Opening Talk - Orienting and Relating to the Emptiness Retreat

I'm Rob. I think I know most of you, but a few of you I have not met yet. I'm Rob, and John, as you can see, is not here tonight. We actually teach this retreat in shifts. It's sort of like a tag team. I do a little bit, and then hand the baton to him, and that just works best with the schedules that we have. He was in South Africa, and I don't know if he got delayed or something, but I actually haven't managed to speak to him. I got a message saying he would be here on Sunday night, so Sunday or Monday is when we'll hand over, and we'll take it from there.

So we are a group, as you know. We asked that everyone came for, signed up for the whole period. We're also joined by Tony and by Juliet, who are both coordinators here. Tony is one of the household coordinators, and Juliet's one of the reception coordinators. And they have special dispensation, because of their work, to do what they can with the retreats. I think Juliet's doing the first six days, and Tony is doing sort of three days, and then coming to as much as he can, and then two weeks, if I remember. And then we have Mark and Ollie, who are on work retreat, and they're sort of deciding whether they want to join us. [laughs] So by tomorrow evening, we should be pretty clear what the group is.

I've also said -- and this might not have been wise -- for the hermits, that they're welcome to come to teachings. However, if we feel that it's really too cosy in here, I might change that notice and say, "I'm sorry. We have to really close the teachings." So you can give me feedback about that if it feels like it gets really too full at teaching time. Okay? The clock -- this keeps stopping, so stop me if it's midnight and I'm still going!

For me, this is really, really, I feel, very much a privilege for me to be able to offer these teachings, and I know John feels the same. It's very beautiful. For me, it's a very beautiful experience. It's beautiful to see so many people here, and that this inspires and calls you and attracts you, to me, is very touching. These teachings of emptiness, I think it's fair to say they're really at the heart of what the Buddha was teaching. They're really at the heart of the Buddha's path. They're at the heart of his awakening. Very much at the heart, the pith, the core of what he awakened to -- it was emptiness. And then his teaching, in a way -- it's not obvious at first, but it was all centred around emptiness. We can say 'emptiness' and 'dependent origination' -- we'll be talking about these two -- they're two sides of the same coin. But he actually said, "First there is the understanding. First there is the realization of emptiness or dependent origination, and then there is nibbāna."^[1] They follow one from another very naturally. He was very clear about that. Without that, there isn't awakening, there isn't nibbāna. And so we say, "What did he wake up to?" He woke up to emptiness. He woke up to dependent origination.

Sometimes (and understandably), people can feel, or we can have a sense that these teachings of emptiness, or the meditations on emptiness, they're sort of the pinnacle of the teachings. They're like the cream or something, or it's a bit elitist or specialist: "Well, I might get into that, or I might not." And to a certain extent, that's true. But in another way, these teachings of emptiness actually permeate the whole of the Dharma, but it's not in a very obvious way. They permeate every teaching and every aspect that the Buddha ever talked about. So when we talk about generosity, when we talk about ethics, they actually have a lot to do with emptiness. It's not obvious at first, but the more one goes into this, the more one actually sees it's all kind of different strands, different facets of one teaching. Why is that? When I practise generosity, when I care about my ethics, something is getting unbound. We could say the tendency of the mind and the heart to grip something, to bind something -- me, worrying about me, concerned about me, and putting that first -- starts to get unbound. And that starts to have an effect. We can go very deep into emptiness through generosity, and also through caring about ethics.

We start to see something: that we build, we shape the world that we live in. We're going to talk a lot about this. I'll just say a tiny bit tonight. That actually ends up being part of the real core of what the emptiness message is: the world that we experience, the world that we perceive, that we feel to be what we naturally exist in, that's actually shaped by the heart and the qualities in the heart. And that's why generosity and ethics and all the rest of those teachings actually have a lot to do with emptiness.

