Transcription
Okay. So, just going back to what I said earlier this morning, I want to talk for about an hour, perhaps an hour. This desire that we have in our lives, this aspect of our being, like I said, I wonder if it's actually approachable from countless directions. And they'll each bring something different, and open it up in a different way -- multiple, multiple. So today, there's only a possibility of really touching on three, picking on three. And in a way, a little bit, I'm deliberately gravitating to a little more unusual ones for this kind of scene. It's not linear. It's more like spokes, you know, into the hub of a wheel, desire being the hub, and just coming from different directions.
So number two -- and this I want to see if I can restrict myself to just five minutes on, although it's actually huge. The reason for that is partly because I've talked about it an enormous amount elsewhere, and so if it's something you're interested in, and you want to ask, I can point you in certain directions of recordings and things. So I've talked about it a lot, and also, partly I'm even mentioning it to balance some of the other stuff I'm saying, lest you get a distorted idea of where I'm coming from.
This one is, I would say, implicit in the original teachings of the Buddha, very, very strongly. It's really there in the Pali Canon very strongly. But it's curious: it doesn't get mentioned that much nowadays at all. So it's quite rare for people to even be aware of it, or to talk about it, or to point anywhere in that direction and its implications -- quite rare. But it's there in the Pali Canon. And I said this morning, this is not -- I'm not talking about anything advanced today. This is a little bit advanced, but I sort of want to give you a whiff of a certain direction that's possible to follow, if you're attracted to it.
So I want to speak now particularly about meditation practice, and how that might develop in some instances. What would happen if any one of us took, as a theme for their meditation, as an avenue of exploration, took the letting go of desire? It's like, in other words, what I'm doing when I meditate is I'm letting go of desire. So first thing I need to do is get familiar with what it feels like to have a desire: to have the mind grab on to something, and try and keep it, or chase something that I want, or push away what I don't want. All that is desire. Whether it's pushing away or hanging on or trying to get, it's all a movement of desire. Yeah?
So I have to get [familiar]: what's the experience of that? Of course, sometimes it's completely gross. The mind is screaming, "I need this thing. I need to get rid of it." It's obvious. There's a lot of thought. There's a lot of agitation involved. I get familiar with that, and let it go. Maybe there are more subtle levels of desire, of movement of the mind, of consciousness, to or away [from] something. Maybe I can get familiar with that. What tells me that the mind is moving to or away from something, or hanging on to something? Get very familiar, and maybe it gets really, really subtle, and I get familiar with it, and I can let it go, and I let it go. And what if I just decide that that's my avenue for a while? Maybe I'm on retreat, maybe whatever. So getting familiar with the presence of desire, clinging, craving, whatever you want to call it, and letting it go, noticing it, and letting it go, noticing it, and letting it go, letting that whole process really be the dominant thing that one's doing, and letting it get really, really subtle, really, really subtle.
What would happen? What would be the experience that you would have? Actually, everyone would have a very similar experience. You'd think, "No, for someone else, this would come up. For another person, such-and-such would happen, and da-da-da-da." Actually, that's not what would happen. What would happen is, the experience of everyone would kind of funnel into a commonality. And you would share the opening up of the experience in a certain way if you did that. The first thing that a person doing that will notice, and very palpably, is that, as I let go of desire in this moment, the suffering, the dis-ease, the dissatisfaction in my experience in this moment begins to drain out. To the degree that I can let go, the suffering, the dukkha, this word, begins to drain out of experience. It's a law of consciousness. There are some exceptions, but ...
So, I see that. And maybe I see that, I don't know, 10,000 times. I see it. I see it again and again and again. There's an insight there -- maybe quite a few insights there. One of the insights, and so important, is that the suffering we have in life, or 99.-something per cent of the suffering we have in life, is from the relationship with. When the relationship with whatever is happening is one of tension, trying to hold on, grabbing after, trying to push away -- when that's the relationship, suffering is there. And as I let go of that, the suffering goes out. So the suffering in life -- most of the suffering is in the relationship we have with things, not in the thing itself. So again, I need to see this, maybe, I don't know, 10,000 times, till the coin really drops. And it's saying something about where suffering comes from. It's saying something. It's pointing deeper than that. So that's crucially important. And one can see this, and really absorb that insight into the being, into the heart, which is fantastic.
But as I said earlier, it would be impossible, completely impossible to live that way in the world, in the complex world of things and people and relationships. It's not possible. I cannot sustain this. One cannot sustain this freedom of all levels of desire. It's not possible for consciousness to function that way all the time. What would happen, though, if this hypothetical meditator kept doing this practice? You keep at it. You take it as an avenue. You take it deeper. First thing, we just said, notice that the suffering goes out of experience as I let go of the clinging, of the desire. And correspondingly, obviously, suffering goes out, joy comes, peace comes, beauty comes into the experience.
But it doesn't stop there. So yes, the suffering goes, joy comes. The meditator -- and again, it will be a common experience for everybody; it's not like just some people will. There's something in consciousness that works this way. Not just the suffering begins to fade from experience, but the sense of a separate self. I usually feel myself solid, substantial, here, separate from what's out there, from you, separate and solid. As I let go of desire, a curious thing begins to happen to the sense of self. And it begins opening out, getting less strong, less separate, less substantial, the sense of self. You guys following me? Yeah? Is it too warm in here?
