A Sacred Universe: Insight, Theophany, Cosmopoesis (Part 1)

So in these last talks of the course and the retreat, I want to try to draw together some of the threads we've been discussing, and exploring in practice, and talking about. And also to elaborate on and fill out a little bit some of the threads and themes and ideas that we've been talking about and exploring. In elaborating and filling out, in a way, taking them a little bit further and opening some doors, hopefully, for the mind, for the views, and also for practice and possibilities in practice, possibilities of experience, meditative experience and exploration.

In opening doors, what often happens is we go through a door and it brings up more questions. As well as providing some answers and providing a structure, to a certain extent, sometimes (and what may be the case with some of what I'm going to be talking about) some of it might seem like we're creating more loose ends, or creating a certain structure, building a certain structure, but also leaving structures and ideas and possibilities incomplete. That may well be the case for some of this. There will have to be another retreat, another course, hopefully.

Also over the course of these next talks, some of the ideas will be familiar to some of you, and some less so. Please hang in there if some of the concepts and ideas that we're talking about sound difficult and hard to understand. Just hang in there if you can, and what I'm going to do is, in the third talk especially, give examples. So hopefully it will become clearer, perhaps on repeated listenings, perhaps through the examples, etc. So hang in there if that is the case.

At the beginning of the retreat we talked about really the context, the cultural context and historical context in which everything that we've been talking about on this retreat, introduced, and the whole idea of imaginal practice, and all of that -- in a way, the cultural context in which it lands, and particularly the unquestioned assumptions, the views, the very sense that we have of personhood, my person and other persons, what a person is. So these ideas are, as I said, landing in that context. They're meeting ideas and views and assumptions that we've just imbibed from the culture, usually unquestioningly. They've become really how we view things, how we sense things. They become, they seem for us, a reality. So views, assumptions, senses of personhood, of the world, of the cosmos, and also of the imagination. We talked a little bit about this. It's worth revisiting it and filling it out a bit more.

So the, if you like, what I'm going to call the 'modernist' sense or conception or assumption about personhood. I'd just like to quote something from a writer called Clifford Geertz. He wrote an article called "From the Native's Point of View," and he's, in a way, comparing Western senses and conceptions of things with what he'd call the native point of view. Listen to this. "The Western conception of the person," I'm going to call it the 'modernist':

The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against a social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us [however obvious and sort of unbudgeable, almost, it may seem to us], a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world's cultures.^[1]

So often, we take all this for granted. We assume it's a reality, rather than a sort of momentary transitional phase, or a period in the history of a certain culture where certain human beings viewed things and sensed things in that way (in this case the personhood). It's quite a dense passage, but it really captures the sort of intuitive sense of personhood and self that we inhabit because it's in the air in the culture, that we imbibe from the culture.

Now, kind of alongside that, or, if you like, making a strange marriage with that sort of more intuitive view that we imbibe from the culture, making a strange marriage with that, for Dharma practitioners in the modern West come other views, mixed with or making up this strange sort of juxtaposition with. For instance, what's quite popular is the view that the self is a process. We've talked about this: "There is no self. What the self is is a process." So everything else is an illusion. What's real is this process of aggregates, of psychophysical constituents, in time; this sort of atomized process, going along in time like some kind of computer readout or machine-like process of physical processes and feelings and perceptions and mental formations and consciousness, moments of consciousness. There's this strange marriage between the view that Clifford Geertz describes, that sort of intuitive view of the self and the more or less integrated, sort of bounded self that he describes there of the person, and then this atomized process view. Or, perhaps, another popular one is, "Interconnectedness is the ultimate truth. That's how we should view self."

So what typically happens in people who are practicing modern Dharma, very understandably, is that a person tries to cling to a philosophical view that the self is, the person is, an atomized process, or has sensed that, has glimpsed that as a perception in practice, and then tries to cling to it, to hold on to it. Then there's this strange sort of marriage, as I said, trying to mix the two between the view of what Geertz describes and the view of an atomized process or the view of interconnectedness, either mishmashed together in some kind of way, or one battling the other, different ones dominant at different times. There's a clinging to view or clinging to an experience, and trying to perpetuate that experience in some cases, but at least clinging to a view philosophically.

