Emotions and Freedom

One of my teachers once remarked, he said, "Our basic problem is that the most important thing in our lives is the thing we know the least about -- our own minds." In Pali, in the language the Buddha's discourses are recorded in, the word citta, it means 'mind,' but it also means 'heart.' In the Asian languages, it's really one word for that whole realm that we tend to divide into two in the West. It's one word, citta. The third foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of citta, mindfulness of the mind and the heart. A part of the third foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of what we could call mind states and emotions. And that part is what I want to focus on this morning. And actually, that's a huge subject already, so I just want to give an overview and pull a few pieces out to look at in more detail. No way it's possible to get to all of it.

So first of all, what is a mind state? What does that mean? Mind states include emotions. So to speak, our emotions are a subset of our mind states. Emotions like anger, fear, joy, these are mind states. They're emotions; they're also mind states. So right away, we can see: we're not talking about something that's just bad, just difficult. There are lovely mind states, difficult ones, neutral ones, etc.

But not just emotions -- 'mind states' includes a whole range of territory that's actually more subtle, less obvious. For instance, does the mind feel calm or agitated? Bored or interested? These are mind states. Dull or bright? Spacious, the mind feels spacious, expansive, or constricted? Energized or kind of depressed in its energy? Peaceful or frustrated? Present or distracted? All of this is -- we can't really call them 'emotions,' but they're mind states.

It's important to realize there's actually always a mind state present. There's always a mind state present. Sometimes a person doesn't relate to it, or they feel like they've transcended -- they're in some state of no mind state or something. There's always a mind state. Right now, in this instant, for everyone in this room, there's a mind state.

This ends up being really, really important, really, really key. And partly it's important because these mind states and emotions, that whole realm, is kind of the womb of our reactivity. It's the womb. It's the source, the birthing place of our reactions in life. Our thoughts are born out of that. Our speech is born out of the mind state. Our actions and our perceptions -- all of this is born out of that soil. The Buddha has a very famous quote, "All things have mind as their forerunner. Things are made of the mind, determined by the mind." That can be taken on a lot of different levels, but one thing it's pointing to is exactly this -- the way the mind will shape our reactivity and our reality. When we're unaware of that and unaware of the reactivity that's coming out of the mind, out of the heart, oftentimes we react and we create suffering out of that.

I don't know how that sounds. Sometimes it's very easy to, even as practitioners, overlook the significance of that. Even as practitioners, we can be at home and spill something on the carpet, spill some oil on the carpet, and the mind gets so upset about this, about a stain on the carpet or something like that. Do we give the same care to our citta that we do to the carpet and what might be staining it? I can get away from a stain in the carpet. I can change the carpet. I can do whatever. Sometimes -- you know, hard to say -- but it might be that I'm pouring things into my mind or staining the citta in a way that might last a long time. I can't get away from my mind.

It's extremely significant on that level. Also, in another aspect, this is a difficult area for us as human beings, our mind and the state of our mind, the states of our mind. We struggle with this. We suffer with this. We react to the mind state, if we don't like it, if it feels oppressive. We identify with the mind state: "It means something about me." We take it personally. We attach. We cling. We fight with the mind state. All of that, the way that we are with the mind states, can bring suffering, does bring suffering.

So the mind states can be soil for suffering, and also soil for freedom. Actually, that goes for all four foundations of mindfulness. These are areas the Buddha points to as kind of, "This is where suffering takes root. Look carefully. Tune into these particular areas, these particular aspects of existence. Suffering takes root there. Freedom also can take root there."

What to do with all this as practitioners? First thing is we need to get to know this territory. This is our inner landscape, our inner territory. And it takes time to get to know it, really come close to it and learn about it. What happens? We have mind states or emotions. Can I bring the mindfulness to that? And actually, for many people, the first place is the body, what's happening in the body. What sensations are manifesting in the body as a sort of bodily representation, bodily manifestation of this mind state? Some mind states -- for instance, anger -- hot, has a heat in the body oftentimes. Fear -- you can feel it. Where do I feel it in the body? Fear is sometimes in the belly or in the heart pumping. Some mind states, the body feels heavy. For instance, sadness or depression, there's a kind of heaviness in the body -- grief, heaviness in the body. Peace, happiness, the body actually feels light. And that may be the whole body, not just one part.

If I say, "Where is it in the body?", it's interesting. A lot of emotions are reflected somewhere between here [lower belly] and here [mouth area], on a sort of central line -- lower belly and mouth area, roughly. But it can be more than that. It can be the sense of the whole body or other parts too. But that's a good place to start looking, somewhere along that line. Yesterday, Catherine spoke about vedanā. What's the vedanā, what's the feeling-tone of the body sensations? All this, to really explore, come close to, discover, touch with mindfulness.

