Transcription
Okay, so. I can't see everyone's face, just because of the light, but that's ... Anyone? Anything? Yeah, Alex?
Q1: navigating with the energy body, noticing what's helpful in the moment
Yogi: In your talks before, sometimes you've said about what works -- do what works. I'm just interested, for you, what that is. Is it kind of Joseph Campbell "follow your bliss" or ...
Rob: It's been a long time since I've read Joseph Campbell, so I can't remember exactly what he means by that. I think, if I remember from years ago reading him ... Did everyone hear what Alexandra's asking? When I say "follow what works ... " What is that for me? Are you asking me personally, or just elaborate on what I mean by that?
Yogi: What you mean by that.
Rob: Okay, thank you. I think my guess is, what Joseph Campbell means is more something like he might well have said, "Follow your passion in life," or "Follow what you really care about," or "Follow what brings you joy," in a kind of larger trajectory in terms of work and where you are and that kind of thing. That's my guess, remembering. I guess I mean that, too, but usually probably when I say that, I imagine I'm talking mostly about meditation and it's a more ...
Yogi: I meant within the meditation, when you get a good feeling ...
Rob: Yeah, okay. Thank you. The first answer is yes. One of the reasons for emphasizing the energy body is it can work as a kind of compass or a barometer in whatever practice you're doing. Let's say with the imaginal practice, you might have an image. An image might come up, and it's dark and scary-looking. Conventionally, the mind goes, "Yikes! This is dark and scary. This can't be good," etc. But if I'm open enough, I actually notice, "Well, okay, the mind is saying that, but the energy body actually has come into some kind of alignment. It's come into some kind of openness, some kind of harmony, maybe more energy, etc." So the energy body is telling me something different than the mind. The energy body is saying, "There's something here for me. It's a treasure. My small mind, usual habitual ways of thinking, don't quite get it yet. I don't quite know what it is. It's opposite to how I usually think about what's helpful and what's not." I would incline more to trusting the energy body there. If something is genuinely not helpful, it won't harmonize like that. It can be the opposite: here's this nice, frilly, ballerina angel figure [laughter] and I think, "Oh, that should be really good for me, because I really need that." And the energy body is just not ... It's the mind thinking something. That's one example of following what works.
In other practices, like insight practices, or even in mindfulness practice, let's say here's this heartache, or here's this pain in my knee or whatever, and I'm just trying to be with it or be mindful, something that sounds so simple. But actually I get a sense: I'm being with it, and the thing is contracting more. I'm being with it, and I feel more tight or something. Then we say, "Ah, now I'm going deeper into it." Is that really the case? Or is it the fact that in my so-called 'simple mindfulness' there's something that's actually tightening the problem? Yeah? It's tricky, because it can be both. But often it's the latter. It's like what's present in my mindfulness at that moment, or what's missing in my mindfulness, that would actually be helpful? And how do I tell it's helpful? Something loosens.
So I often say there are two words in insight practice or mindfulness practice, release and relief. Again, they're felt in the energy body. Sometimes it's mental. But sometimes you just feel "ahh." And it can be really subtle. That's my compass. It's an energy body feeling. Now, there can be bliss, and peace, and freedom, and well-being, and joy, and all that. But at the sort of most basic, subtle level, there's some kind of release or relief. That's telling me, whether it's mindfulness or insight practice, it's telling me I'm on track. But it's through the energy body. Does that make sense? Is that enough? I could talk about it all day. Yeah? Okay. Yeah, I'd say that, because sometimes we come to all this with quite fixed ideas of what we need, and I would trust that more, you know. That's one of the reasons why I tend to offer the energy body and put quite a lot of emphasis, because it does so much. There's so much available through it.
