Transcription
In case it wasn't obvious, I just want to clarify something, make something clear, about what we were talking about earlier. This, if you like, spectrum, what I was calling the spectrum of priorities, of what's prioritized in one's conception, attitude, orientation, intention for the path, the aim, the goal of practice on the one hand, whether beauty and sacredness and soulmaking are really, genuinely at the forefront, or on the other hand, freedom, healing, etc., for the self. There's a spectrum there.
Just to really make clear something I was assuming, just to draw it out: of course where we are, where a person is on that spectrum at any time is going to vary, dependent on all kinds of conditions. It's not a static thing. So sometimes even if, generally speaking, on the whole, the priority is the sense of sacredness, opening and deepening and widening the sense of sacredness, there will, of course, arise moments and times and situations in our life where actually what we really need is some relief from suffering, some insight or some approach or some cultivation that opens up a situation from the contraction that we've put around it. So it's flexible, it moves, of course. Not just in long periods over time, you know: "Ten years ago I had this orientation, and now I have this orientation," whatever. But also, if you like, even within a day, and probably quite a few times. So just to clarify that.
Let's say a little more about these themes, the why, why offer a retreat like this, and the context and the bases. As I said, these are interwoven themes. So just to say a little more. And in a way, to preface all this with just a -- what would you say? -- an admission. Someone or other, I can't remember who, said something like, "All philosophies that anyone would state are actually confessions." They're personal confessions, and I certainly recognize that. If I'm offering a set of teachings or an orientation or a sort of larger conceptual framework, most often, implicit in that is revealing my own orientation, inclination, where I've arrived at, but also my predisposition. I've talked about this elsewhere. So just to say all that before we even talk about context more.
In terms of the context of these teachings, and the emphases that we'll be supporting in practice, the emphases that we'll take in the practices over the week, partly just to see -- in the context, partly, I feel, and I guess I'd be speaking for Catherine as well -- partly it's a response. In other words, this retreat, these teachings, these ideas, these practices, are partly a response to the situation around us. Not just the global environmental situation, but also the situation of ideas in the wider culture, but also in Dharma culture, or spiritual cultures, or psychological cultures.
So it's partly a response to dominant paradigms that often go unquestioned -- which is partly what happens to a dominant paradigm. It might arise first, for example, with the Western Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution as a question, but over time, that paradigm itself, or those perspectives, views, philosophies, just become entrenched, dogmatized, unquestioned, second nature, really. So it's partly a response to all that, to what's become encrusted and solidified in the wider culture and also in spiritual cultures, what has become prevalent and goes often unquestioned and just simply taken as truth.
Within that, there are different aspects. One is that I turn and see realism everywhere, different kinds of realism everywhere, whether it's in terms of sort of religious realism, or naïve religious fundamentalism, or a secular realism, including the realism that is really at the basis, the unavoidable basis, of secular Buddhism. Or the kind of realism that permeates most understanding of dependent origination, in terms of process and 'real' events, 'real' aggregates, 'real' moments happening in time. Or the realisms that, again, underpin and run through a lot of psychology nowadays, across the whole spectrum of the kinds of psychology, whether it's cognitive behavioural psychology or the more psychodynamic or whatever.
All of them -- so, so rare for approaches, whether psychological or spiritual, to not be based on a kind of realism. A lot of the work is wonderful in psychology. There's, for instance, a lot of work on ego psychology. It's great, but there's a realism underlying that, and it's quite, quite different to have a non-realist basis (this is something I'm going to come back to shortly), to have emptiness as something basic to the path, meaning an understanding of emptiness forming the basis of the path. And even more than that, to entertain this idea, this conception, that fantasy and image is primary. Included in fantasy and image is conceptual frameworks and ideas and that all of this is primary in constituting, fabricating, creating what we then experience and perceive and move in -- rather than that our experience is some kind of independently existing reality, or the ideas that we have are somehow real and true.
So these ideas, these non-realist ideas, are really quite rare and radical in a world or worlds where realisms of different kinds are rampant, if you like. Even more, very often people might hear about a non-realist basis, but it's actually very hard to stay in it. So it's like, "Yes, that's right. Great. Okay. I get it." But so often, then, whether we're talking in the realm of psychology or psychotherapy or Dharma or other spiritualities, so often, unwittingly, there is a reintroduction of some kind of realism. Some thing or other gets reified, made real, assumed to be real, and often without even recognizing it. Even though there might be some enthusiasm for this idea of a sort of non-realist, non-truth-claiming, non-truth-grasping basis for things, it's actually quite rare and difficult for a person to actually abide in that place deeply.
[9:09] Just picking up one area of all that or related to all that, I think -- again, for myself; Catherine would have to word this in her own way -- partly I find myself, along with others, perhaps, responding to what someone coined, the phrase 'aggressive secularism.' You see that in public figures like Richard Dawkins and other people, but also within the Dharma. There's a kind of aggressive secularism that comes from certain voices and certain positions within the Dharma. And in a way, because of the aggression there, and because of the dominance of that force, and the sort of way that it takes hold in people's consciousness, and takes hold of people's consciousness, it seems to demand a little bit or ask for a response to balance it in a way, to open things out.
