Transcription
Good morning. So there are about six questions here on paper. Sometimes they weave together, so let's just see if they do that. Okay. So maybe I'll go through the written ones, and if there's anything that comes up for anyone, or you want to ask, we can interrupt the process with spoken questions too.
Q1: discerning thoughts and worries from intuitions; deep okayness from practice and insight
So the first one says, "I'm having difficulties discerning thoughts and worries from actual true intuition. Any advice on that?" Does the person want to say any more specifically about that? Or ...? You don't have to; just curious. No? Okay. I'm not sure what I have to say about that. We talked about samādhi and about calming. I think in general the deeper the calm in the consciousness, the deeper the samādhi, the more likely, or you could say the mind becomes kind of a refined, very refined, delicate instrument, the more likely it is that intuitions are available to us. So more long-term, the cultivation of samādhi will be helpful with that. It's probably then also in the short-term or in any moment more likely that something that pops into your mind like that, a thought, or is it a thought, is it an intuition, is it a worry, is it a distraction -- when there's more samādhi, it's probably more likely that it's something worth trusting. But it can be very difficult to tell.
We were talking about thought and working with thought in meditation. Before being able to discern, it might be actually good to be able to feel the difference between being entangled in thought and not being entangled in thought. So when I described, for instance, that state where you just open out the awareness with listening and with sounds, etc., and thought just takes its place as another very insubstantial and ephemeral phenomenon within that space, at that point there's not much hooking onto the thought, there's not much meaning injected into any thought or significance. It's all just fairly insignificant stuff. It's a state of consciousness. But when one experiences going in and out of that, then at least one has experienced times of not being entangled in thought. If all I know is being entangled in thought, it's going to be hard to tell which ones are intuitions worth following and which ones are just entanglements. Having this experience of less entanglement, of freedom, gives me more likelihood that I can have a perspective on that.
The other thing, maybe, is that -- what happens, a person has a thought, and it sounds like from the note thoughts and worries; something comes up, and is it an intuition, is it something I should be worrying about? Even if it is an actual intuition about something that might happen, the worry probably isn't helpful. The worry is a secondary reaction. So I wonder whether also helping to make it clear in all this is a confidence that might come through practice, over time, that whatever happens, whatever is going to happen, I'll be okay. I might be dying, but there's still an okayness with that. Where does this deep level of okayness -- whatever may transpire, whether it's this or that, there's a sense of okayness with that. Then whatever thought pops into the mind, there's much less chance of this sort of shrinking of the mind in agitation, in worry. So something can come up, and because there's a sense of deep okayness, possibility we trust, we have the confidence that we can be okay with whatever happens at a very profound level -- and it might mean illness, it might mean the end of a relationship, it might mean death, whatever -- at that level, that allows much more space to just have a look at what's come up, what thought, what intuition or vision or whatever it is, and get a feel for it, and kind of just hold it there in that space, let oneself feel into what's going on with it.
Where does that confidence come from? I'm talking about a long-term confidence. One of the ways is it comes from practice, from deep insight, from the kind of deep nourishment that things like mettā and samādhi give to the being, but also from the insight, that one knows one can be okay no matter what. So when that's there, it makes a difference, it makes a big difference in terms of what comes up in our relationship to it. That's all very general. I'm not sure. Does that suffice for ...? Or does anyone else have a question concerned with that? Okay.
Q2: what's the deal with reincarnation; how teachers decide what to present
This is the next question. "So what's the deal with reincarnation?" [laughter] "The big one, at death." [laughs] Does the person want to say a bit more about this? Yeah? Do you want to say a little more?
Yogi: [inaudible] During a few talks over the past several years, sometimes I get a hint that there's some [?] by teachers of how much should we be teaching this, or is this the right word for this; there just seems to be some different [?] by Western teachers.
Rob: Could everyone hear that? Yeah? Great. Well, the first answer is I don't know. I don't know about reincarnation. I mean, I don't know. What I feel is more interesting is what people do with that, whether it's a teacher or a student or yourself. So that's why I ask you what's going on for you with it. It's pretty hard to prove one way or another, so we're left with this not knowing, for the most part. And what do we do with that not knowing? You can either decide one or the other, or probabilities, or stay in the not knowing. But I actually wouldn't say it has to be this or this or this; I'm just interested why certain people choose that, and certain people choose this not knowing, and certain people choose to believe that there is reincarnation. What's happening there? Well, you don't have to -- unless you have an answer ...?
Yogi: [?]
Rob: You do? Yeah, okay.
Yogi: I just think there's a lot of energy in the consciousness that just ... it goes somewhere. I'm comfortable with that notion.