It's really worth noting that, I would say, the Buddha's teaching about anattā and the emptiness of self -- all self-views, in that teaching, all self-views, without exception, are regarded as empty, not ultimately true. It's not that the Buddha, in my view, was saying, "The self is an atomized process," or "The self is the field of interconnection, the web, the ocean of interconnection," whatever you want to call it, or some other view of self. Rather, all self-views -- no self-view whatsoever is the truth, the ultimate truth. What that does, actually, when we really realize that and take that as an avenue, what opens a door of practice is then we are free to use, to step into, to put on, if you like, as garments, and as lenses, all kinds of self-views -- knowing, keeping the knowledge, while viewing in a certain way, while viewing self and person in a certain way, "This is not real. This is not the truth." Because all of them are untrue, it frees us up to use any of them.

The particularly popular ones nowadays -- we could list a whole bunch, but let's just say there's the atomized process or this view of interconnectedness. Interconnectedness may be something we'll come back to later; this is kind of an aside for now. I don't want to lose track of the main point. But interconnectedness is an interesting teaching. When we kind of poke at it a little bit more, it's interesting what is meant and implied and not implied in the teachings of interconnectedness. Usually -- I hope I'll return to this later, in a later talk -- but we imply something like, "The physical processes or events that make up my body and even my brain and my organism and that of others are connected over space and time. This physical event here, this physical process here, is interconnected with others, or actually all physical processes, over space and over time." Or mental ideas -- for example, I hear a teaching, or I read a book, or some idea in the culture, or something like that -- are also interconnected, connected over space and over time.

So there is, if you like, the teaching of interconnectedness is what I would call 'horizontal' -- physical processes and events are connected with other physical processes and events; mental events, if you like, are connected and influence other mental events. It's at the same level of being, the same dimension of being. There's a horizontal interconnectedness. Though we, of course, admit that the physical state of things affects the mental, and the mental the physical, essentially it's a teaching that does not -- how would you say? -- draw attention to, or admit, or emphasize an interconnectedness between dimensions of being, or invite the idea that there are other dimensions of being apart from the physical. So it's a horizontal teaching, rather than vertical. That's an aside for now; I'm just throwing that out as a seed.

The main point here is, again, what is the context of these ideas that we're talking about? The modernist context or the modernist person, as Geertz described, or mixed -- this strange marriage with clinging to certain Dharma views, holding on to them as philosophies, the atomized process or interconnectedness. And also the context of what is the modernist view or assumption or sense of reality, of what the cosmos is, and that cosmos being essentially physical matter, atoms moving, bumping into each other, in kind of meaningless movement and interaction of matter, over vast stretches of space and time, which, over vast stretches of space, give rise to consciousness in some way that scientists haven't figured out yet. So there are kind of two different levels, consciousness and matter, but that consciousness is an emergent property of the physical, of matter.

That's the modernist view of the cosmos. Not everyone believes that, and we may battle that in some ways. But what that then means in terms of the context of my personhood, of our personhood; the context of my life and the trajectory of my life; what gives meaning to my person and my life; the context of my Dharma practice, my view of Dharma or my spiritual practice or something else -- all of that takes place, if you like, within a context of what we could call a philosophy of materialism, that matter is the primary reality. A better word is 'physicalism.' Don't confuse 'materialism,' as in the chasing of expensive cars and iPhones and all that kind of stuff, with this philosophy of physical matter as the primary and only reality, and everything else emerges out of that, and if it's not material, it's illusory. Or if it doesn't have its roots in matter, it's illusory.

What this means is that the context of everything that I do -- my person, my life, my practice, all that, and whatever meaning I chase -- is within this essentially physical universe. Everything is taking place within physicalism. And it's so easy not to realize that these views and assumptions -- about personhood, what a person is, and what the cosmos is -- are perspectives. They are perspectives, what I would call 'ways of looking.' They are not complete truths, absolutely not. They originated, some of them at least, originated as kind of working guidelines for the Scientific Revolution. Somehow they became absorbed into the culture, and the sort of mindset of the culture, as if they were proven and complete truths. Very interesting. Not proven and not complete truths. Similarly with those Dharma views of the process or interconnectedness, or whatever, vast awareness, whatever it is.

