonings, you become convinced, and then you've got a kind of quick, something quick that you can plug into meditation practice. You're there, in the moment, with your attention on the present moment, and then you delicately start contemplating the present moment in this way. In the moment, attending to the moment and see what happens. Okay? So it's really about practice. It's certainly not about being clever or mental gymnastics. And then one sees, for any thing to be, for any thing to be, really, it needs a time to be in. And through this reasoning, you actually see there is no time for anything to be in. That was what Gampopa applied to the mind and consciousness. "Does it exist in one moment or many?" he said. There's actually no time for consciousness to exist in, inherently.

Yogi 3: Could you just -- sorry. Could you just do the "Why not many?" again? Just the last ...

Rob: Why not many? Because 'many,' the word 'many,' means a collection of singularities, a collection of ones. Yeah? And we've already said one can't exist, so many can't exist because there are no ones. Yeah? Once you've got to that point, it's actually quite easy.

But please, please be aware that this does take time. But some things that feel daunting at first can end up being a real, real resource. And we might feel like, "It's not my personality to go in for all this reasoning." And maybe that's true, but it might be something that you can actually find works very, very powerfully for you.

Yogi 4: Can you just kind of clarify for me about the -- if it can't be divided, and it's so tiny as to not have a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore it can't be put next to another one ...

Rob: Okay. Well, therefore two things: one thing is it's so small to be non-existent. That's number one. Number two is you couldn't actually arrange a series of moments for anything to happen in because it's like ... What, how do I ...? You line moments up in time by beginning -- this moment has beginning and end, and that lines up with ... The end of this moment has to line up with, has to be next to the beginning of the next moment. Otherwise time won't continue in ... Do you understand?

Yogi 5: Rob, with this many, things can't be an accumulation of ones because there is no one. But this one moment has just been divided into three parts. So we can divide any object into a number of parts, but we still accept that validly, it's one. So I don't really get this many.

Rob: Not inherently one or inherently many. So that's where this is going. And this reasoning can actually be applied to anything which has parts or not. But what it's saying is if something exists inherently, it must be either one or many. It will take some reflection. So you have to work these things. It's just like the Chandrakīrti. In a way, this is actually a lot easier because it's a lot smaller, but you have to grapple with it, and at a certain point it might click, and then you can use it.

[18:43] But I want to actually introduce another one as well. Some of you will be familiar -- I've talked about it with Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and that first stanza begins something like, "Nothing whatsoever" ... something like:

Not from itself or from another thing or from both or from neither can anything whatsoever anywhere arise.^[3]

And we can apply that to this moment. Again, we're looking at time, and specifically this moment, which seems to be there right in front of us.

(1) We say, "This moment can't arise from itself." Okay? Why not? Because for something to arise from itself -- or put it this way: 'arising' has no meaning for something which already exists. So this moment can't -- nothing can arise from itself because it actually already exists. This moment cannot arise from itself.

(2) It can't arise from something other. This moment can't arise from something other. Let's dissect that a little bit. Either I say, "This moment is somehow arising from some other kind of energy or force or thing or factor in the present, and that's what's giving rise to the present moment" -- but hold on. If it's in the present, then it's actually this moment, and it's part of itself again. So then I go, "Okay, some other in the past -- it arises out of something else in the past." But a past moment must be completely gone before the present can arise. For the present to be the present, the past must be gone. Otherwise you'd get an overlapping of the past and the present, a kind of moment that was in between the two. It's like one of those Venn diagrams: you've got a third moment that's kind of an overlap moment.

Or you say, "Okay, it doesn't overlap, but they touch. The two moments touch. The past moment and the present moment touch." And then you say, "Okay, there's a third moment at that moment of contact." But then you've got a problem. [laughs] Then you've got a problem, because that moment will have to have two contact points with the present moment, so-called present moment and the so-called past moment, and they are going to have to be apart. So in a way, there is no contact between past and present. Or you could say, "Well, I take the moment of the contact of the present moment with the transition moment." Same problem again. This third moment of contact -- it keeps going ad infinitum. And if the past moment has gone, how is it going to give rise to the present moment? How's it going to give rise? Something that's gone can't affect something to bring it into being.

