Wisdom, Art, Balance (Part 2)

So we're taking our time exploring the factors and the elements that contribute to creating, shaping, forging a vessel that's adequate for the material and the fire of eros, and the transformations there and the explorations there, and also what it means to, so to speak, master the fire in relation to this kind of work with eros and the imaginal. We talked about preliminaries, and we talked about ethics, and we talked about skill and confidence with emotions and energetics, and the capacity to trust a little bit or just play with a little bit of trust, and we talked about equanimity and some other things.

Let's pick that up and continue the list. We can also talk about samādhi. People think of that as something that brings steadiness, but oftentimes -- and I've said this before on other retreats -- it's like sometimes this word, samādhi, gets short-changed. It gets contracted and shrunk to quite a narrow meaning, meaning just, "How steady is my focus?" And even when people teach the jhānas, they imagine that it's really a question of getting more and more concentrated and focused and kind of rock-like in one's concentration, as if that's the most important thing there. That's just one strand of what's involved, this kind of immovability of mind, the attention being less pulled by things, by distractions, and then hoping that that will kind of just generally be good for me or make me more equanimous. That kind of immovability of mind does happen sometimes, or relative immovability to different extents, but it's a meditative thing, primarily, when the (quote) 'concentration' or focus or steadiness of mind is strong.

But, you know, and you've heard me say before, I would define samādhi as much more than a kind of steadiness of focus of the mind. It really involves a juiciness, a depth, a real sense of well-being permeating the energy body primarily, and the mind, and the kind of filling out of the mind in that juiciness, in that well-being, in that loveliness, to whatever degree. That encompasses all the jhānas, etc. I'm speaking loosely now. But that's really how I would define samādhi. And also samādhi is a state of less fabrication. Again, to what degree? You can go through the eight jhānas, and they're all progressively less fabrication of perception. That's a way of thinking about what's going on in the jhānas. So there's a connection here -- equanimity, samādhi. It has to do with less fabrication.

If we acknowledge, you know, samādhi is important in all this, but I would say primarily not just because of the steadiness of focus that it brings or that's part of samādhi, but because of the well-being. So what happens -- again, over time; I'm talking about months and even years -- when we develop our samādhi, meaning developing this sense of well-being, this pool of nourishment and well-being, and joy and loveliness in the energy body, in the mind, pervading the being with that, we develop this over time to whatever degree, dipping in and out frequently or a lot, dipping in and out to that brings equanimity in general in our life, and balance, and again, balance with respect to eros and more generally.

Why? Because we grow in happiness. We actually feel ourselves, that we have access to a deep happiness and nourishment, a deep nourishment. We feel, more and more as we develop that kind of samādhi, the well-being there, that we have enough, that we are nourished enough. We have enough to drink of this water that we so need (at least at one dimension -- that's something I'll come back to). But that sense of happiness that's available to us and nourishment that's available to us, it means that, over time, as we get more secure in that, we feel like we don't need, and we can actually see we don't need, to rely on the sense pleasures to kind of give us nourishment. It's such a poor level of nourishment, of trying to get nourished and happy somehow from sense pleasures, or from boosts of the ego because someone says something nice to me about my appearance or about something I've done or this or that, or just someone tells me I'm okay, or communicates to me in some way or another I'm okay. This can all be important to a certain degree, but relatively speaking, it's such a poor basis. Such a poor security it gives to try and get or secure a sense of well-being, of happiness, of deep okayness, through those mechanisms.

When we have the samādhi available to us over time, dipping in and out, then we just become less dependent on these kind of sense pleasures or ego boosts or being told we're okay. And because we're less dependent, we're less pulled by them -- towards them or whatever, or recoiling away from things or collapsing. And we're less thrown off balance. You can see how the samādhi has more to do with that kind of balance, giving us that kind of capacity of balance, rather than just this kind of immovable balance of a focused mind that is not pulled one way or another away from its object (the nostrils or whatever it is). Why am I mentioning this? Why is understanding this important? Because, in general, I would say that understanding why and how the elements and the factors of the path work, this is important. I understand samādhi is good for me. It's good, it's important, to know why and how samādhi is good for this business of equanimity.

