Transcription
Okay. Let me throw some stuff out, and if you need to ask questions, then we'll open it up a little bit. In other words, if it's not completely clear, that's fine. On this retreat, when we're talking about emptiness, almost everything has to do with seeing how we construct -- how the self is constructed, put it that way. It is a construct, a fabrication, in the Buddha's words. And seeing that that is the reality of the self. It's a fabrication. But a little bit more than that, understanding, understanding how we fabricate, or how it is fabricated -- put it that way -- how the self is fabricated. Seeing that it is, and understanding how, and thirdly learning how not to, or how to fabricate it less, how to construct it less.
So when Catherine was talking last night, what was an example she used? I can't remember now.
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's come back to that. One of the first things is that I want to start to see when I'm suffering, when there's suffering, I'm building. I keep saying 'I'; let's put it in the passive. When there's suffering, there is the constructing of self. And actually, if I really look, I cannot suffer without constructing a self. That suffering is supported by the building of the self. So one of the first things, just following on from Catherine's talk last night, is I want to start noticing that going on, noticing this building going on. Doesn't necessarily mean catching it and stopping it. I might notice it -- actually, I might notice it ten years after it happens. [laughter] Been through all that one! Constructed this whole thing, gone off and married who-knows-who, and then it's like, "Oh, blimey." And one looks back. It's like, "Gosh, that was really a construction." [laughter]
Sometimes you notice this, of course, with an argument with someone. Or you get into a tizz with someone, or with yourself about something. A little time goes by, and you think, "Wow. What was all that about?" It doesn't even seem real after the fact. Do you ever have this, this sense of "something was constructed there"? The self was certainly constructed. But so was an issue. On this retreat, we're primarily talking about the self-construction, the emptiness of the personal self rather than phenomena. We'll get into that as much as we need to, but that's not the primary focus of this retreat.
So first thing is, I want to start looking in that way, knowing that this is going on, and looking out for constructions. And I might catch it, as I said, after the fact, five seconds later, five years later. I might catch it during. And I might nip it in the bud. Okay? But it's that I'm building.
Now, sometimes, we're, let's say, on retreat. We're moving about the house. And you know you're in the middle of a construction. Something has got you, and the self is solid, and I've become this person or that person, or whatever it is. So how, then, to let it die? This construction rises up. And then, how to let it die? How to stop the building process? There are many aspects to that. But one is, it probably rests on some kind of view. And we're feeding a certain view or views which feed the construction process. Silly example I thought of in an interview today with someone: I'm walking around the house or walking outside, and I see a certain plant -- I don't know, a geranium or whatever. I can look at it, and maybe they've trimmed it in a certain, you know -- is that the word, when you cut back the leaves?
Yogi 2: Pruned!
Rob: Pruned! Thank you, yes. They've pruned it in a certain way. And I have a bit of gardening in my history, and it's like, "That is not the way to prune geraniums." [laughter] This starts to really upset me. "They really are not in the know here." The silence exacerbates it, because I can't say anything to them, and it's coming out of my ears. I know, I am born as the Professor of Gardening or whatever in relationship to this poor geranium or whatever [laughter], but also in relationship to the construct of Gaia House, etc. So the issue and the self as geranium expert or gardening expert get built together. And that gets, in this case, quite puffed up, self-righteous, angry self, etc. And then maybe I totally get wrapped up, and I'm stamping around the garden, fuming about the geraniums, etc. Maybe I'm going to write a letter to -- hopefully, not to the Resident Teacher, but ... [laughter] To someone else. And no, maybe I won't just write a letter. They can actually read my book. I'll send them a copy of my book. [laughter]
So the whole thing gets built up. To recognize that: what does it feel like? What's the experience of the self getting constructed? How do I know when the self is constructed? And I see it there. How can I let this process die, or just stop building it so much? And as I said, one of those ways is, stop feeding the views that are supporting that. In this case, it's like, "You have to prune geraniums this way." That's a certain view. There are actually lots of views supporting that, but one of them is: "This is the way to prune, and it's wrong to do it otherwise." Sometimes identifying the views, and just realizing: they're just views. That's just a view. And maybe I can have a bit of space around that. To the degree that I'm attached to this view, I'm going to be pumping up the whole construction process, right? So that's one possibility.
Another possibility, or another necessity, I would say, is a simplification of the attention. What happens when Mr. Geranium Expert has got constructed is everything gets really complicated, with theories of horticulture, and this and that, and the whole thing, and one's relationship with Gaia -- and all that stuff. The attention is spinning at quite a complex level, in terms of quite a complex story of, you know, what one needs to say and do, and how I am, and my history with the university, studying, you know, gardening, and all this. In that moment, going to the body, there's actually quite a lot of agitation there, contraction, heat, etc., in the body.
