Transcription
So the Buddha, his teaching is concerned almost exclusively, of course, with the release of dukkha. Dukkha is usually translated as 'suffering.' We could say release of unnecessary suffering. That's what the teachings are concerned with. We sense that some degree of the suffering we experience in life is actually unnecessary, and the Buddha's teaching is saying it's possible to suffer less, it's possible to suffer a lot less. The proportion of our suffering that's unnecessary, I would say, turns out to be much, much larger than we might initially realize. And so we may have a sense of this even as non-meditators, but I think, in a way, going deeper into meditation, one of the things we begin to realize more clearly is that we participate in suffering. We build suffering. The mind builds suffering, somehow, in different ways, in the ways that it sees existence and this moment and experience, and the ways that it relates to it. It's responsible for building suffering.
So one of the questions is, how does it do that? Part of insight meditation is actually uncovering how the mind does that, how the mind, how the heart does that. But practice involves realizing that happens, realizing how it happens, and then, through understanding how it happens, actually learning to do it less and less and less. So learning to decrease, to drain away this unnecessary suffering to a larger and larger extent. We do that in the moment, right now, but as we do that more and more, because part of that process is understanding, our understanding grows and grows and moves us towards liberation. We talk about liberating the moment, but we can also talk about understanding, deepening and ripening to a point -- or points, you could say -- along the journey of more lasting liberation.
So we think about our practice, we think about basic mindfulness or bare attention, bringing that simplicity of awareness to experience. And when we do that, as most of you will know from your years of practice, when we do that the encouragement is actually to get underneath the story, and the simplicity of attention, the direct attention to experience, actually through going underneath the story, the story tends to decrease, and to a certain degree, the building of the suffering -- which is often dependent on the story or wrapped up in the story, the narrative, the way I unskilfully bring that in in connection with what's going on -- that building also decreases, and unhelpful concepts, etc., views, opinions. All that decreases. So just with mindfulness, and just with bare attention, just with a simple presence in the moment, there is some letting go of suffering to some degree.
And we talked about also how in samādhi practice we're also not feeding the sense of self. We're not kind of building that sense of self. As the samādhi goes deeper, the self gets quiet. We're not building a sense of world. It's a very, very significant fact of samādhi practice. And then, again, I've said it before, but to me it feels so important: what we're doing in practice, a big part of insight meditation to me is practising ways of seeing, ways of looking that bring freedom and letting go. So these three characteristics we did this morning, we introduced this morning, that's what they are. They're ways of looking, ways of seeing, ways of relating to experience that bring letting go.
It's funny because even in the Dharma world it's almost like not everyone agrees with that, I don't think, and it seems as if sometimes people interpret the teachings on the three characteristics, and it might sound like that -- it's like, three characteristics of all conditioned phenomena: everything's suffering, nothing lasts, and you've got no self. It sounds like, "Pff." [laughter] And as if the teaching is, "That's the deal. Get used to it. Come on. You can do it. Get used to it." I don't -- that's not how I interpret this teaching of the three characteristics at all. It's a meditative tool. They're meditative avenues to joy and freedom. It's not like holding some philosophy about existence or something. We're learning meditative ways of looking. And the outcome, generally speaking, is joy and freedom.
So not, as sometimes you hear, and even in some texts -- not in the suttas, but in commentaries -- that the practice of the three characteristics leads to anxiety, leads to terror, disgust, depression, to a dark night of the soul, etc. On the whole -- I mean, it might be that that comes up, and there are reasons why that would come up; I'll go into that. Basically, it's usually that aversion has crept in the back door. If aversion creeps in the back door, it will lead to those things. I'll revisit that. Also if I expect it to lead to those things, it will probably lead to those things. If I expect it to lead to fear and terror, etc., it will probably lead to that.
So in this way of conceiving of insight meditation, we're practising ways of seeing that lead to letting go and freedom. Of course, when there's letting go, there is freedom, and there is joy. It comes. Peace comes. It all comes. So again, this is review -- we talked about different modes of insight meditation. One is just hanging out, hanging out and insight arising. We talked about the result of insight, just a result of mindfulness, insight pops up. It's almost like, "Ah, I see. Things are impermanent." It feels like an insight. "Then I realized things were impermanent. I realized it was changing." It's like insight as result. Great. Wonderful. But if we switch at that point to the second mode of insight, and actually let's take that result and use it as the basis of moving onwards. So now I take this result, this realization -- things are impermanent -- and I start using it as a way of looking to consolidate that insight and take it deeper and deeper, and really impress it on the being, and see where it takes consciousness, see where it takes my understanding.
Eventually that will then bring new results. There's two things happening there. One is I'm consolidating an insight that otherwise might just drift away and not have any impact on my heart, and the other thing is I'm, so to speak, digging a tunnel towards the light, towards freedom. This insight that I'm using again and again will eventually evolve into deeper insights, more significant, more freeing insights.
So let's review what we did this morning. Three characteristics, but a few different ways of going about them. (1) So the first one, impermanence. Anicca is the Pali word. And in this case we're focusing -- that's what we're interested in. We're interested in change, as I said this morning. That's the primary thing that we're tuning into. The primary facet of experience is changing nature. I'm more interested in that when I'm doing this contemplation than anything else. Change, change, change. That's what I'm tuning into.
