Transcription
Okay, so we'll be recording these Q & As. If you don't feel comfortable with your question being recorded, then say that, and Mark will turn the machine off or turn it down or something at that point. But generally speaking, as I said earlier, your questions will be helpful for other people, helpful for you later on, etc. But if you don't feel comfortable with that, just say so. I'm not sure what else to say, really. Anyone, anything, questions so far? Yeah, please. Is that John? Yeah.
Q1: one energy body, or many
Yogi: Sometimes you say the energy body, rather than my, your, and I sometimes got the sense that it's as if there's just one. Am I just getting the wrong end of the stick?
Rob: Could everyone hear that? I'll repeat just in case you can't. So John's asking, sometimes when I speak, and I think also Catherine as well, generally you'll find Buddhist teachers say the body. Yeah. One level of answer is, yeah, sure, there is one. And there are many. And there are none. [laughs] They're all true. I think it's just a habit of speech, really, probably that I've picked up.
But I've actually intended, rather than to point towards "there is only one" -- which we could say, and that's a valid point of view, as valid a perspective, a way of looking as any other -- I think the languaging of the energy body rather than my is just to give a little bit more sense of less of the self's kind of tight grip around it: "My energy body, and I'm evaluating my self, because it's my energy body." So a little less me and mine in it, a little more looseness in the relationship of identification with the experience. So just allowing a little more room, rather than going to this "everything is one big energy body" -- which is actually a very fine perception, very important as a mystical experience, but not so much what we're going for right now. Variations on that can open up quite spontaneously, even on this retreat, maybe, or whatever, but that's not so much an aim. Does that make sense? Does that answer? Yeah? Good.
Yeah, Chrissy?
Q2: difficulty sensing the energy body outdoors, with distracting physical sensations
Yogi: I'm finding that when I try and rest in the energy body, when I'm sat here, especially with the group, I'm finding it quite easy. As soon as I'm outside, then it's like I can't manage to feel it while I'm walking. Or if I'm standing inside, I can. If I'm standing outside and it's windy, I can't. What I'm starting to work out is if there's something that makes my edges, like my skin or whatever, stand out -- I can't do it lying down either, because all I can feel is the pressure on my back, say. There's something else that takes over my sensing capacities, and I can't rest in it.
Rob: Yeah, that's very interesting. Could everyone hear that? Do you think I need to repeat it? I'll repeat it just for the recording. So Chrissy's saying when she's in the meditation hall, and with the group energy as well, it's easier to access and stay and rest in the energy body. When there's some other kind of sensation impinging on the body and on the bodily consciousness, like the wind or the touch lying down, the contact with the floor, then it's harder to stay with the energy body feelings.
There could be a lot of possibilities, but part of it could just be familiarity. You know, the usual way we're used to paying attention to the body is not via the energy body, it's via the sensations -- especially if you've done mindfulness in Insight Meditation. So there's a kind of propensity for the awareness to just be aware of sensations. The more you touch base with the energy body, make it easy for yourself at first. Don't go where it's difficult too much. Make it easier for yourself. Just hanging out there, getting used to that, what I'm calling a sensibility, that kind of tuning of the awareness, it just becomes more second nature. Then you've got like, you know, you're riding a bike or something, you're good with all the gears: "I can shift to sensations, I can shift to energy body, I can shift to other kinds of awareness of body." Make it easy for yourself, and the more you hang out there, the easier it will expand to other regions. Yeah?
