The Place of Calm

It's a little difficult to know what to talk about sometimes, especially in this situation, where everyone's moving in different directions, or intending in slightly different directions with practice. Some people have been here a while, quite a while, some people have just arrived, etc. -- all in very different places and different movements. I decided to talk a little about calm, calming the heart, calming the mind. Hopefully there will be something in what's said and what's offered that's useful to everyone, helpful. It may be that what's helpful to some people is disturbing to others, but ... I think you'll see what I mean.

Often when we come on retreat, a person even looks forward, or we emphasize a lot, this aspect of calm, calming: "Good, some calm." You think, well, why is calm good? Why is the emphasis on calming? Obviously and understandably, there's a certain amount of stress that we have, and calming is a relief from stress, so we like it. Good. Fair enough. Also with calming, there's the opportunity for the mind to have a bit more clarity. The Buddha has, to shorten an image of the Buddha: a pond, when the waters are agitated, it's hard to see, to see clearly what's at the bottom of the pond. When the waters are calm, when the surface is calm, there's the possibility for clarity. One can see more clearly what's there. Relief from stress, and clarity -- fine. We're going to come back to that. That much is good, but we're going to return to that, because actually there's more there.

You wonder, what is it that gives rise to calm? What is it that supports the emergence of calm? Steadying the attention, keeping the focus steady, keeping the attention of the mind steady on either one thing, or on the moment, this moment, the next moment (so actually moving between objects). Either way. So whether I stay steady on something like the mettā, the phrases of the mettā or the feeling of the mettā in the body, or the breath and the sensations of the breath, the feeling of the breath, that's steadiness on one object. It helps to calm the mind. Or whether it's this moment with a kind of more open mindfulness practice, this moment and this moment -- again, that steadiness of focus calms the mind.

This steadiness of attention is important. If we can keep the mind on one object, whatever it is, or on the moment, why is that important? Because it allows, it's the beginning of allowing meditative work. It's not the end. It's not the goal. Sometimes we think that the point of practice is to be present, to be in the moment. That's the beginning. Once we have this thing and we're more present with it, whatever it is, then I can begin the more interesting opening up or penetrative work of insight. Again, I'm going to return to that.

So actually steadiness of attention and calm are aspects of what the Buddha would call samādhi. Many of you know this word, samādhi. Also included in that concept of samādhi and the quality of samādhi are other factors, other aspects, principally well-being. There's a sense of well-being. There's a sense of the mind and the body, the attention, the whole energy system, a state of unification to some degree, of harmonization of the energies. It's actually quite an energized state. In other words, there is energy there. Calmness without energy is just a bit sleepy, a bit dull. So it's energized. Well-being, unification, harmonization, energization -- sensitivity is another aspect. So in this word, samādhi, it implies a kind of subtlety of attention, a refinement of the attention. That's a big part of what we are gently cultivating, engendering.

What does that mean, and how would we support that? If you're working with the breath or something, what it means is that the breath, as we calm, the breath goes more subtle, and the attention needs to become more subtle with the breath. That deepening of subtlety is a big part of samādhi. We somehow have to find a more delicate kind of way of paying attention that supports this deepening of sensitivity, deepening of refinement. The object becomes more subtle.

The mettā, as well, needs to become more subtle somehow. I'm going to say a lot of things today, and a lot of it, if you don't understand, please ask or bring it up in an interview or something. How can we help the mettā to become more subtle? Because that's a big part of the whole process deepening. Or if you're doing insight practice, what is it that allows this refinement of the perception, subtle-making, subtlizing?

So samādhi is all that, and the Buddha talks a lot about samādhi. Samādhi is all that, and it's all contained in there, all those qualities that I enumerated. But some of it's actually not that calm. There are states of samādhi where there's actually, and I know some of you know this, where there's actually quite a lot of rapture and energy arising, and bliss, even, and 'calm' is really the wrong word. You wouldn't put the word 'calm' with that, with this pīti, what it's called.

