Transcription
At the beginning of the retreat, the first couple of days at least, our encouragement is for all of us to really emphasize the awareness of, practising with, what we've been calling the 'energy body.' You were asked to review and become familiar with that whole area of practice before the retreat, so I'm not going to repeat instructions much about that at all, or the whole actually infinite range of possibilities that are there with that, that are available with that in relation to the energy body and working with it. We'll have some Q & As so people can ask, or in the groups or whatever, and in the individual meetings. You can ask about working with that in terms of what comes up.
But just to say right now, very briefly, a few general things in a short summary around this. Just a reminder: the energy body, when we use that term, we're talking about mindfulness of the body, but it's a different kind of mindfulness than, say, the usual mindfulness of sensations that we're mostly accustomed to hearing about and practising with in the Insight Meditation world, in the mindfulness world. The mindfulness of what are the sensations with the hands under the running water of the tap, what are the sensations of the breeze on the cheek, or when I lift and move and place the foot and the foot touches the ground in walking meditation or whatever -- this is the more usual presentation of mindfulness of sensations. Very important, very lovely area of practice, direction of practice. And in a way, when we talk about energy body as a mode of mindfulness of the body, it overlaps with that mindfulness of sensations. It's not really something completely different. It overlaps. But really there's a different, if you like, tuning. We're tuning a different sensibility than the usual mindfulness of sensations. It's more subtle, in a way. Generally speaking, it's more subtle.
And this tuning of the sensibility, it grows. The sensitivity to that kind of awareness grows. The more we practise feeling the body and sensing the body as energy body, the easier it becomes, the more familiar it becomes, the more established it becomes. So it grows with practice, like many things. What we're really talking about is a sensitivity to, a tuning to, if you like, the space or the field of the body, a little bit bigger than the body, even, and the energy or the feeling or the vibration of that whole space -- maybe certain energy centres or points within that space, but really the awareness of, the tuning to, the sensitivity and sensibility towards and with that whole field of vibration, energy, feeling.
Why is that important? Why are we emphasizing that? Well, for a lot of different reasons. I tend to view it as something so useful for almost every domain of practice. (1) So for samādhi practice, where we can use the energy body and develop what I'm calling samādhi, this kind of energization of the energy body, of the mind as well -- deep nourishment can come in. We're using the energy body as something we tune into in an orientation of practice that's aimed at nourishment, energization, rest, brightness, calmness. And all this is a huge resource to mind and body, this practice of samādhi or working with the energy body in the direction of samādhi. All this should be just repeat. You should be very familiar with this, as we asked you to be.
(2) Another area where the energy body is really, really, really a helpful resource and really useful is in navigating and responding to and caring for our whole emotional life. So the energy body reflects and expresses what's going on with our emotions -- very, very subtly, even very subtle emotions, emotions that probably we don't even have words for in the English language. Shades, subtle movements of opening or contraction, or turning away, or whatever it is, different kinds of love, all kinds of things. The sensitivity, the attunement to the energy body, can be a really skilful way of working with the emotions, really helpful, developing the sensitivity and developing skilful responses to the vicissitudes of our emotional life.
(3) Thirdly, the sensitivity and awareness to the energy body, the tuning to that, actually proves to be really helpful in guidance and kind of navigation for whatever practices we're doing, whether it's imaginal practices, and one can feel the resonances or a dimension of the soul-resonances, of the soulmaking and the soulfulness of what's happening in relation to an image, for example. One feels that partly in the energy body. It's a way of gauging whether one is on track, whether an image is going to be fruitful, fertile, or soulmaking, or helpful for the soul.
Also in terms of emptiness practice, or much more broadly, insight practices, again: are we on the right track? Well, the energy body will reflect it. When there's the release and the relief that should come with insight, we feel that in the energy body, not just in the mind. The energy body will reflect it much more subtly and much more palpably than the mind, much more accurately than the mind. So the freeing, the release of contraction that should come with any insight, small or large, in the moment, this is felt in the energy body, and it can tell us. I may not even quite understand what just happened or how I'm looking right now, what the insight was, but the energy body is telling me, "Whatever you're doing, there was an insight there. It was helpful." Or not, or "This is leading to more contraction," in which case, what's going on? What's coming in as a thought or an assumption or a view that's actually causing more contraction, if you like, the opposite of insight, in a way?
But also with mettā and, as I said, samādhi and other practices, the sensitivity to the energy body will help us know when we're on track, whatever little experiment or play or shift we're working with in practice: "Ah, yeah, that feels right. I can feel it in the energy body." And with mettā, sometimes the feeling in the energy body itself can become mettā, or be interpreted as mettā, and then radiated outwards or bathed in or wrapped in or whatever. All kinds of possibilities. Really for any direction or domain of practice, any kind of practice, the energy body, for me, can be really helpful to make central. So, so helpful, in so many ways.