That's actually all I'm going to talk about emptiness, per se, tonight. What I really want to talk about tonight is how to relate to this retreat and how to relate to these teachings, just a little bit, and it's something we'll revisit. So I'm kind of wondering how you're feeling, how you're feeling tonight. Maybe you're just tired, and I know some have had a very long way to get here -- coming from California, etc. So you might be feeling tired. I hope if you're tired you can find some energy, because I feel like I have quite a lot I want to communicate. So I hope some energy can be roused. But other than just tired, if you are tired, sometimes people are really excited. There's something about these teachings, and they actually feel, and people have said to me, "I feel excited. I'm really looking forward." I love it when people feel excited about practice. I really enjoy that, and I think it's important that we do feel excited about the practice at times.

But equally, there might be -- and I would expect it -- some ambivalence. Some people feel maybe daunted -- maybe by the length of the retreat; maybe by the theme. And so this is a little bit what I want to go into. So tonight I want to talk about certainly some information and general stuff, but also about this relationship with the whole retreat. So what I'm saying tonight -- sometimes opening talks, you know, people are tired, and we just sort of say "hi," and kind of set a certain tone, and then "see you tomorrow, good night." So I'm hoping that what I say tonight you will remember, because it might not feel that important right now. Some people are doing this retreat for the second time. They did it last year. And they will recognize a lot of what I'm talking about, and actually it's quite important. So I hope that you can remember this over the retreat, which is four weeks, which is quite a long time to try and remember it. I'm actually not expecting you to remember it, but [laughs] saying it's quite important.

[8:03] So being on retreat is a challenge, and I'm sure many of you know that. It's challenging in different ways. This retreat has its own particular challenges as well as the usual challenges. It's actually quite challenging to teach. It's a very challenging retreat to teach. Part of what's challenging is that there's an enormous amount that we're communicating. It's going to feel like really a lot of material and a lot of possible approaches offered. There's a reason for that. I'm sure there are other ways to go about this, but this is what we've chosen. It's because everyone in here is different, and everyone in here has different practice backgrounds, and different histories, and different personalities, and different inclinations, etc. So everyone in here will probably be approaching this whole area quite differently. The idea is to kind of offer loads, and people find different bits to nibble on, and to follow different strands. I think at the beginning last year, I said it's a bit like a giant pizza, and it's in the room, and people will be starting to nibble from different directions. That's not a very good analogy. [laughter] Ultimately, everyone eats a whole pizza. Everyone eats the whole pizza, ultimately, in the end.

It's impossible to communicate everything at once. In other words, we'll be moving through -- obviously the teachings have to get communicated in time, so this, and then that, and then this, and then that. It may be that the order that the teachings get presented in is exactly the order that follows, and exactly at the right time that you feel it progresses exactly with your internal process. Hallelujah if it is. But it's probably not going to be that. It's probably going to feel like you're storing some stuff, and just leaving some stuff, and following other threads, etc. And that's all really, really fine. It's completely fine. Eventually, it will all fit together for you. And as I said, it's impossible to say it all at once. Sometimes one wishes that one can kind of say everything at once, and actually repeat this opening talk every day, but obviously it's impossible.

So did everyone get the message about the notebooks? I see lots of notebooks. Did everyone get that? Yeah? So this really isn't a study retreat. If study isn't your thing, don't be nervous. It's really not a study retreat, but there's, as I said, an enormous amount of teachings offered, an enormous amount of approaches, things to reflect on, subtleties, etc. And really that's what we want to do, John and I, is communicate something, give you something of the fullness of these teachings, the subtlety, the depth -- give you all of that, and the precision. There's a lot of real precision here, as well, rather than kind of having a practice that might be a little vague. So it's sometimes sad when people are left with a bit of a vague sense of what to do or how to go about practice. What we want is to really give you the know-how, how to practise in this area, and really practise well, and really know how to practise well. That's my hope.

