What is 'Insight'?

This talk presents a map and overview of the path of Insight Meditation, exploring the different kinds and levels of insight available to us, the possible avenues for its development and deepening, and some of the many ways we can nurture and strengthen its unfolding.

Okay, so what I would like to talk about tonight is insight. When the Buddha taught, oftentimes he was quite fond of presenting maps -- maps of the path, maps of our potential, really. And in a way that's partly what I want to do tonight. I want to try and give a kind of overview or conceptual framework, a possible map for insight, and ask this question: what actually is insight? What is it that we're trying to do?

I feel quite strongly that it's actually important for us as practitioners to be quite clear about what it is that we're trying to do in practice. So if that's a bit vague -- it can actually take a long time to get clear, but it's quite important that that is becoming clear over time. This attempt, I'm going to attempt to kind of paint a bigger picture, an overview, a conceptual framework. Now, I know just from meeting and talking to so many people, that some people love to have the bigger picture and the conceptual framework and the map. They find it very exciting and helpful. And other personality types -- and just the ways people learn -- don't like that. It somehow doesn't light their fire; it somehow confuses things for them. So if you're in that second camp, apologies for tonight. It's just one talk. [laughs] And hopefully there will still be something in there for you.

I'm also aware of attempting to cover a lot of territory tonight in this talk, and so I hope it doesn't overwhelm anyone. In a way, you can kind of just sit back and hear about the possibilities and hear this bigger picture as one possible map. But still, still engage. Maybe it just plants seeds, something or other plants seeds. Maybe there's something particular. And hopefully there's something for everyone, something for everyone here.

One other thing I should say almost as a preface is in drawing a map of the path or the potential, to be aware of how one's listening. For some people it's very exciting to hear about the potential, for others it can be that the comparing self comes in. I feel again quite strongly that it's important for us to have goals in our practice, in our life; to have beautiful, deep, noble aspirations. The rub, the important thing, is what's the relationship to them? So is it about measuring the self, or is it just about the heart's yearning? Just to be aware as you're listening if that comes up, and how one's listening, what the heart qualities are that come up.

Okay, so what is 'insight'? We use this word, of course, all the time. We talk about 'insight meditation,' etc. One kind of pretty simple definition, we could say, could say: 'insight' is a seeing or an understanding that brings a kind of dissolution or a decrease in the dukkha, a decrease in suffering, dis-ease, dissatisfaction in that moment. I'll say that again: any seeing or understanding that brings some degree of dissolving or lessening of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, discontent, dukkha, suffering. So that seeing could be very intuitive. It could be intellectual, but it's not just intellectual because it has to go into the being in a way that transforms our suffering in that moment, okay?

Now, this could be in any situation and in relationship to any experience. So, for example, on a very mundane level, a very everyday level, I might have a difficult interaction with someone. Something difficult comes up between us, or they do something that rubs me the wrong way. I go and try and talk to them about it, and I start accusing them and calling them names and saying, "You are like this, and you da-da-da-da." Generally what one will find if I do that is all it does is create more suffering. If I start accusing someone, start calling them names, putting them down, they're basically going to throw it right back at me or shut down. They're experiencing suffering coming from that, and probably I will, too. Very, very simple. When I see that and when I see it clearly enough in that moment, most people will then -- organically there will be a kind of dropping. They'll say, "Okay, how else can I go about communicating this?" Very, very simple, very everyday. That's an insight. I see there's suffering being produced here by the way I'm speaking, by the way I'm approaching this, and I drop that, and there's less suffering. So on one end something very, very simple and kind of everyday, all the way, the whole spectrum of possible insights, to the most subtle, the most profound and transcendent possibilities of insight. All that is insight in the sense that there's the possibility of lessening suffering. There's the seeing, the understanding, that brings less suffering.

One helpful division to begin with -- and take it with a pinch of salt, but it's helpful in the sense that it can help us to make sure we're filling out the fullness of the path, the comprehensiveness of the path and what the Buddha is offering. So one possible, helpful division is to divide insights into three categories: (1) personal insights, (2) universal insights, and (3) what we might call ultimate insights. I'll explain a little bit what I mean. There's nothing rigid here; it's just an arbitrary thing. But it can help make sure that we're filling out the whole of what the path is offering.

(1) So what does this mean, personal? What's a personal insight, or personal insights? For instance, knowing one's patterns and habits, one's particular patterns and habits -- what are my tendencies, what are my typical reactions in situations, either in solitude or in relationship or in a certain social situation? I have good friends, they're a married couple, and one of the patterns they get into as a couple is that she kind of is blind to his needs. They talk about this, and they're conscious of it. They're both very conscious human beings. But that's a kind of pattern, a personal pattern in the dynamic of the relationship. So he might be hungry or thirsty or something, and she doesn't see it. It's just a simple example there.

