Question and Answer Session 2

Again, the encouragement to explore these periods as also kind of times of practice. Oftentimes when one is speaking and listening, the mindfulness is not so strong, and sometimes the loving-kindness is not so strong. So it's quite interesting to take this as a field of practice. What is it to have the whole thing be held in kindness -- the way one listens, the way one speaks, the way one holds someone else's questioning? Because this is our life. We spend time listening and speaking.

There are a few things here. [shuffles notes people have left] Most of these questions, I don't understand, so the people will unfortunately have to say something. [laughter] Of course, I still might not understand! [laughs] But I'll try. Does anyone ...? We'll get to these, certainly, but does anyone want to ask, either someone who wrote something, or anything? There's no particular order we need to go in.

Q1: Focusing practice (for working with difficulties)

Yogi: I had some really difficult stuff this morning, and since then it's been incredibly hard work. I'm just feeling really irritated and frustrated and a lot of self-doubt. I can see it all sort of there and happening, but it's such bloody hard work! I'm just not sure what to do with myself, and there's self-judgement coming in on top, because I'm not managing even the phrases. I'm just getting really pissed off with it, irritated, and then criticizing myself for not just carrying on, doing it anyway. Help!

Rob: Sure, this is hard work. I mean, if it wasn't, it would be easy -- everyone would be doing it, and the world would be a very different place. So you recognize this pattern? Yeah, okay. What's helped in the past? Can you remember times when this kind of constellation has come about and something has ...? You see, a lot of things are coming together, getting constructed. Sometimes it's a matter of, "Okay, which piece, this time, can I just move a little bit?" And in that construction, it's like -- because everything is holding everything else up. You understand? The self-judgement is not a neutral thing: "I just happen to be self-judging." It's actually making a big impact. Maybe remembering from the past, or is there a piece now that feels like might ...? I mean, do you remember anything from the past, instances from the past where this has opened up a little bit when it has come up?

Yogi: I know it has. I'm struggling to remember specifically what. I know things can just shift. Sometimes it feels like, I don't know, things just come to a time and they shift. I can't think of things that I particularly do. I think that's part of this process, you know, feeling doubtful about myself, like feeling ineffectual, trying to see outside that box.

Rob: Yes. Okay. I don't know what the right answer is for you right now. We were talking yesterday about, first of all, just seeing it as a confluence of conditions. You know, it's very easy to say, "I am ineffectual. I'm not doing it right. I,I,I,I," versus this other way: it's just a lot of conditions have come together in terms of views and reactions and energy levels, etc., all compounded together and creating something. Then it's slightly different. It's like, well, which conditions can I perhaps influence in some way? Sometimes one just needs to take a rest from practice, you know, and just stop banging one's head against the wall. I don't know, going for a long walk, perhaps? Or have you done that already?

Yogi: Tried that. [laughter]

Rob: Yeah. What about the Focusing? Have you tried it or not?

Yogi: A bit. I sort of not wanted to [?] ...

Rob: No, this is important. Are people familiar with this practice of Focusing? No? Okay. Well, maybe Isla wants to sum it up in a sentence? Or I could. It's up to you.

Yogi: It's about identifying part of oneself that formed a struggle, or having difficulty, and actually getting into dialogue with them from a place of being with and presence and kindness.

Rob: Yeah. Did people get that? It's relating to oneself in a different way and what's going on in a different way. That, to me, falls under the umbrella of what I would call insight meditation, certainly. It also falls easily into the third basket that we were talking about. It's like, here's the sail, everything's going fine, the first basket. Second basket, you're staying with it, it's not quite happening. Third basket, no, trim the sail and all that, and it's like ... [laughter] Now I've got to remember! [laughter] I need to find a helpful way to relate to the difficulty. What that is, there's a huge range. I mean, we could talk days and days and days just about ways of relating to the difficulty.

If one says, "I'll just be mindful of it," that's the sort of first option of an insight meditator. But sometimes, just being mindful is not helpful. One needs to check: "Well, is this just being mindful, so-called, is that actually helping?" And sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. If it's not, it's like, what else does it need? When you do the Focusing, a lot of things are happening with that. You're relating to something that might previously have been unrelated to. You know, it's like by dialoguing with something, you're actually starting a connection. There's also kindness there because you're dialoguing. There's honesty. There's room for whatever it is to express itself. It doesn't get pushed out or rejected, etc. There's a dynamic that's starting to happen. All of that is part of relating to this in a way that's helpful. Do you think it might be helpful?

Yogi: Yes, I think there is part of me when you've been saying in the last couple of days, now we're in this stage of the retreat we need to be kind of leaning into this and doing that, so there's part of me thinking I should be doing ...

Rob: Yes, but that stage of the retreat started at the beginning. I understand this may sound like a paradox. I'm going to try and express it not as a paradox. We have these three baskets and, as I said, you cannot go wrong. It's impossible [to go wrong]. When you're Focusing in this stuff and you're dialoguing with it, there is kindness in that relationship. And you know there is because you've been there and you've done that: dialoguing with it, listening to what this element, this character inside you, what it says, what it wants, what it expresses, what it needs, all of that. Just the listening is kindness, never mind even your response to that. The honesty is kindness, the opening up is kindness, the relating is kindness.

So that's very easily a form of loving-kindness, you know? It's not the "may I be this, may I be that," the phrases, etc. There is a time when the phrases are not appropriate; they're just not what's helpful, either because there's a difficulty, or sometimes because things have got so quiet that the phrases are just the wrong thing. So there's always this responsiveness.

What I was trying to add with that is, sometimes there are times when we feel like we have a choice. We feel I could lean a little bit this way, I could lean a little bit that way. At those times when we have a choice, for this kind of retreat -- this is a very particular kind of retreat. Another retreat, we would say they are all three, you know, whatever, and sometimes we might even say lean towards the difficulty: "Come on, find the difficulties. Keep rooting them out." But this retreat, we're just kind of, when we have the choice, we're a little bit prioritizing that for the sake of the trajectory. But I don't know, does that sound like a paradox? Maybe it does. I'm not sure.

