Truthfulness and Authenticity

The first thing I want to say is welcome to the coordinators who are, as you know, joining us for five days until Sunday. They'll be in and out. Some of them are here right now. Also just wanted to say how much I'm appreciating the quality of silence in the house. Very quickly this retreat seemed to just -- I don't know if you felt it, too -- settle very beautifully into a lot of stillness and quietness and a real sense of depth of practice and contemplation. It was very lovely.

So the theme I want to explore a little bit this morning is truthfulness and authenticity, and to look at some of the aspects of that. When we consider ourselves and our existence as human beings, we see that one of the kind of less noble, less pretty things that we witness, aspects that we witness, is our capacity to be inauthentic and untruthful at times, with others but also with ourselves. Correspondingly, one of the more beautiful, one of the more noble dimensions of our being, is our capacity to be truthful. Even when circumstances are difficult, when pressures are on that to not be so, we can be truthful, we can align with the truth, we can be rooted in the truth, with others and with ourselves.

I want to go into this a little bit. And please, please hear this as not a preaching. I'm talking to all of us, and I include myself. I'm talking to myself, as well, listening too. So in relationship to other people, the Buddha obviously spoke about speaking truth, being truthful in one's communication. But he didn't just call it at that, leave it at that. He said speaking what's true, but only what's true and helpful. There's already a modification. It's already a concern there. It's not just about blurting the truth out. Speaking what's true and helpful, non-harming, at the right time. So this gets quite a bit more rich and complicated. At the right time, and in a way that can be heard, or only if you feel that the other person can hear it and digest it and take it in and learn from it. So it's not just about blurting out the truth in an insensitive and inappropriate manner.

Let's turn it on the other side. I want to look a little bit at the ways we are, as human beings, or can be, untrue. The ways we can be untrue at times. Now, sometimes, obviously as human beings we encounter this -- there's deliberate lying. And why do we do that? Well, usually because there's some sense of gaining something from that. More often, though, in the kind of environments we move in, perhaps, it might be more that it's coming out of fear, that we're lying out of fear. We could say all fear is rooted in the self. That's true. Something the self wants to preserve or protect. Oftentimes, if one finds oneself lying, it's actually coming out of fear of rejection -- something around feeling loved, actually, the bottom line is. We lie because we want to save face or we're afraid what another person might think.

Oftentimes the untruth that might be there is more subtle. It's more subtle than a deliberate, outright lie. Sometimes we might find ourselves in relationship with someone, with a partner, with a friend, and something's going on that's difficult, and we're not telling the truth about it. We're withholding it. We're not communicating it. Now, if we go back to what the Buddha said, sometimes that's skilful, it's wise, it's totally appropriate, it's well-considered. But sometimes it's coming out of fear. When we don't express the truth out of fear, have you noticed how it saps the energy out of a relationship, how it saps the sense of connection, of contentment, of well-being that might flow in the relationship? It actually drains out of the dynamic when we're holding the truth about something out of fear.

This can be verbal. It can also be non-verbal. I was talking with someone recently, he's in quite a prominent position in a Saṅgha somewhere else. He was feeling -- this had been building up over actually some years -- was feeling that he had to fit in in a certain way. And so he modified his behaviour, he modified his speech, he modified his presentations, he modified what he wore, etc. It was coming from the perception that he needed to fit in, to be a certain way: "I need to be a certain way. I need to be like this for this group of people because they're like that and they want me to be this way." This was all in his mind. Slowly, over time, anger built up, anger, resentment. Obviously. And in that presenting himself a certain way, slowly began to feel more and more disconnected from himself, not being real. And with that, more anger. And with the disconnection, again, a draining of the ability even to see the situation clearly, because there wasn't the connection and the vitality and the presence of truth and self there.

I'm sure we've all seen this. In the different things I do, in the different circles I move in, I've been at some meetings, and even for myself, one feels a pressure to conform or fit in. How difficult it is to speak the truth. Sometimes that's operating and people are not even aware that that dynamic and that pressure is operating. I've been at some meetings where it's almost hard to believe what goes on there, almost hard to believe. A person says something in the group blatantly untrue. I've even heard a person say that and then laugh and then just brush it off and it moves on. What goes on? What goes on with us? When there's untruth like that, actually there are some cues of discomfort in the body. It takes quite a lot to sort of ignore them or suppress them. And yet, as human beings, we have this capacity, and we can do it quite a lot.

A lot of this fitting in has to do with feeling enough love inside. If I love myself enough, if there's enough of that, if there's enough buoyancy of that, the pressure to fit in with the group dynamic or whatever it is is much, much less. When that's not enough, I'm pulled this way, I'm pulled that way, I'll look this way, I'll look that way, "How do you want me to be?" So part of this is actually being interested in and conscious of the hidden influences and motivations in any situation, just being aware of them.