So I wouldn't necessarily bang your head where it's difficult. But it might be there's some kind of in-between environment where it's easier. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Let's see, some other possibilities: maybe what you could do is, two possibilities. One is make the awareness space bigger, if that makes sense. As I said this morning, when we talk about energy body, energy space, whatever, I'm talking about a space that's usually a bit bigger than the body. Now, the awareness can go very small. I could pay attention to a minute area of attention in the tip of my finger, for instance. Or I can go really huge. So there are gradations of how big the awareness can be, a whole spectrum of how big the awareness can be, right? Energy body tends to be this kind of space [slightly bigger than body], but it might serve to go really big for a while, and just let everything be there. So you'll get maybe a mix of the more usual kinds of sensations in awareness, but they're in a bigger space, so the mind is not sucked into them so much. Do you understand? It'll shrink, fine, but really as big, big as you can. In that space, you've got sensations and things dancing around, and maybe you can have sensations and energy in that space, and then you can kind of tune back in. Yeah?
The converse possibility may be possible, which is very gently to go into the centre of the body. So if something's on your skin, just gently, "What's happening right at the core?" Sometimes, for some people, what can be helpful is actually using the imagination a little bit. And as I said, anything goes with the imagination. But one thing that's helpful is, if we're talking about the core, there's a line. You can imagine a line of energy up the body. So let these sensations be; you don't have to fight these skin sensations. But just imagine that line. Maybe it's a certain colour or whatever. Feel into how that vertical axis feels, energetically, in the middle of the body. Does that make sense? If you just hold that, it's a little bit more going in with the imagination helping, then aware of the whole space, but with that central axis. That might help as well. But generally, I would say it sounds great, and this thing, as I said this morning, it grows more until it becomes just another dimension of life. It's just another way we can feel the body. Yeah? Okay. Good.
Yes, please?
Q3: pīti as an experience within the energy body; penetrating or opening to pleasantness; prioritizing samādhi, image, or emotion; working with images or skilful reflection in jhānas
Yogi: When I'm practising and I become more concentrated, I get a sense of -- I think it's what you would call pīti, and it feels sort of as though I'm wearing a helmet or something like that. It's not tingly or anything, but it feels heavy. It feels like there's physically something there. Is that the energy body? It doesn't move around very much. It stays mostly around my head. Is that what you would call the energy body, or is that pīti? Is that something different?
Rob: Yeah, good. Are you Rowan? Yeah, okay, so Rowan's asking, when you feel more concentrated, more settled in the meditation, there's an experience in the sort of top third of the body that feels a bit -- what is it, heavy, or ...?
Yogi: It's as though I'm wearing a great big hat or a helmet or something. It can be small, or it can go out [inaudible].
Rob: Okay. But what's the sensation there, like pressure coming in or going out, or what would you say?
Yogi: It's more like a gentle pressure.
Rob: Okay. Is it pleasant?
Yogi: Yeah, mildly.
Rob: Mildly. Okay. So this word, pīti, is a word the Buddha used quite a lot when he talked about samādhi. I would define it basically as any pleasant experience in the bodily space that arises from a non-sensual origin. Okay? In other words, I'm meditating and it arises. It's not arising out of someone touching my skin or something, or a taste or something like that. All these definitions, they have edges to them. So this pīti arises. It can take many, many different forms. What characterizes it is the non-sensuality of its origin, and the pleasantness. It can be extremely intense, like 'blow the roof off the top of your head' kind of thing, or really quite mild, but it's all pīti and it's all good.
Is that the energy body? What I want to emphasize -- I think what I said this morning, as well -- is the energy body is not a certain kind of experience so much. There are a lot of different experiences that can come within what we might call the energy body. It's a way of attending to the space of the body. So pīti is a certain kind of energy.
There's a lot in your question, so let's just take it apart a little bit. Someone wrote me a note this morning, and I was thinking maybe a good analogy is a bit like, if you know what harmonic overtones are -- when you hit a note on a musical instrument, it has multiple resonances of other notes that are sometimes less loud. Are you familiar with this? Yeah? So we could say all of that is the energy body, and within that, we can tune to different wavelengths of experience or, in the analogy of sound, of the tone. So pīti is one wavelength, or even there are many different kinds of pīti. There are different tones within this series. In a way, they're all present at the same time, funnily enough. We just don't notice them. You could think of it like that. Does that make sense in terms of what's the energy body and what's pīti, just for that part of the question?
