Transcription
So just recapping very briefly some of what we've talked about so far. I mentioned with regard to the use of the imagination in Dharma practice and other traditions and psychotherapeutic traditions, etc., the range, really, of directions, of flavours, and also of conceptual frameworks that support that use of the imagination. There's quite a range possible, and we just very briefly mentioned some of them. Then also added that given that range, and when one practises a little bit with images and explores a little bit, one comes to see that actually what's most interesting and most significant about imaginal practice is the conceptual framework that we're bringing to bear, that we're creating, if you like, to support imaginal practice, because that's what directs it in this direction or that direction. It's what opens it up. It's what gives it depth and amplifies it. So it's actually the conceptual framework, rather than the images themselves, that is most interesting and significant. Again, there's a range of conceptual frameworks, and I really want emphasize that it's up to you how much of this material you take, where you land with conceptual frameworks (it's really up to you), and how much and how you use images in your practice. It's very much up to you.
Having said that, I also shared some of my, if you like, deeper aims for this retreat. I'm wanting to just be open about that. We also talked just a little bit, a very brief overview of the sort of cultural history that over millennia, in fact, has given rise to the dominant view of our culture -- the sort of view that most people share about reality, and by extension about imagination and images, and what place that has and what place they don't have, etc. Some of that may sound a little academic historically, academic history or something, but it's important because those events, those decisions, these debates that happened, perhaps you think, "Well, that's very abstract," but that filters down and becomes a common view over time. That's what we inherit and that's what we walk around in. That's what saturates, if you like, permeates our consciousness. So it's quite difficult to move out of that, to even realize the force that it has and the limitations that it has on consciousness, on experience, and on the sense of existence.
We mentioned, too, that some are not okay with that dominant view. They feel the limitations, or they intuit or consciously recognize the limitations of it and the fact that it's not necessarily a final truth. They recognize the possibility, they feel a calling, they recognize perhaps the necessity of opening something up further with regard to the imagination and the use of the imagination, because of what it does, we mentioned, with regard to the sense of self and the range of self-experience, the range of self-view and self-sense, and how much that's maybe needed in these times. Also because of what it opens up in the range of experience, and the range of the sense of what is beautiful and what is holy, that whole range of what we regard as beautiful and holy and divine, if you like. Sometimes people feel that is already wanting to expand. They feel that expansion. They feel that calling. They feel that necessity. With all that, there is, for me, what I'm perhaps most interested in, perhaps even above and beyond the use of the imagination, is can we expand, can we expand our felt sense, our felt perception of the range of sacredness, of what is sacred to us, and our felt sense of the sacred? Can that expand beyond either not existing at all, or beyond a quite narrow limitation that was somehow given to us by the culture?
And through that, with that, is there the possibility for us to re-enchant the cosmos? The cosmos that we've inherited from modernist thinking is a very flat cosmos of materiality. I'm going to talk more about this. Is there a place for the skilful use of the imagination that actually does something, opens up something, deepens something, enriches something in our very sense of existence and the world, the cosmos that we live in?
I want to say a bit more now particularly about some of what we'll be exploring in terms of directions in the retreat, and also the kind of conceptions that run alongside the practice, supporting practice. Some of what I'm going to talk about, just mentioning it tonight, it probably won't make complete sense. That's okay. We're going to throw it out there. It's a little signpost, if you like, of where we're going, and also just to plant a seed. It's like, "Oh, yeah, that's a piece that I want to understand." So if you get to the end of the retreat and listen to this introductory talk again, it's like, "That piece, and that piece, and that piece." So we'll mention things now, and then we'll revisit them, elaborate on them over the days.
Given this cultural history and what is really the dominant view in our society, our culture, regarding the imagination, to try to kind of revalidate, if you like, give validity and importance again to imagination, or certain kinds of imagination, certain kinds of use of the imagination, again in the culture, for ourselves, for our practice. To open space and place for imagination that's actually wider and probably more far-reaching than some of the ways it's used, say, in typical psychotherapy, typical psychotherapeutic uses these days. To open space and place, and respect and validity for that, wider and more far-reaching than it has so far. To actually reintroduce or revalidate the idea of some uses of imagination as ways of knowing -- so something quite subtle and profound.