So there's untruth with others. What I'm actually much more interested in for this talk today -- and that's a whole area, truth speaking with others -- but much more today what I'm interested in is this in relationship to ourself. Truth and myself. Truth in relationship to myself, my practice, my life, my being. This is a quote from someone called David Livingstone Smith. It says, "The ever-present possibility of deceit is a crucial dimension of all human relationships, even the most central: our relationship with our own selves." He makes a very interesting point. "Lying is obliged by its very nature to cover its traces, for in order to lie effectively we must lie about lying."^[1] Right? Does that make sense? When we don't tell the truth to ourselves, we have to do that as well. We have to actually somehow conceal that we're not telling the truth to ourselves.

[9:30] Why is this important? Because it has consequences. There are beautiful consequences of speaking the truth, telling the truth to ourselves, standing in truth, and there are important consequences, unfortunate consequences, of not doing that. As I said at the beginning, this is something we are involved with as human beings. It's not at all to point the finger at anyone. We. A few months ago I was talking with a practitioner who, for the last few years, has been living in South Africa, and very much involved with the Dharma scene there. He was here on retreat for a few days, and we were talking about his practice. We got onto how it was going in South Africa. And he, like from other practitioners I've heard from in South Africa, was actually a little bit bemoaning, there seemed to be a real lack of depth in the Dharma culture in South Africa. It was predominantly white South Africans, and it seemed like everyone was sort of skitting on the surface of practice. He brought this up by himself, and then he went on to reflect, and he said, "You know, all the time I've been there, I've never heard one white South African say, 'I feel really ashamed of what went on here.'" That's just what he was reporting. He made a connection that that denial of truth had a direct impact on the possibility of deepening in practice in that Saṅgha, in that scene.

So there's deliberate lying: deliberately, consciously not telling the truth. But there's also, much more pervasive, much more subtle, not being interested in truth. That's more common, not being interested in truth. I found this passage the other day. When you're lying, it involves some kind of ill-will -- you're deliberately trying to deceive. You would assume that to be called a liar you have to actually understand an area or a situation or a truth, some degree of understanding of something to be called a liar and deliberately telling an untruth.

There's a philosopher called Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University. He discusses this issue at length in -- this is taken from another book: he "discusses this issue at length in his classic 1986 essay, 'On Bullshit.'" [laughter] "Under his model, 'bullshit' is a form of falsehood distinct from lying: the liar knows and cares about the truth but deliberately sets out to mislead; the truth speaker knows the truth and is trying to give it to us; the bullshitter, meanwhile, does not care about the truth and is simply trying to impress us."^[2]

"It is impossible" -- this is this Professor Frankfurt -- "for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.... When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off. He is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly; he just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."^[3]

That was in a book about something else. But have you ever felt like you've been on the receiving end of that? [laughter] It's actually fairly prevalent. What I'm interested in as well is where we've been on the receiving end of that. Because it finds its way into all kinds of circles, including spiritual circles. I, for one, know that I've been plenty of times on the receiving end of that in spiritual circles, plenty of times. Something is going on. It's not interested in the truth. Some whole other -- something else going on. It's not even that our lovely, beautiful tradition is exempt from that. I can't remember if Christina brought it up in the opening talk, but why is it -- just a small little sliver of an example -- why is it, in this tradition, that we have been so shy for so many years of the word 'renunciation'? Did Christina say this in the opening talk? I can't remember. And instead using the word 'letting go.' What's going on there? What was going on? Or, for some people, just ignoring that whole realm of renunciation. Maybe it's just as important as mindfulness. Or rejecting it outright -- "I don't do that." Oftentimes hearing experienced practitioners say, "I am renouncing a lot." One gets a sense ... is one actually grappling with this question of what this might mean to me as a lay practitioner? Or is it just convenient to put it aside? "I am renouncing a lot." Or "I've done that, 'cause I've been to India." Or "I did it years ago." Or "I had a trauma in my past, or I did renounce a lot years ago, and now I'm practising indulgence to balance it out." Or someone says, "What we have is the tantric approach," without a real understanding of what that means. What if I said "I've done mindfulness"? "I've done that. I've done mettā."

It's difficult stuff to kind of bring up and look at. There was recently, about two weeks ago, there was an article I saw on the internet, and it said in the United States today, end of 2009, considerably less people felt and perceived climate change as a serious problem and one that needs addressing. Considerably less than in 2007. To me, again, it's quite interesting. I have no idea why [people feel it as less serious], but small conjecture: does that have anything to do with the economy and the financial crisis, and an eclipsing of what becomes even true or worthy of paying attention to? I'm not going to say that, but it came up as a wondering.