Or it might be, again, in another kind of social situation, is it my pattern to assume that I'm better than others, or assume that I'm worse than others; assume that others are wrong and that I have it right, or that they're right and I'm wrong? Oftentimes we have tendencies here, and it's important to know: what's my pattern? All kinds of instances like that. What are my particular weaknesses and my particular strengths? So not to overlook what my strengths are -- oftentimes we do; we're very focused on our weaknesses. It's very easy to get obsessed and only look at one's weaknesses and not actually be conscious of what one's strengths on the path are. Both need to be known.

For example, sometimes people find themselves on a kind of spectrum of duality. And it really doesn't need to be a duality, but sometimes people find, for example, that there's a lot of clarity and the ability to think clearly and see clearly in situations, but the heart may be not so open. There isn't such a richness of emotion, a richness of the emotional life. Or the opposite: there's a lot of richness, there's a lot of movement and upsurge in the emotional life, a lot of openness there, but it's at the expense of clarity. Just to see where one is on that spectrum. It actually doesn't even need to be a spectrum; one can have both a beautifully rich emotional life and the clarity, so it doesn't need to be a duality.

But these kind of things, these are personal insights. What is our story? The story that we tell ourselves about our life and our history. This is huge for us, most of the time. Is the story that we're telling ourselves about ourselves, and that we tell others about our life, is it helpful or not? So for us as human beings and trying to be conscious human beings, trying to walk the path, it's actually really important to embrace our story and to investigate our story and our past and what's happened to us. It can open us up to aspects of ourself and aspects of feeling, etc. But are we stuck in the story or identified with the story? Because we don't have to be.

The story that we tell ourselves about our life, it can never, ever be the whole truth. It can never be the whole truth. We have a tendency to kind of shrink and wrap our identity around a story. It can never, ever be the whole truth of who we are. So a story is something we can actually use skilfully, and that's the question: am I using, am I relating to my story, in a helpful way? The story is not written in stone. The story of my life is not written in stone. I say, "Oh, I did this, and this happened, and then I went through this, and then this fell apart," or whatever. It's actually not written in stone. It's more malleable than we might think, our story. And are we telling ourselves a story, are we relating to the story, in a way that's actually helpful to us, that's inspiring, that's uplifting, that's moving us onward? Or are we telling ourselves a story and relating to a story that's keeping us stuck? All this is in the realm of personal insight, and really, really important work for all of us to do.

(2) We can talk about universal insight and what that might mean. This is something that's true for all of us. Whereas one person might have a particular pattern or another pattern on the personal level, universal insights are true for all. So something like impermanence is true for everyone. It's true for all things. All things are impermanent. And this whole area of universal insights again needs a lot of attention. We really need to explore: what is it about life that's universally true? So impermanence is a very good example. Another one might be just something like: it's a really good idea to practise meditation. You know, that's an insight. It's an insight. It's clear. That's something one knows and it leads to a decrease in suffering. Similarly, it's really good -- like we just chanted the precepts, it's a really good idea. It leads to less suffering to keep the precepts. These are insights, universal insights. They're true for everyone, always true.

Really good, really helpful, really brings less suffering to practise generosity. The power of generosity to open the heart, to open the consciousness, to start dissolving the boundaries we create between self and other. These are all insights. Kindness. Again, the power of kindness, the importance of kindness. Massively important universal insight. Kindness leads to less suffering. Kindness leads to happiness. So there's a lot in here in terms of universal insights about what it is that leads to happiness and what it is that leads to suffering. I'm not talking about, "I like chocolate ice cream, and this other person likes vanilla." Very, very universal: kindness, generosity, etc., lead to happiness, lead to a decrease of suffering.

So insights like that -- and this is true for all insight, that sometimes we can have the assumption, maybe perhaps based on what we've read or heard, that an insight is a kind of one-off thing. It bursts into consciousness, I see it [claps], and then that's it. My life is changed from that, and I never forget that. It's very rarely the case. It does happen. But it's very rarely the case. Most of the time, insights are not one-off experiences. They actually need repeating. And in the repeating, they deepen. They deepen, and they move into the very fabric of the being, into the very cells of the being, so one knows in an unshakeable way, one knows unshakeably the power of generosity, the importance of generosity. It's not something that any kind of advertisement or someone saying this or some condition or other can shake, because it's been repeated over and over, that insight.

