Transcription
Today I want to introduce the third of these three characteristics, these three ways of looking that we're exploring. And just a tiny bit of review before we get into it. I can't remember when it was. It was near the beginning of the retreat, but I mentioned the historical Buddha, the Buddha of the Pali Canon scriptures, generally -- I mean, occasionally, he did try to communicate to people this sort of Middle Way between existence and non-existence that emptiness points to. And in one famous passage, he's talking to someone called Kaccāyana, and he says, you know, generally speaking, almost everyone can only seem to conceive in terms of duality: some thing -- the self or whatever, love, or whatever it is, any phenomenon -- it either is or it isn't. And that just about seems it. It either is or it isn't. Can't help but conceive in terms of that duality. And he said, "I, the Buddha," he's like, "I don't do is or isn't. I don't go there. I teach the Middle Way," which is dependent arising, which is emptiness.
But for most people, generally he avoided that. He avoided even trying to explain it, because it's very difficult to understand. That razor's edge, that Middle Way, is very difficult to understand. And so it seems, looking at the whole body of teachings from that historical Buddha, at least, that what he actually did more often was, he just said, "Try this way of practising. Don't even go to that question yet. Try this way of practising. Try this way of relating to things, this way of looking, or these ways of looking," as we're doing here. If you develop these ways of looking, and these ways of relating to things, you will discover a freedom, or more and more freedom in the moment, in the now. And that will get deeper and deeper.
And with that unfolding freedom will come an unfolding understanding. And the understanding will unfold, so this 'not is' and 'not is not' begins to be understood -- not just intellectually, but in the heart, in a way that transforms the life. That was his general sort of tactic. Generally, people would ask him, "Is there a self? Is there not a self?" And he would just not answer, as in: "I'm not going to say there is a self, and I'm not going to say there is no self." And the same about anything else.
So, yesterday, in the Q & A, we talked a lot, and a lot of it was about the emptiness of phenomena. So I want to bring it back today into the 'emptiness of self' realm. And if we break down a little bit the practices we've been doing, and let's just consider them a little bit. So the impermanence -- many things come out of that practice, the contemplation of impermanence. But in terms of the emptiness of self, perhaps one of the central ones is that when I look inside, or look at anything that I might construe to be myself, all I see is things that last only a moment and change. And so I can't find this permanent self that feels like it's there. When I look for it, I can't find it. All I see is things that are momentarily existing, changing. So that's a certain angle on the emptiness of self.
With the dukkha characteristic, with the relaxing the relationship, when I relax the relationship, I'm relaxing the aversion and clinging. The aversion and clinging is relaxed, and as we spoke yesterday, etc., we begin to see, "Oh, aversion and clinging is part of what constructs the self-sense, part of what builds and fabricates that self-sense," right?
So we see something about this self. It seems like it's independently existing, but I actually see, because I have aversion and clinging, then I relax it, I have aversion and clinging, and I relax it, and the self goes up and down, and up and down, and up and down with that. And it begins to be obvious: this self-sense is constructed. And one of the principal factors that constructs it is grasping, is aversion and clinging, right? So that's another angle into the emptiness of self -- that the self-sense is constructed. Right? So far, so good. Just review, right?
And now, yesterday, when I put it to you guys and I said, "What do you notice when you do all this? What do you notice?" -- and you told me a lot of things, which was wonderful. And I'm not quite sure. It seemed like a little bit implicit in a couple of things people were throwing out, so I'll ask this: amongst what you're noticing at times, did you also notice that when it feels like these practices are going well, there is less identification with things? In other words, something like a thought might go through the head, but instead of just thinking, "Oh, how terrible, that thought," because it was an ugly thought, or "How wonderful I am, because that thought is mine," etc. Or the body sensations just seem like they're just there, but there's less identification, meaning less taking it as me or mine, the usual range of phenomena that we would usually take for me or mine. I'll explain what I mean more.
