Transcription
As a human being, any experience, any moment of experience, we could say, is felt, is experienced, as pleasant or unpleasant or somewhere in between (neither pleasant nor unpleasant, sometimes what people call 'neutral'). Any moment of experience, any moment of conscious experience. We might hear that and say, "Okay. So what?" But there's actually a lot wrapped up at just that simple level of our experience and what we do with that.
Typical reactions to those three: when something is pleasant, we grasp, we cling, we contract around it, we want more. When something is unpleasant, we reject, we're aversive, we try and push it away, we don't like, we try to get rid of. Either one is a struggle. It's a struggle, it's a tussle with experience. When something is kind of in between, it tends to -- not always, but sometimes -- not have enough in it to be of interest to the self, so we kind of space out or get bored or disinterested. These are what we could call typical unconscious reactions that go on all the time, all day long, very moment-to-moment.
It's important to see that this reactivity -- trying to hang on, trying to pull towards me, trying to push away, etc.; that's what I'm calling reactivity at a very basic level, very fundamental level -- with that reactivity comes suffering. That reactivity itself is a state of suffering. So it might be very, very subtle suffering. It could be quite gross. The reactivity is so strong that it's quite gross. But that's important to get clear, that actually that is where most of the suffering is. It's in the reactivity. We need to be absolutely crystal clear about that by seeing it over and over and over.
In the practice with the space of awareness, the expansive space of awareness -- I think I touched on this last night -- partly what we're doing in that is we're using different approaches and different kind of suggestions and ways of looking to actually quieten the reactivity, quieten this pushing away and pulling. I actually haven't said it so much that way, but that's been in there. Quietening the reactivity. What happens when the reactivity quietens? Well, the suffering quietens. Reactivity down, suffering down. Reactivity up, suffering up. Really important to see this.
There are other effects too. Reactivity goes down, also -- as a 'side effect' (not really, but) -- the sense of the space gets stronger in a way, more palpable. The space becomes more prominent, more sort of sensible than otherwise. So reactivity less, suffering less, space more. As I've been saying in the talks, everything works both ways: space more, reactivity less, suffering less.
So what do we take from that? The thing in itself, the experience in itself, is not a problem in itself. That's not where the suffering is. The suffering is in the reactivity. So in Dharma language we say it's empty of being inherently a problem -- this pain, this whatever it is, unpleasant sound, whatever it is. It's empty of inherently being a problem. We don't just need to see that once; we need to see it many, many times.
But also in this space of awareness practice, we see other things too. We see -- and I touched on this last night -- reactivity less, what else? Self less. Reactivity quietens, self quietens. And not only that, reactivity quietens, solidity gets less. Some of you have been reporting this. If you haven't noticed it, you might think, "Oh, yeah, that's true," or perhaps to gently -- without putting any pressure on -- look for that. Reactivity less, a whole bunch of other stuff less. Self less, solidity less (perceived solidity).
So all that -- I'm moving through this quite quickly, but all that says, implies, a lot about suffering and where suffering comes from, which was the Buddha's fundamental question. It implies a lot about suffering, but it also implies a lot about so-called 'reality' of self and solidity, etc. We're looking into the dependent arising of all this. It's dependent on reactivity, etc., and different views. I'll go into this tonight and expand it in more depth.
In the breath meditation, we've got a different orientation to this pleasant, unpleasant, etc. We're actually interested, very deliberately interested, in developing the pleasant as a resource. Developing pleasant feeling in the body as a resource. Now, that also -- later on, as one really develops this breath meditation and the pleasantness -- that also becomes part of understanding this dependent arising business, eventually. But first things first. So this comfort or ease, whatever degree, however unremarkable it might be, some comfort, some ease, somewhere in the body, we're tending to that. We're nurturing it and nourishing it just as best as we can, finding ways to do that.
Now, it's not always there. And it's certainly not always remarkable. Sometimes it's a very modest feeling. But in the breath practice the emphasis is really on that and taking care of it and finding ways to nourish it. That can be through the breath or it can be actually whatever, whatever ways one finds to tend to that feeling. There can actually be quite a range. That's where the play comes in. It turns out there are actually lots of ways of doing it. You might find your own little tricks. If we had a much longer retreat, I would be suggesting all kinds of things.
But not to get too tight around this. It can't be there all the time. I, for one, have sat through, in the beginning years of my practice, years and years of pain and quite excruciating, endlessly, sitting after sitting, difficulty. Eventually we can all find ways of working to move the bodily experience towards more pleasure, more comfort, more ease, and develop that.
Now, if some of that's been around over the days, a little bit of comfort, a little bit of ease, a bit more, a bit less, different parts of the body, etc., you may also notice -- you may have noticed it already on the retreat, or you may notice this if you pursue this kind of practice in time -- that it will have (how could we put it?) different colours or flavours at different times, this comfortable feeling, this easeful feeling. And they're kind of available to us.