[15:47] So we talk about the personal and the universal as realms of insight. What they, in a way, have to do with is our capacity to be with and respond skilfully, to care for the relative world, the world of body, of mind, of feelings and emotions, of relationships, of our relationship to work. All of that, our relationship to all of that, is in the realm of personal insight and universal insight -- caring for, responding to, being aware of.

(3) Then we could also talk about ultimate insights, or insights into what is ultimate; something seen so deeply into the nature of things -- I'll go into all of these in more detail in the talk -- something seen so deeply it's beyond even concepts, and it liberates deeply, completely, profoundly. Something that we can't even -- it's beyond impermanence, it's beyond all of that. Something that the mind can't really get around completely. And that brings the deepest freedom.

It's an important question, I think, for all of us to ask or keep asking: in my life, is there equal attention and equal interest to -- what we could say -- the relative world and the ultimate? Again, it's interesting just meeting so many people and moving between different Saṅghas, because sometimes different groups of practitioners have different kind of leanings with this. But in my life, in my practice, am I leaning one way or another? Am I seeing my practice only in terms of responding to and finding an ease with and getting to know and working through the relative world of body, mind, feelings, relationships, work, etc.? Or am I so concerned with the ultimate truth of things that I actually don't pay enough attention to the relative world of relationships, taking care of the body, taking care of the heart? Just to know oneself. Where's the balance? The Middle Way says they're equally deserving of attention. Is that true for me? And if not, "Why not?" is a very good question. Why not?

Okay. As practitioners we sit and walk, and we try and be mindful in our daily life, and we practise. There are two modes. This is very important; I really want to stress this. There are two modes, two ways that insight deepens.

(1) The first is by far the most common. It's by far the most common that one comes across. It's that insight arises by itself. One is practising, one is being mindful, one's paying attention to experience, and we say we have an insight or I get an insight. I suddenly see something. I suddenly understand something. Because of the mindfulness, because of the stillness, etc., an insight arises. And not to underestimate at all the power of simply sort of being present for experience, being present for life, showing up, being open, simply being with experience in an ongoing way without putting any pressure on it -- simple mindfulness. Not to underestimate the power of that. And insights do arise. They do come up. More classically, the Buddha actually puts it that sīla, ethical care, and samādhi are the soil for insight arising. So that's one way and it's probably the most common way that we expect insight to deepen. There's a kind of arising of insight through just paying attention moment to moment in an ongoing way, trying to be mindful. There's the mindfulness, and out of that we hope, we expect, and it happens that insight arises.

(2) But there's another kind of leaning, another approach, another mode that I really want to kind of draw out because I think it's really important. That's, we could say, using insight or consolidating insights. I'll explain what I mean. Sometimes we are mindful, and an insight comes up. Or we're on a retreat or whatever, and an insight comes up. It might be into impermanence. It might be into the necessity of loving-kindness. It might be anything like that. And then a little time goes by, and we lose touch with that insight, its sense of potency, its sense of aliveness. We kind of forget it a little bit. It seems so powerful, so present, so "wow" in the moment, perhaps. Sometimes it's just a matter of minutes goes by, and sometimes it's more like months or even years. Something needs to happen. A few things are possible. One is we need to, in our life, act on the basis of that insight, even when it feels like we've lost touch with it, like it's faded.

So if we've seen, for example, the emptiness of the self, if we've seen the necessity of loving-kindness, the power of generosity, the necessity of generosity, if we've seen that, there will come a time when that sense fades. In other words, the sense of the insight just recedes, it dies down, and just everyday mind comes back. Very normal. To be expected. But we have a capacity, once it's faded, to act as if that insight were still alive for us and make choices in our life based on that. So a lot of times, it's almost like we're in a situation in life where we're sort of on a fence, and we can flop down one way or flop down another way. It's almost like acting as if that insight were alive. What would it be to just flop down, to choose in line with that insight -- in line with the knowing of the importance of generosity, in line with the knowing of the emptiness of self, whatever it is?

What that does is it strengthens the insight and makes it accessible again. So in a kind of -- I don't know what you call it -- backward feedback thing, it strengthens and re-enlivens that insight, keeps it alive and gives it more strength. I think it was Ayya Khema who said insights are like muscles, and if you don't use them, they atrophy.^[1] We need to use insight. The insight arising in meditation is just the beginning of something. It's really just the beginning. If there's one thing I want to emphasize tonight, it's that. That's just the beginning, and it's like opening a door. Then we have to step through the door and actually walk along a certain path.

