Transcription
We're going to start building on, if you like, or nuancing a little bit, this practice that we've introduced in the last few days of staying at contact. If we talk about insight, insight comes in many different ways. It's possible to have insights through reflection or contemplation (in other words, through thought). It's possible to have an intuitive flash of insight. It's possible that insight comes from a moment of silent, clear looking -- very simple, without thought. All of that, and many other ways too. Generally speaking, what insights have in common is that they unlock freedom. In a way, that's part of what you could define insight as. It's some kind of seeing or understanding that unlocks freedom. So there are many ways this can happen, many forms that can take.
One division I just want to make right now is two types of insight. One is a kind of -- the "aha" moment. Many of you know. So for example, you're sitting, and you're paying attention, just being generally mindful, and you notice something, or something gets clear. The insight just sort of pops up, or is revealed or presented, simply in the calmness and the receptivity of seeing, of clear seeing, of mindfulness.
And then perhaps there's another type, if we just make a distinction -- it's slightly artificial, but we'll make it anyway -- which is more what I would call sustaining a way of looking, a way of relating, or sustaining a view that leads to freedom. I'll explain what I mean. Deliberately sustaining ways of looking, ways of relating, or a view, we could say, that brings freedom, that brings a sense of freedom.
So for example -- was it yesterday? -- we were talking, there was a Question and Answer period going on, and very easily, for many people, the view can creep in, the way of looking at the whole situation, that's one of comparing. And with that goes the comparing self: "I am not as good as ..." Very occasionally, a person feels, "I am better." But generally it's unfavourably comparing. And so that self-comparing is a way of looking at that situation. It creeps into the situation. It's like a lens we're putting on the whole situation. It's like I'm seeing it through that filter of the comparing mind and the self, usually unfavourably comparing.
Or the example I gave, the silly example about being the gardening expert. And there I am, stomping around the house and the garden, looking at the plants, and looking to find fault with the plants, looking to find fault with the way they're taken care of. So that's also a way of looking that, in that instance, is acting as a filter, or -- that's not even the right word. It colours my whole perception of the situation.
Now, neither of those ways of looking will bring freedom or happiness. If I'm sitting in a Q & A, and I'm looking at the whole situation, I'm perceiving the whole situation through the lens of the comparing mind, I will not feel happy, and I will not feel free. Is that ... obvious? That's obvious, right? [laughs] Good.
Compare that with the practice that we've introduced: staying at contact. In a way, that's also a way of looking. It's a way of seeing. It's a way of perceiving. It's a kind of way of relating to this moment of experience. And it's a way of relating that, relatively speaking, brings or allows a lot more freedom, a lot more spaciousness into -- yeah? Have you even begun to get a taste of that? Yeah, great. Excellent. So they're just ways of looking. Some ways of looking that we have, in that way of looking, there is the construction of self. That very way of looking, the way I'm looking at this situation, the way I'm relating to this situation, the way I'm viewing it, the way I'm feeling it, the way I'm sensing it, the way I'm relating to it constructs the self, and binds us, imprisons us with that whole construction.
And unfortunately, as human beings, there are many of those ways of looking, and we often have them as habits. We are habitually addicted, without even realizing it. We take them as reality. We don't even realize they're going on, often, and they're so close to us, we can't even sense that they're there, and they're impacting how we feel, what we see, the possibility in the situation, the sense of freedom -- all of that. And some ways of looking are available to us, and then there are many ways of looking available to us as practitioners that do the opposite -- ways of looking that start unbinding, deconstructing the self, or not allowing it to be constructed so much, and opening up the sense of freedom.
Okay. So at this point in the retreat, we're going to introduce what's called the three characteristics. And some of you may have heard of this. For some it will be new. But we're going to introduce it with a particular angle on it. So it's a particular lens -- sorry, a particular slant on this. So the three characteristics are -- it's a particular teaching of the Buddha's. Do you want the Pali? Do you guys care about that, or ...? You do? Yeah? Okay.
The first one is anicca. [8:31] And it means change or impermanence, flux. Actually, it also means uncertainty, interestingly. The second one is dukkha. And that means unsatisfactoriness, something like that. We'll go into these in much more detail over the days. And the last one is anattā. And it means -- well, attā is self. An- is a kind of negation. So either no-self or not-self. And we will explore these. For our purposes, on this retreat, we're going to use these as ways of looking. So each one provides a very, very powerful way of looking, of bringing freedom, ways of looking that bring freedom, that allow freedom, ways of looking that bring letting go, ways of looking that don't construct the self so much. And they bring that in the moment, in the moment that we're looking. It's not like I see something, and I hope that later on, maybe I'll have a little bit of freedom. In the moment of looking this way, there will be freedom, or there is some degree of freedom, generally speaking.
What they also do, these three characteristics as ways of looking, it's almost like the consciousness begins to go on a journey of deeper seeing. They start to unfold deeper and deeper revelations about the nature of reality. It's almost like you start doing it, and that tunnels into an insight which goes on to the next insight, etc. And particularly, what they reveal, the insights they reveal, they burrow deeply, tunnel deeply into the depths of this dependent arising, this construction business that we've been talking about, really into the subtlety of that -- so much so that it's into how even such subtle, taken-for-granted aspects of our existence like space or time are also constructs.
Now, on this retreat, we're just beginning that tunnelling process. As I said, we're working mostly on the self, and the way the self is constructed. But actually, these three characteristics are like three avenues, three tunnels. And one can keep going, and keep going, and keep going. If one really develops the practices of them, they're immensely powerful, if they're used in the right way. We're beginning that. As the Buddha said, you know, after his famous story after his awakening, which supposedly happened, you know, one night -- might have been longer -- but he was really unsure whether to teach or not. He said, "This is hard to see, what I've discovered (this emptiness, this dependent arising), hard to understand, hard to discern." And he wasn't sure whether to teach it or not. So in a way, we need something, we need quite powerful digging implements, if you like, to tunnel. We need ways of looking that really penetrate.