Yogi: I'm presuming you mean what works in the moment.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, going back to Joseph Campbell, that's one extreme -- it's long-term trajectories: "Am I going to do this or that? Am I going to work in Africa?" or whatever. Great, really important part of life. In other words, this question can apply on all different timescales. Mostly I'm talking about in the moment. Who was it who asked -- Julia? Your question the other day about "I found this imaginal figure, and then when I came to sit down with it, it no longer worked." It's like, "Fine, switch." Other times I have to stay with something a bit more, and really see, "Oh, this isn't working." But it's really in the moment, flexible. Not too much flipping and flopping between, because you need to stay with something a little bit. But generally speaking, I'm responsive in the moment, without a preconception of what's working. I'll say ... well, maybe that's enough.
Yes, Andrea?
Q2: what to do when the mind is flitting between images; including mindfulness/focus but not overemphasizing
Yogi: So my question's around precision, which you use that word as opposed to the mindfulness or the concentration. My experience outside when -- I think it was similar to the man who asked a question the other day about taking in the tree and there was appreciation there. It's a noticing that something is harmonizing, maybe in some respect, but the imagination flits then. What's meaningful changes from thing to thing to thing. There's a sense in me of something [?], with not being able to stay and resonate with each and every one of them. So there might be a moment outside -- there was a moment outside where all the rain fell all of a sudden, and there was a loveliness in just staying there, and then a sort of romance of being a woman standing outside in the rain. Then that changed to a fairy tale image. [?] What I'm saying is I don't feel that in that moment I can reach in, touch the energy body, sense the resonances. It seems like there's so much to do. What I just did was just enjoy the movements of it and stay with that.
Rob: The question is really a lot of images are arising, quite rapidly, seemingly flitting one to another, and not lasting long enough to really tune into the energy body, tune into the image so much, but getting something from each and a beauty in each, and what's right or wrong or how to navigate that.
Yeah. I tend to think with all this stuff, there isn't so much a right and a wrong, but you'll get different results depending on what you do. I mean, it may be that those images are actually related to each other. In other words, for example, in the first two that you mentioned, I'm not saying this is the case, but it could be that here's the beauty of the rain, in the landscape, and the rain as object. Then what happened -- I'm not saying this is what happened, but it could be -- it's like, always when there's an image that's meaningful, the object is alive as image, and self is alive as image as well. It could be that a woman in the rain, with all the resonance of that, was just the subjective part of that same image. Do you understand? So it's not really that it's flitting between different images; it's flitting maybe between different aspects of an image, which then you can then kind of hold together or focus on one or the other. It could be that what looks like flitting is actually different aspects of the same image. So that's one possibility.
Second possibility is yeah, experientially, sometimes it does that for a while -- it goes to this, or that same image suddenly ... I remember once this character kept taking off clothes to reveal a different character underneath, like a Russian doll kind of thing. [laughter] It was like, "When are you finally going to stop this?" And it did, eventually. It settled down to one. Sometimes it's just a matter of staying and waiting, and it will settle. Other times, maybe just picking one and staying with it -- so actually trying to stay steady with one, and see what happens. Either it will feel like, "This really isn't right," or it will begin to morph or change and become workable. I think my tendency would be, yeah, to advise more integrating it into something that's more settled, that then you can come into resonance with. Because, again, we want the whole being to be involved in -- imaginal work means body, energy, soul-resonances, awareness. If it's too flitting, it can't really come into resonance and do the soul-work so much.
Yogi: But how is that not mindfulness, or how is that not focus?
Rob: Yeah, thank you. I'm not saying "don't be mindful" and "don't be focused." I'm not wanting to say that at all. I'm really, I guess, in a lot of what you hear on this retreat, and maybe other stuff, it's really responding to context, and what tends to get prioritized and sometimes overemphasized so that it excludes other possibilities. So if you hear me say something like that, it's really in response to that. Catherine was using the word 'lingering.' It's not lingering for the sake of, "Great, today I notched up two minutes and forty-five seconds of uninterrupted time with this object!" It's not for the sake of that, or because a still mind is better. The lingering is because we come more into resonance, and feel more, and more can happen there. So being relatively steady with an image or a vision is actually really helpful. It's just, I think, in the larger picture of things it tends to get a bit overemphasized. So many people get so tight around it, and it becomes so painful. It's a self-measurement thing, about how well -- or badly, usually -- one is doing that. That's the sort of thing I just want to shake up a little bit. But, you know, sometimes you'll get something, as I said, that just doesn't seem to settle, and then there are different ways of responding to it. How does that ...? Yeah? Okay, good.