Yogi: So you're saying all of it is the energy body and there are different manifestations?
Rob: It's a different wavelength. So when I rap my knuckles on that, and I can feel the sensation, it's slightly unpleasant, whatever, you could call that energy body. But actually it's more a certain frequency of the sensation. Energy body is usually characterized by a bit more, we could say, subtlety of the wavelength. Does this make sense to people? These words we use -- gosh, when we get to words like 'soul' and 'God,' it's even more [laughs] like, "What are we talking about here?" But there's something, after a while, you get a feel for this. We're really talking about a kind of way of paying attention, and a certain dimension of our experience as human beings that oftentimes goes unnoticed, either because of the meditative training we have, or just because people in society don't tend to talk about it, so it doesn't get noticed. The kind of pīti you're describing -- which is one of many, many different kinds of pīti, many different kinds of pleasure that can come up -- the energy body feels that way at a certain time. As you practise more, you realize, "Oh, that's just one type, then there are others, and loads of others." In terms of it being up, yeah, that's normal. What I might ask is, it sounds quite static, from what you're describing. Does it have any movement in it?
Yogi: It's quite static. I have experienced other kinds of pīti like tingling and showering and that kind of thing, but this feels a very different kind, and it feels as though -- I don't know whether this is my imagination or what, but it feels as though it almost has a sort of boundary, but it's very diffuse, which is why I wonder whether that's more like the energy body.
Rob: Yeah, I think it's all manifestations or experiences of energy body, everything you've described. Quite characteristic of this way of working with the energy body is a sense of some kind of boundary that is quite diffuse, don't know where it is exactly. That's quite characteristic. But it doesn't have to be. There are lots of possibilities here, but that's quite characteristic.
I think a rule of thumb is if it's steady, this pleasantness, relatively steady, then your job -- at times, if you want to go more towards the samādhi -- is just to enjoy it. That's your priority. That's number one. Have it flashing neon: enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. And how do you do that? Well, there are lots of ways of doing that. One is, here's this experience, and it's sort of up here. Just find where it's strongest. Maybe it's completely homogenous over that area. Maybe there's an area where it's strongest. Just as you might pay attention to the breath here at the nostrils, you kind of dive, you focus on where it's strongest, and you just nuzzle into it. Really find the pleasure there. So that's one option.
Another option is to kind of be a bit more open with it, as if you're just bathing in this and receiving it. The whole area that's being touched by that and enjoying it, it's just bathing in it. You're opening, opening. So one mode of attention is a bit more probing, a bit more narrowly focused. Really always seeking the pleasure, yeah? It's very hedonistic. It's good. The other is more like you're sunbathing, and just soaking up the sun. Make sense?
Yogi: But then isn't that going more into practising with joy and stillness?
Rob: Well, it might. As you do that, actually, there's a number of possibilities. One is it just stays the same and you just enjoy it. Another possibility is that just by doing that, it starts to spread and fill the whole body. If we're talking about samādhi, that's something we want to gently encourage. You have a second option there, which is to actually imagine it spreading. Just imagine that it spread, or just like ... [miming spreading the energy around] [laughs] I mean, not with your hands, but with your mind. Just spread it in the body. That can be like it's quite viscous, or it's really quite insubstantial, and you're just spreading it. You're painting your body in this.
Sometimes just enjoying it, opening to it, getting into it, it will spread naturally. And sometimes it won't spread. It just stays like this -- fine, just enjoy that. So the size of it may or may not change. If we're working towards samādhi, if that's the orientation, that's the conscious intention at any time, then that's gently what we're wanting to encourage: full-body immersion. As the Buddha says, "suffusing and saturating" the whole body.
