Transcription
There are lots of questions here! [laughter] Let's see what we get to, and maybe even some people want to ask. So we probably won't get to everything. I'm also mindful, Stew asked a question halfway through when I was giving the instructions the other day, and I don't feel that I really answered it, because I left some out, so I want to actually get to that. Did you have something, Jane?
Q1: balancing conceptuality and heart work
Yogi: Yeah. [long pause] I wonder if I can get there!
Rob: You have time.
Yogi: It feels like there's a part of my mind that's kind of freaking out. I don't mean that in literally like I've been kind of freaking out -- it's like, I can definitely see it as a kind of a path, an aspect. And it's like the conceptual part of my mind -- I didn't think it was going to be so emotional, you know, talking about it, because doing the 'not me, not mine,' and kind of going along quite well with it, and kind of aware that there's an experiential part, and then there's another part that's sort of not me, not mine, that's, you know, ridiculous or what have you. And then it felt like that sort of conceptual part really got it. Something happened, and that conceptual part, it was like it was not mine, and then that part went, "Well, if it's not mine, then whose is it?" And the answer came very clearly, "Well, it's nobody's." And it's like this, it doesn't come from anywhere, it isn't anything, and it doesn't belong to anybody. And it was like really clear. And since then, it's like that part of my mind, I can't go to -- it's almost like if I go to 'not me, not mine,' that part of my mind's just ... [exploding sound] Is it maybe, it just wants to think and think and think and kind of work it out, and it's like, you know, if I give it any space at all it's just totally off.
Rob: Yeah, yeah.
Yogi: It's fine, but as soon as I go to it, it's like it just kicks off.
Rob: Yeah, okay. And when you think about it, what happens? Where does it go? What does that feel like?
Yogi: It feels like a kind of burrowing, and it feels like it's burrowing into the centre of my head, and it's like -- I didn't realize it had, there was so much emotion, until I started talking. I can just feel it, it's like ...
Rob: Okay. When it starts thinking and there's that burrowing, does it feel exciting, disturbing, confusing, agitating, all of those? Freeing? You know?
Yogi: There's a part that feels free, and there's a part that feels, like, really -- you know, perhaps the words 'freaked out' are a bit too strong, but it's like, "Aaarrgghh!"
Rob: Okay. There's no problem here, you know. It's no problem. It's just a matter of balancing, that's all. If we go back to this surfboard analogy, it's just, okay, it's gone a little bit too conceptual, with too much energy in the conceptual. Sometimes it's the opposite for people, you know, in terms of they're practising, and there's a sort of anti-conceptuality. They're not allowing any rumination of what's going on, nothing means anything. It's all just like [flatly], "Experience." And it's kind of flat in that way. So it can be out of balance -- practice can be out of balance in many ways. If we do Level 2 and 3 and whatnot, we'll actually start bringing the conceptual in much more, because if you gather it right and use it well, actually thinking about this stuff in the right way really brings a lot of freedom. But you have to learn how to do that kind of thing.
At the moment, probably what I would say is more mettā -- you know, more mettā or more something that calms. So it's like, feeling -- I mean, there are two things: one is just, you feel it getting pulled into that place, and then just bring it back to something that's more calming, more mettā, etc. The more mettā there is, the easier it is. As I said right at the beginning, the mettā acts like a cushion for the emptiness practices, in the sense that the more mettā there is, the more we can just kind of let go into that emptiness and what it means, and it feels, rather than freaky, it feels actually really just soft and freeing. There's a kind of dissolving which we're really okay with.
So one thing for now might be just bringing it back and upping the mettā percentage, and really just softening the whole experience. A little more tricky perhaps, though, is sometimes something like this happens -- and it could be, you know, this time it's conceptual, whatever; other times it could be like anger or something coming up. And we tend to maybe get freaked out by it, but it may have something really wonderful in it. It's like, there's a lot of life energy in our conceptuality. In the Dharma world, oftentimes our conceptuality gets like pooh-poohed and put down, and it's all about just the body and the heart, and so cut our heads off. Can it be about the totality of us? And it might be that, in this, some freeing up is coming into the whole conceptual realm, and a lot of the energy is going there. And although that can feel troubling, it's almost like sometimes it might be that you can give that a little space and actually enjoy that kind of opening there. That's a little more tricky to do. But it might be, I think it might be that there's some treasure in there as well as some difficult stuff with it. Does that make sense if I say that?
Yogi: Yeah. I mean, completely. It feels on -- it's like on that level. I guess it's a bit like, "It's true, it's true," kind of ...
Rob: Yeah, and so it's true, it's kind of like -- to me, it's so important in our life, whether we're meditators or not that we get -- what's the word? -- shocked, shocked at certain points, exploded out of our usual ways of conceiving reality. Now, when that happens, it's often not a smooth ride, you know? And it's not that it should happen every day of our life, of course. But periodically in our life, if that's not happening, something's not working, something's not alive. But when that happens, it's often very agitating. It comes with a sense of excitement, but also a bit of crisis. So sometimes it might be that you can feel into the kind of excitement of it, if that makes sense. And just dwell more there, than in the, what you're calling 'freaked out.' I mean, it's in the mix, you know. But it's wonderful to be excited, and excited is an agitated state, but it's okay, it's good. And so sometimes you just let yourself have the excitement of, "Wow! God, it's amazing!" It's this sense of prison walls being broken open, and it is like, "Whoa, what do I do now?" And sometimes it brings like, "Oof." You know, it's hard to ... Good practice feels agitating at times, and at other times just the peace, just back to the mettā and calming it, you know.
Yogi: It's kind of like theoretically, one hears the theory of it all, the non-self and the non-whatever, and it's like, "Yeah, it's fine as long it remains over there." [laughter]
Rob: At a safe distance!
Yogi: But we're doing it. We're actually doing it. It's a bit like, "Ooh!"
Rob: Look, I mean, for me, there's no point doing this unless it's going to shift something.
Yogi: Yeah, cool, but ...!
Rob: Yeah! "Hold on! I didn't sign up for this!" [laughter]
Yogi: It's what I've wanted.
Rob: Last year a bunch of people, a whole group of people came, and they thought it was a study retreat. And you know, it was a problem! [laughter] Yeah, it is what you wanted, and when that happens, it's rocky. And a lot of opening can happen through the conceptuality. As I said, we tend to just dismiss that in the Dharma world, but it's as powerful an opening as the heart and the body and all the rest of it.
And the thing is just to integrate. So when you let yourself feel excited, you're also letting -- as you said, you were surprised that the tears came up when you started talking about it. That's showing that the conceptuality is actually linked to the heart and the body. It's not some abstract professorship thing somewhere. It's actually, it means something. So when there's the conceptual meaning, and it's touching (you okay? Yeah?), and it's touching, and you feel the excitement, and you feel the tears, and even sometimes I don't quite know what it means, but I feel it -- that's the marrying, and it's going on, and it's doing its work, and that's fantastic, and it's not always that easy.
But, so sometimes -- just to repeat -- sometimes just lean over into where it's simpler and easier, just simple mettā. Really good, really good. And other times, it's like, let yourself go into that thing, but kind of find the excitement and the sort of "Wow!" in it, and not so -- don't get too sucked into the freaked-outness of it, yeah? It sounds wonderful.
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Yeah, good.
[shuffles papers] There are a lot [of questions]. So as I said, we may not get to all of it, but does anyone feel their question is urgent and needs answering today?
Yogi 2: You just answered it!
Rob: Okay. So of anyone who put a note in here, are there prioritized ones or ...? Because we'll have more, at least one more question and answer, at least one more.