These are perspectives, and it's really important to emphasize this and to realize this. Absolutely crucial. Everything hinges on this, realizing what is a perspective and what is not a truth, a complete truth. Then the question with perspectives or ways of looking, what I call 'ways of looking,' is, "What does this perspective, what does this way of looking bring? What does it open? What does it close? What does it unfold? What are the effects of looking through this way of looking, this perspective, this lens? And what are the effects of looking through another way of looking, another perspective?" This is the golden question, and for me, the golden Dharma question. "What do these perspectives bring, and what do others bring?", rather than, "This is a truth." And in the context of the teachings of this retreat, "Would does soul need? What kind of perspectives, what kind of views, what kind of conceptual frameworks does soul and soulfulness need?" That is a deeply important question for the being, for our being.

So there are these contexts that we live and move and kind of try and arrange, follow the pathway of our life and our practice in -- the contexts of views and assumptions of personhood, cosmos, imagination. And then we have something like the notion of self-expression, to express myself, and how important that has come to be in modern culture for us. It's something that wasn't -- I alluded to this earlier on the retreat -- wasn't really an issue at all in other cultures or in the Buddha's time. Self-expression is alive for us as something important. We might not speak in those terms, or we might feel very inhibited when it comes towards that, and want to shove it away as a concept because it's so painful for us, not even realizing that we're doing that.

But in this context, or in some of these contexts of views of personhood or cosmos, for instance, if I'm clinging to a view that the atomized process is really the reality, then self-expression is a ridiculous notion. Any emphasis on that is just ridiculous. Who cares? It's just an atomized process. Might as well be a machine. Or in the context of this modernist cosmos, an essentially meaningless universe, self-expression, again, it becomes maybe not ridiculous, but there's a disjunct there. Self-expression, oftentimes that's where a sense of meaningfulness comes in our life, or we generate a sense of meaningfulness. But it's kind of divorced, or there's a disjunct, as I said, because all that is taking place in the context of this vast universe of essentially meaningless matter. Somewhere, we've been taught that's the reality, and so anything to do with self-expression is kind of dwarfed by that. But also anything to do with our meaningfulness, our sense of meaningfulness, it does not derive in any objective way from the universe. It has no place in the universe. It's alien in the universe, dwarfed and alien and facing a void of meaninglessness. We tend to think it's self-generated, therefore kind of illusory, because this self, despite the interconnectedness at the level of physicality and maybe ideas, is essentially a strange, alien, minuscule entity in a vast universe of essential meaninglessness. That is the real reality, the objective reality. So it does something. These views do something quite potent to notions of self-expression or meaningfulness. Or, in relation to the way we think about and view self-expression or personhood, these contexts, philosophical contexts -- often unexplored, often unquestioned, often half-conscious -- they constrain how we think about and view personhood and self-expression and these kind of things.

So that, for example, what we've been talking about a little bit as one possibility, of seeing a person, my person or another person, as a theophany, as an image or vision or portal, an expression or face of the divine; as a being, an angel, expressing the divine, through which the divine shows itself in a certain form, diaphanous to, translucent to the divine, to what wants to come through. We talked about this. The desire is not so much in me. What wants to come through me? It's something I'm not separate from, that divine that wants to come through, that angel that wants to come through, and what it wants. But it's also more than me somehow, other than me, both.

This divine, this divinity or angel that wants to come through, it's in a particular form, in a particular personhood. I'll elaborate on this later, but it's a different conception of the divine than just that the divine is shining through everything, because it shines through everything universally, because all is one, or it shines through everything that has awareness, because awareness is what's divine, and therefore anything that has awareness ... This is a different vision or sense, if you like, of the person and personhood.

Because of the cultural context, the philosophical context -- and oftentimes we don't really think of any of this as philosophy -- there is a constraining, a constricting of the range of possible ways of seeing and sensing a person. I'm interested in widening that range of possible ways of seeing, of viewing, of sensing personhood, mine and others. What is it, for instance, to see and to sense the other vividly, in a beautiful and rich and deep way, the other or self, as a portal, if you like, for soul? For something much bigger? For soul-worlds, for the divine, etc.?