Now, actually, all of the practices that we've been doing will encourage non-identification or less identification. It's interesting. If we were just to do the practice of bare attention or mindfulness, and all you did was sustain mindfulness at your experience, or even if you had the patience to sit there and just sustain mindfulness on one aspect of your experience (like just a sensation in your knee), and just mindful, mindful, mindful, and stay with it, after a certain amount of time (which will be hugely variable), it's almost like the mindfulness begins to -- what could we say? -- well, the identification goes. It's almost like it separates it out. It kind of knows that it can't be what it's looking at. There's a sense of this same sense of disidentification that comes in, if you just sustain the mindfulness.
But similarly, it will come out of the mettā. Enough mettā, and a similar -- you're just doing mettā, just doing mettā, and there's a similar sense with thoughts and body sensations, etc., emotions, even, of non-identification, to some degree, that comes into the experience. [8:01] Same with the impermanence, same with the relaxing the relationship. All of them kind of allow this letting go of identification.
So at first in practice, whatever practice one is doing, it might be that one just gets a glimpse of this, literally just a moment. It's like, "Oh! What was that?" This sense of just, it was like the thing was just there, and it didn't seem to be me. Maybe a taste or something. It's like, "Oh." There's a sense of space around something. For instance, sensations or thoughts -- it's like they're just happening. They're just happening. It's like they're coming and going by themselves, so to speak, as if they're sort of just floating there, as if the body sensations are just floating there. It's as if they don't belong to me. I don't feel like they belong to me. This thought, it was just passing through, same as a birdsong, same as a shooting star. Doesn't belong to me.
In a way, what's happening is we're unhooking the identification. So identification with something is like hooking into that thing, and saying, "This is me. This is mine." Yeah? And we're unhooking that hook, that identification. Another word for it is 'appropriation.' So this self appropriates this or that as me or mine. Now, that hooking is a kind of clinging. Can you see? If I hook into something, I say, "This is me. This is mine," that's a kind of grasping, right? So it's a subtle form of clinging. We could put it in the category of clinging, if we wanted to.
With this, the Buddha's saying, can you practise this as a kind of strategy, this way of looking, deliberately? Not just wait for it to come up because you're mindful, but actually deliberately start to see things this way, start to regard them this way. Why? Because it's an extremely practical way of going about the teaching, because it's suffering to identify. If I have an ugly thought, and I think it's me or mine, or reflects on me, I'm going to suffer. Actually, if I have anything that I'm regarding as me or mine, there's a degree of suffering. There's a degree of suffering in that clinging, just as we talked about when there's aversion and clinging generally. There's suffering in appropriating things. So it's like, you know what? You don't need to do that. And it's suffering to do that. Can you practise letting go of that? And it's a practice. It's a practice.
So we're practising letting go of identification, which doesn't mean getting rid of the thing. It means letting go of regarding it as me or mine. So can I regard phenomena as not me, not mine, not-self, let's say -- looking at experience, looking at phenomena, and not identifying? And can I sustain that way of looking? Deliberately, lightly, delicately sustain that relationship with things? This is the third of the ways of looking, the ways of relating.
So usually, habitually, consciousness appropriates. It regards things as me or mine. [11:53] We have a thought, and we regard it as me or mine. We have a body sensation, and we regard it as me or mine. We have an emotion: it's me or mine. This or that, an intention, whatever it is. Sometimes that's conscious. We're really conscious: "This is me. This is mine." We actually think that. And sometimes, and probably most of the time, it's unconscious. It's just a habitual way of regarding things. We're not even aware that that's what we're doing.
So the Buddha talked about five aggregates. The Pali word is khandhas. Sanskrit is skandhas, just the same with an s in front. And these are (1) the body, (2) the vedanā or the sensations, the sense of pleasant, unpleasant, etc., that we talked about, (3) the perceptions or the perceiving process, the discriminating between this and that: "This is a bell, this is the carpet, this is whatever." That's the third one. (4) The fourth one is what's called mental formations -- so thoughts, intentions, movements of the mind that tend to construct things. So aversion and clinging are actually belonging in those mental formations, as is identification itself. So that's quite a big basket, that one. That's the fourth: mental formations. (5) And the fifth is consciousnesses, plural. In other words, knowing -- knowing, awareness, the knowing of this, the knowing of that. That's what's called the fifth aggregate.