[23:59] So there's choosing as if the insight was alive, choosing from the perspective of that insight. But there's something that applies even more to our formal practice here, and that is what I call 'developing modes of seeing.' I'll explain what I mean. Let's take impermanence. Oftentimes a person is, again, just being mindful, very conscientiously, and what begins to stand out is the fact of impermanence. Everything -- it's just this parade of arising, passing, everything, everything, everything. Rather than just accept that as an insight, like "Ah, I'm seeing impermanence. Tick! Done!", actually beginning then to take that as a starting point and develop a mode of seeing that tunes in to impermanence deliberately. Or, again, it could be the emptiness of self. So we have a sense, "Wow, everything is just happening. It doesn't really belong to me." And again, taking that, what was an arrival point, taking it as a new departure point. What is it to start looking at things and seeing them as not-self, seeing them as 'just happening'? And then developing that as a mode of seeing, a kind of lens which one sustains. In the same way that one sustains mindfulness, one sustains a mode of seeing. Could be a lot of things.

So there's insight as a result: I'm just being mindful, just practising, and here it comes as a result: "Aha!" And it feels good. Or there's insight as a kind of process of using, a process of using insight and developing it and deepening a certain way of looking. Now, both of these are important. Both are important. Oftentimes, I do see people resistant, for different reasons, to the second way, to a more deliberate developing of modes of seeing. It's curious. I often wonder why. Sometimes people think, "I'm just not together enough to do this. It sounds too advanced," or "I have too much stuff going on," or "I just want to be. I just want to be simple. It feels like too much doing." To investigate these resistances, because they actually don't hold water too much. We actually don't need to do just one or just another; both are available to us. And it's not that we always work in one mode or another. There's a kind of passive receiving of insight, and a deliberate developing of a mode of seeing that's consolidating and deepening certain insights. You consolidate the insight of impermanence. You consolidate the insight of anattā. You learn to look at things as not-self. So it becomes almost a little bit like a switch. The mind gets so used to it, you can just switch the mind into a mode of seeing things as not-self. So right now, it's just, "Okay, just start seeing the body sensations as not-self. Start seeing the voice and the thoughts as not-self." It just becomes that familiar. The mind can just move between these modes of seeing.

If we confine ourselves to just being mindful, I think it's very probable that it won't be enough. It's very probable that it won't be enough just to be simply mindful. We see, and people report, "I saw this, and I saw the aversion come up. I was practising, and then I saw the desire come up," or "I had this lovely experience, and I saw that I wanted it to stay," or "I saw that I wanted it back," or whatever it is. There's a knowing; there's the mindfulness of, etc. Sometimes it's enough just to see it. In that moment, it can dissolve it -- sometimes. But as a complete strategy for the sort of dissolving, a deep dissolving of what we call the kilesas, the force of aversion and greed in our life, I don't think the mindfulness will be enough. It's not going to exhaust it just by looking at it. If I just sit and I'm just mindful and I just see over and over again, "There's aversion. There's wanting. There's aversion," I'm not sure that that, at the deepest level, will cut through and dissolve. Now, other people will say differently. But I'm here, and I'm talking, so. [laughs] You get my opinion. But I don't know that it has that deep power at a really deep level. What we want, I feel, is to learn to look so that that aversion decreases, so that that greed decreases, that we have ways of looking that dissolve it right then and there -- actually we have a whole perhaps array or toolbox of ways of looking that dissolve it right there. It's a learning; it's a developing of a skill. Developing skills of ways of looking that decrease aversion and greed and delusion and suffering.

Why? Because as unenlightened beings, our perception of things, all things, our perception of things is actually fundamentally flawed. There's something very basically mistaken about the way we apprehend things, inner and outer things. It's what the Buddha calls delusion. There's a fundamental mistaking in the way we perceive things. And unless we actually address deliberately that fundamental mistaking, there's going to be no end to the kilesas because the kilesas of greed, aversion, wanting, getting rid of, etc., they come out of this fundamental mistaking. Somehow we've got to look at that fundamental mistaking and kind of jig it around until we learn different ways of looking, different ways of seeing.

Sometimes I like to kind of define 'insight meditation' -- and again, it's just my definition -- as learning ways of looking that lead to freedom. So insight meditation is actually something huge. To me, it's not just a narrow technique at all. To me that kind of sums up what we're doing. We're learning ways of looking that lead to freedom. It's a small thing to say, but it's a big thing to say.