We tend to think when I have knowledge of something -- I know I'm looking at a table; how do I know that that's true? Well, I can kick it. I can ask a hundred other people, and if ninety-nine people agree it's a table, at least that's good enough. Then I know something, I know something that's real. And perhaps I can measure it. Such factors give us a sense of knowing. You say, "Imagination? That's not a way of knowing." But what is it, this question of what I referred to before, epistemology: how do we know anything? What is knowledge? What does knowing mean? That needs to be opened up for us. This is quite subtle and quite profound. Is there a kind of knowing that's different than the commonly agreed-upon meaning and range of what 'knowing' is? If it's just me that sees this image, can that still be, can I open up my idea of what 'knowing' means to give more respect to imagination in some cases, in some usages, so it forms an avenue as a way of knowing?
So to do that, to open up that space and place for some uses of the imagination as a way of knowing, and to map out and differentiate all the different kinds of image that arise, the aspects of imagination, the levels of imagination, the directions, all of that. What is, for example, just the flotsam and jetsam of the mind? What is just daydreaming? What is memory, and the colouring of memory through image and fantasy? What is what's called ESP, extrasensory perception? What's archetypal image? What is the whole range that falls into mystical experiences that are possible in terms of perception of self/other/world? What is this opening (Corbin uses this phrase), the mundus imaginalis, Latin for, it literally means 'the world of the imagination' -- we can say the imaginal realm, the realm of the imaginal. Differentiating, mapping out all that, and all the nuances and all the subtleties of all that. To do that, to open up space and validity for imagination as a way of knowing. And to place all that in a larger, coordinated philosophy and psychology that does explore this question of reality, and opens up the exploration of reality. Is it just 'yes' or 'no,' it's real or it's not real? Are there more subtle shades philosophically, and ways we can open up that whole question of what's called ontology, the study of what's real? And as I said, as well, the study of epistemology. All this needs opening up, or to do that, to place it in that philosophy, which includes ontology, epistemology, cosmology, the sense of the cosmos.
That would be a huge task. Absolutely huge, to revalidate it, to bring it in as a way of knowing, to give it respect, to map it out, to differentiate, to coordinate a much larger and more open philosophy. So I actually don't know anyone after the Scientific Revolution who has even attempted to do that. It could be I just don't know and I'm not aware. There have been certain people like Goethe, the German poet, and Coleridge, also a poet, Jung, of course, Owen Barfield, the English philosopher of the twentieth century. Apparently Rudolph Steiner -- I don't know any of his work, so I'm not sure; I heard indirectly. Ed Casey, American philosopher, Richard Tarnas a little bit, a sort of cultural philosopher. All these in their way have added a little to this quest. In Tibet, Mipham Rinpoche, a great sage of Nyingma, the Nyingma tradition in Tibet. He died, I think, in 1908 or 1912 or something like that. Very beautiful and sophisticated philosophy, bringing emptiness and tantra together, and the whole question of reality and levels of reality. I'm not sure how much, by that time, the sort of Scientific Revolution had reached Tibet, or how much that was integrated in his thought. There have been people who have done this, and I wonder now, and I wonder for this course and this retreat, can we add a little? That means you and me, in our explorations and discussions. Perhaps we can add even a little bit, if that's not too grandiose an idea, to this movement and expansion and opening and exploration. You and I together, talking, sharing our experiences. Is it possible that we can add to this opening movement?
One thing that's quite perhaps necessary, or at least what is possible, is that we can elbow more room, more space and more respect for skilful and nuanced, sophisticated use of the imagination, so that it's less immediately dismissed, so that at least there's a larger willingness to admit that maybe imagination is important for us, maybe that it needs including in our psychology, in our sense and view of what the self is, and our self as an experience, in our philosophy, in our world-view, in our whole idea about so-called 'reality.' Elbowing a little more room to include that, and as I said, to give it some respect as a way, or really ways, of knowing, different forms of imagination as ways of knowing, involved as particular ways of knowing. So one way we can do that and that's possible is by actually turning around and exposing, questioning, critiquing the assumptions of the dominant culture, what I call the modernist metaphysics, that are, as I said, often hidden, not even fully conscious, and very rarely questioned. We can expose, question, and critique those assumptions that run almost in our blood, in the blood of our minds these days. So we can do that without reverting to a kind of simplistic primitivism, trying to go back to the Stone Age sort of thinking, or some other culture from centuries and millennia ago. Without reverting, also, to a kind of naïve religious fundamentalism or naïve New Age fundamentalism.