So sometimes, you may well run into modern teachings which say, "That was the Buddha's definition of a human being, is these aggregates -- this is what the human being is." Or saying, "The self is just the process of these aggregates in time, like it's just moment to moment, these aggregates arising and passing, and that's what the self is, and that's all it is. So saying the self is empty means it's just this process."
Actually, the Buddha never said that. There's not one passage where he said that. Doesn't say the self is a process, doesn't say the human being is the aggregates or anything like that. Again, it all falls under a much more practical teaching. He's saying these aggregates make up the totality of our experience, and they're the likely things that we might identify with. And it's a way of breaking down our experience and looking at it to practise disidentification, rather than a statement about what is or what isn't a human being.
So this teaching about the aggregates is saying, this actually includes everything. The aggregates are the totality of our experience. And it's just one way of kind of, instead of being overwhelmed by the complexity of our existence and our life, actually just chopping it into five, and saying these are the things that we're likely to identify with. I'm likely to identify with the body. I'm likely to identify with awareness. And it's saying, okay, chop it into five, and see if you can not identify with any of that, as a practice. So it's a helpful way of breaking down our experience and practising non-identification. And that's actually all it is. That's all it is.
So sometimes, experientially, sometimes this feels easy. It feels easy to disidentify. Or there's automatically, organically, a sense of disidentification with experience, to some degree or other. And of course sometimes it doesn't feel easy. When it doesn't, you might try moving back to sort of the bare contact practice, and just hanging out there, back to a simple mindfulness practice, back to the mettā practice, doing, say, the mettā, and deepening the samādhi, doing the impermanence practice, relaxing the relationship, because all of those, to the degree that they deepen, there will be this natural sense of seeing things without identification. It grows as those practices grow. Also sometimes just letting the space open up. Space opens up, and we tend to be less identified. There's less identification there.
Sometimes, a lot of people doing this practice -- and remember, introducing these three, you will probably have a favourite, and it doesn't matter which it is, really. You may like two of them, or you may like them all. It's fine. So see. Sometimes with this practice, a lot of people find a very gentle label is really helpful to help, to allow that disidentification. But it has to be very light. And sometimes in the suttas, the stock phrase is, "Thus should you regard something: 'This is not me, this is not my self, this is not who I am.'" That's way too clunky! [laughter] You can't be doing that to every body state. Takes way too long, it's too laborious, and it's just going to get in the way. So if we're using the labels, super light. It's just part of what helps regard phenomena this way. So something maybe like, "Not-self, not-self." Or "Not me, not mine." Or anattā, if you use the Pali word.
Yogi: Can I ask you a question right now?
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi: When you say, "This is not self," and the thing that's being constructed is what we're calling self ...
Rob: Yeah?
Yogi: I guess I can understand, there's no substance to that thing that's constructed, but it's still what we're calling the self. And we're calling it not-self at the same time?
Rob: Yeah, they're slightly different. Let me finish, and see if I've answered that. And if not, we can pick it up, because they're all slightly different angles on the thing. So in other words, all these practices say something about construction of the self-sense, but they approach it slightly different ways. So what we're doing here is we're just saying habitually, a human being has this sense of "me, mine, me, mine, me, mine" all the time. And we're just, all we're doing is unhooking that, and just saying, "It's not me, not mine." So let's see if it comes out in the wash. [19:20]
It might be any of those labels, very light. It might be, you know, something like, "There is" whatever it is. "There is thinking. There is awareness." You know, it's just the "there is" puts it in non-identified language. "There is" -- it's very light. It's very light. Some people don't want any labels at all, doesn't help. So you'll have to play with it a little bit. Basically, if there is a label, it's only supporting that way of looking. That's the function of it. It's just helping us to relate to phenomena in that way of disidentifying.