Rob: Okay. So if I pursued this a little bit -- so you saying that, and someone else in the hall saying, "No, I don't believe it," I'm fine, I'm personally fine with all of that. I have no problem. What I'm more interested in is why a person believes that. And they may not know why. But what it gives a person, what it opens up or prevents or what it does for the consciousness to adopt this belief or that position or not ... Do you see what I'm saying? So you used the word you're comfortable with it, but is there something more? Like if I asked you, what difference would it make to the way you lived your life whether there's one or the other? Because some people can say, "I believe in rebirth or reincarnation, and my belief in that really makes a difference to my life. I'm choosing differently. I'm living differently. Really I'm living with that sense of there's a continuation, so what I do here matters," etc. But I don't want to put words into your mouth. What would you say? Do you feel that it gives you something or makes a difference in this life for you to have ...?
Yogi: I do.
Rob: And what would it be?
Yogi: Sometimes it's a motivating factor. Other times it's like it's not as skilful an idea -- it's like, "Well, I can do it next time," you know?
Rob: Right, okay. Good.
Yogi: So it does influence my life.
Rob: Okay. So that's quite interesting to me, if everyone heard that -- it's Trish, right? On one level, there's a sense -- you said it's a motivating factor, so there's something actually positive coming out of it. It gives you inspiration, direction, dedication, etc. And yet, at other times, there's this sense that, "Ah, well, I can do it another time." [laughs] "Mañana," you know? Interesting. And yet still, on the balance, you feel that it's positive? Okay. Yeah. Why? Is that just because it's more of the motivation than the non-motivation, or ...?
Yogi: I just think it is.
Rob: You think it is more ...?
Yogi: I mean, I haven't really investigated it. I just -- it seems true to me.
Rob: Yeah. Okay.
Yogi: When you hear about how the Dalai Lama was selected, I think there's some evidence like that that kind of supports it. It doesn't prove it, but it supports it.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. I personally feel with a lot of these kinds of questions -- and they're not just spiritual questions; also something like climate change or whatever -- it's like, you can present your evidence, someone else presents their evidence. Oftentimes people just -- they don't know why they're believing something. It's not really a rational sort of assessment of evidence. It may be in your case, but generally not. People just decide. They have a predisposition to believe this or that. That, to me, is very interesting. And there are questions in life that maybe we won't know the answer to. And then what's more interesting is, what does the mind and what does the psyche do with that, and how does it -- am I relating to that in a way that's bringing something alive for me? So it sounds like you are, which is great.
But a person could choose either answer, and I'm sure in that talk you heard, probably the person was saying, "I have chosen not to believe this. We should not choose this, because it brings something else alive." There's a kind of subtext there. If I don't believe that, then this is it. Now I really have to get it together in this life. Now I have to meet this challenge of this finiteness, etc. It's not so much the rationality behind or the evidence behind things. People will seek out the evidence that kind of supports the position they want to believe, and oftentimes they don't know why I want to believe something. Even ideas that, "Oh, you're just doing it for comfort because you can't handle the idea of an end." Mm, I wouldn't even buy that. I think the movements -- again, if we use this language, the soul, the psyche -- they're much more deeper and mysterious than that. The question I have is, is it bringing something alive now, in this life, in your sense of life, in your journey, in the way that you're living, and it sounds like it is for you.
Yogi: I [?] want to know is ... I read in, I think it was Christina's book, about this is the first generation of teachers that's kind of bringing Buddhism out of the gates or ...? What are Western teachers talking about? Are they -- do they talk about how to present not just this practice but ...? How do you guys decide or cultivate this idea of what to present to cultures that are very new at this?
Rob: Can we turn the tape off here? Just kidding. [laughs] No, joke, joke, joke! Specifically about rebirth or ...?
Yogi: [?]
Rob: Yikes. [laughter] My sense is, within the Insight Meditation tradition, sort of here and at IMS and Spirit Rock and Beatenberg and those kind of places, we don't tend to talk much about rebirth -- I mean, just informally, and there's a kind of very much like, "Yeah, whatever your position is, it's fine on that." Maybe people talk about it informally, and some people have heated opinions about it, and some not, and some don't even think about it much at all. But there are probably other issues that are more debated. How do we decide ... [laughs] Give me a minute here. Are you asking how we are deciding to position ourselves relative to sort of the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy? Is that what you're asking?
Yogi: Well, I guess I see all of you as -- it's a huge responsibility, you know? Do you decide, or do you talk about, you know, this is the order that we should ... "Let's hold off on the brahmavihāras," or?
Rob: No, not that I'm aware of, no. I think people approach that individually. What's quite interesting to me is that on most insight retreats, it's sort of putting people in a room and keeping them there, and saying, "Sit still and pay attention," and basically people bump into experience, you know, and they have to deal with their experience. There's nowhere else to go. So that's kind of what an insight meditation retreat is, with someone just saying, "Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention." What happens then is people bump into their experience, and we work with people a lot about how to be with their experience. Mostly experience is -- a lot of the time, people are running into quite difficult experience; it's not that easy. So it's a lot about how to be with this and it's not that great, and weaving in the Buddha's teachings around that.