For many people, the body is the easiest, the simplest, the most direct, and the most, in a way, reliable way in. Some people, though, that's not their forte, and they don't really use the body to tell so well. For everyone, there are other cues, other cues to help us see what's going on with the mind state. One is thoughts. An angry state of mind obviously generates angry thoughts. The thoughts tell us about the mind state. It's important, in the investigation of any mind state, to actually notice: what kind of thoughts are going on right now? What kind of thoughts are being given birth to?

Mind states also colour the perceptions. If there's a lot of joy or a lot of beauty, a lot of mettā, we see beauty. One sees beauty. The perception changes in that way. It's coloured. If there's irritability, notice how sounds actually sound irritating. The actual vedanā of the sense contact is coloured by the mind state. All this is going on, and all these are aspects that we want to really see clearly and be clearly in touch with, really get a feel for. There's a whole other kind of aspect, which is what we could call the texture of the mind. It's almost like the inner sense of the mind itself, if it feels kind of rough or calmer or spacious or constricted, as I was saying before.

Very often, when we have emotions or when we have mind states, it's very easy, even as practitioners, to say, "Oh, yeah, it's just peace, or it's just anger, or it's self-loathing. It's just this. It's just that." And "it's just this," we can kind of dismiss it and shut the door a little bit to intimacy, to a real intimacy with what's going on. So is it possible to draw really close with the awareness, really touch it? Touch it nakedly, the experience. Really become intimate. How does it actually feel? How does it actually feel, this emotion, this mind state?

Sometimes a person, something perhaps difficult is going on, and they say, "I can't feel it. What I feel is a kind of cloud around it, or a kind of barrier, or a wall there." Maybe that's resistance. How does that feel? Whatever's there, even if it feels like it's a step away from the original emotion, I can feel into that. I can really come close, draw close to that with the awareness.

Sometimes when the emotion is difficult -- let's take sadness for an example -- the mindfulness we bring to it has to be quite delicate. Sadness is quite a delicate feeling. It's asking us for a delicate kind of holding, a light attentiveness. I can't laser-beam it. I really have to hold it. I sometimes say to people, it's almost like just holding a little bird in the hands, in the cupped hands, just holding it, and it comes and it goes. Very light with the attentiveness. There's skill that can be developed here. It's a beautiful skill to develop.

It's also possible, being interested in this whole area, I don't have to wait until something is there. I could actually take a meditation session or a walking session, a standing session, and just station the awareness here in the centre of the chest, or along this line, and just hold very light, delicate attention -- see what comes in. It's there, and I'm holding it, and then it goes out, and maybe nothing is there for a while, and then something else comes in, or the same thing comes up again. Just station the awareness at the third foundation, at the mind states. Stationing it there with kindness, if possible, with curiosity. Bringing those qualities to bear as much as possible.

Sometimes when there's a difficult emotion going on, it feels like there's a lot of stuff going on at all kinds of different levels. The mind is going off, the thoughts, the memories, the stories, the body feels agitated. Everything's going on. It's like everything's going on -- it's like a lot of static loudly being expressed at the same time. It can be very helpful at those times to just tune into something very simple in all that complexity of experience. One thing that's very simple is the vedanā level of the bodily experience. So here's all this complex, difficult emotion. I feel like I'm getting lost in it. Let me go to the body, and find just the vedanā of what's going on -- perhaps at the heart, perhaps somewhere else. And it might be just unpleasant, unpleasant. And I'm allowing it to be unpleasant, and I'm allowing it to be unpleasant in this moment, and in the next moment. What I'm doing is I'm tuning into the simplest strand, just for that moment, for that time. I'm tuning into the simplest strand, and that simplifying of the attention can allow what feels an overwhelming complexity, can allow it to simplify a little bit.

Working in some of these ways, we begin to get more and more confidence. And one realizes: some of the emotional territory inside that we may have been afraid of, I don't need to be afraid of it any more. I'm developing, I can develop the skills, the tools, the meditative approaches to handle it, to be with it. That's a wonderful gift to give to oneself -- a sense of fearlessness in relationship to one's own emotional life.

One small thing. When we're mindful of what's difficult, we have to also be checking in: is my mindfulness helping? Because very often, we talk all day about mindfulness on a retreat. All day, mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. Say, "Oh, I'm paying attention and paying attention." I have to be careful and actually keep a part of the mindfulness checking: is the way that I'm paying attention to this difficulty, is it actually helping? Because it can not sometimes. I get a sense. Maybe the difficulty is draining out of the inner experience, and I feel the difficult thing just quieten. Maybe it's not that. Maybe it stays difficult, but around it, there's a sense of a bit more spaciousness, a bit more softness, a bit more ease. This is something I want to encourage. I want to check that that's there. It feels, "Yeah, it's still difficult, but there's something in feeling connected to this difficulty emotionally that feels right. It feels good to be connected." I want to look out for those cues. It's not just that I slap on mindfulness and everything will be taken care of. With that, and with that care, we do get the sense more and more that we're able to be with the inner experience. I'm able to be with it. I can meet it. I can embrace it.