Sometimes, we might wish that just being present might reveal all the depths of that dependent arising and the subtlety of emptiness. But it may not. We may need something a bit more powerful, or a lot more powerful. So we're going to introduce these three characteristic practices over the next days, over the next -- I don't know -- four, five, six days, whatever it is, gradually, one by one. I'm not sure what [is] the right way of doing this. We could have given you all it in one go, and then you kind of see where you are. But we're going to do it one by one over the next days. And we'd like you to try each one and see which is your favourite. It might be you like them all. It might be you like a couple of them or just one of them -- hopefully at least one! [laughter] By "favourite," I mean what works best. Like I said, if you find the right way of working these practices, you actually feel the freedom unfold in the moment. You actually feel it. It's palpable -- might be subtle, but it's actually palpable. There's a sense of letting go, and that's what I mean by "it works best."
So today I just want to talk about impermanence, and kind of give it to you as a practice, and hopefully as clearly as possible. So, that things are impermanent is pretty obvious, right? It doesn't take a lot of insight to realize that things are impermanent. Could we agree on that? [laughter] Just look around you. It's pretty obvious that things are -- as soon as someone, you know, about four or five, it's like, that begins to get obvious. But what if we practise sustaining that way of looking? So it's not just that things are impermanent, but I'm actually sustaining a way of looking that's looking at impermanence and seeking that out. That's what I want to tune into.
So what does that mean? It means to notice change, deliberately to notice change, deliberately to tune the attention into the sense, the aspect, the perception, the experiences of change, of flux, of fluidity, to remain focused on that sense of things, to stay with that fact of change, that sense of change, of anicca, the flux, the birth and death of things. It's a different way of looking. It's a different way of relating to the moment. So each word, each sound -- each word is a sound as I'm speaking, and each one is born, and is there, and then dies. There's change all the time, and we can tune into that stratum of our experience, that level of our experience. That's all I'm interested in, is change. I don't care about anything else. I don't care about seeing this clearly or defining it clearly. What I care about is change: change, change, change. I don't even care that I exactly know what it is that's changing. I just care to see, and to be in contact with its change, the birth and the death, the shifting of textures, the fluidity, the change itself -- just as fast as it's kind of revealing itself, moment to moment. So one doesn't need to pressure it too much to kind of see nanoseconds of change if that's not what's revealing itself.
So mostly, we're interested in moment-to-moment change. I'll give some examples in a second. But there are also many levels, many sort of frequencies of change in our life. So for example, often, you know, might say to someone: "Okay, this morning, what mood were you in when you woke up?" Maybe happy, maybe grumpy, maybe slightly depressed, maybe elated, maybe curious, whatever. Was that same mood still there at lunch time? Or had it changed? Maybe it had changed somewhere and gone back. Or how is it now, compared to when you woke up? And checking tonight.
So there's a kind of everyday frequency of fluctuation, which is really important to see, because that's where we often get stuck. Wake up in the morning, I feel low, and then woven into that, there's this assumption that it's just going to last all day long. And actually just very simple -- you just see: it doesn't. Things have gaps in them, just on that level. So that's an important level too. But primarily, for this practice, we're more leaning towards the moment-to-moment level of noticing change.
So I'm going to do the bell example again. So was it yesterday? Seems like ages ago. Was it yesterday? [laughter] Goodness. Okay. Going to hit the bell again. We did bare contact with the bell. Now, same deal. You come in bare contact, but listening to and for the fluctuations in the sound of the bell. Now, there's the moment that it starts, and the moment that it ends -- actually, it kind of goes into imperceptibility at the end. But within that, you can hear it kind of throbbing, pulsing, etc. So let's do that again. And this is what you're tuning into deliberately. And just as we did yesterday, you know, you'll notice that, well, halfway through -- actually, about one second after it was struck, the mind has wandered. No problem. You just bring it back. It's like your object for this amount of time that it's ringing, right? So flux, change, shifting of sound. [18:46, bell rings for several seconds]
Could you hear? There's a kind of little wave to the -- yeah? Is that discernible?
Yogi 1: Wobble.
Rob: Wobble, yeah. Wobble. Yeah. Okay. So that's an example of -- do I need to do that again, or was that okay? Again?
Yogi 2: It's very nice when you do it. [laughter]
Rob: Shall I do it again? [bell rings again]
And then it's over. And that over-ness is part of the impermanence as well. It's the micro-fluctuations. What's nice about it?
Yogi 2: Well, it seemed interesting. It's -- well, it's a sound that I like. It's got good associations, I think. Feels very calming to listen to. Yeah.
Rob: I'm partly asking that because I'm wondering if that calming is also because of the bare attention as well. In other words, there's not that -- you know. So there's a real, like we talked about a little bit, when you're paying bare attention, you're really simplifying things. And it's like that tends to calm the being. There's less of a construction around. There's less of this mania of the mind to construct and construct. When we're doing the impermanence, we're actually taking that a level deeper, taking it a level deeper.
So that's an example, obviously, where we're directing the attention. As we talked about yesterday, we can have the attention work in an open way or a directed way. We can choose. And that's obviously an example where we're directing the attention.
[21:30] What if we were to open out the listening right now?
And just the totality of sound, all of it, it's like a sphere. The awareness is open. And that openness of awareness just receives. And one's tuning into the change there. Doesn't matter what it is, there's flux, there's change. There's the arising, perhaps the shifting of a sound, and the disappearing.