What I do want to say, the next point I want to make, is that our perception of things -- and so our perception of what is and what isn't true -- is actually dependent on a lot of conditions, multiple conditions going on there. And as human beings nowadays we're subject to all kinds of media and advertising. That may have something to do with what's going on in that poll. But there are big implications for all this. Because when the perception changes, our choice changes, our choices in life, and our choices about very big things will change dependent on our perception. And that perception is dependent on all kinds of factors. This is something we need to be interested in.

Also, someone emailed me this. This is a true account:

A man standing in Washington, D.C. metro station on a cold January morning in 2007 opened a violin case he'd been carrying and began to play. He played six Bach pieces for about forty-five minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After three minutes, a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, then hurried to meet his schedule.

Four minutes later, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. Six minutes, a young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again. Ten minutes, a three-year-old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly as the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced them to move on.

Forty-five minutes, the musician played. Only six people stopped and stayed for a while. About twenty gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. One hour, he finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed, no one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best concert violinists in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100. [This is a real story.] Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and people's priorities.

The question is raised, in a commonplace environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? [And, as far as this talk, perhaps, do we recognize talent in an unexpected context? Or is it hyped by what goes around it? This is what they said:] One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be, if we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written with one of the most beautiful instruments, how many other things are we missing? [Right at the end, again pertinent for this talk:] We should base value on what is it worth, not what does it cost.^[4]

I was also reading recently about the placebo affect. Does everyone know what that is? Placebo? If English isn't your first language. It's when you give a false medicine to someone -- it's just a little bit of sugar; there's nothing in it -- and they get better. There's a lot of scientific investigation of this phenomenon. This is very interesting, I find. The cost of a medicine dramatically improves its efficaciousness as a medicine, regardless of even if it's just a placebo. A more expensive placebo will be better for you than a placebo that doesn't cost so much. Four placebo pills are better than two. [laughter] They also -- you get twice as much side effects. [laughter] An injection, being more dramatic as a kind of medical intervention -- again, just placebo, just saltwater -- much more dramatic in its effect than a pill.

[21:15] Some kind of medical invention involving elaborate ritual and big machines with lights and lasers and all the rest of it, again, a lot more effective packaging. Very much more effective. Fake knee operations! Keyhole surgery. The doctor goes in there and just sort of plays around a little bit. [laughter] Fake heart operations, unbelievable, for angina. Again, nothing actually done. Pacemakers put in but not switched on. [laughter] Very statistically significant, beneficial effects, not just in how people feel but in their actual symptoms. Okay. That's all interesting. What I want you to reflect on is how does this apply to other areas? Other areas, same principle. How does it spill out into other areas in our life?

In Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, some of you might have seen it, there's a piece in it where he talks about if you put a frog in boiling water, the frog immediately jumps out. It knows it's not good for it. If you put a frog in room temperature water and you slowly heat the water up -- I don't know why anyone would think of doing this, but -- the frog stays in there and eventually will die unless you take it out. It won't jump out. The point he was making was that something in our perception, about suddenness and dramaticness, makes us notice something. Something like climate change, because it's undramatic, because it's slow, over time, we don't notice it. We don't register it. It doesn't register as something needing our action or attention, compared with something like 9/11, two planes slam into the World Trade Center -- very dramatic, very sudden, everybody wakes up. Everybody moves lots of resources.

I remember, similarly, when I was living in America -- I can't remember where it was; this happened more than once in the world -- but there was a shooting in a school. A gunman walked into a school with very young children and started shooting. I think twenty-five or so children were killed, and a few adults. And again, front page news, horror, big thing. Every day in the world, as I'm sure you're aware, 4,000 children die -- every day -- just from not having clean water. Just from that. Every day. What would happen if a shooting like that, twenty kids every day, happened in different places in the world? It would be dominant news. Partly it's the media. Partly it's this thing about what's dramatic and what's not. And partly, again, one conjectures: is it that we don't so much identify with people on the other side of the world, different colour, etc.?

When we were talking about emotions the other day, there were a lot of pieces about truthfulness in regards to being honest with what one's feeling, etc. And there was also something we were talking about -- believing or assuming more difficult or negative emotions to be somehow more real, and how common that is, that I somehow believe my sadness or my depression or my anger to somehow be more real than another emotion. This whole concept, psychological concept of denial -- I don't know, it's probably from Freud, but kind of popularized perhaps in the fifties, sixties, seventies -- that usually leans towards denying something difficult, some difficult emotion or memory, etc. My experience working with practitioners is that they're just as likely, or we are just as likely, to deny our joy and to deny our peace and to deny our sense of spaciousness and freedom and happiness. Just as likely. But with practice, we can begin seeing through this, seeing this lopsidedness of what we take to be real. Really important part of practice. And also, as time goes by with practice and we get more and more interested in minds and the kind of magic show of the mind, beginning to see that actually our thoughts -- which we usually take to be true, and therefore believe in -- it's not necessary to believe them. I'm sure Yanai said that when he was talking about thoughts. We don't have to believe them, because they're often not even true. The freedom that comes from that, realizing I don't have to believe my thoughts.