(2) The second one, dukkha, the second characteristic, dukkha in Pali. This we split up into -- actually I'm going to split it into three; this morning I split it into two. (2.1) In a way, the first characteristic of impermanence leads very naturally to the second characteristic. If things are impermanent, then we could say they're unsatisfactory in the sense that they can't give me a sense of lasting satisfaction because they're impermanent. So seeing the impermanence leads, in some ways, very naturally to a sense of the dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of things, and seeing that, rather than bringing depression, etc., should bring a letting go. If something's unsatisfactory, just let it go. I shouldn't have to really think about that. Also when things are impermanent -- well, I let go. When things are unsatisfactory, I let go. So that's one way of going about the dukkha, is actually via the impermanence.
(2.2) Second way, and the two ways we touched on this morning, are beginning to get sensitive, to sense into, the relationship with an experience or with a phenomenon. And begin to notice the presence of grasping, trying to hold onto something or get something, and aversion. Sense that relationship when it's there and relax it. See if it's possible to relax that relationship, relax the aversion, relax the craving. And doing this over and over and over, making that the modus operandi, the way -- that's what you're doing in the meditation. Obviously it takes mindfulness to do that, but that's what we're doing, more than trying to be present or trying to be. That's what we're doing: sensing the relationship, relaxing, sensing the relationship, relaxing it.
(2.3) Third way of going about the second characteristic of dukkha is -- and I spoke about it this morning -- actually moving into a mode, seeing if one can kind of soften into a mode or open into a mode of awareness or being that's actually letting be, letting be. Letting things be, letting experience be, letting phenomena be. And we say 'letting go,' but sometimes 'letting be' is a better expression. Just letting it be, and if it's unpleasant, let it be. If it's pleasant, let it be. And if it's neither, let it be. We could also say what we're doing then is emphasizing allowing, allowing experience to be however it is. And the emphasis is on allowing, again, rather than mindfulness.
(3) Third characteristic, anattā in Pali. Attā is self. Anattā is a negation, not-self. In this mode, we are learning or practising a way of looking at experience, at phenomena as they unfold, and learning to regard them as 'not me, not mine.' The default way of seeing, the default human way of seeing experience is as 'me and mine, me and mine.' Goes on even without us realizing it -- me, mine, me, mine, me, mine. And so we look at things, are aware of phenomena, and 'not me, not mine, not-self.' Learning to disidentify. So all of these, I'm going to go into much more detail tonight; it's just to sum up.
So we're emphasizing, we're prioritizing those particular lenses. They're like lenses for looking at experience. I have a lens of impermanence and several lenses of dukkha and a lens of anattā. You understand? You're looking at experience that way, rather than as would usually be the case if you're just practising mindfulness or insight meditation mode number one, which would be usually emphasizing just being aware or the precision of noticing, the texture of experience or exactly what's going on, etc. Okay? So slightly different.
Now, as I said this morning, but just to -- I really want to make sure all this is clear. Really talking in detail about these practices tonight. The attention has a capacity, human attention has a capacity to focus itself and work quite microscopically. So I have a body sensation, for example, and I can really zero in on that and kind of put it under a microscope, in fact, and look at the microscopic change. I can hone in the attention to something. And the attention also has a mode where it opens out and can actually be quite spacious. Again, like everything else, there's a spectrum. I can work spaciously or microscopically. Both are important, and both are useful.
[14:11] It's also possible with these practices to stay with one experience. So let's say I might have a pain in my knee or something going on, and I stay right with that experience, and I contemplate it. I find my way in to looking at it in that particular way, and I stay right there with that phenomenon, that object, that experience. I can also choose to stay with one sense door. So I might, for instance, stay just with listening, and the totality of listening, and contemplating, let's say, impermanence in relationship to listening. Or I might stay just with body sensations. We were doing a lot of that this morning. So I can choose a sense door and stay with the totality of that sense door.
As the sense of collectedness and steadiness settles, it's actually possible to open up to the totality of our experience: body, mind, all six senses (mind is a sixth sense in the Dharma) at once. But because there's a steadiness, the consciousness is able to open out and feel like it's steady taking in everything. Does that make sense, totality? [yogi in background: At the same time?] Yes, everything -- it's almost like not really differentiating between listening, sounds, and body sensations. It's just all happening, all bubbling away, and it's all impermanent, or it's all stuff in relation to which to let go in our relationship, etc., or it's all just not-self, etc.
So, and again, review again, we talked about balancing samādhi or mettā and insight, 50/50, and really getting a sense of that. I think Nick asked this question -- it doesn't matter about order. I could start a session with samādhi and then go to insight. Could start with the insight and go to samādhi. It really doesn't matter. I could take a whole session of one and a whole session of the other. Doesn't matter at all. I tend to think, actually, of samādhi and insight being lifetime practices, and I want to balance them over a lifetime. Over a lifetime I just want to kind of feel like they're balanced. And you may want to have that attitude to this four weeks, just balancing the samādhi and insight, and feeling free to move between the two in that way.
And again, review from the samādhi talk, I think: sometimes there are blocks, blocks in the body, in the energetic body, and of course now you have a range of practices -- three, four ways to go about looking at those blocks; in other words, the way you relate to those blocks in the body and contemplating them via these lenses of the three characteristics. And when we do that, what should happen is that insight mode actually begins to bring some ease in relationship to what's going on, or open the block, or allow some samādhi. And at that point, if you want, you can go into more of a samādhi mode. You filter out, in a way, the samādhi factors from what's going on.
