Transcription
[20:33]
So I really want to add my welcome to everybody here. All of us have had a very busy day, and just sort of arriving here. Once again, feeling the beauty of what's here, something really special. And knowing a lot of you, and not others, but knowing that those that I know, and knowing the sincerity and the dedication of your practice and seeking, and the goodness that's involved. Knowing, too, that that is present in those that I don't know. And that's just a beautiful thing to be here with, to be present to.
I just want to be quite brief, and just a couple of aspects of being on retreat, and being on this retreat. Yanai was asking just now, what is it that brings you here? Why are you here? What is this surge inside, this current that pulls you to spend time like this, in these kind of endeavours? Maybe it's clear. Maybe it's less clear. But we can definitely feel the pull -- otherwise we wouldn't be here. And so, then, a question goes with that: how can I best support that? How can I best support this current in me, this longing, this desire in me? And that goes as a question for my whole life, and it's also a question for this retreat. On this retreat, how can I best support that? Both Yanai and Christina have spoken about this. I just want to touch on two things specifically.
One is the silence, and the relationship with the silence. All of you have been on retreat before, so you know about being in silence. And just a kind of reminder, a plea, to really not forget the power of it, or not to underestimate the power of the silence. Something immensely potent in its capacity to hold ourselves, hold our experience, and hold our desire as well, hold that current inside us. So to really, really commit to the silence, to give ourselves, to abandon ourselves to the silence that's here. It's actually palpable, even right here in the hall. And oftentimes people say as they walk in the front door, there's something in air at Gaia House.
Silence has a lot of dimensions to it. On one level, it's just an agreement that we're making together, that we'll try to support each other and ourselves in practice by keeping the silence together, so that we make it easier for self and other to go deep in practice, to let go more easily. And there are other levels, too, and the sense of being able to open to something, to feel the embrace of something much greater, much deeper, much more profound. It can really hold our whole sense of existence. That's here if we can open the consciousness to it, can open the being to it.
It's so easy to kind of close the door a little bit on that possibility by not giving ourselves so fully to the silence. One example would be with mobile phones. Nowadays, we all carry around our mobile phones almost everywhere, and it's a clock, and it's a this, and it's a that, and it does all kinds of things. So -- and I know this -- now, very often, that habit of just having the mobile phone on, it continues on retreat. In a way, just to really honestly ask: is this really serving? Is it really serving my retreat? Is it really serving my deepening? Is it really serving the way I'm supporting my fellow retreatants, my colleagues here, my fellow journeyers? So please, please, please, just turn it off. If there's an emergency, if some kind of situation is going on with a loved one or a relative or something, and you're waiting for a call, please just let, for instance, the office know. In fact, not 'for instance' -- let the office know, and give your friend, relative, whatever, that number. They'll call and they'll find you just pretty soon.
Second thing: as well as the silence, talking about what really supports our retreat, my retreat and the retreat of all of us, is sīla, this word sīla, which means ethics or guidelines of ethics. Actually, one lovely translation that they have in the Mahāyāna is 'caring for sentient beings.' Sīla, ethics, means to care for sentient beings. It's a very beautiful and broad description of what that is.
So again, it's like, what does one feel when one arrives at Gaia House? There's the silence, and I feel, and I know a lot of people feel, there's goodness here. There's a palpable sense of goodness. And no, it's not perfect. It's definitely not a perfect institution, certainly, and it's definitely not a perfect place. But there's goodness here, and there's a commitment to goodness. And that's something, as human beings, that we can feel, and we can feel held in and supported by, embraced by, protected by. So, so significant in then what happens with our inner experience -- because when I begin to sense that I'm moving in an environment of goodness, in an environment where I can let the guard down a little bit, then also the guard of the heart begins to feel like it can let down a little bit, and the guard of the way we contract sometimes.
So through the sīla, through this dedication to goodness, and to respect and care and cultivating a sense of trust, we're giving ourselves something incredibly lovely, and giving others that, too, and receiving that for others. It's really in the service of simplicity. It's in the service of calmness. It's in the service of peace. Respect, care, trust.
I know you know these five precepts, but I just want to offer them again, run through them again. We're, in a way, collectively making that commitment together. Something very precious in this world to want to live in a field of goodness, and to want to feed a field of goodness.
(1) The first one, as you probably know, is to really try not to harm, in one's actions, in one's movements. What is it to be together, trying not to harm -- certainly each other; oneself? What does that mean? The animal world, the insect world around us. We could really broaden this, but we'll keep it simple for now, because it's just the retreat. Not to harm, but correspondingly, to act with kindness, to let kindness express itself through our being, through our body and action.
(2) The second one is to try not to take what is not given. And again, here at Gaia House, almost everything is provided that we could need possibly, and if it isn't, you can just write a note, and usually it shows up for you. [laughs] Which is nice! We don't need to worry -- I don't need to carry my bag around with me to make sure. There's a real safety that's being provided for each other, a real arena of trust. The corresponding positive of that is to act generously, to embody, to be generous in life.
(3) The third one has to do with sexuality and how we are with our sexuality, with our sexual energy in life. Generally it means not to kind of be abusive with or exploitative with our sexuality, but on retreat, together, what you guys are making is a commitment to conscious abstinence from any deliberate sexual activity, just for the period of this retreat. Of course it's not that there's anything at all wrong or impure with sexuality at all, at all. Very beautiful part of human existence. It's just for the sake of simplicity, and for the sake that anyone here doesn't feel hassled by unwanted attention from someone else.
(4) The fourth has to do with speech. And again, that's a very big and complex one outside of retreat, very challenging and rich. On retreat, again, it's just to do with the silence. If you're going to write notes to coordinators, see if that can be with kindness too.
(5) And then the last one has to do with intoxicants, with drugs and alcohol. Again, for the duration of this retreat, it's a collective commitment to not partake of any drugs or alcohol whatsoever, to preserve, to allow the heightening and the deepening of the sensitivity, the refinement of consciousness, which is so necessary for meditative work and also for the opening of the heart, actually.
So that's it. With these kind of rules, it's so easy to think of them as rules, as 'shoulds,' as a pressure, and we bring our Western tradition of right or wrong, and the oppressiveness of morality. But actually, it's a gift. If it feels oppressive, the invitation is to see if there can be a different relationship, an opening to the sense of gift, receiving and giving something really, really precious, for oneself and for others.
I wish you a very lovely and fruitful retreat, and I'll see you soon.
[32:18]