Yogi: I think as you say, it's like when you have a choice, like at the moment I don't ...

Rob: Yes, exactly. You don't, and so it's like that's the skilful response. Right now, there isn't a choice. Right now, we're clearly in rough seas. Right now, the wind is blowing. There are sea monsters and all kinds of stuff, and that's the deal. Okay, so we don't have a choice; we do the sensible thing, and that is the expression of kindness, right there. I'm saying three baskets -- it's really an artificial division, in a way. So all of this is learning, all of this is cultivating kindness, all of it is cultivating insight and wisdom. It's all there, and I really, really feel that you can't go wrong. As long as you're bringing that willingness and that kindness indirectly in that way, you're doing exactly the right thing.

Do you have a sense right now of (or perhaps you need to try it and see) what the characters are that you need to be talking to there? You do? Do you want to share it? You don't have to, I'm just curious. You really don't have to.

Yogi: There's quite a few. There's a part that's feeling really, really pressured, and then there's a part that's creating pressure, and then that part is very frightened of missing out.

Rob: The part that's creating the pressure is frightened of missing out on ...?

Yogi: All sorts of things! But it's also got a history of loss. It's in a lot of pain. It's feeling the pain of its loss and it's frightened of more loss. So that's the kind of main character. [inaudible]

Rob: They sound quite important to me as well. They're powerful players in that dynamic. There's a lot there. If we relate this to emptiness, it's like when you're Focusing -- I think we said this in terms of a couple of people's questions -- a thing, whatever it is, a body sensation, an inner constellation, an inner character, an inner dynamic, it doesn't exist, nothing exists independent of what I'm bringing to it. Once you start doing the Focusing, you're actually bringing that kindness. And you know, it's like when you have a friend or someone who's having trouble, you bring kindness in, and usually it softens things up. Once you find the way of relating, you don't even have to force the kindness; it will be there, natural self-compassion. Kindness affects things, because it's changing the relationship with things, which changes what manifests. Do you understand?

Is there more coming from that? No? Partly why I asked you if you remember -- because I know, too, that you've been through this and out the other, and in through this and out the other, and it might be interesting this time (you will come out) to write down what was it that seemed to help. Because things are not random. Sometimes it's hard to see what causes the difficulty and what causes the dissolving of a difficulty, but actually it's not random. There will be times when we just don't know; it just seemed to come and just seemed to go. But over time, we begin to notice what kind of things are helpful, and it's good to start clocking that. But you're not forcing anything. You're just doing your usual process with the Focusing, and just by virtue of showing up there, it begins to unravel and tell you what it needs to. Yeah? Okay.

Anybody else?

Q2: mettā as listening vs mettā as doing

Yogi: When you think about Focusing, mettā being kind of a form of listening, I think that's one of the reasons I'm not keen on the phrases; it feels almost like I can squash [inaudible] ... To listen to what's going on. That just came to me, that that appeals to me, mettā as listening.

Rob: Can everyone hear that? No? Do you want to say it a little louder or should I say it? [laughter]

Yogi: Just from that dialogue, I was thinking about mettā, a form of mettā being listening, and rather than speaking and ... yeah, I don't know what else to say about it.

Rob: Okay, so what would you be listening to?

Yogi: In a situation like that, to myself. But also, say I want to give you mettā, kind of open to you and listen -- it makes me think of that Mother Teresa quote ...

Rob: Which one?

Yogi: Someone asked her what she did when she prayed, and she said, "I listen," and what does God say, and she said, "God listens too." [laughter]

Rob: Yeah. And then before the interviewer could say anything, she said, "And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you." [laughter]

It's really important to see that there are lots of ways the mettā can express, and in a way, this relates to the question you asked the other day. You may have favourites, but sometimes there's something for opening it up in ways that may not feel that natural to you. You're quite right: there's something about listening, and listening to yourself, and listening to another, and the kind of mystical listening in silence, which we haven't really talked about much. But there may be something also about doing, which is different. There's listening, and there's also doing, and might be just interesting to play with both. It's like, here's what I gravitate to, and then sometimes I just do a different one. When I say a phrase, I can also be listening. That's quite interesting, because you can say a phrase and have a sense of, even if you are saying it to yourself, of giving something to yourself. And you can say a phrase, and it's almost like, just listen to the echoes of it, listen in that way. There are all kinds of shades and subtleties here which it might just be interesting to explore. Is that okay?

Yogi: I'm not actually doing the mettā phrases. Are you suggesting that I start to do them?

Rob: No, well ... No, in terms of what we talked about and the devotion and stuff, no; it's more in terms of the big picture. I think maybe a general response, it's like, if I know that I always lean this way and I have a resistance to doing something that way, that's good. Go with what one's ease is and one's strength is, and then at a certain point ... Sometimes we learn the most from doing practices that we don't naturally feel drawn to. It's quite interesting -- they tend to open up pockets of us that one part of us is happy to keep shoved in a corner and not really unfold it. Yeah? Okay.

Q3: mettā and craving

Rob: Shall I try one of these? [reading from note] "Is it common for mettā to slip into craving? Do you have any advice re: how to sensitively handle it?"

I'm not sure who that's from. Julia? Can you say a bit about that?

Yogi: Well, one of the responses I've noticed from doing mettā, I suppose it's a kind of warm excitement, and in that state, I've noticed that there's a kind of wanting that comes out of it, even on a general level. So if it's near the food time, it's like ooo, or it's a bit like kind of going into maybe a slight high or something like that.

Rob: You're doing the mettā in here, and you're conscious of the time, and it's getting to lunch time, and somehow when the mettā's going well it seems to trigger more desire for lunch, or food?

Yogi: I mean, when it is near lunchtime, then as I'm going towards the food, then I notice that. But it would be kind of a general state, so I might sort of be attracted to anything. [laughs]

Rob: Is the attraction painful?