So with these practices, it's really important to make sure that we're practising with the whole range of our experience. The whole range in terms of difficult experience certainly, so as I just said, when there are blocks, but also when we don't feel good. And really check -- this is where, you know, when the back is against the wall, when we're grumbling, when there's struggling with something, that's when these insight practices, that's when we really want to get these tools out and start applying them, put these lenses on, because that's what's going to help us.
So especially when there's a difficulty, when I don't feel good, when I'm sad, when I'm tired, when I'm angry, when there's pain in the body, when there's a block in the energetic body, when I'm depressed or whatever, when the mind is scattered even, funnily enough. Don't assume you need an enormous amount of samādhi to do these practices. You actually don't. They will bring samādhi. If there's scatteredness in the mind, it can actually help to feel into how that feels in the body and pay attention to that and look at that with these lenses on and see what happens. So really to practise on those difficulties, really take difficulties as opportunities and not as blocks and things that stop us practising. Difficulties as an opportunity. Really, really important. And the three characteristics, using those lenses, should take the suffering out. To some degree, they should drain the suffering out of the experience.
We give, or generally, many times it's the case that we give too much authority to our difficulties. Too much authority to a feeling, say, of impatience. Way too much authority to fear. Way too much authority to a feeling of tiredness: "I feel tired, so I have to ..." What? Really? Maybe there are other ways of relating to it. Maybe I can see it in a different way that releases something, that releases more possibility, that releases the sense of the whole thing. Way too much authority to a sense of block, emotional or physical. Way too much authority to resistance, irritation, etc. Now, to say I give these things too much authority is not the same as judging that they're there, or judging that I should be doing it differently. It's actually just saying there's a lot more possible here than we might initially feel. And this is often partly where the practice deepens, through the difficult, through the challenges.
For instance, if we're tired, what happens to tiredness if I look at the experience of tiredness in the body, or even in the mind, and I see it through the lens of impermanence, moment-to-moment change? What happens to the experience of tiredness? What happens to the experience of tiredness if I am quite spacious with my awareness, if I open up the awareness and contemplate one of the three characteristics? Actually when there's tiredness, the mind shrinks. The space in the mind actually shrinks. If I open up the space and learn to contemplate with more space, can do something. What happens to the experience of tiredness when I let go of my aversion in relationship to it? If we really go into tiredness, it's a very, very interesting, curious phenomenon, curious aspect of human experience. Oftentimes, of course, we need to rest, but sometimes what's actually happened is that there's a small feeling of actual tiredness and a lot of aversion, and the aversion blows up the experience into a much more overwhelming sense of tiredness. We will revisit this concept. The aversion ends up being part of the tiredness.
Now, to repeat something I've said before, the three characteristics are actually just some of the tools we have. For instance, I said sadness -- well, if there's sadness, I have a number of ways to approach that, and it's not that I always want to just keep bashing away with the three characteristics. Sometimes I need to really look in terms of self, like we were talking about last night, two ways of looking, care for myself, etc., bring kindness in, hold my self in some way. So difficult experience, certainly, certainly to make sure that's included. But not just difficult experience. Also the lovely. What happens when we put these lenses on and look at the lovely through these lenses, or just the neutral? What happens then? So really pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, all of it, the totality of experience. Sometimes different personalities have tendencies to leave out different ends of that spectrum. Seeing what happens when the whole of it is looked at that way.
So sometimes a person hears about these practices, and even tries it a little bit -- and you may have felt this today -- it's like, "Well, they all kind of feel the same to me." I don't know if anyone felt that way, but -- "They all kind of feel the same." Sometimes people say that to me. It is true, you could say, to a certain extent, that they're all -- you could say they're three sides of the same triangle. You could say that, to a degree, to a level, and they're different angles on looking at the same thing. You could say that. So there's a degree of truth to that. Sometimes people say, "That's what I do anyway. I've been doing this. I've been doing it anyway," which is great. But the thing that I really, really, really want to emphasize on this retreat is to develop what we do, to develop avenues of practice which end up being avenues to freedom. So great if you already do it, great if it's working for you. But then develop it, because as I said before, this avenue, whichever works for you, unfolds. It unfolds. It's like digging a tunnel. It just goes deeper and deeper. So to have a sense of moving into, with each practice or whatever works for you, moving into more subtlety with it, more depth with it, more potential of freedom with it.
I think I said this morning or at some point, you may find that you have a favourite. And that's completely fine. It's actually appropriate. It's really appropriate. There's no should here. It's not like you should have this or ... And careful if the mind comes in with a sense of, "It should be this," or "It should be that that's a favourite." When I say favourite, I mean which of them, when you do it, when you try it, actually brings the most sense of freedom, the most sense of peace, and the most sense of letting go? That's the one that works for you. Even if it feels like it's a little bit -- which is the most? That's the avenue that works for you. I've been saying to people this morning, then don't go banging your head against, you know, a bricked up wall of some avenue that actually isn't working for you because you think you should. Use what works and follow that, and it will go deeper and deeper.
Eventually, there is a way that they all begin to -- it's almost like when the mind gets really, really humming with this, when this practice really gets humming, it's almost like phenomena arise, maybe even very quickly, maybe, and immediately we kind of see all the three characteristics at once. It's just we kind of see, even without having to label it or anything, you just see them as that and let go. It's just a sort of spontaneous letting go. You're looking at experience in that way. As it deepens it can turn into that more and more.