So sometimes I think it would be better if this retreat was four months long, or actually four years long. There's a ton here. And it's okay. It's really okay. No one is going to get to all of what's being offered in four weeks. Well, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would be very, very unlikely that anyone would get to all of it. Rather, what I'm hoping, as I sort of alluded to before, is that in everything that's offered, in the practices and approaches that are offered, each person finds one or two or maybe three approaches that work for you individually, and then you follow that. You follow strands, avenues of practice, and you develop that. They're going to be different for different people. So maybe one, or maybe a couple. But the key thing is finding what works, and then developing that, and taking it deeper, and seeing where it goes, rather than trying to do everything. But we do want to give, as I said, some sense of the width of the possible approaches, and where we're heading with all this, where all these teachings on emptiness are going -- some sense of that.

So again, what I really hope for, what I really wish to communicate and to offer and to give, is that you, on this retreat, learn new ways, new approaches, something that you haven't been able to do before -- that you learn how to do that; that you acquire a new skill, a new art, a new tool in meditation that works for you. And by 'working' for you, I mean you really sense that you can feel the freedom coming out of it. You feel, "I have some sense of how to do this, and I know that when I do it, I can actually feel the freedom." That's what we would wish for. So it's finding what works, experimenting for yourself.

I've seen many, many times, over the years of teaching, there are people grappling, feeling like nothing is working, nothing is working, and eventually finding something, and being surprised with what comes with that. So I sometimes see meditation as a kind of art. It's an art and a craft, and we develop skills, we develop that art, and we really can do that. Partly what I want to communicate tonight is that really that is possible. You can do that. We can do that. So sometimes, as I said, it will feel a little bit daunting, or "I don't understand," or overwhelming, but we really can do this. I know it. Everyone can pick up something, find something that works here.

One of the sad things for me teaching sometimes is that -- I don't know proportions, but sometimes it seems to me that the majority of meditators actually grossly underestimate what they are personally capable of, what's actually possible for them. And because of that, they don't actually venture out and experiment with things. They don't even try to play and experiment with things. They just feel like, "I couldn't possibly do that." I have a real sense that it's a matter of finding one's way of working, as I said. Much, much more is possible for us as meditators than we tend to think -- much, much more.

[15:20] On this retreat -- it's only open to experienced meditators -- we're kind of presupposing a little bit that you are familiar with basic sort of mindfulness practice, and what it means to be mindful, what it means to pay attention to your experience and the different aspects and dimensions of your experience. We're kind of presupposing that, and presupposing that you feel able to be with your experience in that direct, mindful way, and open to it, and work with it like that. So that's a kind of presupposition. However, being realistic, it's true to say that maybe most people need more practice with that. You know, just that practice sounds simple, but as many of you know, it actually takes quite a while to really absorb that into one's meditative life, and really feel like, "I really feel comfortable knowing how to do that. I really feel comfortable with that sort of basic mindfulness and openness and ability to be with." For most people it takes years. It takes years to develop the capacity to do that and to feel really comfortable doing that.

So, though we are kind of presupposing it, it's something that we can still talk about. It's very much something that we can talk about, and sometimes we will talk just in those terms. And you can bring that level of things to interviews, and please do. But I guess what I'm asking is: don't just do that. Please, please, please, don't just do that. If you're familiar with just being mindful of your experience, don't just do that. And don't assume, as I was saying, that emptiness meditations are all difficult. They're not all difficult. Some of them may be very subtle. So you might have a kind of normal practice of just opening to things and being with things. It's fine sometimes. But see if you can really add to that, and build on that, and go beyond that.

So to do that, to learn new practices, to open into realms of practice that we're not familiar with, for me, takes playing with. It's kind of a willingness to play with our practice, like a child playing with toys, and actually have fun with it, and experiment, and allow ourselves to be flexible that way. And then finding what works and consolidating that -- actually really absorbing that and making it more solid. You'll get lots of different opinions on this, but I really feel that it's highly, highly unlikely that someone 'just being with' their experience would stumble on the full depth and range and potency of the teachings on emptiness. It's an opinion, but I guess I hold that opinion, that it's unlikely that just being with the experience would open up that whole depth. It seems to me that we actually need to be a bit more directive in the practice, a bit more experimental, a bit more playing, listen to teachings, etc., and develop, as I said, specific approaches. So finding what works, playing, really playing with it, and then repeating, repeating that, following that avenue, taking it deeper, burrowing with that and seeing where it goes.

