Transcription
Now, all this, of course, is related to prayer and prayerfulness. What does that mean? You know, oftentimes people are a little suspicious of religion, or actually even some religious people think of prayer as asking something: "I'm asking God for a favour, or to help me out in some situation," what we could call 'supplication.' That's fine. That's, I was going to say a level, but it's a style or a stance of prayer. It really is fine. But just to say here with that, careful. It asks of us some care, because not only can supplication or asking an imaginal other (or divinity or angel or whatever) for something, not only can it be a little too much on the reified, self-serving side of things, as we've talked about, but the very asking itself can come out of, but also actually support or bind in place, a sense of the self, in the moment, that's quite contracted and small and hard.
In other words, the very asking, the way that we're asking, the relationship with that asking, the whole way that we're seeing it, actually is keeping a contracted, small, hard sense of self in place at that time. That's different from a kind of humble opening out of the being to receive something bigger. That's the opposite of contracted, small, and hard. There's a kind of softening and opening out of the being to this something, some other, some autonomous other, that we sense is something bigger than us, if you like. One is contracting, and one is opening. One has humility, and one has a kind of tight smallness to it. Again, without making too much of a problem out of this, it's the sort of thing we want to be interested in. Of course it's going to go one way or another at times. Just recognizing these movements, discerning what's happening: "Ah, okay, can I open it differently? Can I see it differently? Can I shift something?"
Prayer as supplication is fine, but also prayer doesn't necessarily mean supplication at all, or rather it can mean a lot more than just supplication, asking. Prayer as praise, our praise, of the divine or of the divinity of all things. Prayer as blessing -- again, our blessing of someone or something. Or our sense of receiving blessing from someone, from something, or from the divine in general, or the universe, the cosmos. Even words like that, 'blessing' can be "May you be well," or a specific wish that can be articulable. In their depths, as things -- again, I don't want to make a hierarchy, but there are also dimensions of praise and blessing that it's almost impossible to put into words. We can't actually translate them into words. The words crumble or dissolve into something that's still very alive, very deep as involving the divine, involving image; it's wrapped up in it. It's not just a sort of euphemism for, "Oh, it's pretty in the garden," or "Isn't it beautiful?", or "Isn't nature amazing?" or something. Wrapped up is still a sense of divinity and the imaginal, and I'm still using words like 'praise' and 'blessing,' and they're palpable, but if someone said, "What do you mean exactly?", it would actually be hard to articulate it. It's something beyond the verbal.
The experiences of this level of prayer, prayer as praise or blessing rather than as supplication, the experiences have a huge range -- both in terms of how close they are to obvious praise or blessing, or the more conventional meanings of those words, the ways we use those words, praise and blessing, but also they have a huge range in their locus, potential loci or referents or focuses on this thing or that thing, or wider, or this element of experience or whatever. They're always imaginal, these experiences of prayer. They always involve the imaginal. They involve image and a sense of divinity, even if that sense and the images involved are subtle or vague. As we just said, they always involve that. But they can extend from one object, being associated with one object, to an all-inclusive, all-pervasive cosmopoetic perception of praise, blessing, prayer. It may start that one thing or one aspect of experience may be perceived and felt in the soul and the heart as a blessing. It's perceived as a blessing, or as emanating blessing.
For instance, the materiality of the body, the materiality of one's body and its form, the form of the body, materiality and the form can be, sometimes there's a shift in the psyche, in the consciousness, in the perception. We perceive this materiality, this form, as a mode of divine blessing, or it is emanating blessing by its very existence, in and through its very existence, as materiality and as form. The materiality and the form is an emanation of a blessing, or both a blessing from the divine, and self as blessing. Not just a blessing or a praise because it's a miracle of biophysical evolutionary processes -- which it is, but not just that. There is, in this sense, in this mystical sense, in this sense of prayerfulness, there are intimations, senses, conceptions, often faint, of other dimensions, of divinity, etc.
[8:00] So there's blessing there in the knowledge of body in this way, and the felt experience of body in this way. And then, as is so often the case, it can extend. A cosmopoesis extends from one object or thing or person, perceived, sensed as a theophany, if you like -- in this case, as praise/blessing -- it starts to extend to the materiality and the forms around us, around this body in this moment. There's a natural, organic extension into a wider cosmopoesis. So from this body as blessing, or this body as praising, there's an extension to matter, the matter that I perceive in this moment as blessing, as praise. And then also an extension from that, potentially, to the knowing of the praise, the blessing, the knowing of the materiality. So knowing it as blessing, and the knowing, too, is blessing. The knowing, too, is a blessing.