(3) So the third option is from both self and other, but actually, what logically doesn't hold for both the first two, the self and the other, doesn't kind of -- two wrongs don't add up to make a right.

Yogi 6: Can you say it's ...?

Rob: Yeah, so Nāgārjuna has four options: (1) arising from itself, (2) arising from an other, (3) arising from both self and other -- but if you've already refuted self and already refuted other, putting them together in some mishmash doesn't actually do anything. It just, you've got two things which can't give rise. It's not going to suddenly make something that gives rise.

(4) And if we say, "From neither self nor other," what that's actually saying is things arise causelessly and without conditions. But clearly, somehow this moment does depend on the moments before it. So again, we conclude that the present moment lacks inherent existence.

Now, there are two more reasonings, but I'm actually not going to go into them because it would overload tonight, but they come from Nāgārjuna.

Let's come out of the analysis and come more back to the kind of practices we know. We've talked before about what gives substance to things. What gives substance to anything, to objects, to the self, to anything? What gives substance to time? And in a way, time is given substance to consciousness when we give substance to things -- in other words, when we're kind of invested in things as being inherently existent. And then, what happens is we start measuring those things over so-called past, present, future, and we have an investment in that measurement: "Are they going to change? Are they going to grow? Are they going to get better for me? Are they going to disappear, be replaced by something I don't like?" So the measurement of things over past, present, and future is important in relationship to what? Moi! Self. Right? It's important. Again, three things are giving each other solidity here -- that's what I'm getting at: the self, things, and time. And like a tripod, they hold each other ... [laughter] Well, this is not a tripod. [laughs, rings bell] Like a tripod, they hold each other up. They support each other. Three sticks are leaning on each other at a point. So the self-sense brings an investment in things and their movement over time: "How will this thing be for me? Will it change in a way that I like, that I don't like? If I like it, will it stay in the future, etc.?" The self-belief, the sense of self, gives substance to things and to time: "What can I get? What will the next moment bring for me, what will it mean for me?" There's a sense of the self being invested in the movements of time.

Now, we can look at this tripod from another angle and say, the self-sense, the self-belief actually needs time-belief, because if I think about it, who am I if there's only this ungraspable moment? And sometimes you get that sense when meditation goes very deep. There's just -- time is going through your hands, [your] fingers, and I'm just this thing -- Rose was saying that there was just this contact with the foot on the earth. And it's like, who am I then? There's just this moment. So self-belief actually needs time-belief. And if things are without time, if there's just this moment, this ungraspable moment, what's the significance of things? What possible significance can I -- why worry about things if they're just not even there in terms of time? So things are drawn out and stand out dependent on selfing -- we've talked about this before -- and it actually needs the time-belief and the sense of continuity, continuing in time. Otherwise, why would we worry about anything?

[26:31] So all these three are holding each other up like a tripod. Again, they're mutually dependently arising, and because of that, they're mutually empty. Yeah? We've talked about the self being empty and things being empty, time empty too -- three empty sticks holding each other up. Now, again, not just an intellectual theory -- we actually want to see this, see it in practice, and this is really, really possible. Again, we see, what happens when the self-sense gets less? What happens when the self-sense gets quieter, begins to die down? Well, as we've talked about in here, the thing-sense, the object sense also quietens down. And what else? The time-sense quietens down. And like all the other things that I've been talking about when I talked about fading, it's a spectrum. It's a continuum, continually fading, dying down. And again, as I push and pull less with things, same deal -- the self-sense gets less. Thing-sense -- object, thing gets less. And time-sense gets less.

So this is possible to really see in practice, and play with this kind of tripod thing. And eventually, it may well be possible to actually say, "Okay, let me approach it from the third of the sticks," and actually approach it from the time one, and say, "What happens if I let go of past and future?" I just let go of my investment in time. Rather than approaching it from self or from the emptiness of things, actually approach it from time, and somehow find a way of just letting go of time, letting go of time, and see what happens.

Yogi 7: [?] From the perspective of past and future ...