That kind of aggressive secularism seems to me to be actually a form of religious fundamentalism. Now, obviously secularists, secular Buddhists, etc., conceive of themselves as completely opposite to religious fundamentalists, but there are two ways in which sometimes these two camps are really very similar. One is in relation to the word 'religious.' I've talked about this elsewhere; I'm not going to say too much about it now. One of the things that's characteristic of, if you like, a religious outlook, a religious mindset and attitude (in contradistinction to, say, an artistic one, or a scientific one) is that the authority is sought and placed and assumed to be in the past. So, again, you see this in secular Buddhism, with the emphasis on the Pali Canon teachings, and the sort of claim of objective historical accuracy there. But in a way, there's something religious about that backwards placing, or that placing of authority in the past, an assumption of authority in the past, as opposed to an opening out into the future that's characteristic of art and science, in different ways.
Secondly, with regards to the word 'fundamentalism,' there's a kind of, if you like, fundament, a basis, a ground again in realism, in a notion of truth. In secular outlooks or approaches, that truth that goes unquestioned forms a fundament and a fundamentalism, an unquestioned and unquestionable assumption or basis for everything. All the rest of the teachings are based on this assumption of truth that's a kind of existentialist truth: "This is our existential predicament. This is what it is. This is undeniable fact, or the facts of our existence." And wrapped up in that is usually what's called philosophical physicalism or materialism -- the assumption that, as we've talked about before, matter is primary, matter is the only reality; things, consciousness, etc., human beings, apparent selves, emerge out of matter, out of the complex organization of matter over time and evolution, but essentially what's real is the physical as conceived according to classical mechanical science, Newtonian science, etc.
These are existential and physicalist 'truths' that form a fundamentalism. These are unquestioned. They are the bedrock of this. And together with this backwards authority, this religious attitude, there is a kind of religious fundamentalism. In some instances, it mirrors or replicates the kind of militant religious fundamentalism that we see around the world today, because we actually hear or witness a kind of wish to expel or stamp out views that don't fall into that mould, opposite views, opposite sensibilities. To me, that's questionable. That's really not okay. What's going on there? That's very characteristic of notions of heresy and all kinds of abuse that we've seen in history taking place under the auspices and aegis of religion, now taking place under the auspices of secularism.
So I would much prefer a plurality, a real range of attitudes and approaches and sensibilities, because there's a range in what human beings need, and there's a range in souls, and what resonates, and what is soulmaking for different souls. For me, it's very important to keep that range and that plurality. Any idea of stamping out this or that teaching or expelling it ... I hate to have to share this with you, but if you know, if you're behind the scenes with the politics of retreat centres and that kind of thing, not just here but around the world, there is probably more of this that goes on than you guys might be happy to hear about. So can there be, rather than that, can there be a plurality, an openness, recognizing the diversity and the diverse needs of souls and perspectives and sensibilities there?
I also talked about realisms in psychology and psychotherapies, and the assumptions there. I think both Catherine and I will return to that whole area repeatedly as the retreat goes on, because it asks of us all, I think, today, quite a lot of sensitivity, and we want to present a kind of balanced view of all that. So we'll return to this whole question of realism in psychology later.
Again, part of the idea of these teachings, or this thrust of teachings, this direction, this opening of these teachings, as response, partly it's a response to what we could call disenchantment. So the emphasis on re-enchantment is, if you like, in response to disenchantment. Disenchantment itself, again, is a word that means different things to different people; it's defined in different ways, and there are different kinds of disenchantment.
But one kind of disenchantment -- and I would actually agree with this -- if you like, runs through the Pali Canon. I'm pretty sure I've talked about this in other talks, so I'm not going to labour it, but the Pali Canon actually presents a transcendent thrust in its teaching. The movement there is not to be reborn in this world; that's the final goal. There's, of course, a turn away from sensuality with that, a turn away from this world as anything that's really that deeply attractive or sacred. Nowadays, that reading of the Pali Canon is not very popular because the whole area of the transcendent, also because of secular takes, is out of bounds. So we're left with nothing but this world. There is a kind of movement to somehow twist the message of the Pali Canon into some kind of life-affirming or world-affirming or this-affirming teaching, which actually it's pretty hard to do, if you're really openly reading the Pali Canon. It's hard to justify that kind of reading, but that's become, if you like, the prevalent reading in a lot of circles.
So there is a kind of strange tension between disenchantment of a certain kind and enchantment that runs through the Dharma. But even more than that, in the wider culture -- which obviously knows nothing about the Pali Canon, or is not really exposed to the Pali Canon -- there's the kind of disenchantment of modernism. Disenchantment was actually a phrase that was first used, I think, by Max Weber, the sociologist, a hundred years ago, perhaps; I can't remember. What does that mean? We've talked about this before. What does that mean? What's the disenchantment? Partly it's this flatness, the assumption of a one-dimensional cosmos: purely matter, purely meaningless matter, random atoms ricocheting off each other, coming into combination through their physical forces, happening to build stuff for a time that can be quite complex and quite amazing, if you like, but then that just dissolves. Nothing but this flatness, this one-dimensionality.
There's a disenchanting that took place as that became the dominant way of perceiving, really -- not just conceiving, but perceiving the world -- over some centuries after the Western Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, on the back of the more sanctifying views of the cosmos that were in place before that in the Middle Ages, etc., in the West, not to mention other parts of the world. But there's a kind of disenchantment that comes with secular humanism, to a certain extent, of what the human being is and what the human being isn't. Again, we'll return to this later. And scientific materialism, which I've just mentioned.