As I said before, every retreat (not for everyone, but for a lot of people) brings up all the usual retreat difficulties -- just stuff, whether it's about sleep, or about your work period job, or about where we sit, or the temperature of the room, or something about your shoes, or whatever it is. It's just normal stuff of retreat life. And again, I'm really hoping that you can remember all this for the whole four weeks, but I'm really hoping that what we're talking about in terms of formal practice actually gets transferred to all that other stuff, in terms of as we move around. Can I bring the same contemplations of emptiness, the same ways of looking, the same kind of ways of seeing things to all that difficulty too?

Okay. I think I mentioned before, but some people, and some people in this room, I'm sure, the idea of coming on a four-week retreat on emptiness, or even just the word 'emptiness,' it brings a welling up of joy and excitement and a kind of "yippee!" inside. Some people, that's what's there for them. They're probably in the minority, if that's the case. Probably in the minority. Most people have some ambivalence in relationship to teachings on emptiness, some degree of ambivalence. You may even be aware of some inside of you right now, or if you're not, it probably will come up at some point in the retreat. I can think, certainly from last year, and just over the years teaching this stuff, usually it's challenging, and it usually rocks the boat either a little bit or quite a lot. Even last year, people get quite angry. Some people get quite angry -- angry at me, angry at John, angry at Gaia House, angry at the teachings, angry at the Buddha. [laughter] It's not that uncommon. Another very common reaction is fear, fear around the teachings of emptiness, and fear around the experience of emptiness, and fear around the whole thing. And again, some people don't approach the teacher, or approach a certain amount and then go away because of that fear. There are different flavours of the fear, etc. Very, very common. Not 100 per cent, but for most people, it will bring up some degree of fear, in some way or another, at some point.

I don't know if this will help, but there's nothing to fear. There's really nothing to fear. We'll talk more about this, I'm sure, in the interactions, and the talks, and the questions and answers and things. But there's really nothing to fear. It's actually moving in the opposite direction of fear and everything that goes with fear. But for most people, these teachings on emptiness, and moving in the practice of emptiness, and getting deeper is actually quite a gradual process, and not necessarily linear. And even the -- what could we say? -- the meditative experiences of emptiness, to whatever degree (a little bit, a lot, whatever), are kind of an acquired taste for most people. We're not quite sure, and we're just getting used to something that's a bit unfamiliar. All of that's very, very normal.

I could be wrong, but certainly if last year or other occasions and situations where I've taught this kind of thing (which is quite a lot) ... it could be that at times you feel very frustrated with the teachings, with everything. They're difficult to understand. I'll start probably tomorrow -- there's something about emptiness that's not difficult to understand at all, actually. It's so obvious, at one level, or levels of emptiness are so obvious. They're so kind of commonsensical. We're going to start there. And there are levels that are so counterintuitive and so mind-blowing and mind-boggling, and we've got all of that. They're difficult-to-understand teachings. To me, it takes time. It takes patience. And there can be at times some frustration. There can be at times some agitation with all of this. We hear something, and we wrestle, and we don't understand, or we don't like how it sounds, and the heart gets agitated. I, for one, have and I still do wrestle with different -- in the past, and wrestling with these teachings, and feeling agitated by them. And that's all, in a way, quite normal, and not necessarily a bad thing. It's part of the deepening process. It's part of the opening process.

This is going to sound funny, but I kind of feel like I would like to ask you to really keep an open mind, to try and keep that through four weeks. That sounds like a very funny thing to ask on retreat, because obviously we mostly show up on retreat with a very open mind. But again, experience from last year, etc., shows that, in different ways, we can struggle with a lot of what's being offered, and a lot of the teachings, and a lot of the concepts, and even the practice. So really asking to just keep checking the openness of the mind, the openness of the heart.