So this is curious. But it wouldn't stop there either. Not just the substantiality of the sense of self begins to fade as I let go of desire, but the substantiality of all things begins to fade. Inner experience begins to feel less solid. Outer experience begins to be sensed as less solid. The substantiality begins to go out of things. What a curious thing.
It doesn't stop there either. A person keeps going with this, keeps going, and really at a subtle level, pursuing this (and this is something that's available to us as human beings), all appearances begin to fade. The world of appearance begins to disappear, begins to not constellate into this or that experience. Something very odd is going on here. And I can -- and I have done -- got a roomful of meditators on retreat, and get them to practise in this way, get on with it, and come back a week later or so, and they kind of marinated in it a little bit, and I can say, "You're going to have this experience, this experience, da-da-da," and it will be exactly like that. Something's going on. There's a relationship with desire and all of this. [9:34]
What does it mean? What are the implications of this? They're enormous. And this, to my understanding, is the most important thing. What this is pointing to is the most important thing that the Buddha was pointing to. This is what he was so excited about: the implications of just this. This is what was so revolutionary about his teaching. There's something completely mysterious here, a complete revolution in our understanding of what reality is and of the nature of perception. What? And what does it mean? And understanding that brings a radical freedom in one's life. The whole sense of existence is changed, begins to change. [10:24]
End of Part Two. [laughter]
I just want to dangle something there, for those that are interested. And if you're interested, you can ask me. But there's something very, very powerful there about desire and using desire as a portal into understanding the nature of perception, the nature of reality, and that understanding opening a profound freedom in life.
So that was longer than five minutes. Okay. Part Three is a little bit curious. At least it was to me. And like I said, I want to be teaching in a little bit different way today, rather than presenting conclusions. So for this third part, I wonder, can we enter into a fantasy together? So we have a make-believe here. And the fantasy is that I'm a research scientist, okay? And my [laughs] area of research is consciousness, is meditation, is experience. And in fact, you are also research scientists. And this, today, is a colloquium, symposium, something or other, of research scientists. And I am presenting some puzzling new discoveries in this field to my colleagues, for your, for our mutual ... empuzzlement, or whatever the word is. [laughter] Okay?
So a little bit different. And just to say with that, why can we not think of ourselves that way as we practise? Steve asked a question earlier. We tend to think about practice, "Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Is it right?" Why can I not think of myself as a researcher making discoveries, exploring, being a little bold?
So also, a little bit differently, I would like to present it, in a way, presenting these case studies that I've kind of come across in my research, as a way of unfolding something. Something happened about -- I can't remember when it was -- maybe about two years ago. I don't remember. Maybe less. There was a lot of -- what shall we say? -- difficult political stuff behind the scenes in Gaia House. And a lot of people were quite upset, and there was a lot of suffering with staff, people, and things. And of course, I lived there, and I was right in the middle of it, and it was quite painful for a lot of people. [13:24]
And I was quite troubled by things that were going on. And I was sitting one evening to meditate in my room, and with all this stuff, and I found myself relating to it differently, or having a different approach, a different way of working with it, approaching the whole difficulty in a different way, via desire. And I'll explain what I mean. The conclusion, I suddenly realized, something flipped. And the kind of answer to the situation, or the blessing in the situation was right there in my desire, in my fighting, in my wanting it to be different. I actually couldn't remember the details of what was going on, so I can't really share that, but I knew that, "Okay, this is different now. I've stumbled on something different." And I started trying it out on unsuspecting yogis [laughter] in interviews and things, and kind of working with them in a certain way. And it was very interesting, what happened. This is what I want to share to you, as pointing towards a whole other angle on desire.
I was talking with a woman on the phone. And she'd done a lot practice in her life. She had -- I think it was the day before -- had some business in a bank. And she went into the bank, and something happened. I can't remember the details. But something happened, and it was very painful for her. There was a hassle involved, and there was frustration involved, and she felt that she'd been abused a little bit by the people in the bank, by the bank manager, etc. She was feeling quite hurt by that. And it was still troubling her the next days. And she said to me, "No one said, 'Sorry.' All this thing happened, and they treated me this way, and no one said, 'Sorry.'" And it was somehow touching something deep in her, and she couldn't let go of it.
Now, a situation like that, as a practitioner -- and this is a person with quite a lot of practice, as I said, and we were talking. There are a lot of ways of approaching something like that with the Dharma tools. There are many ways of approaching. Now, one way is to say, "This self that feels so hurt is actually empty." And some of you have come across this teaching of no-self, or not-self, or the emptiness of self. So one way in, particularly for a more experienced practitioner, is actually looking at, "This self that seems so hurt and so separate is actually an illusion," looking at it that way, and it kind of dissolves the whole situation. So that's one possibility. We didn't talk about it that way, but we could have.
Another possibility (I should have said this maybe first) of course is: there's the hurt, and there's the pain of the situation. And what would it be to bring in some loving-kindness? That's the obvious thing to do. That should've been the first. That's the obvious thing to do. I'm feeling hurt, and I'm feeling angry at these people in the bank. And can I bring this practice of mettā, of loving-kindness -- kindness to myself, and kindness to them? And something begins, can begin to soften in the heart, and then in the perception of the situation, and it softens, and it heals, and it opens, and there's more movement there. That would be an obvious first step. And then maybe there's this thing about not-self that I said, and looking at it in terms of the illusion of the self.