Q3: the effects of mudrās in meditation
Yogi: You were talking about mudrās. I don't know if this was specific to me -- we spoke a while back, and we were talking about an issue that I was having, and I told you that I had been meditating with my hands up. You said, "No, no, no, don't do that. Hands down. I can't go into why now, but let's just say for now hands down." So I'm wondering why ... [laughter] I don't know if you remember.
Rob: I do remember, yeah. Or I'd forgotten until you reminded me. I think what I'd really rather say is that what I see is sometimes people always meditating like that, or mostly meditating like that. What I would rather encourage is have some time not doing that. Even doing just that, the opposite -- palm down, or this, or all kinds of possibilities.
Yogi: I think I know what you're saying. I had actually been meditating I think primarily like this, and then I switched to this, and that's when things started happening.
Rob: Yeah, good. Was this, did this come from a Zen tradition?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: It looked pretty Zen to me. You know, this is a very open gesture, energetically. And this, I can almost feel the pressure [laughs], and all the teaching that goes round it: tightness, presence, brightness, alertness, discipline. It's not like one is right and one is wrong. It's like everything we do has an effect. Going back to Alexandra's question, it's like, "What is the effect?" I think we're complex as human beings, we're rich, at different stretches of time but even sitting to sitting. We need different things or will respond to different things.
It might be that there might come a point in your life when that's one among your repertoire, but yeah. It's just clear in the gesture: one's a lot more soft, a lot more open. It's a bit like, there's the possibility at times that this openness, with the palms up, it gets a little -- what should we say? -- flabby, flaccid, sometimes. It's not that it will or it needs to, or you shouldn't do that. It's just that's one of the ways it can go. Just as this can get too tight and rigid and forced, that can get a little [flabby], and actually doesn't allow so much depth. But really the answer that I would give is to play and experiment. And there's much more than just those two options. But it's quite a subtle thing, the whole thing with hands. It's not like a huge ... although between those two, it's quite extreme. That could be a deal-changer, you know.
Yogi: But even going from this to just turning my hands palms down, it made a big difference.
Rob: It will. It's amazing. Here's the hands at the heart, and just that, or just a little bit higher, a little bit softer, it's different. It's really subtle, but it's different. Not to make too big a deal out of this, but it's something that we become more aware of. Mind affects body, body affects mind -- and 'body' meaning physical and also the energy body, energies, and the perception and all of that. Yeah? Okay.
Keval, yeah?
Q4: kilesas, the dark gods, and purity in imaginal practice; 'soul' vs 'spirit' in Hillman's terminology; respecting and navigating complexity and particularities
Yogi: This is more about your talks, relating to some of the things [inaudible]. With this kind of way of working, with the imaginal, I find it very beautiful, and it's a lot like the tantric practices. I've got kind of three questions. The first is about the relationship between this way of practising, to your mind, and working with kilesas. [inaudible] I think there's some kind of aphorism in tantra, that they say according to sūtra, the kilesas are the cause of suffering. I was wondering if you would be able to talk about the relationship between. Or is it just that because you're working with emptiness, and because you're being fluid with your ways of seeing, that that kind of undercuts tendencies towards grasping or...?
The second thing is ... is it okay to [ask]? Or maybe you want to .... [laughter]
Rob: What do you want, Keval? [laughs]
Yogi: I thought if I just get it all out ... [laughter]
Rob: And let me mop up! Yeah. [laughter] All right, go for it!