So there's a response to the disenchantment that is pervasive now. It's become a norm, so much so that most people would not even recognize that they're living in a disenchanted universe, because they have no recollection of an enchanted universe. But it's important to say with all this that certainly I -- I think I'm speaking for Catherine as well -- we're not anti-science here. I have a deep interest in science, and especially physics and modern physics, as much as I can understand it, and I have a little history studying that. But there's a difference between being anti-science -- it's more like what needs to get challenged is scientism, this word that I used the other day, which we could say is the kind of creeping outward, overstepping of the boundaries of what science or what people believe that science can legitimately explain and take within its purview.
What started in the Scientific Revolution as really a mode of approaching, a way of thinking, a way of approaching experimental data -- a sort of scientific method, if you like -- slowly, over time, became a truth, an unquestioned truth, that there is nothing more than what can be explained by scientific materialism, that these are actual realities and truths that we're talking about, and they will eventually be able to encompass and explain the whole of existence, the whole of our experience, etc. It's this scientism that actually is part of, if you like, a kind of disenchantment -- though, again, we can call, if you recall from the first talk, it's like this idea of a cultural enchantment of which scientism is one example.
But again, the context of the retreat is partly in response to this creep of scientism. Again, in ... I was going to say "Dharma culture," but it's not really only Dharma culture. It's wider than that, in the culture of psychological growth and healing modalities, the medical model, etc., that I talked about. Mindfulness, in all that, is often presented, if you like, with what I would call an underlying metaphysics of disenchantment, an underlying metaphysics of non-enchantment (in the way that we're using it), either because it's presented, more and more rarely these days, in the sort of classical Pali Canon thrust of disenchantment, of transcendence, either that kind of disenchantment, or there's a kind of, in the more popular versions of the way, say, some Insight Meditation or mindfulness is taught, there's a kind of limited enchantment. For example, what gets enchanted is the whole idea of "the moment," and "living in the now." Or nature, to a certain extent. I've talked about all this before; I'm not going to repeat it here. But again, to notice that why those enchantments are limited is because they are often actually assuming a flat cosmos. Also there's the assumption of realism wrapped up in that. So in different ways, "the moment is real," "this experience is real," "these atomic units of perception or consciousness or factors of mind are real," "time is real." Also the kind of physicalism or one-dimensionality of the view of nature. It's all based on a kind of flat cosmos, assumed to be real -- so from a realist conceptual framework.
[24:45] Again, part of this, part of the response, and part of the contrast I want to draw out is: what happens when we take emptiness as a radical basis for our path? An understanding of emptiness as a radical basis. I said I wouldn't repeat too much of what I've talked about before, but this one is so crucial, and so seemingly hard for people to really grasp what it implies to do that, or what's really involved in that, and why it's such a radically different basis and approach to the Dharma. 'Radical' actually means, from the word radix, which means 'root.' The whole root, the whole basis, is really different. Nowadays, the word 'radical' gets used much too easily. It kind of becomes a little meaningless, if you like. But really we're talking about a very different basis.
So the idea, as I said, of the possibility of placing ways of looking, the notion of different ways of looking and all the different possible ways of looking, and the notion of the exploration of the fabrication of perception -- those two notions, interrelated notions, putting them really central, really integral to the whole unfolding of the path, right from the beginning. What is it, then, to have a non-realist assumption? That any concept that we have, any perception that we have, anything that we think we arrive at, is not 'real' or 'truth'? Practice then becomes, in all that or with all that as a basis, practice becomes the practice of, the exercise of flexibly entertaining different ways of looking, a whole range of skilful ways of looking -- which includes conceptual frameworks. So a conceptual framework or an idea is a part of a way of looking. Some of these are very, very subtle, and some of them are broader, grander, more built up.
But this whole flexibly entertaining and trying out different ways of looking to see their effects on freedom, their effects on the heart, on the perception, on the sense of beauty, on sense of meaning, on soulmaking -- all of this we can experiment and play with, because there is this flexibility. Because things are empty, all there is is ways of looking, and we are free to engage different ways of looking. This whole idea of ways of looking and the fabrication of perception forms both the starting, kind of working basis of a path, and also the end. The deeper and deeper we go, you see all we're left with is ways of looking, and ways of looking are empty too. But there's something that legitimizes it right from the beginning.
This, as I said, is radical, and it's a big deal. All Dharma concepts, whatever it is -- aggregates, or not-self, or impermanence, or whatever, Four Noble Truths -- none of them are truths or realities. There's no Dharma concept that really is a truth in that sense, or a reality. But all of them, all Dharma concepts, big ones or little ones, are, if you like, translatable to ways of looking, or concepts embedded in ways of looking, that become available to us with skill in practice. We then engage them, but they're not truths. This is, as I said, a big deal. It's a radical re-grounding, if you like, of what the path is and what it's based on and what it involves. It has all kinds of massive implications in the way it opens up possibilities for practice and for understanding.
One of the reasons, perhaps, why it's difficult for many people nowadays in Dharma circles and wider circles, mindfulness circles, etc., to really recognize the significance, the radicality, or what a big deal this placing of emptiness, of ideas of ways of looking and fabrication, those ideas in their fullness, placing them really at the basis of the path and the conception, and forming a path, letting a path form around those conceptions, based on those conceptions, shot through with those conceptions and oriented according to those conceptions -- one of the reasons that's so difficult is because there's so much emphasis and rhetoric and assumption on a reality that can be arrived at through mindfulness, through bare attention, etc., that permeates, perhaps, a lot, if not most, Insight Meditation teachings and approaches, and also of course mindfulness teachings and approaches.