Sometimes you might go to other traditions, and right from the beginning they present a whole structure of the path and how it's going to unfold, and that's a very different approach. I can see that both ways of doing things have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes I feel a little bit in our tradition, because we're so much focused on being with the experience in the moment and what's unfolding right now and how to be with that, which is a really important skill, sometimes the vision of the bigger path is a little more nebulous for people, or really unclear about where they're going and how things can potentially unfold, what the whole purpose of it is. Other traditions, that's put there, but there's maybe not so much emphasis on how to work, how to meet with and work with what's going on. Strengths and weaknesses both ways.
Because the Insight Meditation tradition is very much a kind of ad hoc, "Here we are. What's happening? Let's deal with it" kind of thing, the teaching, in a way, has evolved around that. So for instance, historically, the whole mettā thing -- when I started, it wasn't around hardly at all. Very little mettā. People talked about it very, very rarely. And there was a lot of talk about really trying hard and pushing, and a lot of people were having a lot of difficulty -- either the practice was getting very dry, or like I did early on in my practice, just hitting a brick wall and kind of everything exploding in a very actually impossible to handle way (I had to stop practising).
People started to realize -- I think it was the beginning of the nineties -- "You know, it would really help this if we added some mettā juice to kind of lubricate things and soften things." And now it's become very kind of mainstream that that's part of the mix, and we talk in a much softer way. So all that -- it's kind of an evolving thing. I think even beyond that, different teachers have more of a sense of their relationship to the tradition and the Eastern tradition, so a person might be very intent on preserving the tradition and keeping it as much as possible, or they might be the kind of personality that thinks about, "How can I transport this tradition?", or they might be the kind of person who thinks about, "How can this tradition evolve? How is it moving forward?"
So if you look at 2,500 years of Buddhism, it's huge changes. And you could say evolution or decay, depending on your point of view. Some people would think, "The original Buddha, the Pali Canon, that's the best, and everything that happened after that, Mahāyāna and especially tantra is a kind of debasement and mixing up of Buddhism with all this other stuff. The real thing is getting back to the original." Or you could look at it and say, "How interesting, how lovely that the Dharma is progressing and actually evolving," that in other words, there's something perhaps even richer and better in some way in late Dharma than in early Dharma. It's kind of like the reincarnation thing. It's like, what do I want to believe about that? Do you see what I'm saying? We have a predisposition either to look backwards for authority or to look forwards with the sense of opening up.
Yogi: Yeah. I think what's under the question is, you know, a trust ...
Rob: ... In?
Yogi: In teachers -- just in your example of mettā, you know, I've been to some retreats where it's like [?], mettā seems to get all the ... [?] And I do trust the teachers, I really do. But it's like, they've been doing this much longer than I have, and there is a trust, and maybe that's what I was asking about.
Rob: Yeah. Making sure what?
Yogi: Making sure that trust was there.
Rob: Yeah. I mean, that's beautiful. Thank you. For me, I'm asking questions all the time, you know? And the way I teach comes very much out of my practice, what I've discovered experimenting, and certainly from others, but also what works, what helps. But also I ask in my teaching, is this helping people? Is this making a difference? Every day I ask that question, you know. And I'm sure other teachers, it's the same. It's like, what's working? What's helpful? Probably the huge emphasis on mettā as well is just because our culture, we have so much harshness and sort of disconnection from kindness to oneself that that's really needed. Equanimity is a kind of quality that would tend naturally to come out of sustained mindfulness anyway, so maybe it doesn't need so much emphasis, but. I'm not sure if I've answered your questions at all. Is that okay? Yeah? Okay. Thank you. Is there any more about that that we can ...?
Yogi 2: [?] the expression of trust in teachers, but it just seems also really, the Dharma is at the beginning in the West, of all the hundreds of years process like in China and Tibet. It was a long time before we knew what it would look like. And the responsibility for how that goes isn't just with teachers. It's with practitioners. I think we just have to be really careful about the trust that we place out there and the trust that we place ...
Rob: Mm, thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, Dharma in the West, I mean, if it was a birth, the baby's head is not even yet out of the birth canal. It's just at the very beginnings. And like in Japan, like in Tibet, etc., it meets the culture, the cultural assumptions, the cultural zeitgeist, the cultural ways of doing things, all that. It's meeting modern Western psychology in a big way, so much so that it's completely mixed already in all kinds of ways. So as Jenny says, the birthing is happening with lots of different conditions coming in, not just from the teachers; from everybody, you know. We're all kind of finding our way in that.
Q3: relationship between mind and perception, aspects of mind; refining and deepening insight
Rob: Okay. If I can read this ... "Does sensation require mind to perceive it? Therefore, is awareness an aspect of mind? If that were true, if in the absolute sense there is no mind, there would also be no awareness? Some people say there is only awareness?!?" Question mark, exclamation mark, question mark. [laughter] Okay. Yikes. All right. Does sensation require mind to perceive it -- well, part of the difficulty with this particular area is words. So these words, particularly the word 'mind,' gets used to mean a lot of different things. So sometimes when we talk about mind, what a person's really talking about is their chattering thoughts and their sort of rational mind, and that's what they mean, the mind. I suppose -- well, first of all, in the Buddhist tradition, 'mind' also gets used as a word, but in lots of different ways.