Yogi: It's kind of a mixture of exciting and ... Is it painful? That's a good question. I'm not sure.

Rob: Okay, so it might be worth checking that out, because it might be that what's happening with the mettā is that things are opening and softening, and in that, just life energy is coming out, and exuberance and excitement, and that lands on what it sees and what it contacts with a kind of delight. Which is -- I don't know -- different than craving. Craving has this sense of lack in it -- lack: "I don't have enough, I don't have enough," and as such, there's an inherent pain in craving. The Buddha says it's unquenchable. It's like a thirst that's unquenchable, and it feels a certain way. We can get caught up in imagining we're going to get what we want, but if you pay attention to the actual feeling of craving, it's not a happy state. It's off-balance. It has a sense of lack, a sense of poverty in it, a sense of a constriction, tightness -- all of that.

So it may be that there's some of that in there. It may be that something else is going on, and it's more exuberance, delight, enjoyment of, relishing -- which could be just allowing yourself to have more of that. I don't know, but it might be interesting to explore the state a little bit more, without any preconceptions or even calling it anything like craving, or this or that. What's telling me that I have this? Is it thoughts about food? Is it a sense of delight? Is it a sense of ...? And actually exploring what that is and seeing, rather than ... Does that sound okay? And just based on what you say, I can't tell.

Yogi: I think it might be a little bit of a mixture of the two.

Rob: Could be, could be.

Yogi: There's sort of exuberance if I go towards it. There's an ooo. It is difficult also to explore, because sometimes when the mettā gets going quite strong, that itself can be a bit uncomfortable.

Rob: Why? How?

Yogi: It's a very strong feeling, but it's a bit intense, I suppose.

Rob: Very good, yeah, it can be. I'm really glad you brought that up. So a number of things can be happening there. There's a strong feeling. It's a bit intense, and it's almost like a slight rejection of that feeling comes in and a craving for something else.

Yogi: A feeling of wanting some relief?

Rob: Yes, exactly. The heart is being pushed open a little bit with the mettā practice, and sometimes we're not used to bearing that amount of sort of openness or energy moving through the heart, moving through the energy system, all that. It gets easier with time. Our capacity just grows and grows, generally.

Two things. One thing is: in the sitting, when it feels intense, you might want to think about just imagining, or somehow creating, more space inside for this intensity. Almost just imagining your body is bigger; or imagining it has more space to open; or if it's energetic, imagining the channels, so to speak, inside -- they have much more room, so they're not constrained that way; going to more sense of spaciousness. Because what happens is, if it feels intense, again, like physical pain, like we were talking about sometimes, there's a sense, what happens is the consciousness constricts around it, and that creates pressure. It's just the same with heart stuff, even if it's good heart stuff. It feels like it's too much, and giving it lots and lots of space, then you actually realize, "Oh, I can tolerate this."

That's one thing, and the second thing is also paying a little more attention -- if we go back to this idea of, in the energy body or in the emotional body, it's rarely just one thing going on. It's usually a mix. So in this intensity, which very easily can be felt as a little bit unpleasant and difficult, there's also loveliness there. Very easily the attention gets sucked into just what's difficult about what's going on. And it's almost like, again, having a bit of space, stepping back, and re-finding the loveliness in it, which might be not obvious at first. That kind of allows you to soften around it more, and allows it to be there more. Does that make sense? If you're with the loveliness, then to the degree that you can be, that will affect the craving. In other words, I don't need to crave when I have the loveliness. If I'm cutting off the loveliness because it's all got shoved out because the whole thing's too intense, I'm cut off from the loveliness and I start craving things outside. That's why mettā is so significant in terms of being able to let go generally. Sometimes it's a matter of navigating and finding the right relationship even with the pleasantness inside.

Yogi: So kind of looking for aspects of the experience that are lovely?

Rob: Exactly, yeah. They might be going on at the same time, so it's different frequencies at the same time. It's like, you know, nowadays the air is full of all these different radio signals and email signals and wireless and da-da-da, and it's like, which one am I going to tune into there? And when something feels difficult, like too intense or painful or whatever it is, we just go there, and it's almost like, just give it more space and find the more lovely, the more soft frequencies, and actually that will fill you up and that will affect the craving too. But space is a big thing here. This takes time, generally, for most people. It's like the capacity to bear certainly what's difficult, but also what's lovely. Yeah? Okay, good.

Q4: pain that doesn't seem to change

Yogi: You know, the other day I talked about the physical pain and dropping words into it? What I found works, which I've been using a little bit when it gets intense, it's a bit like the Focusing thing, kind of separate it, and having a sense of talking to it and just saying, "I love you."

Rob: Good, beautiful.

Yogi: It's just a different message. In terms of what you were saying earlier, it feels much more like compassion. It feels like seeing the pain and just kind of ...

Rob: So that's excellent. That's absolutely perfect. When mettā meets pain, it naturally turns into compassion. It just turns into compassion, and that's fine for our purposes. Then, when that's happened, you're in the third basket then -- you're meeting what's difficult. And it will naturally and healthily and that's exactly the right response for it to turn into compassion. No problem there. Absolutely, spot on, that's great. There's also just one word in what you said, and I meant to say this to Isla, so thank you for saying that. Something also happens when you're Focusing or when you're doing that: it creates a kind of space around what's going on. Instead of being entangled in something and no sense of any separation from something, there's a kind of healthy separation, a healthy distance that comes in, which helps you relate to it and helps it calm down a little bit, because you're not so in the middle of this thing, completely entangled.

Yogi: I notice that it can very quickly just sort of feel like, "It's just the same anyway." [inaudible] I think I said that the other day. It's like, "Oh, nothing's different." I guess that's just wanting it to be different, trying to get rid of it, and I guess just using the insight as well to accept that's just how it is.