Together with that, what makes it difficult is that the ideas of fabricating, of what is fabricated, and seeing through the fabrication of certain ideas or states or thoughts or whatever, seeing them as fabrications, that idea is already there, as is the idea that comes up from time to time that, "Yeah, we can look at things in different ways. There are different ways of looking at an experience or whatever it is that's happening." But underneath all that, underneath those relatively limited teachings of fabrication and the acknowledgment of the possibility of different ways of looking, underneath that, there's this idea that mindfulness or bare attention will reveal what is unfabricated -- the experience, in the moment, revealed 'barely,' 'nakedly,' 'as it is.' So the word 'unfabricated' is often not used. It's used occasionally. But if it's used, it means something like 'this experience, just as it is,' or 'this bare actuality of the breeze on the cheek, or the thought as the thought,' or whatever.
So in that, as I said, the whole teaching of fabrication of perception is grossly limited, and there's a limit on the exploration of just how much we can let go of fabrication and unfabricate perception more and more. Underneath all this, teachings about mindfulness, bare attention, and typically the way Insight Meditation is taught, is some kind of assumption of a reality that we can meet, find out, that is sort of life as it actually is, experience as it actually is. But there's not this understanding that there is no reality independent of the way of looking. So, "Yes, sure, we can look at things differently at different times, to a certain extent, but underneath that, there's a reality. There's a way things really are, which, yeah, we can look a little bit different ..." But the whole teaching of ways of looking has, again, a very limited depth, because underneath the teaching, or a mentioning occasionally of different ways of looking at things or that possibility, there's an idea that there is an actual, independent reality.
[33:53] So what I would like to say is, contrary to that, all we have are ways of looking. They're empty too. There is no reality independent of the way of looking. There is no objective, inherently existent reality. And the scope for unfabricating perception, for moving up and down on this spectrum of fabricating and unfabricating, is, if you like, complete. It goes into total cessation of any experience of subject, object, space, time, thing, all of that. So there is not, underneath, this assumption that's being held on to of reality, or bare attention being able to expose, to reveal, to meet reality.
Typically, people hear these teachings about ways of looking and fabrication, and it just doesn't have the impact. It's like, "Yeah, so what?" It almost just goes in one ear and out the other, or over the head, or whatever, because 'being with reality' or 'bare attention' or whatever is held on to as really the main thing, so that teachings about ways of looking, or mentioning the flexibility of that, is just heard as a sort of, "Yeah, okay, big deal. It's a small, occasional supplement."
As I said, I would really want to give a different ground to the Dharma -- a ground of groundlessness; a basis in emptiness, in this fullness of understanding, and comprehensiveness and thoroughness of the understanding of the ideas of ways of looking and fabrication. So there is nothing hiding in there about this bare actuality of the moment, or meeting things as they are, etc., and all that.
So quite different, and that may be, apart from the fact that emptiness is sometimes scary to people, the prevalence and the sort of ways these ideas have sedimented in Dharma culture and in the consciousness, obviously, of practitioners, etc., means that they're there and they're operating, and what is heard that might actually be deeper or wider or different than that tends not to get heard, because it just bumps into those sedimented ideas.
As I said before, it's not easy to stay in that notion of non-realism. So, you know, what's quite popular these days is replacing the word 'truth' in the Four Noble Truths with the word 'tasks.' That's good, in a way. It's kind of obvious that they're tasks, but still. What happens there is, at one level, in recent years, people get very nervous with the word 'truth.' They don't like it; they feel a bit oppressed by it. So there's a kind of small, superficial liberation in jettisoning that word, 'truth,' and it feels good. But really, as I said before, okay, so one is not using the word 'truth,' but still underpinning that, even if I've replaced it with another word -- the shift is nominal, literally; it's just in terms of a word has shifted, because underpinning all that is a belief in so-called existential truths, the so-called truths of our existential situation, and usually a kind of philosophy, unspoken -- well, rather, unthought-about, unquestioned philosophy of physicalism involved in that. So the shift is purely superficial there, often.
For some people, what enables this shift of basis to really having emptiness, and deep understanding of emptiness and dependent arising, as a basis of the path? Curiously, the more one understands emptiness, the more it even makes sense to have emptiness as a basis, so much so that it's almost like one can't really take seriously an approach that claims some kind of realism or truth, explicitly or implicitly. I'm just saying, personally, I can't really take anything seriously that is based on some kind of realism that's usually hidden there.
For some people, that approach, curiously, of putting emptiness at the fundament of the path will actually come once they understand emptiness more deeply. For others it might come through certain more modern philosophers, really probably starting with Nietzsche -- very amazingly insightful, radical thinker. And since then, lots of other philosophers in the Western tradition open up this whole question of truth, kind of deconstruct the assumptions of truth and reality that we've had.
So it might be that that helps for people. It might be, for some, it actually comes through a deep understanding of modern physics. For others, it's just that they already are possessed of or have available to them, if you like, what we might call a more artistic or poetic sensibility -- their personality is already, in contrast to some personalities that tend to see things and think of things in quite concrete, literal terms, some people are already, I would say, blessed with this kind of ability to not fixate consciously, in a way that articulates, or in a more unconscious way on 'reality.' So there's this kind of liberation that comes through an artistic sensibility.