I have myself spoken and written just a little bit about this in different places with respect to nature, with respect to the self, with respect to the Dharma and other things. And coming at it from different directions, either through Dharma understandings of emptiness, deep Dharma understandings of emptiness, or through more recent sort of openings in Western philosophy, postmodernism, poststructuralism, that sort of stuff. Even some of the openings from modern physics in the last 100 years or so. All of which I and other people find fascinating, really fascinating to explore, and it's very important, very important to bring a more sophisticated philosophy in, I feel. What's very interesting is some people need that to kind of legitimize for themselves imaginal practice, to open the doors for them. They need this kind of elbowing of space, creating more space philosophically. Some people don't need it at all, and actually are not even that interested in it. So that's also quite interesting in itself, why some people do, why some don't.
On this course, on this retreat, I'm actually not going to go too much into all that philosophy stuff. What I want to emphasize more is practice, and really getting into practice, certainly with some of the conceptual stuff, but not so much a critique of the dominant view as opening up other possibilities conceptually, and really emphasize the practice more, and see: what does that open for us in terms of our experience and then in terms of our view?
In terms of practice and what we'll be doing, I just want to make clear as we practise and as we talk about a lot of this, what I'm not doing, what we're not doing, is -- this is not Gestalt psychology. It's not psychosynthesis. It's not Focusing. It's not drama therapy, psychotherapy, or art therapy. It's not voice dialogue work. It's not chöd, if you know that Tibetan practice. You may feel, and it does actually have some common aspects in terms of techniques with those modalities and those ways of working, but again, what I'm going to emphasize is really differentiated primarily from those kind of directions by a different kind of conceptual framework regarding the images, imagination, regarding the self, including emptiness, and regarding also cosmology, this sense of how are we looking at and what are we conceiving or perceiving of the world, of the cosmos. So it might have some aspects in common, but it's actually differentiated a lot by the different conceptual framework underlying it. I'm interested -- I said this before -- I'm interested in the more usual conceptual frameworks regarding images and all those modalities, healing modalities, etc., that I mentioned earlier, but I'm also a little bit, if you like, more interested in what we could call more radical conceptual frameworks. I mentioned this earlier. So let's just highlight three areas of that right now.
(1) One is regarding the self. I touched on this earlier. What would it be to really include a thorough sense of the emptiness of self, and then within that or with that, to really expand the sense of the self? I don't mean in some kind of expanding oneness; I mean in a plurality. Expand the range of the self, not to integrate what we see in some imaginal characters or subordinate them to some central sense of self, but actually to expand radically, together with a view of emptiness, and to turn something around in our relationship of the self to the imaginal figures or what are sometimes called daimons, and the kind of relationship with them and the sense sometimes of what they're asking of us. Instead of these figures serving the self and serving the so-called growth of the self or the journey of the self to awakening or whatever it is, enlightenment, full potential -- all very valid, but what is it to turn that around, in terms of the direction of service? So that's one aspect. I'm going to come back to this in a minute.
(2) The second aspect, and again I've mentioned this before, is the realization, the dawning that fantasy/image/mythos is already permeating our lives. It's already functioning, it's already there, and this is not bad. It's not a bad thing. The word 'fantasy' has very bad press in certainly the Dharma scene for the most part, but what is it to realize that it's already operating, already there in our lives? And that's not a bad thing; we just need to realize it. It's already operating, as well, in relation to our sense and conception and vision and our very feeling of what the Dharma is for us. When we realize that, that pervasion already of fantasy/image/mythos in our lives, and that it pervades also our sense of the Dharma, then that does something to our very sense of the Dharma, eventually. It puts it on a different ground. What then does the Dharma become? Is there another way of conceiving the Dharma, given that realization? That's the second aspect of the more radical conceptual framework.
(3) The third is a word, what I call 'cosmopoesis.' I'm going to talk more about this as the retreat goes on, but this really has to do with, if you like, using the imagination to open up the very sense and perception of the world that we live in, including the material, very much including matter itself. Through the imagination, we realize that, in a way, there's -- 'poiesis' means 'creating,' like poetry, like making poetry -- there's an art to that perception, and a malleability to the perception of the cosmos.
