Transcription
We want to unpack, if you like, unfold, have a closer look at, and inquire into eros and the path, the relationship of eros and the path, but also eros on the path and eros for the path. What is it to have an erotic relationship with the path that one is on? And so, wanting to inquire further into that and explore all that, open it out for our investigation and questioning and practice. Because of all that we've said so far about what eros is and what it does, to talk about eros and the path, eros on the path, or eros for the path, means of course to talk about soulmaking and the path, soulmaking on the path, soulmaking with respect to the path, because, of course, as we've said, eros stimulates soulmaking. It's a part of soulmaking, and soulmaking always involves eros, as we're using those terms. They implicate and involve each other. So eros and soulmaking on the path and with respect to the path.
Now, we should also point out that when we talk about path, implicit in talking about path is the idea or the sense or the vision or fantasy of where that path is going, its aim, its direction, its goal; awakening, whatever the concept, vision, image, fantasy of awakening is. So talking about eros and soulmaking with respect to the path necessitates, involves already, talking about eros and soulmaking with respect to whatever idea and fantasy of awakening we have, or the different ideas and fantasies of awakening.
And further, to tie a third point in, any idea or fantasy of awakening implies an ideation, a logos, regarding the world. In other words, how does the vision of awakening, the idea of awakening, conceive of the world? What's the relationship between world, the senses, what we experience through the senses (which we could call 'the world' or 'life')? To talk about awakening means also talking about that. Senses, world, life, sense pleasure, all that, the relationship with that is implicit in the idea of awakening, the vision of awakening, the image of awakening; and the idea of awakening is implicit in the vision, image of the path. So if we talk about eros and soulmaking and the path, eros and soulmaking on or for the path, wrapped up in that is the whole fantasy and logos of awakening, and wrapped up in that is the whole idea about the world, about the senses and life.
So that to talk about eros for the path and on the path is not really separate from talking about eros and soulmaking and its relationship to the world, what the path and the ideation, the vision of the path, allows or disallows, encourages or doesn't, in terms of the directionality of eros and soulmaking with respect to the world. These three are connected: the world, life, the senses, if you like; awakening; and path, eros and the path. Three aspects there, actually interwoven inevitably in each other when we begin to unpack these things. And, as was already made clear plenty of times (hopefully) by now, when we talk about soulmaking, we are talking about eros, psyche, and logos. In other words, this erotic movement, this erotic inclination, attraction, kind of desire; psyche, meaning image and fantasy; and logos, meaning ideation and concept. So all those three (eros, psyche, logos) are wrapped up with those three (path, awakening, and world or senses or life). All these, one set of threes and the other set of threes, they're all completely interrelated, interwoven.
Let's go into this a little bit, take our time. What does the mind do with respect to, let's say, sense pleasure? How does this tie into what the path says about what we do with sense pleasure? Because that's related to how awakening envisages a relationship with sense pleasure. And tied in with that then is the relationship, of course, with the whole world and all that. So eros, sense pleasure, and awakening, and the possible ways they're constellated or conceived of in different frameworks or different visions of path and awakening.
(1) One, and one that you'll be probably quite familiar with, even if you're not familiar with the words, is that when there is pleasant vedanā, pleasant sensation, when there's sense pleasure, or the possibility of sense pleasure in the future, then what quickly comes in for unawakened human beings is papañca. And of course that applies to unpleasant sensations as well. So here's this possibility of pleasantness, that chocolate cake, whatever it is, that attractive person, and the mind starts spinning around that and kind of veiling it over, hyping it up with papañca: how wonderful this thing is, how beautiful it looks, how dear they are, how interesting they must be, this person or whatever it is, and there's a veil of papañca, of kind of ideation, thinking and imagination, etc. All that's called papañca, complicating, etc. And this is unanimously regarded as a bad thing. Papañca creates more craving and clinging. It's part of that process, and creates self, and basically creates dukkha and entanglement in dukkha and all that.
The practice is therefore cutting that link, cutting the link from pleasant vedanā (which is unavoidable in life), and what comes, what can flow out of that in terms of craving. But now we're talking about particularly the papañca. So just cut the papañca off. And what you get wrapped up or implicit in that kind of view, often, is that when you cut that off, then there's a kind of reductionism. We are reducing all this hype. We're clearing away all this hype and all the entanglement of papañca, all the veils of illusory thinking and aggrandizement of the object that I'm attracted to in this case, and the imagery that goes with it, the imagination that goes with it, and we're reducing to just sense pleasure, so that when I'm in a situation which involves sense pleasure, there is just sense pleasure, and I'm not adding any more to it with imagination or concept, etc.