So there's a beautiful passage from Dōgen, who was I think the founder of the Sōtō Zen school, and a great Zen teacher. And it's quite famous. Some of you may know or remember: "To study the Buddha's way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things."[1] Is that right?
Yogi: That's very good.
Rob: Was that right? It goes on after that though. The next line, which is usually not quoted: "To be enlightened by all things is to drop body and mind of self and other." So this relates also to this holy disinterest we were talking about. Just drop it, drop it, dropping the identification, dropping, dropping. It's the body and mind that we tend to identify with. What is it to just drop, drop, drop that -- drop body and mind?
So let's break this down a little bit. Actually, before we even get to the aggregates, it's good to do it with external things. How many people have a car here? Only a few. Hang out in the parking lot, and give your car a good, good, long stare. [laughter] You know, if I sustain looking at something, it begins to seem ridiculous to hold it as mine. One could do the same with one's house. What is it to just stand in the street -- if you own a house -- stand in the street outside your house, and just look and look at this house: not mine. Or your furniture at home. Just look at it. Sit on the sofa and stare at the TV with it off. [laughter] And just look at it.
And eventually something begins to peel off. It's like the usual sense of "mine, mine, mine" -- we don't even realize, but that "mine" is a burden. It's a burden, it's a prison, and we don't feel it as such. And just, all I need to do is look at something and sustain that looking. I don't have to be in full lotus. You sustain that looking, and something begins to unburden and peel off. It's the identification. It's the ownership -- the myth of ownership. One could do it with one's watch. If you have a watch, just take it off and look at it. One could do it with one's clothes draped over a chair, and you're just looking at the clothes. And what one senses is, as one sustains it, there's this sense of, "Of course they're not mine." Well, they're mine at a relative level. But of course they're not really mine. Some freedom begins to come into the experience. And actually, that's, again, always really important to feel. [23:13] I'm not getting the sense of -- I'm not, you know, "It's bad to identify, and you shouldn't, and thou shalt not." It's not about that. It's like, I notice, when I see my house is not really my house, my car is not really mine, my socks are not really mine, my watch, all this -- space, freedom comes in. I actually want to taste that. And it gives me that taste that I'm on the right track. Letting go, disidentification is the way to freedom.
Have you ever done something like that with someone you really love? Stare into each other's eyes. Or just look at each other, gaze at each other, and just see what happens when there's that sense of, maybe even encouraging this sense of, "You're not mine. You may be 'my daughter,' 'my son,' 'my mother,' 'my father,' 'my husband/wife,' 'my boyfriend/girlfriend,' whatever it is. Actually, you're not mine." That's true at one level. And we tend to think, "Well, I don't want to do that. Maybe that will squeeze the love out of it." Actually, it's quite the opposite. It allows space and mystery to come in, and increases the love, interestingly. All these practices that we're doing bring more love, bring more space, more freedom, generally speaking. It's not to say there are not hiccups in different ways at different times.
But what would it be to do it with the body and the body parts? And we might do a guided meditation, maybe at some point, with this. What is it just to stare at the hand, for instance? And again, sustain the looking long enough, until one gets the sense, "Yes, of course it's me, but at another level it's not me." And look, it's getting around time when I should probably clip my fingernails. And then what? Am I going to lose some of me? Clip them and keep them for a while. [laughter] See. Or pull a hair out. Me or not me? When does it stop being me? How much of my body could I chop off and still be me? If I chop my leg off, am I less me then? If I have to have it amputated, then I'm only, what, three-quarters Rob after that?
