Transcription
As always, the invitation, the encouragement, to bring to these sessions the quality of mettā, the quality of loving-kindness. There's a sense of holding oneself in that kindness, and holding others and the whole field of the room, and others and their questions, and their curiosities, holding all that in kindness. So, anything?
Yogi: Just wondering if I could make a proposition of a sort of a two-minute silent pit-stop halfway through, because I kind of feel at the end of an hour, it's a bit much. Just to settle a bit in the middle?
Rob: We don't know how long it's going to go. After half an hour? Yeah.
Yogi: I don't know. It's just a proposition.
Rob: Sure, okay, sounds good. Thank you.
Q1: allowing unpleasantness vs allowing aversion to unpleasantness
Yogi: I've got some questions.
Rob: Juliet, yes, please.
Yogi: I've been confused about vedanā, and I thought before that I had to try and find the experience and then the vedanā, but I think you were saying they kind of come in a package?
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi: Okay. And would you say the clinging and the aversion was part of that package as well, or is that a separate ...?
Rob: What would you say?
Yogi: I'd say yes, to be honest.
Rob: Yes, which?
Yogi: That it is part of the package.
Rob: Okay. What gives you that ...? Really important question. Vedanā, sometimes when we explain the teaching of vedanā, it seems relatively simple. You start going into it, and it starts, like, "Hold on!" [laughs] It's not quite as simple as it looks like at first. Is the sensation and the vedanā, as you say, are they different things; are they the same thing? And then, again, even more interesting, if you like, is the aversion and the clinging -- is my reaction, the reaction to the vedanā, is that separate from the vedanā, or part of the package of it? And so your sense is that it's part of the package.
Yogi: I don't feel like I've got very subtle about it, so ...
Rob: Oh, okay. [laughs] That's okay, no. Is it a matter of just clarifying that?
Yogi: Well, there are a few questions around all of that. Like, for example, yesterday I was doing the walking meditation in my room, and Phil delivered some breeze blocks just as I was in there, and there was this loud, roaring engine the whole time I was in there. [laughter] And I was attempting the walking meditation, and then I just felt, "Okay, I'll sort of explore this practice."
Rob: Yeah, good.
Yogi: And I couldn't ... I mean, one thing that I realize I didn't quite get was, if I was doing the allowing, was I allowing the roaring engine, or allowing my aversive response to the engine?
Rob: Very good. You could do both at different times. So I think the primary practice that I introduced would be allowing the roaring of the engine, or allowing the unpleasantness, the felt unpleasantness of the roaring of the engine. When I'm allowing, what I'm really doing is quietening and dissolving the aversion, because allowing is kind of non-aversion, by definition almost. However, sometimes -- either because one feels like one can't allow enough, it just won't go to allowing, or one can't relax the relationship -- you can actually get the felt sense of aversion, and allow that sense of aversion. So you're taking like one step back, being more spacious, and it's like, "It's okay. This aversion is okay." This sense that I have of aversion, I'm completely allowing that.
What often happens is -- I mean, one way of talking about it, it's not quite accurate, and we may or may not get into that on this retreat -- is there are kind of feedback loops going on, so you start being aversive to the aversion, and then, you know, forget about it! [laughter] You could always find a level, so to speak, a space, bigger, where you can kind of soften or allow from or whatever. So that would be really skilful. Or it might be that, at other times, you're getting the sense that the aversion and the vedanā are not really separate, and so to allow is to allow the whole package. So it could be both.
Yogi: And it could also be an allowing of the sound of the engine as well?
Rob: Yeah, they're just slightly -- it's quite subtle; we're talking about just subtle, subtly different angles on a similar process, yeah.
Q2: aversion without an object
Yogi: Okay. And another question in relation to that. At other times, what I noticed was just kind of like an aversive reaction, but not to anything particular. Just sitting there with a kind of clamped head and kind of anxious in my belly, and then I tried the relaxing practice.
Rob: Uh-huh, relaxing the body?
Yogi: Yes, like relaxing the tension, the clamping in my head.
Rob: Good.
Yogi: And what happened then was actually fear came really strongly. It was like rather than the fear being clamped, it became more fluid. And then I got a thought that I won't say, but it actually felt even more fear, what I was afraid of. And ... yeah.
Rob: Okay. Do you know -- so there's the clamping in the head and a little bit of fear, and then when you relaxed the clamping, more fear came, seemed like it unfroze the fear a little bit so it could ... Do you feel like you know why that was? In other words, sometimes there are moments when there is an investment in clamping. There's an investment in being a bit shut down. We don't want to be open, and then when it opens, we're like, "Whoa," you know?
Yogi: It's like keeping something out.
Rob: Yeah. Okay. So what's the question there?
Yogi: There was a question to it, but I don't know what it was. [laughs] Maybe I just wanted to tell you.
Rob: Okay, have a quiet moment and see if it comes.
Yogi: Ah, it was that I didn't know what it was, the original ...
Rob: What it was about?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, very good. This is, again, quite common. Sometimes it feels like we have a state of aversion or fear, and it doesn't seem to be about anything. And there are a couple of things with that. Sometimes there are -- what could we say? -- periods in life, for some people, and I know this in the past, where it's almost like the organism, the energy body and the physical organism and the mind, kind of finds its way into the groove of anxiety or contraction, just kind of out of habit. And it doesn't have anything in particular that it's anxious about or whatever. It just will go to that loop, you know, and stay in that loop. And then from that loop, a person might start looking for things that they're anxious for, to justify the anxiety, and then it builds. So that's one possibility.
The other thing that also is very common is that -- I think when we were talking with Nina -- it's like, there's fear of fear, and there's aversion to aversion. So in a way, it doesn't need anything other than the experience of aversion or the experience of fear to start looping on itself. It's its own closed circuit that works fine, thank you very much, without anything else. And so oftentimes when this sense of, there's just a sense of aversion, or contraction, if we're honest enough to kind of stop it just making an excuse out of something external, you actually see that what you're aversive to is the feeling of aversion. And it's kind of just a self -- what are they? I don't know what it's called.
Yogi 2: Perpetuating.
Rob: Self-perpetuating, self-excited loop, yeah. Self-excited system, exactly. So what you can do there is kind of what you did: just opening to this experience of aversion, just completely allowing this experience. So, again, how do I know I'm aversive? How do I know there's aversion in a moment? Because it feels like there's some contraction, and that contraction is unpleasant. So aversion and clinging themselves are unpleasant experiences, generally speaking. I can relate to that and, you know, open to that. Now, what happened, in terms of opening up more fear, it sounded like that triggered something else, but it could have gone completely the other way -- it could have just quietened the whole thing down. So it was just, you know, it happened to work that way because of other conditions.