You can see it starts with one thing. There's an extension, as I said, a natural, organic extension -- not always, but often with these processes and mystical unfoldments. There can be a natural, organic extension to a wider cosmopoesis. It's possible at times in practice to sense all things, all beings, all objects, all elements or aspects of experience, to sense that they are all praising, they are all blessing. They are the praise and the blessing of the divine, they receive the praise and the blessing of the divine, and they emanate the praise and blessing.
But always what's involved in this kind of cosmopoetic perception and the imaginal, etc., always this praise and this blessing (if that's what we're talking about right now), this is felt and known through the senses somehow. For example, in the realm of materiality, the sense of the warmth of the sun -- you could say, in a certain language, the fire element -- the sense of the warmth of the sun on the body is somehow praising, is somehow divine blessing, or the divine blessing existence. Or through the sensations of touch, the feet, legs, body, with the earth on which I'm standing, the sense of connection, of rootedness there -- this somehow is divine blessing. This experience of touch, these sensations of touch, are emanating blessing, are praising. Or through the sense of smell and fragrance. And not necessarily only pleasant sensations, pleasant smells or pleasant touches, whatever. Certainly, as I've said on other talks and I said earlier, these words, 'praise' and 'blessing,' are not euphemisms for just, "Oh, how pleasant. How aesthetically pleasing" or whatever. But they don't restrict themselves to the pleasant.
Involved in all this, there's the potential for a kind of liberation from the whole duality, if you like, of pleasant/unpleasant in experience, and the directives, if you like, the constraints and compulsions of consciousness, of experience, that come out of that duality. So we can perceive praise and blessing more and more widely.
But always what's involved here is the imaginal, is the heart, the receptivity, the openness of heart. Conception is involved, even if subtly and vaguely, and the senses are involved. It's felt and known somehow through the senses. We're really talking about ways of knowing, different ways of knowing that are not, if you like, conventionally acknowledged or recognized. The possibilities here for this level of prayer, prayer as praise, as blessing, there are manifold possibilities in all kinds of directions, and multiple kinds of ranges, if you like, involved. The possibilities are infinite, in fact, infinite.
Similarly with all that, there are flavours and intensities of the feelings of prayerfulness, of devotion, of surrender, of love and compassion. All of those qualities, there's a huge range to them, both in their possible intensities and also the possible, if you like, flavours that they have. For example, compassion can be very tearful, quivering with the resonance with the suffering of whoever we're feeling compassion for. It can also be very, very sweet and lovely, and very buoyant; light, healing energy streaming forth, and there isn't so much of the tears. It feels very bright, very sustainable, very light. It can be a mixture of those two. Compassion can be very, very spacious, or really quite cool. All of these are flavours of compassion. There's no hierarchy there, again. They're just flavours that are available to us, and also intensities.
All of these qualities that I was mentioning before -- prayerfulness, devotion, surrender, love, compassion, mettā -- they're actually always composites. In other words, love, or mettā, or compassion, or prayerfulness is never just one thing; it's a mix of different elements. This is not just an intellectual point at all. As practice grows, and we develop our practice, it's there for us to know and to really experience all the ranges of all these qualities, and to be able to discern these qualities and the flavours and the subtle differences, and actually tune the mix: "I want the compassion to be a little more buoyant right now, or a little more light, and less heavy and tearful. I want it to be more spacious," or whatever it is.
We're really talking about what's possible in practice, what ranges can we traverse, and what can we know, and what can we sense, and what can become really just part of our lives. I'm not even talking just about formal meditation practice. It's also in our lives, in our relationships, in the moments in the day. Again, no hierarchy here. We're not insisting on intensity for prayerfulness or surrender or devotion. Intensity is fine and great and can be wonderful. But it's not that it's always better or deeper or more helpful. Yes, in the course of practice, in the course of -- for most people -- years of practice, our capacity grows. We learn how to accommodate. We grow, our heart grows, our psychic space grows, to be able to accommodate really intense, big emotions -- either difficult ones, or the really beautiful ones. Such a force of sacredness, or praise, or blessing, or beauty, or whatever it is, or compassion, or love. And actually, we learn how to allow that, how to handle it, how to have room for it, for it not to be overwhelming and a problem. This is part of deepening in practice.