So the Buddha, at the sort of fundamental, his core teaching, as many of you I'm sure know, was the Four Noble Truths. He says there is suffering, there is cause for suffering, and there's the possibility of the ending of suffering, and then there's what leads to the ending of suffering. We could put that kind of in a shorthand version. So here I am, sitting, walking, standing, shopping, whatever it is, going about my life, and I notice suffering. As practitioners, we want to be sensitive to the arising of suffering and notice suffering. Okay, there's suffering; it's the First Noble Truth. What is contributing to this suffering? This is repeating what I said the other morning -- was it yesterday morning? Until we're completely and utterly enlightened, until we're Buddhas, there's always something that the mind and the heart is doing that's adding unnecessary dukkha. That's always going on. There's no judgment here. It's just a quality of being an unenlightened consciousness.

There's always something that's adding unnecessary dukkha. So that's where the Second Noble Truth is. What's the cause of it? How am I, how is the mind or the heart, contributing to this dukkha? How is it sustaining it? So a moment of suffering becomes alive with an investigation, and there is always something -- in fact, there's usually more than just one something; there are usually a number of things -- that the mind is doing. It's a bit like -- I don't know what you call it here -- or it's a bit like a house of cards. Suffering is like a house of cards. It's built, it's held in place, by lots of things that the mind unwittingly is actually erecting. We learn to see what they are, and we learn to actually take -- did you play this game when you were kids? Yeah? No? You build cards and if one pulls the right cards out, the suffering decreases. That's what we're learning to do as insight meditators.

So this question, how is the mind, how is the heart, how is the perception contributing to and sustaining this dukkha? Again, there can be a huge range of subtlety or grossness. It could be that something is going on that's difficult, and we're aware of it but we've just gone into a kind of ongoing grumbling about it. I live and teach mostly in England. Some of you might know it's quite an English characteristic to just grumble. Grumble, grumble, grumble. [laughs] And quite quietly, so not too many people hear you. But to grumble. And actually it accomplishes nothing except making oneself more miserable, just keeping the suffering in place. So I'm aware of it, and one thinks, "Oh, I'm being aware of it, and I'm reporting it," or "I'm discussing it with friends." But actually it's just an ongoing grumbling. That's a gross level.

Again, going back to what I said earlier about the story, is there something about the way that I'm bringing in my story that's keeping the suffering in place, that's holding this whole thing in place? Is there something in the way that I'm seeing this, that I'm viewing this situation, this pain in the body, this heartache, this sadness, this irritation, this other person, something in the way that I'm seeing it, something in the way that I'm viewing it, something in the way that I'm reacting to it, that's keeping the suffering in place? The answer is always yes. It's always yes. And the question is: what is it, or what are they? Can I develop in this moment the capacity to actually take out that card and see, "This one I can play with. This one I can shift the view. This little thing I can let go of."

[35:36] So sometimes, it's amazing: sometimes we know what the problem is, and we don't do anything about it. We know, we're kind of half aware of how we're keeping the suffering in place, and somehow we're -- I don't know what it is, addicted to it? Enjoying it? This principle of a kind of -- I used this word the other day -- 'scaffolding' that keeps suffering in place, keeps discontent in place, again it's very gross, it gets very gross, and extremely subtle, extremely subtle. And again, the whole spectrum for investigation, for awakening to. So at the most subtle end, the most minute, subtle movement of intention can be enough to create suffering, to create an experience of suffering. Or the most subtle kind of deluded looking, just the sense of "there's a real object for a real subject." It's a very, very subtle level of delusion.

Okay. So developing ways of looking that bring freedom. Classically, in Theravāda, we talk about the three characteristics. Just to go briefly into them.

(1) The first one is impermanence. So again, these are ways of looking that we can develop. The first one is impermanence, change, instability. Anicca is the Pali word. Now, at one level, this is extremely obvious. You stop any human being above the age of four and say, "Are things impermanent?" and they're going to say yes. It's very clear to us that things are impermanent. What we want is to move that into being an insight that's helpful to us, so again, this mode of seeing, this way of looking, that we're actually deepening a channel that's freeing. Can I, in my sitting and walking, decide deliberately at times I'm just interested in impermanence right now? The agenda isn't just mindfulness right now. Surely there's mindfulness there. But I'm just interested in impermanence. That's what I'm tuning into. I'm only interested in impermanence. It's one possibility.

If we talk about impermanence, there's actually a number of sort of levels on which we can see it.

(a) So one level is a big level: death, being aware, living with an awareness of death. Even right now in this moment, there are words, there are sounds, there's this moment, and somehow the awareness of death can encompass this moment, can inform this moment of awareness. It takes a deliberate reflection in one's life, deliberately remembering death, deliberately drawing close to the fact of our death. It might sound scary. It might sound depressing. But one finds that it's actually very liberating, if one finds the right way of working with it.