If I have the wrong understanding, that I think it's just about being able to fix my mind on the tip of my nose or whatever it is, and that's somehow going to help me be equanimous or generally help my life somehow ... It's important to understand how and why elements or factors of the path are working. Why? Because, as I think I mentioned in an earlier talk on this course, our understanding of these kind of things informs our decisions in practice. So if I understand that it's more about well-being than about nailing my attention to the tip of my nose or whatever, or the soles of my feet or whatever it is -- not that that doesn't have a place, and I'll come back to that, but if I understand more, that understanding itself gives me some wisdom in terms of making decisions at any moment in practice about where to lean, how to navigate, how to incline the mind, what to develop, what to let go of, etc.

If I have an idea of, "Practice is trying to be kind, and just accept whatever arises, and let things come and let things go as much as I'm able," and that's my idea of sort of Dharma practice or insight meditation, or if my idea is really narrow, and I'm just trying to not be distracted, and I'm sort of judging myself about how much I was with the breath or how much thought was there, these kinds of ideas, they're so prevalent. Some sound a lot more attractive than others -- the kind, accepting, let everything come and go as much as possible. They sound kind of open-minded and soft and whatever. But the ideas we have about practice, the concepts -- and sometimes we don't even fully realize what we're holding as a concept; I'll come back to this as well -- but they are operative in the consciousness, and they have a huge influence, obviously, on what I do in practice, what I choose, where I lean, what my intention is, what gets developed and what doesn't. But also, they have a huge influence on how I regard what arises, how I regard this thought, or this image that arises, or this energy that arises, or this emotion that arises: "It's just okay. Just kind of open to it. Let it come, let it go." Or, "Kind of don't give in to it. Be with the breath," whatever. Or any other idea.

[10:16] The ideas I have, the understanding I have of what practice is, what I'm trying to do, how it works -- this has a huge influence. You know, sometimes it's like it's the less popular part of Dharma talks. People like the stories and the kind of quotes and things like that. But there's something about understanding the structuring of practice and how it fits together that will hold you and serve you better in the long run, so to speak, than this or that story or this or that quote or whatever. How I regard what arises determines what unfolds, the experience that unfolds, as we've been saying.

So the samādhi, equanimity, ethics, skill with emotions and energies, trust. We've talked about all this. We can also develop kind of balance and strength in our lives in general by certain other meditations. For example, meditating on the hara, the energy centre in the sort of dantian or the lower belly, the connection of that point with the earth and the sense of rootedness, and the connection of that point with the whole body, and meditating on that sense, just stationing the awareness, almost like the centre of the awareness at that point -- this can be, for some people, a really useful meditation, as a way of just changing the sort of inclination of mind, of consciousness, to not be that rooted, and the inclination of mind towards more strength, solidity, the balance of rootedness, etc.

But notice also, implicit in that is also, it's not just about being at one point, being conscious of the sensations at one point -- which sometimes can be useful, but sometimes implicit or really helpful to be woven into those kind of meditations is also images of earth connection, images of the earth. So there's already an imaginal element. Standing meditation, walking meditation, sitting meditation, feeling or imagining that rootedness, and feeling that in the energy body, and feeling the earth, imagining the earth, imagining and feeling the earth as some imaginal figure, if you like. An imaginal figure, meaning the earth is alive as image. What is the image of earth? I don't mean that it's necessarily personified as a human or something like that. But the image of the earth as something that supports, that connects, that roots, that gives solidity, that gives blessing. Think of the Buddha on the evening of his enlightenment -- it's famous from statues, touching the earth. The earth was, in his gesture there, an imaginal earth, even just a little bit. The earth is alive for him as image in that gesture, in that moment.

So the imaginal and energetic and feeling connection, weaving these all together. As we're saying so much, that's part of imaginal practice. But dwelling in those kind of practices can, for some people, be really important, to dip in and out of that kind of thing and hang out in there. Other people have done plenty of that, and doing more of that is not what needs to develop, yeah? But times, for many people, of dwelling in that, in that sort of energetic and image and feeling, and the fullness of that image, the beauty of that image, gives ballast, gives root -- can give, sometimes. It's complex.