Yogi: And it's like relaxing it not to get rid of it, isn't it, which is ...
Rob: Yeah, that's really important. Have you noticed that when you relax aversion or clinging to something, it often dissolves the thing? Is that not interesting?
Yogi 3: Very.
Rob: We'll come back to that, but yes, you can't, "I'll relax my aversion so that you go away." [laughter] It's too smart for that! No, that's just nicey-nicey aversion, dressed up as, you know ... This kind of allowing and welcoming has to be completely as genuine as one ... And we do start seeing this phenomenon which, to me, is so pregnant with insight, so important in the Dharma. It's like, when I let go of my aversion, this thing begins to dissolve. But once you start seeing that, then very easily that comes in as a motivation.
Different motivation possible is curiosity, like, what is going on there? What does it mean that a thing dissolves? It implies something extremely profound about the nature of reality. And so if I'm just in the game of wanting to get rid of this thing that I don't like, it's like I'm missing the treasure because I want this little, I don't know, piece of chocolate or something [laughs], and there's this whole room full of gold, you know. So that will happen; we're always going to slip into, "Oh, if I can just be nice to it, maybe it will go away" kind of thing. That's normal, you know, human response. But if we can kind of catch that and soften that, and try as much as possible to come from a genuine place, with curiosity being the motivating factor, that's quite a different ... Yeah? Okay, wonderful. Really good stuff, yeah.
Q3: clinging and aversion as two sides to same coin
Yogi: Is it possible to have clinging and aversion at the same time?
Rob: Yeah. What did you notice? Yeah.
Yogi: I kind of have been experiencing that.
Rob: Can you say a bit more, or ...? You don't have to.
Yogi: Just noticing a very obvious area of clinging in my life, and whilst there is this area of clinging, there's the pain that comes from the clinging, and then there's the aversion to the pain, so it's all happening all at the same time.
Rob: Yeah, yeah, it is. Very good. There is all that, and one notices -- they go together. In some respects, they're just two sides of the same coin as well. I mean, what you said is slightly different from what I'm just going to say now; it's in addition to what you said. You know, aversion to this thing here is also implicitly clinging to its opposite. When I'm aversive to a pain in the knee, I'm clinging to wanting a sense of comfort, and vice versa. When I want this thing, when I want romance, oftentimes I'm aversive to loneliness, or what that makes me feel or think of myself, if I see myself as a lonely person in a Hollywood-saturated society. So they go together, two sides of the same coin. And what you're saying is kind of very subtle, as well: it's like there's pain in the clinging, and then we're aversive to that pain. And if you like, that aversion to the feeling of clinging is partly what fuels the clinging more. So it's like, what am I actually after? I'm after the ending of this painful feeling of clinging.
Someone with a kind of addiction, let's say to cigarettes or something, partly, one of the ways of working really skilfully with it is learning to tolerate that craving and the pain of it, because it's uncomfortable. And if I just watch it with mindfulness, it just gets stronger and stronger, and it gets stronger, and at some point a person says, "I can't tolerate it any more, I've got to have a cigarette" or whatever it is. But if you just watch it, and you have space, and it's like, it is uncomfortable, there is pain in clinging, and it rises, and at a certain point, it just kind of peaks, and then it naturally dies down, because one's not feeding it through the aversion to the pain of the clinging. And the more one does that and just sees clinging arise, it starts to lose its grip, its power over us, and also its actual force as a ... Or rather, the unhealthy clinging, because there's such a thing as healthy clinging, good clinging, clinging to good stuff, in a way that opens us up. But that kind of unhealthy movement starts to lose its power. So that's really good to notice, yeah. Is there something more that comes out of that, Becca, or ...?
Yogi: A lot of questions. I mean, there was a question, more as a confirmation, really, but it was more of an observation. I feel like there's enough space at the moment that even it coming round again, shall we say, the story that causes the clinging, etc., even when it comes round again, there's enough space for it to just, "no, thanks," you know? It's kind of got that quality. But yeah, it's just a really subtle point.
Rob: Yeah, okay, great. Mm, thank you.
Q4: sense of and fear of lack
Yogi: I wanted to ask about, most of us fear the sense of, I guess the lack of, I don't know, love, or lack of food -- this fear that most of us have, I'm just wondering where it comes from?
Rob: The fear of lack? I mean, the sense of lack, and the fear of lack?
Yogi: Yeah! Yeah, exactly.
Rob: Where does that come from? It depends who you ask, really. I mean, I think from a Dharma perspective, it comes from fundamental delusion, from avijjā. When there's this belief in a self that's real, and really separate from others and the rest of the universe, then automatically, just in that proposition, there's a sense of having to defend oneself, having to look out for oneself, having to feed oneself, which is also a biological necessity. All of that, inherent in that sense of separateness, inherent in the sense of this self being something real which I have to look out for, and all that. In its very finiteness, in its separateness, there's going to be a sense of lack there. It's a fundamental delusion, and out of that delusion comes the clinging and the rejection, etc., which only feed that delusion, and don't end up really satisfying us, so the whole thing kind of snowballs, builds like that.
So there's a way that that sense of lack, and the fear of that lack are just part of -- I was going to say the human condition, but actually the condition of unawakened consciousness. Not just the human condition; they're part of the condition of unawakened consciousness. And one of the fundamental movements of awakening is puncturing that delusion, so that there is not that sense of lack, there is not that sense of imperfection and incompleteness. And that comes into the very feeling of life more and more, and it's not dependent on me achieving this, or someone saying you're good, or anything like that, or having this kind of person or that kind of person in my life. It's just that something in the whole sense and perception of existence itself has changed, has opened out, has dissolved, or is in the process of doing that, and a radically different sense of existence comes into being.
Now, of course, on top of all that, human beings -- what should we say? -- out of that delusion, and being impacted by their history -- for instance, sometimes we don't get the parenting that we need, and so that will compound that. So I would not say that that's the primary cause, whereas maybe some psychotherapists would. It's like, "If you had had perfect parents, you wouldn't feel that." I disagree. And I've said this in here at other times: it's like, also it's being fed by the culture. Here we are, here. When was the last advertisement you saw? It's probably before the retreat, right? I mean, you take -- just walk to the local town, and you cannot walk down the high street without being bombarded with the message that "You need this!", that basically you're lacking, and you might be able to get happy if you can have this, or buy that, or get that, or look like this, or have this kind of person in your life, or whatever it is.