Another possibility is, as you do that, the quality of the energy changes. It might go, as you said, to joy. Or it might go to stillness, or peacefulness, or the quality of heaviness might become very light. There are all kinds of possibilities. We could map territories here, but I think for now we don't need to. What you want with this kind of practice is you become a connoisseur. You know, like people do wine tasting, and they can really be very discerning, it's like we become a connoisseur in the realm of pleasure in the body. Very subtle, very strong, different kinds, different qualities, and we really get to know, get familiar with each kind. Then you can start to map them out, and see how that fits onto the Buddha's map of the jhānas and all that stuff. Does that give you a bit of a sense of how to ...?
Yogi: Yeah. I think I'm just sort of wondering whether -- I practice with the jhānas, but that's not what we're doing here, is it, right?
Rob: Oh, no.
Yogi: We want to be more staying steadily with samādhi, not intensifying pleasure or the stillness?
Rob: Oh, thank you for raising that. No. So we have options here. If I use the word samādhi, I really mean a big, big spectrum of what's possible, of which the jhānas -- the really deep states -- are just part of that spectrum. Going back to something I said this morning, what wants to be clear is, "What am I actually trying to do in practice right now, in this stretch of this sitting or walking?" Now, at some points, my intention might be towards samādhi. In the very broad sense, what that means is just gently encouraging a sense of well-being in the energy body space, and the mind kind of getting into that and enjoying it. We could say that's what my samādhi direction is. Not forcing it. I'm not pushing it. I'm not demanding. That has a whole range: if I'm just sitting and not feeling pleasant, then I'm working with easing the unpleasant; to very mildly pleasant, nothing to write home about; all the way through all eight jhānas, etc. That's totally fine, if you're kind of working the subtle plasticine of the energy body, and if it feels like "this is really good," great, enjoy it. If it goes into a jhāna, great. Fine. It's all samādhi.
At other times, the intention and orientation with regard to the energy body is, "No, I'm abiding here, watching the emotional resonances." It might be grief, it might be sadness, it might be boredom, it might be just peaceful, it might be joy. But I'm abiding with a sensitivity to the emotional resonances in the energy body. And if it's difficult, what's happening emotionally in the energy body, then I'm trying to work with that skilfully: "What's helpful here? What does it need? Some love, some softness, some space, some image?" Right? That's the second option. The third option is working with images, which we did a little bit today. But as we said, always on this retreat, including the sensitivity to [the energy body]. Whatever I do with images, I'm always in contact with my energy body. I'm trying to include that in the awareness, because that's how I notice what's helpful, what's not, what's soulmaking, what's not, the resonances (as we used that word). Does that make sense? So broadly speaking, three options. What's important is just clarity about what's happening.
Yogi: So one can work with the imaginal in the full range, all through the jhānas? Or just with a milder sense of samādhi?
Rob: The textbooks say, you know, if you're in jhāna, then nothing else is going on in terms of images, etc. What you find with a lot of jhāna practice, and what I find with teaching, is there is the possibility to be in a jhāna -- see, a jhāna isn't an on/off switch, like it's just black and white. It's actually, when you start to get into it, you start to realize it's a territory, and there's no exact demarcation point like some people would have you believe. But it's possible -- some people find it easier than others -- to actually be in a jhāna and work with something like an image as well, or even work with a kind of skilful reflective process. There are all kinds of possibilities. So I wouldn't so much exclude it. You'll have to find out what's kind of possible for you. If you're just learning the jhānas, generally speaking, I would say better to kind of keep them more pure at first, and learn the really pure version: nothing else is going on but this joy or whatever it is. And then, after a while, you can kind of realize that actually more may be possible. Yeah? Okay.
Is that Mei-Wah? [23:40]
Q4: dissolving into oneness, or retaining particulars and moving into cosmopoesis
Yogi: Working with the love character, when I've been doing that, I've kind of noticed two different tendencies -- one to stay more with the particular, with the personhood of the other character, and another where we kind of hang out or start dissolving. Should I choose more the personal, universal, or either?