[8:25] So on this retreat, whatever we're doing, whatever you're doing at any time in meditation practice, can it be done in touch with, sensitive to, open to, aware of, attuned to, the energy body? Now, anyway, when we talk about working with the imaginal and cosmopoesis and things like that, we can't do that all day long, working with an image or with a cosmopoesis. These things come and go. Right now, at the beginning of the retreat, as I said, we want to have more emphasis on the energy body, perhaps more on the cultivating of the samādhi or the tuning to the emotional movements coming and going, ebbing and flowing. Just at the beginning, a little more leaning that way.
As the retreat goes on, as you get more skilful with all that, even off retreat over months, there can be much more fluidity and flux in the emphasis between the different practices, between the intentions and orientations, whether it's towards samādhi, towards working with the emotions, towards feeling guidance, towards feeling the energy body in relation to an image or cosmopoesis or whatever. But all of these orientations, all these intentions for practice at any time include, never lose touch with the energy body awareness.
This fluidity or flexibility of emphasis, any of these practices can move via the energy body from one to another. Again, all this should be repeat for you, if you listened to those other talks. For example, one is working with an image, and as one's working with the image and noticing all kinds of things in terms of the soulmaking and the energy body, one realizes (for example, often) that with this image, a harmonization has come into the energy body, an opening, a lightness, a beauty in the texture there of the space of the energy body.
If one wants, one can then lean more the emphasis of the attention into that loveliness of the feeling in the energy body, with the intention of entering into it, bathing in it, basking in it, wrapping oneself in it, enjoying it. And then the intention has moved from the imaginal work into more the intention of samādhi, of that as a resource, of staying in that. Really valid, really fine. Very, very useful at times.
Of course, things can work the other way around, from samādhi to an image that, if you like, comes out of samādhi or is made available because of the depth of the samādhi and the harmonization there. Or, for example, one's working with a certain emotion and, again, in touch with the energy body, and from that emotion -- maybe it's a difficult emotion, perhaps -- and out of the vortex of energy there that's wrapped up in the emotion, an image comes. Then one works with the image, and that feeds back into the emotion, etc., maybe unlocks something, helps it, transforms it, all kinds of possibilities. Again, all this should be review.
But this growing fluidity and flexibility to move between these different emphases in practice. Even now, at the beginning of the retreat, many of you are familiar with these kinds of ways of working, or you might even find that this fluidity is available even if a lot of this is relatively new. So some degree of fluidity between these emphases and orientations, intentions of practice, is really valid. But at the beginning, let's a little bit more lean into really emphasizing, staying with, staying close with the energy body, developing the samādhi or the mettā or the sensitivity to the emotional flux there and tuning to the emotions.
But really, in a way, with the energy body, especially in relation to samādhi, anything goes. It's very, very creative. How we can play with the energy body and the image or images, potential images, of the energy body -- for instance, visual, with colours or lights or lines, or other images that work into the energy body and give it harmony, as I said before, and a nice feeling -- the possibilities are actually infinite. The potential for creativity is open and infinite. What's really important, then, whichever way one is working from (say, for example, from an image or something visual), what we're prioritizing is the felt sense, the kinaesthetic sense of that space, the texture, the feeling of it. So, as far as the energy body is concerned, that's the primary thing is the feeling, the texture, of that space.
In a way, I talk about this energy body, and maybe for some people it's a slightly strange phrase or whatever, but in a way, we could say that the energy body is as much or maybe even more about an awareness, a sensibility, a subtlety of attention, than it is about the body per se. So when we talk about energy body, we're really talking about a way of paying attention, a sensibility, a subtlety of awareness to that space of the body, rather than something about the body per se, or rather than a certain experience of the body: "I feel a certain flow of energy," or whatever. So energy body is, if you like, a way of feeling, a way of experiencing, a way of attending to and attuning to the space of and around the body.
Walt Whitman -- I can't remember what poem it's from, whether it's Leaves of Grass or Song of Myself or something; I can't remember -- but he has a lovely line, "I sing the body electric."[1] In a way, we can hear that line as "I sing of, I sing about the body electric," the energy body, the beauty that's there in this sensibility, and feeling the body this way, the body alive as a field, if you like, of electricity, of harmony, of that kind of more subtle energy. And I sing also of the well-being that's available in that mode of paying attention to the body. And some of you will know, that well-being has a huge spectrum. It can be very, very subtle and unremarkable, and it can also be extremely intense, or very, very blissful -- all kinds of gradations and shades and tastes, if you like, of well-being, of bliss, of pleasure, of comfort. Really opening up the range of possible experiences of the body, this electric body, this energy body.