And on the other hand, so to speak, to tie in with something we said before, those states of deep equanimity, relatively deep equanimity, can also be very not solid. So the feeling with them is of real insubstantiality of things. That's partly where the equanimity comes from. There's not so much ethereality, but yeah, insubstantiality. It's almost like you can just see through things. Everything becomes very, very light. But the practice of hanging out in those states really of, for instance, a very spacious allowing, letting everything come and go, and just really developing that deeper and deeper, practices of this really wide consciousness, just receiving and allowing, everything come, everything go, resting in awareness (people give different names to that kind of practice, that orientation in practice), that is a state of deep equanimity, of relative unfabrication, but it emphasizes the spacious quality, the spaciousness of equanimity (which is important, as we mentioned before). It's not solid. So yes, solidity sometimes gives balance and equanimity, and sometimes the exact opposite is part or an element in our experience of equanimity that gives us balance. But dwelling in those kind of states of spacious insubstantiality, letting everything come, letting it go, letting things fade -- really, really helpful in the long run, can be. But I'm talking about, again, hours, not just this one experience, or here and there, or just dipping in for a couple minutes. I'm talking about really developing the ability to hang out there for a long time, have it be accessible.

So there's the imaginal connection with the earth, the rootedness and the belly centre and all that, and the solidity there. There are these much more spacious states of allowing an insubstantiality, lack of solidity, but giving a kind of balance and equanimity. There's also a third, here in this little list about strength and balance. There are also the images of strength that are available to us. So imaginal figures and images of strength -- maybe solidity, but images of strength. Sometimes what happens is a person's imaginal practice is alive in certain directions, or certain kinds of images, but not so much in others. For example, someone might have a lot of images of devotion, very beautiful, and sort of surrender, and not notice, or ignore, or discard, or not choose to dwell in other images that arise for them that are more images of strength. They have an inclination, or a tendency, or a habit, or a pattern, or an okayness, or a captivation, even, with images of surrender and softness, but images of strength -- whatever they might be, and there can be many kinds -- they tend to ignore, discard, not even notice sometimes, or choose not to dwell in.

So sometimes a teacher can be helpful. This might come up in an interview. Someone might mention something, and then just completely ignore it, and it's exactly what they need to pay attention to. So a teacher or a therapist or someone can sometimes point that out in working with someone. Might be helpful. One could even, in some instances, I guess, prescribe this or that kind of image for a person to develop more strength. I'm cautious about that. I'm not saying it's not helpful sometimes or possible sometimes. But I would be a little cautious about it, partly because it also kind of implies that the teacher/therapist knows best, but also for other reasons.

Sometimes, as well, if we talk about strength, sometimes there's a kind of general weakness of the being. It seems like there's just this tendency to collapse, or everything gets a little mushy and soggy and can't kind of sustain or present. You kind of feel it in a person's being sometimes. It's just a general sort of weakness. And sometimes there's a kind of general suppression of libido, of life force. But here, if that's the case, again, we have to be careful, because what is just natural to a person, and they shouldn't be told or forced to be different than they are? It's just natural for them to have that much libido or this much libido, whatever it is -- a little, a lot, you know -- rather than kind of pathologize them as being repressed or being overcharged or over-erotic or overexcitable or whatever.

When there's this kind of general weakness, or a general kind of libidinal suppression, if that's what's happening, it may be, of course, that a kind of inquiry and working in psychotherapy -- maybe, and we'll talk about this, looking at the past and what may have contributed to that -- may be helpful, but again, whether it helps or not will also depend on the conceptual framework operating in the psychotherapy. All psychotherapies and all teachings have a conceptual framework, and so if the conceptual framework has, again, got a certain image of what one should be like, or what one's moving towards, or a concept of what's right and what's wrong, and what's okay and what's not, that will determine a lot of what actually gets released. But it may be that some work in psychotherapy actually helps with that.

[21:15] It also might be, I mean, sometimes, if there seems to be a general libidinal suppression, then it might be that finding where the libido flows easiest in that person's life and expresses the easiest, finding that and encouraging and supporting that may then just allow the libido to flow, and then it can begin -- maybe -- to move towards a general strengthening and vitality, and perhaps opening the range of the libidinal expression, opening it wider than just that one area where it sort of trickled a little bit in the first place. But it's complex. All that's complex.