Some of the teachings and approaches -- some; I'm not sure what percentage, but some -- will be very non-conceptual, very sort of direct and simple. And some will be actually very conceptual. They will involve a lot of the thinking mind, the rational mind going into things and using the intellectual capacity to sort of address these whole questions. They're part of what's being offered. Different people will pick up different things. Different people will be helped by different approaches. So again, that's something that may be challenging at different times, but I hope that's okay, and it feels important.

So open-mindedness, and, I also feel, humility. Again, that sounds like a funny thing to be bringing up at the beginning of a retreat, or asking you for. I feel, for many years, this has been a real central avenue of my practice, these teachings on emptiness and the whole area of emptiness, and I feel very, very humble still around all the teachings. You know, there's stuff that I still feel I don't really understand it; I'm not sure. But it's a sense of just keeping that sense [of humility]. As I said, a lot of the teachings are counterintuitive. The teachings of emptiness actually counter our general sense and intuition of reality. It's actually in the opposite direction of that. So to me, it takes humility. Sometimes, as I said, very difficult to understand, and there are levels and depths. Even if we feel like, "Oh, I understand that. I understand that. It keeps going. Great, great, great," haven't reached the end yet. Haven't reached the end. I don't know. It keeps going. It seems to just keep going. For myself, it seems to just keep going. And to me, there's something beautiful about the necessity of humility there.

There's a teacher, Āryadeva. We'll talk about him. He's a very important teacher, four or five hundred years after the Buddha. He's talking about this open-mindedness:

Those with little merit do not even entertain questions regarding this Dharma [these teachings of emptiness].^[2]

They don't even entertain questions about it. It's a closed door.

Even entertaining a question about it tears saṃsāra to shreds.

Then he says,

When one sees reality [in other words, emptiness] one achieves a supreme abode.

But this is the important bit:

Even by seeing the slightest bit, one is better off.

It's a very gradual teaching here. There's a spectrum.

Therefore the wise should always cultivate such wisdom in contemplating phenomena.

A lot of this, or some of this, some of what's being offered, will be like planting seeds. In other words, you will feel the fruit of a lot of it in these four weeks. I really hope that. And some, it may be that seeds sprout a couple of weeks later. It may be years later. It may be something you've completely forgotten about, but it will manifest later.

Okay. On this retreat, most of what we're talking about -- not all, but mostly what we're talking about is emptiness. And it's possible that, at times, for some people, there's the danger of it feeling a little dry. It shouldn't be, okay? It really shouldn't be. And what I'm kind of asking you is for you a little bit to take care of the juiciness of the retreat, to take care of your heart here. Do you understand what I mean by that? Like keeping it moist, keeping your heart connected and open. I'll explain a little bit.

In terms of the teachings, we're mostly talking about emptiness. Some of it's conceptual at times. There may not feel like much entertainment. Sometimes on retreat it feels like, well, the Dharma talk in the evening is the entertainment bit, and you get to hear some stories and da-da-da. I don't know about John, but for my part, there are not a lot of stories about emptiness. [laughs] Emptiness is actually, in a way, the opposite of stories. It's letting go of stories. Sometimes people like the stories. We like the stories because it's kind of entertaining. However, I still hope that it's entertaining in different ways.

So about the heart: I feel very, very clear that going into emptiness brings love. It brings love. There's absolute clarity about that. The deeper I go into emptiness, the more love it opens up, and actually, the more I go into love, mettā, compassion, etc., the more emptiness it opens up. They feed each other. Now, for some people that's obvious. But actually, for a lot of people, [they're] kind of suspicious that they're actually moving in different directions. In other words, "Emptiness does not bring love. It might even have nothing to do with love, or even make me disconnected," etc. We'll talk about this more, but for a lot of people, emptiness may have suggestions of nihilism, and with that is a sense of coldness, meaninglessness, lovelessness. Some people will struggle to see the connection and see the opening of love from emptiness. Others, it will be obvious; some will struggle. And to understand that.