(b) A sort of more medium level might be everyday impermanence, meaning that we wake up in one mood, and to track that mood, that mind state, through the day. By lunchtime, am I in the same mood? Is that the same thing going on? We get very locked into believing things are going to last. So just track it on a very natural, easeful, everyday level. What's changing every day? The body sensations, the sights, the sounds, the environment, the inner landscape.

(c) More often in Insight Meditation circles, these particular Insight Meditation circles, we talk about tuning into a more fine level of impermanence, moment to moment seeing the change, paying attention to the body sensations and seeing, "Oh, look at that, it's changing," just moment to moment; the feeling-tone of things, the emotional life, the thought life, sounds, changing, changing, changing, moment to moment. That level, very, very useful, very powerful. But they're all actually available.

It's interesting, not so much in the suttas, the original discourses of the Buddha, but more in the commentaries, you get the sense oftentimes they report that contemplating impermanence, or insight in general, should make you feel very agitated and ill at ease and afraid, sort of a tremendous amount of angst and trembling with it. It can be that that happens sometimes. But actually I feel that the contemplation of impermanence, all insight, again it should be what frees. This should actually bring a kind of calming. It should bring a freeing. The taste of insight is release or relief. When insight is humming along, either an insight has come up or you're in that mode of looking, that's the taste of it. It's relief, release, much more so than it's fear or agitation or kind of existential angst, much more so.

So with these three levels of impermanence, to ask oneself: if I am contemplating impermanence, is the way that I'm contemplating it helpful? Sometimes we assume that the more micro-level is the helpful one, but it may not be. It may not be. The way that I'm contemplating death, is that helpful or not? So again, to learn to play and to shape the practice, to encourage the practice to be helpful. We can feel when it's helpful. We actually feel it.

(2) The second characteristic -- the first one's impermanence -- the second of the three characteristics is what we call dukkha. There are a couple of ways you can go about this.

(a) One translation of it is that phenomena, experience, are unsatisfactory. In a way they're unsatisfactory because they're impermanent. So coming from this seeing of their impermanence, everything is just fleeting, just arising, passing. It cannot give me lasting satisfaction. So again, that could be an insight as a result, or it could be I put these goggles on, put these lenses on, and that's how I'm looking at experience. It just comes up and I see it as unsatisfactory. Ajahn Chah says, "file" it as unsatisfactory.^[2] Just look at it -- you want to have this mode of seeing it's 'unsatisfactory, unsatisfactory,' because it's impermanent. So that's one way of doing dukkha. Again, I'm moving through a lot of territory very quickly, and hopefully there will be something that you can snatch on here.

(b) Another way -- and this came up in the question and answers yesterday morning -- is to tune into the presence of grasping. By 'grasping,' I mean either a pulling towards oneself of what one wants, or a pushing away of what one doesn't want. One feels that. When there's mindfulness, and particularly mindfulness of the body -- the mindfulness of the body is open and sensitive -- the body actually reflects the presence of grasping. It will tell me by some kind of cramping or tension when there's a pushing away or a pulling. Then can I learn to notice it and to relax it, to let it go? I practise letting go of pushing away and letting go of pulling. That becomes the mode of working, the lens. It's just continually feeling into this presence of pushing (aversion), pulling (craving), and letting it go, letting it go, letting it go.

What happens when I do that? What happens when I do any of these that I've talked about so far? Well, what happens is there's less suffering. There's a decrease in suffering, which is the whole point of why we would do it in the first place. There's a decrease in suffering. One begins to learn to use these modes of seeing and to actually consolidate the insight through the practice, through the repetition. And through the decrease of suffering, one sees: suffering arises because there's pushing or pulling. Just continually feeling the pushing and pulling and relaxing it, feeling it and relaxing it, letting it deepen that way, feeling the decrease in suffering. That's what -- yeah, I'll say it: that's what should happen. That's what should happen.

(3) The third one, the third kind of mode of seeing to practise -- I touched on it briefly already -- is anattā: seeing things, all things as 'not me, not mine.' Normally, whether we're aware of it or not, our consciousness is always appropriating things: "This sensation is mine. It's happening to me." Or we identify: "I am this depression. I am this mind state. I am this mind. I am this consciousness." Learning to practise a mode of seeing that actually deliberately regards things as 'not me, not mine,' and develops that. People are different in terms of their favourites; for some people this is the more difficult one, practising this disidentification. Some things are easier than others. It's usually easier to disidentify with the body than it is with, say, consciousness. But eventually one can learn to let go of the identification with consciousness. It's not me that's being aware; there is awareness. One develops that mode of seeing, that lens, everything, everything, everything, and sustains it, as I said, in the same way that we sustain mindfulness.

