Transcription
Okay. So please let me know at any point if you can't hear what I'm saying. I'd like to jump right in with the teachings right now and actually divide them in sort of bite-sized chunks, or fairly bite-sized chunks over the day, along with sitting and walking practice. Is there anyone that's totally new to meditation and ...? Fairly new? Ah, okay. Okay, great, thank you. I will, in the period before lunch, I'll sit right here, and if anyone has any questions about the sort of nuts and bolts of meditation, that would be the time, or one of the times to come ask. Because what I want to talk about today is not so much about that. But please do take advantage and come and ask if there's something you want to check in about around it. Yeah?
What I want to talk about today is not advanced. I don't think it's advanced. I'm not sure, but I don't think it's advanced. So even if you feel relatively new, it's not that what I want to offer is particularly advanced. What it is, I think, is different. So I want to perhaps open up a different direction or a different arena, different than perhaps what many of us might be familiar with or used to in how we approach the Dharma and how we think of things, how we actually feel our existence. So it's different. In a way, I want to go into this whole different arena through quite a common entry point, and that is the self. The self and the problems of the self is our thread into this area. But like I said, I want to take a different route in and open it up in a different way, a different approach.
And in opening it up, I feel that it's actually opening a door to something huge, something really quite vast to orient oneself and navigate within. So I've been wanting to teach around this, in this area, for a little while, and I keep postponing it. So now is the time. And we're really just nibbling at something that is much, much bigger, taking a small bite out of something much huger. So I hope that it transfers in a day. I hope there's enough that can kind of cohere in a day, that can stand on its own. It may feel that some of what's being said or communicated is pretty far out. It may seem that way. And I think it is, again, compared to our usual approaches, notions, assumptions. But you have options here. So you could take just a little bit of what we're going to be talking about, you can just take a little bit, something to use occasionally as a sort of adjunct meditational technique -- you pull something out of a little hat of tricks and use it occasionally. You can take it like that. Or you can take a bit more of what's being said, or a bit more, or really quite a lot. And if you move more to that end and take quite a lot, it's actually quite a potentially radical opening in how we tend to conceive of things, including the Dharma and including existence. So partly saying all that just to set the stage, and also to ask for open-mindedness when you're listening, as we go through.
Okay. So since not so many beginners, how many of you have heard a teaching, something like, in spiritual sort of perspectives, saying, "Well, the problem, the root problem is the self. The root problem is the ego." Yeah? Familiar with that kind of language? Okay. So we've heard that a lot. We point the finger for the cause of our troubles and woes and suffering and dis-ease, dukkha, at the self. And then you've probably heard, "Yes, that's what we need to expose as an illusion -- the self as an illusion. The self is an illusion." Or, in Dharma language, "It's empty. The self is empty." Have you heard this kind of ...? Yeah? Now, some of you, and especially in Buddhist circles, and some Buddhist circles in particular, will have heard, "Yes, the self is not real. The self is not real. This is what we want to understand. What there is is bodily processes, the sort of processes, organic processes of the body; the processes of feelings and perceptions and thoughts and mind movements and consciousness. And there's this trundling forward, the process of those things -- bodily processes, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness, what's called the five aggregates in technical language. And all there is is that. There's a process of these things in time. But there is no self with that."
If you've heard that kind of thing before, some of you are quite familiar with that. "The self is not real, but these aggregates and their process is real, and that's all there is." So the self becomes -- there isn't a real self, but what there is is this process of these aggregates in time. And often we hear that, and we say, "Oh, that's the truth of things." We take it as a truth. And if we do, there are all kinds of problems that follow, all kinds of problems. If I believe that, that there is no self but there is this process of aggregates, of five aggregates, all kinds of problems ensue. I mean, the first thing to say about it is the Buddha never said that. It's a contemporary spin -- actually, it's not that contemporary; it goes back a while. The Buddha never said the self is the process of the aggregates in time, it's just this process of elements. You can read the whole shelf-load of what the Buddha said and you won't find any statement like that.