And of course, it would also be possible, as a third possibility, very possible to explore the feelings that have arisen. You know, what are the emotions that have arisen in relationship to this? And I asked her. We did spend a little time on this one. I asked her, and she said, "I feel helpless. There was a real feeling of helplessness in that situation. It was quite painful. I also felt," she said, "I also felt I wasn't taken seriously, and I wasn't respected." And somehow this was going -- it wasn't easy to let go. It was triggering something inside, quite painful.
Now, with all that, with those particular emotions or some others, maybe it's possible to be with -- in this case, felt like a little girl inside who was hurt. And it was no longer a little girl practitioner. There was a little girl inside, you could say, metaphorically, who's feeling helpless, who's feeling hurt. And what would it be to be with her, with compassion, with warmth, with love, and with caring? And what would that do -- actually going via the feelings of pain, and relating to them in a way that opens them? [18:10] All these three -- the mettā, the emptiness of self, this one with the feelings -- really beautiful and important ways of practising, and very powerful, potentially.
But instead we did something different. I said, "In this frustration, in this feeling, is there a desire involved in it? Is there desire somehow wrapped up there?" She said, "Yes." So what are you wanting? What am I wanting? What is this desire wanting? What's the desire for that's wrapped up in this hurt, in these feelings? Now, sometimes when we get asked a question like that, the head immediately wants to answer, "I want this. I want that. I want this or that to happen. I want some thing to happen." The head jumps in with a very clear answer of what it wants to materialize in the world. Do you follow me?
Is it too warm in here? A little foggy? [yogis respond in background] You feel wakeful enough? Okay.
So that's a possibility, is that the head jumps in and wants to fix it on something. Another possibility -- and I'll come back to all this -- another possibility is that when we ask, "What do I desire?," the feeling immediately gets hooked onto and wrapped up in the sense of lack that goes in the desire. I desire something because I don't have something. And there's a sense of not having that, of lack, of not having enough. And that's where I get stuck. I get caught in the feeling of lack, of not having. And that's painful. I don't have, I lack this or that. Some object is what I lack.
So asking this question, kind of trying to open it up in a way, "Can you feel the energy in the body? Can you feel the energy of desire that's in all this hurt and frustration? Can you really feel that in the body? Without -- and this is really important -- without assuming that it's bad, that what you're desiring is somehow immature or wrong?" And actually, she was able to do that. But oftentimes, when we ask what we desire, we assume something's wrong with our desire, we shouldn't be wanting that.
She was able to do that, and open up, and a sense of empowerment came. It was quite different. A sense of empowerment came into her being, and in her words, she felt like she was able to stand up. With that feeling, she was able to stand up to what was happening. I think she had to go back to the bank. She felt more confident in her ability to stand up, and also her ability to respond and to say something about the situation to the bank manager, etc. In her words, a possibility of creative response came in. She felt, where there wasn't before, a possibility of creative response. And part of that included strength. So instead of helplessness, she was beginning to feel strength. Really important. Not just helplessness and lack. Okay? Wonderful.
And then we said, "Can you, even now, go back even more to that feeling of desire? And the feeling of desire -- what does it feel like inside?" It actually feels like, if you really pay attention to this desire, really with it, it feels like a movement of energy in the body. That's what desire feels like if I really allow it and open to it. It's energy moving in the body. Can you open up to that without it landing on a particular object, without the mind saying, "It's this or that event or action that needs to happen"? Really open to it. And I don't just mean the way we might say, "Can you feel your desire? Can you know your desire?", like be mindful of it, like we might say in mindfulness or in some psychotherapies. I mean, really, really open to it -- really big, big, space, creating a huge space for this current of energy, for this movement of energy, and really allow it, really give it lots of room to fill the experience and the body, and to move like that. Really give it space.
Then she was able to do this, and what happened was an enormous amount of energy began to surge in the being, and move as a current in the being. And she said, "It feels like there's dancing going on inside. Feels like a dancing energy inside. It feels like -- I feel like dancing." And again, a whole other level of strength came into the experience. Something very different was happening. The whole experience was transforming. Enormous amount of strength, enormous amount of openness came into the experience. The whole quality of being felt very, very open, enormously open.
And love came. A feeling of love was there, palpably there. And actually, that was one -- love was one of the original answers to, "What am I wanting?" And that came. And it came through the desire. No sense of lack whatsoever. Nothing had changed. Only the relationship with the desire had changed. No sense of lack whatsoever, and a sense of super abundance in the being. Something's going on here, something very interesting and kind of counterintuitive.
Another example -- case study, so to speak: a woman came in for an interview, and she was recently in a new relationship. And her new boyfriend, whatever, unfortunately, lived in California. And he had been over here for a while, and they'd been exploring the beginnings of a relationship together, beginnings of a romance, which was quite new for her in this period of her life. It had been a long time. And then he had to go back to his home in California. And she was getting ready to go out and visit him in California. There was a period where they were apart while she was here and he was there. She came in for an interview and said, "I have to talk about craving." And she was quite upset. She said, "I'm craving, and I feel it's painful. I feel the contraction of it." And she also said, "There's a fear of loss." And of course, that's common at the beginning of a relationship. We don't know how it's going to work out, whether it will work out. There's a fear of loss, and that it won't work out.