(1) Let's take the first one, impermanence, and fill that out in a bit more detail. We could say -- and it's an artificial distinction -- meditatively, or contemplatively, there are three sort of rates of change that we can tune into, if you like, three gears of this, a way of putting it. (1.1a) We can contemplate impermanence at the level of death, our death. I'm not going to talk a lot about that. As you know, there's a skeleton in the walking room now. But that's a really, really, I think, beautiful and lovely and powerful contemplation. So impermanence at the level of "This, this being, will come to an end. This existence will come to an end as I know it. This body will come to an end" -- a sense of that. And finding a way of contemplating that -- again, not one that leads to fear. If it's leading to that, let it go. If, and we can at times find a contemplation of death that actually brings a sense of freedom, a lightening -- really, really helpful. (1.1b) Or similarly, vast scales of universal, cosmic time, thinking about galaxies evolving and seeing our existence in relationship to that. (1.1c) Or seeing this moment [snaps fingers], think about the universe, it's 14 billion years old. It's a staggering amount of time. Modern cosmologists are guessing it's going to last about another 14 billion years. You just get a sense, bringing the mind into this moment within the context of that huge time. That's another way of going about it. What happens then to the sense of the moment? Can you get a sense of that right now? Large-scale, either death or cosmic scale.
(1.2) Medium sort of scale, in the sense of look, it's eight o'clock at night. How do you feel? What's the mood now? How was it when you got up this morning? How was it at lunchtime? Everyday sort of ebbs and flows of the normal course of the day. And just realizing, things are impermanent. If I'm in a bad mood, if I'm grumpy when I get up, hey, it's going to shift. Also brings letting go. So very valuable.
(1.3) And as we were doing this morning, moment-to-moment tuning into impermanence. Just really keeping the attention with something and noticing, moment to moment, there's change. But as I also said this morning, not to put too much pressure on what we're noticing of change, to really notice really fast change. Again, some streams of the commentaries tend to really emphasize noticing as fast change as you can, and that's really what you have to do. And it can be extremely useful, but probably more skilful to just not put too much pressure on, just notice change, moment to moment, as it appears, without any pressure, and tuning into that. It may well refine and get faster, but even if it doesn't, so what? The point is not actually getting faster and noticing faster and faster change. Oftentimes in teachings you hear that that is the point, as if you're kind of going deeper in the intensity of fastness, faster [breathing fast], and then maybe something will explode, and you'll be liberated. Maybe. Don't see it that often, to be honest. So it might get faster, it might not. It's okay. What we're interested in is the letting go, letting go.
So I might be seeing slow change. Change might be moving slowly. It might be this life, you know, death, but that it brings letting go -- that's what we're looking for, not anything else. That's the point. So again, sometimes with this teaching of very fast impermanence, you hear about (again, it's not anything the Buddha said; it's in the commentaries, or some commentaries somewhere, Abhidhamma or something) the ultimate truth of things is minute particles called kalāpas, and what we want is to see these kalāpas, these microscopic particles of experience. Certainly in teachings of emptiness, that's not the point. Even if you do see something like that, we're going beyond it. And still, the point is letting go, that these contemplations, the three characteristics, bring letting go. They're not some sense of microscopic, momentary particles being a kind of ultimate reality. All that is is, you could say, taking off some degree of a layer of conceptuality, some degree.
Okay, so impermanence, as we said, can lead to a contemplation of the unsatisfactoriness of things, and that brings letting go. It's just -- I let go, it's not going to satisfy me, just let go, I just let go. Impermanence can also be a way into anattā, to the not-self. Could say, "Well, my sense of the self, generally speaking, is of something kind of unchanging. I'm the same me as I was yesterday." You feel like the same you. But when I look inside at my experience, I actually cannot find anything that's not changing. I actually cannot find anything. So it cannot be me. And, in a way, also, you could say, "This that I take to be either me or mine cannot be mine." You say, "Well, I control it," but actually I have quite limited control.
There's a sutta where the Buddha says, "If the body was yours, you would be able to say to the body -- if the body belonged to the self, the self would be able to say to the body, 'Don't grow old. Don't get sick. Stay healthy. Stay young. Don't die.'"[1] It can say that, but it's not going to do anything. So if it was mine, we would have that full control. Sometimes, occasionally, you run into explanations of emptiness that when you sort of listen, it's almost like they're equating impermanence and emptiness. They might use slightly different language. When you get down to what's being said, it's almost like, "Basically things are empty because they don't last very long, and so you can't really find anything lasting there," and that's what it means to say something is empty, in different sort of words than that.
Impermanence and emptiness are not equivalent. They are not equivalent. To say something is empty is to say something actually much deeper. We're going to go into this in more fullness later. So we've said already to say something is empty is to say that it's dependent on the point of view, it's dependent on the mind. So, for example, we were talking about countries. Well, it's dependent on a human mind and a human agreement. A little, I don't know, rabbit scurrying backwards and forwards over a border to feed on different bits of grass or whatever -- it doesn't think, "I'm going over into wherever-it-is right now." It's dependent. Of course that's gross, but this gets very, very subtle. And also we're saying emptiness means that the mind fabricates perceptions. We've touched on this already. Emptiness means the mind fabricates perceptions.
