Transcription
All right, go ahead.
Q1: ethics, authenticity, and a non-realist basis for Dharma
Yogi: In previous talks, Rob, you talked about truthfulness, authenticity, and integrity a lot, going back some years. I appreciate that, because I sort of felt, well, truth doesn't care where you are, what you're doing, whether it's convenient for you. Truth just comes along and says that this is what is. So I've always appreciated that, but I'm struggling to work with that out in relationship to this material.
Rob: Can you give an example of truthfulness coming along and saying X or Y?
Yogi: [inaudible] climate change. It came along and said, "You can't do that any more in the way you used to. You have to change your life." It says you've got to start making more choices about what you buy, what you eat, how you act, and how you spend your time. I suppose it's related to sort of, in insight meditation, there's a sort of, "This is the way it is right now," and you yield to that.
Rob: Yeah. This is what's happening in the moment, and you yield to that.
Yogi: I'm not sure about it, but ...
Rob: You're not sure what you mean?
Yogi: No, I'm not sure.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: But you get the first example.
Rob: Yeah, okay. Thank you. It's really important. I'd say maybe two things now. Everyone could hear the question? Yeah? So Andy's saying, you know, sometimes something in life -- the truth of it demands a response, or it needs to be looked at from the perspective of truth. We respond to the reality of that, and in a way, that imposes kind of limits on our response and what we do. And how does that fit in with -- what exactly, all this imaginal business?
Yogi: Yeah, I suppose I'm just sort of struggling to orientate that. It's always been a guidepost, "Am I having integrity with this?"
Rob: I think one piece here is, in terms of the imaginal piece, it's something we enter into, or we enter into an imaginal relationship with things, where it's not so based on truth. But that's a conscious moving in and out of something. To always live with one imaginal perspective on something, that's a fixation; it's become delusion. It's become something that's contracted around, right? So it might be that we feel into our life, and there are certain situations or facts or contingencies of existence that we can find an imaginal dimension of our relationship to it, and others that are more, it's like, "There's something about truth here that needs responding to." We're not adopting one or the other; we're adopting both/and, and as always the skill is, like, when? When do we move? What's possible here? Does this make sense? Yeah?
But I would also add that -- we were talking about this at some point -- it's like, the truth of climate change, it's not that one is getting into, "That's not real," or that kind of thing. It's real, but both your responses to it and how does the self of Andy image itself, fantasy itself, in response to climate change. Do you see what I mean? So "the world burns around the still meditator" -- that doesn't work for you, but for some people, that fantasy of imperturbability and transcendence is a fantasy that -- I mean, it has problems, obviously, but ... Or the fantasy of the engaged activist who actually lets his rage and his forthrightness, and is willing to be perturbed and involved and get dirty, you understand? In other words, here's the fact of climate change. Around that is all kinds of fantasies. There's room for both. Do you see what I mean?
And part of the question is, on top of that, there's the soul-resonance and the fantasy of integrity. This came up in the other group yesterday, actually. For me, integrity, purity, it's really something that's in my soul. It's something I really resonate to. There's a fantasy level of everything, if you like. That's not the same as just not dealing with reality. It's more that there's a thing, and it can be seen different ways, and my self seen, imaged, fantasized, differently in relationship to it. Does that make sense? There's all kinds of fantasy already involved. You have a resonance with purity, integrity, ethics, ethical questioning. They're alive for you intellectually, morally, actively, but also fantastically. It's like allowing that dimension, just to recognize that that dimension exists.
This also relates to emptiness, and what does it mean to say something is empty. Climate change is empty; I need to respond to it. Not "climate change is empty, therefore who cares." If that's the response, I haven't understood emptiness. So there are two ways of seeing all this. One is as image, and one is in terms of the emptiness of things. They can come together very much. But there's always, with the emptiness part -- which is a lot of what you're working on recently -- it's the Middle Way between existing and not existing. We're always just tipping one way or the other. So it's not that. You know the emptiness is right when there's this sense of not reifying, not contracting something, and the self not contracting in response to it, but there's still a response of care and compassion and embodiment, etc. That's the Middle Way.