What is it that gives rise to samādhi? What is it that supports samādhi? It's a bigger question. What is it that supports samādhi? Well, we talked about steadiness of attention, and that's really important, but there's much more to it than that. Sometimes people have this idea that if I just fix the mind on something, if I just glue it to something rigidly, if I can keep it locked into something, samādhi will arise. Well, maybe, maybe not. If I put too much emphasis on the steadiness of attention, of trying to lock my focus on something, and I'm thinking that's the principal emphasis of my whole meditation, whether it's the moment or the breath or whatever, it will probably backfire. It will probably not serve the whole process. Too much emphasis on that leads to tightness, generally speaking, frustration often, agitation, and it kind of squeezes the joy out of practice. It becomes joyless. Why? Because the whole practice has just become about trying to stay steady. Maybe I haven't even realized that's what it's become.

So really helpful, when sitting down to practise, or walking or whatever it is, to actually pause a little and check: what's the intention here, even unconscious intention? Can it broaden? Can I see there's a lot more going on here potentially than I might realize at first? A lot more than just keeping the mind fixed. Can I see a much bigger picture that's potentially involved, a much bigger remit, scope for my intention? So every time I even try to be with the breath, let's say, or the mettā, or the present moment or whatever, I'm not only cultivating this steadiness of attention, but I'm also cultivating the capacity to know where the mind is at any moment. So then, even when the mind is not on its object, and I recognize that, that's what we call, we could say it's a moment of mindfulness, of knowing where the mind is. And that's really good. We're cultivating mindfulness. Really helpful. We're also, when the mind is off wherever it's supposed to be, and one sees that, and one just has a little space around that, and brings the mind back and brings the mind back, there's also the possibility of cultivating patience there, perseverance.

So these are other qualities that are in addition to the steadiness of focus. Every time the mind goes and I bring it back, and it goes and I bring it back, and it goes and I bring it back, I'm also cultivating this power of the mind, this capacity, the muscle to bring it back. All these qualities are involved. And really helpful to see that they are involved. Again, if it goes, and I find this tendency, when the mind is off where it's supposed to be, to judge, and I judge myself, again, there's the potential there for that moment to become a moment of easing the habit of self-judgment, of pacifying, of slowly eroding that habit of self-judgment. All of these qualities are there. In a way, they are all equally important. Perhaps eroding self-judgment is more important than being able to stay steady on one object. If I squeeze the intention and the view of the practice too small, I don't see all this. If I really consciously remind myself all this is going on, whether I'm on the object or off the object, there's all this potential, all this possibility. Practice has a chance to breathe. There's more space, more loveliness.

Samādhi, in the Buddha's way of using it, includes a sense of well-being. You could say that samādhi leads to well-being. You could say something like that. But interestingly, well-being also brings samādhi. Usually causality works both ways. Samādhi brings well-being. A certain amount of well-being supports samādhi, supports this unification, this deepening, this settling, harmonizing of the whole system, the energy system of body and mind.

What does that mean for us, and what does it mean for our retreat? It means that we need to take care a little bit of a certain level of well-being, in how we are in the days on retreat, in how we are in practice. What is it to move through the days and open to nourishment here? What does that mean? How would that look like? Because again, I can view practice in a way that squeezes something out of it, squeezes the joy out of it, and then it will squeeze the nourishment out of it as well. So what is it to be here on a beautiful day, with lovely people, practising together, and actually receive, tune in, open up to, and receive the nourishment on all kinds of different levels that are here? Hugely important foundation for the deepening of samādhi and of practice, hugely important.

That means very much factors like kindness. Is my attitude to kindness, is my attitude to myself, is my attitude to practice, does it have that quality of kindness pouring into it, lubricating the whole thing? Can I nourish that? Because in nourishing kindness, I'm nourishing samādhi and calm and all these other factors. Gratitude, appreciation. To be here in this beautiful spot on the earth, in a place dedicated to this kind of work and to something we love. And actually really opening the mind, the eyes, and the heart so that we can support these qualities of gratitude and appreciation of ourselves, of the environment, and of the others around us.