We should point out that when we talk about balance in practice or in life, but especially with regard to eros -- this is really important -- we're rarely talking about something that's static. We're not talking about a static state of balance. We're talking about something that's dynamic, fluid, responsive. Think more of a dancer, or a footballer dribbling the ball this way or that or whatever, running, or a cyclist. Even just riding your bike, you're actually in a state of dynamic, responsive balance to the little micro-movements this way and that. So these equanimity-giving qualities that we've been talking about -- samatha, spacious awareness, equanimity itself, mettā even (which I didn't mention) -- these equanimity-giving qualities, it's not necessary for them to be there all the time, to be there kind of as a constant, mixed in with or in the background to our passion or our eros or our energetic or psychic charge. So, careful with this. It's rather that we can learn to access these qualities to different depths, and eventually, I would say, we can learn to access them at will.

This is what you learn if you practise the jhānas or these deeper states. Not 100 per cent of the time, but generally speaking, it's possible to just choose to enter certain states. We can access them, these qualities, rest in them, and kind of marinate in them, marinate in that deep well-being of stillness. Just sit there like you leave a slab of tofu to marinate in tamari and garlic and ginger or whatever it is. You just marinate. It soaks it up. It soaks up into the being. And marinate in them at times. And then that gives, slowly, gradually, a confidence that that is developable, that access and those qualities are developable. And we trust. We gradually, eventually, reach a point of trust that they will be accessible. If they're not accessible in this moment, or if I'm emphasizing something else in this moment, in the not very distant future, this quality of deep equanimity or this deep, dark space of non-fabrication, relative non-fabrication, or this lovely nourishment of samādhi, whatever it is, it will be available to me in the not distant future if I want. Or we just get a kind of trust and a confidence because it will be there frequently enough. It's there. It'll be there frequently enough in my life, that I will have that nourishment, that stillness, that sense of equanimity, all that.

So it's this frequency of access to these qualities and these states, and the trust. It's the frequency of access and trust that supports our equanimity in life and with regard to eros. So what this means is we're not, as I said, fixed in some kind of medium heat setting where we're not quite an ice block, dead; there's a certain amount of warmth and kind of interest, but we never get too excitable, or we never get too hot with the eros or whatever. We're not trying to find the acceptable five, "that's the Middle Way" kind of thing. That's less how I would look at all this. More that there's a range of being that's being opened up, and through that whole range all kinds of beauty and nourishment and necessities are being -- we are meeting with them, we are being fed them. So there's a range of being, of excitability, if you like, arousal, being on fire, being impassioned, and a range of stillness, and coolness, and spaciousness, and all that opens up a big range. Something about that that I would regard as the vision of what practice can possibly open up for us.

So in general, if there's eros, certainly if there's a lot of eros, just to say again: some people, I think, are just born -- it's their natural character, if you like, natural way they are. They're born with a lot of eros and a lot of psyche, if you like. They just have a lot of eros and a lot of soul. A lot comes through them. And it needs certain factors or certain qualities to allow it to be fertile and helpful and soulmaking so it doesn't get short-circuited, or implode, or explode, or fall over this way or that, or whatever. So part of this is balance and strength of the citta -- all these factors that we've been talking about.

We could add a few more. I would add solidity and firmness -- so the ability of the mind or the attention to stay steady with something. I will mention that several times. But that actually is important. If I'm investigating eros, if I'm working with an image, if it's quite subtle and complex what's going on, yeah, the ability to keep the attention steady with that is important. And the general mindfulness -- in other words, the general awareness; the ability to notice, to observe. It might be a close, detailed, intimate noticing. But an ability to notice and observe, that, even if it is close and detailed and intimate, is not entangled -- so that kind of what we would call mindfulness, that's important.

And also I would add inquiry. The factor of inquiry, investigation, is also really important. The questioning, to bring questions to bear in the moment on my experience. All kinds of questions, and at all different levels. And the specificity and subtlety of the questioning, and the specificity of the intention that needs to be involved at times in inquiry. So those three things: (1) the firmness of mind in terms of the steadiness of the attention, (2) the capacity to observe and notice, what we call mindfulness, and (3) the capacity to inquire, the actual factor of investigation. These are all part of what's necessary to this whole investigation. You know, I'm aware that in the past, recently at least, I've kind of said things which really lean away from or de-emphasize mindfulness and equanimity, etc. So if I seem to be contradicting myself, I am, in a way, contradicting myself. I'm not really; it's to do with context. If I said that in the past, it was really, for a start, in the context of sometimes what happens is there's a shrinking of the path, a shrinking of what practice means to people, a shrinking of what awakening means to people, and it gets shrunken to just mindfulness, or just a vision of equanimity, and [I was] really just wanting to open that up, and partly in opening it up, de-emphasizing the mindfulness, or critiquing it even.