So again, let's take this, spend a little time looking at it from the more traditional Dharma perspective. Craving -- and we did talk about this in the interview -- craving involves hype. Do you know what I mean when I say "hype"? Like ... bullshit, basically. [laughter] Something's getting injected into the whole thing. We're constructing an artificial distinction between things and times through hyping it, hyping that distinction. The mind comes in and this, here, now seems so different to that, there, then. My mind makes it, paints it, colours it this way. In her words, "The adventure begins then," she said, "when I get to California. The adventure begins then. Now it's just like limbo. It's just waiting. It's just empty, empty wait -- the clock is counting meaningless time." Even though there were lots of phone calls and texting and exchange, and it was quite lovely and going on, the mind creates this difference.
We have to -- this is traditional perspective -- I have to see that as a practitioner. I have to see the hype, the way that craving is constructed artificially. We've pumped some illusion into it. Is it really that different without the mind making it so different? Is it really that different, or is the mind painting something more different?
So how can I deconstruct this illusion that comes? In the Dharma, we say -- you know, we say there are five aggregates and six senses wherever you go, wherever you are. In other words, here, now, I have sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, thoughts, and emotions. I have body, I have feelings, I have intentions -- all of that. Some of all of that is very nice. Some is really not very nice. And some kind of in between. When I get to California, I'm going to have sights, smells, tastes, touches, da-da-da-da-da-da, and all the rest of that. [laughter] And some of it will be very nice, and some of it won't be very nice, and a lot of it will be in between.
Now, I'm not, of course, saying that that's the ultimate reality of existence. I'm not saying that at all. But it's a way of deconstructing the hype on which craving rests, the illusion on which craving rests. Is it really that different without believing what the mind is painting?
So less hype, less craving. I take away the illusion, the hype, and the craving goes down. Less craving, less hype -- again, it's a mutual dependency. We did talk a little bit about that in that interview. We did talk a little bit, but rather, what would it be to explore it from this other direction? And I asked her, "What are you wanting? What are you wanting? In the middle of this craving, what is it that you're wanting?" And she said, "Him!" [laughter] And she looks at me like that was a really stupid question. [laughter]
It's like, it's hard to see. It's more than that. It's obviously, "I want him!" So it was like, "Can we explore that a little bit more?" [laughter] And she did. She said -- and these are her words -- she said, "I love that I can say anything." This is someone who hadn't been in a relationship for a while. "I love that I can say anything, and I'm listened to." And that was what felt really lovely for her. And I said, "Okay. Can you, can we explore that a little bit more deep, go even deeper with what it is that you're wanting?" And then she said -- she kind of laid it out and explored it inside. She said, "I want the opening of the heart." She felt like something was opening in her heart, and that was precious. And she wanted that, the heart, to open. "I want the expression that's involved." That was the second thing. "I want the connection. There's a feeling of connection here, and of being received, and I want that too." And lastly, she said, "I want to love. I want to love."
So all that. But in a way, if you hear it at that level, can you hear that the desire is not so much landing on something so specific? It's gotten underneath that, more amorphous, more general. It's not landing on a limited object. And she was able to do this. And again, same thing: "Can you feel that? Can you connect with that level and really feel it?" And she began to feel this current, a very powerful current in her being. "And can you let it fill the body? Can you really, really open to it, really give it space, allow it, feel it, etc.?" And she said, "This is more powerful than I'm used to feeling, and I'm not used to feeling myself this way. It's unusual for me." It was quite interesting. Just working, and she was there doing this, and the self-boundaries began to dissolve as she opened up. She connected with this deep current, and really, really gave it space, and allowed it. The sense of self and its usual boundaries -- "I end right here" -- that began to dissolve right there as she did this. And a sense of non-separateness and expansion of the sense of self began to come in, a whole expansion of the sense of being.
Now, for her, in that moment, not having so much practice experience, that was actually quite scary. And she felt a little bit resistant to that, which is a very normal, understandable reaction. So it's like, "Okay, so let's just go slow here. What's the fear of, right here, with this experience opening up like this?" And she said, "Well, I'm afraid of losing myself. I'm afraid of disappearing here." What happened was we ran out of time in the interview. But in another situation, what can be helpful is like, okay, the fearful self, the resistant self needs some compassion there. You don't force it through anything. To that resistance, to that fearfulness, some compassion, some holding. And it begins to make it okay.
And one can play one's edges with this exploration and this expansion of being. And that expansion of being, the dissolving of the self, the fading of the boundaries of the self -- that's something so beautiful that is available to us as human beings, and particularly as meditators. So precious, to begin tasting what's there, when that happens, so precious.
