Transcription
We're already in transition, the end of the retreat, and Catherine and I just want to say a few things in closing. Because you've all done silent retreats before, you're familiar with a lot about transitioning out of silence, out of retreat, back to different environments, the busyness of your home and work life. A lot of that you know; I don't think we need to repeat it. But just a few things. This retreat, because we haven't put so much emphasis on concentration and on silence -- there have been these exercises and things -- and more openness of the senses, as opposed to this focus on sense restraint and also on the kind of smallness of attention -- when the retreat's like that, a lot of concentration, a lot of smallness of attention, a lot of silence, a lot of solitude, the transition is harder in a lot of ways, particularly in the domain of sense contact and sense impact. That's less the case, probably, for this kind of retreat.
However, the heart and the soul may be very open, you know. So there may be a sensitivity at the heart and soul level more than at the sensory level. This needs care. We need to really respect, and listen, and feel into what does the heart, what does the soul need -- today, in the rest of the day, in the next few days, etc. In a way, it's just a continuation: noticing the energy body, noticing the emotions, noticing when the heart is maybe contracting or feels vulnerable. And then, what does it need? What does it need in that moment? As always, letting the energy body, letting the sensitivity to the emotions kind of guide, letting the contact with that guide and give wisdom about what's appropriate here, what do I need right now.
One part of that is about sharing your experiences or your enthusiasm from the retreat. This, anyway, is something I think we need to be careful with after retreat, but it might be asking, again, for a sensitivity. You might get home, and before you've even put your suitcase down, you've downloaded the whole thing to whoever you live with. Maybe that's not right for you. Maybe it's not right for them. [laughter] So. You know. It really does need sensitivity, and noticing really what do you need, but really also what do they want. What does this other person want?
Sometimes we get a sense of the preciousness, or something in this week that's touched us that feels precious, and we want to share that. But also to be careful -- careful what you do with that in relationship. It may make complete sense, "I'm close to this person. They're my friend. They're my spouse. They're my whatever-it-is. Of course I tell them." Well, maybe, maybe not. If they're not interested, or if they're even disrespectful, that really has an impact. You can sense this in the contact. You start to say something, and the eyes kind of glaze over in the other person. Or they're just trying to be politely interested. Careful what you want to do with that. Maybe it's fine. But it's just being sensitive to what you need, how you need to be received, and what they need. There's timing as well. They might be in the middle of a busy thing with all this other stuff going on. They've been at home dealing with that. When's the time that they're open and ready to hear, if they're interested?
We do need to share, I think. We need to share our practice. We need to hear from others who are practising. That's kind of fundamental to all practices, the importance of Saṅgha, the importance of receiving, listening, communicating, having a back-and-forth. It's so, so nourishing. In terms of this retreat and these kind of practices and maybe other related practices, emptiness and samādhi and imaginal stuff, Andrea's put a list. If those are the kind of things you're interested, and you want to have some contact with people -- partly they'll probably be some people in London and other places you can meet in person if that's what you want, or have email contact and set up other ways of contact. But the importance of Saṅgha is so crucial in nourishing and sustaining and kind of sustaining the fire under practice. I think it's easy to underestimate that. It's really easy to underestimate how important that is. We need to talk. We need to share. We need to hear from others. We need to bounce ideas. We need to be supported.
We need also, I think, to listen and to read. So easily, practice just kind of sometimes doesn't expand or grow or deepen in the ways that it could, because we're not inputting much that's new, or that's opening things, or challenging things, or building new ideas and things on which practice can then open to new vistas, new explorations. So we do need to be fed. If it's Dharma talks, listening, there's Dharma Seed and all that, or books, reading, etc. Somehow we need to keep alive the flame of our desire. We talked about this yesterday in the Q & A. Somehow that needs to be kept alive, in all the different ways that that can happen. It's so easy for that to be diminished.
Part of that is also keeping -- what we've emphasized so much this week -- keeping alive the spirit of experimentation, of play, of creativity. That's really so important to keep, to be kept alive. With that, this question: "What's working?" To have intelligence in the practice really means to ask, "What's working? What's opening? Where is this leading? How does it work?" These kind of creative, interested questions ensure that the practice is intelligent and is actually unfolding in a fruitful way. That's part of the creativity and that's part of the desire.
Just going back to the sharing thing and the Saṅgha, I think especially in the kind of practices that we've been exploring this week, even some Dharma people will not be interested, or not be respectful, or even disparaging. So really to be sensitive to that, of where you can be supported in this kind of work if this is what you're interested in, if this is part of what you're interested in.
In terms of nourishing, I wanted to say one thing, kind of tacked on to a few questions that have come up recently and maybe some stuff in the Q & A, regarding nourishing the practice, regarding the attitude of experimentation, around imaginal practice and cosmopoetic practice. It's back to this real/unreal thing, and what's called in Dharma the Middle Way -- the Middle Way between "it is" and "it isn't," "it exists, "it doesn't exist," "it's real," "it's not real." That's hard. Generally speaking, that Middle Way is hard. It's a very deep insight. It's very rare for someone to actually be able to be there and relate to life from that place, and that be the sort of place where they dwell and they view things from. Until the insight into emptiness gets really quite deep, there's going to be some reification of something. There's just a tendency to reify -- which I want to say now is really okay. It's not a problem. That's just how it is.