[30:21] But also, just to say, for myself, I've spent years training in mindfulness, and developing that extensively, intensively, developing mindfulness and equanimity to a really high or deep degree of development, and ... pffft, maybe in my case, too, I don't know if one can say this, but I think certain people have a more natural disposition to equanimity, but also to mindfulness, in fact, and I would say that that's part of my natural disposition perhaps. So me saying that is in the context both of that perhaps natural disposition, but also in the context of the general scope of teachings or how people are thinking about what practice is right now. So given all that, or given my -- actually just the personal things, given that I spent a lot of time and effort and years developing that, and perhaps there's a natural disposition towards mindfulness and equanimity, it may be easier for me to just kind of say, "Let go of that, or develop something that seems to be its opposite, or let go of the emphasis on so much mindfulness and equanimity all the time."

But it's tricky. I want to say I apologize, but actually I don't. [laughs] I just want to say that it's tricky. Sometimes things need to get stirred up a bit. The question is, what do you need? Can that be an inquiry? And the question is also, what leads to what? What kind of concepts, what kind of emphases, what kind of explorations, what kind of fantasies lead to what, generally speaking? What am I assuming, what are you assuming true, just because a teacher, or lots of teachers, seem to be saying the same thing, or seem to be saying it? So there's a lot of questioning involved or necessary for all this.

If I am contradicting myself, which I admit I am in a way, maybe a way of thinking about it is, in the very contradictions, of which there are many in what I'm saying, it's really presenting both sides. So there's this and there's that. There's this, and the opposite is somehow true as well. So it's really a matter of actually balance, again. The contradiction itself is reflecting a kind of meta-level of balance that I'm trying to communicate in relation to all this. The responses of balance and wisdom to all this are complex questions. There's complexity to them.

I'll say one more thing, or one more possibility to develop some of these qualities. Psychological balance, if you like, is implicitly or explicitly conveyed in maṇḍalas. It's developable through meditating on a maṇḍala. Some of you already do this. Some of you will be not familiar with this at all. Meditating on the maṇḍala as a whole, or some elements of the maṇḍala in combination. So I don't mean so much as a visual pattern, but I mean actually what the elements represent, or the imaginal figures within certain maṇḍalas. For example, in one maṇḍala, Akṣobhya is a Buddha that represents wisdom into emptiness, or wisdom into the Vajra, which means 'diamond,' so something that's really indestructible, some indestructible element of being, which is related to emptiness. Meditating on Akṣobhya, if you like, and what that means as an imaginal figure, as an icon, one can balance that with another Buddha in the same maṇḍala -- for instance, Amitābha, who might be regarded (some ways of seeing it) as the Buddha of the imaginal.

So right there, you have this balance of: there's the imaginal, but there's the knowing of the emptiness. Just putting those two in relationship to each other as images, but images that are pregnant with idea, as well, and putting them in some kind of counterpoint and balance, if you like: there's the imaginal, and there's also the knowing of the emptiness. There's the form of the imaginal, and there's the lack of form in the emptiness. There's the imaginal with the eros implicit in it, and there's the coolness of the knowing of emptiness and the knowing of image as image. So sometimes putting those two and meditating on them, and perhaps placing them in your heart, or along a certain axis, if these images are alive for you or can become alive, can be really powerful as a way of developing sort of balance generally in relation to all this.^[1]

Or it could be putting those two or one of them in counterpoint, in balance, in relationship with, in opposition to and co-constellation with, for example, another Buddha of the same maṇḍala, Ratnasaṃbhava, who might represent the emotions, the actual feelings of compassion or mettā or whatever, or we might say, more generally, the emotional life, and again, putting them in relationship, and actually having them as iconic figures, letting the imaginal work, imbued with a little bit of concept (as it always is anyway, imaginal work), actually let that do its work on you by bringing the energy body and the whole consciousness into that, or bringing that into the whole consciousness and the energy body, either way. Or, a fourth Buddha of that maṇḍala, Amoghasiddhi, is the Buddha related to action in the world. You can see how these things just psychologically -- can I balance the imaginal with the emptiness? Can I balance the emotions with the action, or the emotions with the emptiness, or the action with the emptiness? So in activism and in engagement, how many people have come to me with that kind of question about burnout, about over-involvement, being over-passionate, or it needs to be balanced more, etc. So this is one way of actually playing with all this.