Rob: Starting there, and as the whole thing grows, it's almost like all this can become more complete. It begins to kind of -- all the insights tend to feed each other and be more complete. But you can start there, absolutely. Just totally let go of past, like investing or believing in past and future, and you come down to a kind of barely nothing present, etc. So something's going on here: investment, the investment of a self-sense in things, and the delusion conceiving of things, whatever these things are, building this whole reality of self, things, and time.

Let's talk about this. Let's talk about another way around. If we talk about a thing, a thing in the present -- any thing, an inner thing, an emotion, a body sensation, an outer thing -- a thing in the present has implicit in it a conception, conscious or unconscious, implicit in it the conception of not that thing. We've touched on this before, the conception of not that thing. So this, whatever a thing is, has with it, subterraneanly most of the time, the conception of not that thing. In other words, it's possible that in the future this thing won't be there, it will change, it will disappear, someone will take it away from me, etc. If I like it, hopefully it will grow or stay or whatever. But 'thing' and 'not that thing' kind of go together as concepts. And that concept, as part of delusion, is holding the whole thing together as well. Do you see that?

Yogi 8: No.

Rob: No? When we conceive of a thing, which we always do when we perceive a thing, there's a sense wrapped up in that, very subtly, of not that thing. And that's wrapped up with the sense of, "It's possible for this thing to change in time and become not this thing." And so the conceiving of 'thing' in relationship to 'not that thing' is also holding the whole appearance of time together. It's somehow bound up with it.

In a way, then, we have a felt sense of present, of the present moment, and some thing in the present moment. But because that's wrapped up with the concept of not that thing, then the future gains significance as a sort of space in which 'not that thing' might occur.

Yogi 9: So you're saying that a conception of a future will also have to ... [?]

Rob: Yes, it's automatic. It's automatically implicit any time you have a conception of a thing, and any time you have a conception of the present moment. Now, any time we perceive a thing in the present moment, you can pretty much rest assured that there's going to be a subconscious conception of 'not that thing' and the future bound up with the whole thing. That arises, but it's also keeping the whole thing together. Okay? That's where I'm going with this talk. Slowly -- we'll get to it.

So time is actually dependent on the perception of things. It's wrapped up in the perception of things. The sense of the present moment is wrapped up in the perception of things. It's not saying, again, time is not existent at all. It's not inherently existent, as a sense of something independent. And we come back to, again, things are empty. Time depends on things, so time is resting, is leaning on something empty. Yeah?

[32:12] Now, let's take this just a little bit more subtly. Consciousness is dependent on time. I'm working now, starting to work with the really subtle elements of the dependent arising, the factors of dependent arising. Consciousness is dependent on time. Why is that? Because it needs a present. I need a present to be conscious. And that present is, we've just said, dependent on the past and the future, and also dependent on an object. No object, no present, no consciousness. Since all those are empty (past, future, object are empty), consciousness (which depends on present, past, future, object) -- that's also empty. Again, it's leaning on something empty.

Remember, all this has to do with practice. So I'm pointing to ways in which you can practise, rather than just a clever sort of philosophy thing. If time is empty, arising, abiding, lasting in time, and ceasing in time are also empty. Impermanence is also empty. If time is empty, then the concepts which are bound up in time, like production, abiding, ceasing, also empty. And any thing, including consciousness, cannot be born, abide, or die. Do you see this? Because those concepts are wrapped in -- fundamental to those concepts is a sense of time. But again, we say, consciousness is somehow wrapped up with time. It's dependent on time.

Yogi 10: Rob, what does that mean?

Rob: Which does what mean?

Yogi 10: If consciousness cannot be born, what does it mean?

Rob: Good question.

Yogi 11: What was the question?

Rob: If consciousness is not born, what does it mean? It means that birth, or lasting, or ceasing, which seem such obvious facts of our existence, don't actually exist as inherent facts for anything, inherently existing facts for anything. They are, what the Buddha would say, dependently arising illusions.

Yogi 10: Because if not, I would say then they have to be eternal.

Rob: Ah, good! But eternal would be abiding, abiding eternally. So this is pointing to something. The jaw starts to hang down. It's like something is really, really being questioned, because we think, "Either a thing's impermanent, or it's permanent. Either it's impermanent or eternal, or it doesn't exist at all." Dependent arising is saying none of those three, none of those three.