So we can say that that rational mind is a part of the mind; you could say that. But there are other parts, too, which include perception, feeling, consciousness, awareness, intention, all kinds of things. All these are aspects of mind. So one way of looking at the mind is it's a kind of -- it's just a way of looking at the mind, but it's a kind of collection of different aspects that work together to perceive, to conceive, to think, etc. And sensation, yes, requires mind to perceive it. It requires those factors of perception and feeling and volition, even, consciousness, all of that. [pause] What would be helpful here? I think meditatively what can happen is, as things deepen a little bit, the experience can open up in lots of different ways. There are lots of possibilities for the ways the experience can open. One of them is that what comes to the fore more is the sense of awareness.
Actually, if I relate this back -- it can happen in lots of different ways, but one very common way that it can happen, if you remember we were talking today and in one of the other talks about opening up the sense of the space, and within that, thoughts, body sensations, sounds, all the rest of it, arise and pass, arise and pass. One of the sort of turnings that can take -- not really turning; one of the evolutions that can take as practice deepens, is that that space comes to feel like it is awareness. And so rather than awareness is somehow in here, in my brain, looking out at the world, one gets a very, very different sense of things, very beautiful, very lovely sense that actually awareness is vast, absolutely vast, infinitely vast, and all this stuff is happening in awareness, so to speak. So the birdsong, the voice, the sight, even, is all taking place within a vast awareness that is much less personalized. People give that all kinds of different names. Does that make sense if I vaguely describe the experience like that? Yeah?
As that sense deepens, it can deepen to an even other level of sense of things where there's much less of a sense of difference between the objects that arise in the space, the sound, the body sensation, the sight, whatever it is. Much less difference between those objects and the awareness. It's as if it's all one stuff, one substance, one awareness. So when this person writes, "Some people say there is only awareness," that's actually coming out of that kind of meditative experience, which, for a dedicated meditator working, is actually not that rare, and it's a kind of mystical sense of things, repeatable, and one really begins to get a very altered sense. Rather than there is a material world and a mind in here, everything is awareness, there is an ocean of awareness of which this piece of paper or this sound or whatever, it's almost like a wave in that. Does this make vague sense even? Someone make some body movement. [laughter] Yes? Okay.
So I would say that's an important, very, very beautiful, very important, and to a certain depth very liberating opening of the perception. That's what I would say. Meditative opening. Beautiful. Usually it comes out of meditation. It could happen through other things as well. Now, then you also hear sometimes, "There is no mind. Ultimately there is no mind." What does that mean? Well, that, like I said at the beginning of this question, it depends what we mean by 'mind.' What does it mean? Some people say no mind is a state of no thinking. Again, it's just a meditative state. The rational mind has gone quiet. What would it mean to say that there's also no awareness? Something much more profound is being pointed at here.
Now, given that state I just described, a person could say there's no awareness because there's nothing substantial there, there's nothing solid, it's all this immaterial, unsolid stuff; I can't really find it. That's a certain level of seeing that there's no awareness, but it's maybe not the full insight into it. Clearly there is awareness, because we are aware. But what does it mean to say there's no awareness, which is to say the ultimate truth of awareness is that there's no awareness? In different language, we say it's empty. How am I going to see that? That seeing is incredibly liberating. I don't know if I can explain that briefly! [laughs]
Not only is awareness not solid, it also -- let's change it around this way: what is awareness? Actually, if you ask what awareness is, awareness means knowing. The word in Pali or Sanskrit is viññāṇa, which is like a present participle verb. It means knowing, knowing of something. So knowing means something must be known. So it needs a known. A subject and object, awareness and the perception -- they're actually two sides of the same coin. They rest on each other. When one sees deeply in meditation -- it's a whole avenue to see it; maybe we'll come to it with the other questions, I don't know -- when you see that perception is actually empty, you see that awareness is leaning on something empty. It's empty as well. There's nothing real in the whole show.
I don't think this is possible to explain in this situation. Maybe we'll get to it in the talks and things. I don't know who asked this. Do you need a bit more, or anyone else here? Can you see that there are different levels of understanding, depending on what the words mean and ...? Okay, great. I wonder if it will come out in some of the other talks and things. But let's say this. And for me, it's a kind of principle of practice. There's a beautiful saying in the Dzogchen tradition, which says, "Trust your experience, but keep refining your view." For instance, if a person has, let's say, that experience of everything being awareness, and they get the sense of the insubstantiality of awareness, my encouragement would be actually to really dwell there and hang out there. There's a certain level of freedom that's very beautiful. There's an opening of heart. There's all kinds of transformation of the being happening through being in contact with that.