Rob: Yes, very good. And two things there. This is really important. If you can also kind of -- a little bit bigger is realizing that this thought ("Ah, it's the same again, it's the same again"), well, that's something to recognize, that that's a kind of habit of thought. That's the habitual thought that arises when this feeling arises here. The habitual thought is that. So it's part of the constellation. Actually seeing that, it's like, here's the pain, and then you can actually expect it: "Where's that thought? Where is it?" [laughs] It's going to come up. It's part of it. It's almost like making friends with it and realizing -- once I begin to see it as a habitual thought, it begins to lose some of its power. It's the normal thing I expect the mind to say when this is there. I just expect it, and I don't necessarily, as time goes on, I don't necessarily have to believe it. It's just a thought.

Yogi: But it could be true?

Rob: Well, what does it mean for it to be true? What's implicit -- that it's never going to change? It's the same?

Yogi: Well, it doesn't seem to change.

Rob: Okay. What do you mean by 'change'?

Yogi: The intensity? I suppose actually sometimes the intensity does change. Sometimes it's more emotional, sometimes it's more physical. So I suppose it does change.

Rob: Yes, it does change. We'll get on to this in a few days' time. If I look at something carefully, what looks like it's not changing is changing. The mind, in its reactivity, in moments of reactivity and in moments of delusion, just says, "This is this. That's there, and it's never changing, and it's just a block of whatever it is," depression or da-da-da, and it's just that. And actually, if I look more carefully, it's got lots of change in it. That seeing of the change begins to lighten the sense of burden.

Yogi: And then when I go to bed at night, it's like, "Oh, you're not practising any more," like, "Woohoo, here we go," and it's like it really kicks off when I go to bed.

Rob: The feeling kicks off?

Yogi: The pain. I just think I just can't keep ... [upset and can't speak for a while]

Rob: It's okay.

Yogi: It's probably not true, but it just feels like that ...

Rob: Yeah. It isn't true, but that's okay. You're in a process of getting to see that. You know, sometimes it's like addressing the pain, and sometimes addressing the totality of yourself. It's like here's the pain, and also here's me trying to deal with this pain, and having a sense of the weight of it and the burden of it as well, meeting that with compassion.

Yogi: [long sigh] Just keep going?

Rob: Yeah! [Rob and yogi laugh] You get times in practice when it feels like the way you're seeing it is helping in that moment.

Yogi: Yeah.

Rob: So to take some faith from those moments. It's going to come back. It's going to come back because the energy system has just gotten in a groove, that's all. It's like a record that keeps slipping to this place. But if there are times in the practice when you feel, "When I relate to it this way, when I see it this way, when I bring in this quality, it loosens it," then you can really take faith in that: it's really beginning to dissolve it.

One of the things that's making this weigh much more heavily is the time elongation -- "It's been so long" -- and then the projection, "It's never going to end." So instead of just this moment, you're then holding this beam that's stretching all the way out there, and it's way more weighty. So one of the possibilities in practice is kind of just to snip off the past and the future -- it's just this moment, it's just this moment. Even just doing that creates less of a sense of burden, because I've just got this moment to deal with, and then within that, like we talked about, working with some spaciousness and compassion -- just brings a bit more lightness.

And then, not neglecting that there are those moments of lightness, because at some point the balance will tip, it will tip, until it's absent more than it's present. It will tip like that. At the moment, the mind is believing this, "It's never going to change," and going into this elongated time thing, joining all the dots -- you know, past to present to future -- versus, at the end of the day or whatever, actually seeing that there have been lots of times today when it softened. It softened through what you've been doing in practice and what you're developing in practice. Slowly the confidence builds. Starting to believe that more, rather than the habitual thought, which says, "It's never going to change, it's not changing, it's never going to change," which actually isn't true. It is changing, you are finding ways to change it, and you don't know the future. [laughs] Over time, we start believing different thoughts, and those old habitual thoughts don't have the same power to ensnare us in believing them. So this question about "what am I believing?" on an insight level, as well, is quite important. You know, you are midway through a process, and there are a lot of pieces here in this unfolding. Okay?

Q5: mettā as conscious learning vs mettā as unconscious reprogramming

Yogi: When you have a short, intense mettā experience, how can it become useful for developing positive views? Because I had an experience like that yesterday during the guided meditation. It was very bubbly. I felt like goose pimples all over me, and then this kind of heat, and the words that came to me -- normally I don't like phrases, and I only use two -- but suddenly, the phrase, the word "giving, giving, giving," and I had this vision of light. And after, when I went for the walking meditation, my body seemed to be looser. But then I think, okay, that's a nice experience, but how can I draw on it from a learning point of view, to be more compassionate with other people? Is there any lesson to be learned?

Rob: Partly this stuff is working just as a reprogramming the heart, okay, and you don't need to kind of do anything more with it -- partly. Even if you have no pleasant experiences at all, and it just feels like a grind, just feels mechanical, just going through this, it's still working on changing the habitual grooves of the mind. Instead of just the mind being a little bit aversive or just kind of indifferent, it starts bringing kindness in as the more habitual place where the mind rests, with that stream of intentionality. This is why I emphasize the body, as well -- it's not just going through the mind; it's also going through the body energetics and the nervous system is also helping that to happen.

In terms of actually reflecting on it, two pieces occur to me right now. There are probably many, but I'll just say two right now. One is: sometimes a person does these practices (and it could be even when things are really difficult doing the mettā practice, not necessarily in a moment of real, like it feels really easy), one feels a sense, a sense of the power and the importance of kindness, that this is so crucial to our lives, it's so crucial to the world. And there's a kind of devotion to kindness, if that makes sense, a devotion: "This is one of the most important things. This is what I put my faith in. This is what I love in others, and this is what I want to get behind." And a sense of letting the being, the really deep intentionality in the being, align with that devotion: "This is what I want to serve in my life."

Now, that may or may not look like a practical plan: "I'm going to do this, that." I don't think that part is so important. If it's very clear, you have this idea, then maybe to align with that: "Exactly this. I'm going to go and" whatever it is, volunteer, or speak differently to a friend, or whatever, listen differently, whatever. I don't think, necessarily, oftentimes the practical piece is the most important. Oftentimes it's that devotional sense, and letting that get really deep. One feels it almost like something planting the being really firmly. It's a direction in terms of the heart's aspiration. It's planted really deeply. Does this make sense?