So rather than keep the attention spinning at the complex level, at the level of complexity, find something really simple to put the attention on. And the body is usually very simple. Right there in the middle of that heat and complexity, at the bottom of it, so to speak, is something simple, which is a feeling of contraction or heat in the body, or something like that. And what if I just find that, let all that complexity bubble away, and I just zero in, so to speak, on the simple thing, and I just stay with that simple thing? And that simplification, and allowing it to be unpleasant, that simplification of the attention simplifies the whole construct, because part of what's building it is me spinning the mind at the complex level. Yeah?
So there's not feeding the view, there's simplification of attention, and a little bit related to that, a third possibility is spaciousness and allowing of the sensations of contraction. Let's say I've got all this reactivity going on about the gardening or whatever. Come into the body, and there's this contraction there, and the heat, and the unpleasantness of that. If I then start reacting to the unpleasantness in the body, I'm only fuelling the whole construction more. (Should I say that again? Or did that make sense?) I go into the body, I find this contraction and this heat there. If I'm not careful, the knee-jerk reaction to that difficulty in the body will be to be aversive to it, and contract around the contraction, etc. And that is part of what's building the whole construction. If I'm going to simplify the attention and go right in there, I need to rest with the attention on that physical simplicity, but in a way of allowing. Just allow it to be unpleasant in this moment, and allow it to be unpleasant. Give it space. Give it space, and allowing it. [11:20]
Generally, too, the factor of spaciousness is really important, because what happens when we get really complex like this is, the whole mind contracts. And there's very little space in the mind. We're full of theories of gardening and letters that we're going to write and all this stuff, and the whole sense of self. There's very little space. With a lot of spaciousness, it's like things can just -- it's like, when there isn't space, we're putting the whole thing under a pressure cooker, you know, and that pressure cooker is heating up more, and building it more. More space, it's like, just allow it to bubble, and it begins to calm down.
Yogi 3: Can I ask a question real quick?
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 3: When that process happens, and then there's the sensation in the body, and there's the aversion to this, the aversion here and there, and then there's the aversion, that aversion is a thought, isn't it?
Rob: No, not only.
Yogi 3: That's where I get stuck, because is it a thought? Or is it like, it feels like the aversion is part of this sensation ...
Rob: Yeah, very good. We're going to get more into that, Jane, as the retreat goes on, because it's quite subtle, what you're pointing to. We will revisit this next week. But how do I know when I'm aversive to something? And what form is the aversion taking? It's taking the form of thought. It's also taking the form of energetic reaction to something. There's just a contraction in relationship to something. So here's, let's say, a pain in my knee, and then I notice my shoulders are like this. That's telling me there's aversion. There might not even be any thought there. Maybe the thought -- I've quietened that. But rest of the body is tensing. And that's telling me that there's an energetic pushing away going on. Now, the last thing you said was actually very profound, because it's -- well, we may or may not get more into this. At first, it seems like, there's the thing, and the aversion is separate to it. But when you really look deeply, you actually see the aversion is not separate. It's part of the thing itself.
If we could park that for now and revisit it later, if that's okay. I think for now, let's say -- actually, I'll say this more next week. It's getting familiar with what aversion feels like, understanding what it's made up of, and that can allow us to begin kind of taking it apart. And sometimes when there's aversion, it just feels like a pfft, you know, just a wodge of aversion. And actually, there are more things going on there that we can take apart a little bit.
So let's just fill that out a little bit. The body tension -- I've said this; I'm just saying it again -- the body tension that I feel as part of that construction, I react to that. It's unpleasant. There's contraction as part of my construction of the self. And I react to that painfulness of the contraction in the body. My chest goes tight. I don't like it going tight. I'm aversive to it going tight. My belly gets tight. I push that away. That pushing away is part of the whole construction process of the whole self thing. What that means is that one way of kind of not building so much, letting it die, is to go -- I've already said this -- to go to the level of body, and actually see if I can be there without so much reactivity to the bodily level, because that bodily level is feeding into the whole construction. It's part of the whole construction.
Another, obviously, component of the construction, if we use that language, is the mental beliefs. Like I said, what's the view? What am I believing here? And this has come up several times in the Question and Answers -- in the one-to-ones as well. Someone may ask a question in the Q & A, and then there's a response to that. We start measuring: "Oh, I'm further advanced than this person," or "I'm nowhere near this person." And very easily, the self gets constructed in a kind of comparison like that. And it's either the inflated self of "I'm better than," or "I'm less than." And we probably have a habit, one way or another, of constructing one kind of self or another. Or both -- it just yo-yos back and forth. That's very common as well. [16:38] But that, too, will rest on a belief. What's the belief? What's the belief there? Someone opens their mouth for one minute and says something, and very quickly a belief comes in: "It means that they're da-da-da-da, a Buddha, and just about enlightened. And they're only hanging out -- everyone's actually just graciously hanging out for me without telling me that that's what they're doing." [laughter] "They could easily go home now." [laughter] What am I believing based on one minute of what comes out of a person's mouth?