So "I sing the body electric" can mean "I sing about that, I sing of that" energy body. In a way, "I sing the body electric" can be heard another way: "I sing the body electric" means "through my singing, through my enchanting" -- and the word 'enchant' is enchanté in French, chant*,* to chant, to sing, actually -- "through my enchanting, through my conjuring," if you like, to borrow a phrase from the Buddha, the conjuring of consciousness, of perception, "through the spell, the magic spell that I'm playing with in my awareness, through that, I sing the body electric." Through my singing, the body becomes electric. The body becomes this energy body; the experience of the body becomes that. So I sing that, metaphorically. Through the way that I'm paying attention, through the way that I'm conceiving of the body in the moment, I sing, I enchant, I cast a spell, and the sense and the image of the energy body comes into being. I sing it into being. The emphasis here is on the sing, on the enchantment, not on the I -- "I sing the body ..." No, "I sing the body electric."
[18:01] So this experience, if you like, of the energy body, this kind of awareness, we could say is something we create. It is something we create. We're fully acknowledging the dependent arising of this sense of the body, of the energy body, of an energy body -- the dependent arising of that perception, and the dependent arising of how it feels. As you practise more and more with the energy body, we recognize and become very skilful in -- when I look at it this way, when there's this quality with the awareness, as opposed to that quality, it changes, actually, the experience and the perception of the energy body. The lightness, the contractedness, the flows, the openness, all of that changes in dependent arising with the ways that I'm looking at it. All of this is beautiful territory to explore. So much potential there for learning and play and creativity.
But we acknowledge, because of dependent arising, that this experience of the energy body is something that's created. It's created by and with the mind. Some systems of chakras have four chakras, some have seven, you can have nine or whatever. Which is the truth? Well, the experience of the energy body is not separate from the mind. I can experience four chakras, I can experience seven chakras, I can experience nine chakras. It's not different from the conception, the subtle conception or gross conceptions, operating in the mind in the moment, and the way of looking. The energy body itself is formed, is fashioned, is fabricated. So yes, it's created, and it's discovered -- this razor's edge, if you like, of what is created and discovered at the same time, both created and discovered. This is something we're going to return to as a theme in this retreat. I'm just mentioning it now in relation to the energy body.
When we do the walking meditation today, can we, again, emphasize the energy body? Just for now, for today, or if you're doing this course elsewhere on retreat, take your time, take your time with this. It could be more than a day. But can we walk, so to speak, in the energy body, or in that awareness? So I'm walking in this bubble or region or space that is this kind of sensitivity to the texture, the feeling, the vibration, the energy in that field. How fast do I have to walk that allows me that fullness of that kind of sensitivity, allows me to tune in? Maybe I have to walk very slow, maybe at a normal pace, maybe actually quite fast helps. And maybe that varies over the course of a walking session. So play with that. At times it will feel more helpful to just stop and stand, either at the end of the walking path or in the middle, because that stopping and being still allows you to more fully inhabit and feel the energy body. Just, again, be sensitive to, in the moment, what is helpful in terms of pace, in terms of being still or moving or whatever.
So there's the formal walking practice, and we said, can we do it in the energy body, so to speak, sensitive to the energy body? And then there's also informal, walking around the house or going for a walk or whatever it is. This, too, at times, at least, can you experiment with what it is to just move around, in informal movement in your day, but in the energy body, sensitive to that? Is that possible, walking down the corridor or whatever it is? Most people -- certainly if you're new or newer to energy body practice, and 'newer' might be even months or even a couple of years it's still new, maybe -- most people will be helped by slowing down. As you're walking around the house inside, especially, just slow down a little bit. The slowing down is not for the sake -- this is something I'll return to -- not for the sake of a microscopic attention: "I can divide the lifting, moving, and placing of my feet. I can divide that not just into three. I can divide it into nine," or whatever, and this microscopic division of attention. That's actually not a priority. I'm going to talk about this in a minute. Not a priority, or a reason why we're slowing down. We're slowing down to allow that different sensitivity, that different kind of mindfulness of the body -- this mindfulness of the energy body -- because we're allowing, we want to encourage that and give ourselves the best opportunity for that to establish itself and become more and more accessible. That's the reason why we're slowing down.
[23:29] Okay. I'd like to say some really quite general things about practice, because we're emphasizing the energy body, and we've given all those instructions in other retreats and talks, and asked you to be familiar with them. So I'd like to say some general things now about practice. The danger in saying them now, at the beginning, and the danger also in talking generally, is that these kind of things easily get forgotten. I wonder if you can, if you're taking notes or whatever, if you can remind yourself of them periodically. Because what I really want to talk about right now is five attitudes or orientations, or inclinations or emphases, or assumptions that are really quite prevalent across much of modern Dharma. They tend to dominate, underpin, and direct practice and thoughts about practice, and constrain and limit practice -- limit the range of unfolding of experience that's possible, and also the range and depth of insight gets limited through emphasizing these orientations, clinging to these orientations or having these assumptions.
On this retreat, or in this way of practising, if you like, in this way of conceiving of the Dharma that we're wanting to offer on this retreat, we're wanting to usurp them, if you like, cast them out of their dominance, question them and replace them with other priorities, if you like. So there are five of these, really, and I want to just touch on them briefly.