[17:42] So yes, intensity and hugeness. But also, again, echoing what I said earlier, the movement to subtlety is also important. Sometimes these qualities of prayerfulness or feelings of devotion, or surrender, or love, compassion, whatever it is, they're a lot more subtle and a lot less intense, and sometimes that's actually more helpful at times, at moments. The mind wants that subtlety and is helped by it. So we want to allow the movement to subtlety, and experience that at times, not be hooked on intensity or afraid of intensity or ignoring subtlety. So again, no hierarchy. Again, it's asking for open-mindedness, sensitive discernment, tuning, experimentation, flexibility, but with discernment, with tuning, and with interest.
So the heart, and the importance of the heart and, as I mentioned, those four interrelated aspects that open the door and support imaginal practice and cosmopoesis. But I want to pick out something else that's a little bit implicit in all this. It's about the relationship of body and energy body and consciousness. Let's say a little bit about this. This is important for the practice too. Body, sense of the body, and particularly of the energy body, and the, if you like, state of consciousness, what's happening in the psyche, the state of the psyche and the soul, at any moment, again, they're very interrelated. One will have an effect on the other, the other will have an effect on the one. There's a mutual influence happening there. Some of that is very, very obvious and gross, and some of it's extremely subtle. Again, there's this range, gross to subtle. This, to me, is a really important thread to become more and more aware of in practice, this interrelationship, and what's possible there, and what we can notice there.
I'll just throw this out in terms of samādhi. Some of you will know, when there's pīti, when there's a kind of well-being welling up in the body or filling the body (that's a Pali word, pīti, that the Buddha used and emphasized in the progression of samādhi, as one of the factors), when that's there, that more intense well-being or pleasure in the body, sometimes what often happens is that the head tilts slightly backwards. It's often because the movement of the energy, of the pīti -- especially at first, not always; it doesn't always stay like this -- tends to be up the body. There's a kind of current or flow or fountain of pleasant feeling moving up the body. It's felt in the energy body, and can actually cause the head to tilt back a little bit, or in some cases a lot. So there's the movement from the energy body -- it's from the consciousness that's gathered in joy, etc., and it affects the energy body, and that actually affects the physical body.
Let's really not make a big deal out of this at all, please, but just to mention, in the spirit and for the reason of experimenting with all this -- not necessarily of achieving anything -- but in that spirit of curiosity, this interrelationship and sensitivity to the energy body, etc. Sometimes you're practising, and you're aware of the energy body, and aware of, say, the uprightness of the energy body. And just being aware of that uprightness, allowing that uprightness as if the sort of axis, the energetic axis of the body, just allowing it to sort of unfurl a little bit and reach upward, straighten out, fill out, extend a little bit. I'm talking about very subtle. It's an inner imaginal encouragement, or actually even just an allowing. How does that feel when you do that? Just let the physical body be straight, and allow the energetic sense, the energy line that runs through the centre of the body, allow that to straighten out. Notice how that feels in the whole space of the energy body.
What happens very subtly, if you just begin to tilt the chin up, but to such a slight, subtle degree that someone looking at you either would not notice or would barely notice? I'm certainly not talking about jerking or yanking the chin up. I'm not even talking about a great degree of movement. Just experiment. Here's the whole energy body, sensitive to that whole space. Here's this line of energy that I'm imagining or feeling up the centre of the body, maybe even extending below and above the body, and just allowing it to unfurl, to straighten, to extend. And then just tilting the head back so subtly and slightly. How does that feel? How does the energy body feel when you do that, whole body? Maybe you feel that, in attending to the energy body or allowing the energy body to open a certain way, or even the physical body, it actually encourages a certain feeling. When there's a certain feeling, it affects the body, and playing with the body very subtly affects the feeling. There's an interrelationship there. I'm just throwing that out by way of example, partly, but also because we're interested in noticing these things.
[24:23] More generally is really what I want to focus on. When we're aware of the energy body, or dwelling in the awareness of the energy body and that fullness, especially when there's some degree of well-being or pleasantness there, and the harmonization, some degree of samādhi (but not only at those times at all), we begin to notice at times, definitely not always, but at times, you may begin to notice that the energy body wants to or actually is moving imaginally, or so to speak energetically, while the physical body is absolutely still. Someone looking from the outside can't see anything happening at all, you're sitting perfectly still in meditation, and inside you feel that the energy body wants to make certain movements, or actually is making certain movements. Inside, you feel like you're dancing, or the hands are in a certain posture, or something or other, or the body has adopted a certain posture.