Any of those -- whether it's understanding emptiness deeply, or modern science, or some aspects of modern Western philosophy, or this more poetic sensibility -- these can liberate and make available for us a shift in the very basis and direction of what the path is, so it's not about 'truth' or based on notions of 'truth,' explicit, or hidden, implicit. But it's really more an art, and from whatever direction one is liberated in that way, then we see, we feel, that we are free to create. The whole thing becomes art. I will come back and talk about that.
[41:20] The kind of realisms are so prevalent, sometimes they're hard to notice; they're actually, as I said, hidden a little bit. So much in the languaging of mindfulness or Dharma -- one person was talking about mindfulness as, I think, "being with life as it presents itself, meeting life as it presents itself." That kind of phrase, or that kind of summary of what mindfulness is, can sound very attractive. It also sounds completely innocuous, and completely obvious to people who have been practising mindfulness a little bit. But what I want to say is: is it really? Is that really (A) what the Buddha meant, and (B), more importantly to my mind, is it really that innocuous? Or is there, again, a whole slew of assumptions -- ontological assumptions, epistemological assumptions, all kinds of stuff -- wrapped up in such an innocuous-sounding phrase, such a simple and attractive-sounding phrase?
Again, I've talked about a lot of this before, but what does 'life' mean? It's such a buzzword these days, 'life.' What do you mean when you say 'life'? What's wrapped up in that? It's, again, a word that can easily have included in it all kinds of things that are taken for granted about what's real -- again, our existential situation, or the reality of matter, or the flatness, whatever. So "life as it presents itself" -- yes, okay, what do you mean by 'life'? What exactly do you mean by 'life'? All kinds of things -- I'm not going to labour that now.
But even the phrase "as it presents itself" seems to suggest a kind of independence there, a non-recognition that what is presented in perception, or to perception, or as perception doesn't so much present itself independently. Perception is not a kind of passive receiving of some kind of representation of reality, or a faithful reconstruction of some kind of reality. We have to see that what arises as perception, what is presented, if you like, or feels as if it's presented in the mind, is not independent. It's a dependent arising, dependent on the ways of looking.
Not understanding that, not including that as either an insight or a mode of working, means that we're missing what I would say is the main point of classical Dharma, which exactly is understanding that -- how perception is fabricated dependent on the way of looking, understanding the deep teaching of dependent arising and emptiness. The Buddha said, "This is hard to understand, hard to see. I'm not even sure if I want to teach this," he said. This is the thrust of the main point of what I would call classical Dharma, meaning Dharma that doesn't include the imaginal, etc. So phrases like 'life as it presents itself' tend to obscure the dependent arising, or the arising of perceptions, of appearances, experiences, dependent on the way of looking.
Again here, this importance, to me, this real importance, this necessity of questioning: what is wrapped up in the views operating in this or that position or statement, this, what I think the word means, 'critique,' as I said in the opening talk? For instance, wrapped up in the phrases 'being present' or 'meeting life as it presents itself' or whatever it was, is there a kind of assumption of modernist physicalism, these random atoms, or what matter really is, versus just the notion of appearance, which is a much more phenomenological notion that leaves much more open and much less assumed? We're dealing with appearance. We're not necessarily dealing with what we might think matter is according to a modernist physicalist view. There's a huge difference in those assumptions, in what opens up by those assumptions, in what's allowed by those assumptions either way.
Sometimes -- unfortunately, quite often -- people write to me, or they say something about emptiness, and they're relatively enthusiastic about it, and then they say something about how congruent that is with understandings of how the brain works, etc., so that this understanding of the fabrication of perception and the possibility of different ways of looking is reduced to a ground, and the ground is the brain. The ground is the neurophysiology and the different neuronal mechanisms and processes happening in the brain. But again, we're back at physicalism. Emptiness does not stop, does not have a ground or propose a ground in the brain or in any kind of physicalist ground. To somehow try and convert the teachings of emptiness and fabrication of perception and all that into an equivalent that posits things in terms of explanations according to brain neurochemistry and neurophysiology and mechanisms is not, as far as I would say, a deep understanding of emptiness. It's leaving out a whole range of territory there.
This physicalism, this tendency to do that kind of thing, is endemic in our culture. We're saturated in it. The way we think and assume and perceive is saturated in that conception, that assumption, and all of that. It's what sometimes modern philosophers call a 'sediment.' It's sedimented in our view, so much so that it's become something that's just kind of solidified and hard to see, hard to question, hard to have a different assumption, hard to even see that it's operating sometimes.
As I said, different possibilities for understanding emptiness more deeply, probing more deeply, questioning with the emptiness practices. Or modern physics and what quantum physics, etc., has to say about the reality of so-called atoms and electrons and those constituents. Or modern Western philosophy, questioning the whole ideas of physicalism, whether it's in continental philosophy or Anglo-American traditions, if we talk about that -- from both sides of the modern Western philosophical tradition, the whole notion of materialism and physicalism is really being, or has been for quite a while, deconstructed and pulled apart.