Rob: Okay. So Mei-Wah is asking, with the meditation we did today with the imaginal figure of love, she kind of discerns two kinds of unfolding that happen there. One is tuning into the particulars and the sort of character of that person, and the other is a kind of movement towards dissolving together -- into one another, and something more universal, or how would you describe what happens then?
Yogi: I suppose it's just the personal dissolves, and then I remember Catherine talking about "keep the personal," so I'm just not sure ...
Rob: When it dissolves, the personal, there are many kinds of dissolving. [laughs] When it dissolves, does it dissolve into some kind of big space of oceanic oneness sort of thing, or what tends to happen?
Yogi: Yeah, different variations, sometimes losing the body or sometimes it goes ...
Rob: Okay, so let's say for now -- and this is part of the reason why we did this on day one in this retreat -- everything is good in the big picture of things. But I think on this retreat, we're wanting to stay more with the character of the imaginal figure, that sense. What you might find is that it dissolves in a way where your person and their person just dissolves in a kind of oneness of something like love or something like that. That's a beautiful experience. It's not so much what we're interested in on this retreat. That's a more likely experience in the kinds of meditation that we might teach, mettā or insight meditation.
There's another way of it dissolving, which is what I've been calling cosmopoesis. What happens is here I am with this character. I'll say more about this tomorrow, but let's just say a little bit now. I'm tuned to their character. I feel their love. I'm taking that in. There are resonances. I see their beauty, and I see also their divinity. What does that mean? I don't know; let's just leave it open for now, in fact. [laughs] There's a sense that they are more than the usual way our culture tends to think about the human being, if they're even a human form at all. There's a divinity here, and I'm seeing the beauty of that. Something in my soul is touched by that sense of divinity. We're not losing the human; it's almost like extending the range, if it's a human figure or animal figure, extending the range of what's there.
Then sometimes what can happen is, in being with that and the soul being touched by that beauty, by that love, by that divinity, it's as if the character of that soul starts to spread. So it's not just universal love; it's their love, with their character. Somehow the whole of nature or cosmos is imbued with that particular character of that being. Does that make sense?
So something has gone from a singular, particular imaginal figure to what I would call a particular cosmopoesis that's characterized with the same personality, if you like, somehow. So here are the trees, the sky, the earth, and somehow it's that figure, and their divinity, and their love, writ large, imbued into the fabric of the cosmos -- cosmopoesis, enchanting the cosmos in a very particular way. Does this make sense? Yeah? So it's all good, but that's the distinction that I think we're trying to lean more [towards]. It's the more rare variety in the kind of circles we tend to move in. The other one of just universal love or universal awareness is more normal as practice deepens in insight meditation and mettā and those kind of things. But we'll touch base about that again tomorrow.
Julia, yeah?
Q5: changing figure of love based on what is easier or simpler in the moment
Yogi: I really liked what you just said, but it feels quite a long way away. But it sounds very interesting. My experience with the love figure was that at the beginning, a lot of grief came up with the particular person that I'd chosen. So I chose somebody else. And then I found that I kind of opened. I just wondered if that was okay, to switch. Because I know Catherine said to trust the person you'd chosen, but it just felt so complicated. Then I thought, "Okay, go with the simpler one," and I felt something shift.
Rob: Absolutely. Yeah, go with the simpler one. You know, all this is flexible. You know this anyway: when you do the mettā categories, someone is your benefactor, then they look at you the wrong way one day for half a second, and "Hey." [laughter] Down to division four, you know. [laughter] This is part of what we were talking about, the sensitivity to the energy body. It's like, "Okay, an hour ago it was her/him/whatever, and now it's too complex." Go with what actually opens in the moment, and trust that. Yeah? So, it's not so fixed.
A lot of the questions are quite advanced, if you like. I just want to make sure the nuts and bolts of the energy body, if there's anyone feeling like "yikes" or ...
Yeah, Laurence?