So tuning into that texture of change. Do you get the sense? There's the birth of a sound, and the dying of it.
What about the body? Was just playing with this a little before. There's a spot right at the corner, where your jawbone turns up, and if you press it ... [laughs] It's a little bit -- what's the word? -- tender. Does anyone have that? Somewhere around there?
Yogi 3: [inaudible] I don't understand.
Rob: Somewhere around here.
Yogi 4: On the bone?
Rob: Well, just around, yeah?
Yogi 4: On the joint.
Rob: Just around there, sort of, where the corner is. [laughter]
Yogi 5: Precision in anatomy. [laughter]
Rob: Everyone got it? Yeah? Great. Okay. Again, we're directing the attention. There's nothing esoterically significant. [laughter] In case you wonder if there's tantric significance or something, it doesn't.
So just press that. Press it reasonably hard, to actually really notice some sensations. And again, it's like, do they stay the same? Or is there shifting there? Is there an ebb, a flow? A pulsing? Flickering? Throbbing? Noticing change. Change. Anicca. Impermanence.
Is it one sensation, or is it many, or ...?
Can you sense the change there? Yeah? Good. And of course, what about your hands? Hands are often quite sensitive, because they have a lot of nerve endings in them.
Just, however your hands are, just tuning into the hands. And what's the experience? Again, going to bare contact with the sensations in the hand, and then noticing the changing, throbbing, flickering, appearing, disappearing. Doesn't even matter if we have words for it. It's change.
Can you sense that? Okay. And of course, again, we could open up the attention. You could be with the whole body, the field of the whole body.
What is it to open up the attention right now, and actually be in the whole body? And open to the field, the dance, the appearing and the disappearing, the movement of sensation in the whole body. So again, the awareness is more open, more receptive. Sometimes you get little flickers. Sometimes you get whole bands of pressure or sensation, shifting. Whatever you notice, the important thing is to notice change.
I don't need to make it so microscopic, necessarily, or so fast, even. Whatever reveals itself to me, when I'm looking for change, looking at change, at anicca.
So this body, what we call the body: experientially, it's a field of change. It's a sea of changing sensations.
Do you get that sense? Yeah? Good. What about taste? That's an interesting one. If you move to that sense door, and you go to a meal, it's interesting. Maybe your favourite meal, maybe a food that you don't like, and you put a morsel in the mouth, and chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp. And what is it to really tune in there, and really pay attention to the change of the experience of taste? So this is quite an interesting thing, to really give full mindfulness to the experience of change, of eating, of taste in the mouth. It's quite interesting. You actually see, there are explosions of taste. Perhaps, you know, if you're eating, like, a curry or something, you can be sometimes aware of different spices within the mix. You know, this little cumin seed kind of explodes its taste in the mouth. And then this, this -- something else. And then it goes, and it disappears, and it's chomp chomp chomp, and not much is happening. [laughs] A lot of work for not much payback. And then something else explodes.
Yogi 6: I tried that this morning while I ate breakfast, and I found that all those sensations, this touch, there is a texture ... [inaudible]
Rob: Yes. Yes, very good.
Yogi 6: ... crunchiness of the cereal, and suddenly you bite a raisin, and you get the taste. But the taste is only a fraction of the experience.
Rob: Exactly. Now, I'm going to come back to that in a few minutes, but that's very interesting. That's very interesting. So we have an idea that when I eat, it's going to be this really nice taste. And we hype up, "Yeah, this fantastic thing!" But if I really am honest, and as you said, look really carefully, what's the actual experience? There are a lot of gaps, a lot of sort of textures -- especially with porridge. It's all about textures. [laughter] And then, boom! There's this explosion: raisin, berry, very tasty. You know, there's an explosion, and then it disappears again. What are we making solid, making into something more than it is? And we do it with something we crave, and we also do it with something we hate. This thing -- I'll come back to this in a second -- we build something up and give it more solidity than it actually has. And then we're imprisoned in relationship to that solidity. We're imprisoned in a make-believe world that we've constructed. We've hyped it up. [29:17]
Smell -- similar deal. Maybe you're passing something, and there's a smell. And it's like, what is it to really give that attention to that and notice?
Sight's an interesting one, if we move to that sense door. If you, right now, just gently wave your hand in front of your eyes, just do this very gently, but ...
Yogi 7: Reminds me of tripping. [laughter]
Rob: Okay! What is it to see it? And Catherine touched on this when she was speaking. It's like, what is it to see it as not the hand moving, but it's the visual field, the patterns of the visual field are shifting? There's a kaleidoscope of form, shifting forms, shifting colour. You know, the texture of the visual field is shifting. In other words, rather than relating to it as this object or whatever, one's actually tuning more into the change.
Yogi 8: When you're focusing on the hand, are you, like, are your eyes looking at that even though you're not constructing, or are you looking at the whole?
Rob: If you take in the whole visual field, then you're more likely to notice the change. If you look at just the hand itself, you're more likely to kind of just have a sense of the object "hand," and there's less sense of change.
Yogi 8: So the hand's kind of out of focus, right?
Rob: In a way, yeah. That will help highlight the change more.
Yogi 9: It's interesting if you focus on the negative space of the hand.
Rob: Can you explain what you mean by that, Rose?
Yogi 9: The space between ...
Rob: Between what?
Yogi 9: The solid parts of the hand.
Rob: So between the fingers, etc.?
Yogi 9: Between the fingers, and ...
Rob: Mm-hmm. What happens then?
Yogi 9: Well, it's sort of very different.