So I would say, and I think this is extremely important, the brain and the mind and the processes of the mind are all empty. All of them are empty. The matter that makes up the brain, and the neurons, and the atoms, and the subatomic particles are all empty. So the emptiness really means a groundlessness. We're not positing or assuming a ground in notions of matter, atomic particles and subatomic particles, as something real.
Wrapped up in all this, or just another way of saying all this, is really about questioning. And for me, that's so, so key, so much the lifeblood of practice, or one of the things that gives zest and vitality and thrust and openness to practice. Without a kind of radical questioning, our practice is actually quite narrow, and quite circumscribed in the range that it can open to. Very often, you know, someone might hear about a retreat like this or these kind of teachings, and of course, very often -- as I said, you'll even get it here -- enchantment is contrasted with the 'real,' so it's not 'real,' 'off with the fairies' or whatever, something like that, and what a person really wants is "My life, the reality of my life. I want meditation or mindfulness for my everyday life," etc. And that idea of mindfulness or meditation for the everyday can be very attractive. One wonders, what's actually the attraction there?
Part of it goes back to this coping, that people understandably are suffering and want to find ways to cope with what most and most often bothers them, which seems to be things at the level at which we're perceiving them: "These are real, they're a problem. How do I deal with that?" But one wonders, too, whether the idea of mindfulness or meditation for everyday life, etc., it's somehow encapsulated in the title and the thrust of the teachings -- there's a belief in, and actually a reaffirmation and a support for habitual perceptions and conceptions of what reality is. And this is much safer, if you like, because questioning deeply notions and perceptions of reality and habitual assumptions is basically upsetting. It's not necessarily peacemaking at first. Challenging deeply such ingrained assumptions, such assumptions and perceptions and conceptions that everyone seems to agree on about what's real (also called ontological assumptions), and what we can know (epistemological assumptions), cosmological assumptions (what the world is) -- this is not easy. If you like, it's more attractive to hear teachings that seem to reaffirm what we already know, what we already take to be real.
[53:08] So there's this, both in Dharma culture and other spiritual cultures, if we even use the word 'spiritual,' which of course some of them don't -- some are about personal growth or however it's phrased -- and in the wider culture as well. That word, 'secular,' its root meaning is 'of this age.' 'Of this age' is what 'secular' means from the Latin. But to me, it's like, what 'of this age' should mean is the questioning of what is now outmoded. That's what it means to be of this age, is to be moving, not just receiving what's actually an old inheritance.
So the assumptions of classical mechanical science, whether one is drawing on them in one's exposition of secularism or teaching; or whether it's just through the neurophysiology, which seems very modern because it's current research, but it's still based on classical mechanical science; or the assumption that we can have objective, independent understanding of anything that's so much at the basis of the classical scientific method, which started with the Scientific Revolution and the Western Enlightenment. But actually, what is it to really question these old inheritances of ours, these philosophical, usually unspoken, or just tacitly assumed, tacitly born assumptions that we have, perceptions, conceptions? The questioning of them is what is current, not just the adoption of ideas that are actually hundreds of years old and have been surpassed in science, in philosophy, in Dharma, in all kinds of things.
So the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, you know, voicing this recognition that the way we see, our perspectives, are partly the result of history, and we have to recognize that. We're not getting some objective take on anything, whether it's a text or our existential situation. Our views are products of history. We interpret, again, whether it's a text, the Pali Canon texts, or other Buddhist texts, or other religious texts, or our life -- the hermeneutics of that, the interpretation of that, is from a certain historical situation, as a result of and conditioned by all that. And it also has a certain horizon that's historically conditioned, and conditioned by all kinds of other factors.
The possibilities for interpretation, the hermeneutic possibilities, these evolve. So it's also not just a result of history, but it's part of history, and the whole thing can be dynamic. Interpretation is not, we don't arrive at a truth of either "this is what the Buddha said, this is what he meant, and this is the truth, and anyone who doesn't agree with me is just simply wrong, just simply deluded" or whatever, or "I can extract this or excise this, let's say, so-called Vedantic overlay or this corruption of the texts, and arrive at the pristine, actual truth, independent of anything else." This is not a very mature understanding of what actually goes on in looking at old texts, or in looking at our existence, our selves, and our lives. It's the interpretation. Hermeneutics becomes actually inexhaustible, creative, open.
So these are some of the ideas that this philosopher, Gadamer, expounded and expanded upon, but many others in kind of postmodern philosophy, etc. And again, these kind of questionings and seeing through the assumptions of classical mechanical science, of the assumption of being able to have objective, independent understanding and perception of anything -- these also can be approached by emptiness, as we said, Dharma understanding, if I go deeply enough, if I approach it in the right way. I have to set up my whole investigation into emptiness in the right way; otherwise that, too, will just reach a wall, and I can't go any further.
Again, I know I'm harping on about this, but what is it to really, really -- not just nominally, but really -- not to have notions of truth or reality, either explicitly or implicitly, girding our sense of existence, but also the path? What is it, really, to jettison that, and really, if you like, to have a ground of groundlessness? To have a non-realism as not just the basis, but permeating through the whole of the Dharma?
With all this, as I said, in regard to the contemporary context of all this, of our teachings or our culture, again, the importance of questioning. And what are the questions of our time? It's easy to just receive old answers and act as if they're new or assume that they're new, but actually what are the questions of our time? What is it time to question? It's a big deal, as I said.