Inspiration -- opening, feeding, supporting the quality of inspiration. Sometimes people want to walk with their eyes down on retreat, and move around with their eyes down, so that they're not disturbed, so that the steadiness of focus is not disturbed by others. But in relation to everything that I'm saying, is that going to be helpful or is it not helpful? Might it be more helpful to actually allow the sense of connection with each other? Actually look: who's here? Who's supporting me? Who am I supporting in my practice? Feel that heart-connection, and look, and smile, and the eye contact. I have to be careful if I'm smiling because I want something back. So mindfulness needs to come in. But maybe through the connection, there is nourishment, there is connection, and something is watered in the practice, deeply. The soil of practice is watered, and more can flower there. There's not necessarily a simple answer, "Do this or do that." But it may be, for some, depending on background and attitudes and assumptions, that some of this is worth questioning and experimenting with.

If we say, what is it that gives rise to samādhi? Again, this question. Well, actually letting go of entanglement gives rise to samādhi. If we just let go of the entanglement with things, let go of the entanglement with phenomena, the mind comes naturally into this state of unification, gathering, harmonization, brightness, well-being, etc., calm. Letting go of entanglement brings calm, brings also a steadiness of attention. You can see that. To be pulled this way about tomorrow and pulled that way about yesterday and this thing and that thing, it's an entanglement with this or that, that's pulling the mind this way or that. I let go of the entanglement, and the mind settles more. It's more steady.

Just in saying that, you can see that samādhi can arise either from keeping the mind with one thing -- because when I'm with this thing, I'm not entangled with other things; every time I return to the breath or the mettā, I'm disengaging my entanglement from something else -- but it can also arise through mindfulness or insight practice. So I'm with the moment or with whatever phenomena, but hopefully mindfulness, we could say, is a state of relative non-entanglement, relatively unentangled.

So if we get impatient trying to settle the mind down, that's actually just becoming entangled in the whole process of meditation -- unhelpful, obviously. The more impatient I get, the more agitated I become. So states of samādhi, as I was talking, for the most part, they involve a sense of a lightness of being. The being and the body in a lot of the states feels quite light. There's a lightness that permeates. Samādhi brings lightness of being. Guess what? Lightness of being brings samādhi, or supports samādhi, we could say.

How does that translate? What is it to be on retreat, dedicated to meditation, in a formal meditation session, with a lightness of being, with a sense of playfulness? Is that kind of attitude possible? How does that look like? How can I find my way into an attitude of creative, light experimentation, happy playfulness with the practice? Because that very attitude is going to water the soil of the whole thing. Of course there are difficulties encountered, and actually tomorrow morning Christina will speak about the hindrances. Of course there are difficulties, but still the attitude can remain very light and very playful. It's hugely important.

Another word for 'entanglement,' we could say, is 'clinging' or 'craving,' a kind of attached relationship with things, wanting to get rid of something, wanting to pull something towards me that I haven't got, or wanting to cling to something that I do. All that we can call 'clinging,' 'entanglement.' It's just another word. Less clinging, more samādhi. It's actually that simple. Less clinging, more samādhi. What happens? Saying now just in different words what we said before -- less clinging, more samādhi -- something happens in the bodily experience when we let go of clinging, and the whole mind and body move into, relatively, some degree of samādhi. I'm sure many of you have noticed this, but if I ask you, how do we know that clinging is present? Well, sometimes we catch the mind obsessed about something and thinking a lot, but often when that level of mind is quiet, you catch clinging in the body as a contraction, as a tightening, as a knotting, if you like. The body reflects clinging. It's a very honest indicator of the state of the mind. So contraction or knots, in what we could call -- they might be quite subtle -- in the sense of the body, reflect clinging.

And all this, the body and the contraction are all very central in samādhi. So I just want to say a few things about the body. I'm not sure what order. It probably doesn't matter. One of the biggest hurdles that people come across when they're trying to settle the mind or working towards settling the mind like this, especially if they're choosing one object, and especially the breath, is that the whole practice seems to get tight at some point. A tightness creeps in in the body, oftentimes in the forehead, especially if you're working at the nostrils. And that tightness is basically unpleasant. And a person can't seem to find a way beyond this tightness: "The more I practise, the tighter I get." What often happens for a lot of people, is they decide at some point, "Enough now. Enough breath. Enough trying to concentrate. I'll just be with what is. I'll just open to whatever is." And there's a relaxation, because there's a relaxation of the intention and the effort, and it feels better.