So there's this mental component of stopping the building, actually questioning the belief. And very often we have a habit of believing certain things. So as I said, in my karma is the habit to believe this or that. Now, actually, that's an interesting one with the comparing mind, because one of the functions of mettā, too, is it softens the comparing mind. It evens it out. It just naturally starts to equalize between self and other. Sometimes, if you feel in that situation, in here or in life, mettā starts equalizing out the comparing mind.
I just thought of this. I'll throw it out now anyway. It's a tiny little thing, because someone asked the other day what to do about conceit. So the judging mind: "I am better than," or "I am worse than." Let's say someone says something, or you just look at the way someone's sitting, and you think, "I am better than," or "I am worse than." Okay, so here's the self, building itself as better than this other self. What about imagining a third self that's better than you are at this thing? You know, say you can sit still longer or something. And then you look at this person, and they're fidgeting and fidgeting, and you could ... [sighs loudly] [laughter] So self is one up on this one. Well, let's say some guy just wandered into this retreat, and he's been living for the last forty years in a cave in the Himalayas. And they wander in and they look at you. And they're like ... [sighs loudly] [laughter] It's an interesting game to play, to actually work in your imagination with a third person who's judging you in a similar way that you're judging another one. And it actually just makes it all seem quite ridiculous -- quite ridiculous. You actually have to do it to get the feeling of the futility of the judgment.
But similarly, negative, negatively, if you're the less than. You're less than. You see this other person. They're sitting relatively still, and you feel, "I can't sit still for ten minutes" or whatever. And imagine someone else here who can't even sit still as long as you can sit still. And then what happens? Same thing.
Okay, so there's this possibility of kind of recognizing that one is constructing, and letting it die, or stopping to feed that building process. A second possibility that Catherine was alluding to is the practice ... If we backtrack: really good thing to just, if you want, investigate some of this construction. So you're just open to investigate it in the ways that I'm talking about. Second possibility for practice now is actually the practice of staying at contact, or trying to stay at contact, and see what that does. So what does that mean? I mean, Catherine was talking about it last night, but we're aiming, in this respect, for something that we might call 'bare attention.' Some of you might have heard this phrase before.
So it's like, if I ring the bell in a second, can ring the bell, and the mind very quickly goes, "Bell." Or you hear an airplane, and it goes, "Airplane." You hear a car, and it's "Car," or whatever. And if the mind gets too involved, it might go, like, "Oh, that's a 1973 Ford MG" or whatever, you know. "And it's probably got this kind of [engine]," if you know about that kind of stuff. Or the plane goes overhead, and it's like, "Gosh, what about global warming?", or whatever. Certainly the global warming, that's a really important piece, I feel [laughter], but that's slightly different than the kind of attention we're going for in terms of bare attention. Now, the mind sometimes just labels [snaps fingers] -- you can't do anything. But then it's like, can I come back to the bareness of the sensation underneath the label, and kind of chopping off the story that goes with something? [22:04] So if I ring the bell, and it's like, it takes a little bit of effort, almost, keeping the mind right at the rawness, the nakedness of the sensation. If you just listen ... [rings bell]
Now, if you notice, just like paying attention to the breath, the mind stays there and it goes off, or it starts interpreting, "I like it. I don't like it. They could get a deeper bell" or whatever, reacting to it. And one can just bring the mind back to the rawness of the sound itself. Does that make sense? Yeah? And the kind of bare attention beneath the words, beneath the labels, beneath the reactivity, just as much as possible. So it's a practice. It's just a practice to stay at contact.
Yogi 4: There's still a cognizing of it, though?
Rob: There's absolutely still a cognizing, yeah. And there could well be a verbal labelling as well. But one's not getting too caught up in that. So it's just, that's just what happens, and we come back to the directness of the contact, of the bareness of it. Right now, maybe there's some sensation in your body that's prominent. If I look in my body, well, there's a slight tension in this hip. There's actually, you know, some history of little injuries there. But I could just focus on that sensation, and just be with the rawness, the nakedness of the sensations there. And just keep chopping off, keep letting go of any storyline that comes in, or reactivity, or interpretation, etc. You just keep coming back to the simple, the simple, simple, simple, bare attention of it. That make sense too? Yeah? Good.
So one can do this, as Catherine was saying, in each of the six sense doors. And you could -- I mean, depending on your personality -- you could be very systematic, and kind of say, "Right. This sitting, I'm just going to do the body, and really get into the body." Or "This sitting, I'm just going to do sound," or whatever. Or go to the lunch: "This lunch, it's taste. That's what I'm going to do." So you could break it up like that, or you could just be more freely moving, but clear what you're doing.