A few weeks ago, someone was here, and working a lot in this territory. We were talking, and heard some teachings, etc., and he came in one day, and he said, "Well, what about -- is it okay to kind of stare it down sometimes, and just kind of really look it in the eye, and just stare at it?" We talk so much about softness and kindness around everything. And the answer is absolutely "yes." I mean, there's a reason we talk a lot about bringing kindness and holding, etc. But sometimes you stare it down. That's a possibility. It's just you and me, and I'm ... [laughs] I'm really just staring it down.

Sometimes labelling is helpful: "It's this. It's that," just a word, "sadness" or "fear" or whatever. That can be very helpful for some people sometimes. If I look a little closer at this -- we need, as practitioners, to be extremely interested in this whole area -- what I may notice is that sometimes the labelling itself actually creates the experience. The labelling itself creates a mind state, and I can use that to my disadvantage, and I can use it to my advantage. Sometimes that happens: labelling makes a thing so. Very important to notice. Sometimes it's as if what's coming up in the realm of mind state is quite subtle. It doesn't really have a name yet. I can't slap a label on. It's too amorphous. It's too subtle still. I need to not hurry in with the label. I need to let it reveal itself, let it reveal its uniqueness.

Very often, a person comes in and says, "I'm restless." And sometimes it's a kind of chronic restlessness. And one works a little bit with it, and says, "Hold off on that label, because 'restlessness' -- I'm not saying always, but sometimes -- might actually be feeling energized, and I'm just not used to that level of energization in the body, in the mind, and I just call it 'restlessness,' and I'm colouring it, I'm pushing it a certain way by my calling it that." I remember working for quite a while with one person who had chronic fear, over years and years and years, and working with him over some time, beginning to get a sense: actually, this wasn't fear. In its seed form, it wasn't fear. It was actually excitement. It was actually excitement, and yet was coming in too quickly with a mental interpretation, and calling it fear, and then the calling it veered it off into fear. It created it.

In insight meditation, in vipassanā, we talk a lot, a lot, a lot about this 'being with,' about being in touch and being mindful of our emotional experience and the flow of our emotions and the flow of our mind states. But am I seeing the being with, the being in touch, the being connected to, the being mindful of my emotional life, my mind states, am I seeing that as the whole of my practice for this foundation and this realm? I think very important. Already just in what I've said so far, which is plenty to work on already -- we could stop the talk right there, finish, enough. And on a week-long retreat, the morning instructions, that would be plenty -- finished; twenty minutes, done. But already, just in what I've said, there are intimations of much more complexity. This is a much richer area than initially meets the eye.

Now, in a way, that's bad news. [laughs] In a way, it's also good news. Would I even want the whole of practice to just be a series of moments of being with my mind state, and being with another mind state, and being with a mind state, and being with a mind state, and something comes, and something goes, and I'm with it in a very heartful, open way, and I let it go, and then I'm with the next thing in a heartful, open way, and then I'm with the next thing ...? Is that where all this is going? Does that feel enough for you? And maybe it does, but I wonder if it is the whole of it.

But we really, really need, as practitioners, to develop this ability to be with our emotions and be with our mind states. That takes practice, and it takes time. I mean, it really takes time. Just what I've talked about so far, it really takes time to develop that art and those skills. Sometimes it takes years. It takes years to learn to be with the life of the heart that way. Not for everyone, but certainly if I think about my practice, it took a long time.

So I want to go in a bit more to the complexity here and the richness here. And please, please, please, it may sound like I'm contradicting myself, or what I'm saying, what I have said so far. Can it be heard as complementary? So there's this, and there's this, and there's this, and kind of holding all that together rather than fighting and contradicting. But if there's the willingness to be with, and if there's the courage to be with the flow and the ups and downs of our emotional life, we begin to see some of this complexity a bit more, and some of the kind of curiosity of what's going on here, the strangeness of what's going on with our emotional life. We begin to see that a bit more, and it raises some really important and interesting and not easy questions.

One of the first things one sees, if one is really giving a kind of full attentiveness to this area, is that there are feedback loops going on. I don't like that language, but I'm going to use it: feedback loops. What does that mean? There are feedback loops with perception, with thought, and with the body -- meaning, for example, I'm irritated. There's irritation. In an irritated mind state, I perceive a sound -- someone shuffling, someone coughing, the plane, the traffic, whatever -- I perceive it as irritating. When I perceive it as irritating, I react to it with irritation, and my mind state is built. It's a feedback loop with perception.