Yogi: [inaudible] Emotionally, I haven't connected with the experience very strongly; it's more like physical. But now that you are thinking about it, then seeing that perhaps I can draw some strong motivation somehow and [?] something deep. But at the time, it happens too fast.

Rob: Yeah, okay. And like I said, I'm not sure it has to be at that time necessarily at all. At that time, there's maybe too much going on in the body. It might be at a time when you're really struggling, but you just know that you're on the right track: "This is really hard. I'm not even feeling very good. But something in the heart knows, this is what I'm motivated towards," you know? And yeah, for some people it's a religious feeling; for some people it's just a practical sense of what they want to move towards, etc. It may be that at some point that emerges and feels natural.

The other piece has to do with something I wasn't really planning to talk about much on this retreat. Well, I was more waiting to see if it came up. We've touched on it already, and we touched on it in the last question and answer period and at several times. Here I am, doing the mettā practice, and I'm going in and out of different states. Sometimes it feels great. Sometimes it feels completely the opposite, and I'm actually feeling angry, etc. Sometimes I just feel completely bored and disconnected and tired. And I move across this spectrum of states. And beginning to notice how the perception changes when I move, when the mind state moves, how the perception changes. The perception of myself changes, the perception of other people changes, and the perception of the world changes. Do you understand what I mean?

So we started with the neutral person today: here's this person, they're just neutral, and one starts giving the mettā to them. And when there's mettā around, they start looking beautiful and radiant, and one feels them as a friend, when it's really going well. You begin to see -- eventually that even happens with difficult people. It's like, inherently they're not this way or that way; I can decide to see people as beautiful, because that's part of the emptiness of how they really are. Do you understand? Is this making sense?

This takes a lot of mettā practice to begin to see this, a lot of mettā practice. We tend to believe our perceptions: "This situation is like this. This person is like this. I'm like this. The world is like this. My life is like this, da-da-da-da-da." And beginning to see, no, there is no way things are. This has to do with emptiness. There is no way things are. We are basically free to shape our perceptions. Inherently -- we say this thing has no inherent way it is. It's empty of that. We begin to see, gosh, it lacks that inherent existence. I can shape it in different ways. If I shape it towards "everyone's cruel and out to get me, and they are all monsters," well, I'm going to have a pretty hard time of it. If I shape it towards "here I am in a realm of divine beings and Buddhas and angels, and I can see people's beauty and their divinity in a way," I'm going to have a very different experience. I start to see: it goes much better if I shape it that way.

There's one insight there just about what brings me more happiness; out of that comes more happy and more helpful actions. But there's a deeper insight into just the inherent emptiness of things. You could, if you want, start exploring that a little bit. People are different. It might be quite early to explore that, or it might be "Oh yeah, that's obvious to me." But eventually, that's really one of the main gifts of mettā. It's part of what explodes, dissolves the whole intuitive sense that things exist independently of the mind, that people exist independently of the mind, that our relationships, that I exist, all of that. And really start getting a very heartfelt, intuitive insight into the non-separability of reality. There is no reality separate of the way my mind and my heart are colouring it. Then I get to decide -- am I going to colour it this way or this way? Does this make sense? So that's a possibility too. There are probably many more, but that's a little to get on with. Yeah? Okay.

[reading note] "Giving mettā to a neutral person, does it show me that mettā is not just giving to what I can relate to, that is beyond what I relate to as 'I,' that it is beyond giving? Is this where you are guiding me?" Can you explain that a little bit?

Yogi: I think you just answered it.

Rob: Oh, did I? Okay. Good. Any more, or that feels okay? Yeah? Sure? Okay.

Q6: changing habitual grooves over time

Rob: [reading note] "Please say more about your two years [of] mettā practice. What did it involve, what benefits did you notice, and how and when did they manifest?" [laughter] I'm not sure I can remember. What to say? Well, do you want to say a little bit what's behind the question, Penny? Or is there ...?

Yogi: I just feel really excited. Having done a few weeks of mettā practice outside, and feeling its amazing power, really, I just feel really excited about it. I don't know whether you did, like, all continuously more or less for two years, with retreats in between or, you know, the practicality of it. Also whether the beneficial effects kind of crept up on you or ... why you kept going for two years, basically.

Rob: I'm a stubborn mule! [laughter] I don't remember, to be honest, whether I was doing other -- I can't remember. I remember what kind of thing I was doing in my life at that point, but I don't remember whether I was putting other retreats and other stuff in between. But I definitely remember feeling at the time that there was some benefit. I mean, it was palpable, as I said, walking down the street and feeling the relief of what is it to have this kind of stuff go through the mind and be kind of what the mind is gathering around, noticing the difference around just the usual stuff that goes through the mind. Even that was really quite lovely. Definitely I was aware of some benefits.

So much in practice, sometimes it's hard to say when the fruits of things come. It's like one just gives oneself to practice, and fruits come all the time. Obviously mettā interacts with insight. It's not like you can tell -- I start to feel freer, and I can trace where that feeling of freedom comes from in the mix of practices that one's been doing. Sometimes that's very obvious, and sometimes it's just less obvious. But certainly I was aware, even in the moments of doing it, that one could feel -- there are people on this retreat going in and out of feeling -- "Ah, this is nice," and feeling the relief of that and the spaciousness it created as well.

In terms of if you're wanting to explore that, well, you've got a lot longer on retreat! Absolutely, that's something that we can talk about and would be really beautiful. If we go back to Sophie's question, actually when this sort of parallel retreat programme started, it was called Lovingkindness and Compassion as a Path to Awakening. What I wanted to introduce then was this idea that there's a lot of really, really deep insight into emptiness that comes from mettā and compassion practice that generally people were not aware of and tend to think that it's good if you're having a hard time -- "Do some mettā, and then you can join the big boys and do insight practice," kind of thing. Actually, one realizes that it feeds directly into the emptiness insights, so there are ways that you can develop that.