(1) The first is concentration. This so often gets emphasized, and in two aspects that I want to draw attention to: one is as continuity. The first way that concentration gets emphasized is continuity. I'm not talking about jhānas or anything like that. I'm talking about even a continuity of mindfulness. (Actually, before I get into this, again, I hope you can hear this as a response to the context, to a leaning that, to me, has sometimes gotten too much or overemphasized and comes at a cost. So, not that it's not important, but just leaning the other way to balance things out or open things out in ways that perhaps they don't open because of the habitual leaning).
In our way of thinking about it, or going about practice, it's not the continuity of mindfulness or attention -- that's not what liberates. So, unlike, say, Mahāsi-style practice, or Goenka practice, where it really is the continuity that's emphasized -- that's sort of the golden key, as much as anything, or the idea is that's the golden key to liberation -- instead, in our way of approaching things, it's rather the deliberate and flexible exploration of a range of ways of looking. Noticing the different effects of each of these ways of looking on dukkha, on contraction, on self-sense, on perception. And with that, the question: "What can we understand from seeing all this? When I look this way, this is the perception. When I look that way, that's the perception." So that deliberate flexibility of exploration of ways of looking, that is more important than continuity of mindfulness.
Now, actually, we might ask: why is it that continuity of mindfulness is regarded so often as so important? To me, it's an interesting question. Either it's because mindfulness gets presented -- whether it's in Insight Meditation circles and mindfulness teachings or whatever -- mindfulness gets presented actually as a way to live. Recognizing that it's impossible to sustain it, still it's presented as an optimal: "If you could live and be mindful all the time, or as much of the time as possible, that is the way to live." So it's a way to live, rather than a way of looking. There's a big difference there.
Or sometimes, even mindfulness itself is taught as equivalent with awakening: a moment of mindfulness is a moment of enlightenment, or something like that. Or the emphasis on continuity is tied up with seeing anicca, seeing impermanence, more and more continuously and intensely, and seeing anicca as reality: "This impermanence is the ultimate truth." Then the other two characteristics, anattā (not-self) and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), they come from the perception of anicca: things are unsatisfactory because they're impermanent, and there is no-self, there is anattā, because things are impermanent. But this impermanence is taken as the reality, the primary reality. And there's a whole metaphysics of reality and a whole conception of what insight is that's tied in with and tied into this emphasis on continuity. It's quite different from the approach of a flexibility of ways of looking.
So we're not emphasizing on this retreat, in this approach, concentration, either as continuity or, in a second aspect, as a kind of prioritizing of focusing, prioritizing of trying to keep the attention on one thing, whether that's the breath or the body or whatever it is. Samādhi, in the way that I use the word, and I would say in the way the Buddha used the word, is not actually that well translated by the word 'concentration.' What gives a better, fuller, to my mind more attractive meaning, translation, is it's a well-being in the energy body and a harmonization of the energy body, which the mind then much more easily settles into and fills out. Steadiness is part of that, but it's only a part of the picture.
Okay, so the first of these five is concentration, in two aspects: continuity and this prioritizing of focusing, prioritizing of trying to keep the attention on one thing. These are so often emphasized, and we're saying no, we're not going to emphasize them. [30:51]
(2) Second is something we could call atomism. So the first is concentration, and the second is atomism, by which I mean either aiming exclusively for a narrow focus, a narrow area of concentration -- it may be the tip of the nose, if you're staying with the breath, or this moment of taste, or this area of sensation in the body or whatever; a narrowness of the area of focus or concentration -- but more importantly, there's an atomism as a kind of prioritizing or elevating or an exclusivity of not just microscopic attention more generally, but also understanding of the view of reality. Again, wrapped up in that is an idea that 'true reality' is atomic: moments of this, these small sensations, put together in a process, very fast, and that's ultimate reality. This kind of atomism, again, is something, on this retreat, really we're not steering towards that at all. We have different priorities, different orientations, inclinations and intentions. So concentration and its two aspects, and atomism, the second one.
(3) The third one we've touched on already: reification or realism, in contrast to what I was talking about: emptiness, ways of looking, fabrication of perception as a basis, as a basic understanding, present at even the most basic level of practice. Right from the beginning, we can teach the Dharma and explain the Dharma in those terms of emptiness. It's not necessarily an advanced thing. But emptiness present at the beginning, and also as the goal of understanding, the goal of practice. We've touched on this; I'm not going to go into it again. This is a very different approach to Dharma, through ways of looking, and the idea of ways of looking and fabrication. It can embrace, it can hold anything in the Dharma, any teaching: generosity, mettā, whatever, ethics. It can all come actually under the umbrella, understanding, the rubric, of emptiness. So concentration, atomism, reification or realism.