So one way of doing it is also contemplating a little bit. Looking at, but also a little bit of reflection. We may go into this again. If you're going to do that with the body, some mettā might be helpful, because we're definitely not wanting to disconnect or reject or all that stuff. The more mettā, the more easy all this stuff is. And actually, one can have a sense of loving the body, and appreciating the miracle of it, and not identifying with it. So certainly, there's a miracle here in these bodies, in this room. Certainly this body is a miracle. But is it me? And is it mine?
Sometimes the Buddha said if it was mine, if it was really mine, I would be fully in control. To say something is mine means that I have to be fully in control of something. Now, obviously, I have a certain amount of control, because I can do this and that, and you know, whatever. But I don't have ultimate, complete control of my body. Lost a lot of my hair, getting older, will fall apart at one point, go back to the earth, which is where it comes from. I don't own this. It doesn't belong to me. Belongs to nature.
In practice, with this practice, my experience working both with myself and with students is that one gradually expands the range of what one can sustain disidentification of. So I'll explain what I mean. For most people -- this is obviously not a hard rule, but for most people, probably one of the easiest places to get a sense of this disidentification and sustain it is with the body sensations -- that one can kind of, as the meditation deepens, kind of regard the body sensations, and it just seems that they're just floating there. They're just happening. And they don't belong to me. And one can learn to sustain that, and just hang out in that sense of disidentification from the body sensations.
The body, in the sense of this flesh and blood and brain and blood vessels and all that, that may or may not be easy, so you'll have to see if that's a tall order for you, or an easy one. [28:26] Vedanā are generally not that much harder than body sensations. If you can hang out with body sensations disidentified, generally you can hang out with just the sort of flickering of unpleasant, pleasant, etc., that goes on, and disidentify from that, sustain that disidentification. Generally, for the majority of people, it seems that body sensations and vedanā are really good places to start, and to get that kind of feeling like it's a foundation, like you can hang out there and spend, you know, a good part of a sitting disidentified from that. That might take a while, you know, so we're really talking about practice here. I'm just introducing a practice.
That might take a while to get to that point. From that point, it's much easier to disidentify with thoughts. With thoughts -- we've talked about this -- it's so slippery and seductive, so quick. But if there's a sense of disidentification with the body that's sustained, and that space of disidentification, can be a lot, then, easier to just kind of add a disidentification to thoughts, rather than going immediately to try and disidentify from thoughts. Do you understand? Emotions, again, may or may not be easy. May or may not be easier with different emotions.
Yogi 2: I wasn't quite clear what you said about thoughts.
Rob: It's easier to disidentify with thoughts once you can already kind of sustain a disidentification with body sensations, generally speaking. I know exceptions, but for most people that's easy. So if you can hang out for, you know, forty-five minutes, half an hour, an hour in non-identification with body sensations, at a certain point it will feel quite easy or much easier to add to that disidentification, that space of disidentification, add the thoughts.
Yogi 2: I thought you just said something after that.
Rob: About emotions?
Yogi 2: Okay. I must have imagined it.
Rob: I don't know. Did I? I'm not sure.
Yogi 2: I thought you said something else about thought, but ...
Rob: Well, it's okay.
Yogi 3: They're very slippery.
Yogi 2: They're very slippery.
Rob: They're very slippery. They're tricky, tricky customers. Yeah. They should come with government warnings. [laughter]
Emotions may or may not be tricky. You know, that partly depends on personality; partly, of course, depends on the emotion. [31:00] And remember, we're talking about ways of looking. So this is not to say that all we ever do with emotions is disidentify with them. That's completely not right. We're talking about one way of looking that's very helpful.
What about intentions? Disidentify from intentions. We're getting more and more subtle. But we build slowly, the range expands of what we can disidentify with. If I try immediately to let go of identification with intentions, it will be too much. I won't be able to do it. Perceptions. Then you get really subtle. If you can do all that, what about awareness?
You may not even get to this on this retreat. It's fine. I'm showing a practice. I'm outlining a practice. Letting go of identification with awareness is very subtle. It's very, very subtle. I've never met anyone who can just go immediately to letting go, sustaining a letting go of the identification with awareness. I've never met anyone who could do that.