So impermanence will not bring the same depth or fullness of letting go, or depth and fullness of understanding as emptiness will. Actually nowhere near that. But it can be a very important stepping-stone. Even of the three characteristics, I would say it's clearer to see the fabrications and the dependency on mind with perhaps the dukkha characteristic and the anattā than the impermanence, but it's still possible. But at best, impermanence is a stepping-stone. All these three characteristics are stepping-stones rather than ultimate truths. All three characteristics are stepping-stones rather than ultimate truths.
Yogi 1: Stepping-stones to emptiness?
Rob: To emptiness and to freedom, yeah, to freedom, yes. Exactly.
Yogi 1: Impermanence is a fundamental truth?
Rob: Impermanence is not an ultimate truth, actually. It's not an ultimate truth. We'll get into this in much more detail, but oftentimes you hear people taking these three characteristics as ultimate truths, and I would say they're not. They're stepping-stones to realizing a more full realization of emptiness. I will explain much more as we go.
(2) Second one, dukkha. (2.1) As I said, if things are fleeting, if they're not lasting, if they're kind of finite, they're unsatisfactory. But to say -- meditatively now, in this contemplation, when one looks at things, and just this experience comes up and this experience, and it's pleasant or unpleasant or whatever, and when one looks at it through the lens of 'unsatisfactory,' that's not aversion. Really important: it's not aversion. It's letting go. It's like, "Well, I'll let it go. Well, I'll let it go." It's not aversion. Really, really important.
Yogi 2: And it's not diversion?
Rob: From what?
Yogi 2: From the suffering?
Rob: Okay, excellent question. I will address that because, as I said right at the beginning -- obviously I didn't say it clearly enough, but -- it's not, in practice, that we are trying to be with suffering. And again, that's something you will hear: "If you're suffering, be with it. That's what practice is: being with suffering." To me that's not what practice is. Maybe sometimes that's the most skilful approach at times, but what we're trying to do in practice is understand suffering and let it go, learn how. Because, as I said, suffering is not just something that we passively experience, and it's like, "Oh well. Life is suffering. Didn't the Buddha say that?" Actually what the Buddha was saying is we create suffering. We are participatory in suffering. The mind is building suffering. And we want to recognize that and pull the supports out from underneath that. So these practices are doing exactly that. If I just say I'm supposed to be with suffering, I might not even realize any of this. I might just take suffering as a given, and I just have to kind of somehow be okay with that. You probably will encounter that in teachings. To me, that's not what practice is about. Does this make sense?
Yogi 2: Yeah. I meant more, though, diversion in terms of putting up a brick wall in front of the path. Because I find that just using the techniques that you taught us today, it just so quickly changes my -- when I'm not necessarily deep in meditation, when I'm just thinking about something, it just changes it. It's like wow, it's gone, straight away.
Rob: What's gone? The suffering?
Yogi 2: The suffering. And I was wondering whether that's, like, you know, not thinking about it, like some people just ignore it. Do you know what I mean?
Rob: Really good question, because sometimes we feel like -- and I think I touched on this in the samādhi talk -- it can feel like, "Well, maybe I'm in denial here. Maybe I'm repressing something, suppressing something." That can happen. Any practice there is, any technique or tool, there's always a potential downside. One of the potential downsides is you just keep bashing everything over the head and not dealing with it, or just kind of sidelining everything. However, for a really honest human being that's looking at their suffering and their life, what we'll also find eventually is that a lot of the suffering that we go through isn't even necessary; we're building it, and then we take it as real and a given. So what I would say is let yourself play with this. You can sometimes let yourself go into something and just be with it, and sometimes actually just kick this in, and begin to get a sense of both approaches.
Don't be afraid of making mistakes. If we have enough self-honesty as a human being, eventually, if we've gone a little bit down the wrong path with some issue or something in our life -- say we've ignored it through the practice -- it will come and knock, you know? If we're gone the other way and just going into some issue, and feeling it, I'm feeling it, I'm processing it, and I'm feeling it, and I'm processing it, and actually after a while you just get the sense, "I'm just throwing mud in the air." Sometimes been doing it for years with the same issue, you know, or decades. I mean, I know people who do it for decades, decades, and not realizing the building. So what we're really interested in on this retreat is the building. But again, if I have that inquiry, that integrity, I can afford, "Well, I don't know right now, this thing. I feel this thing. This thing's going on. I don't know whether I need to feel it or whether I need to actually see through it. But I'll try this one and get a sense how that feels, and if it's not -- just backtrack, five seconds later, five minutes later, a day later." If there's that consciousness around, you're not going to go five years down the road with that, as long as there's that openness of both being a possibility. When we get locked into one or the other, that's when people go for years, you know?
Yogi 3: Sorry, locked into one or the other ...
Rob: One or the other: "I need to process everything. I need to be with everything. I need to really feel everything," or "I need to bash everything on the head with the three characteristics and kind of zap it." Yeah.
Yogi 3: The Middle Way?
Rob: Middle Way -- sort of more like openness to both. It's a more comprehensive way, put it that way. Really, really important. So that's the first contemplation, dukkha via impermanence, meaning unsatisfactoriness, and so letting go. Not aversion, just letting go.