(4) The fourth one is what I might call solitude or self-sufficiency. Again, there's a tendency in the Dharma to view solitary practice and self-sufficiency in one's process, in one's practice, as better than relational practice. Solitary practice is somehow viewed as better than relational practice. Now, there's a whole thing about relational practice that we're only going to really get into in a small way on this retreat, but it still feels important to mention it. I also mean by 'solitude' a predominantly inward looking. So, Insight Meditation, we tend towards silence -- silent retreats, silent retreat centres, etc. The eyes are usually closed in the meditation.
But even more significantly, again, going back to the Pali Canon teachings, the Buddha, so many times, talks about an "escape from the world" -- nibbāna is an escape from the world; the Unfabricated, the goal of practice, is an escape from the world. He uses that phrase and that word, 'escape.'[2] So the whole thrust, the whole direction, the whole intentionality of Pali Canon Buddhism is this escape from the world, and not to be reborn again. With that, there is a kind of disenchantment with the world that's wrapped up with all that.
The Buddha talks about kāyaviveka and cittaviveka -- kind of isolation or removal of the body from crowds, this solitariness, and also removal of the mind in different ways; this 'escape,' moving away from. That's in contrast to, you know, an engaged practice, politically, environmentally, etc. I've talked about that in other talks. But it's also in contrast to a re-enchanting, which is the theme of this retreat: opening the eyes, opening the knowing to the world, and seeing, sensing the world, the cosmos, as enchanted. For example, seeing it as bliss. That's a classic tantra teaching: the nature of all things is bliss. Seeing divine beauty everywhere, in all things, more and more in the cosmos, this cosmopoesis. Seeing or knowing all appearances as divine, again to borrow a tantric phrase. To expand, deepen, enrich, widen the sense, our senses, plural, of sacredness, of the sacred. So concentration in its two aspects of continuity and prioritization of focusing; atomism; reification or realism are third; solitude, self-sufficiency, solitary practice, the fourth.
(5) The fifth is what we might call sanity or, as well, sanitization, by which I mean -- this is a little bit more insidious, even -- a kind of narrow conformity, often unconscious, to conventionally prescribed modes of expression and views. So there's a conformity to expressing oneself in different ways, in different domains and areas of our being, and also conformity to certain views. Usually these are picked up from various cultures that we are subject to, that we move in, including secularism, the sanitization of secularism, if you like, and the so-called sanity of secularism. We move in that culture, most of us; I certainly do. I feel that our society is dominated by that. But it also includes Dharma and Buddhist cultures. How often we have a conformity to, for example, an uninvestigated and kind of biased attempt at dispassion. This is, again, a complex area. It needs a lot of sensitivity and openness of questioning and balance of approach. But oftentimes, there's this suspicion of desire, suspicion of passion, suspicion of eros, and it kind of imbues Dharma culture, and affects very much how we then practise, and how we relate to life and ourselves and others. All of this, this sanity, sanitization -- it's all 'safe' and 'sane,' and sometimes there's a kind of, if we're with S's, a kind of soggy serenity that becomes the tenor or the ethos of practice and of life, as opposed to fire, not soggy.
[39:11] So these are five, as I said, emphases, or attitudes, orientations, inclinations, assumptions, that are very prevalent across much of certainly modern Insight Meditation, but also other areas of spiritual practice. Can we orient differently? Can we assume differently? Can we have a different inclination?
Those five, actually, if you want to remember them, they make two anagrams, in fact. The first one is CRASS: concentration, reification, atomism, solitude and sanity. In a way, if these five inclinations and assumptions dominate, practice will be crass, to a certain extent. It will be crass. It will stay gross, and not be able to deepen in subtlety. This aspect or dimension of subtlety is something I want to return to. I see it as so central and so vital to the possibilities of practice, subtlety, subtlety of awareness -- so integral to the possibilities, to Dharma possibilities. And as far as we're concerned, it's an element we are seeking to open and move into, this subtlety.
Another anagram [laughs] that might come out of this to remember is SCARS. Just rearranging the order there. You know, I've heard from people, when these are dominant -- or they don't realize what it is that's made them feel this way -- when these are dominant too long, these factors, these assumptions, these intentions and orientations, they can, in a way, scar our soul and scar our potential in various ways.
So maybe all this sounds quite polemical ... and it probably is. But just to qualify it a little bit: again, none of these attitudes is wrong. Absolutely, they're not wrong at all. But it's just that they can easily become, and probably they have become in the Dharma world, overdominant and even exclusive. A person doesn't realize how practice has closed around these concepts, orientations, assumptions. As I said, that will have all kinds of limiting effects, in all kinds of directions, in fact, in our practice, in our path, in our life.
So in contrast to all that, as I said, we're emphasizing the flexibility of ways of looking, moving in and out of different ways of looking. And through that flexibility, that moving in and out, revealing to us, because of the effects on perception, revealing to us dependent origination of things, dependent origination and fabrication of perception. And with that, or another way of saying that, is the emptiness of all things. So it reveals insight, but we're also developing a flexibility in ways of looking and the availability of different beautiful, beauty-making, sacred-making, soulmaking, skilful ways of looking. Through the moving in and out, we're developing the flexibility and availability, as well as the insight into dependent origination.