Now, this is very different than restlessness: "I want to move. I want to scratch. I want to shift posture. I want to open my eyes. I want to go out of the meditation hall." [laughs] I'm not talking about that, because the mind is not steady or I'm bored or whatever. I'm not talking about that. This is actually something else. It comes when we're really with the energy body, tends to come when we're really with the energy body, when something is opening and harmonizing in the citta, in the psyche, in the energy body. So this can happen. And really the encouragement when that happens to let yourself feel into that, to actually allow it, and feel this either imaginal movement or imaginal posture, or the impulse to that imaginal posture. Really explore it. Let it be there and feel how it feels in the energy body.
Now, sometimes, you might actually explore physical enactment, or allowing the physical body to actually adopt a certain posture or move in a certain way. Usually that would take the form of kind of spontaneous movements. Usually they will be quite slow. There's no formula here, but it will look something like a kind of tai chi, or spontaneous moving between yoga postures, or holding of this pose, or some kind of slow dancing or something -- usually. But actually anything is possible. Maybe sometimes it's just in the hands. Just the hands feel like they want to move in a certain way or change into what's called a mudrā, one of the meanings of which is a hand posture, a deliberate ritual hand posture in some traditions, especially in the Tibetan tradition (actually quite a few traditions). You might have seen pictures of different mudrās. The hands and the fingers are in different postures. There are many possibilities. Again, you can allow that movement or the adoption of a certain hand posture, a certain mudrā, and notice and feel it, feel yourself doing that, but feel its effects in the energy body, feel its effects on the emotions if there are any, or on the sense of soulmaking. You let your hands do that, let them adopt a certain posture, let them move a certain way, but you're really tuning to how it feels in the energy body, in the soul, in the emotions, etc. Or, again, you can just let it be an imaginal movement of the energy body, where the physical hands are absolutely still.
All this can be extremely subtle. With the hands, there's a lot of possibility for subtle and sensitive experimenting. For example, the añjali, the bowing posture with the hands, or the prayer posture, the posture of devotion, with the palms and fingers spread together. Very common gesture in Asian countries especially. How does that feel different? Or sometimes you can let yourself experiment if it feels helpful, if it feels fruitful. Sometimes it can be just a complete waste of time, or it's not really helpful, or it's not really the thing that's helpful at that moment, you know. But how is it different? This can be very, very subtle. The hands, in añjali, pressed together, the palm and fingers, placed at the heart centre, or placed at the mouth, or even slightly higher, at the heart centre or the mouth, slightly higher, slightly lower. Little increments can actually make quite a big difference in the rest of the feeling of the psyche, and the energy body, and the emotions. What about the angle of the hands, if they're tilted forward, or if they're straight up? If the fingers and palms are pressed flat together, or if the fingers are interlaced?
What about if the hands, in this añjali posture, are touching the forehead? I mean actually touching, as opposed to just nearby, or not. How does it feel? Can you notice? If you're experimenting with this at times, there's an immense subtlety that's possible here, what is noticeable, and the effects on the feeling, of the emotions, the energy body, etc. The 'touching the earth' mudrā -- you know, the famous picture of the Buddha sitting with one hand touching the earth. There are all kinds of possibilities for that. It's not formulaic, this, necessarily. Or the way that we're teaching it is not formulaic, as we've said before. But touching the earth, and what does that do? Or the head pressed to the earth, bowing, and the head, the forehead touching the earth?
All of this affects the emotions, affects the energy body. Sometimes in meditation, we feel stuck. The energy is stuck, or the emotion is stuck, or the attitude is stuck. I'm not saying this as a sort of 'fix it' card, but sometimes, again, from the spirit of exploring all this, sometimes just a shift in the mudrā, in the hand posture, just a subtle shift. Maybe even which fingertips are touching. Maybe the thumb and the second finger of each hand start to touch, or there's the añjali prayer posture of the hands, and the first fingers bend to touch each other, fold to touch each other, and the thumbs come to rest on those two first fingers. There are many, many possibilities, almost infinite possibilities of different kinds of mudrā. Just subtle shifts in the mudrā can shift the direction of meditation. They can open the emotions, open the energy body, shift the view, even, shift the sense of possibility and what is actually possible, shift the attitude. Even very subtle changes in the hand posture, in the mudrā, can allow something to shift just a little bit, and then something opens.