So it's like the culture is feeding that message very, very strongly, incredibly. We're just saturated by it all day long. And everyone you talk to agrees with it, you know, so it's like everyone supporting each other in, for instance, financial fear. It's like everyone propping each other's fear up, mostly. So all that kind of spirals, snowballs it in the wrong direction, so to speak. But fundamentally it comes out of a sense of a misperception of reality, which is what emptiness is all about -- the mettā too, actually; both of them together. They're dissolving that misunderstanding, those misunderstandings. Does that make sense?
Yogi: Yeah!
Rob: Experientially, you know, this is really interesting, because we feel that, a person feels that lack at times, and the fear of that lack, both. Now, if the fear of the lack is really strong, I won't even go near the lack. I won't even let myself feel the lack. I'll do everything in my life to just numb that sense of lack. I can distract myself in a gazillion ways, and partly distraction is big business. A lot of the economy runs on ways we can distract ourselves and pay for being distracted. So it's like, what's in control here? And what glimpses do I have? If I can glimpse the fear of the lack, then do I have enough courage alongside that fear to feel the fear of the lack, which might take me towards the lack and feeling the lack? If I'm continually invested in numbing, and trying to fill -- maybe not even numbing, but trying to fill the lack through things that are not going to help, again, I'm just going off in the wrong direction in a way that's not going to help. But it may be that I begin to feel the lack. It may be that also, for instance, just getting really interested in the question of happiness -- happinesses, plural. There are different kinds of happinesses. If I walk down Newton Abbot high street, there's a -- what are they called? They're like, it's a whole, not really a shop, but it's full of slot machines and ...
Yogi 2: Arcade.
Rob: Yeah. So I could go in there and play whatever those things ... thingie things ... what are they called?
Yogi 3: Slot machines!
Rob: Slot machines, yeah. I play the slot machines, and there's a degree of happiness in that, you know, a degree of happiness. Compare that with the happiness of however it's felt when the mettā has felt good for you. Compare that, whatever that is. Even just the sweetness of touching your pain with compassion, there's a happiness in that. [probably making gestures of playing the slot machines] It's pathetic, it's absolutely pathetic. Excuse me, but it's ... [laughter]
So there's something about just really, really paying attention to happinesses and what's available to us as human beings, and then it's like, almost without even going to the lack and saying, "I have to go through this existential, deep lack, to really confront that, and my fear of it, to really go through the pain and eventually ..." You know, maybe not; maybe I just start paying attention to happiness. And following those good happinesses, I start giving myself things which actually heal that sense of lack and that misperception, without having to sit in this terrible coldness that's scary to the soul and all that, necessarily. So there are lots of things here. Yeah? Now, have I answered your question, or have I just ...? [laughter]
Yogi: Yeah, fully. Yeah, thank you.
Rob: Yeah? Okay. It's certainly not to deny the influence of family and all that, but there are other factors, too, and fundamentally, I mean, who have you met with a perfect -- have you, do you know anyone who's had a perfect parenting? [laughter]
Yogi 4: What does that mean anyway?
Rob: Exactly, what does it mean? It's part of our contemporary myth, you know. We believe in that. Other cultures, they don't even think that way. They just don't think that way. At other times in history, people just don't think that way and put so much weight on that. And Dharma would say, fundamentally, you could put all the conditions right, you get all the love you want, all the pampering -- you know, it's not going to address that fundamental delusion. It's something we're born with as human beings, that we misperceive reality. It seems so obvious -- and this is what emptiness is all about. Everything seems so obvious: I'm here, you're there, this is the floor, etc. There's a misperception woven into that, and out of that comes all the pain and all the striving in the wrong directions, which only cause more pain. Yeah? When we go into emptiness, if you like, in the Buddha's words, we're addressing the root. We're trying to address the root. And it's not to say, of course, healing in terms one's childhood and all that is not important, but it won't reach that deeper level. Yeah?
Yogi: Yeah. Thank you.
Rob: Catherine, yeah.
Q5: what happens when we let go
Yogi: I've been doing the sort of allowing, but then opening out and getting that sense of dissolving the body. That doesn't happen very often at the moment, but when that's happening, going further in that, then I'm getting a sense of ... well, the word that came to me was 'interconnectedness.'
Rob: Yeah, beautiful.
Yogi: With other beings, and maybe with trees. [laughs]
Rob: Yeah, beautiful.
Yogi: Shall I go there? Shall I keep going there?
Rob: No, that sounds awful! [laughter] Yeah, very much, absolutely. Yeah, go for it. But then I have a question for you guys: tell me what happens. What happens when you do these practices? So Juliet was saying there's a difficult thing, and I relax the aversion, and sometimes that thing dissolves. Catherine's saying I do this thing, the body dissolves. The more I let go, the body dissolves. The sense of the body dissolves, or maybe gets lighter or more spacious, even. Doesn't need to dissolve completely. But have you begun to get a glimpse sometimes? Yeah? And then going further, there's a sense of interconnectedness. What else happens?
Yogi: Peace.
Rob: Peace. Very good, peace, calm.
Yogi: Happiness.
Rob: Peace, calm, happiness. Great.
Yogi 2: Love.
Rob: Love. Okay, what else?
Yogi 3: Joy.
Rob: Joy, yeah, lovely.
Yogi 4: Freedom.
Rob: Freedom, yeah.
Yogi 5: Desire to help, actually.
Rob: Desire to help. Beautiful, yeah. So coming out of the love and the ... Also, if we relate it to what Nina said, the sense of lack gets less. We might not notice that. Because the sense of lack, as I was saying with Nina, it goes with the sense of self and the sense of separateness. If I feel this self to be separate, once I start feeling there's less self, there's less sense of a lack here, the more interconnectedness and less sense of ...
Yogi: You're more available.
Rob: Absolutely, all of that. Yeah. Beautiful.
Yogi 6: It's like we get the instructions from Catherine to eat less, sit more, sleep less. She had given them at the beginning of the retreat, and I said, "No way!" [laughter]
Rob: Of course! Yeah.
Yogi 6: I can do them now.
Rob: Yeah, very good. So what else, what else?
Yogi 7: The realization that happiness all is not -- doesn't originate from something external to oneself, which is impacted [?]. Even though one keeps feeling the impact, it's like it kind of repeats, and then it's like, "Well, actually there's nobody here. There's nothing happening. I'm not doing anything." It's just that realization, just that unfolding of that realization, I would say.