As I've said before, as we've discussed before a little bit, wrapped up, or very much fundamental to this context, these contexts of views and assumptions in which we move and conceive, and in which the teachings land, is the whole question of reality and what is real. We've touched on this. There are different aspects. But in relation to, for example, imagination, this view of physicalism, of the physical as the only thing that's real, that (among other aspects, which I've talked about before and I'll come back to) means that we tend to view, or the culture tends to view, imagination as unreal. We say 'imaginary' with a kind of derogatory sense to it, for the most part. We've touched on this; I'm reviewing. That was one of the main reasons why Henry Corbin coined this term 'imaginal,' rather than 'imaginary' -- to escape or set it aside from the kind of derogatory views and assumptions that 'imagination' has in the culture.

I'm talking about a different way of approaching the imagination, a different way of relating to the imagination. It becomes something valuable and has a certain reality to it. So for people like Henry Corbin, for William Blake, for Walter Wink (a Christian theologian with a quite sophisticated philosophical background and understanding), for Buddhist tantra, and I'm thinking particularly in the sort of very beautiful, worked out systems of tantra you get in some of the streams in Tibet (I'm thinking particularly of Longchenpa and Mipham in the Nyingma tradition), for these people, the imaginal is actually more real than matter. So there's a turning upside down, if you like, of the usual cultural view that we now inhabit.

Now, the question of what matter is is something that I'm going to touch on a little bit later, but the view is that the imaginal actually has, in a way, more reality than matter. Someone I don't know too much about, Swedenborg, was a sort of mystic and visionary in the Christian tradition. I can't remember exactly when he lived; a couple of centuries ago. This is just a passage from a writer (I'm not quite sure how to pronounce his name), Czesław Miłosz, writing about Swedenborg, and about the way he held the reality of the imaginal. He writes, "Swedenborg's detailed descriptions," in his imaginal practice, from his imaginal practice,

Swedenborg's detailed descriptions of beautiful gardens, their trees and their flowers in Heaven, [and] of slums, dirt and ruins in Hell do not mean that he believed they existed other than in imagination.^[2]

So he understood: this is in imagination, this imaginal world, and what he's calling Heaven and Hell, and within a Christian sort of theological and conceptual framework. But, Miłosz continues, imagination is "the most real existence." So yes, it's imagination, but the way he's viewing that kind of imaginal experience is giving it a whole different ontological validity. It's the most real existence. For Swedenborg, and for William Blake, etc., this other world, this world of the imaginal, is more real than any physical place. So there's quite a different view going on.

As I mentioned in the opening talk, in the introductory talk, when we come to all this and try to say, "How do these things fit together?", we understand, or we think we understand matter and the experience of conventional reality: this is a table, that's a chair, etc. And then there's the imaginal, and psychic phenomena, and all that. How does it all fit together? What kind of conceptual framework will present to us or outline to us the truth of what is real here? What is the reality of all this and the reality status of all this? The easy, if you like, and unexplored option is just to follow, without too much questioning, what's given to us culturally. But when we start exploring, and start questioning and probing these things through practice, through experimentation, through dialogue and philosophy, etc., and in our experience, we realize that it's not that simple. And as I said, I don't pretend to have the answer, and I don't think anyone's really worked it out, as far as I can tell.

What you get nowadays is people approach this in two kind of broad ways -- actually three.

(1) One is, as I said, this sort of just going along with the assumptions of modernist culture, and kind of pooh-poohing the imaginal as just imaginary and a waste of time. And so reality becomes -- even if people dismiss using words like 'truth' and 'reality,' actually a default, what's operating in their philosophy is a default assumption about what's real.

(2) But more sophisticated, some philosophers and people nowadays would admit that contrary to the modernist assumption (which is that there is a view or a way of looking that reveals reality, "This view reveals reality," whether it's scientific materialism, or translated to the modern Dharma world, there's actually mindfulness or bare attention reveals reality or whatever), but contrary to this sort of singularity of view, or belief that singularity of view exposes and reveals reality, and there is one view that reveals it (which, as I said, is often either explicit or hidden in someone's philosophy or approach or Dharma, even if they say that's not the case) -- contrary to that, a more sophisticated philosophical approach that's quite popular is acknowledging, a sort of postmodern realization, acknowledging that any individual perspective will be incapable of capturing the truth of things or the reality or the way things are really. And therefore, there's the necessity of multiple perspectives, just by virtue of a difference in, if you like, the level at which reality exists.