We also talked -- just to remind -- about how much and how important it is to see how the mind state and the emotions colour our perception. Talking still about all the different ways our perception of what's true and real is conditioned. The mind state and the emotion will condition how I'm perceiving a situation I'm in. It will condition how I'm perceiving myself right now in that situation and in my life, how I'm seeing the world, and how I'm feeling and seeing my needs. All of that is dependent on the mind state, and changes with the mind state and the emotions. We need to see this and we need to admit it and we need to really investigate it, because sometimes our choices come out of that, and sometimes they're very important choices.

Going into all this even more, and we touched on this the other day, we begin to see how malleable perception is. We can see things every which way. Years ago, I did a retreat in the States when I was living there, with Ajaan Geoff, one of my teachers. We were learning a new way of working with the breath, involving the whole body, kind of feeling like the whole body is breathing, and the sense of energy and the movement of energy in the whole breath. It was new for me, and new for a lot of people who were doing it. I think he was really introducing it. And people were saying, "I feel the breath energy go up," and someone else said, "I feel it go down the back," and others were like, "I feel it in the legs," and someone was saying, "It goes clockwise this way," and another person said, "It goes anticlockwise this way." [laughs] And every time they would say, "Is that okay? Is that right?" And every time he would go, "Yes. Yes. Yes." And then he finally said, "You know, actually, you can see what you want to see." You can see what you want to see.

[28:17] A friend who's working a little bit in a different tradition where they work a lot with quasi-archetypal, inner psychological structures -- very helpful -- she also was beginning -- every time they go on retreat, they introduce another few of these structures, and then you find it inside. You're beginning to wonder, "Is it there, or am I kind of ...?" You can see what you want to see. If you do a lot of mettā practice, you can just, I can just see your beauty. I can just switch it on and see your beauty when I want to, even if I'm having a difficulty with you, doing a lot of mettā practice. If you do a lot of some kinds of practices, I have pain in the body and I can just decide to see it as pleasure (if you've really done a lot). It's painful. I can see it as pleasure. I choose to see it as pleasure and I experience it and feel it as pleasure. This obviously takes a lot of practice, but one can see what you want to see. Perception is malleable. And that's a Dharma fact that actually goes very, very deep and ends up being one of the most crucial of truths in the Dharma.

A few weeks ago, someone was looking at all this and looking at the way mind states change and thoughts change and all of that, and with that the perceptions change, just noticing all this, and coming and saying, "Well, it's all impermanent. It's all just changing. My mind state changes, my thoughts change, and the way I see this situation or whatever and the way I want to choose, that all changes." And then she said, "What can I trust, then? What's to trust? It's all just impermanent. Throw the whole lot out -- is that what?" No, no. Not wanting to go down that route. Some mind states are more riddled with aversion, with confusion, with grasping, with selfing, with papañca, with agitation. And those mind states are less trustworthy. They're clouding everything up, they're confusing everything. They're less trustworthy as indicators of truth. There's less clarity there. An obvious example is when one is completely plastered drunk. You don't want to make life choices out of that space. It's just not a mind state that's conducive to that.

But again, it's interesting. I can't remember if I said this the other day with emotions. As far as I can tell, most of us, there is a tendency for human beings to believe, say, the perceptions that come out of a mind state of mettā and joy, to believe that less than the kind of perceptions that come out of a difficult mind state of depression or irritation or whatever. We're somehow considering that to be less real. We need to be really interested in this, particularly in how certain mind states colour the truth in certain directions. So why is it, oftentimes as human beings, when our spouse or our dear friend tells us about some difficult dynamic they're in that we just automatically assume they're in the right? And we're on their side. Or someone was telling me recently they had an evening -- this was actually the other way around than might be usually the case -- it was an evening where they could have gone to a Dharma talk, a kind of Dharma gathering of friends in that evening, and actually they got pulled by family duties. Something was going on with their family and they had to attend to that. They were noticing their mind and what the mind did with it, and this kind of craving to be somewhere where they weren't, with what they missed and the kind of humdrum everyday reality. Usually it's the other way around -- a person is on retreat and wants to be somewhere else.