So sometimes it can feel just like a calmness in the body. Sometimes it can feel like there's a refreshing quality -- someone was saying about "the delicious breath." It can feel like there's a tenderness that's pervading the body or in some part of the body. Could feel like joy is kind of welling up. It can feel bubbly, the pleasure in the body feels kind of bubbly. Can feel like waves of pleasure. Could feel even ecstatic. Could feel just quietly peaceful, pervading the body or in some part of the body. Could feel like a stillness, again in some part or the whole body. All of that and more. You may have noticed, if any of that is happening, even just a little bit, that there may be, there can be, a kind of gravitation towards one or other of those flavours or colours. We might find ourselves, "I keep going back to a kind of calmness, or I keep going back to" whatever.
I want to throw in something at this point in the retreat, which is to do with this: not to neglect, even now, the long breath. How to put this? We're interested in deepening calm, but we're also interested in invigorating the whole energy level of the body. Those two deepen together -- calm and energy together. We don't want that to be out of balance. So if I'm too calm and not enough energy, it becomes a bit sluggish. If I'm too energized and not calm enough, it becomes agitated. So just on the whole, we want to balance this. It can be sometimes that people neglect the long breath and the way that can energize things. So just to not forget to play also with the long breath still at this point.
[9:43] If this was a longer retreat, if this was, say, two weeks or a month -- I just want to put something out because it might be interesting -- actually we would really emphasize a particular colour of the comfortable feeling, and kind of developing that. That is what the Buddha calls pīti in Pali, the original language of the discourses. What is pīti? Well, basically you could say it's any pleasant feeling that arises from meditation. So in a way, it includes all of what I've just talked about, but it's a particular sort of range of colours which tend to be more of the energized feeling, a bit more bubbly, wavy, sort of tingly, lightness, etc. In the context of a longer retreat -- on this retreat, it's all fine; any comfortable feeling, great, just tend to it and enjoy it. In a longer retreat we would actually emphasize that side of things, that range of things first. So whatever experience you were having, even if you were having a lot of stillness, etc., there would be an encouragement to find a way to develop that.
What are the boundaries? Actually, there are no real boundaries between when I say 'a comfortable feeling and an easeful feeling' and 'pīti.' You can't kind of draw a line there and say, "That's pīti, and that's just a comfortable feeling." It's a spectrum. In a way, it doesn't matter. It's completely irrelevant. Sometimes people get into this thing, you hear a word like pīti or jhāna (which I'm not going to use on this retreat), and people say, "Have I got it? Is this it?" Well, it's not anything different than just the easeful, comfortable feeling that's there at times, that we're finding a way to work with.
So if it starts as a very modest, easeful, comfortable feeling, it evolves gradually, very gradually, without pressuring anything. Just tending to that, it will grow. It will grow. That's the direction we're moving in. Other people have a different experience, which is nothing seems to be happening much at all, maybe a little bit occasionally, and then boom, an explosion of quite extreme bliss or pīti or whatever. It doesn't matter either way. It doesn't matter. I'm not sure statistically -- maybe most people go the gradual way, I think.
Sometimes when the pīti is very strong, or even when it's not that strong, because it's unfamiliar, we're losing our familiar sense of the body, fear can come up. That's very normal. It's very normal. And in a way, we're just getting familiar with a different tone in the body. Instead of the body feeling uncomfortable or just kind of normal, we're developing something different and getting familiar with that. In the end, there's nothing to fear. There's nothing to fear with this at all. Nothing whatsoever with this kind of practice to fear. It's very healing, and a very natural and healthy way for the consciousness and the bodily experience to deepen.
So what to do with this comfortable feeling or pīti or whatever? To enjoy it. To, in a way, prioritize enjoying it. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we kind of hold back. So sometimes just to check, am I actually letting myself fully enjoy this? If it's relatively strong, actually opening to it, making sure that I'm opening to it inside. It's like I'm opening the channels inside, or I'm letting it wash over me, I'm receiving it. Really experimenting with that kind of way of relating to it. You could also just kind of feel like you're getting into it, you're really rubbing your nose into it or exploring it. Not putting pressure on the comfortable feeling -- just however it is, that's fine, that's great, being content with that.