There are feedback loops with thought. For another example: I'm in a depressed state of mind. Out of that depressed state of mind, it gives birth to what? Depressive thoughts. "It's hopeless. I'm hopeless." Typical kind of depressive thinking. I'm conscious of those thoughts, or semi-conscious of those thoughts, and I react to those thoughts, and the depressive mind state grows and solidifies. There are feedback loops with the body. A classic one is fear or the sensations of fear in the body. When we have fear, the unpleasantness of the sensations, we're actually afraid of the physical experience of fear. We don't always realize this. That also will build the whole thing. It will cycle on itself, snowball on itself.

I have a friend who's a clinical psychologist, and also a Dharma teacher. He told me the other day, they did this experiment recently where they got people to watch cartoons with a pencil in their mouth, either sideways or forwards. And what they found was that the people with it sideways, because it's a little bit of a smile, they actually found the cartoons funnier than [with it forwards]. [laughter] Interesting! Slightly odd, but interesting. Someone was telling me the other day they've got a very, very difficult situation in their life, and they're also practising mettā. When they're out of the mode of mettā, this situation feels very intractable, very solid, very burdensome and heavy. When the mettā comes, when the mettā starts going, the actual situation seems lighter, more spacious. Interesting. Perhaps in a so-called 'ordinary' state of mind, I'm actually colouring it a certain way.

Another person, talking about such-and-such situation, a job or being on retreat -- "It's terrible. It's intolerable." The mind state makes the experience feel intolerable, "I must get out of it!" And the mind state is colouring it. The mind state is seeing it a certain way. And as I said before, we take our mind with us everywhere. We take it everywhere, and the mind, from the mind state, from the space of the mind state, colours and creates according to that mind state. What's even more difficult is that we have habits of certain mind states, habits of certain emotions -- a certain emotional range that we tend to traverse, and it's quite limited, and different for different people. Those are the habits of the mind state. So then we habitually colour and create our perception in a certain mould.

Do I know that this is going on? Do I know that this is going on, and can I see the implications of this? The implications are huge and actually they end up being really, really profound, even more than it might seem at the surface. And are my habitual mind states helpful or not? In other words, are they colouring things in a helpful way or not? So I need to understand this as a practitioner. If I'm interested in freedom, I need to understand this. We talk about papañca, when the whole mind state has completely gone bonkers with complication and story and proliferation. I need to understand how that's colouring things and how it's colouring perception. This goes very deep.

And if I do bring a real openness, a real curiosity, a real care to my investigation, I also begin to see -- again, it's not just a matter of being with -- I begin to see how the mind states themselves are being built and constructed, how the emotions themselves are being built and constructed. So a few weeks ago, I was talking with someone who was talking about feeling lonely where he is, a place where he's living part of the time. And just going into it, and actually realizing that -- I brought up the word 'loneliness,' and he was reflecting on it, and realizing that he did not admit to himself that there was loneliness. He did not label it. He did not recognize that what was going on was loneliness. When he went into that a bit more, he realized that it was because he judged it. He judged the presence of loneliness, because in his life, growing up and in school, etc., later, being on the outside, not fitting in, was really difficult. Not being cool at school was very difficult, and there was a sort of history of that. So even the whiff of loneliness had the scent of failure, that he was a failure.

So he just did this to loneliness [looks away]: "I'm just not going to look at you. I'm not going to recognize you. I'm not going to open myself to you or admit that you're there." What happens then? In doing this [looking away], he was actually disconnecting from himself and from the truth of his emotional life, the truth of who he was, in a sense, in that moment. Disconnection from the self. When there's disconnection from the self, there's loneliness from ourself. There can be loneliness in relation to other people; oftentimes loneliness has to do with loneliness from oneself. There's a distance to myself. I'm not connecting. When there's loneliness from myself, everything is coloured lonely. Loneliness increases.

So in looking at this more deeply -- and it applies to everything in the Dharma, this question that's so important: how am I relating to it, whatever 'it' is? How am I relating to it? It's the golden Dharma question. It's a golden Dharma question. How am I relating to it? So much depends on how I'm relating to something, to this experience, this phenomenon, this emotion, this mind state. In a way, everything depends on how I'm relating to it. Because my relating to it can increase it or decrease it. It can build it or unbuild it. And in that building or unbuilding is the building or unbuilding of my suffering. I build my mind states, my emotions, and with it, I build or unbuild my suffering.

This is very interesting when we go into it. First thing: I need to notice. I need to notice what the relationship is. Relationships are multidimensional, so one dimension is looking carefully at the mental level of relationship -- in other words, what thoughts do I have as part of my relationship to whatever's going on emotionally? So "It means this or that about me because there's this emotion. If I feel lonely, it means I'm a failure, because it means I'm not fitting in. Or if I'm angry, it means I'm an angry person. Or if I feel a little bit of peace, it means I'm enlightened. It means whatever. It means this about me," self-view coming out of the experience, being added to the experience.