[32:27] Also, again, if we're interested in, "Why are these things helpful?" One of the things that's helpful here is just the very subtlizing and sensitizing of the awareness and the attention to try and pay attention to how these shifts in mudrā affect the emotions. Just that sensitizing and subtlizing energizes the awareness. I'm injecting more energy into the awareness. When the awareness has more energy, if it has more energy than whatever emotion I'm in -- I'm stuck in a depression or an irritation or whatever, and there's a certain energy locked in the emotion -- by sensitizing and subtlizing the awareness, that's one of the ways of giving the awareness more energy. When the awareness has more energy than the emotion, then the emotion starts to be much more handleable. It's like the awareness can get around it, accommodate it. It doesn't dominate. The emotion doesn't dominate; we're not sinking in the emotion. It's not pulling us around so much. Sometimes the emotion can soften and heal and become more subtle, or just change. At any rate, it becomes less problematic because the energy of the awareness is bigger than the energy of the emotion, rather than the other way around. When the energy of the emotion is bigger than the energy of the awareness, we're actually drowning in the emotion, so to speak.
Okay. So there are a lot of things to play with. Take your time. Don't get overwhelmed. Experiment, be playful. In the walking meditation, let's say, still, we're always walking with this connection to, sensitivity to, mindfulness of the energy body. What we can add now, having said what we've just said today, is we can add the possibility to explore movement and posture. You might stand still in the walking meditation, and explore the hand posture, or be in one place and dance a little bit, rather than the walking meditation up and down. It might be more this feeling the energy body, and then feeling that it wants to move in certain ways and dance, or maybe just a part of the body does. Let yourself do that.
It might be a physical embodiment, a physical enaction of those impulses to movement, or to certain postures, or dance, or whatever it is. Or it might just be, as I said, an imaginal movement of the energy body. You look like you're standing still, or you look like you're slowly walking, and you can feel both that -- of course you can feel yourself sitting there, etc. -- but you can also feel the energy body, and it might be doing all kinds of things, all kinds of dancing, or somersaults, floating in the air, or all kinds of things. What matters is the awareness, and the being in touch with the space of the energy body. If you want, at times, you can move between a sort of classical walking up and down with the energy body awareness, or you can explore some of this movement, either enaction, or just letting the energy body do that but tuning into that feeling.
Now, either if it's in actual movement of the physical body, or just in the imaginal energy body, if the movement is imaginal or the posture is imaginal, either way, the movement or the posture can also open up images, or cosmopoeses, or ways of looking, as I mentioned earlier. And sometimes the other way around: a certain way of looking, or a certain cosmopoesis, or a certain image, will affect the energy body so that it wants to move, either in actuality or just in the imagination. Again, there's mutual dependence. But the encouragement for practice, as we play with this, if you're going to play with it, if you want to, then really to notice the energy body, the emotion, the feeling and all that, and the perception, or the shifts in perception, the shifts in the sense of things and the way of looking -- perception, sense, way of looking at the body, at the self, and at the world, what's around you, the environment.
Now, I realize this is not that usual for this kind of meditative culture. In other spiritual practices, it's very normal. But for some of you, some of this, if you're going to let yourself, will also involve navigating your self-consciousness, etc., like that, and just to have some care with that too. But really to notice this interplay between perception more widely and energy body, both ways.
Just to say again (I implied it already): sometimes the actual movement of prostration, or the actual shift in the hand posture, or the actual moving in this dance or whatever it is, or the shift in posture, will shift things and bring something alive. The being will come into a heightened sensitivity with that, and openness, and soulmaking, etc., and it's really helpful to move. Sometimes it's not. We would assume it is [helpful] when I'm doing this ritual or I'm doing my prostrations or whatever, and what happens is the body acts and the soul kind of turns off. This is interesting. Why does that happen? How does that happen? Is it happening? Do I even notice that that's happening? Sometimes what happens is it's more helpful, sometimes, to have the inner prostration, the inner attitude of bowing, the inner devotion, the inner sense of the energy body and the surrender, etc. The mind kind of, at that time, wants more subtlety. That's more helpful. And it comes alive and sensitive through not enacting something physically. Other times, it will come alive and sensitive and soulmaking through actually acting. Even discerning between these, it's asking quite a lot of us as practitioners, to be able to discern, to notice what's happening, to feel which would be helpful right now, and to be really open for both possibilities, both avenues. Okay. So, lots to play with.