I'm going to get to this, hopefully in this talk, some time tonight. [laughter] There's a way in which everything is holding everything else up together in a mutually empty, mutually dependent way, and the whole illusion is kind of supporting itself.

[35:44] Let's explore a little more. Let's come to the first few links of dependent arising, of the map of dependent arising. I don't know how much John went into this with you, but I want to explore it as well. The Buddha, the most detailed description of his so-called night of awakening, if it really did happen in one night, the most detailed description he gives is, he keeps asking a question. And he says, "Okay, death is my big problem. That's what I'm struggling with. What gives rise to death? Birth. What gives rise to birth?" And he just keeps asking questions and finding the answer, and he keeps coming, and then he gets down to vedanā: "What gives rise to vedanā?" And he gets another thing, and he keeps asking the question, and he gets down to name and form, okay? Name and form -- I'll explain what this means -- but then he asks, "What gives rise to name and form?" And he says, "Consciousness." And then he says, "Okay, what is consciousness dependent on?" And then he says, "Name and form." And he says, "At that point there was awakening." In other words, when he saw the mutual dependency of consciousness and name and form, that was the moment of awakening. He says, "I see, it turns back on itself" at this point.^[4] And that was the moment -- not any moment before that. So this principle of mutual dependency is, you could say, the thing on which realization hinges, the insight on which realization hinges. And it's possible that originally he just taught a ten-link dependent arising thing that kind of ended with consciousness being mutually dependent with name and form. So some versions you find in the in the Pali Canon are just that, and later he added two more: ignorance and saṅkhāras.^[5]

So, what does 'name and form' mean? And he says 'form' is forms. 'Name' is really another word for mental factors that shape a perception. He lists them, and he says they're perception, vedanā, attention, intention, and contact.^[6] We're getting quite technical now, but it's actually quite important. So 'name,' meaning what he's calling nāma, 'mentality' or the processes of the perceiving mind. What he's saying is consciousness is dependent on the processes of the perceiving mind, and the processes of the perceiving mind are dependent on consciousness. There's this mutual dependency there.

Let's take this apart a little bit. Let's take attention, because we've talked a lot about perception and vedanā. Let's take attention. Now, on this retreat so far, we've talked a lot, a lot, a lot about pushing and pulling and the relationship with experience. And we've said that the object of perception depends on the push and pull. And we've also gone further and said the push and pull actually depends on the object. No object, you can't have anything to push and pull against, right? We've talked about that mutual dependency. So what is attention? If we think about it, what is attention as a factor of mind? To me, what attention is, is intention plus consciousness. You intend to put your consciousness somewhere. You intend to pay attention somewhere. That's what attention is: it's holding the mind in a way that singles out an object for perception. Yeah? That's what attention is.

[39:36] Now, a few people have actually begun to bring this up already in interviews. It turns out that that process of attention actually has its own kind of push and pull to it. In a way -- let's pay attention to this bell. I kind of put everything else aside and clamp on it with the attention. There's a kind of calipers action of the mind. So there's a kind of push and pull that's going on in the process of attention. Actually, when it gets really subtle, that push and pull, in a way, is not any different from the other push and pull in relation to vedanā. It's all just push and pull. What it turns out, just as objects and perceptions are dependent on the push and pull, and the push and pull needs the objects, it turns out that objects are dependent on attention, and attention is dependent on an object. If there's no object to pay attention to, I can't pay attention. Right? I need to be paying attention to something. And to make that thing an object for consciousness actually needs some attention. This is where I was saying, very briefly last night, I just threw out: the problem with passive notions of awareness is they don't take this, they don't see this level, that actually there is a kind of movement in consciousness to actually pay attention to anything, for anything to be an object for consciousness -- not necessarily deliberately, but there is a movement of intention and attention. Consciousness, awareness is an active doing process. When people talk about, "I'm just going to be in meditation. I'm just going to be," actually, one's kind of missing this very, very subtle active movement, doing.