They were noticing that the craving actually painted the missed scenario, the lovely gathering of Dharma friends, in technicolor, bright, beautiful, soft hues of glowing warmth, etc. When you're thinking back on what the actual reality was, it was kind of this, you know, half-hearted sort of pencil sketch without much ... it felt threadbare compared to the juiciness of what was missed. Just interested in how the craving mind state actually colours either way, both the actuality and what wasn't the actuality. With all this, we say, "Yeah, perception is empty," but we're not going into a kind of nihilism and saying it's all impermanent and therefore it just doesn't matter. We're not doing that. And we're not saying it doesn't matter what choices we make. We're not going that far. It's a Middle Way: empty, and our karma, our choices, our actions and intentions matter greatly.

I'm particularly interested today, for this talk, in what all this has to do, how all this comes into our practice and our relationship with practice and how it affects our practice. That's huge. I only want to pick out a few pieces. It's difficult -- I think it's difficult -- for us as human beings, and perhaps especially today (I don't know if it's a cultural thing), to discover what we really, really want in life, what our deepest desire is. It's actually difficult to find that and connect with it and know for sure what it is. We're bombarded by so much, advertising, media, this, that; different kinds of fears in ourselves, and they're also fed culturally; the mind states shifting. All of this that I've talked about. It's difficult to discover what is authentically our truth. Truthfulness is one of the pāramitās, one of the qualities, the ten qualities the Buddha said that lead to awakening. Ajaan Geoff, one of my teachers, says, "Truthfulness" -- sacca is the Pali word for truthfulness -- "also means sticking truly to what you've made up your mind to do, not becoming a traitor to yourself." He says, "If you can't rely on yourself, who will you rely on? No one else can walk the path for you." If you can't rely on yourself, who will you rely on? No one else can walk the path for you. These are strong words.

And in all of this talk, you know, careful, careful, careful, and I have to be careful when I speak. It's like, how quickly the inner critic can come in and take all this as a kind of attack, and take it very negatively, and start going into a kind of inner bunker, or being assaulted by the inner critic about all this. Why am I talking about this? Why does the Buddha list it as one of the ten pāramitās? When we're aligned, as human beings and practitioners, and we feel ourselves aligned with what's a really authentically deep desire, with our authentic deep longing in this life, when that's the case, there's a kind of joy with that. There is, just in that fact, in that sense, there's a kind of joy. And despite or alongside all the challenges, all the frustrations, all the agitations, just knowing that I really deeply am in touch with what I want, and I'm aligned with it, and my life is aligned with it, and I'm moving towards it, there's a joy in that, and there's a kind of energization in that. We're energized. Our being is energized.

But what happens to us, what happens to us as human beings? Everything I'm talking about and the difficulties, it's all too human. What happens to us? How is it that the whole thing -- we can lose touch with it, or the path just becomes a little bit mechanical, lacking in heart, lacking in rootedness in that authenticity. What happens to us? There's a poem by Rumi ["On Gambling"]:

[37:12 -- 37:35, poem]^[5]

Pretty strong. Rumi has this lovely side that we often quote, but he's actually pretty tough too. We stop for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses, despite what we thought we'd set out for.

So this deep desire, if we can get in contact with it -- we might feel at times we're in contact with it. Oftentimes, though, it gets hijacked. It gets hijacked by other forces. Or it just slips unwittingly, unconsciously, into other directions. Oftentimes what it gets hijacked by, where it slips, is again not that dramatic: I just want to be a bit more comfortable, I want things to be a bit more convenient, I want security. Fears come in and budge our deep desire out of the centre of our heart, out of the centre of our being. Sometimes just something like fear of tiredness -- how often that might come in and just shunt the truth, the authentic truth, aside. It's actually not that big a deal, but somehow in that moment it's got more clout, more power. Our seeking of sense pleasure. Or the inner critic, the way that can come in and just barge everything out of the way. Being interested as practitioners in our intentions and the movement of our intentions, because they do move. Intentions are impermanent. I might feel completely rooted in my deep heart's longing one minute, half an hour goes by and the intentions have slipped into something else. Very normal, very human.

So again, in terms of dramaticness, in the Mahāyāna tradition, taking the bodhisattva vow, vowing to be reborn endlessly for the sake of liberating all sentient beings. It's beautiful. I might have a ceremony, and take that vow, and it's a very dramatic event in my life. But again, a little time goes by and one's forgotten about that. Probably more significant, more important, and actually more common in the literature and the teachings, is repeating that intention many times a day, aligning the being: "I want to serve others. I want my practice to be of benefit to others. I want to give as fully as I can," three, five, six times a day. Because the intentions move. And it takes that repetition, it takes the repeated alignment, repeated devotion.