But again, what would it be to balance Akṣobhya, the emptiness, the Buddha of emptiness, the Vajra being, the diamond quality, indestructible quality of the transcendent, for example, and balance that with the Buddha of action, of engagement, Amoghasiddhi? We can, as I said, play with these figures, these icons, these images in meditation, place them in relationship and counterpoint, or in balance, etc., and it will bring balance. It's possible with other imaginal figures, as well -- even erotic-imaginal figures. See. Play. See what's possible.

One thing I would say about all this in relation to that maṇḍala and the emptiness thing is emptiness, or the realization of emptiness here, is really at whatever depth or whatever fullness you understand it at present, or that is evoked by that image or concept. So I know I put a lot of stress on saying 'emptiness' means more than this, and it's more than that experience, and it's more than this, and this is what we really mean by 'emptiness,' but at the same time, in this kind of meditation, you know, you might have a sense, some intuitive sense, or even a direct experience, of the Unfabricated, or the Big Mind, big awareness, cosmic consciousness, or emptiness as ground of being. These are all things where you may have heard me say that this isn't emptiness in the way that we mean it. There's more to understand. There's a deeper emptiness, etc. But still, they can be really valuable. So emptiness at whatever level and depth of fullness you understand it, it can be really valuable to bring that in the meditation, so it's alive, and it's personal, and it's relevant to you right now. You don't have to wait until, necessarily -- I mean, it's better if you have a deeper understanding, or it will be better when you have a deeper understanding, but you can bring in any level of what these images and ideas, bring whatever level is alive for you, that you can bring in. It will still have a lot of power here.

Or, you know, Akṣobhya might be the dharmakāya, the non-dual Buddha's gnosis that includes all appearances. In a way, it's not important. What we want is something that's relevant and that has a certain potency and power to bring into the meditation, and let it do its work, let it do its alchemy. It is interesting to me, as a teacher, sometimes how vague concepts or a certain level of understanding and images can open experiences that bring deeper understandings, or open understandings that are deeper than a person knew that they even had -- it's amazing -- or knew that they were even conscious of, if you like, until they played with it in a certain way, or until they entered it a certain way. You think, what's going on here? Is it magic? Is it a kind of invocation? Is it just intuitive wisdom, that something in us knows emptiness, for example, at this deep level? Knows the co-constellation and the balance and the necessity of these things, and what we're really doing through the maṇḍala is contacting and allowing to emerge that level of deep, intuitive wisdom? Is it the power of the imaginal, the power of image and poetry?

It's interesting. The alchemy here is not entirely linear or expected. So what I'm really saying is: trust whatever level of understanding of emptiness you have, if you're going to play with this kind of thing. And trust the imaginal to do a certain work here. Again, it's got a certain autonomy to it. It's beyond what we might have 'imagined' (in the narrow sense) -- what we might have expected or thought beforehand.

Okay. So just in this talk, we've talked a lot about strength, balance, space, a vessel, mostly as a sort of collateral, as how we develop these sort of qualities in our life that can then shape and inform and give us balance generally, which will affect our relationship with eros when it arises and all that. In the next part of the talk, I want to talk about what does 'balance' mean actually as you're doing imaginal practice, as the eros is alive with this beloved other, with this erotic object. What does mastery and balance and responsiveness mean in the moment there, in the actual practice? So this talk was mostly on sort of what's around that practice -- as I said, development of collateral. And the next one's actually in the practice.

Just to say it one more time: sometimes, for some people, there comes a time to question even the whole ideal of balance and equanimity. Or question one's clinging to the opposite, of being passionate and up and down, and "I'm like this" or whatever. So I'm really interested in developing the skills and the art of balance and equanimity, etc., with respect to eros, and also there's a place for questioning. It's an ideal. Balance is an ideal. I'll say a little bit more about it in the next talk. But there's sometimes the place for just questioning this whole ideal, and where did it come from, and do I have to buy into it, and what does it look like? Okay.