Yogi: As well, because I told you about this, because I've been doing this gratitude practice for the past four years, just a little bit in the evenings, it has actually -- and I noticed it doing the brahmavihāras practice -- amazing impact on the practice of developing appreciation, and so I feel encouraged by that.

Rob: Yeah, thank you. I think, going back to this idea of the habits of the mind, oftentimes we don't tend to look at the mind that way, and actually seeing that I tend to have these habitual thoughts, or these habitual responses, or these habitual ways of looking at myself or the world or situations or others, or these habitual intentions. It's not the complete truth, but one way of looking at it is there are just all these habits, and some of them are so habitual we don't even see them as habits. It's just that's the climate that I'm used to.

Some of them are really quite deeply entrenched. And so what happens, if I do a practice like mettā once in a while, it's going to have some effect, but if I start doing it over and over, or gratitude practices -- just keep putting that in -- you start really beginning to change the habitual grooves of the mind, and that's enormously powerful. There's a real deep re-conditioning going on, as you saw with the gratitude practice. But it takes kind of doing it and doing it and doing it. That's where the faith comes in. I feel one can begin to feel that at some point, but even before one does, it's just having faith in that.

Partly, the insight that the mind is, at one level, a collection of habits -- it's not a very nice way of seeing the mind, but actually it's quite a helpful insight, because if it's habits, it means that they're not -- what's the word they say? -- 'hardwired.' Do you understand? It's like it was put in there somehow, and they are not hardwired, and they can be changed. It's just a habit. I can replace it with another habit. This habit was strong; eventually this one will be strong.

Sometimes people say with the mettā practice, "Gosh, sometimes it just feels so dry and mechanical. I'm just like, yabba-dee-yabba-dee-yab. May I be this and may you be that. It just feels rote, mechanical." Actually, reflecting a little bit, if you've got an inner critic: how rote is that? [laughter] How often have I heard that message before? It's mechanical -- just put something mechanical in that's great, that's actually much more helpful. So it's a way of seeing the mind that's not particularly attractive, maybe, but actually there's a lot of potential for change there, which is really potential for reshaping. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question!

Yogi: It's great.

Yogi 2: What is the gratitude practice?

Rob: I don't know -- Penny, do you want to share a little bit?

Yogi: I got it from Carol Wilson, who was teaching [?] years ago. She said that she and a friend had decided they would email each other every day saying what they were grateful for. Some days it would be, "I can't think of a single thing." [laughter] So I thought I would try this, and I started doing it with a friend. We didn't manage to email every day, and I carried on after that. I just carried on -- instead of writing a diary at night, I just have a little bit of space [?], about five lines or something. I just write down everything I'm grateful for. Even if I've had a really horrible day, I can find loads of things! [laughs] It's really -- I recommend it.

Rob: Very good, beautiful. And what happens, again, because so much is tied in with the habit of ingratitude -- which we don't even think of that as a habit. The mind does not tend to see things to feel grateful for, or appreciative of. Once you start training that, to look for those things and to recognize and actually feel that, you start to notice it more. It's like the "half empty, half full" thing, and that's actually a training. It's a training to redirect and notice things. Just as I say with the body, it's like, can you actually notice, "Ah, maybe there's some not-bad feeling here that I may tend to overlook"? So a lot has to do with perception here as well.

Yogi: You do, you're starting to notice more things during the day. You think, "Ah, that's something I really can write about!" [laughter] I can now go to my diary, and I look forward to it, because I know, even if something really bad has happened, I know that I'm going to feel good by the time I've written those few lines.

Rob: Very good. Yes, so very powerful. And there's a train of habit that starts to build up in the perception, in the intention, in the way the heart orients to things -- all of that, wonderful.

Yogi: Carol said she and her friend were surprised.

Rob: I think most people will be surprised because -- I don't know if it's a cultural thing, I don't know what it is, but we don't tend to appreciate a lot in this culture. We take a lot of things for granted and look for what's wrong. Sometimes I think British culture is very strongly that sometimes. It's really reorienting, in a way, opening something that we didn't even realize was particularly closed, and how powerful the impact of that is. We could talk about that a lot. It's huge.

Q7: meaning of emptiness and fabrication

Yogi: I felt really inspired by the talk on emptiness.

Rob: Which one? The first one?

Yogi: Yes. During it, I had the experience of unbounded consciousness, and then the intermittent thought, "Oh, this is emptiness." Is it? Is that then a conceiving, to think, "Oh, I was experiencing emptiness"? And I really wanted more practices about how to experience emptiness.

Rob: Yeah, good. In terms of the practices, we will get to them very soon. They're coming. Let's backtrack, actually. Emptiness is not a state, interestingly. It's not a space of consciousness. I would actually say emptiness is an adjective. In other words, I say, "The self is empty," or "This thing is empty." Like we were saying with Sophie, it doesn't exist independently of my mind, independently of the way I'm looking at it. Emptiness is an adjective that goes with everything. The self is empty, time is empty, you are empty. This situation -- I tend to think, "This situation is terrible, it's awful," or whatever, or "It's fantastic." It's actually empty of being inherently that.

Talking about realization of emptiness, even on a very mundane level, I'm in a situation, and I think -- let's take the weather. Grey day, miserable, da-da-da. Then maybe I have a sitting, and I start to feel a little brightness inside, and I go outside, and I actually can see the loveliness here. It's empty of being inherently a miserable day. That's quite mundane, but really important, because those are the kind of places we get trapped.

So I can point that towards anything, and look at something and see the emptiness of this thing and the emptiness of that thing -- inside, outside, selves, others, worlds, states of consciousness, all of that. And as I start to do that, the consciousness starts to change. In other words, when I see a thing as solid and fixed and independently existing, it tends to create a certain consciousness in my mind -- the one we're usually used to, which is quite separate and brittle and contracted, etc. That's what we're used to.