There was something else that seems so gone, and I know it was something to do with divinity, but I can't ... I'm just a bit tired, so I'm not sure. Maybe it will come back. How does that sound right now? Does that ...?
Yogi: Yeah. I still kind of have a question about connecting some of the material on the retreat from the perspective of somebody with a fantasy of integrity and truthfulness.
Rob: Can you say what the problem of connection is?
Yogi: I don't know.
Rob: Take a few seconds.
Yogi: I spoke with Catherine as well about that kind of -- being very, very moved by the mantra, but then somehow, "I can't have that."
Rob: Why?
Yogi: Because of [inaudible] with the sense of truth. If it's not true, you can't have it.
Rob: Okay. So I can't have it because it's not true. Okay. So this is really crucial. Someone else wrote a note today. This, I think, is the hardest thing for some people: if it's not true, I don't value it. Some people don't struggle with that, interestingly. But many people will. This is why I keep saying there's such a radical basis, at least in the way that Catherine and I would like to present these teachings, which is not on a realist basis. That's really rare. It's rare for someone to really be able to hold that perspective. It's extremely rare -- it's extremely rare in teachings, anyway, but -- for a practitioner to actually be able to hold that basis, that way of looking at things, because we tend to go, "Either it exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't, pfft. Not worth it."
So some people don't have such a problem with that, because they're more able to enter into a sort of poetic or artistic mode of sensibility and of relationship with things and life. It might have been in that talk that you guys listened to the other day -- it's like, how much art can move us, and we know it's not real. So what's going on there? It touches so deeply, and stirs so deeply, and stirs us to movement so deeply sometimes, and sometimes ethical action. But nothing was real there. So one way into all this, in this balance between true, not true, real, is just through the artistic relationship, the poetic relationship with this thing and with everything, actually -- with life. Life becomes art, life becomes poetry, more and more or in places or whatever.
A second possibility is the whole emptiness thing, which you're working on. But it takes a while for that to go really deep so that this 'neither existing nor not existing' is really understood, and it becomes a perspective that's alive and unshakeable and real. So one answer would just be, "More emptiness practice." [laughs] And I'm not saying that glibly, because I realize how rare it is to actually hold that perspective. What you hear a lot of in other Dharma is, "Yes, yes, yes, it's all empty," but then going back to talking as if everything is real, or as if this or that particular is real. It's almost like we forget, so we're just kind of paying lip service to this Middle Way emptiness thing. We're quite interested in putting it right at the basis -- but also realizing that's hard. Some people just can put it there, and some people it's coming from philosophy, modern Western philosophy, and some people it's coming from the emptiness, and some people it's coming from the artistic thing.
Usually hiding, wrapped up in that question that you're asking, is "Something is real," okay? So this business of "It's not true," I can say, "Yes, yes, I understand everything's empty, therefore I can't trust that. Therefore this divine is a bunch of rubbish, or it's not trustworthy, it's not real. I can't let it have its power, because it's not real." And the same with meaningfulness -- a lot in our lives these days, people say, "Life has no meaning, the cosmos has no meaning, your life has no meaning. You're free to make up a meaning, but ultimately it's just made up." Underneath this kind of creation of the meaning of one's life and meaningfulness is actually a vague thought that the actual truth is meaninglessness. It's a kind of nihilism. So again, in this "I can't believe that," it's because I believe something is real. It's interesting. What then do I think is real? It's almost subliminal. As long as there's something that's real, the non-real will be less than in relationship to it. You understand? Once you get to the point where everything's not real -- everything, everything, everything ...