[40:13] So this has to do with commitment, resolve, determination, and really being honest, our capacity to really be honest with what is driving us in our life, what is driving us in this moment or maybe sometimes in this life, what's driving us often, maybe what's driving us primarily in our life. Again, none of this is easy. I'm aware that it's difficult. There's a poem, I think it's W. H. Auden. Sometimes what's driving us is something quite extreme, and we feel like we've just gone off, just been taken with something that we had no intention of being taken with. Maybe for a short period, maybe sometimes for years. There's a poem by W. H. Auden. The scenario is a man on a horse galloping by on this runaway horse, and a bystander kind of turning towards him and saying, "Where are you going?" And the man turns back and says, "I don't know, ask the horse." [laughter] For Rumi it's a donkey. [laughter] Sometimes it's very dramatic. What is driving us? Sometimes it's very dramatic. Sometimes it's much, much more subtle, and that's where we need to be interested, in the subtle movements particularly. It's much more subtle.

A while ago I was talking -- very common scenario -- I was talking with someone, and she came in and she was saying, "I really like to practise." She'd been practising a long time. "But I find myself just not doing it." We're talking about daily practice. "I just don't do it, or I go through long periods, and then I come back and get into it again, and then I veer off and forget all about it." She was beginning to get interested in this. We talked about different ways of cultivating a sense of urgency and reflecting on death, etc., but it's also partly, can I really look at this dynamic and what might be going on there, open it up, without judging? Just really have a look, open it out, look what's operating. Not judging, but being conscious. There are choices being made; it's just that they're not fully conscious as choices. It's not that we just don't do something or do do something. We make choices in life. Our life is full of choices. And to have them be as fully conscious as possible, as fully informed as possible as well.

Oftentimes when we look inside, there are mixed motivations. We find that. "I want to do this and I want to do this. Or I'm doing this because of this but also because of this." Fine. There's no problem with that. That's completely okay. That's our humanity there. But which am I nourishing within that mix? What am I strengthening and what am I aligning myself with? What am I taking care of? Another poem by Rumi ["An Empty Garlic"]. Again, it's pretty strong. It's very strong, in fact.

[43:08 -- 43:59, poem]^[6]

So, how to help, to nurture, to encourage our intentionality to be more deeply authentic, deeply authentic? When there's self-measurement, when the practice is about self-measurement, is about self-improvement, to me that's not felt as a deeply authentic drive for practice. How often this comes in. How often this creeps into our practice and just sidelines what's more authentic. The inner critic hijacks our practice. So, so many times, people come to me kind of reporting or realizing, oftentimes after years of practice, that this is the case. When that's the case, when the inner critic, this voice of criticism, of harshness, of self-judgment, when that's in the driving seat, measuring oneself, it's not what I would call deeply authentic. It's not a deeply authentic part of our being. It's not even speaking the truth. It's not the voice of truth. It actually blocks the truth and blocks access to what's more deeply authentic.

Again, from some psychological survey, apparently an unbelievably high proportion of people feel inside that they're a fraud. I can't remember the figure, but I was quite shocked. They actually have this feeling inside that they're a fraud and a fear that they're going to be found out. And again, that creeps into practice. Someone was telling me a while ago, "I haven't been coming to see a teacher for interviews for a few years because I feel like a fraud and I feel like I'll be found out," just beginning to get conscious that that was behind their reluctance to come to interviews. What's going on there? The inner critic is believed to be true. We're believing the inner critic to be true. So this relationship to practice -- the inner critic seems so prevalent nowadays in our culture for different reasons. So prevalent. The relationship with practice, it's at least half the battle. It's at least half the battle for us.

A teacher or the teachings might say, "Be mindful. Practise mindfulness. Practise this practice or this approach or do this or do that." When that lands in the inner critic, or gets interpreted by the inner critic -- a person reported to me, who again had been practising for years but lost touch with why they were practising, can't remember why they're trying to be mindful even. Or it goes in there and it meets a sense of rebellion, rebelling, rebelling at authority or the very idea of practising in a certain way. I recently gave a whole talk on the inner critic. I just want to go into it a little bit because I feel it's so important. I just want to say a few things today. We need to turn towards these energies inside, turn towards the inner critic. Turn towards it and pay attention to that voice, listen to it. Oftentimes it has its power through its vagueness, through the fact that we just cower from it without giving it full attention. We just feel badgered and harangued by it without actually turning towards it and finding out about it, and dialoguing with it, speaking to it, listening to it. When I suggested that to someone recently somewhere else, they said, "But I thought we weren't supposed to think in practice." Thinking has its place, and using that, using it helpfully.