So this bare attention. Two possibilities there, if we get a little bit more subtle. The amazing thing about human attention (actually, maybe animals, too), but amazing thing is, we can direct it or have it be more open. Like right now, with the bell [rings bell], that's one sound that you're deciding to pay attention to and zoom in on. The zoom lens is focusing on that one thing. Or like this one sensation in the hip: I can zoom into that. Or this one taste in the mouth: I can zoom into that.
That's a real possibility. You direct the attention to one phenomenon of experience, and you just try and stay there, really at the contact, as bare as possible. Or sometimes, especially if you feel a little more settled in the meditation -- it's quietening; maybe the mettā's going well -- you can kind of let the whole thing open out, so to speak. Now, I could stay still within one sense door and do that. So I could, for instance, right now, you just go to listening. But it's not this sound, and then that sound, and then that sound, and then another sound. In other words, it's not so much attention getting pulled into one thing, and then pulled into another thing, or deciding to go into one thing, and then deciding to go into another. It's more of a global totality of listening. One's listening to the totality at once. It's everything together, rather than the attention narrowing down and picking one thing out.
Yogi 5: You were saying, with practising the contact, that's alone, that's not within the mettā?
Rob: Yeah, very good, thank you, Mei-Wah. At this juncture -- actually, I'll probably say on this retreat -- we're separating out these two practices. So there will be times when you're practising what we're talking about now -- staying at contact -- and times when you're practising the mettā. And for now, for this retreat, keep them separate. There is a way of mixing them which is actually very, very powerful. But I would rather not overload you with too much for this retreat. So they're separate.
Yogi 6: If I get caught up with the, you know, find the sensations distressing or something, then I tend to just slip back into the mettā, just to kind of stabilize myself.
Rob: Good. Very good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Very good, thank you. So you could do a whole sitting -- you could actually do a whole day in one practice or another practice, or anything you want. The important thing is to be conscious which practice you're in at the moment. So you could also split a sitting in two. You could do more what you're saying, which is, you're trundling on in one practice, and then you just veer off consciously into the other approach, maybe even just for a few moments. But you know what you're doing. You've switched gears there. And then you move back or you stay there or whatever. So it's separating, being sure what you're doing, when you're doing it, for now.
Yogi 7: Well, that's what I was doing, and doing the contact, and whenever I got distracted, I went into the mettā for a few seconds, and then I went back.
Rob: Okay. Good. That's totally viable. It's also possible that it's just the case that that feels more settling to you because we've had more time with that. There's also a way, like, if I ring the bell again -- this bell, you know, rings for quite a while. If we really try, everyone try and just be right at the contact with it, you will see: your mind slips off it, goes back, slips off it, many times in one bell ring, so happening quite fast. With this practice of bare attention, there's still something to bring the mind back to, and you bring it back to quite barely. And eventually that gets just as strong as going back to the mettā in terms of stabilizing the mind when it's distracted. Do I need to ring the bell again to illustrate that, or ...?
Yogi 8: I just like that sound. [laughter]
Rob: You just like that sound? [laughter] That's just you want me to shut up? [laughter] Okay. [rings bell]
Naturally, or normally, the mind will slip off, even many times during that. If you're watching carefully, it goes many, many times, on and off. No big deal. As long as that object is there, it remains an object that one can return to and kind of pay attention to. That's an option. [30:04]
Okay. So one might move in that mode of bare attention and staying at contact, and then one might feel, "This is pretty boring. You know, there's just all this bareness." That might be a response. But -- I think Catherine said this; she did say it last night -- it's like, there also might be, the more you hang out there, the more might get revealed this sense of beauty in the very nakedness of things, a kind of sense of brightness, because one is right there with things. There's a brightness in the very attentiveness. It's almost like things have a kind of brightness of their own, if that makes sense. There's a radiant quality to things. So at first, one might think, "Well, it's boring." As Catherine said, "There's nothing in it for me." But as one stays there and abides there a little bit, it actually begins to allow a kind of luminosity into the experience.
Yogi 9: So what if you do get quite strong emotions? Because of what you described, you know, you look at the flower, so you notice its freshness, and you still come back to the bare attention. Is that -- should we try to let go of these emotions and clutter?
Rob: Oy. That's a good question, yeah. [pause] There are always options, Sophie. There are always options. So if I'm looking at a flower, and I notice some emotions come up, the question is, first of all, are these helpful or not helpful? Now, if the emotions are coming up, where they're Geranium Professor emotions, and all this stewing about that, that's not that helpful, okay? And I see, "This is a construction that's not helpful." And one can, as I was talking about before, find ways of letting that go, maybe staying more at just the flower. It's just this visual sense of the geraniums right now or whatever.