So one analogy, I got this from Sanford Drob, who's a philosopher, who in particular writes a lot about postmodernism, and also the influence of Hegel on other ideas, but also on Jewish Kabbalah in a contemporary context. He has this analogy of the way maps of the globe work, to try to represent, in two dimensions, something that actually exists in three dimensions. I don't know much about this, but there's something called the Mercator projection. When you're making a map of the world, like in an atlas, in two dimensions, it will necessarily be distorted. There are political ramifications of this, but it makes certain countries look much bigger than they are, and other countries or continents look much smaller than they are. Then there are other systems. I don't know the names. I think one's called Gall-Peters. There are other systems of translating the three-dimensional to the two-dimensional map, which make different countries look bigger and smaller. So you suddenly see, "Wow, Africa's important because it's huge," or India, etc., and countries like England are really tiny. [laughs] But there's the acknowledgment that neither is really an accurate capturing or description or translation of reality, necessarily. The reality being in three dimensions, necessarily we acknowledge there are some distortions when I try and translate that, represent that three-dimensional reality in two dimensions.

So that's a kind of physical analogy of our existential and philosophical situation. The assumption there, or implied in all that, is that there is some kind of objective reality to the way things are, to the universe, to things. It is there, but it's certainly not obvious, and it's not really translatable or expressible to the human consciousness, to the human mind. The assumption is that it does exist in an object independent of the human mind; it's just that it's not articulable at our level.

This has parallels. That kind of thinking, or that kind of view and assumption, has parallels. Some of you may have heard of a physicist (he's dead now) called David Bohm. He had some dialogues with Krishnamurti a little bit. Now, he was not so keen on some of the implications, for instance, of quantum physics, which seemed to be, to many people, implying this sort of non-objective status of reality, of things, of atoms -- that an electron or whatever it is, a particle, does not exist in any way independent of our observing of it. It doesn't exist as a thing, in a place, at a certain time, with a certain energy, with a certain speed or mass. All of that is very much contingent, very much dependent on the way of looking. In a way, that has a lot of parallels with emptiness teachings. So some people, including Einstein, were really not comfortable with some of the implications of these discoveries that were made in the early part of the twentieth century, the first thirty or forty years, and some of what they seemed to imply. David Bohm wrote a book called Wholeness and the Implicate Order, and sort of trying to work out a system of physics which, akin to what Drob was saying about maps, it gives an objective reality at a certain level, but recognizes that what we then perceive looks like it has all these strange features to it that quantum mechanics describes, but it's not actually the reality. In other words, again, there is this objective, independent reality, and it's just that that cannot be translated or be made visible to us, so that it gives rise to these strange effects when it's translated to our level of experience, perception, and translation.

Now, it's interesting. Around all that stuff -- quantum mechanics and its philosophical implications -- a lot of physicists just ignore the philosophical questions that quantum mechanics gives rise to. I've talked about some of this in other talks. Very few of them actually pursue it, and of those that do, some -- like David Bohm -- will be drawn to the project of finding an objective reality. In a way, of course they are, because that's what drew them to physics in the first place, probably: the idea that there is a reality that one can discover and capture in certain formulations or equations or conceptions, etc. So the whole beauty and romance and attraction of the project of physics, for physicists, is to discover what that objective reality is. That's the whole scientific project. So a lot about the quantum revolution, really, in a way, can be philosophically challenging to the very fundaments of the Scientific Revolution, and the ideas that came, the conceptions and the assumptions that became embedded after the Scientific Revolution.

That's one more sophisticated philosophical approach: assuming that there is an objective reality, but it's just not capturable or translatable obviously, like the 2D/3D necessary distortions.