Yogi 3: Mine is for the interview, really.
Rob: Okay, yeah, I saw that, Sophie.
Yogi 4: Mine's not urgent.
Rob: Okay, good. Anyone else ...?
Yogi 5: I'm hoping there might be some question there related to working with thoughts.
Rob: I actually haven't read them!
Yogi 5: If there isn't, then it would be helpful to look at that at some point.
Rob: Let me just see if I can classify and weave a pattern here. Okay, there are two about the energy, energy and energy body stuff.
Yogi 6: I have a question I haven't written down which I'd like to ask.
Rob: Okay, and then there's also Hannah's, and someone else had a question about disidentifying with awareness. So that may or may not be important for everyone.
Q2: disidentifying with awareness
Yogi: If you're going to do disidentifying with awareness, could you do it before I go? [laughter]
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: But it doesn't have to ...
Rob: What time are you going?
Yogi: Half past.
Rob: Half past eleven? Oh, yikes, okay. All right.
Yogi: Or I can go five minutes later, but ...
Rob: Okay, well, let's maybe ... is that okay if I talk about that now? This is actually a huge subject, so I'll just give you a little bit. So we talked about, you know, one way of kind of -- what could we say? -- flushing out clinging, flushing out identification, is dividing up reality, or our experience, into the five aggregates, and then kind of "these are all the possible places that identity could hide: I am my thoughts, or they're my thoughts, I am my body, or I am awareness" or whatever. So it's just a kind of semi-systematic way of making sure that you disidentify with everywhere.
Have you noticed -- I don't know -- that identification is also a constructor of the self-sense? In other words, as I said the other day, what self does is it identifies with things. That's the activity of the self. But that identification builds the sense of self, yeah? Just like clinging and aversion. Identification is a subtle form of clinging and aversion that will also build the self. So again, you get this co-dependent arising.
I wouldn't really attempt to disidentify with awareness until there's that sense of really being able to kind of disidentify with almost everything else -- in other words, hang out in a space where one's disidentified with the body, there's not the 'me, mine' with the body, with the thoughts, with the emotions, with the intentions and that kind of thing. For most people, that takes a long time. We're just building that up gradually. Most people, that takes really quite a while, and that's completely appropriate and fine.
At a certain point, if you can rest in that kind of disidentification of a lot of the other stuff of mind and body, you might want to give it a shot. Because what happens, if I'm disidentified with body and all the other movements of mind like thought and emotion and intention and all that, that only leaves awareness as a place where identification can be. So if you disidentify with awareness, there's not any identification with any of the places where identification could happen. In other words, all the five aggregates, that's it. The moment when there's no identification is actually a really powerful moment. The usual kind of all day, all night appropriation of identification, me-mine-me-mine-me-mine-me-mine, and then even if it's just for an instant that doesn't happen, it's an instant of me-mining not happening, and that's going to be pretty powerful. Let me get back to that.
So there are a number of ways you can do it. The trick is, in a way, to start getting a sense of awareness, if that makes sense. What the Buddha does is divide awareness into six, six consciousnesses, one with each of the sense doors. So it's like there's a visual awareness, there's hearing awareness, there's tasting, etc. And you'll probably find that some of the sense doors are easier than others to do it in. But I remember, the first time it happened to me, like a lot of these things, it just happened by itself. It was just a quiet moment of mindfulness, having a cup of tea outside on the lawn at another retreat centre, and very peaceful, and just drinking the tea, and then it was just, literally a moment -- if I remember; it was many years ago -- it was literally a moment, and it felt like there was the tasting of the tea, but no taster. It was just, there was taste, and there was consciousness of the tea. And it was like, "Wow!" And in a way, the after-effects came a little later. But if I remember, it was really just a moment.
So oftentimes with many of these things, like the first glimpse of any kind of disidentification, it will come not so much out of trying to make it happen, but just organically as the practice unfolds, as we let go more and more, etc. So the trick is playing with it, finding which sense doors work best for you. I find for instance hearing, to disidentify with the awareness via hearing, is actually more difficult for me. I don't know why that is. Other people, it will be easier. Sight works much easier for me. Body works well, but, you know, everyone's going to be different with this.
But the trick is to get a sense of the awareness. So for instance, right now, we could try it with the visual sense. If you just find something to look at, and just look at that thing, whatever it is, and you sustain your gaze on it. Now, obviously there's an object to the perception, but the Buddha said you cannot separate perception from awareness, or perception from consciousness. In other words, to be aware is to be aware of something. To be conscious is to be conscious of something. A better word for it is 'knowing,' and that's actually what the Pali and the Sanskrit mean. Viññāṇa is a participle. It means 'knowing.' So it's something we do.
In any moment of consciousness, there's something that's known, and there's the knowing. But they go together. They're like two sides of the same coin. So if you look at something right now, and you just sustain your gaze on it, there's obviously the sense of what we're perceiving, the perception -- here I'm looking at the bell. The perception, that's obviously the visual sense there. That's the perception. Sometimes if you just sustain the awareness on it, you can kind of get a sense of the knowing of it. There is knowing happening of it. It's like, it's with the perception, it's mixed with it. So it's quite subtle, just to get that sense of ...
Yogi 2: Do you mean knowing it's a bell? The concept of a bell? Or more knowing that you're seeing?
Rob: Knowing that there's seeing going on, yeah. So it does not have to be with a label of what you're looking at, no. That's something a little more gross than what I'm talking about.
Yogi 3: Is there any spatialness to it? Like is it just behind your eyes, or is it your whole body, or ...?
Rob: It's hard to say. I don't think it's really physical.
Yogi 3: It's not spatial?
Rob: It's not spatial or physical; it's more just getting a different angle on the experience. You'd probably have to hang out with this for -- I mean, I used to stay up when I was on retreat really late at night, just staring at plants. [laughter] And actually, it was amazing. And then sometimes you can look at something, and eventually it's like you begin to be aware of the knowing, or would get a sense of the knowing. It's like, that there's knowing going on, and it's joined with the object somehow. And then, then the next step is just to see that knowing is just happening. [snaps fingers] The same thing: you're just doing the 'not me, not mine' on the knowing. It's like it's just happening in the universe. There's a moment of knowing.
[21:43] So another way you can do it is with a very momentary sense. It's like, okay, listen to the rooks. Each sound is a knowing. It's a knowing. It's a moment of knowing. And via the impermanence, you see them as kind of discretely just arising and floating there, this moment of knowing. So actually, kind of, you're subtly labelling it as 'knowing.' In a way, it's a two-step process. I mean, it's not necessarily easy, and like a lot of things it will take just having patience and hanging out with it, and then maybe you get a little glimpse of something, and you can build on that. But in a way, the first step is getting the sense of the knowing that's kind of married to the object. And the second step would be then unhooking that and seeing it's just happening. It's just like, there's just knowing in the universe. There's a moment of knowing, there's a moment of knowing. [snaps fingers]
Yogi 4: It's simultaneously, though?
Rob: It's simultaneous, yeah. In other words, if I replace the word 'awareness' -- see, there's a problem in English with words like awareness and consciousness, because they're nouns, so we tend to think of a thing called awareness or a thing called consciousness. There's also a problem meditatively because there are a lot of states that a meditator can get into where it seems like one is 'in' a thing, even if it's not a very tangible thing, called awareness or consciousness. Very, very helpful states, but they tend to reify awareness into some kind of thing, or space or whatever. But if we replace it with the word 'knowing,' then there has to be knowing with something known. A verb has to have an object. So there's a co-arising, and that ends up, much later in practice, also being very, very important in terms of the much deeper levels of emptiness, of puncturing the whole idea that awareness is a thing.