There's a kind of reductionism in there. And this can go a couple of different ways, which are not really separate, and we've touched on this before. It can kind of go into an atomistic, a reductionism towards an atomistic process view, as if there is just this moment of bare sense pleasure which can be revealed with bare attention. There's the registering of sense pleasure, but nothing more is added to that in terms of imagination or thought or that kind of thing. And so really what reality is that we can be with is just this bare process of bare registration of sense pleasure, and yes, it's enjoyable, but we just register that, and we don't add anything, and that's the kind of movement there: to strip away down to the bare elements of this kind of atomistic and automatic process, if you like, at its barest level.
Or it can go into a slightly softer sounding kind of vision of path and awakening, which is to be with what is, be in the moment, be with the touch of life, open to the touch of life. And if the touch is pleasant, then that's what you open to, and if it's enjoyable, that's what you open to. And if it's unpleasant, that's what you open to. Here, implicit, too, there's a kind of realism. The 'what is' is assumed to be real. 'The touch of life,' there's usually the assumption of reality wrapped up in that: "When I strip away this papañca, then I'm passively receiving the real touch of life," etc.
Now, that one, that 'touch of life,' or 'being with what is,' is slightly more romantic. There's a bit more possibility for some kind of eros and soulmaking than with the atomistic process view. But the two get mixed, and as I said before, sometimes the word 'process' gets replaced with the word 'flow,' for instance, and then you've got sort of river and water analogies or imagery associated with it, which can be a little more juicy. But still, here, with this kind of view of cutting the papañca, the eros and the soulmaking is limited. The path says imagination and fantasy and thought about the sense object, about the sense pleasure, is papañca; cut the papañca. In cutting the papañca, psyche and logos are cut, and eros in relationship to the senses, in relationship to the world, is limited, cut as well. That's one view, and like I said, whether you're familiar with that exact language or not, you'll recognize that kind of thrust of the teaching.
(2) A second view, and actually, again, if you take a closer look at the Pali Canon, while there certainly is that level of teaching about papañca, there's also that papañca is filled out in terms of what it actually means, what the Buddha really means by papañca. It says a lot more. It has a lot more depth to it than what I've just explained. And there's a sutta where I think Sāriputta is explaining about papañca, and he says that what papañca really means, it's equivalent to sense perception. In other words, it's equivalent to sense experience. Papañca is really objectification, meaning 'making objects,' 'making things': self and this, this lamp, this table, this piece of paper, this person, etc.
So papañca means the making manifold, the construing in the perception, in the actual experience, in the world, into objects, separate objects, things that seem to exist. Papañca is actually equivalent with fabricating the perception of objects, the perception of things. So papañca has this whole other level of meaning to it beyond this idea of being cut and removed with a bare attention -- which is there, but there's a whole other level. In other words, what actually is the Buddha referring to when he says papañca? What's included in that? What's the extent of that? There is, if you like, the papañca of the senses, meaning the equivalence, actually, of senses and papañca, so that to let go of papañca is really to let go of the whole edifice of what we were calling clinging, and the whole edifice, the whole building, construction, of the fabrication of perception. So a moment of no papañca is really a moment of no fabrication of perception, a moment of the Unfabricated. Where there is no papañca, there is no object. You can't really talk of anything. As the Buddha said, "Where all phenomena cease, all ways of speaking cease."[1]
Here, then, if the path is construed as this, "Here is sense experience, and we're trying to get rid of papañca," the whole movement there is towards the Unfabricated. The eros, the erotic movement and attraction is away from appearances, away from the world, to the Unfabricated. So that therefore, of course, the psyche and logos, the soulmaking in relation to the world is very limited. It's not itself really an object, an erotic object, an object for soulmaking.
(3) Compare that with a view, a third view of sense pleasure, which would perhaps make a distinction between papañca and the craving that goes with that, and soulmaking and the eros that goes with that. So papañca and craving on one side, and psyche, soulmaking, eros on the other side. Where there's eros, there will be soulmaking. What's the difference? We've touched on this before. What's the difference between papañca and psyche, papañca and soulmaking? Eros and craving -- we've talked about the lessening of contraction, the different experience in the energy body, the fact of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic opening things up and liberating, if you like, the object away from realism, and expansion, and all that.
For example, if we talk about sense pleasure, eros in touching a lover, in the touch of two lovers, or eros with respect to the touch between two lovers, what's going on for those two lovers when there's the erotic connection there? Is it really just sense pleasure? Is that all it is between two lovers -- it's just pleasant sensation? And would we teach those lovers, "Bring mindfulness to the sensation in your lovemaking, and notice the bare sensation of pleasure"? Is that the guide to profound lovemaking that we're going to teach them, bare attention and the noticing of sense pleasure? Is that all that's going on there? Or is it just sense pleasure plus papañca? Are we really going to say that? Some people would. Or are we even going to say that in the touch between two lovers what's really going on there is, yes, there's some sense pleasure, and then there's some love, meaning care -- they care for each other. So what's really going on, what's really communicated and felt in that touch is a combination of sense pleasure and care. And again, some people would say yes, that's what's going on. A slightly more generous view.