Some of this is semi-conscious. That's why it's really important to shine the awareness on this aspect. "This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be feeling this way after X days or weeks on retreat. I shouldn't be feeling this. A person like me shouldn't feel something like this. It shouldn't be happening." Or sometimes, some difficulty going on emotionally -- and this can be very subtle -- "There's much more of this," or "It really feels like there's a ton of this inside. There's an ocean of this inside. I have to go through all of this anger, or all of this grief or whatever it is." How do I know? Or "This is horrible, but it's good that it's coming up, because it's purifying." Maybe, maybe not. These are thoughts and interpretations. Very careful what the mind is saying in relationship to what's going on emotionally.

Then there's a whole other level, which is, we could say, more subtle than the thinking. It has to do with the kind of energetic relationship we have with an emotion or a mind state. By this, I mean specifically whether we're wanting to get rid of it, pushing it away, aversive to it, or trying to hold on to it. We begin to get a sense more and more of those two primary movements of our consciousness, pushing away what we don't like (aversion) and trying to hang on to what we do like (craving, clinging). So first part is noticing all this, really noticing the different ways it manifests. It's very rich. But then, I would actually add a whole second part to it, which is: can I allow myself to play with this? Can I allow myself to play with the relationship that I have to an emotion or a mind state in the moment, and actually experiment with it and see what's possible there?

What would it be to just shift into a mode of investigation? That could take many forms. What would it be to be aware of the conclusions the mind is making, and just decide either to drop them or not believe them? I see that they're there; I'm just not believing them. Playing with the relationship. What would it be to see that the mind is labelling, "Fear. Anger. This. That," and actually just see the labelling as one thing, and the experience as another, and kind of separate them out, play with separating them out, and see what that does? Or might be, here's this difficulty; I'm just going to stay with mettā. I'm just going to stay with mettā and see what that does. I'm moving through very quickly now just to give you an idea. It might be that I begin to get a sense of the energetic sense in the body of whether there's aversion or clinging, and I learn to relax aversion when it's there, relax clinging when it's there. I just feel it in the body when it's present, this kind of tensing, subtle, wanting to get rid of something. It can be very subtle. And I learn to relax that. All of those are practices, learning to play with the relationship. They're really practices, developable.

Let's take the last one: just relaxing aversion in relationship to a difficult mind state or emotion. Let's take something like impatience as a mind state. Sometimes it can feel huge. This state of impatience, it feels like such a solid thing. When I go to the bodily experience, I realize, "Gosh, it's hardly findable. It's hardly there as as bodily experience, impatience." It's quite subtle. Sometimes also tiredness is like this, interestingly. I can hardly find it. There's not much there. Or sadness sometimes -- it's quite subtle in the actuality of the experience. And we see: the aversion has come in and puffed the whole thing up, grown the whole thing, made it feel like it's taking up everything. I have to see that, how the aversion to some mind states actually increases the felt experience of it till it feels overwhelming, unbearable. Massively important.

And if it's a lovely mind state, if it's mettā or if it's joy or if it's peace or if it's well-being in the body, how can I play with my relationship to it so it actually nurtures that, nurtures that lovely mind state, nurtures that lovely emotion, nurtures joy, without grasping, without strangling it, without squashing it from clinging? How can I actually tend to it? That's an art. That's a skill. But that's really important.

So how am I relating to it? This is a huge area in the Dharma. How am I relating to it? My relating to it also includes the way that I'm looking at it. So I'm always looking at experience in one way or another. I'm always looking at experience in one way or another. What would it be with a mind state if I actually decided to look at it through the lens of, say, impermanence? I'm looking at it, but what I'm really interested in is its impermanence. And I might reflect, "Well, I wasn't in this mind state in the morning, and I probably won't be in this mind state when I go to bed." And I see that everyday flow, and I remind myself of that, and it takes some of the aversion and the contraction away from it.

But what if I hone that lens of impermanence even more finely, and I tune in really microscopically, moment to moment, and I see this is changing, changing, changing? If I look at, say, sadness, really close, really intimate with the sadness, I'll see: sadness, a moment, sadness, a moment, maybe a third moment. I doubt whether you can witness more than three moments, at a subtle level, of the same mind state. I see sadness, sadness, a gap, nothing, sadness, joy -- where did that come from? Sadness, neutrality, sadness, peace, nothing, joy, sadness.