It's really, really common. Probably I'd say with the majority of people, that's what happens. Does it really need to be that way? Does that need to be an insurmountable hurdle? Actually, it may be that this kind of tightness is helpful as an indicator of effort levels. We can use an awareness of the body in the background, if you like, of the practice.

Say if you're working with the breath at the nostrils, that's the foreground, and the body, you use the sense of the whole body as a background to that foreground. That sense of the body, you can pick up on any tension that creeps in when there's too much tightness, too much pushing, too much effort. It's actually quite helpful, this tightness; it's indicating something. It's indicating: just back off, just back off a little bit, just ease off the accelerator, the gas pedal. So rather than a problem, it's a useful indicator. It can be really, really helpful.

But this notion of using the whole body as a kind of background to the foreground, really, really skilful in meditation. Every time I feel some tightness or contraction creeping into the body, I can relax it, relax the body, relax that background. It prevents the body getting too tight and off balance that way. When I do that, too, I'm also opening up a bit of space in the practice. Sometimes, relating all these elements we were talking about before, sometimes too much contraction creeps in, too much clinging has crept in. It's a contraction, and you feel that contraction in the body. So opening up to the space brings less contraction. More space, less contraction, right? Contraction and space are opposites.

As I said before, any deeper state of samādhi includes the whole body. So somehow, whatever practice I'm doing, I'm going to have to include the whole body in it. We're moving towards states of being that include the whole body in a sense of well-being. So I might start with a small object, but there's a whole other way of practising where you start with that whole body sense. In a state of samādhi, this whole body, what we could call the sense of the subtle body, the energy body, is smoothed out. It's become harmonious, energized. There's a sense of well-being permeating all of it. The knots are unknotted. That's the sense of the subtle body then. That's what we're moving towards, this whole body in that sense.

Actually, there's a way of practising where you start with that: opening up the whole sense to that whole energy body, and just abiding in that, and gently nourishing, gently nurturing a sense of well-being within that, rather than starting with a smaller object. So I'm just mentioning that as something you may want to check out. If it sounds like something you are interested in, please do ask. There are CDs you can listen to too.

So if samādhi is related to less clinging, one could make a practice of just prioritizing less clinging, less clinging, non-clinging, letting go of clinging, and actually make that the thread of the practice. And then we're moving into more, we could say it's leaning towards an insight practice. And there are tons of ways of lessening clinging in the moment, and then doing that again and doing that again. So that's an insight practice, or insight practices, that move towards samādhi, that will just open out a sense of samādhi. When we're practising mindfulness, when we're practising mettā, when we're practising steadying the attention on something, that's part of what's happening, is we're letting go of clinging. We're letting go of entanglement. It's part of what's happening. That's part of why sometimes these practices bring this state of samādhi. They open it out. But we can do that more deliberately. We can actually take up clinging as our theme. What is it to sit in meditation, or walk in meditation, and the theme is not mindfulness, the theme is clinging? The theme is not breath -- the theme is clinging and the release of clinging. Very deliberately, very consciously tuning into that element, that stratum of our conscious experience, and working with that. Very beautiful practices involved there that unfold in beautiful ways.

Tying all this together: if, when there is clinging, there are knots and tensions and contractions in the body, then these very knots, tensions, and contractions, rather than being problems, can be used as indicators, as helpful focal points for this release of clinging, for this attention to clinging and the relaxing of clinging, the release of clinging. Wherever it is, wherever I feel that, can I tune into it? And actually the way that I pay attention to it, the way that I pay attention to something unpleasant or to the experience of clinging will determine what unfolds. Usually we pay attention to clinging and to dukkha in a way that creates more dukkha. That, if you like, is the human condition. When we're moving into more skilful insight practices, we're learning to look at things in a way that unties the clinging, unties the knots. There are many ways of doing that. Probably over the weeks, I'll maybe elaborate some of this a bit more.