Yogi 4: Why would you want to let go of that?
Rob: Because that's suffering, too; because that's not-self, and it's suffering to hold. And when I let go of the identification with awareness, it opens up the insight very, very deeply in terms of what happens then. But even something so subtle as the intention to pay attention -- very subtle. But sometimes, you know, if you're really quiet with mind -- again, I'm just outlining a direction here, so, you know, to the degree that we disidentify, we suffer less. And we're learning to disidentify. I'm just painting an avenue. Sometimes one's very quiet in meditation. One can actually feel the throb of intention to pay attention. And one sees: that, too, is not-self. It's just arising.
It's interesting, though, because when we let go of the identification with, say, something like body sensations -- or let's say I let go of the identification with body sensations and thoughts -- then very naturally, the identification will go to awareness: "I am the one who's looking at this stuff." That's where it will go. And it may go there consciously or unconsciously. In other words, I might hold that as a philosophical position: "I am awareness. I am the witness. I am consciousness," etc. And that might be my spiritual, philosophical position. And maybe someone's told me that, or I've read that, or something. It seems to fit some teachings.
Or I might go there without even realizing that I'm identified with consciousness. That's still present. But that, too, is anattā, that too. So actually, there is knowing. There is not an I that knows. There is knowing. [snaps fingers] There is this moment of knowing. [snap] There's knowing. There's knowing this and knowing that. And we may come back to this on this retreat, but you know, it's fine, it's completely fine, of course, if the practice doesn't get to that point. It just unfolds at the pace it does for everybody. And at some point, there will be that aspect of experience, or that aspect of the aggregates to let go of identification with. [34:38]
Yogi 5: Just to ask very briefly, with awareness, would you have a -- because it's getting more subtle, you may not sense -- there's no actual sensations. It's just the -- I don't know. I'm wondering how you would actually approach that.
Rob: Yeah. Shall we bring it up again? Unless you feel like you're really at the cusp of that, and you're ...
Yogi 5: I'd play with it if you told me. [laughs] But if it's not, if it's better later, I mean ...
Rob: Well, maybe you and I can talk, Hannah, or we might bring it up with everybody later. I just kind of want to get through what's here, if that's okay.
So I'm just wondering what to leave out here and what to pick up later. Yeah, I'm going to leave a bit out, and just rather say less and just see, let you take it for a spin and see what comes up. Beware -- and this came up the other day -- beware of a couple of things with this practice. Just like the other practice, it's very easy for aversion to creep in. I might say, "Not-self, not-self, not-self, not-self," and what I really mean is "Go the hell away!" [laughter] And I'm letting go, but what that really means is I'm trying to get rid of. So that can always creep in. But actually, if I say, "Oh, this uncomfortable body sensation that I'm having is not-self," what that really means is, it can be there. Because it's not-self, it's not a problem. It can be there in the space. I don't have to take it personally. I don't get upset if you have a pain your knee. I get upset if I have a pain! [laughter]
But what it means to say not-self, it's a letting be. So careful this letting go language doesn't turn into getting rid of. Letting go -- another way of saying it is letting be. It can be there, because it's not self. It can be there. It can hang out. It's just floating there. No problem. So that's the first thing. Just beware of the way aversion can creep into any practice, but this one in particular.
The second thing to beware, be aware of is, for want of a better name -- I haven't come up with a better name -- it's what I call the 'kink in the carpet' phenomenon. [laughter] So I'll explain what I mean. With this practice, it can be very -- once it gets going a little bit -- very tempting to kind of get into an attitude of trying to squash the self-sense out of existence and obliterate it. That's actually not what we're doing with this practice. We're not trying to get rid of the self-sense. Very, very important. Because if I do that, what's going to happen is I see the self there, identified with the body, I squash it there, and like a kink in the carpet, it comes up over there. So I run over there, and I stamp on that, and then over there, it comes up there, so I stamp -- and then I'm straddling the room and pulling my hair out. [laughter] And it will be endlessly enervating and frustrating. That is not what we're trying to do here. We're not trying to squash the self-sense, okay? Rather, it's quite a subtle difference, distinction. What we're doing is, rather, learning to regard this phenomenon in this moment as not-self. Just different, subtly different. One will lead to endless frustration like a dog chasing its own tail, and one will lead to freedom and a deepening of understanding. Even if, at times, it feels like, "Yes, but there is still left a subtle self-sense," no problem. In time, as I said, one expands the range of what one can disidentify with, and it will include that too.