(3) And a third possibility: compare the second possibility -- assuming there's an objective reality, hard to get our heads around, or impossible to get our heads around completely -- compare that with a non-realist, non-reificationist conceptual framework. What do I mean by that? We humans have a tendency, a deep-seated tendency -- I would say this is what the Buddha is pointing to very fundamentally in his teachings -- we have a strong inclination, an attachment to assume an objective reality to things, selves, world, time, objects, etc.

What would it be to approach this question of reality and have as a basis for our whole way of approaching things, including the Dharma, a non-realist conceptual framework? We don't reify anything as ultimately real or "this is the way things really are," any conceptual framework. What would it be, or is it possible, to put the Dharma thoroughly on a non-reifying basis of emptiness? This, to me, is so important. It opens so many doors. I can't emphasize it enough, to me how fundamental and fundamentally different that would be. Can we do that? Can we put the Dharma or realize the Dharma, realize a Dharma, if you like, shape and conceive of the Dharma absolutely, thoroughly, completely on a non-reifying basis of emptiness? That means emptiness, this understanding of a non-realist perspective, actually becomes the total, fundamental, everything in the Dharma. The whole Dharma is on that basis.

I think that's actually quite rare in the Dharma world. You ask anyone who has been around the Dharma for a while, and everyone would agree on the word 'empty': "Yes, of course, emptiness." But the meaning is very, very different. There's a whole range of what people actually mean when they use the word 'empty' or 'emptiness.' So what I mean, and what I would like to really, as I said, place as the basis, as the foundation for the whole understanding and practice of Dharma, is not the sense of emptiness means "things or selves are just a process in time of smaller units, moments, or aggregates," or whatever it is. And not just, for example, the teaching of interconnectedness, or certain other teachings. I'm talking about something much more radical than any of that, much deeper and much more total.

In, for example, the process view, the elements of the process are still given a certain reality. I'm talking about something utterly total. Everything, without question, is empty. And even the deepest, more ingrained concepts of space, of time, of awareness, all that is empty, thoroughly.

What often happens in the Dharma is people say, "Yes, yes, of course, emptiness, or empty. Of course things are empty. Of course this or that is empty." But then it's almost like it becomes something that's easily forgotten about in practice. It's like, "Yes, yes, of course," and then one engages practices or views that, if you like, ignore or don't incorporate the understanding of emptiness.

So the whole idea of bare attention, or when we bring into practice the question, "Is this moment enough?", and the whole rhetoric of 'this moment' or 'what is' or 'presence' -- so pervasive in Western spirituality, whether it's Buddhadharma or other spirituality. So pervasive, these kinds of notions of 'this moment' and 'what is' and 'being present' and all that. And all of that rhetoric, all of those kind of teachings, helpful as they are at a certain level, they actually reinforce this reification, this making real of something. Very helpful at one level, as some possibilities for beginners, and particularly for beginners because it seems basic. It's like, "I can get my head around that: this moment, or being present." They sound so simple as concepts, so attractive because of their simplicity, because they seem so basic: "Ah, that's good, and it seems as if I'm meeting reality on a basic, undistorted level." But that basicness becomes very, very quickly a basis for then the whole of the Dharma and the whole world-view and all the rest of it.

So the unquestioned assumption of the reality of this moment, the unquestioned assumption of bare attention as meeting, or "This is the basic experience," or whatever it is, that unquestioned assumption takes root, and it creates, it fabricates experience in line with that assumption. And so it seems that way. It perpetuates an experience of this or that, or this moment, or this bare attention as a reality. And then I'm left with, "I just need to align with the reality or this moment. I need to be with what is or this moment. I need to accept what is, open to what is, love what is," whatever the ways we put it. It's lovely, beautiful, very, very helpful, but only to a certain level. Quite limited.