It's just, don't set up a house there, because there might be an even deeper level of insight that unfolds out of that. But if you're getting some sense of either no mind, that the mind, the rational mind, is an illusion and an illusion-maker, or that everything is awareness, anywhere down on these kind of tiers of deeper insight, if you're there for a while and it's feeling freeing, hang out there. Really use that altered perception to really work on the being. When it's mature, then it can go to the next level, rather than kind of trying to figure it out all at once. Is that okay?
Yogi: Can I just say one ...
Rob: Please, yes.
Yogi: If we're talking about truth, [?], so the truth being no mind, in the deeper sense, recognizing that, is it dependent on being in some deep meditative state in order to recognize that? Because if it's in some way obvious or true, does one need to be in a deep meditative state to realize it? And if one isn't and one realizes it, does that mean it's somehow invalid? Do you understand the question?
Rob: For any of those levels, you mean?
Yogi: Especially the deeper insights. Are they dependent on ...
Rob: I would say the deeper insights with this are probably made much more likely with deeper meditative states, yeah. It's as if they allow much more this kind of breaking apart of things and seeing their emptiness. But what's also interesting to me with all this is that people -- this came up in the work retreat meeting yesterday. I see that people get insights and absorb insights and take on different openings and open freedom in different ways. So some people, the primary vehicle is meditation and meditative depth, and learning to unfold that, and learning to bring different meditative views into play to unfold something. Other people -- or it's a mix, different times for the same person -- other people actually use the rational mind quite a lot, and you can actually prove logically that awareness is empty. For some people, that's actually a very powerful way in, and using that, bringing it into meditation a little bit, and then letting it go deep. So there's also that. Then there's also, for some people or someone at a different time, there's also just intuitive -- something is known intuitively; there's an intimation of something, and it's neither coming out of primarily a meditative depth or the thinking mind, the logic. And that can make the same difference as well. So it varies. Probably a lot of people have combinations of all those, you know. And sometimes it can just happen spontaneously, spontaneous intuition.
For me, there's always a sense of it's possible to refine insights and deepen. So one might have an intuition of something, or just a sense, "This is how it is. This is the truth of things." Especially when we talk about emptiness, emptiness has a very subtle meaning. So the meaning of what it means to say this or that is empty, or the mind is empty, that can be refined and taken deeper and deeper. So even if intuition and intimation is one's primary way, even that process can deepen over time so that one's insights mature and deepen. But yeah, I really see there's quite some diversity in how people open and free themselves. Is that all right? Do you want to say more? No? Okay.
Q4: allowing as an aspect of mindfulness
Rob: Okay. I can go on through the questions, or does anyone ...? If there's anything else or anything that's come so far for anyone. "In your first talk, you said something like, 'This is not just about mindfulness. It is a profound allowing our experience to be as it is.' Isn't this an intrinsic aspect of what mindfulness means?" I'm not quite -- I don't quite remember exactly what I said. It might be referring to when I was talking about letting go of clinging as a way to deepen samādhi.
When we talk about mindfulness, like all these words, you start unpacking them and you realize that there's more to -- mindfulness is a kind of composite; there's quite a lot to it. If we take out two, we could say principle aspects of mindfulness, one is clarity; it's just clear about what's going on, what the experience is, precision of clarity of what's happening on the one hand. And on the other hand, and especially nowadays, these days, we tend to emphasize the aspect of acceptance, acceptance of what's happening. There are many other factors, too, actually, of what mindfulness is. But say one has those two factors. Each of them, we could say, is refinable and able to be deepened, to be strengthened, so that one can be more or less precise in noticing what's happening in the mindfulness, and also more or less allowing, more or less accepting.
Now, oftentimes we tend to assume, "I'm being mindful of something. Therefore, because it's mindfulness, I must be accepting it." But actually, if you start being mindful of mindfulness, you realize that mindfulness, at different times, has lots of different flavours or qualities to it. Sometimes it has a modicum of acceptance in it, it's true, but hidden within that is a bit of rejection or grasping onto what's going on. Maybe clear. Oftentimes it's just not clear. It's there. So it's possible -- another way of practising, rather than worrying so much about the precision of the object that you're looking at is actually really emphasizing this allowing. So don't just assume that it's there. What would happen if we really, really leaned over into emphasizing the allowing, welcoming, 130 per cent, allowing, allowing, allowing? That becomes -- you could call it mindfulness, but it actually starts to take a different route in the insights it unfolds, a very different route. Something different will happen than if I just assume that allowing is there because it's mindfulness, and I keep emphasizing the precision and the clarity.
Do you understand what I'm getting at? We can allow this much, or this much, or this much. There's a whole spectrum of how much we can allow, really quite deep, and emphasizing that starts to unfold a very different avenue of insight. I don't know who asked this question, but does that answer at all?
Yogi: [?]
Rob: That's part of what I'm saying.