Rob: Yeah, beautiful. So the happiness is not dependent on the external? Is that what you would say?
Yogi 7: Or the unhappiness.
Rob: Or the unhappiness, yeah, exactly. Very good. Yes. Excellent.
Yogi 8: Well, there's some, like, momentum that is happening, that something seems to -- what I feel I'm plugged into -- I don't know how else to express it -- has its own momentum, has its own, you know. And I'm just part of that. So I'm just kind of able to rest back in that.
Rob: Okay. So could you say what it seems has its own momentum?
Yogi 8: No, I can't put a word to it. But the experience is starting from this allowing, and something more spacious around whatever it is that one is working with. Then life becomes more spacious, just the whole experience of being becomes more spacious, and it's so much less limiting. And whatever it is that I feel that I'm -- it's that which I feel that I'm connected to, and that has its own momentum and ... yeah.
Rob: It's okay. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, beautiful.
Yogi 8: It responds. It contains. It supports.
Rob: Yes, all right. Very good. What else?
Yogi 9: Silence.
Rob: Silence, yeah.
Yogi 10: I find with the mettā, it's just coming on its own. As I'm sitting here, all of a sudden, I just became aware that it's just flowing out on its own.
Rob: Yes, very good, yes.
Q6: the emptiness of the body and self-views
Yogi: And I also wanted to ask about looking for the emptiness of the body. I mean, I'm doing something -- I haven't been taught this, but it sort of just came to me. About fifteen years ago, I did ten days with Goenka's lot, in Hereford. They didn't tell us what we were doing, but we simply had to go through absolutely starting from the head to each part of the body, looking for movement. And if there was no movement, we waited, etc. Hours and hours and hours of this.
And they said that after about five or six days, some people, that you may get a burst of energy. That's the way it was put. I didn't know what they were talking about, so I went, "Okay, fine, whatever." And this one night, on the sixth night, I was lying in bed, and I got this surge of energy. It was extraordinary. It went on for hours. And I thought, if I had to describe this, I'd call it a Mozart symphony. [laughter] Just beautiful. Never had anything since. I never went back. Because I thought I'm not going to grasp on to that; if I go back, it won't happen again.
So what I've been doing here, I remember, that came back to me, and I thought, "Oh, maybe that's what was going on when they had us going through ..." So I've been going through the body very, very slowly like that, sort of seeing, you know, "Where is the self? Is it here? Is it here? Is this the self that cooks? Is this the self that is the mother? Is this the self that's the (whatever)?" All sorts of selves actually presenting themselves, selves I never thought of. So that's what I'm doing, going through the body, ever so slowly, and obviously the answer is, "No. No. No." And I'm seeing, I'm actually seeing the dance, and I call it, it came to me yesterday, I call it 'the dance of liberation,' as though these, whatever it is, the delight of the body ... Is this an okay way to be doing it?
Rob: Absolutely, yeah, yeah definitely.
Yogi: Because I'm quite attracted to that, and I'm attracted to, you know, you see somebody or you're thinking, "Well, you know, yeah, they upset me or whatever, but there is no self there either, so what are you upset at? What's this self?" So that's actually how I'm doing it.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Very good. And at some point, Ruth, you might also want to add in that the mental looking. So it's like, in the mental events, not just the bodily events, is there a self there? I just see the dance, and it's almost like, "Where might the self-sense be hiding?" If it's not in the body, it can hide in the mind. So when you feel like you want to, you can expand that into the mind and looking at the flow of the mind, and is there a self in there? Same -- you know, you're just extending your search, if you like. Then it's kind of, it's not in the body, it's not in the mind, where else is it going to be? Outside there somewhere? It's kind of an exhaustive search that way, yeah.
Yogi: But this thing about the body disappearing, too, I've actually had it, but I didn't know what it was. I never thought about it. Sometimes if I'm receiving healing, my body would just disappear, and I would say to the healer, we'd both say, "Isn't that interesting?" Or if I'm giving craniosacral therapy to somebody, sometimes an arm would disappear! [laughter] And I would just go on with what I was doing. Now I know.
Rob: Yours, or theirs, or ...?
Yogi: Yeah, well, theirs. Their arm. Or if I'm receiving it, sometimes my arm would disappear. But I never ... Now that I have the pointing out instruction, I know what actually is going on.
Rob: Okay, very good. Excellent. So what have we got so far? We let go. There are insights about happiness. Love comes up in a more effortless way, a more natural way, that it just kind of reveals itself, it's pervaded. Body begins to lighten, lose its substantiality, maybe even dissolve a little bit. Spaciousness emerges, silence. Sometimes a thing that we're looking at dissolves and disappears. What happens to the self-sense? It gets ...
Yogi: Smaller.
Rob: Smaller, less built up, less constructed on this continuum. If you go back to what I was saying earlier in the retreat about the continuum of the self-sense, we build it up a lot, or a little bit, or less or less. So we're going down that scale, right?
Yogi 2: Because we can see that it depends on certain conditions.
Rob: Very good, okay. So we start to begin to see, if we take just this practice that we've -- well, let's take both what Sophie's saying and what Ruth said. We start to see from different angles. So if we take this practice of relaxing the relationship with things, which is relaxing the aversion and clinging, I start to see that the self-sense is dependent on aversion and clinging. It's constructed through, by, aversion and clinging, to some degree.
Now, you can even see that without meditating. You don't need to be a meditator even to see that. An extreme of aversion and clinging, I'm really, really upset about something, and I'm really angry, and it's like, the self is very*,* very solid. Then just some time goes by, and I'm a little less upset and back to normal, and the self, relatively speaking, is less solid. I haven't done any meditation there. It's the same insight. Does this make sense? Sure? What meditation is doing is just extending that scale, the movement of that scale, and beginning to ask, "What is going on here?", and understanding the self-sense is constructed like that, seeing it over and over again. When we do the impermanence, if we go back to what Ruth said, it's like, looking, and it's like, where is this self? I look everywhere, and I don't see it anywhere. What I see is that the mind creates connections between these dots, like I was saying, dot-to-dot, and then constructs the self that way. So a few things here.
Yogi 3: Can I say something?
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 3: Well, it's just that I've been trying to let go. Because I've had some bad heads, focusing has been difficult, you know, going in. So I've been kind of relaxing the whole body, and I've found that when I actually was able to do that -- which I eventually did, it took blooming ages ...