[48:13] But there's this other character inside that also doesn't get to be fully conscious. We might call it the inner rebel. That might operate in reaction to the inner critic. We need to also inhabit the inner rebel fully. Listen to the inner critic, and maybe inhabit the inner rebel: "I don't want to," or whatever form it takes. Feel that fully. There's a strength there that we actually need as human beings. It might be in the body. It might be a bodily strength. It might be in the belly. To really feel it. That strength is good. It's actually on our side. Some of you may be familiar with Gestalt therapy where you put different characters in different chairs and then you talk them out. We can do that inside with our eyes closed. Get to know these characters, get to inhabit them and explore them. If we don't, what happens is this inner critic gets projected outside. It gets projected onto the teacher, onto an authority; it gets projected onto an institution -- Gaia House, IMS, this or that; it gets projected onto a Saṅgha, if we're not consciously really connecting with the energies and the dynamics of the inner critic or the inner rebel. So there's strength to be gotten from the inner rebel, but sometimes also connecting with it reveals there's not much there. Also with the inner critic. Someone was saying recently that when they were exploring this inner rebel, listening more closely, it turned out to not be much of a rebel at all. It was actually just the voice of what they were calling the original status quo. Still, I need to discover that, and I need to explore it.

In practice, there are many approaches that we can have. There's not just one way of doing things. There are many ways we can approach things, this way and this way. Sometimes they're kind of opposite or complementary. So two of them, for example, we talk about anattā, non-self, and we also talk about self. They're both important and they're both useful. Careful that I'm not picking up the language of no-self and anattā, careful I'm not picking that up and kind of denying my self or accusing the self. That won't be helpful. Rather, can I be listening to different aspects of the self with love, with care? Am I caring for the self and what's in there? What do I need? What does the self need? What is needed? Sometimes a person thinks they need to see the emptiness of the self, but actually what they might be needing is a sense of the self connecting more, say on retreat, opening the heart to a sense of connecting with each other rather than just dismissing the self as empty and non-existent. What's needed? I think we mentioned in the last talk, needs are also a tricky area, because that depends on the mind state too. So for some people, this whole not-self business, they go into it and there's joy. That's actually where it should be going, eventually. I see the emptiness of self and joy comes up. But sometimes it's not the right moment or time to work in that way, and actually much more fruitful to get close to the self and discover, rediscover, reconnect with aspects of the being that we might have ignored or sidelined. Reconnect in that way.

So this question in terms of our authentic, deep desire, this question: what do I really, really want? To me it's a beautiful and incredibly powerful question. Do we kind of honour ourselves and give ourselves the gift of asking ourselves that repeatedly and deeply, dropping that question in, what do I really, really want? Such power in that question. And I can follow this, I can trust that question, I can trust where it leads me, I can trust how it unfolds in my being, rather than feeling like I'm superimposing a kind of foreign set of practices and teachings from the outside. But following that question might not be easy. It's also not just about feelings. It's not just about feelings. It's also about bringing our discernment, our intelligence in. Someone again was working a little bit with listening inside and the voice of the inner rebel, etc., and the voice of what do I really want and what does this part want and what does that part want, etc. Oftentimes a person on retreat, and sometimes people on a long retreat, will say, "This is all very well, being here. But what about the real world? What about the real world?" Going into that voice and actually discovering that what the real world involved, this person was saying, and very good-naturedly observing, was it involved watching Strictly Come Dancing. [laughter] If you know that from on TV.

Or again, a person on retreat, and one might find one's way into -- everything empties out, lots of spaciousness, not much going on, more deep samādhi, more deep sense of emptiness. And again, quite common, a person thinks, "What's this got to do with anything? What's this got to do, what's this refined, admittedly lovely state, maybe frightening state, what on earth's that got to do with my day at work or my relationship with anyone?" But again, using the intelligence, really asking that question, asking it very deeply. Because it has a huge amount to do with all that. But not just trusting the feelings -- letting the feelings go really deep, but also bringing in the discernment and the intelligence.

So if I say, "What do I really want?", if I take that deep enough, it's not so much "I want this or that," personal things that are unique to me. Pretty much we all end up with different versions of something that's quite similar: freedom, love, joy. But again, bringing the discernment in, I have to see, is this that I'm going for bringing joy? The other day someone played me on -- it's on YouTube if you want to find it -- it's a young Tibetan rinpoche called, I think his name is Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, I think. He's a young Tibetan rinpoche. I think he's the son of Chögyam Trungpa. He has a rap. It's about a five minute rap. It's actually quite good. It's called "What About Me?" Very good lyrics, very good. He says, "I get up in the morning, first thought is me," me or maybe those few people around me. "What about me? All day long. What about me? I go to bed at night. What about me?", and maybe those few people. "All day long. What about me? What about me?" And the lyrics unfold and he says, "I do this because I think it will make me happy. I'm concerned with number one." He says it much more poetically! He says, "If that were really true, putting me number one all the time, even me at the centre of my own practice, this practice, my practice, my process, my, my, my, if that were really true, if that were really helpful, I should be a bundle of happiness by now." [laughter] It obviously doesn't work! Anyway. It's a good rap if you're into that. [laughs]