Yogi 5: Will it have a sense of your self in it?
Rob: Will what have a sense?
Yogi 5: The awareness. Once you get -- it's kind of like a 'you-ness' there?
Rob: Yes, either a you-ness there or a mine-ness: "It's mine. I'm doing that. Somehow, this awareness, it's me that's aware." And we say, "Well, I'm aware. It's not you that's aware. It's me." And there's a sense of, you know, just implicitly, we have this sense of "I'm aware. I'm the one who's aware. It's mine," as opposed to, as I said, it's just floating there, just seeing it unhooked from that mine-ness.
Yogi 5: And that's the same with anything you're meditating on? So say you're just sitting with your meditation, and you're having thoughts that the 'you' that's aware of having thoughts ...
Rob: Yeah, so that would be the sixth consciousness, the mind consciousness, is aware of thoughts. That's another way you can break it down, into the six, and it also starts deconstructing a little bit the concept of awareness. And then you see, yes, it's also, this awareness of thoughts is just happening, it's just happening. So that's one possibility. This is actually a little bit -- does that even make sense, even if it's not possible now?
Yogi 6: Just one thing -- if the perception changes, does the knowing change?
Rob: Yes, exactly. So in other words, you cannot separate perception and knowing. What was it Sāriputta or the Buddha says? "What we perceive, we're conscious of. What we're conscious of, we perceive." So they go together as two sides of the same coin, and they're -- well, in the conventional level, they're inseparable until one completely transcends something. So that's actually quite helpful. When the perception changes, that awareness changes, and that helps break down the awareness until this sense of [snaps fingers] a moment of awareness, a moment of awareness, a moment of awareness. That's a way of kind of just seeing, "Oh, these moments of awareness, they're just happening." So it's a way of loosening it up. Yeah?
A little bit this relates to, maybe coming out of this, Stew's question the other day. There are actually many ways of disidentifying with awareness. There are many ways of doing all these emptiness practices. And they start feeding on each other and reinforcing each other. The more one does, the more it's like they start supercharging each other, turbocharging each other. For instance, when we were doing the 'relaxing the relationship,' and we, say, begin to get the sense, the more I relax the relationship, the less I'm constructing the self, and eventually, slowly, slowly the coin drops: this self-sense is a constructed thing.
Now, that can get really, really deep, and that sense, and into the emptiness of phenomena, etc. And then when you, say, do the anattā practice, and you say 'not mine,' it can have two levels of meaning at least. The first is, this doesn't belong to me, because as I said, the Buddha said, about the body, "If it belongs to me, then I would be able to not make it die or not make it get ill if I wanted to." That would be the obvious choice. But I can't; I don't have that control. But there's a more full sense of saying 'not mine,' which is 'there's no entity that all this belongs to.' I cannot find an entity that it belongs to.
So in a way, then, you start marrying -- there's no entity, because I've seen the only entity that exists is a constructed, fabricated one, a kind of illusory one. Do you understand? So I might have a sense of 'mine,' but where's the 'my' that it belongs to? This actually ties in with the conceptual stuff, which I'm not going to get into now. But there are very, very powerful conceptual practices, logical practices, mostly with the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, where they actually say it's impossible for there to be anything that owns any of this. You say, "What could the self be?", and you go through everything that it possibly could be. Could it be the body? As I said, if I chop my leg off, do I feel like I'm only three-quarters Rob now? Or I chop both legs off, I have to have amputations. Then I'm only half Rob? Amputees don't feel like that. And you go through all the aggregates, maybe even consciousness, and there are ways of logically deconstructing, that it's impossible for there to be any core entity that owns any of this. So those kind of conceptual practices end up feeding into the anattā and really turbocharging it.
Q3: anattā supercharging the mettā
Yogi: I'll say before I go, I had this experience when I was doing mettā where I sort of brought the anattā into the mettā practice, and I sat down, and I just realized that even the urge to do the mettā wasn't coming from me, and to sit down and just feel that kind of bubbling up and arising and ...
Rob: Yeah, beautiful. How was it?
Yogi: Incredible. Really incredible.
Rob: Yeah, fantastic.
Yogi: Just to see that even this kindness, the will to kindness is just arising, and it's just coming from ...
Rob: Absolutely beautiful. And how did it affect the mettā?
Yogi: Yeah, beautiful, yeah.
Rob: Yeah, very good, very good. So again, mettā leads to less sense of self. As we said, it's a non-building practice. And then, with a lot of these practices, and a few years we did a different kind of retreat, and that would be one of the offered practices: that you can actually learn to, in the space of disidentification, do the mettā from that space, and it turbocharges the mettā. So yeah, beautiful, wonderful, yeah.
Q4: emptiness, an acquired taste
Yogi: Could I just clarify ...?
Rob: Yeah, is it still on the awareness thing? Yeah, okay.
Yogi: Well, I was just wondering if this is linked in. I think it is, but I can't quite see how. Like the experience, I was walking down the lane, and doing 'not me, not mine,' and then suddenly the trees were just really, well, to say I was looking at trees is not really the experience; it's just that there was green and it was beautiful, and it was just like -- I suppose -- I didn't ask myself the question, but I didn't really have a sense of myself looking at the tree. It was just ...
Rob: Yeah. But it sounds like something ...
Yogi: It was there.
Rob: Okay. So it sounds like something in the self-sense began to not be so strong, but also something in the object-sense began to be not so strong, right?
Yogi: I guess so.
Rob: Wasn't so much 'tree-ness' about the trees, right?
Yogi: I guess so.
Rob: Or ... yeah? Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Yogi: Well, it was more, I suppose, that it was very alive. The colours and the light was very bright.
Rob: Yeah, okay. And what about the individuality of trees and the sense of them?
Yogi: Yeah, they were probably still ... I think I saw them as trees, but not separate trees, if you see what I mean.
Rob: Okay, yeah, yeah. So you know, all kinds of thing can happen as we do these practices. There was one question and answer period, we talked about the emptiness of phenomena a little bit, and I was not wanting to get into it too much for this retreat, but. When I don't build so much of the self, I'm also not building so much of phenomena as well. It can't help but that goes together. However -- and I'm sure anyone who's sort of just done a bit of mindfulness practice begins to notice -- after a while, it's like everything gets brighter and more radiant and more kind of immediate. With the deepening of mindfulness, that's what we get: it's almost like a sharpening of perception, and a brightening of it, a radiancy.
Once you start letting go more, though, it's like the opposite begins to happen. So as you begin practising, everything gets more bright, grass looks greener, sky looks bluer, everything's more and more shiny. But then it starts actually getting more and more faded, more and more dissolved, more and more blurred. The individual thing-ness of things begins [fading] -- not all day long; just in the moments of deep letting go. Because not only are we constructing the self-sense, we're also constructing the thing-sense, the perception. So perception, the world, and the self get constructed together, as a perceptual reality. So in very deep movements of letting go, actually the whole show begins to fade. The whole show begins to fade, begins to dissolve. And the whole of our experiential reality begins to kind of maybe merge, blur, fade, dissolve, etc. And that has different degrees and stages to it. Does that ...? Yeah?