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 3: Took a march in the night to do it. But all these terrible pains I've been having, they just completely went away. I mean, they come back. But what I realized is, very, very strongly, far stronger than I ever have before, is that all this chronic pain and stuff that I've had in my life is all aversion. And it's shocking! [laughter] I mean, it's like, you know, I have lived my life as an aversive self. And it's horrible.
Rob: Okay, care[ful]. There's a fantastic insight in there -- you know, really, really important. Careful what we add to it, in terms of then making a conclusion about the self and a definition. But there's a priceless insight in there. But careful of crusting around that, you know.
Yogi 3: Yes, well, you know, a lot of tears, like, "Oh, my god!"
Rob: Yes, okay. Actually, you know what, because that ties into what I want to pull together, but let's have, as Stew suggested, let's have a bit of silence here. So my question for you in the silence is -- Kate, we talked about this anyway yesterday -- you know what I'm talking about, right? My question is, "What does all this mean? What does it all mean, and what's going on here? What is all this about?" I see this -- nothing you've said to me has surprised me in the slightest. And as I said to you, I give you these practices, and I expect you to say, "This, this, this, this, this, this, this, this," and lo and behold, that's what happens. And I can say, "Oh, well, whatever." What's going on? So let's just have a couple of minutes' quiet.
So, what do you think?
Q7: self vs no-self vs Middle Way
Yogi: My question is, why is it so uncomfortable to accept this idea that there isn't an inherent, fixed self? Because it is quite obvious. But why is it difficult to accept?
Rob: I mean, the Buddha would -- that's why, you know, there's this incredibly deep delusion. It's a really deep habit of reifying the self and reifying the world, believing it's something really solid and real. And why is that so deeply bound like it is? I don't know! [laughs] But similar to what we said with Nina, it's also the fact that we're born with that, but we also act and choose in ways that make it tighter and tighter and more and more. The question is, through my life, is that getting stronger? Or is that getting weaker, that delusion? Am I unbinding it or am I making it stronger? Why it's there in the first place, I mean, I have no idea, and the Buddha didn't even attempt to answer that question, you know.
Yogi 2: It's like you're standing at the top of the cliff, and you've thrown the stone, and the stone is that self coming into being, and there's just no way to not be the stone, without lots and lots of awareness and mindfulness and ...
Rob: Yeah, there's a real momentum to it, yeah, absolutely.
Yogi 3: For me, it's really tempting in that silence to say there is no self, but I know that's not true. Because there's also self. That's how it feels to me, is that when there's most peace, there's a dance, there's self and there's no self. Because the self is needed to perceive what's happening, to understand that there's no essential self. I need my memory to know what's happening from moment to moment. I need a self to act appropriately in that moment. I need a self to heal myself. I say that, I guess, because -- I don't know why I feel quite emotional -- I think it's because I tend to the clinging to not-being, I think, and it's this discovery of, actually, somehow, some sense of self is quite important. But how to manage it?
Rob: Yeah, yeah, thank you, Julia. So there are two things here. I think I put this out at the beginning of the retreat, but because we're talking about emptiness, it's like, that's where all the teaching goes. But it's really important -- to me, it's important. What is it to be able to be in the self, and be the self, and have that fullness and that richness and my journey, and knowing oneself, and relating from that self, and acting in the world responsibly, and then the whole growth and the journey of the self? To me, that's really important and really beautiful. So there's a way, obviously, that we can grasp hold of self and it's really a problem. But we can also grasp hold of emptiness and make a problem there.
Nāgārjuna says -- I've forgotten the exact quote, but it's something like, "If you cling to emptiness or pick it up in the wrong way, it's like picking up a snake at the wrong end." You understand? [laughs] You're going to get bitten! So there's a way where we have to have wisdom in relating to emptiness, because it could go into nihilism, this kind of -- just obliterate everything, obliterate the self, obliterate all of that. For me, it's really a balance. That quote that Catherine read yesterday, was it something like, "In seeing things to be or not to be, fools fail to see a world at ease"? So in seeing the self to be or not to be, fools fail to see that the nature of things is peace, it also says somewhere else. But that, it's not either being or not being. That's what's called the Middle Way of emptiness teachings. It's not saying it doesn't exist, but it's not saying it does exist. That's very hard. That's the reason why the Buddha was like, "I don't know if I really want to try and teach this stuff." [laughter] "It's really, really exasperating."
As one deepens in the understanding of emptiness, one oscillates around that Middle Way less and less. The whole thing gets more subtle, and we understand it more. Another option, though, is to actually say, "Let's just think of it like two boxes. I can be in the box of emptiness, whatever that means for me right now, and then I shift gear and I'm in the box of self." I just go back and forth, and not worry about the one when I'm in the other. And the question is, when I'm relating in terms of self, am I doing that in a way that feels fulfilling, and beautiful, and rich, and your uniqueness and all of that, and your sense of the life that that brings? Or is it a prison, and a constriction, and a self-hatred and all that stuff? And similar with emptiness: is it opening up the love? Is it opening up the sense of connectedness and all that? And you just move from one box to the other. In the deepening of the understanding of the emptiness, the Middle Way comes more and more. Yeah? You look like you're not quite satisfied there! [laughs]
Yogi 3: No, no, it's something to think about.
Rob: Okay. In terms of what you said: "I need a self because I need my memory." Actually, if we were going to be really strict, say, you actually don't need that. You need memory, and there needs to be seeing and consciousness. There needs to be the aggregates there: consciousness and perception and memory and all that. But that doesn't necessarily imply a sense of self. In other words, it's possible to have all that stuff operating without a sense of self, as we'll talk about starting tomorrow. Yeah?
But, you know, it's interesting, the whole emotional reaction (which Catherine was also talking about last night) to emptiness and stuff. And so sometimes there's a sense where, as I said, we're just clinging to our prison, and we don't want to let go of it, and it's a matter of -- that analogy I used -- can I just dip my toe in the bath, and realize that it's okay, and realize it's really, really ...? There's something absolutely lovely about letting go of the self and dissolving the self, you know, to whatever degree that is, not constructing the self, and I actually realize it's a beautiful thing and it's completely safe. Sometimes there's something healthy in this wanting to keep one foot in the self camp and keep that alive. Sometimes it's just fear, and not quite trusting the emptiness yet (that's coming out of delusion, of course), and sometimes there's something beautiful there and healthy. It's like, you don't want to just obliterate yourself. What does it mean to have that self be something precious and alive? Yeah?
Yeah ... no one's answering my question! [laughter] That's okay. Does someone else have a question? Does anyone want to answer what I said?