But what is it? I feel this knot of clinging. I can feel it in my body. And what is it to look at that, and find a way of looking at it in the moment that is helpful? One I'll just mention is completely letting it be -- not just being mindful of it, but completely allowing it to be what it is, unpleasant. Let it be tight, let it feel that way in the moment. Completely allowing it. It's this relationship of allowing. It's an attenuation, a reduction of the clinging in the moment. Everything depends on that -- everything. Am I going to go this way or am I going to go that way, suffering or the end of suffering? Right there in the moment. This is a skill. We can learn this as a skill.

Knots, contractions, the tightness, clinging itself is unpleasant. That tension in the body feels unpleasant. We could use a certain language. Ultimately speaking, it's not all that accurate. But we could say there's a secondary reaction to the unpleasantness of clinging. We react to the unpleasantness of clinging with clinging. I don't like the way this clinging feels, this tightness, this contraction. We contract around the contraction. We tighten up in relation to the tightness. So I'm using this language of 'secondary reaction.' As I said, it's just a way of talking. What if I relax that, over and over and over? I let the tightness be, I let it be, I find a way [to] completely welcome and allow this unpleasantness of the clinging, over and over. What if that was the practice for a while?

So I'm just throwing that out. Everything I've said, there would be loads more to say. As I said, people are moving in very different directions, so maybe some of this just gives you some ideas of strands and threads you want to sort of follow a little bit or explore. There are many, many skilful ways of looking, many possibilities of working with contraction and craving, clinging, in a way that unbinds it and brings samādhi. We can tie all this together.

If we return to something -- I just threw it out very briefly at the beginning: why is it so important, this calming and samādhi? Why is it so important? We said about clarity, and we said about stress relief. But I would add something: that periods, times of samādhi, of this deep sense of well-being, to whatever degree (it might actually be quite subtle), some degree of well-being, some degree of unification, periods of that, frequent periods of that, not just "once in a while I had this" or whatever. It can only be periods, because everything is impermanent, so I can't keep this state of samādhi. But periods of this, frequent periods, they are hugely important in our life. They offer the sense of having access to a reservoir of well-being, to a resource within ourself that is really, really priceless.

We talk so much in the Dharma about letting go, letting go: "Oh, let go, let go." To the degree that I feel that I have this reservoir inside of potential well-being, that I have access to that, that that is a resource available for me -- not all the time, but frequently enough -- to that degree, my ability to let go is empowered. Without that, my ability to let go is minimal. It's not powerful enough. I don't have enough to draw on. If you ask me for £100, and I only have £100, it's hard for me to let go of that £100. If I have loads in the bank, if I have a huge reservoir in the bank, I can let go more easily. So this is actually one of the principal reasons why samādhi is so important, because it gives us this reservoir, this sense of resource that we can tap into, have access to. And that allows and supports our ability to let go, hugely.

But it's also important for insight. So again, it's not just sort of de-stressing, that we're interested in calmness. And nor is it, what we said right at the beginning, that it's important for insight because of the clarity. That is a metaphor of the Buddha's, but it has to be seen in context. Something much more interesting than that is happening with all this, something much more profound and mysterious. It's not that as the mind settles and as the heart settles, it's not that then the mind is in a state of more clarity which reveals 'things as they are.' That is not what is happening. That is not the direction in which things are going. It can seem, there is, so to speak, a certain bandwidth of the mind settling, and calmness coming, and samādhi, etc., a certain bandwidth at the beginning of that journey into depth where it really feels like, "Gosh, everything seems more vivid and bright and defined," and we sense this dissolving of a level, a layer of projection we put onto things. Certainly we can feel that. That's, as I say, a bandwidth that the samādhi moves through. It seems like that's what's happening. It seems like, in this phase, in this bandwidth, that we are becoming more clear in our perception of things. That's what it seems like, and it's a beautiful experience, and it's very important. It's very lovely, and it has its own loveliness. But it only seems that way. It's only a bandwidth. It's not where we're going.