I said yesterday in the Q & A, Catherine and I, just by virtue of sitting up here and history, we're placed in a position of authority. We might emphasize this thing of, "Realism is a problem. Drop the realism. Don't grasp things as true," etc. I'm just cautious of the weight of that authority, that giving of authority, if that makes sense. In addition to that, a person might feel -- and several people have said this, and it's very common now in our society to think this -- all the damage, and all the danger that has come from religious realism, and people clinging to this as truth and fighting with someone else who says, "No, that's not true, this is true," and identification with that. We're hyper-aware in our culture of the dangers of fundamental religious thinking and realism. That may be also a kind of hesitation around entering into more belief in some kind of reality of the imaginal realm or of the divine or something. There are different forces at play here.
It's more recent, of course, in human history, and rarer, to see the dangers of secularism, which is actually just a belief in the reality of something else, as opposed to a belief in the reality of the divine. It's the same realism, misplaced -- well, not misplaced ... [laughter] That was a Freudian slip. [laughter] It's the same realism placed somewhere else, as the only reality. You can have aggressive secularism as well, and you can be on the receiving end of that, and that's why also I caution about, "Where am I sharing this?" Because even some Dharma people are going to really look down on you and disparage, etc. In the bigger cultural human history picture, realism both ways has caused damage. Don't forget that. It's hard to see what's more recent, the damage of the flat view, of physicalism, of secularism, of secular humanism, etc. It's not so obvious to us.
For millennia, humans have believed in the reality of divinities, given them a reality, and believed and functioned that way, and had -- despite all the problems in history and all the terrors -- a lot of beauty, a lot of opening, a lot of sacredness, a lot of meaningfulness. I would like to say now, go back to what's helpful. This Middle Way is hard. It's not simple. It's hard-won, in a way, that depth of insight. But if it's helpful for you and where you are to lean towards granting a reality to the imaginal realm, believing in the reality of this or that divinity in some kind of way, if that feels helpful, then lean that way. There's a journey here. There's a journey of evolution of understanding.
We partly wanted to lay out something with quite a sophisticated philosophical framework, because I think that's what we need now in our contemporary society, also because of the assumptions of secularism, etc. It needs a response that's quite robust, that's not easily dismissed, that actually is philosophically quite deep, I feel, and that also is contemporary. We can't go back in time, really. We need something beyond modernism, incorporating scientific insight, incorporating modern philosophy and all of that. That's the reason we tend to emphasize that quite a lot. But really this thing about trust. I go back to this thing: check the soulmaking. Check the soulfulness. If I'm believing something, is the soul alive with that? Is it bringing something alive? Is it helpful? Is it freeing? Is there beauty that's coming from that? These are the things to check in with, as opposed to allegiance to a position of authority, which might be, in this case, Catherine or me or both of us. "Well, Rob says this, so that's what I'm supposed to be doing." Check the heart. Check the soul. Check what's working. There really is a journey with this stuff, so please, to trust that.
Just two more brief things. In relation to imaginal practice and cosmopoetic practice -- I think this came up in Q & As -- I don't think, necessarily, that long retreats are really what's needed. They're great, and they're wonderful. But there's a lot of potential in these kind of practices for short periods of practice, practice off retreat, practice when there isn't that much samādhi. It can be really, really fruitful. We're interested in this flexibility, this agility of the ways of looking, and these quick, agile shifts of the perception, of the mode of being. With practice and in time, it's something you can enter into and out of quite quickly. This imbues the days, and actually changes what's possible in our sense of existence. It's not, "Ah, I should go on retreat for three years," necessarily.
Last thing which has, in a way, come up indirectly. What we've been doing this week -- actually, we've been doing a few practices this week, haven't we? We talked about the energy body, we talked about samādhi, we talked about the emotional sensitivity and skilful work with one's emotions (whether they're difficult or lovely or neutral), and we've talked about imaginal practice, and we've extended that to cosmopoesis. There are a lot of things there. We mentioned emptiness. Just to kind of put the imaginal and the cosmopoetic practices in the context of a wider buffet, if you like, of what's available, and what's really mutually enhancing, mutually enriching, mutually deepening. There will be periods in your life when you're maybe more into imaginal practice, or periods where you're really exploring mindfulness, or periods where you're really going deeper into the whole samādhi thing, or mettā, or whatever. Just as on this retreat we're saying, "What's the intention right now for practice?", sometimes out of retreat you can have an intention or a thread of practice that's really going for a few weeks or a few months. That's what I'm interested in, and that's really where I'm devoting myself.
Sometimes that's really fruitful, to just kind of go with something for a while. But know that it's part of a bigger tapestry, a bigger jigsaw of how things might fit together and be mutually nourished. The path goes very deep. So much more is possible than most people tend to think. It goes back to keeping that flame of desire alive, keeping the intelligence alive, asking: "What's working? What's helpful? Is this going where I want?", and keeping that spirit of play alive. When those things are there, an enormous amount is possible. So the path is deep, but it's also very wide. All these beautiful practices and aspects and how they feed each other. And it's there for you. It's totally there. It just takes this spirit of play, of questioning, staying true to what my soul longs for. It's all actually available. It really is available.
So thank you for your practice this week. It's been really, really lovely, really beautiful. Thank you very much.