Again, related to all this, remember, we're talking partly about why, why offer such a retreat, why is it important. I'll speak for myself, but I know from Catherine also that she has found this as well. I'll speak from my experience, but since I've been talking about the imaginal, for instance, I've lost count of how many people have reported back to me that because of hearing these teachings, something was legitimized, that they were somehow given permission, through hearing these teachings, to play and to explore and to pick up concepts like divinity, God, angel, without reifying them. They were given, granted somehow, permission to play and to explore, and certain concepts and perspectives were legitimized -- the whole use of the imagination, words like 'soul,' etc.
I rejoice; it really touches me when I hear that. I'm very glad that that kind of opening has happened. And I have a question, again, in relation to that: where did the pressure come from, the authority, the imprisonment come from in the first place, that it was not legitimate, that there wasn't that permission? Where did that authority and imprisonment come from? Who imprisoned you? How? Where do we give authority? Where do we give up our authority? To whom? How does that even happen, that somehow I can't entertain certain ideas which might be extremely fruitful, extremely nourishing and fertile for the soul, and opening in all kinds of ways? Somehow something has gone on with authority, or authority figures, or something or other, and I'm not allowed. They're out of bounds, they're taboo. What's gone on there? How has that gone on, and why has it gone on? This, to me, is a real question.
So partly offering this retreat to give permission, to legitimize, to open up whole vistas and areas and vast areas for exploration, for play, for the fertility of the soul, for inclusion of aspects and dimensions of being that have somehow got amputated, rendered out of bounds, no entry, do not enter, do not even think about using this. So there's a big, for me, a big desire to open up those territories, because I just see how important they are, how necessary they are. And there's a question in that.
[1:03:16] Okay, so just a few brief things. I said I would say a few things, just to finish, about relating to the retreat, relating to these ideas and teachings. How do we hear, and how do we frame and hold these ideas and these teachings? If I just share for myself, I notice that I feel quite sensitive and sometimes a bit reactive, or I get a bit nervous, when I hear certain ideas expressed, let's say in the New Age kind of language, where there just seems to be too much realism, too much reification in it. I mean, personally, it rubs me the wrong way. As I said, I can't take it seriously, whether it's a more New Agey idea or whether it's a more secular idea. Something really reacts to that in me, and I get a bit nervous when I'm listening. That's just me sharing what kind of doesn't work for me when I'm listening. If someone is talking that way, or I'm reading something that way, I kind of have to work a little bit on how I'm listening to it, so that I can actually take in what might be useful, but not get tripped up by what makes me a little uneasy.
One thing here, related to that (and I've talked about this again before, but it's so important that it's worth repeating): we have this emphasis on a deep understanding of emptiness and dependent arising, on the one hand. All perception, all experience, is empty. There's no truth in any of what I perceive, no ultimate truth, or conceptual framework, etc., on the one hand -- real strong emphasis and basis in that. And, if you like, on the other hand, what appears to be in opposition to that is this willingness to entertain certain conceptual frameworks or what we might call 'metaphysics,' and sometimes quite sort of Platonic in the sense of these hierarchies of existence, or things that are given reality, etc.
So there seems to be a kind of opposition there, it can seem, very much. And in a way, this kind of work, imaginal work and re-enchanting in meditation, can seem like somehow walking a razor's edge between these two extremes. It's kind of what seems to be realist spiritual metaphysics on the one hand, and kind of radical emptiness and understanding of dependent origination on the other hand. It can seem like one is really walking a tightrope, or it appears from the outside that one is really walking a tightrope or a razor's edge between those two.
But my experience is that the deeper I go into understanding emptiness, what looks like this tightrope balance, actually, and this narrow razor's edge or tightrope -- you get the image of some very narrow, precarious balancing; I have to really keep in the middle between falling off on either side -- actually what seems like a very difficult, narrow place of walking, of standing, of moving along this razor's edge or tightrope, actually with practice and the deeper I go into understanding, is not narrow at all. It's quite the opposite. It becomes very wide and fertile fields, allowing, legitimizing, inviting a kind of infinitude of exploration, so that practice becomes, in this holding together of the understandings of the emptiness of all things -- a radical, absolute emptiness of all things; complete, thorough emptiness -- the holding of that with the willingness to enter into and entertain various conceptual frameworks, and even metaphysical ones, etc. With practice, the balance isn't precarious at all or contrived, which from the outside or maybe at first it might seem as if it is.
Going back to this question about -- really, the question is for you -- how will you hear these teachings? How will you frame and hold these ideas? As I said, I shared for me what makes me nervous sometimes. Just to say, the encouragement to take care, to find a relationship with these ideas, with the practices, with the teachings, that work for you. So that's one thing.
A second thing, related to that, has to do with listening in general, or reading. And I know I've said this before, but again, it's so important to say it: it seems to me that, as human beings, we listen or read teachings almost from inside of certain boxes, from certain conceptual structures that we've built up, that we understand or that we assume to be true or real. We listen to something new, or we read something new, from the perspective of what we already know. And sometimes, in that, what happens is we just cut out and cut off -- and almost, in some instances, literally do not hear -- what is new, what doesn't fit into the boxes of our conceptual structures.
This is, maybe, just part of the way the human mind works. It's difficult, sometimes, because sometimes these boxes -- there are periods, maybe long periods in practice, where those boxes need to get consolidated, need to get built up. We need to hear just little bits that patch this and that and make the structure more firm. But there's a downside to all that. Sometimes we simply do not hear what is new, what doesn't fit in the box, what's different, what stretches and opens and sometimes even breaks, shatters the box.