This journey into deepening, deepening samādhi, what's happening is something much more interesting. We're actually, if we use technical language, fabricating, we're skilfully fabricating perceptions. We're dealing in the whole realm of perception, and we're shaping skilfully beautiful perceptions. Actually, the journey into samādhi is a journey into constructing less perception. So in a way, this bandwidth where things seems more clear because they're less covered over with the grime of all our projections and stories and papañca, actually that's also a layer, the first layer of less construction. But it does not stop there, and to believe that it stops there would be ... just a mistake. Something else is happening.

We're on a journey of unfabricating perception and, in that, we're understanding something about the malleability, the magical nature, of perception. This is where it's going. This is where the insight is going, and this is why samādhi is so important: understanding the malleability, the flexible nature of perception, the magical nature. And that includes, as this journey deepens and deepens and deepens into samādhi and all this, it includes all kinds of mystical openings of perception. That would be the only word that you could put with it. The perceptions open to something quite different than what we're usually accustomed to in our everyday sense of things. Mystical openings of perception, whole other senses of existence other than the ordinary: "I am here, you are there, it's 11:39 on a Thursday morning" or whatever. Whole other senses.

Two things right now I want to draw out about that, two things of note. [There is] this whole idea that can be very popular and attractive, that this, what we see, is it -- this that we encounter in our everyday perception, that everyone seems to agree on it, this everyday reality. The notion that "This is it. This is the truth of things."

How to say this? Some philosophies, including some ... well, I'm trying to be kind! [laughter] Sometimes, some schools of thought -- particularly I'm thinking now about, say, secular Buddhism -- actually, if you push it a little bit, the whole notion that "this is it," and either I have to put up with this and that's the project of practice -- "Realize this is it. Put up with it. Deal with it. This is our existential situation" -- or "This is it. Relish it." Either one. "This is it," that notion, that secularized notion that has all kinds of assumptions behind it, it actually is dependent on the absence of these deeper states, these deeper openings of perception. The more they open in practice, the more that whole view is threatened. For a person who is, in very deep practice, regularly opening to this kind of thing, [they] can no longer really believe this kind of view. That whole way of thinking, that whole direction of practice, that whole philosophy -- whether it's one of existential awe and dread that it's the job of practice to confront and brave, or whether it's the "This is it. How precious, how wonderful. Relish it with mindfulness in the moment. That's the job. That's what practice [is]" -- either one depends, if you like, on an absence of these deeper, more mystical openings.

Behind both, there is the tacit or explicit belief that things are as they appear. I mean, they might be moving a little faster than we can see, in terms of their impermanence, but behind both is the same sort of (oftentimes materialist) kind of assumptions. With the deepening of samādhi, a lot of that gets questioned. And with the deepening of samādhi, especially the existential angst school of practice, it's not what a person feels. Actually, they feel quite the opposite. There's something in the mystical opening that completely dissolves or quietens this sense of existential angst. Something quite different opens in the being and flows into the being. So that sense of things, "this is it," is just one perception. It's just one take. "This is it. This is what we are dealing with. This is the final ..." It's just one perception.

So the second thing in relation to all this is that nor is samādhi and the whole journey of this deepening in consciousness, nor is it leading to an alternative one perception: "Actually, the truth of things is that it's all oneness or it's all awareness or it's all cosmic consciousness" or whatever. Something about the malleability of perception, something much more profound, much more interesting, much more mystical and mysterious. When we listen or read a certain teacher, what are they trying to sell me? Which version? It's usually one thing, one take: "It's like this." "No, it's like that." It's one take on reality.