All three of those I'm mentioning very briefly. Some things we're going to return to, as I said. Some key words and concepts, we're going to return to. I just want to mention them now, as I said. All these -- regarding the self, regarding the pervasion of fantasy and what it means for the Dharma, and regarding this what I'm going to call 'cosmopoesis,' this sense of the cosmos -- all of that includes the importance and the nourishing, if you like, the feeding of a sense of soulfulness. That's another word I'm going to explain more what it means as we go, but it's really talking about meaningfulness, resonance, depth, beauty. These things are part of soulfulness for us. We can also talk about 'soulmaking.' So again, I'll come back to this in much more detail. This is very much involved in the conceptual framework of what I want to emphasize over these days. And that taking care of the soul through feeding and nourishing and giving attention to a sense of soulfulness, the soulmaking, that either will open up the sense of imagination as a way of knowing, or it already requires a kind of entering into a trust of the imagination as a way of knowing. So those two aspects are also related to each other.
Just to very briefly fill that out a little bit, what we're talking about here: one of the aspects of the conceptual framework that I want to open up a little bit is with regards to the self. Is it possible, through the use of imagination in different ways, to expand the notion and the sense, the actual experience of self and other? So when I say 'self,' I don't mean just my self; I mean the selves of others. Expanding the notion, the sense of self and other, so that we can feel and know the self as more than a result of neurological or genetic causes or accidents. It's fine to view the self that way. It's a mode of viewing, a mode of seeing the self. But is it possible to actually expand the whole notion of self way beyond that? And way beyond seeing the self as a result of past conditioning in terms of family, culture, education, etc. And also beyond a view of self that is quite popular in the Dharma these days, saying, "The self is just a process. All there is is process." And certainly, beyond all that, but beyond, too, a kind of concretized or tight identification of the self with anything -- any image or self-view or belief. Can we, through the use of imagination, expand the very sense, the very notion and view of self and other, beyond all these? We can include all that at times, fine, but actually radically beyond all that.
Part of what helps is a Dharma understanding that the self, this self and other selves, are empty totally, thoroughly and totally empty, which means much more in Dharma language, I would say, than to say that the self is a process of the aggregates in time, a process of psychophysical constituents. To say that it's empty totally is saying something much more thorough and profound than that. And realizing, too, that because the self is thoroughly empty, the perception of the self and the sense of the self is malleable. It's something that we can shape through and with the imagination. It's thoroughly empty, thoroughly, deeply empty, and it's malleable.
But going beyond, too, is it possible to expand the notion of the self, the sense of the self, way beyond the sort of typical humanistic notions of self and personhood? As I mentioned, in Western culture, modern Western culture, and also in Dharma culture, there's a kind of poverty we have regarding notions and attitudes to the personality and personhood. Strange, and quite, in some ways, self-contradictory. But there's a kind of flatness there. We flatten a little bit personality, and in a way, we flatten the possibilities for a sense of meaningfulness regarding the self, regarding the selves of others. One of the ways of really opening that up in very beautiful directions is through the imagination. And through that, actually, what's quite interesting is there can be then a place again -- we open up the possibility for re-including, perhaps, even a sense of divinity. That's another word that I'm going to throw out now and explore more and expand on more, elaborate more, as the retreat goes on. But is there a place for divinity in the self, through the self, this self and the selves of others? Can I open up that experience?
The kind of divinity that I'm talking about right now is a divinity in and through the personality. So that's different because it's particular. It's particular to this being or that being, or the face that this being or that being is showing right now, through my perception, through my imagination. It's particular. It's different than a kind of divinity that's sort of homogenous, like "All is one. Everyone is part of the same oneness, the same one divine substance, or whatever you want to call it, that pervades the universe." That's beautiful, but I'm talking about something different now. It's not just universal. It's very particular and personal as well. So again, we're going to get much more into this. But with that, there is also, as I mentioned before, a possibility for the whole sense of what is divine or holy to be stretched, to expand, so that we can allow a wider range. We can actually see and feel and sense a wider range of what is included in what divinity looks like and how it expresses. There are other gods, if you like, if we put it that way, apart from the ones that we are educated to see as divine, as holy, as sacred, this or that. We'll get into this later.