[46:39] So what happens is these modes of seeing, these three characteristics, become avenues. They're not just arrival points. It's not just an arrival point to see, "Ah, this thought is not-self. I am not the thinking mind." It's not just an arrival point. It's actually a beginning. It's an avenue. So where does this avenue lead? If we sustain it, if we follow it, where does it lead? As I said already, one thing -- and it's major, major, major; we really need to be clear about this -- is it leads to less suffering. When I look in a way that's not identified, there is dramatically less suffering. When I learn to relax the tussle with experience, pushing away, pulling, there is less suffering. Really, really important. But actually there's more than that. It goes even deeper, this avenue. Even deeper.

Something starts happening to the actual experience itself, to the nature of experience. Not just the presence or absence of suffering or the degree of suffering, but actually to the experience itself. I'm getting kind of into deeper waters here, but it's important to touch on. Experience starts to fade. It starts to dissolve. When we look at experience in these ways in a more sustained way, phenomena themselves begin to dissolve. And it's not just because they're impermanent, it's because of the way we're looking at them. When we practise mindfulness with simple attention, just coming back to the present, there is, in time, a lessening of the sort of papañca mind, of the complicating, proliferating mind bringing in all the story and the views and the opinions and this and that. With that, what happens is it's almost like that was a veil, a film over experience, a layer of grime over experience. What begins to happen -- people very commonly report this as they deepen in their mindfulness meditation -- as we let that go and we come more into a sort of unlayered experience, experience begins to brighten. Our sense of colours, of smells, of tastes, it begins to enliven and brighten. It's almost like everything becomes more radiant. The sense of this moment, the sense of the now, sometimes in practice begins to kind of sparkle. There's a real intimacy there.

It can seem -- this is very, very common -- it seems like, "I see what's happened. I was covering experience up with all this stuff. I've sort of scrubbed that clean, got rid of it, and now I'm in contact with the reality of things." We even have this word in the tradition -- I don't think it's a word that the Buddha used: 'bare attention.' It's like, "Okay, now I'm in contact with the actual thing, the actual reality of things." So that would be a very common conclusion. But lovely as that is, the vividness of that, the beauty of it, the brightness of it, the radiance of it, lovely as that is and beautiful as it is, healing as it is, we want that and we also don't want to stop there. I'm talking about going into deep practice now. We want to keep letting go, keep practising these modes of seeing, these avenues of deepening. Because what happens is almost like the opposite movement: an experience of phenomena begin to fade. They begin to kind of lose their edges. They begin to dissolve. They begin to blur. And again, it's a spectrum, it's not an on/off switch. But eventually they move into completely disappearing.

There's a quote from the Buddha. To paraphrase, "A good practitioner is one who tears down form, tears down feelings, tears down perceptions, tears down mental formations, thoughts and mind states and intentions, and tears down consciousness, dissolves it, scatters it."^[3] I don't know how that resonates, you know? Eventually, when it's completely torn down, we know what is not built by this house of cards, what is not fabricated, what is not, in the Buddha's words, compounded or concocted. We can know the Unfabricated, the Unborn.^[4] This is where we talk about ultimate insight now. The Buddha says everything's faded there, and "where all phenomena cease, there all ways of speaking cease."^[5] So something beyond everything that we're used to in terms of subjects, and objects, and things, and feelings, and emotions, and thoughts, and sounds, and all that. Torn down. So the Buddha's using very strong language here -- "to tear down."

Again, I'm aware just from experience talking with people about this, as I speak right now in this room people are going to have different reactions to that. For some of you it will be very new to hear this kind of thing, perhaps. For some, there's a real heart pull; can't perhaps even explain it, but you hear that language of tearing down, of going beyond, of the Unfabricated, and something is moving. And for others, it's horrifying. It seems anti-life somehow. Again, just to be aware of it. But the Buddha is using this language.

Another quote from the Buddha. He said a practitioner should be focused on the arising and passing away with regard to the aggregates. That's form, body, feelings, thoughts and perceptions, the whole show. Focused on arising and passing away. But it doesn't stop there, because that sounds like "just notice its impermanence." What he says is he or she should know: "Such is form, such is feeling, such is perception," etc., to consciousness, "such is its origination, and such its fading."^[6] The "such" doesn't mean just that it arises and that it passes. It means how it arises and how it passes. He says understanding that is what brings full liberation. So not just that things come and go, but how they come and go, why they come and go. I'm really hoping this isn't sounding too abstract.