Yogi 4: I think for me it's, I really don't know. The more you explore and the more you experience, the more you just keep coming back to the "I just don't know."
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 5: I can't work out what the question was. [laughter]
Rob: If I asked you guys a little bit -- maybe some people have had this experience, or less or more or to some extent, and this -- again, I wasn't planning to get into this in terms of the curriculum for this retreat, but I was expecting it to come up. And it's fine. And it's fine if you hear it and it doesn't quite make sense, and parking it for later on. So here is this pain in the knee, this difficulty, whatever, and I let go in relationship to it, and it dissolves. Now, I could just be like, "Yippee, it's dissolved!" I could be just, "Well, it's all a mystery, isn't it?" "I don't know. Not knowing sounds good." I could be like, "Well, things are impermanent so it just dissolved."
Yogi 6: The whole of our experience is mind.
Rob: Okay, very good. Jacqui? Sorry, Hannah said, "The whole of our experience is mind." So, Jacqui?
Q8: emptiness and the relationship with things
Yogi: Is it because of relationship?
Rob: Yeah. Say a bit more.
Yogi: Because as you were talking about the two boxes, I wasn't comfortable with that, because I feel as though what I've been able to understand about emptiness has been realized through the mettā and inside myself, and the whole thing has been interrelated. And it's my relationship to the pain in the knee; the pain in itself is ... innocent?
Rob: Of?
Yogi: Wanting to hurt me?
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: And it's my relationship to it that creates the suffering.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: So maybe all the other experiences are about relationship between felt sense of self and emptiness, between body and mind? This is just the sense I have.
Rob: Okay, yeah, wonderful. All right.
Yogi 2: Is it about the body not existing?
Rob: Say a bit more.
Yogi 2: I'm just saying that based on things you were saying, not because I'm [?] it.
Rob: [laughs] Okay. Mei-Wah said, "Is it about the body existing?", and then she said she was more, like, guessing from things I was saying, more than something that was in her own experience, or in her own understanding. Catherine, were you ...?
Yogi 3: When the pain has dissolved, then the pain, the pain's empty -- the same as when the body's dissolving; the body's empty. So the object, the thing that you're relating to is empty.
Rob: Yeah, what does it mean to say it's empty?
Yogi 3: That it's in my mind. It's in my looking at it. I don't know if 'looking' is the right word. My relationship to it is creating it, and so when I'm opening and spacious and allowing and it's dissolving, then that relationship is disappearing.
Rob: Yeah. Well, the thing is disappearing, and therefore the relationship also disappears, in a way. But is it empty only when it dissolves, or is it empty still when it's there?
Yogi 3: Yeah, it's my self, it's my perception, my mind's perception of the thing building the relationship, creating it, constructing it.
Rob: Okay, very good. So it's empty even when it's there, because it's constructed, right? Okay. So there are levels here. Let's say I have this pain in my hip, or knee or whatever, and I look at it, and I begin to let go, and the first thing I notice is that the suffering gets less. So we said it's empty in itself of inherently being a problem, but maybe I still feel it as a pain. And I keep relaxing. So first thing I notice is it's not inherently suffering, and it's not inherently a problem. It's empty of that, we say. But I keep doing it, and sometimes I begin to notice, not only does the suffering go out of it, the actual sensation goes out of it. The actual pain itself dissolves, or the body dissolves or whatever. And I begin to see that the presence of something is dependent on how I look at it. The presence of something is dependent on my relationship with it.
Yogi 4: There is something I can relate to that. It's when we are doing the impermanence practice. I was looking at the blank wall in the walking room, and just a little square of it, and I could see change in that. Then I realized -- this was the thing that Julie had said a few days ago -- it is to do with perception changing. So the impermanence is in the perception.
Rob: Mm-hmm, yes.
Yogi 5: Can you say what you said again? I kind of, it's there, but ...
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Don't worry if you don't get this, because like I said, it wasn't in the plan for this course. It's just, as I was talking to people in interviews, it was obvious that it was coming up. We talk about constructing the self. We've talked, and it feels like people are understanding the notion that we construct the self in different ways. One of the ways from this last practice that we see is the self-sense gets constructed through aversion and clinging. More aversion and clinging, the more self. Right? But then you also begin to see in terms of phenomena -- that they, too, are constructed through aversion and clinging. In other words, if I can, to the degree that I let go of my aversion and clinging, and relax my aversion and clinging with regard to something, that phenomenon dissolves, because it needed the aversion and clinging to be there. It needed that ... no? [laughter]
Yogi 5: My brain's just going ...ooaooao! [laughter]
Yogi 6: So a lot of it's about control, isn't it? Aversion and clinging, keeping things safe and the same.
Rob: Yes. It's a movement of control, exactly. A movement of trying to control, definitely.
Yogi 6: And that's what freaks us all out, really, because it's like, "Ah fuck!" [laughter] "Now who's in charge?!" Oh, that came out, didn't it?
Rob: Yeah, this is a very highly sensitive microphone. [laughter] But I don't have a problem with that at all. Yeah, it's a movement of control, exactly. So does everyone understand the bit about the self being constructed through aversion and clinging? Is that much, the self-sense being ...? It's like, the more aversion and clinging, the more the self-sense. And it slides up and down this -- all day long, most of the night, we just go up and down on this scale: more self, denser self, more solid sense of self, less, more, less, more, partly through aversion and clinging. But it's the same with phenomena. That's all I'm saying. It's the same with phenomena.
Yogi 7: Because of our relationships to them?
Rob: In other words, I tend to think, "This thing is what it is. I might have an aversive relationship to it. I might have a clinging relationship to it. I might have an equanimous relationship to it. I might let go. I might not let go. I might hate it. I might whatever. But that comes after the thing." That's the typical, intuitive sense of existence that we have: "There's the thing, and here's my reaction to it," going right back to what Juliet said at the beginning. "Here's my relationship with it, which is a separate thing. It could be this, it could be this, it could be that -- but the thing is the thing. The thing is the thing." When we begin to start playing with this, you see the thing does not exist separately from my relationship to it. I cannot point to a separate thing. And as I let go in my relationship, the thing cannot sustain itself because it does not exist independently of the mind, independently of the relationship with it. There is not a "thing first, relationship later," even. Let's take this with the self. I don't know -- maybe it's too early to say this on the retreat. I don't know. You're all looking pretty puzzled. [laughter]
Yogi 8: It gives me an understanding, like a flavour of why you said it's not that there's no self and it's not that there is a self. There's a kind of, like, there isn't a thing that's independent but ...