There might be like, "Eh," but then it's still hiding there, this belief in some kind of reality, that the reality is meaninglessness, or the reality is matter, or the reality is whatever it is. Once that's all gone, then it frees everything up -- not into nihilism, not into meaninglessness, but I would say into the possibilities of divinity, the possibilities of re-enchantment, without any sense of less than. In the end, if we talk about the emptiness, all we have are ways of looking. That's what it's saying. There's nothing but ways of looking. There's not a reality which, "Yeah, I can look at it this way, and I can look at it that way, but really it's a certain thing, whatever it is." There's not a certain thing. There are the ways of looking, and they're empty too. Once you realize there's nothing but ways of looking, that frees up the whole thing, and frees it out of this duality of real/not real, better than/not better than, valuable/not valuable, higher/lower. Do you understand?
Yogi: Yeah. And until then ...? [laughter]
Rob: Until when? What do you mean?
Yogi: Until I've seen the emptiness of everything, how to proceed.
Rob: How to proceed? As you are. You're doing the practice. Andy's working a lot on emptiness practice, and you're doing the right thing. It's like we talked in the interview the other day. There are certain places where the tendency comes in to believe this or that is real, certain things which you can see are not real. What happens as one goes deeper into emptiness is just that range expands -- both the range of what we really know is empty and fabricated expands, and the conviction. At some point it's just, I just know it. As you said the other day, when the gun is against the head, I know this is empty -- life, death, all of it. So there's an expansion of the range, and the conviction that comes. None of that takes away, for me, none of that takes away from the beauty of the heart's and the soul's resonance with integrity, with truthfulness, with dedication, with honesty. If it does, something is wrong. Something's out of balance with the understanding of emptiness or the way I'm holding all this. So that's our kind of indicator or compass or barometer. If I lose the care, if I lose the passion, something's off in the way I'm understanding emptiness. Something needs deeper, more understanding, more filling out. Yeah? Okay.
Q2: the plurality of archetypal characters, soul-voices and directions
Yogi: This is also kind of a question about ethics. I have this preoccupation that my sense of what is soulmaking isn't reliable, that the conditioned, habituated mind tells me something is soulmaking, almost like a false friend or in the enemy, because I want to let myself off the hook, because I don't want to deal with people's suffering. So on Tuesday night I went to a talk about fast fashion and sweatshop labour, and then I went home and I watched some Saturday Night Live sketches. I felt this expansion, and this freedom, and the divine comedy, and the beauty of people like Chris Rock and [?]. [laughter] I felt, "Where is my compassion for these trade unionists who have told me all these stories? In this moment, my ability to connect to that suffering is diminished." And this sense of divine comedy, I wondered, "Is this really soulmaking?" You were talking about how you watched a TV show and knew it wasn't nourishing. It's easy for me to know what isn't soulmaking, but sometimes I get so juiced, I think [?]. Do you have, without going too much into a materialist or scientific perspective -- you know, "What's your diagnostic criteria for what's soulmaking?", would you say the vedanā? Is it the energy body expanding? Is it intuition?
Rob: Before I answer that, I'm a little -- there was no connection between the comedy show and the sweatshop?
Yogi: The sweatshop came first, and I got completely compelled and called to action, to participate. And when I went home ...
Rob: Okay. So what I would say about that, really, is I would draw attention to the plurality of our souls. In other words, both are soulmaking. Oftentimes we have, if you like, divinities within us, or archetypes within us, that don't exist at the same time, or they move between each other, or they battle each other, even, they're contradictory, or at times they don't gel but other times they might gel. There might be some way where divine comedy and ethical action come together, you know. Not that that's better or worse. What I really want to emphasize more is not just the multidimensionality, but the plurality of archetypal characters, of soul-voices and directions, within each of us. Do you understand? Now, some people have a lot, or at different periods of life or whatever. But both of those might be soulmaking. They feel different. Both of them will activate the energy body, and the heart, and the resonances, and the meaningfulness, and the sense of dimensionality. All these are characteristics of soulmaking. How do I navigate with all of that -- not any one of them, but all of them, and it comes alive imaginally? Even just 'divine comedy' is already an imaginal term, you know. I don't know if these guys were talking in terms of -- were they using that language?