Not seeing that, what we tend to do is solidify and make a burdensome, heavy, solid block out of something, out of a difficult mind state. I can puncture that and see the gaps in it. It begins to let a little air in, a little space in. It feels less substantial. It actually feels less substantial. And again, I see: look at that! There's something very important. This is a skilful tool, but it's also something much more. What does all this begin to show us? What's it pointing to? That the mind is kind of building and fabricating -- in technical Dharma language -- it's constructing our mind states, through the way we're relating and through the way we're looking. If I look not seeing impermanence, which is the normal human way of looking, I actually see that I'm solidifying something which doesn't have a solidity that I don't give it. In and of itself, so to speak, it doesn't have that. It doesn't have any substantiality. The mind is constructing it. The mind, in Dharma language, is fabricating it, saṅkhāra-ing it.

What, then, is real in this realm? If it doesn't have a reality outside of what the mind is giving it in the moment, what then is real? And backtrack some minutes -- I said there's a lot more to this than meets the eye originally. Now, we have to be very, very careful with this. As I said, complementary rather than contradictory. Can I hold both of those? I need to respect my emotional life, the beauty, the richness of it, the depth of it. Emotions are important. They tell me things I need to hear. They guide me. And there's a level at which they may not be as real as they seem.

I was talking with someone else the other day. Emotions are important, as I said, because they tell me about my needs. I have this emotion because a need isn't getting met in a certain situation. That's important. This person was doing a course in psychotherapy. He's training to be a psychotherapist, and he's a Dharma practitioner as well. This course, actually, was a Buddhist-based psychotherapy course. But he was reflecting to me -- I was having a phone conversation -- was reflecting to me that it seems like the whole realm of needs is related to differently in the psychotherapy training than it is in the meditative training. Just kind of observing that and being interested in that. He also went on, very wise reflection, and said, "There seems to be dangers in the meditative path, that it's possible that I might bypass some important emotions in the meditative process, either through concentration or through this laser-beam awareness or something, and actually miss a whole emotional experience or messages that I might need to be aware of and feel." That is possible in meditation.

But he also said there's a danger in the more therapeutic realm, that the needs that are felt actually go unquestioned. We just stop at feeling the needs, and not questioning them, and not questioning the self to which they seem to refer, and actually reifying and reinforcing both the needs and the self unquestioningly. And that is possible. Danger, danger. What do I need? I need to bring all my honesty, all my integrity, all my care, all my intelligence, and not jump to conclusions here. When I begin to see that the mind states are built, constructed, fabricated, they're actually malleable. This whole dimension of our being is malleable. It's like plasticine, actually, like putty. It's malleable. And because it's malleable, there is the possibility, thankfully, for us as human beings to cultivate beautiful, helpful, lovely qualities of heart and mind, mind states, emotions.

One of my teachers, Ajaan Ṭhānissaro, he said, "You use your understanding of fabrication to deconstruct unskilful emotions, unskilful mind states, and then to develop skilful emotions and skilful mind states in their place." And he goes on to say, "We don't usually like the idea of constructing an emotion or fabricating an emotion, as it seems too artificial. But we do it all the time. It's simply that we're not conscious of it." So I know that this can be difficult to hear. I know there are people perhaps right now who find this quite difficult. If we look at the texts, if you look in the Pali Canon, the words of the Buddha, most of his emphasis around mind states is actually the encouragement to cultivate, to develop, to shape them in a certain direction. It's actually much, much, much less, radically less, about just being with them. As a tradition, we've tended to emphasize that, and that's for good reason. What you get is, when there are difficult mind states, when there are negative mind states, to learn how to help them to die down.

This is a Tibetan teacher, Chökyi Dragpa, in a text about bodhicitta, about becoming a bodhisattva:

When the various negative emotions arise, if one lets them manifest without relying on an antidote, one becomes gradually habituated and accustomed to them. [This is what I was saying before, about habits of mind states.] Then it will be very difficult to reverse and abandon them in the future. Therefore, a person who is mindful of what to accept and reject, and is conscientious with respect to whatever happens with his or her body, speech, and mind, will apply the antidote as an extremely sharp weapon. [You get a lot of this really strong, kind of combative language in the text.] With this antidote, he or she crushes and leaves behind the negative emotions whenever they are about to arise or as soon as they have arisen.

We don't often talk that way, because it's often not helpful. But if you do start rummaging in the texts, oftentimes this is the kind of thing that you will come across again and again, that kind of language. And that's actually a text on love and developing love! [laughs] It's not aversion. There's a difference, a knee-jerk reaction of aversion, of hating, of wanting to get rid of something. This is skilful working with, shaping, out of wisdom, out of care. One gets that, and one also gets the encouragement to increase, to build, to nurture the positive, the beautiful. Why? Why is there such an emphasis on cultivating generosity, loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity, all these lovely mind states? Because they're an incredibly profound resource to us as human beings. They are our treasure. They're our inner treasure. And also because, in those mind states, the capacity for insight is increasingly heightened, through the clarity, through the openness, through the sensitivity, through the expansiveness.