Okay, let's just pause a little bit and recap a little bit. I know this is not that easy. So far, what have we said? We have, as human beings, a sense of this moment. It's definitely something that arises for us, this moment. But this moment -- in another talk I said, how long is the present moment? Justin said, "It's short." Okay, now we've gone into that more clearly. It's actually, well ... [laughter] Just how short? We talk about this moment, or "There was a moment when this, or da-da-da." This moment is delineated by perception. It's delineated for the mind by perception. I perceive this, and I perceive that, and that experientially makes the moment for us. And as such, this moment or the sense of this moment is delineated by what is known. I perceive this, I know this, I know that sound. It's delineated by what's known. What have we got then? This moment is dependent on knowing. So this moment -- which means time, including the now -- this moment is dependent on knowing, is dependent on consciousness. All right?

So I can't have a 'this moment' if I'm not conscious of it -- impossible. Knowing, consciousness, is dependent on ... guess what? This moment. I can't have a knowing of something that's not a knowing of this moment. Same is true for attention, so we can substitute 'attention' for 'consciousness' there. This moment is dependent on attention, and attention is dependent on this moment. I need to be attending to something, and it's the attention that makes it this moment for experience. Again, what do we have? Same thing again -- a mutual dependency and a mutual leaning of something on what is empty. It's leaning on empty -- and 'mutual dependency' itself already means something's empty.

Yogi 11: If you say "attention," you mean just saying, like, being aware of something?

Rob: It's actually drawing out a slightly different meaning, so this is good. What it's actually coming to, in the end, is that none of this is actually separable from any of the other parts. What we [mean] when we [say] "attention" is, it implies being aware, because you can't attend to something if you're not aware, but it also implies a deliberateness at some level, which might not be consciously accessible, that the mind is kind of paying attention to something. So it involves -- I would say awareness and intentionality wrapped up make attention, okay?

So then the Buddha talks about ignorance or delusion. Remember, I'm talking about the subtle aspects in the links of dependent arising now. And usually dependent arising is started with the link of ignorance or delusion -- 'delusion' is actually a better word. What does that mean? What does 'ignorance' mean? Actually, it means a range of things. There's a range of meanings that it has. On one level, 'ignorance' just means ignorance about what leads to suffering and what leads to happiness. It's a very pragmatic -- what leads to suffering, and what leads to freedom? And not understanding that is what ignorance is. On another level, ignorance is ignorance about impermanence, just kind of blinding ourselves to the fact of impermanence. On another level, ignorance is about feeling that the self inherently exists, an ignorance about the nature of the self. It's also ignorance about objects. It's also ignorance about time. All of this is kind of wrapped up -- this business of self, things, and time is wrapped up in ignorance. We're ignorant about things, the way they exist, we're ignorant about time, the way that exists, and we're ignorant about the self. We're deluded about all of those having inherent existence.

Now, let's take the self-sense. And as we've said, it has a spectrum. It has a continuity of how sort of built up it can be, how exaggerated, how gross, how heavy and solid it can be, and how subtle it can be. At its most subtle level, the self-sense is just the sense of a subject, a consciousness knowing. No personality, no history, no nothing -- it's just consciousness as a sort of receiver and knower of experience. Yeah? That's the most subtle level of self-sense you can have. Do you see that?

When there is ignorance, when there is a belief in a subject of awareness, objects, and time, then what happens is, so to speak, out of that ignorance comes intentions: the intention to either move stuff or change stuff, but even more fundamentally, the intention to pay attention. We believe in this reality of things, and then it's like, "Okay, because of an investment, what shall I pay attention to?" The intention for attention comes out of a belief in the inherent existence of subject, object, and time. By 'time,' I mean present moment as well as past and future.

Then we start peeling this apart and say, "Okay, what do intentions need?" Well, intentions, even the intention to pay attention -- again, it needs an object. I can't have an intention towards what isn't an object. Intentions are in relationship to an object. Is this okay, guys? Is this ...?

Yogi 12: Could you slow down?

Rob: Okay, all right. But is it hanging together, or is it ...? Yeah?

Yogi 13: Can you say the last bit? [laughter]

Rob: Please say if it doesn't make sense. We'll go a little later, you know, but otherwise -- because the talk, too, is a dependent arising. And if no one understands, then it's actually just me talking to myself ... [laughter] which believe me, is not that much fun. [laughter] And it starts affecting things. We can go slowly with this. I know it's difficult.