Rob: Yes, very good. Yeah. Let me throw one more little thing out. Here's this self, let's say. I have a sense of self, in any moment. Here's this sense of self. Now, that self, by nature, almost, will have a self-interest, right? I perceive myself -- going back to Nina's thing -- I perceive myself separate from the world, needing protection. This self, the self-sense, with a self-sense goes a sense of self-interest. I want X for this self, and I definitely don't want Y, so there's pulling and pushing. It goes with the self, right? It's the activity of the self-sense to push and to pull, because it has that self-interest. That pushing and pulling is clinging and aversion. In other words, the self-sense spawns, as part of its very existence, its activity, it gives rise to aversion and clinging. That's what it does. It's the activity of the self, is to cling.
But we also see the other way round: I see that aversion and clinging builds the self. The more aversion and clinging, as we've said, the more the self. Less aversion and clinging, less self. Really, really little aversion and clinging, really, really little construction of self. So aversion and clinging construct the self. The Buddha talked about dependent co-arising. So you've got the self brings aversion and clinging, and aversion and clinging brings the self. Which one comes first? Is it this first and then that, or that first and then this? Or is it that this whole thing comes together? The whole construction appears -- it's a magic show, and that was the Buddha's words, the magic show.
Now, that also goes for phenomena. Here's this pain, here's this emotion, here's this whatever. With a lot of practice, it starts even happening with external things. Here's this thing, and then the relationship with it. And again, I see, with deep practice, when I let go, very counterintuitively, the thing dissolves, it disbands, it disappears. It cannot support itself without a certain way of looking at it, a certain relationship to it. But this phenomena itself, if I then ask: okay, so the phenomena is dependent on the relationship of clinging. What does the clinging depend on?
Yogi 9: Conditions.
Rob: Okay, but what conditions?
Yogi 9: Self.
Rob: Self, okay. Self is one, very good.
Yogi 10: Could you say that again?
Rob: So we're saying, I'm seeing through letting go -- maybe some people have glimpsed this. Don't worry if this -- you know, we're just extending the whole thing a bit. I've seen through practice that when I let go in relationship to a phenomenon, that phenomenon can dissolve. So that implies to me, if I see it over and over again -- I can't get away from it -- I'm staring right at the thing; it's not that I'm ignoring it -- and it dissolves. So it implies to me, it's just like a science experiment: every time I let go, it dissolves. And I'm looking right at it. I'm not distracting myself. There it is. I see that the phenomenon depends on my relationship with it. That already is very counterintuitive, because I tend to think, as I said before, "There's the phenomenon, and then afterwards, maybe a nanosecond later, comes my relationship, and it could be any of many things, but the thing is the thing in itself." We're already saying the thing is not the thing in itself, it's dependent on the relationship. Then I might ask, "What is the relationship dependent on?" Mei-Wah said "self." People said "conditions." Yeah, so what are those conditions? Self is one. In other words, without this self, there isn't the self-interest, so there isn't the aversion and clinging, but what else?
Yogi 11: Karma.
Rob: Karma, okay. I'm hunting for one specific ...! [laughter]
Yogi 12: It's dependent on external stuff.
Rob: Like?
Yogi 12: Phenomena.
Rob: Yeah, very good. Excellent. Beautiful. So first thing we saw was the phenomenon was dependent on the relationship, but the relationship is dependent on the phenomenon. I can't have aversion without an object, really. So again, we get this dependent co-arising. What comes first, the thing or the relationship, the relationship or the thing? Magic. The world is magic. It's a magical, mystical reality. Not just the self, but the whole of existence. And you might say, "Well, maybe the mind comes first." Actually -- and this really is off the curriculum now -- but actually, the mind, too, has no basis. It's groundless. The mind, too, consciousness, too, arises in that magic. And this is what it means. Nothing exists in any way separate from anything else -- not just because my jeans were made in Turkey or wherever they were made and da-da-da, all that stuff. In some much, much deeper -- so woven into the fabric of consciousness and existence. And seeing that liberates everything, to the deepest degree.
Yogi 13: So this must be woven into the fabric of the consciousness of animals?
Rob: Yep. That's what I said with Nina. It's not just humans. This is woven into all consciousness. It's part of the way consciousness works. It's what consciousness is, if you like.
Q9: is there an external reality?
Yogi: I hope this is not too theoretical, but I'm imagining this doesn't negate the possibility that there is an external reality that we cannot perceive -- it's just that in our perceiving of it, it is co-arising?
Rob: Yeah, um ...
Yogi: Or is this a metaphysical ...?
Rob: Well, I think it's a beautiful question, and a really complex question. Within the Dharma, you'll get different answers to that. One is, I mean, the way the historical Buddha approached this is what's called the phenomenological approach, which is basically like, "I cannot know anything anyway external from my perception. I deal with my suffering as part of all that. I just go with that, and I don't ask questions about that. I cannot ever know anything outside of that." But there are different takes on that. So some people would just kind of avoid that question, because, you know, "I deal with this. This is my suffering. This is the world that I'm living in. It's obviously what I perceive," etc.
I'm not sure if I can give a simple answer to that. There are schools within the Dharma, and meditatively it can really seem that nothing exists at all outside our mind. There's nothing external. Everything is just the mind. Some people don't feel comfortable with that, some people do. If you explore really modern physics, like quantum physics up to the present, you know, those questions are very alive there as well. Physicists themselves are split. They call it RWOT, standing for the Real World Out There. [laughter] And so some people believe in that, and some physicists don't. The implication is, everything that quantum physics and relativity and those sort of really newer approaches that are trying to unite those theories, it's actually, that can't seem to stand any more. When you say, "What is mass?", it seems so obvious, and you can't actually find it. They don't actually know what mass is. Things like that. It's a really deep question. The original Buddha was like, "Don't even go there, because answering that question won't help you get nearer to the end of suffering." Later, as the Dharma developed, there were incredibly brilliant philosophers that would debate that kind of thing, etc. I find it interesting, and it moves me -- it's not just a head thing; it moves me to go there. But it's also, I'm not sure that one needs an answer to that for liberation.
Q10: what happens when we let go (continued)
Yogi: In the really simple, simple kind of -- might sound silly, actually -- but it's like we're all the same. We're all the same. Everything's ... we're all the same.
Rob: Mm-hmm, in what way?