But eventually, whether it's slow or whether it's fast, one is, and she will be, able to allow that expansion, able to open to that. And in it -- and she was beginning to feel this already -- a whole new sense of self. The whole sense of self just opens differently. Very different sense of self, the life force, and the strength, and the openness that comes with it, moving through. And in that, independence -- so a sense of fulfilment not dependent on getting this thing, not dependent on the object of the desire being there. Fulfilled, rather, to a great extent, by the life force, if we call it that, opening, opening the being, by the deep desire itself flowing. [33:23]
Curious. So a question I have with this: is it possible, do you think it might be possible, that the kind of craving that we're used to feeling, that feels contracted, that feels painful, the kind of craving that tends to swing to fear of loss, or fear of rejection, etc., the kind of craving that repeatedly moves away from the present moment, to be lost in the future, to be lost in daydreams, that kind of craving -- is it possible that sometimes, that contracted kind of craving is actually rather a result, even, of not connecting to, not realizing, and not allowing the deeper desire to unfold, to flow, to be felt? Is it also possible that we have a habit of relating to desire that tends to contract around it, and feel it as something painful?
Another example: a man came in for an interview, and he was feeling troubled by kind of where he was in his life, in a bigger sense. Given a lot of time to Dharma service, a lot of time to practice, etc., and was feeling like he would like to be in a relationship, which he hadn't for a while. And he was also getting to that age, and feeling like, "I would like a family. I would like to have children," etc. And felt a little bit torn between these two pulls: towards service, towards Dharma service in particular, and towards me and a family and relationship.
The first thing: can you wipe aside assumptions that might be coming, even, from a Dharma perspective? Typical Dharma assumption might be that desire is what we call a kilesa: it's like a root sort of impurity, in these words. Don't assume. Can you not assume that the self's wants are somehow wrong? It's the opposite of the usual. So, wiping assumptions off the table -- particularly, maybe, assumptions that might be coming from the Dharma. And assume instead, for the sake of exploration, the opposite: that my movement of desire, or aversion -- whatever it is; they're two of the same things -- is actually something like a plant moving, finding its way towards the sun, that there's a kind of phototropic force. There's some kind of intelligence in the being, whatever you want to call that -- the intuitive, dynamic intelligence of the life force, of the Buddha-nature, or whatever. What if you actually assume that? [37:00] What would that then do to the whole unfolding of the experience?
And he was able to do that, and open up in the same way. What he wanted was love, and in his words, "Giving love and receiving love." And same thing -- open, etc., feel it. And no sense of lack coming from that desire, no sense of lack whatsoever. The movement, the current of the life force, of the being. At first it was just in the front of the body, and with a little work, it was actually the whole of the body. And then it felt like the body and the thoughts and everything was inside that. Whatever this thing was that it was opening to, it was bigger than he was. Something completely opened in the being. And what would it be, then, to let the practical choices about life and direction come out of that? It's a very different sense of being, to come out of that.
Are you sure it's not too warm in here? [laughter]
Yogi: I think it's too warm.
Yogi 2: It's slightly warm ...
Rob: It seems a little sluggish energy in here. [yogis comment in background] Sometimes when it's a Dharma talk or something, it's a bit better to have the fresh air; otherwise it just -- it all goes gaga, you know. Okay. Have you been at least awake enough to get the general gist of things? [laughter] All right. Okay. Gary, are you okay? Do you want to sit on a chair, or are you okay?
Yogi 3: I'm fine.
Rob: Okay. So another example: this is a guy who's also done a lot of practice, and in recent years, he'd been exploring a parallel path of more shamanic kind of explorations -- very lovely. And he had felt, in his explorations, that he was encountering or opening to certain qualities of himself, of being, like curiosity, and wonder, and excitement, that he didn't usually encounter in himself and he noticed he didn't usually let himself feel. He was catching himself kind of repressing them, and trying to stick them back down into a box. He felt that in the past, in childhood, there was a kind of trauma around that, and that that kind of energy, he had repressed in himself. He held that back and constrained that, and there was fear around those kind of manifestations of being. And he felt that as a child, he had been told, "You are too much! You're too much! Your energy is too big and too wild, or whatever, and you need to kind of" -- and so he repressed it.
And in this other work that he was doing, in the shamanic exploration, etc., what he was being told was, "Well, you need to go back, metaphorically, to the past, and identify the causes of the patterns of these kind of repressions, etc., in your history, in your past." And kind of, through identifying them, the metaphor was "dig out the root." In doing that, that allows the positive qualities naturally to manifest in their place. And of course, that will be very familiar from modern psychotherapeutic thinking, etc. It's very lovely, and very valid as a way of entering into all this.
But again, it's also possible to come at it from a very different angle. What happens if you feel into that energy right now? And a lot of it was frustration -- frustration at the repression, frustration at feeling bottled in, etc. What happens if you feel into that? And the same thing. This frustration is a form of desire. Do you see that? It's got desire in it. Yeah? What happens if you ask, "What is it wanting? What's it wanting at core?" And again, really feel it in the body. Same thing happened: the qualities that were being repressed, the qualities that were being desired were manifesting right there and then, through the desire that was wrapped up in the frustration, and that way of relating to it, and that way of opening to it. And with it, the sense of self was opening as well.