But it can be easy to hear this, "Okay, we build mind states, positive and negative," it can be very easy to hear that and go into blame, and blame oneself. That's not what this is about. Mind states, emotions, arise when the conditions are there for them to arise. When the conditions are there, this arises. When the conditions are not there, that won't arise. It has nothing to do with a self. I actually need to cultivate a lot, to practise cultivation, to actually see that: it has nothing to do with a self. It's possible to walk the path of cultivating what's beautiful in the heart without any sense of the inner critic coming in, of the judging coming in. It's just conditions that I'm shaping. It's just conditions that are being shaped. Nothing to do with a self and self-judgment. Oftentimes because of the pain of that, a person rejects the aspect of cultivation.

When I go more in, as part of my path and part of my life in the Dharma, when I go more into cultivating, to shaping, I begin to see more and more how it is that things get built and fabricated, because I'm actually working directly with the building. I see it. I also see how the opposite, the more difficult, gets built. And I also see, because of the range of movement -- a lot of mettā, a lot of the opposite, normal state of mind -- because of that range, I begin to see more and more clearly, or if it's joy or equanimity, how the perception has changed. It begins to be very, very clear, because I'm moving over a wider range. I also -- and almost everyone who walks this path at some point begins to report back in interview -- begin to see how I may have had a tendency to believe or assume that the negative, the difficult, and the painful emotions are somehow more real. I believe them more. Not everyone, but it's so common. And the question is, why? Why do I believe that depression or fear or anger or whatever feels difficult is somehow more real? Can I investigate that? We're saying emotions are built. Which is actually built more? Not easy to hear, perhaps, and not easy to investigate, either, but it's there for us as something in the Dharma that's important and needs our attention.

So I have this capacity to just be with emotions as they arise, and just be with them, and just be with them. Beautiful, beautiful capacity of a human being, beautiful part of the path. Indispensable part of the path. But even that idea that I'm just being, it may not even be that accurate, because I may have a tendency, within the mix, within the different frequencies of my inner experience, I may have a tendency, without even realizing it, to tune into what's more difficult, and filter that out more of the experience, and I just keep tuning into what's more difficult, maybe.

But even, let's say that there is such a thing as just being with, just being with. It can be that just being with, it connects with deeper emotions, and there's a release. Something feels like it's releasing, and maybe memories come up, etc. And all that's a very important part of healing. But still, if I haven't gone into this building of emotions, I haven't fully understood my emotional life, and in a way, I haven't fully understood my humanity. And it's not possible that there's the fullness of healing. So yes, just being with, just allowing, just learning to do that, to hold, there's healing there, and one thing leads to another. But unless I really understand deeply this fabrication, and -- and, and, and -- I walk the path of learning to fabricate joy, learning to fabricate peace, over time (we're talking about a Dharma life now, not necessarily one retreat, or even a stretch of a few years), learn to fabricate what's lovely -- all that is the fullness of healing.

Sometimes, in relation to creating what's lovely, a person says, "It doesn't even really interest me that much." From time to time, someone says that. "I've heard about, you know, developing mettā. I've heard about this word samādhi or jhāna or whatever. I've heard about peace. It doesn't interest me much to be doing that." Why not? I mean, of course it's everyone's choice. But to me, it's an important question: why not? To me, saying something like that is actually resting on quite a lot of assumptions -- quite a lot of assumptions about reality, about the heart. And anyway, why limit my range as a human being? Human beings have such an enormous range in terms of their emotional life, the range of mind states, the capacity of consciousness. Why would I want to limit it?

So this understanding of fabrication is something that goes very deep, very, very deep, right into the whole question of the reality of the self, etc. And when I understand all that, the whole relationship with emotional life is completely different, completely revolutionized. And eventually -- and maybe take this lightly right now, but eventually -- it's possible, at times, that there's a kind of magic. One senses the magic. If I use the word 'fabrication,' it sounds very technical, but there's a kind of magic in the malleability of all this. The malleability is a fact whether I like it or not. There's a magic there, and we begin to be able to start using that magic. I create and I shape the mind state and the emotional life, and in so doing, I'm creating and shaping my life, my reality, my world, my perceptions. And it's almost as if we begin to get a sense, at times, as we play with this, at times, eventually get a sense, it's almost like I'm scattering my path in front of me, I'm shaping some kind of magical energy, and casting it in front of me. What has been created in that way becomes my path, magical. It's like creating magical hologram horses, and I'm riding them. There's something quite beautiful in the possibility. We conjure something. We're always conjuring something. I can use it in a beautiful way.