There are lots of ways that can happen. Sometimes, you know, you just get a real sense of freedom, because what you're noticing more is less self-sense, and the self just feels unburdened -- it's like, "Ahh!" You know, really, really lovely. Sometimes different parts of that non-building of the world become more prominent. So sometimes it might be, yeah, the sense of things, the body, the sense of visual perception or hearing or something actually dissolves. Sometimes it's more like -- no one's mentioned this at all, but sometimes time stops. [laughs] Or it's like, the sense of time. One also realizes time, too, is a fabricated reality, and it doesn't have the independent reality. So, many, many different things are possible. But that's off the syllabus, so to speak.
Yogi 2: So if time actually goes faster than it should ... I know it sounds silly, but I've had an experience where it did ... that means I'm self-constructing more?
Rob: [laughs] I'm not sure, actually, no. It's not so much that -- no, I'm not sure about that. I think more one just realizes the relativity of time, that time is a construct. So it's not that it will always go slower or faster. It's just there are ways of feeling and seeing through to time just not feeling that real. And sometimes it feels like it stops; sometimes it just feels like all the past and all the future are here in a way that's hard to explain. But no, I wouldn't necessarily say that. But anyway, this is off the syllabus. I'm just drawing out something. [laughter] So don't ... What's that?
Yogi 2: Because I was getting stuck with that. I was feeling like, I was hearing birds, and then it was just like, "This is dull."
Rob: What's dull?
Yogi 2: Well, just the, what was a beautiful sound previously was like ... And then I just, I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to go there. So I was like shutting down on the practice.
Rob: Okay, yeah, very good. Thank you, Catherine. That's really important. So, you know, like I said, if we talk about the beginning years, really, of practice, years, they're really about reconnecting to things, and discovering this intimacy with things, and discovering the aliveness and the beauty of things, the beauty of this moment, the preciousness of this moment, etc. And that's hugely important, you know, to have that respect and that love for the uniqueness and all of that. But to me, it would be a problem if practice stopped there, if that was -- to me, that's not the end point of practice at all, because that says very little about emptiness. It says very little about this radical nature of reality (or so-called reality). It's very, very important, can be very healing, but in time, hopefully, we see that things are constructed. Now, it's an acquired taste. And it's not saying that we're going to live all the time in this kind of nyuhh -- nothing appears. [laughs] You can't -- you couldn't go shopping or go to the toilet if nothing appears. [laughter]
Yogi 3: Don't take away one of me simple pleasures! [laughter]
Rob: And it's important to keep the economy going.
Yogi 3: I weren't talking about shopping! [laughter]
Rob: Sometimes, even sometimes for people when the self-sense begins to open out, a person can feel like they're losing what is most precious -- either that they're losing their identity, and it's like, "Well, what about me? And I've done all this work to get me back," or a person can feel like, it's not that the emotions are going flat, it's that they're getting more subtle.
So in the emotional range, you might have a lot of work over years, if you're like me, years and years, catharsis and healing and tears, and beautiful process of reconnecting with "who I am," and my journey, and the healing of that, and reconnecting with my emotions and the capacity to have strong emotions. And then it's like there's a whole other side of it as well, in addition (not instead of, but in addition), which is, who am I when all that goes quiet? Who am I when the emotions get very subtle, and I couldn't really say there's -- it's like what's really there is just subtle love, or subtle equanimity, or just the absence of emotionality. And is that okay?
There's a real beauty in that, as much as there is a beauty in having intense and strong emotions. There are different kinds of heartfulness, you know? But often for people, it's an acquired taste, and there may well be some identity clinging there. It's like, "I don't know who I am if I'm not in my emotional process all the time." But actually, one sees: it goes and comes, and goes and comes, and it's like we get to know the best of -- well, the beauty of both.
Sometimes a person fears the emotionality going quiet because they think, "Well, if it goes quiet, I must be in denial, because what's real is the painful and the tears." That's very, very common in our culture -- meditation culture, psychotherapeutic culture -- that we believe that what's more real is the painful stuff. And unless that's happening, "Well, I must be out of touch with something." So it's a big, tall order for the long-term practice -- it's like, can I, am I willing to feel my difficult emotions, see their reality, work with them, not afraid to work with them, not afraid to have big feelings going through the heart, and am I willing, do I have the courage to let them go and see their emptiness as well? And then one can do both. That takes a lot of courage, a lot of maturity in practice, and it brings a lot of freedom. And you know, the truth is, sometimes people are not ready for that. They still need to ... And that's fine. Sometimes people only want to do the emptiness thing and not really feel a lot of feeling.
So it's like, where's my balance here? Where have I been? Where have I been the last twenty years? Where have I been leaning? And then in terms, also, as you said, of a sense of beauty -- it's like, here's the birdsong. And it's so important. We live on this miraculous planet, with birds that make extraordinary -- it's unbelievable, and to know that beauty, and to let the heart resonate with that beauty. It's so precious. And there are times when we go beyond that, because there's something -- I was going to say deeper, but that's maybe not even the right word. It's just, what's the beauty that's there when all that other stuff goes quiet? And there is a beauty there, and there is a freedom there. And it's not that we're only doing that; it's like we're going back and forth. There's a fullness there, and a fullness of healing as well. In other words, healing might not just be about feeling the difficult stuff.
So I'm talking around what you're saying, but does it make sense? How does that sit? You don't know? Something's touching you, yeah? Do you want to say, or you rather not?
Yogi 2: [tearfully] I don't know -- I don't know what it is.
Rob: Okay. Does it sound okay, or does it sound not okay what I'm saying?
Yogi 2: It sounds quite scary.
Rob: It sounds quite scary, yeah. Do you know what -- if you had to put your finger on what's scary there, what would you, do you know?
Yogi 2: Flatness.
Rob: Flatness, yeah, yeah. It's not flatness, okay? That's really important. That's what I'm trying to say. This is really important, because -- I'm going right back to the beginning of the retreat -- I think we said (I can't remember), this word, 'emptiness,' it's interesting, because we just think the word or hear the word, and it's very close to "I feel empty," meaning "I feel barren, flat, bereft, bored, blagh." That's not at all where this is going! It's not at all where this is going. It's going the opposite -- there's a real beauty and heartfulness and fullness of heart that comes out of, and love that comes out of going into emptiness.
At times in practice -- going back to the surfboard analogy -- at times, for some people, in fact for everyone practising deeply, just as Jane was saying it went into the opposite of flatness, like too much, it can also go the other way, that things seem like it's getting a bit disconnected or flat. And that's just an indication that something's off balance. That's all. There's probably a little bit of aversion crept in, and disconnection. That's what's causing the flatness, not the emptiness. Hidden aversion causes flatness. Emptiness does not cause flatness.
I think Catherine was saying in one talk, sometimes for some people, the sense of emptying out and going into big spaces triggers a sort of nihilistic fear, or fear of abandonment, or that kind of thing. Sometimes that's the case. But really, what happens, gradually, over time, is it's just like our eyes getting used to the dark, in a darker room. You walk into a room, and it's looks like, "Well, it's just completely empty here." But then you hang out for a little bit, and you start to see: "Oh, oh, there are some chairs here. Oh, there are some people here," and that actually it's full of beauty, love, compassion, peace, mystery, wonder, all that stuff, freedom. At first, or rather sometimes, we may not see it in the space, and it's just a matter of, like I said, lots of mettā in the mix, and just our eyes getting used to the dark, and it comes. A sense of flatness, disconnection is coming out of aversion, etc. Different, probably subtle forms of aversion have crept in. I don't know -- does that sound okay?
Yogi 2: Yeah.