There are other problems with it, too, in that the thrust of the Buddha's teaching is actually not just seeing that the self is illusory, seeing actually everything is empty. So that includes those elements that are supposed to be in a process -- the body and its organic processes, the feelings, the perceptions, the mind, the mental formations, the thoughts, the consciousness; all of that is what he calls a magic show, illusory. We need to see the emptiness of all of it. So just saying the self is a process is a little bit limited in depth. This is a slight tangent, but just to mention. What you get in the Buddha's teaching is more, can you look at things, can you adopt a way of looking, that sees these elements -- consciousness, and thoughts, and emotions, and feelings, body -- and see them as not-self. And if you do that, adopt that way of looking, what will unfold, what will disappear, actually, what will dissolve in your experience? So he takes it, very important phrase, as a way of looking. Not as a teaching of truth, but as a way of looking that you can adopt and go on a journey with and it opens up something very profound.
So not only is it not what the Buddha said, and not only is it limited in terms of the depth -- that's by the by -- what I want to focus on today is that it's limited in a different way. It's limited and limiting, that kind of teaching, psychologically. So believing that this is the true nature of the self, that it's this process of elements, is limited and limiting psychologically. To say there is not a self, there are just aggregates, there are just these elements, consciousness and all the rest of it, what it does is it simplifies. It's a way of simplifying, simplifying this complexity of experience out there and in here. And it simplifies, and it simplifies the suffering that we feel, at times. That's the key thing: at times. In other words, there are times when relating to things that way, seeing things that way, is helpful, is going to cool desire, it's going to simplify, it's going to ease suffering. But then there are other times when it's completely and utterly the wrong teaching; it's the wrong way of looking at things.
How does that fare, to conceive of oneself as just a process of aggregates, some machine trundling along of elements, how does that fare in a romantic situation, when you're falling in love? How does it fare when you're in bed with someone, making love? How does it fare when you're engaged in some intensity of artistic production over a long period of time? Can you see that it's not -- it's an inappropriate teaching. Yeah? It's going to flatten something. It oversimplifies something. It's actually not helpful in a certain direction.
[9:50] If we're not going to adopt this assumption that it would be better if we were celibate, it would be better to let go of the sort of hassle that it takes to create big works of art or whatever, if we're going to say yes to eros and not put that down, then actually maybe we have to let go of some of the oversimplification that we get in some Dharma teachings. The simplifying that doesn't serve something, that tends to flatten something. So even think, "Be in the moment, don't cling, desire leads to suffering" -- these things are taken for granted and we try to apply them to the whole of our life. We think, "Oh, I can't kind of fit it in there." It's the wrong thing.
Our modern life is complex, and by that, I don't just mean things like this and the fact that we're plugged in in a million different ways with Facebook and Twitter and all that. I don't just mean complex in terms of busyness. Our modern life is psychologically complex in a way that it never was at the Buddha's time. The whole way we feel the self, and sense, intuitively sense ourselves these days, is actually, at one level, different than, say, at the Buddha's time. If you open up, again, the Buddha's suttas, you don't get, for instance, all these people experiencing a lot of inner critic or struggle with their personality. It's just not there. It's partly because the whole sense of self is different. So we inhabit and feel a different sense of self nowadays than that, and it's very complex, we're much more complex psychologically.
And if, as I said, in addition to that, the whole sensibility we have and sympathy we have with, let's say, the whole area of romantic love -- again, it's different now. We inherited something from European culture, from the troubadours and Tristan and Isolde -- all this stuff goes back to the twelfth century, and now it's saturating our culture. You can say, "It's all rubbish. It's all hype," or whatever -- it's the air we breathe. And most of us say yes to that. We're enamoured of those kind of myths. So the self is more complex; we're inhabiting a different psychic terrain. And if we're not going to say no to all that, if we're actually going to open and move in the world saying yes to that, and all the complexity and the richness and the depth and the fire and the passion, the possession, the dark gods, the madness of being in love and whatever else, if you're going to say yes to all that and not say no, then we need to be careful of what we might call the fantasy of simplism, making everything too simple, trying to fit it into too simplistic spiritual teachings.