Rob: Can you say how?
Yogi 9: Well, one thing is that the hand stops being a hand.
Rob: Aha. Okay.
Yogi 9: You've got space coming in ...
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Yogi 9: ... rather than a hand going out.
Rob: Yeah, very good. That's actually really important. I don't know how much we're going to get into that on this retreat. But if it comes up for you more, then it's something we can talk about, because this is getting into more about the emptiness of phenomena. We construct phenomena through perception, through attention, the way we pay attention, all of that. But see if it feels like really compelling for you and we can talk about it more.
Yogi 9: It's an art thing.
Rob: Yeah, I'm sure. Absolutely. It's about ways of looking again. Yeah, exactly. So does everyone begin to get a sense, the visual pattern is -- the visual field -- there's a shifting texture?
Yogi 10: I can't get that one at all. I'm just so seeing what's ... what it is, and it's like I can't not see it.
Rob: Yeah. Okay. It takes a little while. It takes a little while to kind of -- it's a bit like, or it could be a bit like some of those Escher paintings, where you sort of click into a different mode of seeing, a little bit, with the vision. The vision is, in a way, one of the strongest sense doors in the way that we just concretize everything, you know, very strongly in that sense door. Most people do. And so it's kind of relaxing the grasping this object or that object, and relaxing to take in the whole visual field. And sometimes you can just let it be really spacious and relaxed, let the vision kind of relax and receive the global impression of the visual field. And then within that, there are shifting textures. Okay?
If we get really subtle with this -- and you know, this is to explore, so I'm just throwing a bunch of stuff out now. It's for you to take away and play with. [33:30] What if there's no movement in the visual field? Is there change, or is there not change?
Yogi 11: Change.
Rob: What is it?
Yogi 11: Photons.
Rob: Photons? [laughter] Is that what you said? Can you see them?
Yogi 11: No, I can't see them. But I can believe that's the change.
Rob: Okay, but we're talking about experience. So is there a sense of ...
Yogi 12: Well, the experience of change I get is that (I experience this and I also know this) the eyes cannot -- if you really look at something, and you try not to move your eyes, it starts to dissolve. And you start to notice that your eyes are constantly moving.
Rob: Very good.
Yogi 12: Which means everything is constantly moving in and out of kind of focus.
Rob: Yeah, very good. If you pay really careful attention to something that's not -- a visual field that's not moving, actually you begin to notice some subtle change, which has to do with what Juliet just said. But play with all this.
Yogi 13: That's what happens in the dark, isn't it? It gets very dark, and you're sitting with your eyes open. You actually see things moving.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 13: I mean, not ghosts or anything like that. [laughter] There's something going on in the darkness.
Rob: Yes, absolutely. So there is the constant shifting, actually of everything, including the visual, in the visual sense as well, whether or not we're actually seeing an object there. Yeah. Absolutely.
Yogi 14: You might see that now, not just in the darkness.
Rob: Yeah. Very good. So that's also -- you can tune into that. Exactly. Now, yesterday, Stewart asked a question about vedanā, and we talked. We're going to go more into this in a few days -- this vedanā, this feeling-tone. So there's the pleasant, unpleasant, or somewhere in between. And is that the same as the sensation, or is it something different? Well, it's wrapped up with the sensation. So every time there's a sensation in any of the sense doors, there's a vedanā with it. There's a sense of it feeling pleasant or unpleasant or in between. But we can tune more into that if we want to, that sense of it being pleasant or unpleasant or in between.
So what would it be -- let's say I'm sitting, and again, have this pain in the hip from an injury. I'm just looking at that, but interested in the dance of the appearance and disappearance and morphing, transformation, of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. I just look at that hip, and I'm tuning into the vedanā, and then particularly into the impermanence, into the changing nature of the vedanā. [36:25] So it's unpleasant, and then I notice, actually, the next moment it's not unpleasant. And it's unpleasant again. And then, weirdly, it becomes pleasant. And then maybe it becomes unpleasant again. There's, like, a cornucopia -- is that the right word? -- a fountain, an endless throwing up of moments of pleasant and unpleasant. It's like the vedanā does not stay the same moment to moment.
Or I could stay with one sense door. So again, we could go back to listening, and that kind of openness of listening. And maybe the rooks get really loud. Not so loud now, is it?
Yogi 15: Can I ask something? It's about the pain.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 15: I've been feeling quite a lot. Could you sort of go to the pain, and then sort of stay with it, and ask, "Does it have a colour? Does it have a texture?", that sort of thing? Would you do that, or not?
Rob: Not at this point, no.
Yogi 15: I've done that, and it does help.
Rob: Okay, what ...?
Yogi 15: And you stay. You actually see the pain moves. Sometimes it changes colour, changes texture.
Rob: Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, if that's helping to key you into the change aspect of it, yeah. Go for it. Other times, you might want to tune more into the sort of bare contact of the physical sense of pressure that goes with pain, and the shifting of that as well. Yeah. But anything that tunes you into a sense of change at this point is great. Yeah? If we're open to the sense door of listening, and it's like, just noticing some sounds are a little bit pleasant, some are unpleasant, many are in between, and tracking the vedanā, the change in the vedanā of sound. Yeah? [38:21]
Yogi 16: I'm still not sure I know what vedanā is.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 16: Are we tracking the vedanā of the sound ...?
Rob: Yeah. We'll talk more about vedanā in a couple of days. But for now, what it means is, the felt experience of pleasantness, or unpleasantness, or neither, that goes with any experience. So clearly, if I stub my toe, and I've got no shoes on, it's painful. And that's unpleasant. [38:50]
Yogi 17: Generally.