Did you get the thing about subject, object, and time? Or should I go over that again? Again. Delusion or ignorance -- we've said that's the root of all this problem. That's the root of suffering. And what is delusion delusion about? Okay? Do you understand? What does 'delusion' mean? And it means a lot of things at a lot of different levels. It means not knowing that selfishness leads to misery, not knowing that if I make my life about hoarding money and da-da-da, not knowing that if I go around cheating on my partners that's going to lead to suffering. That's ignorance, so it's at that level. Blinding myself to the fact of impermanence is also what delusion is. At a more subtle level, it's about, like we've talked about on this retreat, not realizing that this self lacks inherent existence. That's also delusion.

Let's take delusion down to its most subtle and sort of fundamental form. And that is that we believe, or there is a belief, there is a delusion, that there is a subject of experience, there is awareness that knows objects in time. Even if I say, "All the stories of myself are an illusion, all the history, all the body and everything, all there is, all I am," even if I don't use the word 'I,' there is awareness, and awareness knows objects, and that happens in time. Okay? Totally the most fundamental kind of strand of reality. Now, from that intuitive level of delusion, that intuitive belief, arises intentions, because the subject, again, is going to be invested. When there's a subject-object duality in time, for the reasons that I said before, it will be invested: "What's coming for this subject? How will it be for this, for this in time?" So ignorance gives rise to intentions and even the intention to pay attention. It's based on the belief in subjects and objects existing as separate things in a separately, independently existing time.

Intentions also require a sense of an object to intend to. So I'm moving from ignorance now to intention. What does an intention depend on? I can't intend towards something without that thing being there. I can't intend to change it. I can't even intend to pay attention to it without the thing there. The thing depends on intention; intention depends on the thing. Same deal. Intention also requires a sense of the next moment, a sense of this kind of investment in "What will the next moment be?", or the sense of possible movement into the next moment. And this subject is kind of the place of investment, the centre of gravity of it all.

So whichever way we go from -- we can look at it in terms of intentions. We can look at it in terms of time. Time, as we've said, is dependent on knowing. And time is also dependent on intentions and the movement of investment. It's also dependent on conceiving of an object in the present, what I've said earlier in this talk. Then I go around -- another triangle I'm making between consciousness, time, and intention. And I go around all three parts, and I see they're all mutually dependent.

So consciousness, again -- it's dependent on the object, it's dependent on attention, it's dependent on intentions, it's dependent on time.

Yogi 14: I was playing with this today, [?] certainly enough, I found myself feeling really trapped.

Rob: Yeah, okay, I will talk about that right at the end. Good. So then we ask, "What in the mind is not empty?" Going back to some of those quotes last time, whatever we look at, however we see the mind, you say, "Oh, mind is a conglomeration of consciousness, perception, vedanā, attention, intention," whatever, or you say it's like this or like that -- whatever we have as being 'the mind,' it's empty. We can always take one strand of it and see that it's dependent on something else which is empty, and it's resting like that. So, for example, attention -- that's part of the mind. Attention depends on objects; objects depend on attention. Attention depends on objects; I need something to pay attention to. Objects depend on attention -- mutually empty, mutually dependent. Then we say, "Well, what about ignorance? All this depends on ignorance." But if you think of that ignorance, ignorance cannot exist in the abstract. There's no such thing as abstract ignorance, outside of the present moment, outside of consciousness, outside of a thing and time and the way we conceive about a thing. It depends on consciousness, depends on mind, depends on perception.

Again, this is not at all to be 'clever.' It's actually because this points to ways of practising -- extremely subtle but very profound, very powerful. So how might one eventually go about this? We've talked in different ways on this retreat about ways of seeing that objects are empty. And so one develops that, and I talk a lot about developing the practice, and developing it to the point where you can actually look at an object and rest in the conviction, the consolidated conviction, come from the development of practice, looking at an object, "I know you're empty. I know you're empty." Then you hold that sense of the object and its emptiness, and you're contemplating it in that way. And you know it's just a perception, in the sense that it's fabricated by clinging, by delusion, by self, me-mining, etc. It's just a perception. So you're contemplating it as empty, the object, whatever it is -- sense of stillness, sense of body sensation, whatever.