Yogi: [?]
Rob: I would agree. All these terms are elastic, especially mindfulness and samādhi and things like that. What I would just say is, rather take advantage of that elasticity. It's possible within that breadth and within that elasticity to actually take advantage of the elasticity, and actually start stretching the elastic this way. Like an elastic band, I can stretch it in different ways. And if I stretch it that way, I start to get a different set of insights that unfold than if I stretch it that way. To me, this has everything to do with emptiness, and explaining da-da-da-da ... It will unfold very, very interestingly. Maybe it will come into other talks, but. So when, for instance, we really lean on the allowing and really make the practice -- the primary intention is allowing, allowing moment to moment what's happening, how fully can I allow or welcome or whatever it is (which means not just 'not reject,' but also not grasp; really relaxing the push and the pull with objects), that starts to unfold in quite a different way than if I'm sitting here just noticing and kind of accepting just at a certain level, as it gets deeper. And what unfolds is very, very interesting in terms of insight. Very important, I would say. Is that enough? Yeah? Okay. Great.
Q5: bare awareness and mettā
Rob: "Please describe how is it possible, the practice of working with bare awareness and mettā at the same time." Who was this from? You don't have to say. I'm just curious if the person had heard anything about this practice before, bare awareness and mettā. No? Okay. I'll just throw something out and hope that it hits the mark. One of the reasons, to me, that this -- what we've just described, and the response we just gave to Jenny about the sort of different directions that practice can unfold, is that one actually starts to realize that bare awareness is a bit of an illusion. So we can feel -- and it's a helpful concept at a certain level -- that we can be mindful, again, if we use this elastic term, I can be in the moment, and whatever comes up (this pain, or this sound, or whatever it is), that I can find a way of being with it, being aware of it, without so much projection, and without too much reactivity, and underneath the level of my concepts and the veil of my concepts and images. Then a person says, "I'm with this thing as it is. I have bare attention or bare awareness of this thing, its actuality, its reality."
As far as I'm aware, the Buddha never -- there's no word that I know that the Buddha used that means 'bare awareness.' I don't think it exists as a concept. What happens if we assume that is oftentimes the practice will kind of plateau at that level. We will keep feeling that we meet the bare actuality of things, and then we might construct a whole kind of philosophy or metaphysics or version of Buddhism around that. But actually, for instance, if we just pick up a thread here of what we were just talking about, if you do this other practice, or this other leaning of practice, one among many possibilities, or the awareness thing we were talking about just earlier, and you follow that, and you follow that, and you follow that thread, that way of looking at things, one does not arrive at a sort of basic actuality of things. That's not what unfolds. Quite the opposite.
Actually what happens is things begin to soften, to lose their edges, to blur, to fade. A person thinks, "This can't be right." It is right. Something very, very significant is happening. Eventually, in deeper and deeper states, the world of perception begins to fade out, begins to literally disappear through the very way that I'm looking at it. Not because I'm spaced out and looking somewhere else. Through the very way that I'm -- if we use the word, I'm being mindful of it, the flavour, the insight within the mindfulness, is not fabricating typical perceptions. It's not constructing. One starts to realize, this whole world of perception, rather than being "it really is like this, it really is like that, and I can arrive at how it really is" (that's what they call 'intuitive realism' -- this assumption that there really is a reality and I can know what it is), something much more mysterious, actually much more beautiful, starts to unfold. It's not there. This is a way into emptiness.
So that's why I was wondering where this question came from or what they had heard. I think it's actually impossible -- bare awareness is a concept that we can use in practice, at a certain level. Helpful in terms of stripping the grosser projections away, the grosser sort of overlay of images, etc. If I keep that concept in mind, I will keep bumping into that kind of reality. I will keep creating that kind of reality. If I dare let that go and start exploring in different ways, I will see that that's just a construct (that there is a real actuality of the way things are). It's just a construct, and it goes much deeper than that. The real nature of things is that they are empty.
So the connection with this and mettā is maybe not obvious at all, but again, if we follow this thread about the allowing, it's possible for a person, if you've done a lot of mettā practice, and you've really got this kind of stream of mettā going, or compassion, and it's really available over a longer retreat, usually we direct mettā towards beings -- may I be well, may you be well, etc., may all beings be well. It's possible to take that stream of mettā and actually start directing it towards phenomenal experience -- in other words, this sensation, this sound, this emotion, this thought, whatever it is, body experiences -- and either zap them with your laser gun of mettā, or actually hold them in this much more allowing space. This actually interfaces a lot with this allowing practice we were just talking about.
If the mettā has kind of gathered, accumulated some strength, something again very remarkable starts to happen. There are actually people in this room who've done this practice and know what happens on retreat. Again, rather than arriving at some actuality of what the thing is, I'm holding it right there in consciousness, very clear, very present, looking at it, directing mettā towards it, it begins to soften. It begins to lose its solidity. It begins to lose its edges, its boundaries. And it begins to fade. The perception, the phenomenal perception of that object begins to fade. What on earth is going on? What's going on? There it is, I'm not spacing out; I'm changing the way of relating to it. A thing does not exist independent of the way that I relate to it. To be a thing, it needs for me to conceive of it, relate to it in a certain way.