Within that, as I said, it's not continuity. Sometimes one is, you know, it's fine, just one is not deliberately practising. There's maybe a minimal level of mindfulness and sensitivity to the body and what's going on around, etc., and that's fine; right now one is not practising, one is not striving for this continuity. That's fine, as long as one plays enough in the course of the days and in one's life with this deliberate moving in and out of different ways of looking. It's that that gives us the insight, the flexibility, and the availability of different ways of looking, rather than just trying to be mindful as continuously as possible.
With all that, sometimes someone gets a bit confused and says, "Well, what about precision?", because, for example, in Mahāsi-style practice, or these other more atomistic practices, 'precision' means a microscopic kind of attention. But for us, the precision is really in the subtlety and the clarity of differentiating or discerning between different ways of looking. So what exactly is involved in this way of looking that's going on for me right now? What exactly constitutes that way of looking? What ideas, what images, what energetics, inclinations of mind, view, all that? There's a lot of subtlety and precision in understanding: what exactly is involved in the way of looking right now? And what exactly are the effects of this way of looking right now on the freedom, on the emotions, on the energy body, on the soulmaking, on the perceptions of self, of other, of world, etc.? What exactly are the effects, and why? The precision is in this area. How is this way of looking, right now, subtly different from one that a person might describe that sounds pretty similar, or that is pretty similar? This one right now is subtly different; how is it different? That's where the precision comes in. It's in the subtlety, the clarity of differentiation between different ways of looking -- discernment, understanding what's involved.
To touch on this point about subtlety that I mentioned some minutes ago, I would say that deepening in meditation generally involves, and generally kind of corresponds to, an increase of subtlety of the awareness and the attention. Deepening in meditation involves, generally, and corresponds to, an increase, a greater degree of subtlety of awareness and attention. So subtlety, in this way of thinking about it, again -- I've said this three or four times now -- does not mean microscopicness of points of attention, microscopic points of attention in whatever sense door, or microscopicness of moments of attention: "I can divide this second into however many moments." It doesn't mean that.
By increased subtlety, I mean increased sensitivity to more subtle, if you like, vibrations, tones, wavelengths, resonances, emotional shades; more subtle, more refined perceptions. This is what I mean by more subtle. The movement, as I said, of deepening practice, either in insight or in samādhi or in mettā, is actually into more and more refinement. So the jhānas, the eight jhānas, again, people don't really realize this -- they think of it as increasing concentration or this and that, but actually they are increasingly refined perceptions. They're more and more subtle perceptions, what the Buddha calls 'perception attainments.'[3] Similarly, as insight goes deeper, and there's more and more letting go, there is less and less fabrication of perception. There's less and less solidity and coarseness and density and thing-ness to perception.
Whether through the spectrum of the jhānas or through the deepening insight, perception is fabricated less, and so necessarily becomes more and more refined. The attention to inhabit that world, to stay with it, needs to become correspondingly -- or does become correspondingly -- subtle and refined. So this movement into more subtlety is intrinsically part of deepening meditation. This is very relevant to the work we're doing with images and soulmaking and enchantment and cosmopoesis. A lot of it is really quite subtle. Yes, sure, some can be very powerful -- fireworks, etc. But as one moves deeper with all this, and even with qualities like mettā and compassion, the movement is into more and more subtlety and refinement. This is something more that we want to emphasize.
[49:06] Related to all this, we can, we should be flexible at different times with what is, so to speak, the priority in our meditation. I've touched on this before, but just to pick it up even within one practice. Let's say, at any time, in this sitting or in this portion of a sitting, I'm prioritizing, my intention is, in the direction of samādhi, to develop that nice, harmonized field, and the mind filled out, settled in that field of harmonized energy body, etc. Now, within that current of intention towards samādhi, (1) it could be that my priority, at times, is indeed staying with the object, this prioritizing of focus. That's part of it. That's fine, of course. So I'm really working to stay with whatever it is, the breath, or stay with the body, or the field of the energy body, or whatever, or an image or whatever it is. It could be that. (2) It could be that my priority is tending to, or gently encouraging, and kind of gently allowing to maximize the sense of well-being, the sense of comfort and pleasure in the energy body. That's a slightly different priority -- not slightly; it's quite different than focusing or staying with an object. (3) Or third, my priority could be, at some time within this samādhi current of intention, tuning to what is more energetically subtle and refined. Through that tuning to what is more subtle in the field, in the body space, in the mental space, in the perception, there is this increasing subtlety of attention.