Experientially, I'm sitting in meditation, sitting in meditation, and things quieten down. And there's a sense, with this disidentification -- let's say with body sensations or thoughts, when things are quite quiet -- that they just come out of nowhere. Have you even had a taste of that? Yeah? It's like there's space, and then pshhhew!
Yogi 6: What comes out of nowhere?
Rob: Everything. [laughter] Everything comes out of nothing. Everything seems to be emerging from nothingness, so to speak, at times, you know, when things feel like there's more settledness, more spaciousness, more openness. So there's a beautiful sense of things. It's just things emerging out of nothingness, and out of the space, out of the silence, whatever you want to call it -- out of awareness, whatever -- and disappearing back into that. It's a lovely, lovely sense. Ultimately speaking, it's not actually true, okay? It's not actually true that things emerge out of nothing, but that's okay, okay? It's a really helpful way of seeing things. So we're not going to be picky about that now.
Yogi 7: What do they emerge out of?
Rob: Actually, ultimately, they don't emerge. Well, we could take a different -- it's like, there are different levels of truth, you could say. So experientially, I have the sense that they appear out of nothing at times, and that's really helpful in being able to disidentify. I just sense: they belong to the nothingness, not to me. [40:36]
And another way of looking -- remember, we're talking about things emerging out of a web of conditions. So any -- whether it's a thought, whether it's a body sensation, it emerges out of the web of conditions. And that's where it comes from. At a conventional level, that's more accurate. Ultimately, even emerging is a kind of illusion. But ... another time.
Okay. Now, that's about it. What I said about the doing and the non-doing -- I can't remember when this came up -- with these practices, it will feel like, at first, "Gosh, this is really a doing, to sustain this. This is really -- ooh, this is really hard work," maybe, even. And a part of us might object to doing. And we might even have heard, "I thought meditation was non-doing. I thought that's what the real thing was, and now I'm doing." Actually, remember, we're doing less. I appropriate all day long: me, mine, me, mine, me, mine, me, mine. I'm so used to that doing, I don't even notice it. I don't even feel it as a doing. We're actually letting go of doing. Because we're not used to it, it will feel like a doing for a while, until we begin to feel the freedom of it, and the space that comes there.
Sometimes, of course, doing the practice, we start identifying with the doer: "I'm the one who's disidentifying." But that will eventually be part of the range of things we can disidentify -- you can even disidentify with the act of disidentification as it's happening. And it's not an infinite regress. But again, that comes later; I'm just saying that in case you feel -- because oftentimes, I'll give this to people and they'll just object without really kind of giving it a good run. Okay?
So still 50/50 with the mettā and the insight. It's really, really important. The mettā is so, so helpful for the deepening of the insight. Samādhi is helpful, and mettā is helpful. About 50/50. Does that make sense? It's something to try and play with for a little bit. And then we'll talk again, obviously, but you'll see for yourselves which of these one or two or three you feel drawn to, and which works for you, and then you can take it from there.
Yogi 8: Can we be doing more than one, like we can be allowing vedanā and also going "not me"?
Rob: Yeah. There's a couple of ways that can happen. One is, if I just allow, as I said, it will tend to engender a sense of disidentification. It's almost like you're seeing both things at once. With a lot of practice of the three characteristics, there's a way you're almost kind of seeing them all three at once as well, or two at once, whatever. I think for now, I would rather people separate them and get really ...