(2.2) Second one, we talked about experience, all experience, having the texture of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. There's a word in Pali called vedanā. Some of you will know it. And it's really referring to this texture of momentary experience. At any of the sense doors, experience is pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. And in relationship to that, in relationship to those three camps of vedanā, different kinds of craving arise. Either we push away the unpleasant with aversion, or we try and hold onto or get or grasp at the pleasant. We want to become sensitive, more and more deeply sensitive ...
Yogi 4: Did you say three types of vedanā?
Rob: Yeah, the middle one is more a kind of spacing out, and it can then go both ways. So 'neutral' -- actually it's worth talking about. 'Neutral' doesn't have much for me in it. There's drama in the pleasant and certainly drama in the unpleasant, for me, for self, for ego. Neutral, it's like, "Well, it's just neutral," so either the mind spaces out or it gets bored. If it gets bored, it's aversion gotten hold of the neutral and the kind of disinterest in the neutral, boredom being an expression of aversion. If it's neutral and I think, "I wonder how long until lunch," craving has got hold of the neutral, and it's gone into [craving] -- so it can go both ways. What we want is to become, gradually, more and more sensitive to this push and pull, push and pull. More and more subtly sensitive to the presence of push and pull, what we call generically 'craving,' whether it's pushing away or pulling.
And that's a journey. So at first when we come to practice, aversion is a huge mind storm: "I hate this thing, and I really want it to go away." That's aversion. But as we were doing today in the guided meditation, aversion can be extremely subtle, extremely subtle. Just a sense, perhaps, of the body tensing a little bit, or a sense even of the space of awareness just contracting a little bit, the presence of craving, either grasping or aversion. So it can be very, very subtle, and what we want is to develop that sensitivity deeper and deeper, and see, very, very clearly, that the push-pull, pushing and pulling, brings suffering. See it over and over, so it's obvious. The suffering, or ninety-something per cent of the suffering, is in the push and pull with experience. In other words, when we can find our way to relax some of that push and pull, we notice the suffering begin to drain out of experience. Really, really important to see that a gazillion times.
[44:10] So we could also say at this point the problem is empty of problem. Something I don't like, there's aversion, I relax the aversion, and I find the suffering and the problem goes out of the experience. The problem is empty of inherent existence. It takes me to support it as problem with my aversion. Do you understand? We could say, in terms of emptiness, that if I have a sense of problem in the body, in the whatever, and I notice that I'm aversive to it, and I find a way to relax that aversion, I will notice the sense of suffering and the sense of problem drain out of the experience. And so we say that the thing is actually empty of problem. The problem is empty of problem. It takes my mind to be supporting it and giving it its problemness with aversion. It's not inherently a problem. Do you understand?
Yogi 5: It seems like you're focusing your aggression or aversion, if you like, on something, and when you stop focusing it, and you just be with the aversion or whatever it is, then the aversion is like a wave that kind of subsides.
Rob: And with that, the sense of problem. So what you just said, you can find a way of -- sometimes you just notice the aversion, and that's enough to subside it. With practice, all of these, all these three, four -- they're avenues, they're real arts, so we get actually able to consciously relax the aversion deliberately, rather than just kind of being, "Oh, there's aversion. Maybe it will relax. Maybe it won't relax." We actually get more and more able to let it go in different ways.
Yogi 5: I think for me very often it is like the sense of me, if I'm ...
Rob: Okay, I will get to that.
Yogi 5: Okay.
Rob: I will get to that. Touching on this point. So it's really, really -- how to say here -- when we let go of aversion or craving, the suffering goes out of experience. And it's important to realize that. It's important to actually feel the suffering less, okay? And to acknowledge and notice that that's happened, and to feel two sides of the coin here: when I cling, when there's craving, there's suffering. I actually feel the suffering, as even -- it might just be the sense of contraction is a sense of suffering. Actually feel that. And then when I let go, there's less suffering. And feeling both sides will help the insight deepen.
But suffering gets less, and what increases? Well, if I notice, if I don't rush on too quickly, if I'm sensitive a little bit, a sense of freedom grows in that moment. Sense of spaciousness, sense of peace. Maybe even a sense of joy. As I let go of holding onto things, all these factors can grow.
Yogi 6: Sometimes there's also a sense of a void, a hole.
Rob: Yeah, okay. We will get to that in a very big way.
Yogi 6: So the suffering is a way of filling that void, even though it's not a good way.
Rob: Is the void there before or after you let go? In other words, do you notice you let go, a void appears, and then you say, "Oh, I don't like that?"
Yogi 6: I'm afraid to let go because there will be a void, rather than ...
Rob: So how about, is it possible to let go and feel the void, and then feel the aversion to the void and see?
Yogi 6: It's scary.
Rob: Yeah, okay. All this is practice. You can do it. What we find, again, like I said, we build things up and give them more authority than they should really have, and we do that through our reactions to things. We actually realize, "I'm able to be with this thing and notice the aversion. If I relax the aversion a little bit to the void, then it actually becomes easier to bear." Not more difficult. Easier to bear. Yeah? And eventually easier and easier and easier. And it might turn into something very lovely. In fact, I would be surprised if it didn't turn into something very lovely.
Yogi 6: The enemy that's known versus the unknown ...