Yogi: The second thing is, and again, you've already spoken about this a lot, and different things are appropriate for different people at different times, but when trying to [?] with a kind of arc or trajectory of practice over one's life or something, I feel like a lot of traditional Buddhism, a lot of the Theravādan and Tibetan, has a lot of what Hillman would call 'spirit' elements to it. There's a lot of discipline, there are vows, there's seeing things through -- sometimes whether or not you want to, because you've made a commitment, in a certain kind of way. I just wonder how the soul-element and the spirit-element relate in that respect, especially in the context of Dharma, where there seems to be so much of a trajectory towards a kind of purity or transcendence sometimes. And how those two work together.
Rob: The two being soul and spirit?
Yogi: Yeah. Or, like, maybe Tsongkhapa or Chandrakīrti write a lot on [?].
The final thing is just this way of practising, for modern people, for people with our psyches, I feel like it's very appropriate, it resonates and there's a lot of beauty in it. There's a lot of much-needed beauty that's missing in the scientific materialist conception of the universe. But what is it about the Dharma as we've inherited it, that means that it no longer has that soul-resonance? Or is it that the myth of being around at the time when the Buddha's teachings exist, and awakening is possible, and all the kind of traditional conception, is that not so relevant from what you've seen from students?
Rob: Is what not so relevant?
Yogi: The kind of, I guess traditionally Buddhists would have found meaning, or at some point they would have found meaning, in this bigger myth that would have given the whole path a kind of soul-resonance that maybe it doesn't have any more.
Rob: To me, these are really important questions, stuff that I'm really interested in. I think I'm going to have to be brief, somehow. But it's the kind of thing -- I've talked a little bit in the past in different talks, and I hope in the future to talk more about the interface with tantra and exactly the kind of things you're talking about. They're really big, big questions. Let's just see what we can say briefly. In regard to the first one, kilesas are greed, hatred, delusion, the three poisons. It's classic Buddhist language. These are the defilements. They're what we get rid of in full awakening. So they're obstacles to awakening; they're dissolved in full awakening. Classical Buddhism, or non-tantric Buddhism, just sees that in that way. Cultivation of beautiful qualities, as well as insight, cuts the kilesas until eventually they don't, allegedly, arise again for a fully enlightened person. Which is all great, you know, and important, and true.
It's like we can cut things, like you can chop a tree at different levels. You can chop kilesas at different levels. In a way, the deepest chopping of a kilesa is like, cultivation -- I know nothing about gardening, so I should steer clear of gardening analogies. [laughter] Maybe back up. The deepest level of cutting kilesas is actually seeing that the kilesa is empty. There is no one who has this greed, hatred, delusion. More than that, ultimately speaking, there is no greed, hatred, delusion. That does a few things. One of the things it does is it undermines the whole mechanism of the kilesas generating. But it also then frees you up in relation to how you're seeing those. Then the whole question of, "Now, how am I going to live? How am I going to live in my action, how am I going to live imaginally, knowing that?", that's complex.
As you say, most traditional tantric Buddhism is with quite a tight basis in the bodhisattva aspiration, in developing goodness and kindness, in commitments and vows of monastic orders and ethics and all that. I think for most people that's important, a basis in goodness. Even today I was talking with someone -- I'll mention this maybe later in the retreat -- I think there's a danger of being too much towards the white and the sort of nice, pure. That will work for some people. In other words, what's alive -- souls are different, so to speak. Soulmaking is different for different people and at different times. I have a great resonance with purity and purity of heart. It speaks to me so deeply. And I also recognize that I have a lot of darkness. By 'darkness,' I don't mean 'evil.' I don't mean anything like that. I mean the dark gods -- eros and things.
But it might be that someone -- and this relates to your third question -- the path of purity, and the resonance with purity, is soulmaking for them. The whole myth, even the classical Buddhist myth, is just what they need. It's what they need all their life, or it's what they need for a portion of their life. And at some point, maybe, it becomes no longer so potent, so deep, and so rich, soulmaking. It's like, "What's missing? What's happening here?" I have to also say that when the Buddha was alive, they lived in a different cosmos. They did not live in a flat, scientific materialist cosmos. The whole thing was ensouled anyway, in ways that -- I mean, don't get me started. But, you know, we approach the Buddhist myth in a much-truncated form nowadays. For some people, even that truncated form is alive for them as myth. It's soulmaking. It fits very beautifully. Like I said, that might last a person's whole life, or it might just last a part of their life. Or it might never really do it for them. Some people need a path that allows and invites more of the erotic, more of a place for desire and the beauty of desire, more passion, more darkness, more eros, all of that.