So once the mettā has gathered some strength, it's possible to kind of shift it and start using it as insight practice, and it starts teaching us about dependent origination, about emptiness. In terms of a practice, it's actually relatively simple. You're taking the mettā, what was towards beings, and you just start directing it towards experience. Whatever experience is there, can I direct mettā towards that, direct that flow of mettā towards that? Or really, really emphasize -- if we talk about acceptance, allowing, it's a kind of kindness. So again, if you approach it that way, it works as well. Very skilful means, because in softening the relationship with things, it softens dukkha as well. It takes the dukkha out of things. It eases the suffering. But something else happens which is much more radical about actual perception, about things being things. A thing is not really a thing. So I don't know if that answers the question. That's why I was just curious what the person had heard, because with bare awareness, it kind of sets it up in a different direction that doesn't really work. But maybe that's enough. Okay. I'll assume it's enough.
Q6: cultivating flexibility of self-view
There's one more question, which is quite an interesting one. But how are you guys doing? Have you had enough, or ...? Is it okay, a bit more? Yeah? Okay. "Could you talk more about flexibility of self-view?", which I think I mentioned in one of the talks. "How can we develop or cultivate qualities that support this flexibility?" Okay. This is a huge question, and really, really interesting. But let's just say a few things and hope that it's helpful. Sometimes -- maybe this relates to the question about the Dharma and the history of the Dharma. Nowadays, I feel like we struggle more, this whole question of self, very deep question, and we struggle more in our culture and these days a lot around the personality level, what I would call the personality level of the self -- how we feel or sense ourselves as personalities.
You sense, reading the original Buddhist texts, that this wasn't really much of an issue for people. Our culture, personality is so much of how we feel the self, our sense, our notion of personality, "I am like this" or "like that," "I have this kind of personality, it's an interesting one," "It's not an interesting one," or whatever it is, "Is it good enough?", because we live in such an individual culture, quite different. So that a lot of the dukkha, a lot of the suffering that people experience in relation to self-view is at the level of the personality. Does that make sense when I say that? Yeah?
So one level of talking about this is just at the personality level. And there's maybe a couple of things. One can start paying attention to the way the mind rigidly defines oneself. So you start to pay attention when we use the language of "I am this" or "I am that," "I am an angry person," or "I am" whatever it is, and actually how rigidly we hold certain views about ourselves at the personality level, "I am like this," "I am like that." So a lot of the inflexibility is just that -- it's rigidity of certain self-definitions. One of the things that's possible, and again, it comes just through paying attention in a more consistent way through a day, you start to see, for instance, there are lots of times in the day when I am not angry, if I think I'm an angry person, or I'm not failing, or I'm not whatever it is. And you start to see all these gaps in this definition which was just sort of washed over the whole of the self. Has lots and lots of gaps in it. It's the continuity of mindfulness that exposes the gaps. Do you see? Yeah? So very, very simple: you just pay attention to what the definitions are, catch them, and then, through the continuity of mindfulness, that reveals the times when they're not there. It can't be as rigid as it seems. There are lots and lots of gaps in it.
I think maybe this came out of the part of the talk where we were talking about working with images the other day. Again, we tend to see ourselves or feel ourselves at a personality level this way or that way: "I am this. I am that." So we have a kind of image of our self, self-view, self-image. "It's like this. This is how I am. This is how I express myself. These are the kind of feelings that I have as a person," etc. One of the advantages of working with different images is you can play with as if taking on this other image that may be quite different to how one tends to see oneself, or maybe actually how one sees oneself typically but one hasn't seen the beauty in it or the strength in it or the vitality in it, and actually just play with taking that image on. So you know what's happening, you're being mindful, and you're exploring, if you like, a different self-image, a different self-identity.
In doing that, in moving from this self-image to another self-image to another self-image, maybe there are ones we don't allow ourselves because the self-view at the personality level has been too tight. Do I let this or that aspect out? Do I feel into that? Maybe -- we were talking about different kinds of sexuality -- whatever; it could be anything. Maybe it's kindness and softness, someone was saying the other day. Many possibilities. Maybe it's the expression of force and strength that we just hold back from. So what is it to actually let the imagination go, and play a little bit with feeling into that and that self-image? Now, it's not for the sake of identifying with that, but actually, again, you're stretching something one way and stretching it another way, and in stretching it, the whole thing becomes more elastic, much more elastic.