But eventually, being interested -- is it possible that, say it's just in my belly, it just feels nice and warm and relaxed there, is it possible that that nice, warm, relaxed feeling can actually begin to spread, and eventually cover the whole body? So there is a direction that we're moving in, without putting pressure on. The intensity of the feeling is not important. Okay? So I don't know where this is landing. Again, whenever I talk, I feel it lands in very different places, and that's fine. But not to get hung up on the intensity. In other words, someone may have bliss completely pouring out of their body. Great. Someone else, or the same person at a different time -- more usually the same person at a different time -- it's just very unremarkable, just a very quiet, modest feeling of well-being. That's actually not so important. In the end, with these practices, this breath practice, what ends up being more important is two things: the steadiness of the feeling -- can I actually keep it around if it's comfortable, can I keep it around for minutes or longer? -- and eventually spreading it in the body. That's much more important than the intensity.
So how do I do that? It might be that I feel that the comfortable feeling is kind of mixing with the breath, the easeful feeling is mixing with the breath, and I'm deliberately doing that, kind of massaging it through the body with the breath energy. It might be at times that I feel it's actually best to leave the breath, the in- and out-breath, and just leave that, and just be with this easeful, pleasant, comfortable feeling, and just enjoying that. Other times, it's almost like the breath coming in and out, the breath energy, is kind of tending to it, supporting this feeling of comfort.
Sometimes a person asks, and they have already on this retreat, "Won't I get attached to this pleasure?" I hope you do. We often hear that in the teachings, that you'll get attached, don't play with that, it's a distraction, it won't lead to insight, blah-de-blah. It tends to be that we get attached to this kind of thing if there's not enough of it. If it's a one-off kind of explosion or something, you think, "What on earth was that?" You have no context, and you don't know how you got it, it just came out of nowhere. And then the next sort of 500 meditations are spent trying to get it back. But if there becomes slowly a sense of learning how to develop it and move in and out, and you see it comes and it goes, and sometimes you can get it and sometimes you can't, and you develop a little skill with it gradually, gradually, when there's sort of enough of it, it doesn't become a problem in terms of attachment.
The Buddha actually really encouraged this a lot, to develop that sense of meditative well-being in the body and then in the heart, in the mind. He encouraged it, as I was saying I think in one of the talks, as a resource, as a really deep resource for consciousness. And also, over time, it matures. It matures. I'm talking quite a lot of time. It matures into deeper and deeper resources.
And again, I think I mentioned this in the opening talk: having a sense of well-being, no matter how unremarkable, in the body, having access to that regularly, developing a kind of accessibility to that, helps us let go of the less helpful attachments in life of which we have many, many, many, many and they're not really helping us. Having a sort of reservoir, a stance from which I can let go of those, makes all the difference. As the Buddha said about this, about this comfortable feeling, about pleasure, he said this pleasure is not to be feared; this pleasure is to be developed, because this pleasure, this attachment, leads to nibbāna, unlike other attachments. One of my teachers said to me, "Get attached, Rob. Get attached."
But we have to have a mature relationship with this. Our relationship with it has to be mature. We have to bring, like I said in one of the talks, we have to bring wisdom into all practice. So what is it to have a mature relationship with a nice feeling in the body, with a degree of comfort, with a degree of the sense of possibility? Practice, like I said at some point, has waves. That's its nature. It's the nature of all things to have waves. Can we really expect those waves and be okay with them, totally okay? It's fine when it's not there. Lovely when it's there and fine when it's not there, and I expect it to go away, and I'm learning something in the movement. I'm not just getting elated and depressed; I'm learning something.
So not to make demands, and sit down, "I must have X. I must get back to the lovely meditation I had at eleven o'clock yesterday." That's a demand with a specific image. I'll tell you something, though. Eventually it is possible to sit down and just say, "Pīti," and there it comes, feeling of bliss. It is possible to actually sit down and just say, "Deep peacefulness," there it comes. Sit down, just say, "Joy," there it comes. That takes a lot of practice, but it's absolutely possible, absolutely possible.
But we're not, at this point, making specific demands at all. It's rather that we're having this movement of a direction. We're tending to -- however we feel, even if we feel uncomfortable, okay, can I somehow work with it that it just becomes a bit more comfortable? Or if it's comfortable, great, can I keep it and perhaps make it even a bit more or spread it? So it's a direction rather than a demand.
There's one more piece. I'll just throw it in. It might seem a little strange right now, I'm not sure. But this business about pleasant, unpleasant, etc. Eventually what happens with all these different practices, eventually one sees that the experience of pleasant and unpleasant is always, always what we call a dependent arising. That means that it's empty. It means this thing is not inherently, the body is not inherently pleasant or unpleasant. I can learn to see it that way, as not inherently this or that, and learn to play with it. Eventually it comes to the point where I can look at something unpleasant and decide to see it as pleasant. Look at something that feels unpleasant -- I'm talking about body pain, and I just see it as pleasant. You think it's like magic, and in a way it is. But actually it's to do with deep understanding of dependent arising. That may be for later, but I'll just say it now.
So a lot of information. I hope it's not too much. But there's something here for everyone, and I hope you can take what feels helpful.