In his case, it wasn't such a dramatic opening of self. But it was very important for him, where he's at, because he said he felt power come into the being, into his body, and into his sense of self -- and not a power over anyone, but just power, strength in the being, energy. And he said, "I feel freedom in this sense of self. This sense of self that I'm feeling right now has a sense of freedom in it, compared to the usual, habitual sense of self, which was actually quite cramped, quite kind of distorted and inhibited with this repression." There was also a little bit of this more open self. But for him, that level was really, really important -- a whole different sense of this, this ego, opening out.
So what is going on here? What does all this mean? What does all this point to? Could it be that the seeds of what we're wanting are right there, present and accessible in the desire itself? [43:44] That's what it seems like. In the frustration, in the aversion, in the desire, the seeds of what we long for are there, right there. And if I can find a way of approaching the desire, and working with it skilfully, it can be that those very qualities that I'm longing for manifest right there, right now -- right here, right now, in the being. And with that, it seems to open up the whole sense of self in a different way, in a beautiful way.
Are you guys okay? [laughter] This is good news, right? This is good stuff? [inaudible comments from yogis]
Yogi 4: You're saying desire, and what we want, and it sounds so similar, but they're different things.
Rob: Okay, let's revisit this, okay? Very good. Okay. Let's come back to that, okay? Let's pause a little here about this relationship with desire and the self, okay? You're quite right. It's quite right. It's like, what does desire even mean? And that's why it's too simple to say, "Let go of it," or "It's bad." Does it always lead to suffering? What actually is it? Do I really know what it is, and what it is to let it move, etc.? But let's just briefly talk about this relationship between desire and the self, because that's quite important.
There was a relatively young man who came in. He's done a lot of practice. And he's extremely -- what should we say? -- gifted, bright, very bright. And one day, he was meditating, and he noticed images arise in his meditation, a kind of fantasy of appearing a certain way to others. And he was checking this out, and, "Oh, yeah, there's this fantasy of appearing." And he said, "What is it? I want to appear ... what? I want to appear bright. I want to appear insightful. I want to appear creative. I want to" -- this is his list -- "I want to appear virile, noble, dynamic, and fearless in my exploration." And you could hear something like that and immediately think, "What an ego trip! This guy wants to appear this way. It's all ego: 'I want to be seen, like, with all this wonderful stuff.'" And that would be a very normal assumption to have about all that. And at first, when he looked, it did seem like the self, the 'me,' was wrapped up in it, that it was me wanting this, me tied up in it, wanting to appear like that.
But actually, taking his time and looking at it more closely, he realized that something else was going on, was more true: that it's those qualities themselves that are beautiful. They are beautiful qualities: brightness, insightfulness, nobility, virility, whatever -- beautiful qualities. And it was that he wanted the qualities themselves and their beauty to be seen, to appear. Something different. It wasn't about ego. It wasn't about 'me.' It was about the beauty of the qualities. And when he saw that that was actually what the deeper desire was, it was as if it began to be perceived that way, and it was as if the universe, you could say, was experiencing, the universe is unfolding these qualities, is displaying these qualities, these beautiful qualities in time. Something very different. It's much more open with the sense of self. There's then a sense of vastness in it. Not the little ego wanting to be/look fantastic. Something else is going on. And he was able to go even deeper than that, to more emptiness, etc. And yeah, maybe it slips back to the ego, but he was able to see deeper again; it opened up to not be about him.
So Dharma, we tend to think -- and maybe you've heard this, especially those of you who've been practising longer -- desire comes from the self. Clinging, craving, desire come from the self, and they build the self. They construct the separate sense of self. And that's true. And then, maybe, we say, "Okay, but the desire for compassion is okay. That's an allowable one," or something. And it is true. Desire comes from the self. Desire builds this illusory self. But maybe it's just not that simple. And the relationship between self and desire is not that simple.
I'll share a personal example. In the last -- I don't know -- three years or so, I've been studying a lot more than I used to. I never really thought that studying was very interesting. I was much more interested in just meditation and letting go of all thought. And then, in the last years, I've been much more interested in studying. One of the things I was studying a little bit -- as much as I was able with my history -- was modern physics. And the reason was there are a lot of parallels -- some of you might know -- between teachings in modern physics and relativity and quantum stuff, parallel to that and the Buddha's teachings about emptiness. I'm really interested in the connection there, and as much as my mathematics would allow, just trying to understand all that.
As I was studying this over time, and began to feel a kind of familiar feeling, which is like a pressure and an impatience in the studying. It's almost like a pressure to understand something. And it's like, you read one book, and basically it just leads to another book, just leads to as many questions as it's answered. And I felt like I was unable to read them fast enough. It's like I wanted to arrive at the end of something: "I've understood now, and I've done it, and there's nothing more to understand, thank you very much. No more books to read." When I felt into it, what is this wanting? What is this wanting, this thing that's giving rise to the pressure? And actually, it opened up in a very lovely way. A lot of joy came. Rather than wanting to arrive anywhere, it was a joy in the ongoing inquiry, in the open-endedness of it. Different, different, and very beautiful, very beautiful. Again, the self-sense kind of expands through different stages. [50:55]
A couple more brief examples: a woman had an ongoing situation with her sister, who she cared deeply about. And the sister had a lot of complicated stuff going on in her life, a lot of difficult things. And she wasn't meeting them very skilfully, in a very helpful way, and a lot of struggling with all kinds of defences and depression, and all kinds of stuff. The person I was working with, the practitioner, really felt in turmoil around this, around her sister. Again: "Can you feel what it is you want for her? What is it that you're wanting for her? And really feel into that." And the same thing, and opening to it, and it transformed the relationship, how she was feeling. A tenderness came in. Tenderness came in, where there was fraughtness and brittleness. Trust came in, which was very different; there was the absence of trust. Love came in, and peace came in, which really wasn't there at all; there was a real sense of worry and not compassion -- worry. And then she felt in that reconnected and re-accessed to herself, to her strength, to her spaciousness, sanity, all that. [52:23] So it doesn't have to be just what I want for myself.