One could also, as I said, go to the bare contact of the contraction there, of the feeling of the emotion, like I was saying before. If it's a beautiful emotion that's opening up, then it gets a little ... [laughs] You have an option of, yeah, letting that go, and just staying at the bare attention of the flower, and just noticing that this stuff is going on around the side, and just letting that go, and staying more with the bare attention. Or, going to the bare attention of how the beautiful emotion feels in the body. Or, if you want, and because I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, you shift right out of the gear of bare attention and you just enjoy the beauty of that. [laughter] And one opens oneself to that, because that's important, yeah?
So you've got these gears, you know. And it's good -- as we deepen in meditation, it's like, I want to explore all of those. Like what I was saying this morning, it's like, do I always tend to do one thing? And if I do, it's like, well, can I explore a bit more what I don't tend to do? You know, I don't tend to let myself enjoy it. Or I never let myself tend to enjoy it. So there's a sense of filling out the practice. [33:33]
Yogi 10: Sometimes with bare attention practice, I feel very constricted, feel like almost trapped by it. And my instinct is to broaden it to spaciousness. But sometimes, that can mean there's quite a tension there, almost then a bit of an aversion ...
Rob: Yeah. Hmm. What do you think you feel trapped by?
Yogi 10: It's a bit, maybe a bit like, I don't know, being caught in a searchlight. Somehow, I'm looking at something, and I can't take my eyes off it, or it's quite painful like this. Maybe some kind of -- there might be a feeling of effort. Not that I've decided to put effort in, but somehow there's something rigid about it.
Rob: Yeah, very good. Again, a bit like your question the other day about the craving that could come in -- it's like, it might be, to explore that a little bit more. And the last thing you said could be very significant, in that oftentimes, when we pay attention to one thing, it starts to feel contracted because effort comes in in an unskilful way. How many people have told me that trying to pay attention to the breath, as is usual on a retreat, they end up just tying themselves in knots, because it's one object, and we try to pay attention. Very easily, you can see, if I'm paying attention to one object, it's like holding. It's like the mind actually literally needs to clamp around it. And in that, it can just get overdone, especially if I say, "It's good to do this," and then, again, we're constructing a self around measuring how well I do that, because "This is the important thing now. We're all paying attention to this thing. The whole retreat is about paying attention to this." [laughter]
How silly, and yet by the end of it, we'll be measuring ourselves dependent on how -- you know? So it's just dependent on what we're doing. And the self gets constructed through measurement in relation to something that we've decided is important. As I threw out the question a little while ago, what have I made to matter? So there are two things going there. One is just an imbalance in the effort, when we attend to something. That's quite subtle, and you might want to just play with noticing that come in, and kind of relax around -- it's almost like receiving the object, so receiving the sight or receiving the breath, rather than zooming into it, both.
And then an added level is this, "Okay, now is there some self coming in here?" I didn't hear it in your question, but I'm just kind of extrapolating a little bit. But oftentimes the self, when the self has something to do, it's given something to do, then oftentimes it starts measuring itself in terms of how well it thinks it's doing that thing. And then, unfortunately, what happens is that becomes so painful that we then throw out all notion of doing, because I can't go near doing. People often say to me, it's quite a big thing in practice, this idea of doing versus non-doing. And oftentimes it's not that it's coming from, necessarily, a very wise place. It's just that doing has got so much of a self-construction that goes with it, and so one just avoids it. And I might be missing all this insight and beauty that goes with doing, just because it's become so painful, because I attach the self to it. I'm just missing that whole half of practice. There's so much beauty, and so much unfolding that can go in that. But anyway, explore a little bit more.
So it could be boring. It could be that one begins to sense this radiancy of things in there. Or another thing that one can begin to pay attention to is the sense -- that one might not even pick up at first -- of freedom, of a little bit more spaciousness when I'm not constructing the self because I'm staying more at contact. I may not even notice it. We're so used to constructing the self. Even in dreams, we're constructing a kind of self most of the time. We walk, walk, walk along, move in the day, sit in meditation, constructing this self, constructing that self, bit more, bit less, coming and going. We're so used to that. To dwell at contact, it's like it's saying, "Not going to construct it so much." It might feel boring at first. But actually that boredom itself might begin to, "Oh, I see there's some space in here. There's some ... [relieved sigh] relief of not constructing." Do you understand? There's some freedom there.
Yogi 11: It's like giving up an addiction, isn't it?
Rob: Yes, yes, yes. And it's an acquired -- yeah, very good. It's an acquired taste as well. We're addicted to constructing. We're addicted to constructing the self: either good selves, bad selves, or both. And giving it up. And sometimes, as I said in one talk, we can be addicted to constructing a painful self and a villainous self. And it's like, what is it to actually gradually learn to let go of that to some degree, and actually realize -- this is important to realize; this is why I'm mentioning this, it's important to realize -- actually that feels better. So the first thing might go, "This is boring. There's nothing in it for me. There's no drama." When I don't construct something, I'm not constructing a drama. You know, "Here's this thing, and it means this, and it's painful, and it's my journey, and it's always been like this, and I'm going to do it, and I'm heroic, and I'm a failure." It's all a big drama, painful as it is. And when I let go of that, I'm letting go of the drama a little bit of constructing. At first it's going to seem boring, maybe. Or maybe not. But with a little bit of just hanging out there, you start to feel, "Oh, this is, ahhhh, cooling. It's spacious. It's freeing." It has a free, spacious quality to it.