But all that is part of the second thing, the second aspect of the more radical conceptual framework that I mentioned before. It's part of a sense of expansion of the Dharma and our sense of what the Dharma is. That's quite interesting, even if I use that word 'expansion': how am I going to relate to this? Are we stretching and expanding the Dharma? Is that what we're doing here? Is that the movement that's going on? Are we fudging it, and kind of saying, "Well, this is what the Buddha said anyway. This is what he meant. I'm not expanding anything. I'm just being historically accurate"? Are we radically undermining the Dharma, perhaps? Are we re-grounding it? How even are we imagining that we're conceiving the relation of all this to the Dharma? Again, something I'll come back to later on in the retreat. These are big, delicate, and subtle, complex as well, streams of what we want to get into.
Included in that, in terms of a sort of opening up of the Dharma and extending our sense of the Dharma, is that we're also extending, or altering for some people, our conception of the Four Noble Truths, what's so central to Dharma practice, this teaching of suffering and ending or at least reducing suffering. And using that teaching around suffering, instead of as a sort of teaching that, in shorthand, says something like, "Try and live a life of non-clinging" -- instead of that, we're wanting to include a different conception of what the Four Noble Truths are, rather seeing them as keys, or rather that teaching itself as a key that we can use to examine perception, meaning examine appearances, examine experiences, and see how that opens up, invites a way of exploring perception which reveals the emptiness of perception, the emptiness of appearance, the malleability of appearances and experiences. Through that, we're widening the range of possible ways of looking, widening the range of ways that we can perceive and experience and therefore live, so we're not locked into a Dharma view or attitude or attempt to live seeing everything as a process, or trying to be in the now, or just being mindful or something, as if that's 'the Dharma way,' or that everything is impermanent, which seems so obvious, and trying not to cling; trying, even, to see everything as one -- that's quite popular.
So we're widening the whole range of perception and possibility of perception, possibility of experience, through an investigation of perception, and that's a different way of understanding what the Four Noble Truths are. Again, we'll return to this. And something else we'll return to, too, I'll mention now. Regarding this sense of the cosmos or experience of the cosmos, is it possible that that expands, that our sense of the world we live in expands? And instead of being just a world of flat materiality, devoid of meaning, devoid of deeper echoes and what I'll call a 'vertical dimension' (that's another theme I'll come back to, another concept I'm going to come back to), that the sense of the cosmos is enriched, and a vertical dimension is allowed through the imagination and through the conceptual framework. Because the typical modernist view is a flat, one-dimensional, material cosmos. We'll come back to that.
So there are a few things here, just to summarize. We're recognizing that image/fantasy/mythos permeates our lives. This is key. We recognize that we see, we experience a lot of the time through image, through fantasy, through mythos. We think, also, through image, through fantasy, through mythos. And we love through image/fantasy/mythos. We see, think, and love through image already, through imagination already. Recognizing that. That's huge. This beginning to recognize, too, an aspect of our experience, a dimension of our experience which I'll go into called 'soulfulness' -- this aspect of meaningfulness, of depth, of resonance, of kinds of beauty and much more, and really beginning to include that, to take care of it, to nourish this soulfulness. Through that is a kind of extension of the range of how we see the self, an extension of the range of what we consider beautiful, what we feel beautiful, what we feel as meaningful -- giving place to more and more. And also this idea of giving back a validity to the imagination, or certain uses of the imagination, as ways of knowing, and everything that's involved in that. And through that, to re-enchant the perception of the self, of other, of cosmos, to perhaps open up a sense or an allowing for a sense of divinity there and what I'm going to call the vertical dimension. So expanding the range of the sacred. And through all this, perhaps, probably, opening up and maybe even changing the relationship with what we consider Dharma.
I'm not, as I mentioned, talking about chöd on this retreat. I'm not actually teaching tantra in the way that it's usually thought of, though there's much overlap in the kind of things that we'll be talking about, and I will talk about tantra a little bit and the connections, etc., a little bit. But given what I've said so far, it's really asking, we're really asking for open-mindedness in the way that you approach this material and also in the way we listen. Listening is quite an interesting avenue of experience. Sometimes we listen and say, "Oh, I already know this. It's the same as something I already know." We kind of put it neatly in a box of something: "Oh yes, it's psychosynthesis. Oh yes, he's talking about Focusing." So oftentimes, we listen for the similarities, and we kind of shrink something that's maybe quite new or different, and shrink it into a box that we already know, and we actually miss what's new and different and potentially stretching or challenging. So is it possible, as you're listening over the days, to listen in fact deliberately for the differences? Listen for what's new and what's different from what you already know and the boxes that you might already have regarding imagination. We tend to listen in a way that affirms what we already know, rather than challenges us or opens up our frameworks. Open-mindedness and openness of listening is probably really necessary on this retreat.