Yogi: The comedians? No.
Rob: Exactly. It's your imaginal filling out. It's come alive as soul for you, through that. There's a vague ideation there that's part of the image. The same thing with the sweatshop and the ethical action. Back to Andy's question, the self is imaged and fantasized in relation to this, the heart is involved, the energy body is involved, a vision of what's going on. So they're both imaginally alive. Even if you were a full-time sweatshop activist person, heavens, you'd need some time turning that off and turning on the comedy guys. That's just practical, like taking resources. Careful of -- I don't want to say 'monistic' thinking, but single track. You're multiple. You're complex. Soul is multiple, complex, alive in different ways. They don't always seem like they would fit together, but they are ...
Yogi: So hold the different possibilities, and trust that you'll retain ...
Rob: Yeah!
Yogi: ... the openness to others' suffering?
Rob: Yeah. I mean, you'll get the feeling, "There's the suffering, and I'm touched, and actually I don't want to deal with it. It's too painful for me." I turn on the TV. "Ah, yeah, great. Where's the popcorn, the chocolate, the beer?" What am I doing? I'm numbing out. That won't feel soulmaking to me. If the thing is soulmaking, it's something you enter into, you come back to. That one's not going to die because I enjoy a bit of divine comedy. You can trust that things have this ebb and flow. They come, they knock on your door. The characters of the soul knock on your door, and they demand of something. Sometimes it's right now. Sometimes it needs action in the life. Sometimes it's a more internal reverence that needs to happen. And sometimes it's just that these are threads that are surfacing, going back down again, surfacing. This soul-creature is coming up. It will come up again. Do you understand? So it doesn't sound like there's any contradiction there to me. It's more thinking about the richness of the soul and the multiplicity of it. Yeah? Okay, good.
Please, Chrissy.
Q3: seeing image as primary; what is cosmopoesis
Yogi: I felt like Catherine really taught me this. I was working with three images, and for me this kind of links into what the person before was saying -- it's like it brings up a different quality, which I'm viewing through the diamond of which I view different facets of my world and adventure. I don't know whether I'm kind of making up my own version of the things you talked about with the way I'm trying to do this. The image comes in, and I'll sense the impact on the energy body. What I want to do is to bring that part into my consciousness. So I'm kind of stuck between, if I do the first one on your list, which can lead to samādhi, then it doesn't sound like -- that would just bring up a sense of well-being, as opposed to the specific quality of the divinity, let's say. I don't really understand the cosmopoesis in this way, but it kind of seems like I'm straddling the two, because what I'm wanting is that quality of the deity or image. And I guess I'm a bit unsure how to proceed. My ultimate intention is to be able to touch these qualities of Buddha-nature to then hold my pain and suffering. It seems like they're antidotes to the different qualities that are coming through. Some are about strength, so that helps me when I want to kind of collapse. Others are about love, which helps me when I'm contracting and pushing away. I'm really noticing these different qualities between different antidotes. But I don't know how to ...
Rob: Where does the cosmopoesis come in? How does it?
Yogi: I don't really get the cosmopoesis yet. But for me it feels like that's where the divinity aspect is.
Rob: Okay. Did you want Catherine to answer? [Catherine in background: Why don't you?] Okay. These are big questions, so a lot of this, I might say one or two things. We could speak a lot in response to this. Just to start where you ended: for me, the divinity is involved in the definition of the imaginal, okay? So it's not particular to cosmopoesis. When we say 'imaginal,' or when I say 'imaginal,' when Catherine and I say 'imaginal,' we already mean an implicit divinity there. I can use the imagination, and imagine my friend, or imagine kindness or all kinds of things, but there's no sense of divinity there; it's just my imagination. But when we use the word 'imaginal,' one of the things that it implies is a divinity.