How that relates to ethics, that's complicated. For me, ethics are very important. But they're also not simple. They're not simple from a soul point of view, and they're not simple even from an ethical point of view. One of the functions of Buddhist ethics is to simplify things. In the original Buddhist teachings, the movement is out of the world, simplify. Both the path of mindfulness and the path of non-fabrication, the letting go of appearances and actually transcending appearances, you could say they're not soulmaking. The path of deliberate fabrication, deliberately engaging in images, is more soulmaking. So you've got three sort of avenues, which ultimately we can be skilful in all of them -- mindfulness or bare attention, deeper and deeper into non-fabricating, and then skilful playing with fabrication, which we're emphasizing on this retreat. Two of those, so to speak, cut soulmaking, because they cut imagery. They have their place. For some people, even that whole thing is enough. They don't have a lot of need for imagery and eros; they're just a different soul.
Other people, it's not going to fly. It might have its place, but it's not going to be the full -- is it 'monty'? [laughter] Yeah. So it's almost like, like I said this afternoon, souls are different. Paths are different. We have different needs, and that changes over time. If I do have a lot of eros, if I do have a lot of image, if I do have a lot of passion, there's a huge gift in that. And there's a challenge in that. With every gift, I'm given challenge. I'm asked to integrate more. I'm asked to work with more. It's more complicated. It's richer. It's like, "How does this fit with that? How do I get skill in this? And then there's this, and then there's this." In a way, it's easier to just not have any of that, and it's all kind of simple and there isn't a lot of, you know.
But the question is back to what works. This is more of a long-term trajectory as well. What's my soul, and what are the needs of my soul? I think, just teaching so much and hearing from so many people, some people, someone said to me -- what was the word she used? -- "I feel neutered," or "Something's amputated. I've been doing mindfulness." For another person, it's not at all; it's enough for them. But this person, it's only when we raise it as something that they realize, "Oh, that's been missing." Or someone else was saying to me how years of practice, actually trying to fit into a certain box -- without even realizing -- and then feeling, "Something's not right." There has to be a kind of honesty and a sensitivity and asking. But it is more to ask.
One very last thing. In terms of -- yeah, you were referring to something that maybe people -- actually, a lot of what you're referring to maybe people don't understand, but Hillman talks about the dichotomy between soul and spirit, 'soul' being more this dark, labyrinthine, complicated, passionate, involved, 'spirit' being more spacious, transcendent, long views, peaceful, calm, equanimous, removed, detached, etc. So yeah, most spiritual teachings -- classical Buddhism included -- are more of the spirit.
I think there's a lot of skill in making that distinction. I also, more recently, would kind of call it all soul, and not make that distinction. If we say our soul has different needs or different levels -- so I love the transcendent, I have a pull there, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that I devoted so many years towards that, and to opening towards that. And it's not everything. There's that level of soul, and level of soul-need, and there's other stuff that's not about that, that's more this darker stuff, or more towards fabrication, etc. I'm more interested now in kind of what way of holding all this just allows it to integrate without causing dichotomies, or polarities, either/ors. And actually, again, recognizing that not everyone, but a lot of us are complicated beings. I'm a complicated person, you know. It's like, that complexity does not need to get ironed out. It needs to be respected, and opened to, and navigated, and sensitized to, so that my make-up is bowed to, rather than like, "Let's blanch it all out and paint it like everyone else's," which is nice and white and square and clean and all that, you know? So yeah, I'm more interested in ways of thinking that can actually accommodate all of it in a way of thinking that's useful.