The basis there is a realist one, and not a non-realist one. The basis then of that kind of Dharma is not in emptiness, even though, as I said, a person might say, "Yes, yes, of course, everything is empty." Or they might say, "Yes, yes, I agree with emptiness," and then mean something different by 'emptiness.' So, "That's real. Other things are empty. This moment, this bare attention, this process is real. I can be with that." That becomes the basis, a realist basis, rather than a non-realist basis. A non-realist basis is much more radical. Hard, hard, as the Buddha said, to see. "Hard to understand, discernible only by the wise."^[3]

So what about, instead of that, instead of a philosophy that assumes an objective reality, instead of the kind of spiritual teachings that basically have a basis in a reificationism of some kind or the other, what about a basis for the Dharma in the exploration, through practice, and through reflection, but mostly thorough practice, an exploration and understanding of the fabrication of perception? What about that as a basis, as a summary of what the Dharma really is, how it works, how it all fits together? An exploration through practice and an understanding, a deepening of the insight into the fabrication of perception, of appearance, experience. I'm using those three words interchangeably: perception, experience, appearance. And then, eventually, as that deepens, the understanding that fabrication, too, as an understanding, as a concept, is also empty. What about that as a sort of nutshell explanation of what the Dharma is, and as a basis for what the Dharma is? That gives a very, very different sense of everything, of what the universe is, and the world, and what experience is, and also a very different sense of what the Dharma is.

Some people might hear that and say, "Well, questioning reality in that way sounds kind of abstract and intellectual," and that's unfortunate, because it really is not abstract. That might be a reaction, but we're really talking about practice here, and something that's very possible and very engaged and direct and palpable in its effects. Or a person might hear this teaching about fabrication and sort of say, not quite understand and say, "Oh, so, you just kind of fabricate something, you make up something so that you feel better." But in that kind of -- it sounds like a question; it's a statement, really, or judgment -- it's really betraying a reificationism: "You're making up something. There is a reality. You're making up something different." It's betraying what the Buddha would call delusional reificationism.

So rather than this kind of reifying basis and understanding about 'what is' or 'this moment,' rather than that, what about a sense or a discovery, an opening, through practice, through insight, that this moment is co-created with me? With the sense of self, even the most subtle sense of self, just the barest sense of consciousness or vast awareness.

This moment is co-created with me, any sense of self, co-created with the way of looking, with the state and the inclination and the assumptions and the conceptions of the citta. It's mutually dependent, mutually contingent, and not separate with that, all of that. The way of looking, the self, the subject and object are mutually dependent and not separate. And then this moment becomes something thoroughly empty, along with the self, along with the way of looking and consciousness and all of it. Thoroughly empty, magical. When we assume that this so-called 'bare experience' that one might have through mindfulness practice or whatever is real, when I assume that even tacitly, even without realizing that I'm assuming it, unconsciously, it constrains. That assumption operating constrains the ways of looking that are possible for me, the kind of views, the kind of lenses through which I can look at experience. There's a constriction there of the possibilities, the range, through the assumption of reality. And because the ways of looking are constrained that way, then the experience, the range of experience, of perception, of what actually appears in terms of the experiences of self, of other, experiences of the world, of time, of space, of things like desire and eros, of cosmos, all of that gets constricted too -- the range of perception, of experience I can have of all of that.

And as one gets deeper into the teachings of emptiness, and realizes, there's a constriction, too, in the conceptual frameworks, because I'm assuming what's real. Tied up in that is a whole conceptual framework. Again, I might not even realize it. I might not even be able to articulate it. I might not even have thought about it ever. It might be unconscious. But there's a conceptual framework operating, and that assumption of reality constrains not only my experience, my ways looking, therefore my experience, but also my conceptual frameworks that I can entertain, move between. It constrains my hermeneutics, if you like. That's a fancy word, meaning my ways of interpreting experience, interpreting cosmos and the world that I'm in; reading, if you like, this field of experience.

And all of that constrains the freedoms that are possible for me, and constrains the creativity of existence. Constrains, too, the sense of beauty that's possible, and the sense of the range of beauty. Remember, we were talking about this before. It's the range of beauty that's possible for me as a human being. What kinds of beauty can the soul open to and know and taste and wonder at?

So, deep, radical, total emptiness, that realization, that level of insight, actually allows so much more. As that insight deepens, it allows so much more. It allows, for example, cosmopoesis, this word that I used the other day, this opening of the possibilities of seeing, of sensing, of really inhabiting a different cosmos, feeling oneself in, perceiving a magical cosmos, a divine cosmos, a cosmos like this or that, the range of, if you like, poetic possibility. Cosmopoesis, the idea of creating different cosmological poems, poems of the cosmos. It opens possibilities through insight, through deep, radical, total insight into emptiness.