Just to say a little bit more about that in regards to the Dharma and how we conceive of and relate to the Dharma: it would be very understandable if someone listening has a kind of loose conception of the Dharma, maybe hasn't really articulated it, a loose conception of the Dharma as involving something like, "Well, the Dharma says try to always be present because this is it, this life is it, this moment is it, there's nothing else. This is what's real, and we don't want to miss it, so you want to be present to it." So we might think or conceive of the Dharma as saying, "Try always to be present because this is it." And in addition, this conception of the Dharma, a popular conception might say, "And try not to cling. Try to let go because everything is impermanent." Right? Which seems obvious. "Try not to cling, try to let go, because everything is impermanent and you can't hold on to it." We might also add, "Try to be kind." And that might be too simplistic, and a little unkind putting it that way, but that's kind of the conception that we might have of the Dharma: "Try to always be present because this is it, try not to cling, try to let go because everything is impermanent, try to be kind, try to be nice." Or some people might have a conception of the Dharma that's a little bit more influenced by a stream such as the Advaita tradition and things like that: the kind of goal, if you like -- though they might not use the language of 'goal' -- the kind of goal is to somehow always be in a sense that all is one, everything is one, or to always be in the sense of no-self: "There's no self. The self is not arising, or non-existent." Those are two quite common, very loose conceptions of what Dharma is that people may have, quite popular these days.
What if we contrast that with a kind of conception that I would like to introduce and fill out a little bit: that those injunctions or perceptions, to see everything as "all is one," or to feel there's no self, the perception of no-self, or to be present, to not cling, all these are rather modes. They're modes of perception, what I call ways of looking. They're temporary options. In other words, one can go in and out. There's a great flexibility of the perception, the way of looking. So I can go into this way of looking and see all is one, can go into that and see different ways that the self is empty, can go into non-clinging in different ways. They're all modes of perception, modes, temporary options of ways of looking. There's flexibility there. And what Dharma is is the practice of this flexibility, practising a range, a whole range of types of awareness or sensitivity, if you like, modes of awareness or sensitivity. Different modes of awareness, modes of sensitivity, what I call 'ways of looking,' so that the multiplicity of perception, a really large range of perception and experience is available to us as human beings, that we can actually sense. It's not an intellectual concept; we can actually perceive very differently at different times, and that's what we're practising through all these Dharma tools and Dharma notions.
Related to that is that there are different types and modes and also different degrees of non-clinging. There are different ways of non-clinging, different degrees of that. We can let go of clinging just a little bit, or at deeper and deeper levels. So this 'modes and degrees of non-clinging' overlaps with the greater range of practice of flexibility of ways of looking, of modes of awareness, sensitivity. They overlap. Through all that, through the practice of all that, and developing all that, the perceptual possibilities are opened. We really start to see, "Oh, how I look, the way I look, conditions what I perceive." And the range of perception opens up, and we understand perception is empty. We understand the emptiness of all appearances through that. And this brings the deepest freedom. To the degree that we see that comes the deepest freedom in life.
But also what comes from that is further opening up, so that through seeing the emptiness we actually open up further, and through doing these practices we open up further our sense of the range of perceptual possibilities. The flexibility of perception is also opened -- perception of the self, perception of the other, perception of world and cosmos. There's freedom coming out of all this, and there's also this opening and flexibility, malleability of the perceptual possibilities. And that, in a way -- I mean, there are definitely limits on that, but in a way, it's infinite. There's an infinite range, an infinite multiplicity possible for us. When we say, "Let go of clinging, don't cling," or this or that, it's not a way of living, in this way of conceiving the Dharma. It's not that we're trying to move through our life without clinging. It's rather that letting go of clinging is part of a range, or different ways of letting go of clinging are part of a range of ways of looking. It's subtly different, but it's a hugely different conception. Because there's this flexibility, there's this malleability and multiplicity of the range of perception and the range of ways of looking, modes of awareness, modes of sensitivity that we can practise and develop and open up, that means that Dharma, as practice, is not just one track. It's not just one thing, "don't cling" or "be present" or this or that. It's not simple in that way. It's rich and complex and various.