Q6: working with sense of lightness in the energy body; appreciating divinity and dimensionality
Yogi: This kind of leads on from Chrissy's question about being outside and having a sense of the energy body. It's a very similar thing. In the hall, it seems to run, pīti in the hands, spreading, a sense of pressure, and kind of feeling like it's a little bit outside of the boundary of the skin. Outside, noticing very much a sense of appreciation, which feels good -- the flowers, the birds, country, lovely. I'm just wondering where to take that when there's not much of a sense of any energy body, just there's maybe a lightness to the body. Just wondering kind of what avenue to take with that, to keep the appreciation going, or to kind of look for sensations, maybe use the imagination ...
Rob: Okay, so, I think maybe this goes back to no right and wrong. Today, we've said emphasize the energy body. But as the retreat goes on, we're going to open up more the possibilities. So you say, okay, there's not much of a sense of the pīti, but the lightness is there, the body feels light. That's energy body. If we go back to the musical analogy, that's a certain wavelength. Great. So one option you have is, okay, just be with the lightness. That's tuning into the energy body. The lightness may not be obviously pleasant at first. When I start to pay attention to it and let it fill, I start to see, "Oh." We like the body feeling light, generally speaking. It's a pleasant feeling. It's more subtly pleasant. So we have to be careful -- energy body is not a certain experience: "I had this pīti, and now I'm trying to get that back, because that's the energy body." No. The energy body is a way of paying attention. So lightness is also fine. It's good. So that's one option.
The appreciation, you know, we've got to appreciate as well -- it's a really important part. Hopefully this will get clearer. Sometimes it's just, appreciate, and let the heart appreciate, let the being, the senses appreciate. You don't have to try and do anything with that. But there's a third option that we're going to kind of emphasize a little more, which is a bit -- I can't remember whose question it was now -- it was in response to Mei-Wah. Appreciation, like everything else, comes with a whole scale to it. It can be a mild appreciation. It can be something touches us so deeply, the soul is moved. And I think what we want to say is when the soul is moved, what's happening there? Okay? Now, there's stuff happening in the energy body. There's stuff happening in the heart. There's also something happening in the perception.
So when I'm moved, when the soul is deeply touched, when there's what I call 'soulmaking,' when there's soulfulness there, the perception, whether it's a tree, or nature, or another human being, or some image, the perception has got more dimensionality to it. You think, "This tree is a bunch of atoms." I can appreciate that. Wonderful. Then I got to the molecular structure and photosynthesis. Fantastic. Other, more soulmaking appreciations, they have other dimensions. It's not obvious. Because we don't talk about it in the culture, we don't have a language for it. This is what we want to emphasize a lot on this retreat. It's not something separate from the tree, or the materiality of the tree, or the nature of the tree, or the evolution of the tree. But in and through the appearance is something that we might call a divinity, or other dimensions.
So that might come into your appreciation. And partly what we're interested in is opening the sensibility to that. The way that we're defining 'imaginal,' and the way that we're defining 'cosmopoesis,' and the way that we're defining 'enchantment,' this retreat -- we could define all those in different ways. As we're talking about it, that's a key aspect. So it might be that you start to pick up on that more. Is this making sense?
So if that's there, as the retreat goes on, that's the kind of thing that we want to -- still in touch with the lightness in the body or how that feels, but "Oh, what is that?" Can I see the beauty of the divinity, or the divinity of the beauty, in what I'm appreciating? It could be purely intrapsychic image, could be something in nature, could be another person, could be a memory of a friend. Does this make sense, guys? Yeah? So this is the kind of thing we're going to be talking about. Our culture doesn't have a language for this, unfortunately. But if that makes sense, you've got different options. Okay?
Ça va, or ...? Please, yes. [36:27]
Q7: difficult and unpleasant experience of the energy body
Yogi: So far this evening, in the other questions, the energy body has been a pleasant experience. My energy body, my experience today, some has been pleasant, but also for all sorts of reasons that I'm not going to go into, there's quite a lot of agitation there. That's okay, isn't it?