So what I would ask is that everyone, at least once a day, does a mettā practice, okay? Meaning loving-kindness practice. And if you're not clear about that, we can talk about that in interviews, certainly. But somehow to keep the heart juicy. You may not feel like you need this, and I hope you don't. But still I feel like it's a really good thing.

Sometimes, as I said, with the teachings being a little challenging, and sometimes might feel a little heady, it's really important to take care of the heart, and soften the atmosphere, soften the inner climate a little bit. So mettā is one of the ways of doing that. Another important factor is appreciation and gratitude. This is important for anyone on retreat. Are we nourishing the qualities in the heart of appreciation and gratitude? To me, there's an enormous amount to appreciate here, here at Gaia House, here on this retreat, being here, and there's an enormous amount to feel grateful for. It may be that there's gratitude for all the work that went into this retreat, all the coordinators working. An enormous amount of work goes into this retreat, and all retreats, actually, in setting it up.

But again, can you remember this over four weeks? I'll probably have to say it again. But to nourish appreciation and to nourish gratitude. The depth of our practice rests on our ability to nourish appreciation and gratitude. Again, it's not always obvious. It's not always obvious that my calm, my concentration, my insight actually rest on me taking care of the heart in that way. For me, these teachings and this retreat, it's for the sake of compassion. It's coming from compassion, and it's for compassion. It's dealing with human suffering, human dis-ease, and trying to find ways to go deeper in freeing us in relationship to that. There's no other reason for the retreat and for these teachings apart from that. There's no other reason. Compassion is the only reason.

So emptiness brings freedom as well. The more we go into emptiness, the more freedom. That's its purpose. It's bringing freedom to consciousness, to the heart, as well as love, like I said. But 'freedom,' to me, means quite a lot. It's a big word. Freedom from my personal suffering, but also freedom to love. As I become, as we become freer, it should bring with it the freedom to love. It should be that the natural expression of our freedom is love, is care, is concern. That's the natural expression of letting go, to some degree, of 'me first' and 'mine first,' and prioritizing 'me' and 'mine' first. That's where these teachings of emptiness are going. It's less about 'me' and 'my,' and that opens something up. And what it allows is love. So that's an expression of freedom.

I see, in a strange way, for myself, two reasons for this retreat: that you are free personally, and that, somehow, from this, manifests something in the world. I hope that's not too much for me to say, but in a way, when I teach, that's what I'm hoping for. I care about your freedom, and I care that something happens in you, because the freedom goes so deep that it opens something, and the relationship with life is different, and it's not 'me first.' That's where this is heading. This is part of the seeds of this retreat. I hope that's okay to say, but I see it that way. I see it like something is hopefully happening here that's not just about 'me,' that its tentacles reach out into the world. To me, that feels very, very important.

So I decided something, and this is partly based on last year. I feel that I would like us to remember that all the time in here, what I just said. I feel that that's important. I feel that it's important for all of us, whether I'm talking, whether John's talking, whether you're just meditating quietly, whatever's going on when you're in here, on this retreat, that we really have a sense of it as being certainly for the sake of our freedom, of course, but that we're doing this in the service of everything that might flow out in love. It's for the sake of all sentient beings. Sometimes, when it gets heady, etc., to remember that, to have that sense of the heart connecting with what we're doing here. It's opening beyond my self.