In addition to all that, and as I mentioned before, we begin to recognize the necessity of fantasy, the inevitability of fantasy, and the primacy of fantasy, how much fantasy/imagination/mythos is woven into our perceiving and conceiving of the self, of our psychology and that of others, of life, of beauty, and also of the Dharma, as I said, which includes notions of awakening, and also includes the notion of the Buddha and the historical Buddha. Now, in more recent Western philosophy, this also has a parallel -- in philosophy, and then in more recent approaches to history as well. It's called 'the turn towards hermeneutics' in philosophy and later in history. So really this understanding that we're always bringing, if you like, interpretations, biases, ways of looking, fantasies, into our perception of history. So it's not saying, "We can make anything up about the Buddha or historically," but it is saying, "There is no true, objectively existing, single story of the Buddha, history of the Buddha." So we start to realize that, "Oh, it's imbued -- our vision of the Buddha, our history of the Buddha, is imbued by fantasy, and so is our vision and our sense of the Dharma and of awakening and all this stuff." And maybe in all this, for some people, they say, "I'm going beyond the Dharma now." Some people say, "I've gone beyond the Dharma." That's a question. Is it? Is it not? How is that for you? Is it okay? What does it mean? Have we gone beyond Buddhism? How am I going to relate to that? Big, big questions, and important ones. Not necessarily easy.
Okay, so just a few practical things. We have five or six days here together, so really all we can do is open some doors and point in some directions, give pointers and tips for practice. Some of you will want to explore these directions and these pointers much more. Some of you will really want to take this further. Of course, you could, if you're listening to this later or on recording, you can take much longer to go through this material -- much, much longer; really take your time and develop it. We're cramming quite a lot of material in a short time.
But related to that, it's also really important to realize that, okay, so, we have a retreat of a certain amount of days, and it can be very easy to judge the retreat in terms of what experiences arise in this period of time. But this is not a good way, not a sensible, insightful way of orienting to a retreat. It's not so much the experiences that are important. I mean, they are important, but they're not really what's crucial. What I hope you can prioritize is understanding, developing, making your own ways of working. So really taking ways of working and conceptual frameworks and supports from the retreat. That's really what we should regard as our aim, a digestion of ways of working, a developing of skill in terms of meditative ways of working and also the concepts that support them. That should be the aim, rather than aiming for any experience. And that's true for any retreat. I would say that on any retreat -- a regular insight retreat or whatever, mettā retreat, etc., but particularly here. Because if I can learn the tools, and learn my way around, learn the ropes, as they say, if I can learn that in terms of practice, and get a sense of how the conceptual frameworks might support me in the directions I want to go, then that can stay with me. The experiences don't necessarily, and the highs of the experiences don't necessarily stay. So really to keep thinking about, "That's what I want to take. That's what I want to digest."
I was wondering about offering this retreat, and some of you may be listening as we go through the material and wonder, "Well, is this very advanced?" The truth is I don't know. I'm not sure. My experience is for some people it might be that certain other elements need to be in place before they can work well with the imaginal practices, and for some people not. It seems quite individual. So really the answer to the question "Is it advanced?", I would say so far, "Not necessarily. It depends." I am wondering more generally these days about a kind of, loosely, a kind of curriculum. What would be the kind of tools and meditative skills that need to be developed to really give a person the best platform for their practice to move and keep expanding and open up into more and more adventure and possibility? That's something I'm thinking about anyway. But I don't know if this material is necessarily advanced.
It's an interesting thing, too, because a typical insight retreat, on the first morning we'd say, "Okay, now concentrate on your breath, and if your mind wanders, come back to being with your breath." Something like that. And in a way, if we hear something like that, it sounds very simple. It sounds like that's probably the simplest possible instruction you could give, just "What does it feel like when you breathe? When the mind wanders, come back to that feeling, those sensations." It sounds like the simplest. It's certainly the most familiar for most people in the wider culture these days. And it's very easy to understand the instruction. It's a very easy instruction to understand. It's also easy to understand the "why?" of that instruction, why would you do that -- because almost no one any more in our culture, whether they meditate or not, needs convincing that focus is a good thing, the ability to focus the mind and keep it focused, focus the attention. Almost no one needs convincing that calm, at times, is a good thing. Almost no one needs convincing that it's important to be present. There's a lot of emphasis now in the sort of pop culture about being present with the moment and all that.