Rob: Generally. Yeah. Clearly. And so we say the vedanā of that is unpleasant. Yeah? Okay. Thoughts -- we said that they're a little bit more tricky, thoughts. But when you're feeling a bit more settled in the meditation, it might be interesting to open up and look at the impermanence of thoughts -- coming, going, darting through the mind, appearing, disappearing -- you know, imagery, words, snippets of songs, opinions, whatever it is. And like we said yesterday, much easier to look at thought when -- a few things: when there's a groundedness in the body, when one's staying in contact with the body sensations, and from that, opening it up to listening, perhaps, and the wideness of listening. And then, naturally, you'll just notice that you're noticing more thoughts in that, coming and going, and tuning into the impermanence of thoughts. But it usually takes a bit more settledness. Yeah? They're fleeting -- the darting, quicksilver nature of thoughts.
There's a lot to play with here. What about something even more subtle: intentions? Intentions -- so, for example, you're at one end of your walking path, and you're standing there, and there's stillness, and there's mindfulness, and there's presence, and there's awareness pervading the body, and waiting for the intention to take the first step. What does that feel like, that movement? We rarely think, "Now I'm going to take the first step." [laughs] That's rarely how an intention arises. It arises as a kind of [makes gurgling noise], like a kind of blip like that. What happens if I just pay attention to the arising of intentions? It's quite subtle. But you can actually catch it in those quieter moments, just standing there, open to the sense of the arising of intention. [41:06] And what happens? It ripples through the body. The intention is there. Maybe it has the fruition of action, maybe not. Or you're standing outside your door, and, you know, when is the arm going to move to turn the handle to go in? So just see these movements of intention, and then they're gone, and the movement of intention -- it's gone. It's quite subtle, but really good to start being able to penetrate the workings of the mind at that level, if it's possible.
Okay. So you can direct the mind. You can choose one sense door. You can also open up to the global totality of things, especially if you're feeling quite settled. I'm just sitting here, or I'm walking, or I'm standing, and I'm open to the totality of experience, the totality of phenomena, interested in the change, this sea of change, always waving, always dancing, things appearing, born, dying. And just open and tuned into, receptive to, plugged into that anicca, that impermanence of that whole mass, texture, shifting texture of experience -- all experience, in all the sense doors. [42:30]
Yogi 18: Actually I find that easier.
Rob: You might. Still try and do both. It's good. So both that openness and the more directed, yeah, would be good. That's a quite important general rule, the sense of, the mind can work in both these ways -- very directed and narrow focus, like you said, zoom lens, and the wide-angle lens. And we learn different things from both of them. So to be able to do both in time is a really good thing. They'll reveal different, they'll unfold freedom in different ways.
So why? Why would we do this, this whole thing? [43:20] Two main reasons: one is, as I said earlier, when I see the impermanence of things, I let go. Seeing change, I let go. I don't even have to think about it: "Oh, goodness. I see that it's changing, and it would probably be a good idea to let go." It's probably not that conceptual. I just start seeing change. Something in the consciousness knows. It's not even you'd have to figure it out. It makes sense. There's a letting go that happens when we see change. That's what we're looking for here. As I said, these are ways of looking that bring letting go. And that just gets deeper and deeper. We're practising letting go.
In a way, what we're practising -- we're practising letting things come and go. We're practising letting things change, letting things get born, arise, shift a bit, and then die. We're practising allowing birth and death of all things -- all things, because when we do that, when we let go, we feel free. When we let go, there's spaciousness that comes in. The consciousness opens out in spaciousness. And a whole bunch of other stuff happens. And my question to you for the days is: what else happens? We'll be unfolding that with these practices. What else happens when I do this?
So why? Because it brings letting go. The second reason why is, if we go back to this sense of self we talked about near the beginning in the retreat, the intuitive, felt sense of self that I have is that my self feels fixed. It feels kind of permanent. I mean, I might know that I'm going to die. Maybe I think, "Well, this self is impermanent," but I feel like there's some kind of fixed entity within me, or that I am that, that goes from -- you know, I'm the same self that I was yesterday. I'm the same self that I was two years ago. I might have a sense of growth, but the intuitive, felt sense, when the back is against the wall -- we might say something different intellectually, but I'm not talking about intellectual positions. I'm talking about our intuitive felt sense is of something that's fixed and kind of permanent in there. Do you recognize this? [affirmative noises] Yeah? So it's not at all talking about philosophies or anything like that. We're talking about how you feel when someone's got a gun to your head, how you feel when push comes to shove. I feel there's something fixed in me, and solid, and somehow independent and permanent. And when I look: impermanence, impermanence, impermanence, impermanence. Everything I look at, all I see is change.
Where is this thing? I cannot find this self that I feel to be a reality, that intuitively seems so real that we take it for granted. I look and I cannot find it. I cannot find that thing. And that non-finding of it, at this level of impermanence -- again, it's not intellectual -- because we're not, at this point, dealing with concepts, it begins to undermine and dissolve that intuitive feeling of a fixed, permanent self. Yeah? I'm not coming in with some philosophy of replacing one philosophy with another philosophy.
Yogi 19: Would you say that again to -- I'm just trying to imagine what that might be like, but the experience is then when you're looking at something, or feeling something, and the sense is the separation of you, as the looker. And it kind of dissolves, if you're kind of absorbed in the change of it. And you don't have such a solid sense of self. Is that what you're talking about? Or is that different?
Rob: That's part of what I said, what else happens. That might be part of that. So we can pick that up again. That's actually really important. That's really, really important. In terms of what I'm talking about now, it's more like, this is something that would shift more the long-term view of the self, and the long-term feeling of the self as being something somehow fixed and independent. If it's fixed and independent, if I look inside, and all I see is things that are shifting, all I see is things that don't last, then where is this fixed self that I feel that I have? That's slightly different. But that's actually important. Bring it up again, because it's part of what begins to happen as I pursue these practices.