Now, the object might fade a little bit, as we've talked about. But into that you add, you can add the sense that the mind is empty, based on what we've talked about, either the mind as a whole or any of the mental factors that you'd like -- attention, intention, etc. -- based on what we've talked about today. Why are they empty? Because they depend on empty objects. Taking attention again as an example, attention depends on the object, the object is empty, therefore ... empty.

Yogi 15: I just say, "Well done."

Rob: I haven't quite finished yet. [laughter] Yeah, if you can do that, really well done, really well done. But then into that mix, into that mix, add the third ingredient, which is the present moment and time is empty.

Now, I'm quite aware that for some people -- and maybe for everyone, I don't know -- that's going to sound very far-fetched as a possibility. But it really is possible. That's really what I want to communicate. So, again, I'm painting a map of possible ways of practising. And it really, absolutely is possible, eventually. It rests on developing one's practice. As I started the whole retreat saying, develop these, develop these, because they unfold. Going right back to the three characteristics, etc., they will unfold. And as I said, you develop them, you consolidate them, and then they unfold to another level. And you're able to look at an object and say, "You're empty." And then you're able to see -- based on that real, consolidated conviction that an object is empty, you're able to see that the mind must be empty, and then that time must be empty. And eventually, based on this development, you're actually able to do all together. Extremely profound way of practising. Difficult? Yes. Subtle? Yes. Possible? Absolutely, absolutely, eventually -- if one takes care of the development of practice, if one takes care of it. In a way, that's the kind of, you could say, the pinnacle, as far as I understand it, of contemplating emptiness as a practitioner.

Let's just go back a little bit. Seeing that time is empty, if we just talk, isolate time, that actually as a meditator, the experience of that can be many and varied. So people will report many -- there are many different flavours of that experience. Sometimes it's this sense of there's no time for anything to be in because a moment is kind of non-existent, or a moment is neither one nor many, as we've talked about. Other times, it's much more of a kind of, rather than a shrinking, it's almost like an opening up. And it's almost as if one has a heart, intuitive sense that all time is here -- all the past and all the future -- it's somehow right here in some mystical way. Other times, people are just letting go, just letting go, just doing the Cittamātra or relaxing the relationship, and it's almost a sense of eternity, just a moment of eternity. Not in the sense of permanence, but something else, something kind of outside of time. Another possibility, which I'll go into tomorrow, is kind of everything fading. But let's leave that for now.

So if we go back to this quote from Ajaan Mahā Boowa, which I talked about yesterday, and he said it occurred to him when he was doing his walking meditation: "Whenever there's a centre to the knowing, there's suffering."^[7] And so, now in this expanded sense, not just meaning 'if there's a self that owns the awareness, owns the consciousness.' The knowing, the consciousness has no centre in a self, but it has no centre in time either. It has no centre in a moment or a present moment; has no centre in space -- space, too, we talked about at some point, is also just a perception; has no centre in mental factors. And what I see is that knowing and consciousness is not separate from empty perceptions. You can't separate it out, knowing from empty perceptions. Again, what I see, what we see is that consciousness is not separate from attention, not separate from intention, not separate from perception, from the object, from feeling, from past, future, from saṅkhāras, whatever. So on one level we can talk about "This is this, and that's that. This is the vedanā, and this is the reaction." On another level, you find that you can't find a dividing line between things. You can't find a dividing line between consciousness and perception, or any of this stuff -- consciousness and attention or intention. They are interdependent and inseparable.

One time Ānanda, the Buddha's cousin and long-time attendant -- he loved the Buddha dearly and spent years as his personal attendant, so heard loads of Dharma talks from the Buddha's mouth firsthand, and was constantly being kind of encouraged and censured by the Buddha. And at one time Ānanda turns to the Buddha and says, "You know what? I think I understand dependent arising now. I think I've got it." [laughs] And the Buddha said, "Don't say that, Ānanda. Don't say that." I can't remember the exact quote, but "It's hard to fathom, hard to see, hard to understand, and it's through not understanding it that this generation is tangled in a tangle. It's caught up in delusion."^[8] So at one level, dependent arising, we can say, "This leads to this leads to this leads to this leads to this," as if there are separate things, and as if it's a movement happening linearly and in time. And at one level, it is. As we get deeper into it, it's a whole other kind of level of understanding -- that actually, it's not linear, and it's not in time. It's a kind of mutually dependent, mutually reinforcing kind of -- is it a hologram? Is that the right word? I don't know, but something -- illusion. And time itself is dependently arisen, as I started the talk saying, the sense of time.