Yogi 8: Sense of them?
Rob: ... Get a sense of each of them, because they're slightly different flavours and angles. And then it can be that, you know, with practice, when it's really humming, you just like [snaps fingers repeatedly], it's all just three characteristics, blub blub, even, you know, just like that, and you know what's ...
Yogi 8: Also there have been some things a bit sticky, I find. It's like, okay, that allowing has been working, but now it's not.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 8: And so if I just go, "Oh, but it's not mine," then it's like, "Oh, okay."
Rob: Yeah, good. Yeah, very good. So sometimes one works, sometimes another works. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Okay?
Yogi 9: When you went through that list, you just said, "Oh, well, then you can disidentify with thoughts."
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi 9: Any help as to how?
Rob: Yeah, yeah. I actually threw it out earlier, but it's really worth repeating. Thank you. I can't remember when I said this. Really good to start with the body. Okay? And just have the sense of opening to the body sensations in space, and they're just there. And if you just sustain an awareness to body sensations, and either, you know, develop the disidentification with body sensations, or body sensations, awareness of body sensations, and then start including sounds, opening out the awareness to listening, and the sounds that come from all different directions, all different distances. With that, there will be a sense of the whole space of awareness kind of opening up. If I can just stay with that sense, what you've got then is the arising, passing, the appearance and disappearance of both body sensations and sounds. And just hang out in that, and hang out in that. Let everything come, let everything go. Just like I don't identify with the sounds that appear and disappear, there's a sense of not identifying with the body sensations, and I hang out in that, in that letting everything come and go. Eventually it will be quite easy, it will feel actually almost automatic that thoughts get included in that. Then you've got body sensations, sounds, and thoughts, all pretty much ... much of a muchness, same, just stuff happening in the space, and there's not the identification. So that can be really helpful with the thoughts. Yeah. [46:05]
Okay, does it feel clear enough to at least try and give it a shot? Yeah? Okay.
So let's leave it there for today. And we can -- oh, did you have something?
Yogi 10: Just one thing, kind of recommended doing it if you're quite equanimous. If you're feeling something ...
Rob: Agitated? Yeah.
Yogi 10: And to not do it, or still we do it, or ...?
Rob: No. When you're equanimous, it will probably feel easier.
Yogi 10: Yeah.
Rob: When you're agitated, it may feel like this won't work. But it may be that when you're agitated, you disidentify with, say, the feeling of agitation. Yeah. Try it whenever. Try it whenever -- when you're feeling like you're struggling with something, or something is difficult. When something is going great, try it then, you know, when you feel wonderful. When you just feel kind of normal -- try it over the whole range. Because sometimes -- a little bit related to what Hannah just said -- sometimes we're struggling with something, and the thing that's keeping that struggle and that sense of suffering locked in is the identification. And what will do the trick is unhooking the identification, and the thing just goes, "Ahhh." Sometimes it might be something else, but eventually one gets good at this, and it's a really powerful way of just liberating the being in the moment. So try it with everything: the good, the bad, the ugly, the indifferent. And then obviously, we can pick it up and talk and see what's what.
And just to throw it out again -- we've said it before, but slow down as you're moving around the house. And really let the mettā kind of express itself in the gentleness, you know, through the gentleness of the body as it moves, as it touches things, etc. That slowing down and gentleness itself will help the mettā. It will also allow more insight, because more slowness, more gentleness, more chance of seeing stuff as well -- more space, more openness. So let that be part of what really deepens the whole retreat, really.
Okay? Okay. So let's sit together for just a minute.
[silence]
Remember, when trying new practices, to allow a quality of lightness and playfulness. Really just experimenting here. So it needs patience, needs that light touch, playing, experimenting, not pressuring. And it's finding a way for you, to make it work for you, finding what works for you.
Cf. Hee-Jin Kim, Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist (Boston: Wisdom, 2004), 104. ↩︎