Yogi 20: Yet there's also the sense that, sort of, that sense of self is doing the looking anyway, so I can, like, kind of understand what you're saying. It's as an inquiry, but this, you know, it's like, I came to the retreat, and, you know, and it's all changing, but there's still ...
Rob: Still what?
Yogi 20: That sense -- it's that sense that there's this me doing it ...
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 20: And it's happening to me.
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Yogi 20: And even though it can -- okay, yeah, it's changing, it's constantly changing. But it's changing for me.
Rob: Yeah. What is that 'me' that it's changing for? Where is it? Show it.
Yogi 20: Well, you can't, really. You can't find it. It's constantly whirling, isn't it? It's like ...
Rob: Well, something is happening. But is it a 'me' that's happening?
Yogi 20: I guess sometimes it feels more solid than others.
Rob: Yeah, exactly, which is what we're saying on this retreat. Sometimes it feels more solid than others. When it feels solid, just because it feels solid, does that make it a reality? Or is it feeling solid because I'm constructing it, or because -- sorry, talk in the passive -- because it is being constructed? Do you understand?
Yogi 20: Yeah. I agree. Yeah, I do understand. But what is it that's doing the looking?
Rob: Looking is doing the looking. Looking is looking.
Yogi 20: There's really no one running the show ...
Rob: What is blowing the wind? What blows the wind when the wind blows?
Yogi 20: It just seems to blow. [laughter]
Rob: There are levels of this, Jane, there are really levels.
Yogi 20: Yeah. I mean, yes. I kind of know, I do know that, but ...
Rob: Okay. But what you're touching on is something very important, because we'll harp on about this, and the intuitive sense of, "Yeah, but there's someone doing this. Yeah, but it's happening to someone." That's so strong, it's so gut. We're not talking about an intellectual position. It's so gut. And so that's why I said earlier, it's like, I have to find ways of kind of dissolving that view, of seeing beyond that view, of seeing beyond that sense of things. That's why the Buddha said, "Whew, this is hard to teach." It's hard to overturn that really ingrained sense of self, and kind of begin questioning it as a reality, in a way that makes a difference in one's life.
We'll get to this later in the retreat. One of the last hiding places of the self-sense is with awareness. [51:04] "I'm the one looking. I'm the witness." Now, that could be a philosophical position: "You are the witness. You are consciousness, etc. You are awareness." Or it can be just a felt sense. There's a sense, "Yeah, everything else is changing, but I'm the one looking at it. It's happening to me." And that's very hard to overturn. But that's possible with these kind of practices.
Is there a "but" there?
Yogi 20: I just wondered if it's very clear to you, but you're not -- you've been doing it a long time.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 20: Then is it very clear?
Rob: It's clear, but the self-sense comes and goes. Self-sense comes and goes. And it will come and go until one's completely enlightened, what we call an arahant*.* The self-sense arises and passes, but there come -- what can we say? -- stages in practice where one knows something in a way that's kind of irreversible, and that makes a difference, makes a big difference. So there's something about knowing in one's bones that one is not those things. And then, when one knows that, it's like there are limits to what can get constructed then, in terms of how much of a mess of construction can be made. [laughter] It doesn't go beyond a certain point.
Yogi 21: A certain mess!
Rob: But still, self-sense arises, and it will start attaching to things like awareness, etc. But some other part knows that it's not that. And then, at times of practice -- and we'll get to this -- there are ways of kind of moving into spaces where that identification with awareness, etc., you can unhook it, dissolve it, if that makes sense. Yeah?
So like I said, this is a journey. This three characteristics business -- it's like, you start with something, and of course, there are going to be all kinds of questions. But it's almost like, I feel like if one just tries the practice and keeps going, it begins unfolding itself. And then one thing kind of leads to the next. If I try and jump to the end at first, it's not going to -- it will feel like, "Well, yeah, but what about this? What about that?" There's a way that, naturally, one platform of insight will lead to the next. So it's kind of, one has to kind of get one's hands dirty a little bit, and one's feet wet.
Yogi 22: Can you sum all of the rest of the talk up in the next two minutes? [laughter]
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 23: And then you expound it more, because ...
Rob: Yeah. That's it, actually. That's the main thing. I'm going to say two more things. One's very brief. I've already touched on it this talk, throwing something out about the emptiness of phenomena. So we talked about, when Sophie asked about eating and tasting, etc., when I see impermanence, I also begin to see that things, phenomena, experiences, are also not as solid and substantial as they seem to be. I begin to see the holes in things, the gaps in things -- so like this fantastic meal, or this terrible meal, or this experience or that experience.
What about a feeling of depression or heaviness? And it seems like, "Ooh," such a block of concrete that the consciousness is kind of under -- so solid, so impenetrable, so heavy. And I begin turning the attention to it, and looking for the change. You start to see it's got lots of gaps in it. There's a moment of feeling of depression, however I notice that, and then there's another one, this heaviness. And then there's a moment of nothing! And then there's a moment of lightness. And then there's a moment of depression. And then there's a moment of depression. And then there's a moment of joy. Where did that come from? It's got lots of gaps in it, and this thing that looks so solid is not so solid. Same thing with pain. We create a solidity of pain. And when I look closer, it's got lots of gaps in it. To the degree that something seems solid, that's the degree that I feel weighted down by it, I feel imprisoned by it. It constricts the sense of space in consciousness. Is this making sense? Yeah?