As I more continually start to see this is empty, this is empty, what happens is the consciousness opens up. And there are lots of different experiences that one can have, but something like consciousness opening up very wide and becoming unbounded, feeling unbounded like that, feeling very empty, very spacious, not much self going on, that's the sort of thing that happens when we are sensing the emptiness of things. But the emptiness is more the adjective rather than that state. Have I confused everyone?

Yogi: So the experience of that state is empty, rather than it being a state of emptiness.

Rob: Yeah, loosely we could just say, yeah, it was an experience of emptiness. More accurately -- we could get into trouble, though, then making emptiness a state to get to, which it's not. Technically, that state was also empty.

Yogi 2: Is it akin to an experience of letting go? I've had experiences of feeling quite tight, something's happened, I've realized it's insubstantial, and then there's freedom for a while, and it feels very spacious.

Rob: Yes, very good. We're going to get to these practices coming up quite soon, and we'll actually keep the mettā going with them. When I see the emptiness of something, I let go of that thing. So let's take [something] very mundane -- this day, grey, miserable, cold, rainy. I start to see, "Oh, it's not really that way," and something in me lets go and opens, and there starts to be just a little expansion there. So emptiness brings letting go, and letting go also will take the mind into being able to see emptiness more easily, and a degree of spaciousness comes into the consciousness.

Yogi: It's like understanding emptiness rather than ...

Rob: Yes, exactly. Emptiness is an understanding rather than an experience. For some people, an experience might come first, and it might bring an understanding, but actually it's an understanding. What we're interested in on this retreat is that understanding not being intellectual, but actually making it more meditative, so one begins to see through that understanding, see with that understanding, and that starts to open up the experience and bring the letting go that Julia's talking about.

I start to see something's insubstantial, and naturally I stop clinging to it. I start to see this thing, this problem that I'm having, or this contraction, I start to see it's insubstantial, and I stop reacting to it because it's like, "Well, I see there's nothing there." We're mostly talking about the self on this retreat, but when I see the emptiness of something, I see its insubstantiality, I stop clinging, I let go, and that opens things out. And actually, as things open out, as I let go more and the consciousness opens out, the emptiness of things becomes more obvious. You get a kind of positive feedback loop. That's what I was trying to say. You understand?

So in that state, when you're feeling open like that, if you hang out in it a bit and you start looking at different things, it's like their emptiness begins to be more obvious to you from that state. Let's take this thing I keep harping on about, the body sense: as you let go more, the body starts to feel less substantial and less kind of solid in that way, less rigidly defined. It's like the emptiness of the body, or the emptiness of the self, when you're deep in the meditation, starts to feel more obvious. This self is not so solid. Where is it? It's more open. It's more undefined in that way.

Yogi: Is the practice of the jhānas something that's useful for understanding?

Rob: Can you hear that over there? No? Selma's asking: is the practice of the jhānas, which are states of deep absorption and samādhi, is that useful for emptiness? I think so, very definitely. Sometimes what you hear in terms of these deep states of bliss and absorption is that they're irrelevant for insight. I can't really explain it all right now, but from another perspective, what you're doing is you're going into states where there's less self, and less self, and even less self. So you are accustomizing the consciousness to states of emptiness.

It takes a long time seeing it, mostly, but you're also ... I'll throw this out now, because we'll start talking about it as the retreat goes on: when I was talking about the self-sense in that first talk, and the sense of self, that's something that gets kind of constructed. Let's say I've got this difficult thing going on, and I'm really reacting to it, and then all these opinions about myself, and all these reactions, and I start to see myself this way. I say, "It always was this way, and it always will be this way," and the whole sense of self gets very solidified and very built up, painfully, right?

That feels a certain way. This is what I want you guys to start getting a feel for. It's like, "Ah, yeah, that's what that kind of self-sense feels like." Other times, it's like you're not building all that stuff -- Catherine's going to talk about this tomorrow -- and the self-sense feels lighter. Deeper in meditation, whether it's mettā or jhāna or samādhi or emptiness or whatever, you're actually building even less, and the whole thing gets -- it's like, what does it feel like for the self-sense to get even less built, even less built? So the movement in very deep meditation, whether it's mettā, or samādhi, or insight practice, is actually less and less building. Do you understand? Less and less -- the Buddha's word is 'fabrication.' We'll go into this again because it's really important. Less and less fabrication. That's the Buddha's word, saṅkhāra. Less and less fabrication. I have to be careful, because if you get me going with this, I could just ... [laughs]

Yogi: By "less and less fabricated," do you mean less thinking, papañca?

Rob: Papañca is part of it. We'll go into this in a lot more detail. Papañca is an extreme state. Does everyone know this word, papañca? Maybe not. It translates as something like 'ego-proliferation.' It's like when you've gone completely nuts with something. [laughter] This thing has got you, and you're just obsessing about it. And in relation to that thing, a whole big self, and all the definitions, all the pain and all the "how I am, and how I always was, and how I always will be, and my mother and my grandmother and da-da-da-da-da" and all this stuff. That's papañca. This thing has got huge. There's an issue, and me and this issue have got huge.

That's an extreme state of building, and you can do that less and less and less. This is the beauty of the subtlety of meditation when it gets deep, is you start to see there's building going on even when there's no papañca going on. So papañca is, like I said, an extreme state. Even when we're not thinking, there's still building going on. It's very subtle. And unless I find the right ways -- this is part of the reason for this retreat -- of working meditatively, I won't begin to see those subtle ways of building. I just take it all for granted that this is all real, because I don't see that I'm building it; I don't see that it's fabricated. But if I find the right ways of unfabricating, of not building, I start to see it all dissolve and I start to understand what I take for granted, what I assume that everyone agrees, "This is all real," I start to see, "Oh, it's fabricated." This opens up a whole new sense of existence.

Yogi: How does fabrication happen if there's no thinking? Do you mean like emotional ...?