Rob: Yeah, it's good to start knowing some different ones, because they're really going to lead to some quite lovely -- that very thing that feels like a problem will, if you can work with it in this way, it will turn into something very, very lovely, eventually. Okay. So that's important. The taste of insight, the taste of letting go, is release. I might feel a sense of freedom. I might feel a sense of peace. I might feel a sense of spaciousness, lightness, freedom come in, whatever it is, joy even, or release or relief. And I should look for these qualities and notice them and feel them. Really, really important.
So when we let go of the push and pull this way, when we relax the push and pull, what can happen is, as we relax the push and pull, more calmness comes into the field of experience. Why is that? Because push and pull with experience is agitating the water of experience. When I'm struggling with experience, it's agitating, yeah? So as I let go of that, can be sometimes that more calmness comes into the field of awareness. With that calmness comes a gift and opportunity, because that calmness that sometimes might be there might then enable us to look and see more subtle clinging. It's almost like the calmness allows more subtlety of awareness, and with more subtlety of awareness we can notice more subtle pushing and pulling, and sensitive to that, and then letting go of that. Not all the time, but it's possible that this letting go of push and pull actually moves into the depths of calm but also into the depths of subtlety. Make sense?
So the whole process can deepen in that way. And doing this over and over -- what happens, as it gets calm, at first it seems like, "Great, that was that over with. End of problem." But then, as I was saying -- someone asked at some point -- it's like the eyes get used to that dark. What feels like there's nothing there, there's no aversion or anything there, either a new one at the same level of grossness as before creeps in and we let go again, or I'm like, "Wow, there's no aversion, there's no grasping," and feel the niceness of that, and then, "Oh, hold on a minute. There actually is. It's more subtle, though." And so it deepens. We just do that over and over and over again, prioritizing this lens of dukkha in one of those three ways. And feeling the suffering drain out, feeling the increase in whatever degree of a sense of freedom, spaciousness, peace, joy, release, relief.
(3) Now, actually, a little bit related to what Bruce asked, and it follows on also from something I said last night: as we let go of push and pull in this way (I don't know, maybe it's too early, maybe you even noticed today), what happened to the self-sense if you were doing this? What happened to the sense of self? Lessens, great. [laughter] Good. The sense of self gets less. As I let go of push and pull, to some degree the sense of self gets less. We said last night that the sense of self is a dependent arising. It's dependent on clinging. I can have a very built-up, solid sense of self, but it's only that when I'm clinging a lot. As I let go of clinging, the sense of self gets less. It quietens, it softens, it becomes more light, more open, etc. If, as I said last night, the sense of self is a spectrum, and I can cling a lot and get a very solid, built-up sense of self, a very real sense of self, or I can cling less and get less solid, less and less solid, less clinging, less solid, etc., and you have a spectrum, spectrum of the self that goes with clinging, which one is the real one? Which is the real self, the real me, the real sense of self?
Yogi 7: There is no real one.
Rob: Right. There is no ...
Yogi 8: Do you have to choose it to be one? Could you not be many things?
Rob: Okay. Well, they're both two ways of saying the same thing. In other words, the problem with the self is we take it to be real at some degree. So we're beginning to puncture that. Either to say there isn't one -- to say something is a dependent arising also means to say it's empty of this kind of fixed reality, inherent reality. Okay.
(3.1) As I do that, I let go of the push and pull, it's one way into anattā practice, the third characteristic, because when the self feels less solid, it's actually easier to see phenomena as 'not me, not mine.' So it's a way into the third characteristic. When the sense of self gets lighter, it's more natural, actually, to see things as not me, not mine, not-self. Does that make sense? So that's one way in.
(3.2) It's also possible, of course, to go directly to the third characteristic, directly to anattā. When the Buddha, in the Pali Canon -- what we have now is 2,500 years of Buddhist evolution of teaching and history and thought and meditative sort of inquiry -- about 98 per cent of the initial teachings on anattā and no-self, not-self, were actually more teachings about a strategy rather than about the actual philosophical, ontological status of the self: "Does it exist, or doesn't it exist, or how does it exist?" That came much later with very, very rich and beautiful Mahāyāna philosophy. Initially in the Pali Canon, what we have, almost for the most part, except one or two instances, a few instances, the Buddha's really introducing a strategy. And the strategy was what we did this morning, saying: can you practise, can you learn, to look at things as not-self? Rather than get into a question of "Is there a self, or isn't there a self, or how exactly is there a self, or what is the reality or whatever of the self?" It's actually saying: just put that question aside, and take up the lens of learning to look at experience as 'not me, not mine,' as I said at the beginning, as a meditative tool that leads to freedom.
If I do that, I realize that it's suffering to identify. It's suffering to identify. When I identify with something as 'me' or 'mine,' there's some degree of suffering there. Is that obvious or ...? So we're learning to regard things as 'not me, not mine.' I don't know, in these three characteristics, if human beings, human practitioners, divide equally between the three in terms of their favourites. I don't know. I think for most people impermanence is the easiest to see. It's the simplest. It's the most obvious. And the other two are a bit more subtle. But as I said, go with what feels right and feels like it's working for you. When we're doing this anattā practice, we're looking at experience and phenomena and not identifying with it, not taking it as 'me' or 'mine.' Next week sometime, or rather in about a week or so, we'll have a whole other direction with this that came more out of Mahāyāna teachings, and it's actually looking for the self and realizing you can't find it. At the moment, we're looking at phenomena and seeing phenomena and experience as 'not me, not mine.' Subtle difference, but we'll get to that.