I'll maybe pick up some of those themes later in the retreat, but I want to throw something else out. And again, like I said, some of this will be agitating to some people, or may be. Just ten minutes ago or something, I said periods of calm, periods of samādhi, are important. And the emphasis is really on that word, 'periods,' meaning not all the time. It can't be all the time, as I said, because it's impermanent. But it may be that nowadays in the Dharma -- there's always a shadow to everything. There's always a blind spot to everything. There's always a danger to everything. It may be that nowadays, one of the shadows, if we use that word, or blind spots, that it's possible for us to walk into unwittingly, is that we might get the message, or absorb the message, or cling to the message, something like, "Don't chase states of altered consciousness. Don't chase mystical perceptions. Don't chase states of trying to get into this or that deeper state" or whatever it is. "Don't chase that."

But somehow, alternatively, rather than that, the image is given of, "What we're really going for is a kind of calmness in life, a calm life, a sense of calmness pervading the life, a peaceful life. Relaxing stress, relieving stress throughout the life. Stress-free, relatively stress-free, unhassled life," versus periods of experience of deep states, deep samādhi, whether that's explicitly said or just somehow wafted out as a direction. And the Buddha, Buddha statues and all that, and the Buddha as an archetypal being, it's almost like the icon has become the icon of a calm and peaceful and equanimous life, a kind of life that is calm and peaceful and equanimous. And I'm just wondering if there are problems about that, with that. And I'm wondering if it's something that needs questioning.

Can you, can I, can anyone fall in love calmly? Can you make love calmly, with a calm heart, with a calmed heart? We use that language, "calming the heart." Can you have sexual erotic arousal with a calm heart? Can I open my heart and engage with what is happening with the planet and on a socio-economic level with a calm heart? Can I open my mind and be fired up? Can I open my mind to the fire of ideas, different ways of seeing, different perspectives, that burn with questioning and turn things upside down? Is that possible with a calm heart? These questions and ideas and perspectives that break walls and open up different kinds of freedoms that we haven't perhaps even conceived of as a freedom before -- can I do that with a calm heart?

This whole notion of calmness, it moves in a certain direction, and we have to be careful what gets lopped off in that. It has all kinds of [implications]. Just on art -- we won't go into this, but on art and the whole artistic creativity, the artistic process, all kinds of implications about that kind of stuff. We say "Calm down. I'm going to want to calm down." What's down? What goes down when we say "Calm down"? Flat, even, unexcitable, quietening down of passion. And sometimes we look at a person, and they are even in that way, and we think, "Oh, they must be spiritual. They must be evolved." Maybe it needs some questioning.

And some of you I know who have plenty of exposure to the teachings will say, "Well, no, no, no. We talk about equanimity, and then what's called the near enemy of equanimity, indifference. And we don't want indifference; what we want is equanimity." That's true. That's a good point. We have to distinguish between equanimity and indifference. But still, the archetype, the image that is promoted, that's calling us, speaking to us, it still doesn't include a lot of that stuff, a lot of those elements of our existence that I enumerated before: falling in love, making love, the fire of ideas, etc., the social and environmental engagement, eros.

Here we are, a roomful of however many people. For some people, a calm life and a calmed heart is what is calling you. That's completely fine. It is, if you like, if we use a certain language, it's the dominant archetype. It's what's drawing us. But for others, it's not. It really is not. It's only one image, perhaps, of freedom. It's freedom looking a certain way, looking the calm way.

So the question I have this morning -- and it may be disturbing; I don't know -- is, are you one of them, or are you not one of them? And no judgment either way. It's just important to know whether you are or not, or whether you are right now or not in this period of your life. Or is it, rather, that one is just a little bit hungry for less stress, and actually that's what I'm after? What happens when I experience enough "less stress"? Do I still stay in that mode, or is it something else that I'm hungry for? So, is it that "I'm hungry for less stress" actually is what's going on? Or is it simply, as I said before, that this whole image or archetypal image of a calm life, a calmed heart, that whole ethos, with less intensity and less passion, has been promoted repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, and we've absorbed it, and we've come to regard that as where we are going, and elevated that in some way?

So the images we put out are hugely influential. The images that we receive as human beings through teachings, through reading, through what people look like and how they move and all kinds of things, are hugely influential.

Another aspect of this is simplicity as well. Calmness, simplicity -- they kind of go together often. Again, that's another thing that often we talk so much about. It's so much saturating the teachings, this elevation of the sense of simplicity with calmness. I just have a question: is simple better? Is simplicity a better thing?