Someone, on another retreat, quite a while ago, it was a day like today, or like it was earlier today, very windy, very rainy. And actually it was an equanimity retreat I was teaching. [laughs] It was interesting. She went out onto the lawn, and actually, really paying attention, and looking out before she went out, it was like, "This is awful! This is awful! This weather is awful. This is terrible." And going out, and actually, like, "What's so terrible here?" So the mind makes terrible Devon weather, this block. [laughter] One goes out, and there's maybe, you know, a raindrop drips down the back of one's neck. And there's that sensation of that. And then it's over. I'm just going to throw this out for Hannah -- 50/50 now. Practice 50 mettā, 50 impermanence, okay?
Yogi 24: Impermanence, and then the contact one?
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 24: So how much with the contact?
Rob: Well, that could be part of your 50, if you want to shift back to that gear. Okay? And you start scrutinizing this thing that we've just labelled so terrible, and actually see that it's got lots of holes in it. There's the breeze on the cheek, and maybe it's cold, and then it disappears. And actually you feel the warmth of your belly. You're bundled up in lots of clothing. It's not what it seems to be.
This is the last thing. Sometimes we use this analogy. Do you remember those drawing books you got when you were young, and you had numbers on them, and you join the dots? That's what we do. That's how consciousness works, actually. We do the dot-to-dot, and suddenly it's awful weather, and suddenly it's this depression. And we've joined the dots without realizing it. The same with pain, the same with an emotion, the same with a meal, the same with this -- we're joining the dots, unawares. And I start to see that, and I start to allow more space into my experience. The experienced phenomena have much more space in them. They're much less substantial than they seem to be. And in that less solidity, less substantiality, is less burden, less oppression, more space, more freedom. So that's a little bit beginning to go into the emptiness of phenomena. We're not really getting into that on this retreat.
And like we just said with Hannah, 50/50. Mettā's still really, really important, to play with that. And 50 per cent of the time, primarily impermanence, but you may want to shift gear and really explore the contact. And that's fine.
Yogi 25: Is it [?] alternate?
Rob: Between ...?
Yogi 25: You know, like doing 50 per cent, alternate sits rather than ...
Rob: Oh, yeah, thank you. No, you can be flexible in any way you want. So you might do like that, alternate sits. You might do a morning of mettā, and the afternoon impermanence, or the other way around. You might start a sitting with mettā and end it with the impermanence, you know, other way around. Very interestingly, this is where we get -- sometimes mettā's really not happening, and the body feels all "ugh," contracted and not in harmony, etc. And then what would it be to actually bring the impermanence lens to the feeling of discomfort or contractedness or stuckness? Why? Because of what we said: it's like, impermanence starts letting go. I start letting go in relationship to that. I start opening that thing up. And then, lo and behold, after a little time, maybe it starts to feel a bit better. And maybe the mettā is more accessible then. So they will feed each other, these two practices. [59:51]
Yogi 26: I've just been wondering -- with the practice of mettā, and also the practices we've been doing as well, I'm trying to understand how they work so well together, and why.
Rob: Why they work so well together?
Yogi 26: Yeah.
Rob: Can you say a bit more, or ...?
Yogi 26: Well, I mean, obviously, they're both very powerful practices. But if I had looked at them prior to retreat, I would never have thought they would've gone together.
Rob: Yeah, good. So I was hoping that people would start to notice this, and a couple of people even mentioned it today in the interviews. If we go back to this concept of constructing the self, when I'm staying at contact, it's clear, as we said, that I'm not indulging in this construction of self so much. I'm stopping that process short, right? When I'm doing the mettā, as well, I'm also doing something similar. The mind is occupied with, "May I be well. May you be well." It can't get into too much trouble. It's limited. [laughter] It's limited, how much construction it can do, in that sense. So that's one piece. They're both a kind of relative less construction of the self. Yeah?
When there's less construction of the self, what happens? What else happens in the experience? You start -- well, there's more sense of well-being, right? More sense of spaciousness, more sense of freedom. How does the body feel? You know, when the mettā is going well, it feels softer, right?
Yogi 27: Lighter.
Rob: Light -- good. Softer, lighter, less solid? Less rigidly defined, yeah?
Yogi 28: [inaudible] Space ...
Rob: Space, okay. So all these qualities, it's like, when the mettā goes well, or when I'm not building the self so much, all of that happens to the perception of both the self and the body. Because we're not building the self, we're also not building the perception of the body. We're not building separation. We're not building the sense of constriction, all of this. So it's like it gets built together. Now, I can not build through, as I said, through the staying at contact, I could not build through the mettā practice, both. I mean, there's lots to say about this -- a lot, really. There's something very profound going on, of why they're similar, and why they ... Sorry, my brain just stopped.
Yogi 29: I'm not getting very much discrimination between the two.
Rob: Yeah. Several people have said that. So, experientially, they may feel like they're pretty similar. Thank you, that reminds me what I wanted to say. [laughs] Experientially, they may be pretty similar, in the sense of, it starts to feel like -- everything starts to feel relatively softer, relatively more spacious, relatively more well-being, relatively all that, etc., in both practices, because that's what happens when we don't construct so much self, and we don't construct so much of this or that. And it's still important to discriminate between them. So whereas experientially they might not feel that different, what makes them different is the intentionality. When I'm in a mettā practice, I'm clear that I'm in a mettā practice, and the intention is towards cultivating the intention of kindness. So one's feeding that stream of intentionality of kindness. [1:04:00]
When one's in either the bare contact or the impermanence, the intentions are different. It's either to be at bare contact and not to build, or to be at impermanence, and -- yeah, like that.