Yogi: Well, in the sense, you know, we're all having an experience which has the same -- we're all affected and we all respond in the same way. I mean, we have our differences. In a sense, it's like, it's all just like one, it's one thing. [pause, Rob and yogi laugh] It sounds silly!
Rob: No, not at all! That's a really helpful sense to have of things, you know, because we tend to feel so separate and so isolated and so different and all this, and once we begin realizing the sameness and what we share, and what we participate in together, there's a real, real deep healing in that.
Yogi: Yeah, there's like the content of what we all share, and then there's also the other ...
Rob: Exactly.
Yogi: You know, which you can't really put words to, but we're all kind of held in it.
Rob: Yeah, beautiful. Thank you, Jane. A couple of people mentioned this, and I was just curious, because Catherine also just wove it into her talk last night. And again, I wasn't intending to bring it up on this retreat, but here's really a question, just for me to get a sense of where this is going for people: do you sometimes get a sense -- some people have mentioned it even in this Q & A -- sometimes get a sense when you let go and things open out, it's almost as if the space itself begins to kind of become more obvious, or the silence, or the sense of love or something permeating, something holding a bit more, or a container a bit more? It's fine if you don't. It's more for me to just get a sense, do some people ...? Juliet?
Yogi 2: A container.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi 3: Love.
Rob: Love there, yeah, okay. Hannah, what were you ...?
Yogi 4: I find myself, I mean, not identifying in the sense of the self, but being more ... yeah, definitely more aware of the spaces rather than the phenomena within the spaces.
Rob: Yeah, okay, very good.
Yogi 5: It's like, for me, it's like this bottomless kind of letting go, and then it's empty and spacious, but at the same time so full.
Rob: Full, yeah. Okay. Because of course, as Catherine touched on last night, what can happen is a sense of not being held, a sense of fear, a sense of kind of one is losing oneself. And yeah, it can go back and forth, of course, yes. If we say, when I let go, I'm not building so much self, and you might find yourself at times without the familiar sense of self. It's like, without the personality, where is the personality when things have gone really quiet? And so on that spectrum, we've gone, the slider has gone less than the personality. The personality is not arising at this point. And sometimes there's a reaction to that. It's like, "Pffft. I want my personality back. I don't want to lose it." And you see, you just go back and forth, and eventually we're really okay with not having the personality around. It's like, it's nice, actually! And you realize there's a beauty in that as much as there's a beauty in the world of the personality.
Yogi 6: Yeah, definitely got that! You know, it's like we're an empty core. There's a field of awareness, and then there's this empty core, and all the [?] and happening outside this core. And I give mettā to myself, and I think, "Who is it, that self I'm giving mettā to?" [laughs] It becomes a real question. How can I say, "May I be well," and I think, "What is ...?" You know. It's become a real question.
Rob: Yeah. That question doesn't need to stop the mettā though. It's funny -- even if I don't know who I am, or I don't have much of a sense of self, I still seem to be able to give mettā here. [laughter] Which is why that -- I threw this out at the beginning of the retreat: it's like, people think, "Well, if I'm saying 'May I' da-da-da, won't it build the self?" And it doesn't. It doesn't.
Yogi 7: I've got a question.
Rob: Okay. I think I just want to say something about that holding, if that's okay. And again, I wasn't intending to go into this, but I was curious just what might come up. So this is really, if it's around right now, or if it's going in and out, or just something eventually to look out for. Sometimes -- or is it enough? Are you guys tired and had enough? You've had enough?
Yogi 8: No, I want to listen.
Yogi 9: Yes.
Rob: Yes? Well, okay. I mean, it's the same for me to talk or not to talk, so.
Yogi 10: Keep going.
Rob: When I was asking, "What happens when we let go?" And you said, "This and this and this and this and this." And one of the things that can happen is this sense of spaciousness. It's like, when there's a self-sense, everything gets more constricted, with the body sense, and it feels smaller and tighter and more bound. That begins opening up. And with that opening up, there's more of a sense of spaciousness. Now, sometimes that spaciousness, it's like it has different flavours at different times. It can be felt like there's just love there, or it's just silence, or it's just space, or it's this sense of holding, like a container that holds, or stillness, or peace.
The love that's in that space will tend to be much calmer. In other words, it's rare for the self to go really quiet and the space to open up and the love to kind of feel like very hot and passionate. It's probably going to be a much more subtle kind of love that's pervading, if it's there around at all. Because in letting go of aversion and clinging, we're moving more towards equanimity, towards peace. So the love, it's kind of shot through with a lot of peace, with a lot of equanimity.
But sometimes this sense of space and silence begins to attract the being much more. And Hannah just said, it's like I start to get less interested in phenomena and more interested in the space that's holding things, and the sense of silence, the sense of peace, or love or whatever, that's holding things. And sometimes that really gives -- as Catherine was saying last night, there can be some fear in that, but one can also begin feeling the quality of that space. And just as one's eyes might need to get used to the dark -- at first we'd see, "Whoa, a darkened room!", and begin to feel into it, and more of its subtle qualities begin to show, and there is holding there, and there is beauty, and there is love, and there is peace, and stillness, all that. And sometimes it can just kind of aid the letting go, because there's a kind of wider holding going on. Does this make sense at all?
So I'm just saying that in case, because a few people have mentioned it, in case it begins. So one whole way that the emptiness practice can unfold is really getting, opening up to that sense, and the holding there, and the beauty there, and the peace, and the sort of mystical sense of that. That's one possible way. And it's certainly not the only way, but it's one thing there.
Q11: normalization of seeing emptiness
Yogi: Can I say something?
Rob: Yeah, we only have a couple more minutes, but yeah, yeah.
Yogi: Just aware that this might be something to do with a duality which I'm holding on to, but I'm sort of in that place of space and awareness and sensations, and just kind of hanging out, and it all just feels really ... normal, and not really that spectacular or mysterious. I can tell that there's this part of me that's like, "Oh, okay." [laughs] I can also see that there is, and it's a different way of looking at it -- I can kind of flip that view as well. But actually just being okay with the normalness of it, the not-anythingness of it ...
Rob: Yeah, yeah, very good. Sometimes we just get used to that, and it becomes very normal. It just becomes a normal part of our lives, absolutely. And as always, there are different ways of looking at things. So the really golden question is, what ways of looking at things are helpful? And sometimes it's helpful to even, eventually -- well, should we say this? Let's just say that's good to notice, Hannah. [laughter] And we can talk about it more, if that's okay. Does that feel okay? I'm conscious of time, because it's almost lunchtime. Is that okay to stop there? Okay.