Is it though? Is that all that's going on? It's not that there's not sense pleasure, and hopefully it's not that there's no care. But really? Can we inquire into this? Is it papañca? What's the missing ingredient? Or is it actually soulmaking, that there is in the eros fantasies, images, dimensionalities, beauties in the erotic other, in the touch itself, in the sense of the eros, in the autoeroticism, all of that? You can call it papañca, but you might be missing, you would probably be missing something. And to call it just sense pleasure and care would be missing something.
Or again, at Gaia House -- and I venture this is true for most retreat centres in the Insight Meditation tradition, and probably all retreat centres in the Buddhist tradition, I'm guessing -- how many cookbooks there are in the kitchen. [laughs] It's staggering. If you go into the kitchen, there are shelf-loads of cookbooks, and some of the cooks who cook in the kitchen have their own personal cookbooks as well, and really a lot. What's going on there? So here in cooking for the retreatants and the staff, is it just pleasure-seeking, the pleasure of pleasant food? Is it just pleasure plus care for the retreatants? Or is there not another element of fantasy, of soulmaking in relation to the food?
All these cooking programmes, all these cookbooks with the fantastic photography and the suggestions of the abundance of the earth, the fruit of the earth, the freshness, the interconnectedness with nature, the sophistication of certain orientations to food, and the sophistication of the palate and the refinement of the sensitivity, or the interconnectedness with all things there. Wrapped up in the relationship with food and in the movement of preparing food and all that is soulmaking, is fantasy, is logos. Cannot be, I don't think, reduced to sense pleasure plus care. Or you can notice when it is -- what a different relationship. Different kinds of cooks cook very different meals. Sometimes when it's just about care, for instance, with some, you know, making pleasant, it's a very different presentation. It's a very different orientation and relationship.
Or again, in Vajrayāna teachings, when the teaching is, "See all appearances as divine," there is in that already some tendency, or it will tend to transform the vedanā into pleasant. But again, this tantric movement is not just about sense pleasure and about just enjoying the sense pleasure. Some very cheap versions seem to mistake it for that. And you could say, "Oh, that's just papañca," in a kind of dismissal of that whole Vajrayāna movement and intention. Is seeing appearances as divine, is that just sense pleasure? Is it just sense pleasure and papañca, or is it the movement of soulmaking?
There is, in that, and in the cooking, and in the lover's touch, there's this eros and soulmaking with respect to the senses. In other words, how are the senses viewed? What eros and soulmaking with respect to the senses, the touch of the world -- certainly with respect to sense pleasure, but actually also with respect to neutral and unpleasant? Or in looking at that, what's the eros and soulmaking that's allowed by the conception, by the vision with respect to the world and the world of the senses and, in this case, particularly the sense pleasure?
And actually, if we expand that a little, and touch on some Vajrayāna teachings, which are very much related to what we're talking about here with soulmaking and imaginal and eros, then you get, as I've said, these icons, statues, or thangkas, or paintings or whatever, of sexual union between the female and the male Buddhas or bodhisattvas there. There's eros between the female and the male. Now, the prajñā, the wisdom, the insight, is often depicted as female in those iconographies, and the male is often representing what's called upāya, which is usually translated as 'skilful means.' So in a way, this erotic union that there's an icon of, an erotic union between the female and the male, they're really, in a way, representing aspects of Buddhahood as a union of wisdom and means, the union of the female wisdom and the masculine means, just depicted that way traditionally.
That's interesting. It has a whole other level in terms of what we're talking about, because this word upāya in the Vajrayāna tradition can also refer to the maṇḍala. And the maṇḍala is not just this arrangement of sand painting or whatever it is, but the maṇḍala at its deeper level represents the world of divine appearances. In other words (and we've talked about this on the Re-enchanting retreat), one level of what the maṇḍala is, is this is the maṇḍala. If I see it the right way, where I am sitting right now, where I am walking right now, wherever I find myself, in the transubstantiation, in the transformation of perception, becomes the maṇḍala. It becomes the means, the skilful means. In other words, the world of appearances, of divine appearances, when the world and the appearances and the senses are seen a certain way, it becomes the upāya. What is the means of the Buddha? The skilful means is the world. This is what the Buddha uses. So that means that this sexual union that's depicted in the iconography there between the female prajñā, the female wisdom -- which, at its level of Buddhahood, it actually has the word jñāna, which is related to our word gnosis -- the sexual union between the gnosis of the Buddha and the upāya, the divine appearances, the world and sense experience. There's a sexual union. There's an erotic connection.