The whole question of what do I need, what do I need -- given all that I've just said in the last minutes -- this ends up being a really important question, and really having honesty. What do I need? Not jumping into the anattā and denying the self and denying that the self has any needs, but really bringing honesty in there. We talk about kindness and clarity, we talk about compassion and wisdom. The two principal bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom. Both need to be there. We emphasize a lot -- I mean, this talk, I realize it's quite -- I don't know what the word is -- challenging. In the teachings, and I think importantly, it's very important, we emphasize a lot about softness and holding and encouraging and that very compassionate ... This behind me is Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. We don't have Mañjuśrī in here. Mañjuśrī has a sword. He cuts through delusion. They're balanced, Mañjuśrī and Avalokiteśvara. They're balanced.

There's a very popular version of Rumi's poems, some of you may have it, with Coleman Barks's translation. It's really, really beautiful if you haven't seen it. Little bits of commentary from Coleman Barks. In a chapter within this book, Coleman Barks writes the introduction. He says:

Don't listen too often, Rumi advises, to the comforting part of the self that gives you what you want. Pray instead for a tough instructor. Nothing less than the radical disassembling of what we've wanted and gotten, and what we still wish for, allows us to discover the value of true being that lies underneath. The pickaxe, for Rumi, represents whatever does this fierce attention-work: clear discernment, a teacher's presence, simple strength, and honesty with oneself. The pickaxe dismantles the illusory personality.^[7]

Actually the pickaxe belongs to another poem. I want to read you another Rumi poem ["The Core of Masculinity"]. Again, it's talking about this. He uses strange language. He uses this cutting through and the kind of stronger element. He's calling it masculinity. We don't -- I mean, that's just what he used. We don't have to go with any kind of gender division. That's just what he uses.

[59:01 -- 59:48, poem]^[8]

So again, please watch out if this is landing in the inner critic. The difficulty of talking in this way is that that's where it will land. But that's actually not authentic. We need to find a way of actually bringing some of these considerations and reflections in. It isn't anything to do with beating myself up. It isn't anything to do with unkindness. It's actually a movement of kindness, a movement of a gift towards myself. I need to finish because of time. I'm going to leave a bunch out. One last, couple of last points.

I've noticed more recently, because I've been involved in different kinds of teachings and different aspects of the Dharma teaching, what I've noticed is that actually it's quite common for practitioners, even long-term practitioners, to pre-decide the truth about something, and actually approach some very deep level of truth in the Dharma already pre-decided, already with a preconception one way or another. This is something I think as human beings, as practitioners, certainly, as we deepen in practice, we need to be really, really attentive to.

It can be things like the place of effort and doing in practice -- one just decides, "It's not true, I don't like it. I prefer it's not there"; or the fact that there's a path or there isn't a path; that there is or isn't such a thing called awakening and enlightenment and that possibility. Just noticing that people decide this and it's just a fait accompli, without actually really being open or investigating. Or again, with the whole notion of truth, a person says, "There's no real truth. What you can say is my truth and your truth." It's just been decided. Or "There's no possibility of transcendence. There's no Deathless. There's no Unfabricated." Often a person decides that and says that quite strongly without anywhere near the meditative depth for checking out whether any of this is actually the case or not.

Something in us wants to say something and decide something, without sometimes even the dedication to the meditative depth that might allow that seeing of whether there is or isn't. Or "awareness is the Deathless" -- someone says it is or it isn't. Lots of things like that. But the point I want to make is really to be aware, as we deepen, of our predispositions. Because we have predispositions with this stuff, and our allegiances, and why, and our preferences. And not to stop the questioning. Not to stop the questioning. To keep that alive.

Rumi. Last little poem.

[1:02:55 -- 1:03:06, poem]^[9]

Can we trust that? How fully can I surrender to that and trust that? How fully do I trust this letting go of any aspect of untruth? How fully do I trust the truth, and even trust my awareness of the places which I will find, I do find, that I'm less than completely true? I trust that awareness, that excavation, and the surrender to the truth. The more I do that, the more freedom comes, and the deeper and deeper freedom comes. When the freedom comes, I have more confidence in surrendering to the truth and speaking the truth and aligning with the truth. When I have more confidence, I do that more, and more freedom comes the more trust in the truth. And so the path snowballs on. It's one aspect of the way that the path deepens and deepens into freedom. There's this commitment to truth in every possible way.

Okay. So let's have a couple of quiet moments together.