I don't know if this is true. I heard it thirdhand, so I don't know, but I think it's interesting. I heard that in the Tibetan language, there are only two words for emotion: happy and sad. I don't know if it's true. But I've heard that people moving from Tibet to the West at first only had experienced two emotions. They either felt happy or they felt sad, because there were only two words. As they learnt English or some other Western language with much more nuance and richness of vocabulary and sophistication, complexity, their actual experience of emotions started to diversify, become much more nuanced and rich, much more complex. Clearly language evolves out of experience, but also language feeds, promotes, guides, instigates, opens up experience. Simpler or more complex? Better or worse? Is simple always good? Sometimes, again, it's wrapped up with all kinds of archetypal images: the simplicity of the baby or something like that. A calm state is a simple state. It's true, yes.

But again, some questions. If I make that too spread out as an image of what I'm going for, whether it's conscious or whether it's unconscious, what gets lost? What might be getting lost? That's the first question. Sometimes we need answers. And actually, sometimes more than answers, we need questions. We need questioning and the fire of questioning. Like I said, it depends where you're at. I know for some people what I'm saying is very much where they're at. For others, it's really not, and it might just sound disturbing. Sometimes we need answers, and that's what we need, the clarity of answers. And sometimes we need the shaking up of questions, and not the answers yet. What gets lost? What might be getting lost if I'm drawn into that image and that direction? And is the image, the direction, the ethos, the archetype, whatever language, of simplicity and calmness, is that adequate to life? And especially, is it adequate to lay life, modern lay life, you and me? Or is it too narrow? Is some other kind of expression, ethos, image, archetype, is it getting constricted out, strangled out of the picture?

So behind questions like that, there is obviously a deeper question, a wider question, actually: how are we, you and I, going to translate the Dharma, which is for the most part dominated by that kind of archetype? How are we going to translate the Dharma to modern, deep lay practice, which is what you and I are doing here? If you're here for a while, everyone who's on this retreat, that's what we're involved in. How are we going to translate a Dharma that's got that kind of ethos and image wrapped up in it? How are we going to translate that? To me, that needs a lot of questioning, a lot of bringing all our intelligence and all our openness of mind to that. If we don't, maybe for us as individual practitioners, it might be fine. Maybe I don't need to translate anything, because that's fine for me. Maybe five years from now, it really will not be fine. For other people right now, it's like, if I don't translate it somehow, if I don't open this up, something's going to die in me, or just go really to sleep, or maybe I'm just going to need to move to some other tradition or something else.

So, big questions, to me, with massive implications and ramifications, and yeah, potentially quite disturbing. I think any way of seeing practice, any way of seeing the path, any way of practising is going to have pitfalls to it. There's no such thing as a practice or a way of seeing practice that doesn't have pitfalls, doesn't have blind spots, if you like, doesn't have gaps or lacunae. It has pitfalls, dangers, and costs. If I think of practice as stress relief, meditation as stress relief -- again, whether it's conscious or unconscious -- a lot of pitfalls, a lot of dangers, a lot of costs. If I think about practice as getting more clear, again, huge cost, huge pitfalls, dangers. And if I think and if I feel in terms of high aspirations about opening mystical perceptions and all this, that, too, comes with a cost. Strangely, though, of the costs, the Buddha seemed to prefer that one. He said, "My monks are addicted to samādhi," and he was happy about that. That's the word he used, "addicted to samādhi."^[1] He said yeah, there's a cost in that, because it's painful when you want something and you're not there, but it's an okay pain.

Anyway, big questions, but right now, we're in retreat [laughs], so if you like, you can forget about all this! Because the job right now, as I said, periods, periods of samādhi. Retreat time is a period, not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it's time for periods of deepening, deepening in the calm, deepening in the samādhi, with the much broader sense of what was meant there. And maybe some of these questions have just planted a seed. It might be uncomfortable. There will be other times to reflect on them.

Let's have a bit of quiet together.