Rob: It's also a matter of where our attention goes. Sometimes we don't, like I said, in the dark, we don't notice what's there. And it might be -- I think, was it Nina that asked this a while ago about fear? -- it's like we get sucked into a sense of [gasps] flatness or [gasps] fear or whatever. Very understandable, but maybe at the same time in the mix is a sense of freedom or a sense of beauty that we haven't noticed. And just hanging out a little bit, and actually beginning to notice the beauty, or the love in the space, or the warmth, or the holding, or the peace, or the mystery there. And it's like, then the mind begins to -- what could we say? -- allow that to fill the space a bit more, yeah? It's just a matter of getting used to it. But I absolutely promise you that going into emptiness is not going into disconnection or flatness or disappointment in any way. It may be that momentarily, and for some people, it may be somewhat of an issue that they need to work with, but most of the time, no. It's going into a depth of beauty and wonder that's really almost beyond what we can put into words.
Yogi 2: I know that, because I already had some of that. I don't know why I'm feeling like this now. I think it's about the disidentification -- it's a much stronger practice.
Rob: Yes, it is a much stronger practice. That's why I left it till last. It's a harder practice. It's more subtle. It's much stronger as well. More mettā in the mix, more mettā in the mix. And it is an acquired taste. If you feel that disconnection, really know that something's -- in that moment -- just a little bit off balance, that's all. That's all that's happening. And then it's a question of, okay, what's off balance? Has aversion crept in? Do I need to do more mettā? Am I seeing it, as Catherine was saying, am I just shooting everything down because I'm trying to get rid of everything? In other words, hidden aversion. That's the stuff to check out in the moment, rather than project into the future, and think, "This is the wrong road," etc. It's more like, in the moment, "Something's just a little bit out of balance. I wonder what it is?" And maybe just try rejigging things a little bit. Yeah? And it's also the case that, something like the 'not me, not mine,' it's like, you wouldn't be doing that all day long. No one -- it's too intense. You'd want to be, you know, a lot of mettā in the mix, and kind of going back and forth between more cultivating practices and more emptiness practices. Yeah? Okay.
Okay, did we have a bit of quiet for a minute or something? Does that feel okay?
[silence]
So how are you guys doing? Are you okay? Yeah? Should we go on a little bit or ...? Yeah? Okay.
Q5: healthy clinging and deeper desires
Rob: There's one here that's actually -- as I said, we won't, unfortunately, get to all of them, but I think they can wait. There's one here that feels quite important to me: "Can you explain more about healthy clinging?"
Yeah, so obviously, partly with the practices that we've been doing, but partly in the Dharma as well, clinging gets a bad press. But it has a really important function. You know, a healthy parent clings to their child's well-being, clings to caring, clings to wanting to be a healthy parent, and that's completely appropriate. There's nothing wrong with that. It's actually needed. In the beginning stages of practice -- well, not beginning; until really, really a long way, maybe all of it -- it's like, we need to cling to caring about how we are ethically, for example. And sometimes people want to say, "Oh, you know, that's just clinging if you decide to follow the five precepts" or whatever, but actually it's really important.
Catherine at one point spoke about, I forgot the word she used, but it's like the fire in practice, what gets you, what inspires you, what puts you on the cushion. And in a way, it's like we need to really cling to that, cling to our deepest desire. The problem, part of the problem with clinging is that it gets -- what's the word? -- it gets dispersed, and we end up clinging to stuff that we don't even really care about -- what someone thinks of us, or getting this or that, or something like that. It's petty stuff. It goes into petty stuff. Or just, "I want to have this meal taste really nice," or "It's important that this or that." In a way, from another perspective, clinging is our life energy. It's our life force. It's what gives us life. It manifests all kinds of things, and then it's like, am I going to squander that? Am I going to waste it and chase rubbish? Chase stuff that doesn't open the being and doesn't feed me? Or am I going to actually let that clinging, let that life force, if you like, really move deeply in the being, and move us deeply? Do you understand what I mean by this?
So that takes a lot of work. Especially, again, in our culture, it takes an enormous amount of work, because you have all these messages saying, "Cling to this, cling to that, cling to that. You don't look good enough. You're not this, and da-da-da-da-da, you don't have enough of this." And so there's all this clinging getting squandered, and we end up feeling not enough energy, not enough passion. All the passion goes in the wrong places, and places that don't actually feed the being. Well, what is it to actually let that passion really gather in a sense of, "This is what I care most deeply about. This is what I yearn for most deeply"? And the being gathers itself around that, and that becomes a very powerful force.
And sometimes even things like petty desires and angers are actually masking something much deeper. I'm just -- I don't know -- irritated at this feeling I have, or irritated at this person. And I actually trace -- I can't go into all this now; it's too complex, but it's actually, underneath it, it's touching a much deeper movement of the being that we actually need to trust. In other words, in Buddhism, we always talk about desire, clinging, being one of the kilesas, which means impurities or defilements. But actually it may be that a good proportion of the time they hold something very precious for us. It's just that we've got hold of them the wrong way. We think, "I need to have that. I need to have that pretty thing, or that, or that person, or I need to get rid of this," and actually it's staying at a surface level of something. Does this make sense? Like, that's a whole other subject; I just wanted to mention that.[1]
So it's like trusting our desires, but not our first look at them. Because they tend to get hooked into something, and try to convince us that we need this something and that's what it's about, when actually there may be something really, really powerfully deep and purifying and opening in that movement.
You know, on another level, as well, it's like we cling to the mettā practice. And that's really, that's really healthy. It's really, really important to do that. If I just say "don't cling," my mind goes, one's mind just will follow its habitual tendencies, and generally speaking, that ends up creating trouble. The mind creates trouble for itself. Right? So clinging is saying -- if I cling, for instance to the mettā practice so that I keep coming back, keep coming back, keep coming back, I'm actually clinging. That's a movement of clinging. But it's helpful because it's preventing troublemaking.
Q6: pain/aversion as a helpful messenger
Yogi: I've been dealing with massive aversive reactions, and trying to do like 'not me, not mine,' or just allowing. I mean, they just kept coming back. It might work momentarily to [?], but it just kept coming back. And it's been driving me insane. So I thought, I just decided to have a different look at it, and go somewhere else to do it. And it was like I found, by looking hard at the aversive reactions, that they were messengers.
Rob: Yeah, good.
Yogi: They were messengers. They were pain messengers.
Rob: Pain messages, yeah.
Yogi: Yeah. But what they were, they were painful because it's the only way I pay attention to them. And they were pointing at thought proliferation. So I would find I would have an instant reaction, tweak-tweak, so to speak, when I realized that I'd gone off on one of my obsessions. Right? It's like, "Oh, back again!" And the pain would go away, but then I would drift off again, and it would come back. There were others as well. But I found that really interesting, as if it's just energy, and getting to look at it as a useful energy rather than a negative energy was really helpful.
Rob: Yes. Yeah, great, yeah. I mean, when there's clinging, clinging at a thought, there is some pain with that because there's contraction. And the pain itself is good. It's telling you something. It's waking something up, yeah. I'm a little cautious about getting into this too much, because it feels like a whole, big stepping out of the whole Buddhist paradigm, in a way, some of it, but sometimes with clinging and desire and anger, it's almost like asking oneself at a very deep level, "What's really being wanted here?" and not falling for the immediate answer. What's really being wanted?
Yogi: It's like a healthy dissatisfaction is a way. Rather than unsatisfactoriness, it's a message.
Rob: Yes, yes, exactly, and it's leading us, it's like, what do I really want? And there's something in that, when that "What do I really?", meaning the deep current in the being, when I'm connected with that, rather than closing the being down, it tends to open it up.