So right there, for example, you have three different possible priorities at any time, within one current of practice, and one larger intention of practice. Those three -- staying with the object, tending to the well-being, or tuning towards what is more subtle -- again, they're not completely separate; they're connected, and they will help each other. They're mutually dependent, often, or for the most part, let's say. But what tends to happen for a lot of people, related to what we said before, is it's the first one of those priorities that gets overemphasized: staying with the object, focusing, so to speak. The second and the third, the tending to the well-being, and the tuning towards what is more subtle and refined, and thereby subtlizing the attention, these get missed. They get overlooked, disregarded, not nourished enough. As I said, that will keep the practice gross. Sometimes people are breathing away, and it just stays the same. Maybe they're locked into the breath, but nothing's really deepening, because the whole thing is staying at a level of grossness. They're blocking the movement into subtlety inadvertently, either through the attitude, the priority, or through keeping the breath gross or whatever.
Most people have too much emphasis on this staying with the object, focusing, etc., and then how upset they get when they don't succeed, when they feel like, "Oh, I'm so crappy. My concentration is so bad. I really need to work on my concentration." Again, one judges the self, etc., so that the whole notion of success gets tied into how well can I stay with this object continuously. There's the neglect, in that, of the other two priorities.
In the Ānāpānasati Sutta, the Buddha's discourse on the mindfulness of breathing, the very first two instructions, if I remember, are breathing long deliberately and breathing short deliberately. As a turner or weaver would turn the wheel, one knows what's happening: "Now I'm doing a long turn, now I'm going to do a short turn on the wheel." But the difference there is not so much about length of breath -- it's about, you know, the shorter breath tends to be, on the whole, a more subtle breath. There's a movement: first you start with the long, and then it goes, as a second step, once that's established, into more subtlety, into the shorter, more subtle breath. There's also, in the Ānāpānasati Sutta, this, what I was calling the second priority, this tending to the well-being -- tending, calming the bodily formations, tending to the pleasure in the body. I've forgotten the exact words, but basically pīti, this nice feeling in the body, pleasant sensation in the body that comes as the samādhi deepens. So the Buddha, right there in his instructions on mindfulness of breathing, he has instructions there that cover all these priorities and more. But so often they get missed, and we just go to this focusing as a priority.
Let me say a couple of things more generally about the practices in this retreat. There are going to be lots of suggestions, lots of ideas for practice, and instructions that we're putting out there. You probably won't be able to keep them all, this kind of bubbling away with twenty pots on the stove, for this week. It may not even be necessary to try them all. We encourage you to. But some will feel more or less like they work or whatever. Don't get too hung up on this. It's being recorded. You can revisit the stuff later and pick up what didn't seem to work, try it again, or what you missed. Don't get into a tizzy if it feels like, "Oh, it's too much for me," or "I'm not getting it." You can come back to this. Or if you're distracted, "I was daydreaming. I didn't hear what he said." Obviously try and pay attention and be here, because that also creates the field of the retreat for everyone, your engagement, your presence, your aliveness, your interest, your openness. It's part of what makes the field for all of us. But don't get overwhelmed, okay? It's being recorded. It's there.
Another thing is -- and I've written about this and talked about it elsewhere -- one common way of practising Insight Meditation is sort of 'just being with' experience. Whatever experience arises in the moment, one generally is just trying to be with that or allow it. For some people, that's the whole of their practice. That's what they do. That's what Insight Meditation is. They feel very suspicious of deliberately trying to do anything -- deliberately directing the attention, or playing with the way of looking. What I want to say is, both are available. They're different modes of practising. Just allowing, so-called 'just being with' experience -- I actually think that's a bit of a myth; there's no such thing, but let's say, at least for a beginner, that's a fine thing -- versus deliberately directing the way of looking, etc. They're just modes. I would say they're both really important. We really miss a lot if we're never deliberate. We miss huge, huge potential in practice and what the Dharma can be.
One yogi said to me or wrote to me, she described that for many years her practice was more like this first one, not deliberately really doing anything, just kind of letting what comes come. She said, "For many years, my meditation practice resembled a chicken running over a minefield." Which I thought was a great picture. You know, it's just this disaster and then that disaster, and just trying to open to it all and be with it all, because it all seems so real, and I don't realize that I can change the ways of looking, and that actually, through playing with that, it changes what arises. That's not not being with what's real, because I realize that there is no independent reality here.
So they're both modes, but in regard to imaginal practice and enchantment and cosmopoesis, for most people nowadays -- because of the disenchantment that's pervasive in modernist culture, modernist Western culture -- working with the imaginal, the enchanted perceptions, the cosmopoesis, are not usually habitual. The mind doesn't tend to go there that much. It tends, rather, to see according to the flatness and the one-dimensionality. So we actually need to encourage them, which means a bit more deliberate. You will find, over the week and as you practise more with these kind of ways, that images, cosmopoeses, cosmopoetic perceptions, if you like, or openings, will happen spontaneously, as I said, out of samādhi or out of being sensitive to an emotion in the energy body. It will give birth to images, etc. Both spontaneously and deliberately, images and cosmopoesis can arise.