Yogi 12: But I'm just -- do you think that, you know, that kind of addicted quality in building the self is because, on some level, we think we're going to get the thing which we really want, which is happiness from doing that, which somehow, I don't know, must on some level be connected to a deeper sense of our being? Do you ...?
Rob: What's connected to the deeper sense of our being?
Yogi 12: Well, I don't know. I was going to say it's an inquiry, but that sense of addictiveness towards building a self, and not wanting to sort of give it up, is because, it's like in any addiction, we think we're going to get something from it. But it's empty, and we still keep doing it even though we don't get the thing.
Rob: Yeah, there's a lot of truth in that, absolutely. And it's also many-levelled. So it's also true that what the Buddha calls, this word that I threw out at some point, avijjā -- it means 'fundamental delusion.' We're deluded in a number of ways before one is completely awakened. We're deluded about where happiness comes from, as you were saying. We're confused about where happiness comes from. We go chasing it in all the wrong places. And one of the ways we chase it is in trying to pump up this sense of self. And that doesn't work, doesn't lead to happiness.
But there's another level of avijjā, which is more just, we believe that the self is something real. We haven't yet seen that it's a construction. There are different levels, in terms of where the delusion, where the addiction is coming from. You know, sometimes just believing that the self is real, so therefore I do what it seems like would be good for the self, or feed the self. Yeah?
Yogi 13: Can I ask a question?
Rob: Please.
Yogi 13: When you go to the body sensation, and it feels like something, whatever, and you get a sense of it's unpleasant or pleasant or neutral, do you get a sense of that as an additional sensation to the original sensation? Or is it a quality that you have sort of tacked on to ...?
Rob: The pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality of it?
Yogi 13: Yeah.
Rob: What's your sense of that?
Yogi 13: That it's possible to feel both.
Rob: To see it both ways?
Yogi 13: There's the sensation, and then there's an unpleasant sensation sort of mixed in that.
Rob: Yeah. You can see it both ways. That's just interesting to note. You can see it both ways. Probably what's more important -- well, what is important at some point is to realize, I cannot have a sensation without a vedanā. Every sensation, part of that sensation is some kind of *vedanā-*tone to it. It goes with it. It's impossible to have a sensation without a vedanā.
Yogi 14: What was vedanā?
Rob: Did Catherine talk ...? Maybe not. Let's going into it now. Vedanā -- it's this Pali word. It means 'sensation,' or it means this 'feeling-tone.' We're going to go into it again later in the retreat, actually, in much more detail. It means the sense, the quality of the texture of any experience, so whether it's pleasant, or unpleasant, or just kind of in between. So if I had a blackboard here and long nails, and I ... [scratching motion] For most people, that would be, the vedanā of that sound, of that sensation would be unpleasant. A songbird sings, and for most people, there's pleasantness there. But we're actually going to go into it much more. I think for right now, Stew, probably what's ...
Yogi 13: Yeah, the reason why I ask is ...
Rob: Yeah. Why are you asking?
Yogi 13: Because if I sort of become aware of those two things, and I dialled more into the vedanā, that seems to ease things quicker.
Rob: Yeah. Could everyone hear that? The reason for that is probably because, when you're, as you said, dialling more into the vedanā-tone, the unpleasantness or whatever, you're more fully aware of that, and reacting less to it, whereas if you're dialling more into when it feels like they're more separate, it's like, there's some reactivity going on to the vedanā, kind of at the side, that you're not so much monitoring or allowing to quieten. When you go directly to it, you're kind of quietening the reactivity more, because you're a ...
Yogi 13: Yeah, and then I can also sit there, and it's just, "It's unpleasant. Oh, it's passing away. It's pleasant. Oh, it's passing away. It's neutral. Oh, it's passing away. It's unpleasant. Oh, it's passing away. It's neutral ..."
Rob: Yeah. Very good. So we will get into that tomorrow already, seeing the impermanence of things. And we're going to start that. Yeah. Well, let's talk about it tomorrow, if that feels okay, yeah?