But in strict Dharma terms, I mean, one of my teachers had this analogy -- I think it's very skilful. It's like, if you say that we're wanting to become awakened and enlightened, and you say, well, that's maybe like climbing a ladder, and you say actually, it's very hard to climb a ladder without letting go of the step that you were on before. So there's letting go involved. But similarly, if you try climbing a ladder without holding on, without clinging to the step above ... So it's like there's actually a -- what's the word? -- a progressive process of clinging, letting go, clinging, letting go, to more and more subtle things.
So when we first start practice, you know, it's like, I don't know, you could get clinging to all kinds of things that actually later on, you see they're not so important. Well, one thing, for instance, you could, very normal, let's say you do mettā, and it starts to feel, maybe you're doing a lot of retreats and a lot of practice, and you start to get really nice feelings. Nice feelings in the body, and you cling to them. Now, traditional, or most teachings you'll hear nowadays, say, "Oh, don't cling. You'll get attached. It's terrible. It's the end of the world, and blah blah blah blah blah." But maybe it's not. Maybe it's not.
Maybe you start to have nice feelings and cling to them, develop them, cultivate them. Then after a while, those nice feelings actually they get quieter, and they get replaced by even nicer feelings, is actually what happens! And then you say, "I don't need to cling to those first ones." You're letting go. And then this second stage of nicer feelings, you're there for a while: "This is fantastic!" Cling, cling, cling, cling, cling, develop, develop, develop, develop, develop. And after a while, they start maturing into something even nicer -- more subtle, but nicer. And you say, "Pfft, I don't need that any more." And so it goes.
That movement, it's a kind of hedonistic movement, but rather than leading to a trap, it actually is a movement towards liberation, because we're getting more and more subtle, and if the intelligence is there, one's actually understanding as well all this dependent arising that's involved.
I don't know who asked this, but does that give an answer to ...?
Yogi 2: Wasn't me, but it sounds like a good answer!
Rob: Maybe it was Kate.
Q7: understanding, not just having experiences
Yogi: Perhaps you won't answer this now, but you said it depends on the intelligence, you know; there needs to be an intelligence in what we're doing. And I wonder, is that intelligence, is [it] inherent, or it's like we're hearing it, or it's like, what does ...?
Rob: It's all of that. So for instance, like we say, when I asked you -- was it the last question and answer period? -- it's like, okay, you've been doing these practices. What do you notice? And people say, "Oh, I noticed this, I noticed that, I noticed that. I noticed the body dissolve, blah blah blah. I noticed there's less self-sense." Okay? Now, it's quite possible, quite, quite possible (I know from doing a lot of teaching) that a person can have all those kind of experiences and not ask any questions at all about what they mean. And very easily, one just goes in and out of all these quite remarkable experiences, and very easily what happens is it becomes about having the experiences, and about clinging to certain experiences: "I like it when the body dissolves. I like it when I feel more spacious," and then, "Oh, no, I'm back into kind of humdrum reality again." And it's just, "I'm trying to get there," and trying, and then maybe you get more and more remarkable experiences. But there isn't this questioning of what it means.
So we're talking about, can I actually see it a certain way? I see: when I do this, there's the construction of self, which means that self is constructed. So there's an intelligent kind of -- I'm taking conclusions out of there, and I repeat those conclusions until I know in my heart that the self is constructed, and if we follow Julia's question, the world too is constructed. But it's quite interesting because I don't know how much most people would do that without the stimulus of kind of someone saying, "Hey, remember to do that. Look this way. Ask, 'What does it mean?'" And actually saying that. Most people wouldn't. Which is a shame, but that's why we have the teachings and why we ... [laughs] You know?
So it's partly from the outside. It's partly some people just tend to think that way more. Partly, you know, someone planted a seed ages ago from what you hear, and years later it comes up -- all of that stuff. But without that, all that's happening in practice is we're going in and out of experiences, and either we just kind of shrug and say "whatever," or we get attached to experiences, or we say "I don't know," or we'll tend to reify things, you know, come up with an explanation that doesn't quite fit or make that much sense. So when I say 'intelligence,' that's what I mean. It's like this real understanding, "What is going on here?" Something is going on. It's not random.
Q8: skilful reification as a stepping-stone
Yogi: The reifying -- is that so wrong? Can it not be a step in the understanding?
Rob: It's absolutely a step in the understanding. Yeah, I think it's important. Selma asked a question a while ago about, "Is love and consciousness the same thing?", and we were talking about oftentimes this space can open up in deep practice. A space opens up. It's filled with love, or it's like Consciousness with a big C. It's Cosmic Consciousness. And it's a really, really striking, beautiful experience that one can develop a lot and go into. And I would say most people, in fact, need to reify it, interestingly. And it's good, and they fall in love with it, and it's beautiful, and it really does its work on the heart. And as you say, it's a stepping-stone. At a certain point, hopefully one's ready to let go of it, because there's this, yeah, this holy dissatisfaction, this restless striving that won't just put up with something that's not the complete, ultimate truth. But yeah, stepping-stone, definitely.
Q9: falling in love with emptiness
Yogi: Does that mean it's all right to fall in love with emptiness?
Rob: I think so! [laughter] Yes. I think it's really important to fall in love with love, to fall in love with awareness, to fall in love with mindfulness, to fall in love with God, to fall in love with emptiness, to fall in love with all this stuff. But that's just my personality. I tend to fall in love a lot. [laughter] People are different, you know? But there's something about staying somewhere and really kind of letting that whole sense really work its magic on the being, and not stopping there, not building your house there finally. So yeah.
Q10: characterizing emptiness as this or that
Yogi: I've noticed that I've started to characterize emptiness, like give it a -- like it has certain feelings, and that I could also carry on disidentifying with those, and it would get more subtle. But then it's like, perhaps I should get more in touch with ...
Rob: When you say characterize, how do you mean?
Yogi: Well, like deep and dark and spacious or whatever, you know, full or whatever. And to really soak those feelings up, rather than going, "Oh, well, that's actually empty, and that's actually empty, and that's actually empty."
Rob: Yeah, very good. I would really let yourself do that. So what you're really doing then is you're letting yourself dwell and linger in states of relative emptiness, which is great. And you know, as we were saying with Catherine, it's like, the very darkness, what might have been scary at one point or feel like, "Gosh, there's nothing here," or "Where's all the beauty gone?", it starts becoming so pregnant with mystery and beauty, and one does fall in love with it. Or can.
Yogi: And sometimes it's light as well.
Rob: Yes, absolutely, sometimes it's light. It doesn't have to be dark. Mostly at the deep end of things it will tend towards darkness, but can be light too. But yeah, getting used to that place and calling it whatever you want, you know, but it does something there. And then there's another kind of gear that you're in which is just letting go of everything.
Yogi: Because I'm very much in the [?] keep trying ...
Rob: Yeah, well, we talked about this the other day, Hannah -- it's like, it might be too fast. I remember this teacher that talked about the ladder -- because I have that tendency too. It's like, "Just go, go, go, burrow, burrow. What's the ultimate?" kind of thing. And he said, "Get attached, Rob. Get attached." He looked at me and said, "Get attached." And I was like, "Really?" [laughter] Nobody had ever said that to me before, and it was so skilful. It's so skilful. And you know, those things I can look back on and it's like I'm not attached to that; that stuff comes and goes. It becomes part of one's life. It's not a big deal.
Yogi: Actually, when you say that, I realize there's the fear of the attachment and there's aversion there.
Rob: Yeah, exactly, yes. And we've been indoctrinated a little bit to "All attachment is bad. All clinging is bad, especially ..."
Yogi: And we learn it as well! "Oh, that hurts."