But just as with objects, you start to realize the self is actually not this or that, like this or like that. It's not for the purpose of making rigid another self-definition, but actually seeing the fluidity that's in there, being free to express in all kinds of ways, and ways that bring more life, more vitality. Walt Whitman said, "I am large, I contain multitudes." Maybe we're more like that than we realize. There are many selves in here, you could say. Now, I don't think doing that makes us schizophrenic. If the mindfulness is there, if the sensitivity is there, like I was talking, you know, it's an 'as if'; it's a game a little bit. But it's doing something to the being. It's doing something to the sense of self.
At another level, again, maybe picking up a few threads. If you take this awareness practice that we were talking about with the big space of awareness and letting everything belong to that, or if you take this allowing practice that we were talking about, and you just pursue that, and you just gently, over and over, take that as your track in practice, in meditation, for a while, or just simple mindfulness the way we tend to usually think about it, something will tend to happen as the practice gains a little momentum: it's that the sense of self begins to soften. More accurately, we could say the self is being constructed less. So you start to get the realization that the self is a construction. My sense of self is a construction. And I can construct it a lot, a whole hell of a lot when I get into some papañca thing and really reactive and really tight with my definitions, really, really constructing a lot; I can let go of a bit of papañca and actually I construct less self, there is less self-sense being constructed then; basic mindfulness, a little less as it's sustained. Starting to do some of these other practices, they have the power of going even deeper -- less self constructed, less self constructed, less self constructed.
At a certain point on that continuum, you might feel like the self, the whole personality level, has just gone quiet. The personality level kind of belongs up at this end of the spectrum, and that's fine. At a certain level, it might just be, "Wow, there's just a process happening here. It's just a process of sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings, and it's all just happening and interacting." Some people would say that is what the self is -- it's a process of aggregates or constituents or whatever that's happening in time. Actually, I would say that's just a certain way down this spectrum of the construction or deconstruction of self-sense. You can keep going. If you pursue some of these practices, you can keep going, constructed less. What is it when you've gone even beyond the sense of a process, beyond the sense of even there are any building blocks of this or that, aspects of mind? There are no aspects of mind. Go right down this spectrum.
Now, I can't hang out there, but what happens for a meditator is you move up and down much more along this spectrum than a person (generally speaking) who doesn't meditate. And it's giving me this insight -- hopefully. It's giving me some relief from the sort of torments of the self, because I can quieten that. But more importantly, it's giving me this insight into what we say the fabricated nature of the sense of self. The self is a construction. In that sense, it's an illusion, a fabrication. We begin to understand how is it that this self is constructed, and realize it's only a construction. It's fine when it's there, because it's an illusion. It's a house of cards. It's a play of light. I need to see that over and over. I go up and down this spectrum through practice, to whatever degree, and I start -- at some point, we cotton on: "Aha! Aha! It's a fabrication, and I understand how it's fabricated." We can see that deeper and deeper and more and more comprehensively.
Then there's a huge sense of elasticity with the sense of self. Not just up and down, but it's like any sense of self at all is a fabrication. Even this sense of the self that it's just a process of bare awareness, etc., it's a fabrication. It's an illusion at a certain level. And that starts to allow huge flexibility in the sense of self. It's fine if it's constructed. It's fine if it's not constructed. It's fine if it's constructed a little bit. It's all just a play. It's just a play.
So to answer the question, I mean, again, we could say loads about this, but let's just pick out what we just said. Just simple mindfulness, with continuity, starts to expose the gaps in rigid self-views. You see they're just not true all the time and it starts to open some flexibility. Playing with the imagination and feeling the self and feeling the body and the self-image in different ways can be wonderful for opening up some flexibility of the self-view. And then generally, any meditation, whether it's samādhi or mettā or these kind of practices we've talked about today, they're all moving down this spectrum of constructing the self less. If I can move up and down on that spectrum, which is what practice is from one perspective, it's what's happening in practice, I begin to see, I begin to understand, to cotton on what's happening, then the whole sense of self begins -- we've exposed the unreality of it, and the sense of flexibility comes then much more easily.
Does that make sense? [laughs] All right. Okay. That was quite a long session. We should probably stop there. I don't know who asked that question or if that was enough. Is that enough to go on?
Yogi: Yes. I would say so. [inaudible]
Rob: Okay, good. Let's have a bit of quiet time together. [pause] Pardon me for saying one more thing. I don't know -- sometimes, you know, people ask questions, etc., and I give a response, and some people might be thinking, "Well, that sounds miles away from my experience," etc. So this thing that I just said about the spectrum, you know, sure the deep end is deep, and that's not easy to access. But actually, even if I don't meditate, I'm moving along this spectrum. We can get a sense of creating more self, more solid, more tight, more separate, more built up, more constructed, or less -- even without meditating. We start to see, "Oh, this spectrum, this fabrication, is happening anyway." As meditators, all of us, wherever we're at, are increasing the range of that range of construction and deconstruction. That's all. If we think about it in those terms, I'm not talking about anything that's beyond anyone's experience. It's just a way of understanding already what is in any human being's experience. That's all.
A tiny bit more silence.