That's the short answer. [laughter] Okay? So Tam, you had a question? Do you want to ...? Well, we can take time. Some people will need to go, but I'm happy to ... Unless you feel like it's a really long one.
Q5: easing energy that's too intense; putting healing energy and pain in contact
Yogi: It's been burning for, like, three years. I'd really like to ask it.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: Hello, Rob.
Rob: Hello, Tam. [laughs] Hello.
Yogi: I'm a mettā practitioner. That's what I do.
Rob: Beautiful. Yes.
Yogi: I do walking mettā, and [inaudible]. Often [?] mettā for many months at a time. Well, when I practise mettā, I purr like a cat. I can feel the sensation and I can kind of hear it. It's not me; it's like I'm being purred.
Rob: Is it nice? Yeah, wonderful.
Yogi: I can move it outside the body. I can do all sorts of [?] things with it. Sometimes it's stronger than others, or it goes away for a few months. Yesterday, for the first time, I found it quite boring. I had enough of it, really. I can do it when I'm not meditating if I choose to do it. I can bring it to my daily life. It's transforming how I'm being in the world. That's what it's doing. I need your help and your guidance, because sometimes it's too much to handle, and it's a lot, and I know that it's more than pīti and has different qualities, different flavours. [inaudible] I need your help.
Rob: Because it's overwhelming, or because sometimes it's overwhelming and sometimes it's boring? What do you need the help with?
Yogi: When it's happening, I don't know what to do with it.
Rob: Okay. To me, it sounds really good, okay? Really good. I think, you know, I'll just say three things. Three possibilities, and they're really picking up on things you've said already. But one is, if it's too much energetically, use the imagination a little bit to let it out. It's like letting steam off. It's like giving it, allowing it to move how it wants to move, outside of the body, radiating towards other people, when it feels too overwhelming, will ease it. So that's one thing. If it feels too much, you can just open the channel, so it just goes out. It's really skilful. It's healing you on the way out, as well, but it just has more space, rather than there's too much pressure in there, not enough space for the amount of energy and purring that's going on. So that's one thing.
Second thing is, you said this, "Sometimes it doesn't feel like me. I'm being purred." So I would, especially in the context of this retreat, that's the kind of thing that you might want to open to a little bit more. It's like, this has divine dimensions. If it gets a bit boring, that might be what needs to come alive a little bit, in the way that you're seeing it. You can play with that. Does that make sense?
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Okay. But even if it's not boring, I wonder whether that, which has everything to do with this retreat -- and it's already there; it's like this sense of -- there isn't a prescription for this, but allowing it to have its divine dimension, or dimensions. Let's put it in plural. Something bigger than you is coming through, but you are being purred, probably for all kinds of reasons. Again, this is part of the imaginal sensibility. It's like, I'm allowing that to have its more than purely physiological or human resonances and ideation behind it. I'm allowing myself to feel all the different kinds of divinity that are potentially wrapped up there in that perception.
Can I say a third thing? You sure? [laughs] The third thing, which may or may not include the second thing, is that sometimes you want to put it in contact with suffering. Cats purr, and some cats, when they sense that a person is unwell, they'll come sit on your tummy, and they purr away. The purring, the healing energy, is coming into contact with the pain. It could be psychic pain, heart pain, physical pain, whatever it is. But you can deliberately bring these things into contact. It might be you're purring and you actually feel good, and you say, "Why would I want to bring up my pain now?" But it's almost like, just bring it up a little bit, and let the purring surround and lap against and hold just a little bit of pain, so that those two come into contact. Or you might be painful, in some pain, and then it's like, can there be some purring that comes to touch this? What's important is the contact of the purring and the pain, so that they don't occupy different realms of our being and don't come into contact so much. That's the third thing. Sometimes that contact is also then the contact of the divinity with the pain, which also casts a different light. Catherine's talking about this tonight, and we'll talk about this -- dukkha, pain, and divinity. So three possibilities. Is that okay for now? Yeah, okay.
I think we probably should just stop. Let's have one minute's silence together.