Let's just step out of all this for a second. What are we aiming for with all this? What am I aiming for in terms of emotions and mind states in a life of practice? And please, I'm talking about a whole life of practice. I would say, I'm aiming that there's more and more the capacity to hold and be with my emotional life, the freedom to hold and be with my emotional life, and be with it in a healing way, in a healthy way, to be with my emotions -- the difficult, but also the lovely. And how often people report, when they are practising cultivation practices, that there's fear moving into territories of love and open-heartedness and tenderness and openness, or states of quietness or joy. We haven't experienced this territory before. Learning to be with that, learning to hold that, to have the capacity to hold that, to increase the capacity. Also, actually -- I haven't talked about this at all in the talk, but I'll just say it: sometimes a part of the deepening of the path is actually a quietening of the whole emotional life. The whole thing just fades and goes quiet at times, and actually getting familiar with that, with the absence, the spaciousness, the stillness that can be there in the absence of emotion, and the beauty in that, and the treasure in that, and the life in that (because it's not deadness).

Wanting to, I would hope, increase our capacity and increase the capacity of the heart, increase that. You know, sometimes, as practice deepens, we become more and more receptive, more and more receptive. The heart, as an instrument, becomes more and more receptive. And sometimes it's not just my emotions that I'm feeling. Sometimes we begin to be more and more receptive to the emotions, the suffering in the world, for instance, worldly suffering, the suffering that exists. It's more open. It's receptive. Sometimes there's grief, grief for the earth and the plight of the earth. You hear about another oil spill, and another non-taking of responsibility about the oil spill. And you hear about species extinction. Something's, hopefully, opening and opening, and having more and more capacity to resonate, to feel all this, to hold all this, to bear all this. And we're interested, as practitioners, I hope, I would wish, that all of us interested in practice [are interested] in being able to hold all of this, hold it all without fear, without despair, without feeling crushed, without paralysis, without cynicism. That's part of the journey that the heart is going on with all this.

So it seems to me we really need that nowadays, at this time. We really, really need that to be in the world. That's part of it, this increasing of the capacity. Then there's also, what else am I aiming for? I'm aiming for the ability, the capacity to shape this malleable, magical energy that I'm talking about, shape and understand that shaping, and shaping what's beautiful, and giving birth to what's beautiful, and letting that give birth to what's beautiful that comes out of that -- out of love, out of joy, out of peace. Why? Again, because it's a huge resource, an incredibly deep resource for us as human beings, and a resource in terms of compassion as well. To the degree that joy is there and peace is there, that increases our compassion. And also it's a resource for insight.

So I increase my capacity, I learn to shape, and I also am interested in understanding this magic of the mind, this fabrication, this building, this construction that goes on, and really understanding it deeply, because understanding that deeply has everything to do with understanding emptiness. It's on the road to understanding emptiness. Everything to do with it. Understanding emptiness is the deepest thing that leads to freedom.

I know it's a long talk. I just want to -- in a way, that was a summary, but just to say, again: can I hold all this together, rather than contradictory? So the being with, the shaping, the cultivating, and this business of fabricating. All of it held together, inclusively, with flexibility. I'm flexible in my view and flexible in my approach. If not -- I heard a beautiful phrase the other day; I think it comes from the Sufi tradition -- if I only fixate on one, it says, "Beware lest your cure become your curse." If I'm choosing just one of these as an avenue in my practice, it will be lopsided and actually become a curse. If I'm only shaping, only shaping, only cultivating, I might miss those inner cues. I might miss the inner message. I might be disconnected from something. If I'm only being with, being with, I might be elevating my emotions as something inherently real, in a way that they're actually not. I'm missing this whole area of magic and fabrication.

So to be careful. It's very, very easy, in these kind of practices and related spiritual practices, to unwittingly or even consciously make an end point of just feeling my emotions, or maybe just feeling them and sharing them with others, and having the beauty of that, of the openness to feel, and the beauty of sharing. But if I make an end point of it, it's not complete enough. It's not full enough. It's not deep enough, because I have to ask: what's this in service of? What's all this in service of? And if I'm interested in healing the world, if I want to be a force that's in the service of healing the world, then my meditative work needs to be in the service of allowing courage, allowing power, inner power, those kind of qualities. It may not come from just being with and just being with.

I don't know; I'm aware of having covered a lot of territory there and a lot of stuff. Does it sound like a tall order? I mean, it is a tall order. [laughs] It's huge. It's massive. It's colossal. But it's also possible. The beautiful, amazing thing is, it's absolutely possible. There's nothing that I've said that's not possible, nothing at all. This is possible for us as practitioners, as human beings. And even more, it's beautiful. So any of those three kind of aspects, each in themselves is beautiful, and the totality of it is even more beautiful. We're talking about something beautiful here. Possible and beautiful. And what else am I going to do? What's the choice? What else am I going to do in my life with all this, with my emotional territory? Working this way is the way to freedom. It's the way to freedom, and it's a beautiful way to live.

Okay. Shall we sit quietly together for a couple of moments?