So it's very, very familiar, that kind of instruction. It's very simple, and seems easy to understand, easy to understand why we would even say that. But actually, as a teacher, I have to tell you, if you don't realize it already, that for most people it's really not easy to do: "Be with the breath, concentrate on the breath." Most people really, really struggle with that simple instruction, and we don't often in many retreats elaborate much on it, because we move on to other stuff, about being more with the general experience, very quickly. And so a person kind of concludes, if they stay meditating, they conclude, "I'm crap at that. I'm pretty useless. My concentration is rubbish." I don't know how many people have told me that in the past. "Oh, well." They sort of accept it, and they just, "That's okay, you know, whatever." Whereas unfamiliar instructions, what we might be going through on this retreat, unfamiliar practices, they may be harder to grasp and even understand why we're doing them at first, but they may not necessarily be harder to do. So we'll find out. But don't automatically assume that they're harder just because another kind of instruction sounds simpler, or sounds more familiar, or it's easier to make sense of given the sort of prevalent frameworks, conceptions that we bring to practice.
Another practical thing: over the days, we'll be unfolding different teachings and instructions, and like I said in regards to this talk, the introductory talk, I'm going to mention things and then return to elaborate them in fuller detail. So there's quite a lot of material, and we'll keep cycling around certain themes, many of which I've mentioned already in this talk, although I realize not enough for you to fully understand just from this talk. But there will be this kind of elaborating, returning to elaborate a bit more, etc., of certain key themes and directions. In the first few days, we're going to almost solely explore and develop practices in relation to what I call the 'energy body,' and I'll explain that tomorrow morning. But we're also going to keep that as a practice, this sensitivity to the energy body, throughout the retreat. So the first few days, we'll focus almost exclusively on it, and I'll explain why. There are very good reasons why. But it's going to be something that's actually going to form the basis of the whole retreat. Again, if you're listening to this on recording, and you want to go through this material at home, I really encourage you to stay, linger even longer, developing your practice with regard to the energy body and the different ways that we're going to talk about it. Let that really be the basis for the imaginal practices as we introduce them. I will keep emphasizing that as we go through the retreat.
You may want to get or keep a notebook, certainly of the teachings. There will be lots of teachings, and a lot of it will be quite new for many of you, and the practice instructions and practice tips. So it can be helpful to jot them down so you have them and can refer back to them, if you like to do that sort of thing. And then, also, working with images, some people find it really helpful and just very interesting to keep a notebook of the imaginal work that they're doing, the different images that come up, and things come back again, etc., and that can be a very beautiful thing to do. It's up to you, but some people will want to keep a notebook of the different [teachings], and keep tabs and record the different threads of what's going on here.
Okay, one very practical, last thing just before we end: slow down. If you're here on retreat for these days, just an encouragement to slow down as you're walking around the house. Slow down at least a little bit, if not quite a lot. And to see if you can be more gentle in your movements. There's no reason to go fast when you're on retreat; we're not really in a hurry here. But why am I emphasizing this? It's certainly not to dampen your spirit or your vivaciousness or your energy -- absolutely not. And it's not also, as in some retreats, for instance Mahāsi-style retreats or others where they say, "Slow down, because we want to kind of put under closer scrutiny a kind of microscopic analysis of the sensations of the body as it moves." We're not slowing down for that reason. On this retreat we're interested in a different kind of precision of attention. It's not a microscopic analysis of sensations. I'll explain this more tomorrow. But we're interested in a different kind of subtlety of attention, a different kind of precision in this retreat, and going a little bit more slowly, moving a little bit more slowly and moving a little bit more gently in the way you open and close doors and handle plates and whatever it is, that allows, it will support a kind of quality of awareness and sensitivity to the energy body that I'm going to introduce tomorrow.
So as you go through the retreat and the time, just being a little bit more slow, a little bit more gentle in the movements will really support that kind of sensitivity to the whole body, and particularly to the feeling of energy in the body, what I call the 'energy body.' Because that, as I mentioned, will be a very important thread through the retreat. It's an important basis for everything that we're going to do, in lots of different ways. And a skill with the energy body, an awareness, a sensitivity to the energy body, as I'll explain, is, can become, over time, a profound resource to us as human beings in many, many different ways and in regards to many different practices and directions of practice. So just as much as you can, really an encouragement to slow down and be gentle, because it's really going to support the investigations that we're going to be doing, and the explorations in practice we're doing over the time of the retreat.