Yogi 29: But then it's okay to -- I mean, it's just naturally happened, but that's happening ...
Rob: It's okay that the experience is that they're the same. That's actually -- I would expect that. What's, I still feel, quite important -- there's a way of marrying them, of mixing them, but I want to avoid that on this retreat, because although it's extremely powerful when they mix, it will be too much info for you guys, and I don't want to overload you.
So what separates them is the discrimination of what your intention is at any moment. Like we said -- I think Juliet and Alice were asking this question -- it can get quite subtle, because say it becomes more of a mettā feeling like it's not me beaming you with mettā; it's more of a sense of, like, the space opens up, and there's mettā in the space. There's a subtle intentionality of either myself receiving and dwelling in the kindness as what I'm tuning into, or acknowledging and seeing someone else dwelling in that, soaking that up. [1:05:18]
There's another piece here. Is this okay, or is it -- yeah? There's another piece, which is like, most people, almost everyone, when you start mettā practice, you have a feeling like, "Well, pfft." And often people say, "I don't want to do mettā practice. It's artificial. You're just pretending. It's nicey-nicey. You're just constructing something false." And it can feel like it's really hard work, you know: "May I be ... May you be ... May you," and it's like huff and puff [makes laboured huffing and puffing noises], and you know, you really do that, and someone was saying he didn't want to do mettā because it was like going to the gym or something. And there's a way it really feels like that. But if we follow Nina's question, it's like: ah, very interesting. When I don't construct, when there is not the construction of self so much, what gets revealed? All this stuff that we've been talking about: more space, less separation, more lightness, more well-being, da-da-da-da-da, less construction of self, less self-view -- and mettā. It might be more subtle. It comes. I don't know if anyone has ...
Yogi 30: It's a lot easier to do mettā practice if one is more -- well, I've found, if I'm spacious, in that receptive mode, it's like, "Oh, it's already there."
Rob: Exactly.
Yogi 30: I don't have to make it.
Rob: Beautiful, beautiful. It's already there. So in a way, it's like we're revealing mettā. This is actually really profound. We'll go into this maybe more, even. It's like, you could say mettā is there. I'm getting out of the way. Mettā is maybe, you could say, more real. When I construct less, I begin to see mettā. I'm not, through my constructions, layering it over. So it's quite the opposite view of what most people would have thought originally. So we begin to get a taste of that, and there's something very profound about this.
Yogi 31: In practice, I find, what is difficult is that, with the other one -- what's this called? -- impermanence was the other one, the other ...
Rob: Staying at contact, yeah.
Yogi 31: It's like meditation -- breathing -- I keep getting out of it, so I have to bring myself back, bring myself back. There is a difficulty there, which in the mettā doesn't exist. The mettā, I just do it very naturally. I don't have to come back. So I get quite a different experience ...
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 31: ... when I worked with the mettā for that, even [?] having to do the mettā first before I can do the contact.
Rob: Okay, and someone else might have the opposite experience. In other words, with the mettā, they keep having to bring themselves back, and they wish they could just be with the ... [laughs] So that's fine. That's totally fine. It's just kind of where your balance is at, Sophie. So I would still say, do it. And yeah, it's hard work. It gets easier, like everything else. It's a practice. It's partly what the word 'practice' means. It's like, it gets easier. We find a way to do it. Is there a way of doing it without it feeling too tight and too constricted, so it's just easy? And eventually it becomes, yeah, the mind just settles into a groove with it. But take advantage of the fact that the mettā gets you going. Use that. Use it well. And then when you feel like, yeah, you're in a quieter place, it's steady, etc., there's a bit of samādhi, then you might change, like that. Yeah?
Yogi 32: So that's why -- talking about mettā before, when it's everywhere ...
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 32: It's directionless, isn't it?
Rob: Say what you mean by 'directionless.'
Yogi 32: Well, I mean with you sending mettā, when it's boundless ... it's everywhere.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Remember, with mettā, it's like, I really want to get -- that's a really important experience. And can we have this sense of a view like, "All experiences of mettā are equally cool"? [laughs] You know, so it's like, careful of prioritizing, like I said, the impersonal mettā versus the personal, the universal or the mystical versus the sort of human, etc. There's a real sense of like, "Wow, mettā comes in so many shades and flavours and expressions and manifestations, and they're all good," rather than, "Oh, I've heard about that, and I'm going for that." You know, it's all good. [1:09:49]
Yogi 33: Can I just clarify, with the change practice, you were saying sometimes just specifically look at a pain you're feeling. Do you have a body sense as well, or you're just focusing on change, change, change aspects?
Rob: The body sense of ...?
Yogi 33: When you were doing the raw contact, you have a sense of your body, and then you do the raw contact -- direct contact, sorry.
Rob: Do you mean staying anchored in the body sense? Is that what you mean, or ...?
Yogi 33: Yeah.
Rob: You don't have to. You know, if you're being more directed -- let's say, this funny point here, or you know, this hip thing that I have -- it's like you can go there, very specific, and not worry so much about the rest of the body. Yeah. That's fine. That's good. Then you're being more kind of directed with the attention. [1:10:47]
So play with it. Like everything else, it's play, play, play. Have fun with it, you know. It's like there are so many modes that the consciousness can go into and we discover. So make it your own. That's the thing about practice. It's like the mettā practice is starting to become your own. At first it sounds like, "Well, it's this foreign word, and this foreign practice, and I'm trying to sort of do it right," and after a while, you feel your way into making it your own, making practice your own. And it's alive and personal. Same thing with the impermanence thing. You play with it, and make it your own. Yeah, and 50/50, and very flexible with how that works.
Okay. So let's just have one moment or two of quiet together.