Because in that -- for instance, just to take one example of this teaching of "there is not self, there is just this process of the five aggregates," that flattens something. Sometimes you want to flatten things, and sometimes we really do not want to flatten things, because we're killing something, something that has life, something that's flame -- we're putting it out. So we need somehow to have more, I don't know, richness, flexibility, sophistication in how we're approaching all this. This personality, as I said, is complex. The way we feel ourselves is complex. The expressions of self, how we express that in a million different ways in our lives, it's complex now. It's also where a lot of the suffering that we in this culture, the very privileged culture, encounter. If you don't have, say, a chronic illness or a terminal diagnosis or something, most of us are well-fed, pretty comfortable, not really touched directly by war and famine and all that stuff. Most of the suffering we encounter is at the level of personality -- the expressions of the self, the complexities in the personality with seemingly irreconcilable forces in there, etc.
So, yes, very helpful to see the whole self, at every level, completely empty. And actually last year when I came, the theme, I think, was emptiness. So it's slightly different, or actually quite a lot different. So, yes, that's great to see it's empty. Even helpful sometimes to see things as a process of aggregates. But, as I said, may have drawbacks, may have blind spots, may spin things in a certain direction where -- not so helpful. So the question is, that I have today, is there another way to approach the self, the expressions of the self, the personality and all that complexity? Can we open up this sense of self in a different way, an alternative way?
[15:16] So I want to, that's what I want to kind of take as a thread through the day. It's a certain way of doing that. And let's start somewhere really simple and very familiar, and as we go through the day it will get less familiar, probably -- almost certainly. Let's start somewhere very, very familiar to most people. Also with quite familiar ways of working. Will be, for many of you, I imagine, quite familiar ways of working. If I say "inner critic," do you know what I'm talking about? [affirmative noises] So I mean by that the kind of self-criticism, self-judging, self-badgering, self-haranguing and harassing and putting down that goes on for so many people in this culture -- never good enough, always something berating oneself for this or for that or for everything. Are you familiar with that? So sometimes people use the language 'superego' or 'inner critic' or whatever, but that kind of psychological constellation. Let's start there.
Now, we can address that painful dynamic, of course, with loving-kindness practice, with mettā practice, and let that soften and soothe and dissolve it, usually over a long period of time. And of course you can dissolve that by seeing deeply that the self is empty in different ways; that will dissolve it. But let's go, as I said, a slightly different direction. Sometimes we have this sense that there -- it almost feels that someone is badgering us, someone is almost sitting on our shoulder and criticizing us continuously, putting us down. So what's possible there is to take this, what can feel like an experience of a person, and actually kind of deconstruct them a little bit. Rather than it being an actual person that's criticizing us, we deconstruct it into elements. There are thoughts, and problematically, there is the belief in those thoughts. So we actually believe these thoughts, "You are, I am, a failure. I'm a ..." whatever. So there are thoughts, beliefs. There's aversion, plenty of aversion, energy of dislike, of judgment. And there are hindrances, as well, you know. All these elements together. So we're not actually dealing with a person, the inner critic. You can deconstruct it into elements, pull it apart and fragment it, and see those fragments, and that takes away some of its power, rather than it all congealing, constellating into one force.
So that's certainly possible. You're kind of deconstructing. Do you understand what I mean by that? Certainly possible. What I want to do is the opposite today. I want to do the opposite. So either spontaneously, or deliberately, it's actually possible to relate to this inner critic as if it was a person. Okay? Either spontaneously or deliberately, actually relate to the inner critic as if it is a person, or an animal, or some kind of figure of the psyche, and actually enter into a relationship with that. Is it possible to have a dialogue? Is it possible to speak and listen, turn towards, and have relationship with this figure? And then there's perhaps sort of two styles of doing that, we could say. You could turn towards this inner critic, and you could challenge everything that he/she/it said, ask it to prove something, question what it means. Every time it says something, you retort with a question. You're probing back at it, standing up to it, questioning it, challenging it. You actually will find that you have more intelligence than this inner critic that tends not to be the smartest in the world. You can bring something of your intelligence to meet it.