So I decided -- and again, I hope this is okay, and I'm kind of improvising it -- we've got this candle, and it will stay up here. I'm making this up as I go along. It will stay up here, and it's going to be burning most of the time. We can take turns in lighting it. So let's say someone lights it at 6:45, the first sitting in the morning, and someone lights it at 9:30. Now, if I'm coming in, or John's coming in at 9:30 for teachings, we'll light it. It's fine. And again at 7:30. So that might be a bit weird, and you might be blowing it out to light it again. But two things: one is that it's there, okay? It's there as a reminder in terms of its burning. But also, when a person lights it, take a few moments, and gather the sense of heartfulness, to really see, put what you're doing here in context, in the context of widening the heart beyond me and mine. So if it feels dry sometimes, if it feels heavy sometimes, if it feels frustrating sometimes, open the eyes. I mean, you've got Tārā here as well, a bodhisattva of compassion. Open the eyes and see that candle burning. And take as long as you want, actually, when a person lights it. You might want to kneel. You might want to bow. You might want to do nothing. But take the moment internally for the heart to connect -- maybe a few seconds, maybe a few minutes, maybe as long as you need. To me, and especially based on last year, it feels important. And actually, the more I practise and the more I teach, the more important it feels to me in the context.

Eventually this relationship between emptiness and love becomes completely obvious. It's completely obvious. Just the word emptiness, it's related to love. And eventually that's obvious for everyone. The heart is touched deeply in that way. It knows the resonance, the sympathetic resonance, the togetherness of emptiness and love.

[38:40 -- transcriber's note: the remainder of this talk is practical retreat information] Okay. A little bit more. I know it's long. Just practical stuff. So we have a schedule. I don't know if it's up already. It's up already? Okay. Did all the bell ringers get signed up and everything? Yeah? Good. In the sittings, as you know, John and I are going to be here sometimes, and other times not. What happens is there's going to appear a clock in here, which can be turned round and face you guys, or face me or John if we're talking. And someone, at the beginning of a sitting, needs to kind of take the bell from up here and be responsible for timing that sitting. Everyone else can just relax. So at the end of the sitting, you just ring the bell, and people know. Take turns doing that, and if you just see that no one's taken the bell, take the bell and do it.

We're starting with this schedule, and it doesn't have the teaching times in it. Tonight, hopefully, I will put up the teaching schedule for the next few days, and that will fit around or into this schedule, so you're kind of looking at two things there. After a week or so, we will probably -- but I'll see how you guys feel -- open up the schedule, and it will be much more free: sit as long as you want, come and go, if you want to sit longer, walk longer, whatever, as naturally people's rhythm tends to deepen. But we'll see what feels appropriate.

Interviews: we ask that you come twice a week for interviews, once with John and once with myself. So you're doubling up like that. And I will post the interview schedule much later tonight, and I'll put even some spaces for tomorrow, in case anyone feels like they need to check in. And then just choose a couple of times a week, as I said, once with me, once with John, that feels like it suits you, and do that, okay? And obviously, if you're needing an extra meeting, let one of us know.

Yeah, the interviews are funny. Sometimes I realize people regard interviews as you just go to interviews when there's a problem, and you're struggling with something, or there's a difficulty. An interview is much more than that. Certainly difficulties, confusions, problems, questions, etc., but they're really also an opportunity to refine these practices. You say, "This is going great." Okay, that's wonderful. Let's take it a little bit further. So to regard it in that way as well, and bring everything possible there, to refine, to stretch, to deepen the practice.

So it looks quite spacious now, but as you can see, it's quite cosy in here, and again, attitude is so important. Most of what I'm saying tonight is about attitude. Can we have an attitude together of really supporting each other? And really, again, it's not just about me. That's part of the candle thing. So when I come in here, I'm thinking about my practice. I'm also thinking about supporting the others, that part of my very purpose for being here is to support everyone else. And can I actually reconnect, and reconnect, and reconnect with that attitude? So it's quite intimate, but it feels very different if we have that attitude of genuinely connecting with a sense of supporting each other.

Gavin spoke about silence? Yeah? Most of you will be very familiar with silence as a sort of environment of practice. It's really, really important. So to really give yourselves to that. Did Gavin say anything about mobile phones? Yeah? So please, please, please, just turn them off, or give them to the coordinators or something, unless there's something really, really important -- it's an emergency or something -- and then, please, to go off the grounds to use it. Sometimes we keep it on and use it as a clock, or we text because texting is silent. To me, all retreats are precious, and this chance of a four-week retreat, and so dedicated, and with such a sort of specific depth being offered on emptiness, it's really precious, and it would be a shame to just keep the mobile phone on and have something pulling us out of the depth of possibility here.