Last one: someone was on the phone, I think, saying, "I feel really resistant to life. I feel this ongoing resistance." I said, "What do you mean, you feel resistance to life? What does that mean?" And she looked into it: "Well, actually, I feel resistant to the suffering that's in the world, to being open to that. I feel resistant to others' suffering." And again, it's like, "What does the resistance want? What is that resistance wanting? It wants to create walls and barriers to the suffering of others."
Now, we might think, if I ask, "What does this resistance want?", we might think, "It wants to be unhassled by the suffering in the world. I want to keep it at arm's length. I want to protect myself from that. I want to not have anything impinge." Curiously, though, when she asked deeply, "What is the resistance wanting?", it flipped. So it wanted the exact opposite. Actually, what was being wanted was to open, to engage, to meet life. In feeling into that, and the desire wrapped up in that, again, the whole thing opened, and the resistance to life just drains. [53:52]
So these are just a selection of things. I actually did this for a while with quite a number, maybe forty different instances. And about thirty-eight or so of them, it opened up in a very similar way, almost predictable, and a couple it didn't. And what is going on here? It's possible, if you want, you could try this with anything, if it makes sense. You try it with a pain in the body. You're sitting there, and there's a pain. What am I wanting here in my relationship with the pain?
In the examples that I gave, in these case studies I was talking about, the experience was very dramatic for people. It was very dramatic, very strong experience, a kind of a "Wow!" experience. But actually, wonderful as that is, I'm much more interested in the principle of what's going on. Something very curious is going on. If you've been from a Dharma background, this should be very, very puzzling, what's happening here. It ain't supposed to work this way. [laughter] So I'm really interested in the principle of what's happening here, helpful and wonderful as it is for the experience to open that way.
So with all this, and in our life, what is the relationship with desire? What's the relationship in my life with desire? It's complex, very complex. I go back to -- remember the example from this morning, and the teacher with the practitioner who said she was longing for God? Like I said, I know them both quite well. And the teacher, I happen to know, was adopted when she was very young. The whole experience was very painful for her, of being adopted, etc. And I just wonder -- and I'm not saying this is the case, and it's a certain perspective on the whole thing as well -- but I wonder, from a certain perspective, if it is not okay for her to desire, and for her to desire and want deeply, whatever that was, if it wasn't okay in the past to want Mum, to want breast, to want love, to want attention, and that that fear of desiring lodged itself in the being, and became the norm. There's a fear of inhabiting and allowing desire in the life, because we're afraid of punishment, or humiliation, or disappointment. And so along come spiritual teachings on no desire, and it's very easy to co-opt them into a structure that already exists.
That may be the case, and it also may be -- and I know from experience, myself and others, that it's possible, later in life, to revisit that. Maybe there's a kind of primal level of desire that one can re-experience the frustration, etc., involved, and the force of that, and actually see it's okay, and heal something. And it might take grieving. It might take grieving, but it's possible.
In this Part Three, this little approach that I was talking about in Part Three, maybe if I feel I'm desiring something, maybe I need to grieve the lack of that thing in the present -- maybe I need to -- the sense of lack, of what I don't have, before I can open up the desire. But -- really but, though, big but -- really to be careful here, because it's so easy, so easy to get stuck in that sense of lack. The lack begins to be the main thing when there's desire. Desire and lack go together, and it ends up becoming about lack, and the feeling of desire ends up becoming a feeling of lack, and the pain of that, and becomes more about the pain of the sense of lack.
If, in my life, in my relationship with desire, if I'm more accustomed to noticing and feeling lack, then discerning and tuning into and allowing the desire in the way that I've talked about in this Part Three may feel like it's unnatural. It's something -- it's a weird thing to do, a forcing. It's making something happen. It may well feel that way. It may feel like the lack feeling -- that will seem to be what is actually present, what is unforced, what is natural. It will seem to be the case. But maybe there's an illusion of habit there. There's a habit of attention to zero in on the lack, and concentrate on that, and a habit of building the pain of lack.
One person I tried this with, and it didn't work, this last approach, she was sitting in the interview -- I can't remember exactly, but kind of slouched, like that, which is fine, no problem. But what was interesting was that it didn't work. And I wondered afterwards whether this familiar way of sitting, kind of slouched -- it's almost like it was setting the psychophysical circuits to run in their habitual pathways, which was a pathway of lack, of not having enough, of non-energy. And maybe if I open the body, and I'm upright, actually the circuits, the energy flow, the neuronal pathways get to open up in a different way, because there's a lot of energy wrapped up in the desire, and it needs to be able to flow, needs to have that space. So posture might be important.