Or you could adopt a much more loving approach, much more softness, seeking to understand, much more kindness in relating to this person. And what happens if we do that? What might unfold if we do that slightly different approach? So, again, that will be quite familiar. I'm aware of that. Now, both deconstructing it or letting it be a person and then relating to that person, both will be helpful -- both can be helpful. That's really important to see. It's not like one is right and one's wrong. Both are helpful. It's not the case that the first one, the deconstructing into elements, is true, it's the ultimate truth of what's going on and the second one is just an unreality, a fantasy. They're both helpful. None of them, neither of them, is ultimately true. Neither of them.
If we can do that, if you're willing to do that, you actually begin to see there might be more to this inner critic character than initially we feel. Sometimes we see it's actually not even an inner critic. We turn towards it, we enter into relationship with it, and it's not actually inner critic. Maybe it turns out to be some kind of what I call a clumsy old protector. This figure there, this person, is actually trying to protect you from embarrassment or hurt or something, disappointment, and it's clumsy in the way it's going about it. What if I enter into relationship with it, and let the image of it fill out, and explore that? Maybe the figure transforms. Maybe my relationship with it transforms. Or maybe I can enter into dialogue. Maybe dialogue is possible.
So someone was telling me a while ago they had a lot of inner critic going on, a lot of this criticism, and then, for a change, instead of turning away and just feeling beaten up by it and sort of cowering almost from it, turning towards, turning towards this inner critic, and actually asked it -- she asked it what it wanted. Asking it what it wanted, and asking it why it criticized. And to her enormous surprise, when she asked that, a gentle and extremely kind voice -- she heard a voice, and it replied, "I want you to use your full potential. I want you to use your full potential." It was so imbued with kindness, she was really almost shocked by it. But it touched her deeply. Tears came. Wasn't at all what it seemed to be. The whole character of it was not at all what it seemed to be at first. Oftentimes people talk of the inner critic to me -- also friends -- and I sometimes wonder, I wonder if that really is the inner critic, or is it something else in you -- so to speak, in you -- wanting something, asking you for something more, something different, something perhaps beyond what you usually, where you usually range to.
So not too long ago, a woman was on retreat at Gaia House, and we were in an interview, and she said that she felt a lot of pressure, and a lot of pressure to work very hard on retreat, and it was kind of burdensome. She assumed very quickly, "This is the inner critic." Just assumed, "Oh, that's the inner critic." And then she followed on, said, "My mum died not very long ago." I can't remember how long it was; it wasn't that recent. "My mum died. She was so wonderful, my mum." And she was talking, and she said, "It's really hard to live up to that standard. Really hard to live up to that standard of how my mum was." And I said to her, "You know, she's still alive. She's still alive as an image, as a person in the psyche, a person of the psyche. And she has a certain kind of autonomy. You know that." Now, she understood what I meant. And we're not talking about a denial; she knew that her mum was dead. She wasn't in any denial about that. And she was grieving still. And we're not talking, either, about a kind of spiritualism, you know, contacting spirits with a séance and all that. Something else. Something in a different dimension, if you like.
I said, "Maybe you have a duty to her. Maybe you have a duty to that image. The word 'duty' is often quite heavy for us, but maybe the duty is a beautiful duty. Maybe you have a beautiful duty to this person in the psyche, this person of your mother in the psyche. Maybe her kindness, her generosity, her beauty wants to come through you now. Maybe she," the image of the mother, "maybe she wants that, so to speak." She understood. Immediately she understood. And she started playing with this as a way of looking. And she wrote to me after she left the retreat a little while later how freeing it was, how much it freed up and opened up and actually touched something very deep in her, something very beautiful. She said it's actually quite life-changing. A very different way of relating to what's happening. A way of looking, entertaining a way of looking, that's quite different. It perhaps wasn't that simple, because there was other patterns to work out there, but something different in the relationship and the conception to what was happening. Started off as an assumption of inner critic, came a long, long way, and opened up all kinds of things, all kinds of sense of beauty.
Okay. I'm going to stop there now. And why don't we do a meditation now? So I'll be talking for a while. If you feel like [inaudible], just take thirty seconds or so to stretch, and we'll do a meditation together.