[54:07] What we see, if I restate what I said before, what we see is the more that I tussle with experience, the more push-pull there is, the more identification with it there is, not only the more suffering but the more solid and substantial the experience itself, and the more prominent in consciousness; and the less, then the experience itself gets less, it dies down, it fades. What does that mean? It means that the thing, the object, the phenomenon, experience, life, whatever you want to call it, is not at all independent of the way that I'm looking at it, the way that I'm reacting to it, and the view that I have of it. Without my pushing and pulling, without my identification, nothing actually arises. This is completely counterintuitive and radical, completely. We could say -- given that I see this fading from one extreme, like things are really solid, really prominent, and then less and less depending on how much I tussle or depending on how much I identify, less and less, and they dissolve, and they dissolve -- how much push and pull reveals the real object, the real phenomena, the real way things are? Is it a lot? Or a kind of medium amount? A little? Can I kind of put the dial on zero, or five, or whatever? Is there a real way things are? Can we even say things are real or not, if they depend on how I'm looking at them, they depend on the mind that's looking at them? They're completely dependent on the mind that's looking at them. The Buddha says they're not real, they're not not real; they're dependently arising.^[7]

So eventually -- and again, please, I'm covering a lot of territory in one talk, painting a map, and I'm really talking about the deep end now -- learning to use this letting go of the push and pull, learning to use that mode, learning to use this mode of seeing things as not-self, and eventually the insight that things are empty, that they don't exist inherently, independent of how the mind is fabricating them, that insight deepens. Again, we see that over and over, because as we let go of the push and pull, as we let go of the identification, we see things fading. Eventually that insight has been consolidated, and eventually one can just look at experience and say, "Empty, empty. I know you're empty." That becomes a new mode of seeing. So the whole thing is kind of an avenue that's deepened just from following one thing.

What it turns out as, finally what it turns out as, is that everything, everything, including such things that we take for granted as the mind or awareness or consciousness or space or time, all of that actually is built in this way. Funnily enough, the mind, the awareness, too, gets built in this fabricating process. It's a mutual building. It's like two cards leaning on each other. It's all fabricated. It's all built. Not understanding that about all things is what the Buddha calls delusion.

There's an interaction, a dialogue, that the Buddha had with a guy named Kaccāyana, a seeker called Kaccāyana. He said to Kaccāyana ordinary beings, unenlightened beings, think dualistically. They regard both the self and phenomena as "it is" or "it is not," "it exists" or "it does not exist." They regard things and situations as either really real or really not real, gone out of existence. And because of that, they cling. Because of that, we cling. We get into this war with our lives, with experience. And because of that, there's dukkha, and there's saṃsāra. He continues, "For those with insight into how phenomena arise and sustain and pass away" -- in other words, this dependent arising that I've talked about -- "there is no is and there is no isn't." Something in the middle. He says, "That things exist is one extreme. That they do not exist is another." There's something very subtle he's pointing to. "But I accept neither is nor is not, and I declare the truth from the middle position."^[8]

I'm aware when I talk about this fading and this kind of going beyond, etc., that for some people it's going to sound nihilistic. It's going to sound like, "Does that mean nothing exists? Does that mean nothing's really real and nothing's real at all?", etc. Or it can sound bleak. But the Buddha's not saying that, and it's anything but bleak. Understanding this Middle Way, this dependent arising, this emptiness, brings an indescribable level of freedom, and love as well -- with it, love. The thing about it is it's really possible for us. It's possible to have a taste of that, to see that opening and see the understanding opening. And with the understanding opening, the whole relationship with life and death opening, transforming, changing. That really is something that's possible for us.

So it's less about chasing a certain experience than it is about developing this understanding and consolidating this understanding of emptiness and dependent arising over and over, ultimately. Sometimes people understandably get into the camp of chasing an experience: "I want an experience of the Deathless, I want da-da-da," or whatever it is. The other extreme is to get into this, "It's not about experience at all. Just be. Just be mindful. Just watch the show" -- as if that was all we're supposed to do and the final arriving point. It's actually neither, I feel. It's the understanding that we want to cultivate, this understanding. And it's that that frees.

Like I said at the beginning, just aware of covering a lot of territory in that, and kind of painting both a wide and a deep picture. Just to be aware of what the mind does with that. Take what feels useful, and perhaps the rest plants seeds, and that's absolutely fine, absolutely fine. There may be something in there that gives you something to think about, something to reflect on.

Let's just have a minute of silence together.