Rob: We'll get into it. It happens -- very briefly [laughter] -- certainly through the thinking, through the ways we react to things, through clinging and aversion, through identification, through solidifying things, through the perception -- like we were saying with Jane, not seeing the impermanence of things. It happens through the conceiving. It happens through just assuming that things are real; that ends up actually solidifying them. All that stuff. It's a journey to really expose all this.

Yogi: Isn't that all thinking, though?

Rob: No, some of it's way more subtle than thinking. Thinking is a part of it, certainly. This is part of what we'll get into on this retreat, certainly.

Yogi 3: Is that part of dependent origination?

Rob: Yes. So to say something is fabricated is to say it's a dependent arising, and what we want to do is understand what that means. We'll unfold this to some extent. That was where the Level 1 came in, because it's like ... [laughter]

Yogi 4: How many levels are there?

Rob: How many levels? You really want to know? [laughter] I'm not sure yet. More than six, maybe, I don't know. But a sense that this is a journey of understanding, and there's a lot of depth and subtlety here. But if one goes about it in the right way, it's almost like one step just naturally leads to the other. It's almost like you start to keep asking questions about reality, beginning to see deeper and deeper into this dependent arising, this fabrication.

Yogi: So there isn't a [?] map of practices?

Rob: A map of practices? For myself, I have maps, plural, but I hold them quite loosely, in the sense that if you do certain practices, I would expect certain experiences to open up, definitely. But there's a range in that, and there's flexibility, and people are different. We'll get maybe a little bit into this. Other people have very rigid maps, which doesn't seem to fit. But certainly I would expect -- some of the practices we'll be doing next week, if you look at things this way, I'm going to expect certain experiences to unfold. In a way, I'm just sitting here waiting for you guys to say, "Oh, this and this is happening," or whatever, or "I notice this and this." Not to put you under any pressure ... [laughter] That's natural, because that's part of dependent arising. I stop doing this, and this stops happening. We'll get into it more. It's something very, very beautiful to begin unfolding. It's very profound and lovely and freeing and absolutely beautiful.

Yogi: There are practices and we'll learn them next week?

Rob: Yes. [laughter]

Yogi: I'm just kind of quite itchy to know what they are!

Rob: Itchy to know what they are? We will be -- Catherine will introduce something tomorrow night. And then over the next week, we'll be doing what's called the three characteristics, but in a certain way. So contemplation of impermanence, contemplation of letting go, certain ways of letting go in relationship to things, and contemplation of regarding things as not-self. But I'll explain all this. They are very powerful ways of relating to things that really have the power to open things up.

How are we doing for time? Is it ...? It's 5:17, according to this clock. I could go a little longer, but have you guys had enough, or ...? The unanswered question? Yeah, there is. Rose, did you ...?

Q8: mettā equalizes all categories and beings

Yogi: I was having, not exactly trouble, with the neutral person. Because I had a sit and a walk where mettā was flowing really well, and it's just that it didn't seem to make any difference, the neutral person from the friend, because they were all the same. That's what it felt like.

Rob: That doesn't sound like a problem at all!

Yogi: No, it's not really a problem, but I kept trying a different neutral person ...

Rob: To make it more difficult? [laughter] Yeah, that sounds really tough. [laughter] So mettā, like emptiness, has a way of equalizing things. There was a story from the eleventh century -- I can't remember which Tibetan teacher it was -- and he said to a mother, "Where this is going is that you love everyone like you love your son." She said, "I couldn't possibly do that." That's where it's [going]. That's a really high ideal, but you get glimpses of this kind of equality, glimpses. However much mettā, you can probably have more. But certainly, when it equalizes like that, go for it, go for it. Wonderful.

Yogi: And there was this feeling of, "This is really good fun," because it's like, it felt like giving an anonymous present.

Rob: Yes, beautiful.

Yogi: I eventually fixed on the bank teller. [laughter] I hardly know anything about her, hardly remember what she looks like. I hardly ever see her anyway. She looked at me and she said, "Why me?" She said, "There must be many more people deserving of this." So I said that everybody is equally deserving.

Rob: I mean, why me, why not me? You know, why not? Great, good.

Yogi: I expect it will be different next time.

Rob: Well, it changes all the time. That's important. Everyone's realized that, right? [laughter] It's changing all the time. Part of maturity in meditation practice, maturity in being on retreat is just, we're going to get these waves, and it's okay. We expect that. And sometimes it goes really smoothly and easily, and sometimes it's like, "Whoa," you know. That's just normal and natural and part of the way that consciousness deepens. If someone comes in for interviews and they're just reporting this steady, smooth ascent into the celestial realms [laughter], I think this person is not telling me the truth. Something's not right there. So we get used to this, and it's okay. More equanimity in relation to the ups and downs is really part of the maturing coming into the practice.

Yogi: Yesterday, I was so stuck. I sat for twenty minutes in a great fuming stew.

Rob: And then here you are! Yeah. Okay.

Q9: ways of looking

Rob: So there's one more question. [reading from note] "How can one work with conceit?" This is a big question. I don't know who wrote it. Do you want to say anything now? Was that answered a little bit by what we talked about with the emptiness practices, for instance? Yeah? When we're doing the emptiness practices -- there are things that we'll introduce -- we're changing the way of looking. I've mentioned this several times. We're deliberately flipping the view of something.

I think it was yesterday, I said the problem we have as human beings is we get stuck in certain views that are not helpful. We have views, a way of looking at a situation, ourselves, others, that are not helpful. Sometimes that just shifts, and you feel it shift. When I put mettā in, when the mettā's going well, I see my view change, I see the view change. Like we said with Sophie, that's pointing to the emptiness of that view. It's not a reality; it's just what my mind sees, how it sees when the mind is in a certain state. So it begins kind of undermining the authority of that view as something to believe in. Other times, you can actually deliberately see it differently. You play, creatively play with a view and just decide to see something differently. It's like a game of how you're seeing things differently.

Is that enough? It is for now? Okay. Is there anything that feels pressing for now? I'm just aware of time. We could have just a little bit of silence before tea, or ...? Does that feel okay? Yeah? Okay.