So, is it possible, as we go through these teachings, or other teachings that you come across, or books that you read, to actually listen for the new? To read on the lookout for what actually doesn't fit in your box? This is difficult. But just to kind of put that out there, recognition of the difficulty of that, but a kind of gentle encouragement to listen in a different way than what is often habitual for us. Listening for what is new, what doesn't fit into my box of what I already know. Again, it's more challenging, sometimes not so comfortable. So that's one thing.
And a second thing to do with listening and reading has to do with listening for the relevance of what's being said in any moment, or the point that's being made. Why I'm saying this is just a couple of examples that I've experienced teaching. I remember some years ago giving a talk, and the bulk of the talk, or some large part of it, was actually about quantum physics and its relationship to emptiness and understanding of reality and perception, and what that had to do with freedom, etc. I remember afterwards, one person listening -- maybe it was a little afterwards; I can't remember -- just sort of somehow making the point that he just thought that I was going off about quantum physics because I was kind of interested in it, and I had just got lost in a tangent that had nothing to do with anything, really, or certainly not the Dharma. [laughs] I was actually surprised, because I had perhaps assumed too easily why it was relevant or what the connections were.
Another instance, teaching emptiness on a long course, a couple of times in fact -- or maybe it was the first time, and the second time I got a little bit wise to it; I can't remember. Going through and explaining all this stuff about emptiness, and realizing that three or four people actually, it was completely abstract for them, because they just didn't see a connection with realizing the emptiness of things and a reduction in suffering, or freedom from suffering. So the whole thing just seemed like, for some people, it seemed like it was landing in a place of, "This is completely abstract philosophy. What's this got to do with suffering?" And again, I realized, oh, I have to go back and actually connect things that, to me and to some people, seem completely obvious, and the relevance, the connection of ideas with (in this case) freedom from suffering needs to be made.
Partly I'm suggesting, what is it to listen for the relevance? And if something is not clear, ask. Ask, "Why did you make that point? What exactly, what was the point of making that point? What was the point of that practice?" Do ask, because when we hear things and we don't understand their relevance, it's like their power to transform or to open up possibilities is almost completely diminished, just dissolves right there.
Related to that, we can also say something about what I might call listening and reading structurally. This is another way of saying something very similar. How often I hear from people they were listening to a Dharma talk from this teacher or that teacher or whoever it was, and the person says, "I took one thing." And they say really half a phrase of what the teacher said in an hour. It might be "turn towards what's difficult" or something. Which is great, you know. They got that, and it was important. But it's almost like this a little bit myopic or over-microscopic focusing on some little detail.
Now, we need to listen for details, we need to read for details. Of course we do. But sometimes what happens is in that, we're not listening or we're not reading for the big picture, for how things fit together. And again, it's difficult to hear the big picture if ideas are different, and we're not hearing those new ideas. But oftentimes when we're not really listening or reading and kind of seeing how it all fits together, how the big picture forms, the big sort of, if you like, conceptual structure, then again, what we'll find in our practice and in our lives and in the way the Dharma develops for us is, because of that, a kind of limitation on the movement that's possible and the opening that's possible. I know this is not always easy in terms of the way some people's minds work, etc. But just a general -- and not just for this retreat, but more generally in one's life -- is it possible to gently encourage what I'm calling a more structural kind of listening or reading of books or whatever, so that one really understands the relevance and how things fit together, the bigger picture?
So just general things to mention about relating to the teachings. We're going to talk more or say some things about relating to the different practices probably tomorrow. But yeah, just more generally in terms of the teachings. And one last thing with that is, you know, teachings have to happen in linear time, and they have to happen in chunks. We can't (A) sit here and download it all in one second, and (B) if we were to sit here and just download it, so to speak, in one go, it would obviously be very long, and everyone including ourselves would fall asleep or get exhausted. [laughs]
So teachings have to be presented, inevitably, in chunks in time. But on this retreat in particular -- and it goes for other retreats as well -- sometimes those chunks are not really separate. We're going to talk, for instance, about what does it mean to re-enchant the self and other, re-enchant the world, re-enchant time (in other words, different areas of re-enchantment), or re-enchanting the seeing, or the hearing, or the tasting, or the touching, the six senses. But actually, all these areas of re-enchantment are not separate at all. They're, if you like, mutually dependent. The enchantment is mutually dependent. They are, if you like, enchanted together: the self, the world, the senses, the perception, the ideation. All of it is actually enchanted together. But we have to split things up to talk about them, so sometimes, you'll be four or five days into the retreat, and you'll get a piece of something, and think, "Oh, I wish you'd said that at the beginning," or a piece at the beginning doesn't make sense or fit until later. So just a recognition of that. It's a limitation of, you know, our existence, in a way, of the way things arise for us and need to be separated.
Also, related to that, there's not really, on this retreat, so much of a linear movement: we start with this, and dependent on that, we'll go to something more advanced. It's not really set up that way, unlike other retreats, with the exception (as we'll talk about tomorrow) about the energy body, as that forming a working basis for our practice.
Okay? So, a lot of stuff to bear in mind, and hopefully to open things up and make things fruitful and helpful for all of us.