I'm a little unsure -- let's go back to this thing, lack and desire. What's involved? Lack and desire are usually intertwined, like I said. Usually, we get frightened of desire, and pained by the lack that's mixed in. Is it possible to differentiate the two -- lack and desire -- actually pull them apart and feel them as different things? Maybe both need exploration. Maybe I need to feel the lack first, before I can open up to the desire. But I wouldn't assume that. I wouldn't assume that at all. Maybe that's a habit of assumption. Maybe I don't need to feel the lack first.
I'm wondering what's needed to be able to do this. What's needed that you can hear this today, or listen to the tape again if it felt like you weren't quite here when we were talking [laughter], and listen again, and actually, you can take this and do it? So I have this question: what do you need to have under your belt to be able to do this? None of those examples I gave happened on retreat. They were all people living very busy lives, lot of demands, lot of pressures, lot of busyness, and it was still available. Maybe I need to be able to separate out lack and desire. Maybe I need to have already a facility with working with my emotions in meditation. Maybe I need to have familiarity with how desire feels, and be able to feel that and allow that. Maybe let it go, and that practice I was talking about in Part Two, maybe a little bit. I don't think it's necessary to have a teacher there, necessarily, guiding it. In fact, I absolutely know that's not the case. So what would you need to be able to do this? What skills, what meditative skills would you need to be able to do this, that this could open up for you? I actually don't think it's that advanced, or that difficult, or that complicated.
Okay. So it's time to end. But I just, like I said, I don't want to make conclusions today, which I might do in another situation. I just want to point in certain directions to end. This is quite puzzling, this last one. This is quite puzzling. Especially if you're from a traditional Dharma background, it doesn't fit that easily into the teachings. What are we going to do with it? May have to look elsewhere. I don't know. I'm not sure. If you look in Tantric Buddhism, in the Vajrayāna, there's a goddess, a deity. Her name is Paṇḍāravāsinī. She's an emanation of Tārā, if you've heard about these things. Her mantra is rāgaratī. It means something like "she who delights in desire." Is it pointing to something similar? I don't know. Her realm is the realm of warmth and inner fire. If we, again, switch traditions, the Jewish Kabbalah, the mystical teachings in Judaism, there's a teaching there. It said we should dare "to extract the sparks of divinity even, and especially, from those states of mind that seem completely removed from God": this frustration, this greed, this desire, this whatever it is.[1] Maybe, right in the middle of that, there's a treasure.
Or Nietzsche, who said, "Ultimately one loves one's desires and not that which is desired."[2] It's interesting too. Where is the treasure? Is it in the object? Is it in the thing that I'm desiring? Or is it in the opening that comes from the movement of desire itself? It's a habit, delusional habit, deep, deeply programmed, to keep wanting the object to give fulfilment, even after you've experienced, say, what we're talking about in Part Two or Part Three. There's a habit there.
So like I said, no conclusions today -- at least not now. But I hope this doesn't sound abstract, especially this -- well, Parts Two and Three, and even Part One. There are practices here, practices that you can play with and make work for yourself. I'm not talking about abstract things. And for the third one, if we just sum it up briefly, what would it involve? Finding, acknowledging that there might be a desire in the middle of one's discomfort or agitation or something, really wiping aside the assumption that the desire could be wrong somehow, or impure, or coming from the wrong place, really putting that aside, maybe trusting the desire, entertaining that. Asking, "What is it that I'm wanting, at a deeper, more amorphous level?" And then really, really opening, really hugely opening the space to that, and seeing what happens. So, in a very brief summary.
But actually, like I said, more important even than certain techniques that can be very helpful in opening, I'm much more interested in what all this is pointing to, the principles, the questionings involved. So I hope, you know, even if it feels like you didn't really relate to what's being said today, or it felt like too much, or whatever, I hope there can be some seeds planted: seeds for questioning, for investigation, for exploration. I'm aware that there's an enormous amount in what we've said today -- an enormous amount. There's a lot here.
If it feels like nothing I've said today, in any of the three parts, has surprised you in any way, or stretched your understanding, something's gone a little amiss. [laughter] Something in Part One, Two, or Three should be challenging something in there -- most definitely. And if there's nothing new, something in the way of listening has -- going right back to the beginning -- something perhaps needs to change in the way of listening. Maybe you feel uncomfortable. Maybe all this is making you feel uncomfortable for different reasons. Depending on your history, and what traditions you're from, what you're used to hearing, what you already know, different parts of this will sit very differently. Maybe it's disconcerting. Maybe it's puzzling. Maybe it's exciting.
It's interesting, inquiring into things, because oftentimes, we want the answer to be a certain thing. We want the truth to be a certain way. And so we're not really inquiring. It's not really open. Really open up the whole field of inquiry. It's fresh, fresh. Have a fresh look at things. Okay?
So let's stop the talking. Let's just have a quiet couple of moments together.
Sanford L. Drob, "The Depth of the Soul: James Hillman's Vision of Psychology," Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 39/3 (1999), 56--72. Also available on Drob's website, http://www.newkabbalah.com/hil2.html, accessed 10 Jan. 2020. ↩︎
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 2003). ↩︎