Now, going back to what Justin said, it could be, from what I've said tonight and from playing with this a little bit, that we get a sense of actually, "This is a complete mess. This is a nightmare. It's like a big ball of spaghetti, and not only that -- the spaghetti's completely overcooked. It's way past al dente, and you can't even separate out the blooming strands!" So it could be that one gets a sense of being trapped in all this, and like it's hopeless to disentangle it, it's hopeless. But actually -- and I do understand that feeling -- but actually what this gives us is many different ways to approach dependent arising. You can pick this strand of spaghetti or this strand of spaghetti, and you can follow it and see what its implications are. So we can approach this whole thing from many different points. You know, like I said, self, things, time is one triangle. Consciousness, intention, time is another. You can actually pick up different things where it feels easy, and then follow them.

It would be possible to kind of hear all this or read about all this, whatever, and kind of just shrug and say, "Well, can't really know anything about anything anyway," and in a way, that a little bit can just reinforce our sense of non-investigation and a little bit of laziness. But going back to some talk I gave or other, I think on conceptuality, we can know what we need to know. We can know what we need to know. In other words, we can understand this to the degree that brings freedom. Partly what we need to understand is the way that they are inseparable. Okay? If we're attached to things being separatable, conceivable units -- "Nice, neat, I put this over here and put that over there" -- then we're going to be in for frustration and disappointment. There's something in the inseparability that's actually what we need to know.

So I said in some other talk, again, dependent arising is the Buddha's incredible stroke of genius -- using concepts, using a set of concepts to actually go beyond concepts. You actually see how this is working, as I talked about tonight. You use a set of concepts, and when you go into them, you see that they're empty and totally not separate from others, and the whole thing kind of goes beyond concepts, based on using certain concepts. And so the image I think I gave was of a snake beginning to eat its own tail and eventually eating itself. That's the way that dependent arising works in practice: you pick up certain concepts and they start gnawing at themselves, eating themselves.

Yogi 16: But that image of the snake eating its tail is also seen in other cultures. It's the ouroboros.

Rob: It's the what?

Yogi 16: The ouroboros.

Rob: Yeah, it's not a Buddhist image. It's just an image I came up with to explain how the conceptuality fades. That's all. Yeah. I don't know what it means in other cultures, but certainly it's not an original ...

Yogi 16: [?] that separates it from other ... [?]

Rob: I would say that the use of concepts that go beyond concepts, without just jettisoning concepts too early and saying, "Whatever," and then having default concepts run the show. Going back to that talk I gave on conceptuality, if I throw out concepts too early, what actually happens is subtle concepts of a subject, an object, and a present moment -- not even conscious thinking, they're operating. But if I follow dependent arising, I actually see the emptiness of those concepts in a way the concepts begin to melt. So it's just, I think, unique in those terms, in actually addressing those kind of concepts and using concepts to go beyond those concepts.

It's not, with dependent arising, that we want to reify and solidify these elements of dependent arising. That would be a mistake. And it's not, also, that we want to be sloppy with it and just kind of shrug at it and say, "Well, who cares?" Again, there's a Middle Way.

Yogi 17: I've forgotten what 'reify' means.

Rob: 'Reify' means to make something real, to give it inherent existence, to make it a thing. What does it all come down to? What it comes down to is all, all, all, all, all is empty. All is dependent arising. And rather than that being a kind of -- again, to say -- rather than that being a nihilistic thing that brings a sense of meaninglessness, I think, I really feel, when one sees it at that level, there's a real sense of beauty there. There's a sense of something so profound and I think moving, I think really moving. It's not a kind of, "Let's just dismiss everything and be cold about everything."

You guys look really tired. [laughter] I'll stop there. Let's have a bit of quiet to end.