So, could be boring, could be a sense of beauty in it. As I said, a sense of the luminosity of things begins to reveal itself, because I'm not layering all this other stuff on top of everything. It's like the very nakedness itself, the brightness of life begins to be revealed. Or I could start to notice that when I don't feed this addiction, when I don't construct a self so much, that actually feels like a relief. It feels -- there's freedom and there's spaciousness in there. And actually to start noticing that, because it's something we might overlook. And that's also in the mix there. [46:30]
Okay, last piece I was going to throw out, just a little particular piece, is in relation to the mind door, which is the -- as Catherine mentioned, there are six sense doors in the Buddha's sort of system. So you've got the sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, right? The five that we're used to. And then the mind is the sixth one. And so an image in the mind, or a thought that goes through the mind -- these are perceptions and sensations at the sixth sense door of the mind. Do you understand? You're aware of the thought.
Yogi 15: Is not awareness one of the senses?
Rob: Awareness is not a sense. The way the Buddha would describe it is, you can have the six awarenesses. You know, there's awareness of sight, awareness of sound, awareness of -- you can break it down that way. So awareness of the mind, awareness of the contents of the mind. So awareness is what's aware of something or other.
Yogi 15: [inaudible] questioning ...
Rob: Yeah. Okay.
Yogi 15: [inaudible]
Rob: Okay, but bring it up again, because someone else asked similarly. Again, it's the sort of thing that, in terms of the curriculum for this retreat, I wasn't going to get into it. But if it's coming up for you guys, ask, and I'm happy to go into that. It just won't be part of what I'm -- but if it feels like it's alive, and you want to ask again at some point ... yeah? Okay.
So it's hard to have bare attention to a thought. Thoughts are so quick, so subtle, and so slippery, and seductive, and snake-like. [laughter] So one of the things that can help a little bit is working -- remember I said there were two modes: you could be more directed or more open in the attention. One of the things that helps is allowing things to be more open. When you feel more settled -- maybe the mettā's going well, and you might switch gear, and be more open to the totality.
One thing in particular that can help is spending a little time in the openness of listening. [49:11] And again, as I said, not this sound, and then that sound, and then another sound, but more like just seeing if you can kind of relax back into the totality of just hearing. It's like the awareness is just receiving, receiving. We'll maybe do a guided meditation on this later at some point or something. And just dwell with listening. And there's a kind of openness to the awareness, just sounds arising and passing, and there's that openness there.
Yogi 16: With listening, would the listening include listening to any thoughts that might ...?
Rob: It will start to get -- at first, just make it actual aural listening. So at first you're just mostly interested in the actual listening. You're still aware of the body, so you keep anchored in the body, as always. Always you're anchored in the body. And then you're opening up the space, and just, okay, the crows, another bird, this -- and you're aware of the totality, someone shuffling, etc. And what that does, because sounds come from different directions and distances, I start to open to that, and it just starts to open up the whole space of the consciousness a little bit -- just naturally, just allowing the listening and the hearing. It's a very receptive mode, allowing. As the space opens up, and you hang out, and it's just like sounds coming, and sounds going, just with the bare attention to sounds. I'll repeat this at another time, but it's just a small step from there. At some point, you'll start to realize that thoughts get included, as Jacqui was saying. One actually notices, "Oh, it's the same with thoughts. They're just like sounds."
And it's this kind of bare attention to the arising of thought, without getting sucked into it so much, just like a sound. Bird chirps, pen scratching, just textures of sound in the space, a thought passing through. And that tends to be much more helpful, because there's not this hooking onto a thought. Usually what happens is, a thought goes through the mind, we immediately hook on, and we're dragged who knows where by it, you know, very quickly. So with the spaciousness, it's almost like just witnessing a thought as a thought. It's just a thought. Like the bell [rings bell], it's just a sound, the texture of it. Thought's much quicker, but one just gets a sense of a thought just as a thought. It's just an event there. But the listening can begin to help if you find -- just settling into that listening. I'll repeat this, because it goes more with where we're moving to later as well.
Okay. That was what I wanted to communicate. Are there more questions, or is that good, or ...?
Yogi 17: Can I clarify something you said to Stew? You said that there's always a vedanā with any sense -- is that even when we stay at bare contact?
Rob: Yes, yes. Very good. So yes, there is. Any experience, in other words, any perception, any experience, any sensation has a *vedanā-*tone with it. Staying at bare contact, as Stew was saying, you can decide to pay attention more to the vedanā quality that's with something. Or you can decide to be more, let's say, like I'm looking at this grid on this microphone. I could be really kind of focused on the experience, or I could start to notice more -- it was neutral at first, but actually, the more attention I give it, it starts to, funnily enough, become subtly pleasant. So I'm tracking more the vedanā in my awareness. Or I'm tracking more the sensation. But both are actually mixed together. You cannot separate them.