Now, that's, in a way, related to the rest of your question, Chrissy. I don't think there's any right and wrong here (I mean, obviously, there are probably limits, but generally speaking) in terms of how people relate to all this. One way of using and conceiving of images and image-work is translating images to aspects of being, in a kind of Ridhwanian language, but then what's happening is I'm making the image subordinate to something else, in two senses. The image is subordinate to something called 'being' that's almost monotheistic. It's one thing of which there are different aspects, and those different aspects might manifest as this or that image. And secondly, I'm using the image to serve my growth, as you said. Fantastic, beautiful, absolutely wonderful. It's one option.
There's another option, both in conception and approach, that has to do with saying image is primary. It's not just a manifestation of this or that aspect of being -- it is, in itself, primary. It's not something I can say, "That image represents my compassion. That image represents my power. That image," you know? And the relationship with the image is more that I am serving the image. The image is not serving me, or even my growth. That's one option. There's a spectrum here; it's not like black or white. In a way, when we relate to image and imagination, you can kind of decide: how am I conceiving this, and how am I relating to it? They're both good, but they'll be different. Does this make sense so far?
So if we relate the first way, in terms of they are aspects of being and I'm using them to develop my compassion, develop these qualities, then that's absolutely beautiful and fine. It will be different. If you're doing that, to the nuts and bolts of your question, then yeah -- let's say there's an image of love, or an image of power, either one. Just being with that image, my being comes into harmony with that. Through the harmonization, my being resonates with that, it vibrates in sympathy, and I am gathering those qualities. They come into the fabric of my being, and they get stronger in me. That's what you're talking about.
Now, exactly where I lean in terms of I can stay with the image and feel those resonances, and feel a degree of well-being and harmony, and they're all kind of mixed, and just trust that the harmonization and the gathering of those qualities is happening through that, yeah? Other times, I can lean more into the samādhi, but the samādhi has a lot of that quality in it, so the character of the samādhi -- yeah, there's well-being, but it also feels powerful, for instance. I'm gathering that quality. Or it feels like there's the samādhi there, the well-being, but it feels soft and compassionate. I'm gathering that quality. It's like how much we keep the image around, and how much we let it fade just into the felt sense of the quality. Do you understand? So the image can still be there, and I'm still resonating with the quality, or I can let the image fade, and go completely into the quality. It will work both ways. Does all this make sense?
I'm partly saying the whole answer just for everyone. There's that way of working, and it's absolutely beautiful, and it's working for you. It's absolutely working. And, as I said, there's a spectrum of how we conceive of what the word 'imaginal' means, and how we relate to it, and what the relationship of the self and the path with the imaginal is. Each person has to decide at what point in their life, where on that spectrum -- it's not right or wrong, but they will be different.
The cosmopoesis, just to clarify, the way we're using it is when an image comes alive, could be Tārā or someone, there's all that resonance, there's the energy body, there's the soulfulness, there are the qualities there, and somehow in lingering with that image and tasting all that and letting it resonate, then I open my eyes, open my ears, and I feel that the image quality spreads to the world, to the cosmos. It's almost as if that quality of Tārā is somehow everywhere. But it's a very particular quality. It's Tārā as I've just seen and sensed her. So that's what the cosmopoesis means. It means the spreading out of the particular of the image. But just, again, to say, for you this sounds so wonderful. It's working brilliantly. Go for it. And also be aware that there are other ways of relating to the whole imaginal thing, which may or may not interest you at a certain point, but probably on this retreat which we're emphasizing more. It might sound like it's a bit different from ... yeah? But absolutely fantastic, and go for it. I really want to say there's no right and wrong. It's like, "What's needed right now?" Trust that. It's absolutely wonderful.
Should we end now? Is there something else?
Yogi 2: How are you?
Rob: How am I? I'm very well. I'm a little tired, but I'm better than I've been in quite a while. Thank you. [laughs] Thank you, Rosanna. Let's just have a bit of quiet together.