Again, I'm not sure if this is repeat: technically, group retreatants are not supposed to use the library. And I would actually say that for this retreat too: let go of reading, and let go of the library for now. There will be a chance at the end. It's just, as I said, we offer so much. You will probably feel like there are too many teachings being offered, quite a lot to handle, and any more would just be too much. So you probably won't need to go in the library.

Okay. And in that, just kind of surrender for now to the schedule, and to being here, and the simplicity of being here. There's a lot in that quality of surrender. It's like, what might come? What might open because there's surrender there?

Couple of last things. If you feel like you're really here, like you've been here for a while, and you really sense you're at Gaia House, great. You might not. Especially if you arrived today, you might not feel like you're fully arrived. So take a little time tonight, and really land here, and feel the body here, and feel yourself at Gaia House. You can wander around, and just feel the silence. If there's any business that you need to deal with tonight, make that call tonight. There's a payphone outside the Hermitage Wing. It's signposted. And kind of just be ready to surrender fully.

I also really think being on retreat is kind of an art, and part of arriving and kind of getting in the mood and the mode is connecting with our aspirations. Everyone here has aspirations. Everyone here has something that they, in a way, long for and desire for, and wouldn't be here otherwise. It's very important to be connected with that. It's very important to feel that in the heart, and be clear, sense that movement. So again, if you want to, as part of the heart -- not just the body, but the heart -- arriving here, take a little time tonight to really connect with your sense of aspiration and what you desire for being here, for your practice, for your life -- including what we've talked about, what they call in the teachings bodhicitta, this sense of the practice not just being for me. That's part of the aspirations, too.

We have aspirations. We have intentions. They might feel very strong, and half an hour later, where have they gone? They're impermanent. That's the nature of them. It's the nature of the movement of intention. "It was so strong. I felt such an upsurge of emotion and devotion," etc., "and then the next thing, I'm just upset because -- I don't know -- someone jumped me in the lunch queue" or something. Or it just slips. It hasn't gone anywhere particularly; it just slipped. The intentionality very easily goes to places that aren't really even that important to us: we just want to be comfortable. We just want things to be convenient. We want to feel some security. All of this is very, very normal, very, very human. We just want some sense pleasure. How many times a day does this happen? It happens many, many times a day. We get moved -- our intentionality slips out of its depths into things that are actually not so important to us deeply, more superficial. It's normal. It's human. The thing is, that's okay, but really to be aware of it. So again, part of the art of being on retreat is really to be aware of where the intentionality is at different times, where it's slipped to. What is it that I'm wanting right now? What is it that I'm trying to get right now? What is it that I'm aligning myself with? And just to be aware of that, and then reconnect and nourish, nourish what we really, really care about, and support what we really, really care about -- those intentions.

Okay. Last piece. Gavin talked about the precepts, right? Good. So just very briefly: sometimes people hear about emptiness, and they think, "Oh, it will lead to a kind of not caring in terms of how we are." Absolutely not. It has to do with the love that I talked about before. It doesn't imply ethical sort of relativity. It doesn't imply that. It implies really caring, actually more and more. So these precepts that we keep together that Gavin went through, again, they're part of supporting each other. They're part of loving, respecting each other, and communicating that through how we are with each other. When we all collectively commit to these precepts with that motivation -- to love, to respect, to support each other -- something happens that I think is very, very beautiful, and very, very precious: an atmosphere, an environment of trust begins to open out and pervade. It becomes an environment here at Gaia House where people really feel that they can trust, and people feel that they can open, they can let the guard down, and the heart doesn't have to be so protected. And to me, in the world, that's very, very precious. We really have a sense that we're offering that to ourselves and to each other through the precepts.