Rob: Of course. That's true, too, yes. That's definitely true. Yeah. Is that okay for the healthy clinging question? It's quite a lot about that, but ...
Q11: emptiness as an adjective
Yogi: Rob, can I check something about what Hannah said? Because I'm getting confused. I have been understanding that emptiness is not a state.
Rob: Exactly, yes.
Yogi: ... that I can hang out in. But that [?], you know, things are empty.
Rob: Yes, good, good.
Yogi: And so when Hannah talked like that, I started thinking that I didn't understand and I'd got it wrong. Could you just clarify that for me, because otherwise everything's shifting ... [?]
Rob: Yeah, good, very good. Thank you, Jacqui. If we're going to be strict and precise, which is actually really important to do in this territory -- it's so easy to get confused, etc. -- emptiness is an adjective. This is empty, that's empty, etc. When we're practising emptiness, that's really what we're doing: we're learning to see that this is empty. When I see that this -- whatever 'this' is, my self-definitions or whatever -- when I see that that's empty, the suffering goes out of the thing. It's like, I only cling to things -- maybe this isn't obvious; I should have said [laughs] -- I only cling to things when I think they're real. Right? I don't cling to something that I think is empty. And the suffering comes from the clinging. Was this obvious already? Yeah? [laughs] Because sometimes I get into a retreat ... No? Okay.
Yogi: It wasn't obvious.
Rob: Okay, this is really important. Go right back to first principles. The Buddha's talking about suffering and the end of suffering. I only suffer through clinging. I only suffer when I cling. And I only cling when I see something as not empty, as real. Therefore, to see the emptiness of a thing means to release the clinging to that thing means to release the suffering. Does that make sense, Penny?
So it's interesting, because I think oftentimes that's not obvious to people at all that that's kind of what we're doing here, that's the purpose. When I see the emptiness of something, the suffering goes out of that thing, out of the relationship with that thing.
So emptiness is an adjective, definitely. Sometimes we get sloppy with the language. I do. And so with Hannah, it's like, what will happen -- let's say I have a self-definition "I'm a hopeless failure." I'm walking around, and all day long I'm in that prison, that straitjacket: "I'm a hopeless failure." And then, you know, I'm on retreat, or at home or whatever, or just in my life, and I begin to see that's not true. Then I start to feel more space and more freedom.
Now, that's already, we could say -- this is sloppy language -- we could say that's a state of emptiness. You're in a state of relative emptiness. In other words, that sense of not being constrained there. But usually we don't; we'll say it more when a lot of things start disappearing, like Julia was saying, like perceptions start dissolving and stuff like that. Because if you're not building a lot, building a lot of self or building a lot of world/thing, what happens is things just start dissolving and disappearing, and the space really opens out, and there's just less and less appearing to consciousness. It's more and more nothingness. Now, we could call that a state of emptiness, but that's actually sloppy language. Does that make sense?
Yogi: It's just more emptiness than there was?
Rob: Okay, you could say that. It's emptied out, yes. It's emptied out of a certain amount of selfing and a certain amount of perception of thing-ness of things and all that, yeah. But still, it's very easy if you start using that language too much for people to chase a state that they think is called 'emptiness,' which is just some kind of spacious thing, and that's not right. Yeah?
Yogi 2: I'm glad Jacqui asked that, because I was going to ask that question as well. So it's not incorrect to be sort of, you're walking along the lane, you're looking at the trees, and you're actually sort of saying to yourself, "Well, that's empty. That's also empty." You look at the stream, you think, "Well, five minutes ago, this water wasn't here, so it's a different stream."
Rob: Yeah, good. Yeah, very good, yes.
Yogi 2: So that's okay?
Rob: That's great, yeah. They're both okay. So the other thing is okay. It's like, Hannah's meditating and it goes quite deep, and then she finds everything empties out. There's not much self there. There's not much else happening. It's just a big black space. And that's okay just to hang out there.
Yogi 3: And it feels lovely!
Rob: And it feels lovely, yeah. And it's really, really important to hang out there. And then, in relationship to that, she could be in two modes. One is, just hang out, enjoy, soak it up, let it do its work. The other mode is "this is empty too, this is empty too." You kind of push on, you burrow further. But what you're talking about, Ruth, that's great, absolutely great. Yeah.
Because ultimately it's not about the experience. It's about seeing that things are empty, seeing that anything, any imprisonment I feel, whether gross or subtle, comes from believing something is solid and real. And that's what it's about, not about the experience. When I'm saying or you're saying "empty, empty," or "not me, not mine," or whatever, you're just freeing a prison, freeing a prison, freeing a prison.
Yogi 2: 'Not me, not mine' doesn't work very well for me. It works with my clothes, or if I think of my car, or my home, like that. But with sort of trees and ... no. What works for me is 'empty.'
Rob: Yeah, okay, good, good.
Yogi 2: That's the word, or 'no-self.' But mostly 'empty' works for me very well.
Rob: Fine. Yeah. As I said, different people will relate better to different practices here, and it's important to just go with what works for you. Yeah.
You guys seem a little tired. Should we stop there, or ...? Anything burning? I'm happy either way, so it's up to you guys.
Q12: working with whichever of the three characteristics feels most helpful
Yogi: I've found with doing the last three practices, I'm getting very caught, involved in them. There's quite a lot of thinking, just trying to sort of hold it and encapsulate it. And when I try and do the mettā, in a way I can't -- yeah, I find it really hard to find that ...
Rob: To find ...?
Yogi: To actually use that as a nourishing practice. I just keep getting drawn back out.
Rob: To the other ones?
Yogi: Yes, because my brain's trying to kind of hold it somehow.
Rob: How do you mean when you say "hold it"? What does it mean?
Yogi: It's like, things just slip, just keeping slipping away.
Rob: What's slipping away?
Yogi: Understanding or trying to remember what I'm doing.
Rob: Okay. It might be -- and this goes for everyone now -- that if you're feeling like one of these is working better than the others of the three, that's it. That's it, that's your practice. Go for it. If you're feeling like they all three work equally, fine, do them all three. If you feel like two, just do two. But it sounds like just simplifying by choosing one -- which, remember, also could be the bare contact; that also counts, so we've actually done four, you could say, four kinds of emptiness practices so far. And you know, there are gazillions more. Just for this retreat, these are the four principal ones. So choose one of those and the mettā. Just to simplify. And choose the one that works the best for you, that you feel like, when you're in the groove with it, you can feel it, you can feel some release happening. That's the indicator that a practice is working: release, relief, freedom, spaciousness, peace, joy even. That shows us that we're on the right track. So just choose one and simplify, and do a lot more mettā. Even if you do, like, three-quarters mettā, a quarter emptiness. You know, get back in the groove with the mettā as well, and then choose the simplest one. Does that ...? Or is there more to kind of disentangle there, or ...?
Yogi: I'll just give that a go and see.
Rob: Okay, yeah, yeah. Choose the path of least resistance. Not the path that "I should be able ..." The path that works for you, which is different than someone else. That's fine, no problem.
Yogi 2: Can I offer a reflection on that?
Rob: Yeah, please.
Yogi 2: It's just the way that you said 'holding' the various things. And I think that my reflection is that the practices are breaking up our ways of holding the world, and so we have to keep asking ourselves to find new ways to hold that. And that might open you up to a different experience of yourself.
Rob: Uh-huh, can you give an example?
Yogi 2: Well, I've found, I've also had a similar thing to what she was saying, and I feel like when I ask myself to hold that in a new way, I feel a lot more heart energy coming in.