Rob: It's totally okay, and I'm thankful someone actually said that, because you're not going to be alone. So thank you. And what's your name? Jen? Yes. Look, when we talk about energy body, we're definitely not talking about just a pleasant experience. Anyone that comes to me and just says, "My energy body is always pleasant," I just think, "You're not paying attention." Pay attention. It contracts, it opens, it softens, it hardens, it gets pleasant, it gets unpleasant, sometimes across quite a narrow spectrum, and sometimes a really big spectrum. That's the deal, okay?
Again, going back to what's the intention at any time in practice: when it's difficult, contracted or tight or agitated as you say, the question is, what does it need right now? What does it need? Agitation might need a kind of soothing. You can soothe in lots of different ways. I'm not forcing it to be different. I'm responding with care to something. That's really important. There's a caring response to how this feels. Sometimes it's just in the kind of attention we pay attention with. Like we said with Chrissy, one option is just going to a much bigger space, and letting the agitation kind of rumble around, but it's rumbling around in a much bigger space, and that can tend to help.
Sometimes it's about almost imagining an energy of warmth, for instance, around the agitation, something soothing. That could be a full-blown imaginal figure, doing something with love, or it could be just kind of energetic imagining, if that makes sense, partly visual. But something soothing. You can use your breath to soothe the agitation. You can really play with it.
Again, you're not forcing something, rejecting something to be different. You're caring*,* like you would if a baby is agitated. Sometimes, of course, parents, in the run of things, do get frustrated: "Ah, shut up," you know. Hey, that's life. But generally, it's like, "Oh, what can I do to soothe?" There are all kinds of possibilities. Sometimes there's an emotion that's making the energy body [feel unpleasant], that's at the centre, and we want to tune more to the emotional aspect. It's like, what does the emotion need with that? So it's not just purely physical; it can be emotional.
One more possibility, just in terms of purely the way we pay attention. When there's something difficult -- agitation or contraction or grief or whatever -- normal human reaction is there's going to be some kind of aversion to it. Not to judge that, the aversion, but one option is, rather than going straight to the feeling itself of agitation, is actually to be more interested in the aversion, and seeing if I can kind of relax around the aversion and soften around that. It's kind of like dealing with the secondary layer of reactivity. Can be really helpful. Yeah? Does that ...? Yeah? Thank you for saying that, because it's really important to understand.
Yogi: Just for a minute there I thought, "Oh, am I the only ..." [laughter]
Rob: No, you're absolutely not, and like I said, anyone paying attention, it's just the nature of the beast. What we want is our range -- to be okay with all of that, okay with all the coming and going, and skilful when it's nice, skilful when it's difficult, and also when it's kind of neutral. There's a whole skill about "nothing much is happening here." That can really open up. So yeah, thank you for saying that. It's really important.
Okay, we better stop for tea. Ah, Rosanna?
Q8: through our ways of looking, we sing into being
Yogi: Just a question that came through just now about the word 're-enchantment.' Is it about re- putting in song in the cosmos? Because you talk of cosmopoesis as like making music. Because there is another meaning of enchantment ...
Rob: Yeah, we will hopefully be talking about that. I would say, I think it was in the talk last night, there's a kind of unskilful enchantment: I'm trapped in something, I've lost my centre, I'm captive to something, some idea or something I'm clinging at. And then there are different kinds of skilful enchantment, of beautiful enchantment, and it is related to enchanté in French, 'spell,' 'magic.' Re-enchanting the Cosmos: The Poetry of Perception, I think, is the title of this retreat. We are the poets. We make poetry with our perceiving, with our sensing of the world. And yeah, that means the poet sings. And 'sing,' I mean in a very broad sense. Through our ways of looking, we sing into being, we chant into being, something that re-enchants. So yeah, deliberate usage of those words. There's something, it's like understanding perception is a creative thing. I think the talk tonight is about this. And we can open up that divinity and that beauty.
Very good. Shall we just have one minute of silence together before we end?