But what I really want to encourage, to return to what I started with, is letting the sense of soulfulness and soulmaking guide you. Part of that is the sensitivity to the energy body. Let that guide you. So sometimes we try out something deliberately, some image or cosmopoesis, either because it's, for instance, a classical tantra prescription, a classical tantra sort of meditation, or it's a suggestion from one of us, or from someone else. And we might deliberately try that out, or deliberately return to it. But what I want to emphasize, again, is please pursue and stick with and try again only those images and cosmopoeses that have resonance for you in the soul. This is so important to recognize, to be sensitive to. Even if some of them feel that they were initiated, or they seem to have been initiated in a kind of contrived way or an external way, what guides you is the sense of soulfulness and soulmaking and the energy body. Let that guide you into what you return to and pursue and stick with and try again and work at.
If we don't use that soulfulness, then actually the practice and the practices that we're doing will be kind of lifeless, soulless, pointless, really, except as kind of exercises (for example, an exercise in visualization, or an exercise in concentration -- again, how much can I stay focused, how long can I stay focused on a certain image), but nothing deep or significant for or in the soul is touched. Nothing is moved for or in the soul. And I mean that word, 'moved,' as in 'to be moving,' 'to be touched,' but also 'moved' as in it starts to be dynamic, starts to form a dynamism in the soul. Nothing is vivified, brought alive. Nothing is really getting enriched or deepened. But if there is, with a practice or a cosmopoesis, a way of looking or an image, this sense of soulfulness, then we can be sure that all that is happening.
[1:02:00] So really then, the encouragement, whether it's spontaneous, deliberate, lots of suggestions, in everything that we're offering, etc., really the encouragement to play with it, to experiment, to let yourself be creative. It's like here is an artist's studio, and we're just opening the door. It's got all these materials, and all these different kinds of canvas, and different kinds of things that you can make sculptures with, a whole bunch of different paints, and watercolours and oils, all these materials, video stuff you can play with and whatever. In a way, what we're doing is just opening the door to an artist's studio, and you can come in and just play. Feel that way about it: playful, experimenting, creative.
Some people, their personality or their style of going about, whether it's this kind of thing or whether it's emptiness practice or whatever, it's very systematic, and sort of working through in order, kind of comprehensively. That's fine. If that suits you, go for that if you want to. Other people are more fluid and a bit more what looks like haphazard or whatever, intuitive. Let yourself work in the way that feels good for you and feels right for you.
For example, I think I mentioned in another talk, we want to re-enchant, if you like, or explore the re-enchantment and cosmopoesis through all six senses -- sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and mind. That doesn't mean -- it should be obvious by now -- it doesn't mean mindfulness is bare attention to the experience in the six senses, the sensations there. It doesn't mean arriving at those, exploring those senses with the typical modernist concepts of matter. We're opening them up in different ways. But some people move through the six senses very comprehensively, thoroughly, in order, and separating them all out. Other people skip around a little bit more, whatever. Find the way of working that suits you, that serves you.
Last thing for now. What is the point of all these practices that we'll be offering, all these suggestions and guided meditations or whatever? This, to me, is quite important. The point is not to believe this or that about the self, about the world, about life. I said that before. We're not trying to move you to a place that you believe X or Y about anything. Nor is the point trying to achieve any particular perception, of a red, etheric light body, or a blue body, or whatever, you know. I don't see the point of all this as achieving any particular perception. Rather, though, it's through all these practices, through the exercise of this flexibility in ways of looking -- in and out, and trying different things -- and through the exploration of what we were calling the attitude of art or poetry in relation to perception, through the exploration of that attitude, through all of that, a loosening happens. Or rather, many loosenings happen. This loosening is of fundamental importance, or these loosenings are of fundamental importance. Loosening, liberation, unfettering, being set free from all kinds of prisons.
But more, even, than that, through all this, through all the practices, through the exercise of flexibility in ways of looking, through this exploration of the attitude of art, if you like, in relation to perception, poetry of perception, through all that, a sense, a perception, a knowing comes. However vague, however undefined; however unarticulated or seemingly unarticulatable; and however diverse the range appears to be of these experiences or senses or perceptions or knowing (they're plural); however diverse the range, however varied, through the flexibility we just alluded to, but a sense, a perception, a knowing, or senses, perceptions, knowings come of eternity, we might say. Of timelessness, is a better way of putting it. Of beauty, different kinds and levels and ranges of beauty. And this opening up of the sense of sacredness. This knowing, perception, sense of sacredness. And actually, as I said, we're talking about a plurality here, so it's not one sense, even of timelessness. There are different perceptions of timelessness, of eternity, of beauty, of sacredness.
And these perceptions, these knowings, these senses -- they themselves open, they deepen, they widen. They become, through all these practices and these attitudes and this way of approaching things, they become more accessible in our life. They become more available to us. And they actually become more frequent. They become regular visitors, regular aspects of our existence. It's that that is the main point of all this, that is the main point of all the practices. At least that's how I would see it. That's the main point.