Rob: Yeah, good, good.
Yogi 2: Because really the mind can't hold, can't hold it. You're pulling it apart by the practices, so it just, it crumbles, and it can't hold it any more, because it's used to doing it in a particular way -- you've constructed this world you're in, and now you can't do it any more. So you need a new way of finding that relationship.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. That's really important. There are different kinds of holding. So when I was speaking, it's more -- did it feel like a kind of conceptual holding, or ...?
Yogi 3: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah, so that's one thing, just getting one's head around, what am I doing here? And remembering what I'm doing and what the point is and everything. And then it sounds like what Stew's talking about is also a kind of 'being' holding, or emotional holding, a bit of what's going on, as well, would you say?
Yogi 2: Yeah, I guess so.
Rob: You said the heart's getting more involved.
Yogi 2: Yeah, I mean, that's just my experience, and it might be different for somebody else.
Rob: It probably will be, but I think what you're saying is really important. So first thing is, there are different kinds of holding, and they're all important. There's a sense of knowing what one's doing and it making sense and remembering that, and there's a kind of conceptual holding of what's going on. Then, and we touched on this today, and I think Catherine in one of her talks, as well, it's like, so we're letting go a lot of the usual ways of holding, and holding together reality, and holding together the self, and it's actually important that we feel safe in that, that that letting go of that holding, that we actually feel safe. Now, sometimes that's just not an issue in a moment for a person. One just lets go, it all crumbles, there's a lot of space, and just somehow in that space it all feels held; don't need to do anything extra. Other times, just as you said, it's like asking, "Well, how can this be held now?" And it invites more of a heart quality in to hold it. Other times, it's doing more mettā. Other times it's looking for, as we were saying with Catherine, there's a sense in the space itself of energies that are holding what's going on. But yeah, that's really important. Yeah, thank you.
Okay, that's probably enough talking, yeah? [laughs] So what we didn't get to today, I'm very happy to revisit, and I'll stick them back in the bowl, if that's okay. Is that all right? If it was a burning one, leave me another note, and I'll try and respond by note. But they're pretty interesting questions, so it might also be just helpful for everyone to hear.
Q13: choosing between three characteristics practices
Yogi: This isn't a question about this, it's a question about, when will the next Q & A be? The reason I ask is this question of choosing practices, and for me, it seems like there were questions or dilemmas in that choice. And I'm wondering whether we'll have the chance to ask those questions or whether that would be best done via a note?
Rob: Who else is feeling in the same boat? Unsure? Well, who's absolutely fed up of the question and answer session now? [laughs] Because I'm happy to stay and answer that question, but if you want to leave -- I mean, it's practically lunchtime anyway -- you're welcome to leave. I will stay and just address that question for anyone who wants and everyone else can just go to lunch. If that feels ... is that an okay solution? Yeah? Yeah, it's a lot of talking, and that's fine. You don't have to. So just if it feels relevant, you're welcome to stay.
Julia, yeah, can you say a bit more?
Yogi: Well, I'm in the 'not me, not mine,' so that's what's most vivid, and I'm getting a lot from it, so I could just carry on with that. But it has a different flavour to the other practices, and I was getting stuff out of that too. What I'm wondering -- I'm not sure, I think I might get confused if I try combinations. I might be doing 'not me, not mine,' but I'll see the stream move, and think, "Oh, I should do impermanence now!" And then I'll be thinking, "What's the best way?" So I'm wondering whether sticking with one practice will reveal everything in time anyway, or whether it's good to, maybe even after this retreat, spend time doing each of the three separately?
Rob: Like everything, I don't know that there's a right answer to that, you know? There's a way with a lot of practice that -- it's like a triangle, with three points, and it's like each corner gives a view of the other two corners, so to speak. So it's like, from the point -- like we've said a little bit -- from the point of view of impermanence, you get a sense of why you would relax the relationship with things: "Hey, because things are changing, so there's no point in clinging." And you get a sense from impermanence that the self, I can't find this solid, permanent-feeling self. So it's like impermanence gives a vantage point of the other two. And it's kind of true each way, you know, from each corner. I don't know -- I'm very wary of this word 'should' in practice, you know? "I see the stream and I should be doing ..." Almost, like, whenever you hear that word, it's an indicator that you shouldn't! [laughter] It's like, it's coming from the wrong place. If it's like you see the stream and then what just leaps out at your consciousness is impermanence, and then that seems to feel alive and helpful in that moment, go for it, you know.
Yogi: That's interesting because I think what leaps -- that does come, but what I don't spot is, what I'm saying to myself is I shouldn't do impermanence because I should stick to one practice, and then I get caught.
Rob: Yeah. I don't know that it's so rigid. You could be more fluid with it. I think the important thing for this retreat is to experiment. So you could have a day where you're really trying to come back to one practice, say the 'not me, not mine' if that feels the most helpful, whatever. And what is it to just see these impulses to go into another mode, but just let them go? Other days, you try just kind of letting it skate around a little bit, but you know "three characteristics is what I'm doing." Other times, there's a sense of you kind of see them all at once, or two of them at once. [snaps fingers] It's like you see them in the same moment, and that's fine, and that will happen the more it matures anyway. So don't worry about it too much, you know.
Q14: impermanence and emptiness are not equivalent
Yogi: But Rob, if you see one -- to me, if you see, if I see impermanence, I see emptiness; if I see emptiness, I see impermanence. To me, they're ...
Rob: Not quite. Thank you for that. They're not the same. So that's important. If I see impermanence -- sometimes when you hear teachings about emptiness, it sounds like they might as well just use the word 'impermanence.' There's a degree to which the teachings of impermanence point to the emptiness of something, but it's only partial. It's not plumbing the depths of it. For instance, the impermanence doesn't really -- if I just see things as impermanent, it doesn't fully tell me how the self is constructed, or the fullness of that construction. It may give me a little clue: I'm joining the dots. But there's more to it than that. The teachings of emptiness have a lot more fullness and breadth and depth to them than just the concept of impermanence. But if you keep going with impermanence, it will begin opening things up, kind of cracking things in a way that you can then move on, if that makes sense.
Q15: choosing between difficult and easy practices
Yogi: [?] something's tricky, like the 'not me, not mine.'
Rob: Tricky for you? Yeah. Tricky because of what you said before? Yeah.
Yogi: And I was getting more -- it was a much pleasanter experience with the other two practices that I liked, as well, and I'm feeling a tendency to stick with this because it's tricky and it seems to be getting at something that the others weren't getting at.
Rob: Getting at what?
Yogi: Well, these things like the aversion keep coming ...
Rob: Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily, no. Of course, sometimes in practice, there's a sense of you need to go where the difficulty is, but at the moment, you know, the more you do, say, relaxing the relationship, the more the, as I said when I introduced the anattā practice, the more I let go, let go, let go, the more 'not me, not mine' just reveals itself without me trying to do it. And then it won't be coming out of a disconnection. And then, the more you do it, then it will be easy -- you will be getting a taste of *connected '*not me, not mine,' rather than disconnected and aversive. And then you'll be able to just kind of, eventually just repeat that deliberately. So I would stick with where it feels good, where it feels like it's got some freeing in a warm, connected way. And out of that will come, yeah -- no hurry, no hurry. Yeah?
Okay, is it lunchtime? Shall we have one moment of silence before we end?
For more on this topic, see Rob Burbea, "The Beauty of Desire" [Parts 1 and 2] (19 and 26 Nov. 2011), https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/?search=beauty+of+desire, accessed 23 Nov. 2020. ↩︎