Yogi 9: Can I just say, when you say, "Not me, not mine," if I open my eyes and I see a tree, the experience of that tree is not the same ...
Rob: I'm going to get to that. So there's a difference between -- what we would be identifying with when we're seeing is not so much the tree; I don't look at a tree and think I'm a tree, generally. [laughter] What I will identify with at that point is the seeing, and identify with awareness: "I am seeing." Okay? I'll get back to this. Do you understand? Did I misunderstand you?
Yogi 9: I look at my hand, and I know it's my hand, but you're saying a part of the practice is to say don't think that, just see the hand. That's what you're saying. That's the practice of ...
Rob: Anattā, yeah. I'm going to fill it in a bit more, so see if that question gets answered, okay? So the usual default way of human consciousness relating to experience is to take everything, as I said, as 'me' or 'mine.' Now, sometimes we're very conscious that we're doing that: my this, it's my, my, my, or it's me. We're very conscious that we're doing that. Most of the time we're not conscious that we're doing that. It kind of automatically goes with our perception of something, of something that we feel belongs to me, or mine, like a hand or whatever, or our awareness. It's just it's 'me' or 'mine,' and oftentimes it's unconscious, but sometimes it's conscious. What we're doing here in this practice, in anattā practice, is unhooking that 'me' or 'mine.' We're unhooking by finding a way into seeing it as 'not me, not mine,' or you could say unhooking the 'me' or 'mine' in it. So it's a different way of seeing.
To answer Nick's question a little bit more, you will find, or most people will find, if you just sustain mindfulness on something -- for instance, if you just really look at your hand and you just really sustain the mindfulness there for some seconds or even minutes, after a while it's likely that the mindfulness starts automatically disidentifying from the object. Or if you do that with body sensations, too. Just sustain the attention on something, and it's almost like mindfulness just naturally begins to shed some of that identification. Then what often happens with this practice is you get a glimpse of a way of looking at something as 'not me, not mine.' Just like, "Oh, look at that." And then what we want to do is begin finding our way back to that way of seeing, which at first will just come as a glimpse (generally; it can be more stretched out). And finding a way back into it, it begins to be something we can consciously just choose to look at things that way or not.
Again, interestingly, the more samādhi, the easier it is to see things as 'not me, not mine.' The more mettā, the easier it is to see things as 'not me, not mine.' Everything good in the practice feeds everything else good in the practice. When there's samādhi and mettā, they're more spacious and open and actually naturally 'letting go' states, so it becomes easier to see things and phenomena as 'not me, not mine.' It's 'just happening.' This body sensation or whatever, it's 'just happening.' And then, as I say, we cultivate and begin to try and develop that way of seeing deliberately.
So because these three are interrelated, it can be that at times letting go of the push and pull or contemplating impermanence will actually begin to reveal more a sense of phenomena not being 'me' or 'mine.' They're a way in. As I let go of the push and pull, more space comes in, and in that more space, it feels, it seems like we identify less. Anattā is easier to see. Sometimes people use a label, like actually look at something, some experience, and actually quietly say, "Not me, not mine," or "Not-self." But it has to be very, very quiet and uncumbersome. There are some passages in the suttas where he says, "And you should reflect, 'This is not me. This is not my self. This is not who I am.'"[2] And so some practitioners -- I remember an interview a while ago and a person was saying he was doing that with everything. Some experience would come, and he was like, "This is not me. This is not my self." It's like, it's this huge, big, cumbersome mouthful, and the mind can never become agile and light with that. What we want with these practices, it's just able to kind of have a sense of almost just looking at phenomena, like you have glasses on, lenses on -- it just sees it that way very quickly, very easily, so that this practice becomes usable and delicate, agile. So it might help, just, "Not-self, not me, not mine," but very, very light.
Yogi 10: Are we looking to -- say we did this with a thought, for example, like an egotistical thought. Are we looking to gently put the label on it and then get rid of it, or are we looking just to leave it there, just to know that we're disidentifying?
Rob: The second. Just to see it in a different way, okay? And then that might affect what happens with it, but we're really trying to see it in a certain way, okay? I would also add, Ollie, it's not just egotistical thoughts. Any thoughts we can do this. In other words, any thought is not me, and it's not mine, either. That's the way of looking at it.
Yogi 11: I was wondering what the difference is between not-self or self expanding, so that if I'm -- if the self starts to expand, then it includes everything in it. There's a dissolving of self. But is that the same ...
Rob: They're different flavours of experience moving along a kind of continuum. In other words, both are completely valid meditation experiences, completely valid. What we're talking about now is the first one. In other words, not so much about expanding the self to include everything, but it's almost like the opposite; it's like learning to say, "Nothing is me or mine, nothing is me," and getting used to that way of letting go. Sometimes you might find that even leads to the second one as an experience, or other practices, like mettā, for instance, or samādhi as it deepens, lead to a sense of kind of oneness with everything. Really, really helpful and valid. But this is a slightly different approach, and will unfold slightly differently, generally. Okay?
Yogi 11: But do they kind of flip into the other?
Rob: Is that what you're finding?
Yogi 11: I'm not sure.
Rob: Okay. I would just say see what happens. There will be some overlap but generally, eventually the letting go practice will lead beyond that other practice, beyond a sense of oneness and that, eventually. But it might move through that as a stage. Yeah?