What happens, if we use this thing, and we're staying at contact or bare attention, looking at the microphone, neutral, and then I start to go, "It's pretty boring," and then I start drifting off or feeling like, "I don't want to be bored." And then this whole thing comes. Or it starts to get pleasant or unpleasant, and I think, "That's not as nice as the microphone I used to have when I was living in the States. And it was really, you know, da-da-da-da." And I'm off now. That's not a very good example. But let's say a pain in the knee. You're sitting in meditation, and there's a pain in the knee, or a pain in the hip or back or whatever. That moment of contact has a vedanā with it: it's unpleasant. Pain has to be unpleasant. What happens, as Catherine was saying yesterday, out of the vedanā comes craving and clinging: "I want to get rid of this." Okay? That's normal, when there's pain. It's normal. We can get carried away with that in terms of a whole bunch of thinking comes in, a whole bunch of reactivity. We start fuming with anger. We hate the retreat. We blame ourselves for having a painful body. And then we've really built this, we've really constructed the self.
So this idea of constructing the self, there's a spectrum to it. I could be doing it really, really a lot, you know, going completely bonkers with it, or a little bit less, or a little bit less, or a little bit less. If I'm sitting here, and here's this pain in my knee right now, or in my hip right now. So I pay attention to it, and I can have a sense: there's unpleasant vedanā. Then I begin to feel -- this relates to Jane's question -- I begin to get a sense also ... I'm just thinking, do we want to go here now? [laughter]
Yogi 18: Yeah. [laughter]
Rob: Who's getting confused? Is it too much? [yogis murmur] You are confused?
Yogi 19: No, no, no, keep going!
Rob: This working more with vedanā directly is something we're going to get to next week, okay? But I'll put it out now, a little bit. Just trying to think. Give me a second. How to formulate this without confusing ...?
If I stay at the contact with the sensation, I'm just aware there's unpleasant sensation. I might feel a tug or a push away, okay? But I just notice that there's a push away, and I keep bringing the mind back to the bare sensation of it, and the bare unpleasantness of it. And I'm not really investigating that tug any more than noticing it's there and trying not to give in to it, just coming back more to the bareness of things. [56:00] Yeah? Later next week, we will start working directly with the tug itself, with the craving and the aversion. That ends up being very powerful. But for now, it's more working with just noticing that there's a tug there. There will be a tug any time there's unpleasantness, and coming more back to just the sensation, not giving in to the tug, not energizing that rejection, that pushing away. Yeah?
Yogi 20: You know, I really noticed that, actually, because I used to have very severe, severe pain for a long time. So that reactivity to pain sometimes is quite strong. I noticed when I was tuning into the feeling of pain in my hip area, and almost automatically, it would be like, "Pain!", flashing pain. And instead of listening to that label, I just went into the sensation.
Rob: Very good, yeah. Very good.
Yogi 20: And it was just like an aching, an achiness. I didn't put the label "pain" on it. And it kind of just was there. I mean, it kind of dissolved.
Rob: Excellent.
Yogi 20: So it was fascinating to watch that.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Very good. So in that sense, one's getting underneath the reactivity, and then also trying to get underneath the label, this word pain. You have to be careful when you start me talking about emptiness, because [laughs] it's just ... There's a way, too, that labelling builds experience, okay? Not just -- well, all kinds of things build, build things. And so sometimes, this word pain is not a neutral word. It's a very charged word. It's like throwing a grenade in there. See what that does. You know, I put this word in, and it does something to the whole experience. It also does something to the self, because when I build up this issue of my pain, I also end up building my self: "I'm the one who has this pain. I'm the one with the history of the pain. I'm the one with the projected future of the pain. I bet no one else has pain." Or, you know, the comparing mind, the whole -- do you see what I mean? The whole show gets constructed together. Everything gets constructed.
Now, when you do that, Nina, I think for now -- what happened was, you said, it just became an aching. In other words, it's just unpleasant vedanā. And one might be aware of the tug away from it, but it's actually just unpleasant vedanā. It may just stay like that, but then there's a lot less suffering there.
Yogi 20: Yeah, I noticed that.
Rob: Very good, yeah. A lot less suffering. There's also a lot less self being built around it. It's just some pain, just some pain. That's what I mean. It's just this, it's just this contact, it's just this thing. Then you said, "Then it just dissolved." Now, that actually turns out to be extremely interesting, in terms of emptiness. But I'm not going to say anything about it now. [laughter]
So this is where -- do you remember? -- I think it was the first talk or something, I talked about there's emptiness of the personal self, and emptiness of phenomena. Do you remember I just made that distinction? I said, this retreat, we're dealing mostly with emptiness of the personal self. But I was curious, breaking it up that way, how much the emptiness of phenomena will come out, in terms of your guys' experience. And you will start just saying, "Well, this happened, or this happened," or whatever. I'm happy to include that, as I said, in the Q & As and stuff. But maybe it's enough for now. It's enough, yeah. Is that okay? So that piece, we can revisit if it feels like it's relevant.
Okay. Let's just have a bit of quiet together.