How different this is, this version is, from the first version, let's say -- cutting the papañca, where there is almost no eros allowed, or moving away from it towards the Unfabricated. There's no eros, or very little eros allowed with respect to the senses and with respect to the world. We'll revisit this several times as we go on. But here, there's eros depicted, symbolized, between, if you like, the experiencer, the wise experiencer, and the experience (in other words, the senses, the world, the divine appearances), between the knower and the known, between the divine subject, that Buddha, that Buddha-nature, that ultimate gnosis, that ultimate mind, if you like, ultimate kind of consciousness, between that divine subject and the divine object of sense experience, of world.
This is a bit of an aside: some people refer to the coalescence of emptiness and appearances, and that actually has a couple of different levels of meaning. One meaning, which I've referred to in the past, is just that appearances are empty. You can't get an emptiness that's separate from appearances. That's what it's referring to. And appearances are empty through and through.
There's another level in the teachings, or rather, in some traditions of the teaching, which actually redefine or expand on the very word 'emptiness.' The word 'emptiness' means different things in different Buddhist traditions, and you should be aware of this. It can mean really quite a range. There's quite a range of what it's taken to mean, the word 'emptiness.' Mostly I use it as the absence of inherent existence -- that things don't exist independently, from their own side, independent of the way of looking, so to speak. That's mostly how I use it. But there are traditions where emptiness and this jñāna, this is equivalent -- this Buddha's gnosis, this ultimate mind, if you like, ultimate citta. So that's actually the meaning of emptiness, more than just absence of inherent existence. It includes the absence of inherent existence of what is observed, what appears, and it knows that absence of inherent existence, and it also includes the absence of its own inherent existence: this jñāna, this gnosis, this Buddha-nature, this ultimate knowing, is also lacking in inherent existence.
But there's also, as well as all that, a kind of non-duality between the knower and the known, so that this Buddha-nature, this ultimate awareness, if you like, encompasses both the knowing and the world, the senses, the appearances. So there's some case for, in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, the Heart Sūtra, which is a very famous sūtra, where it actually says, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." I used to think that was just bad Sanskrit, and what it should say was, "Form is empty," rather than "Form is emptiness." And then it continues through all the aggregates: vedanā is emptiness, emptiness is vedanā; perception is emptiness, emptiness is perception; saṅkhārā (mental formations) are emptiness, emptiness is mental formations; consciousness is emptiness, emptiness is consciousness. But there's some case, and I think some scholars would very much argue, do argue, that the meaning of the word 'emptiness' in some of those Prajñāpāramitā sūtras is actually in this much larger meaning, to refer to the dharmakāya in this bigger sense of the Buddha's gnosis, of the ultimate kind of awareness, if you like, of the Buddha-nature.
That's a slight tangent, but I think it's important to know, if you really want to get into all this stuff and explore the teachings and understand. There are important divisions to be aware of. And I think I've said in the past: everyone might use the word 'emptiness,' [but there's] really, really quite a range of differences in what people are actually talking about when they use that. And there's a lot of confusion that comes when we don't really understand what a person means by 'emptiness,' etc., or dharmakāya, or Buddha-nature or these words. But the important point for right now is that, as I said, there's a very different notion implicit and a very different eros allowed between the practitioner and the world of the senses there and the world in general.
This also gets mirrored in Kabbalah and Kabbalistic teachings, and we'll come back to all this later. But this union that's depicted in the iconography there between aspects of Buddhahood, aspects of the Buddha, aspects of Buddha-nature, aspects of the ultimate, aspects of the Buddha's gnosis, whatever, this union between those aspects is actually to be practised, to be mirrored, if you like, or mimicked by humans in their practice. In other words, that iconography is encouraging, allowing but also encouraging a certain way of looking, a certain way of relating, a certain way of conceiving of senses and sense pleasure, and the whole movement of what awakening is, and the path, and the soulmaking in relation to the world of the senses.
As I said, it's all wrapped up together there. But this union that's depicted between aspects of (let's call it) Buddha-nature is something that's to be mirrored, or better, mimicked, echoed -- mimicked is a good word -- in a human being's practice, in a practitioner's practice. You can see just there with those three of four different kind of castings of the path in relationship to sense pleasure. And in the first one, that the bare senses, or what's received in the senses, the sense pleasure is regarded -- whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral -- it's regarded as a basic kind of reality, missing a whole level of emptiness of that very sense perception itself, of the sense pleasure, of the sense of unpleasantness or whatever. And it also, as I mentioned, as I stressed, it limits the soulmaking and eros in relation to the senses, and in relation therefore to the world and to life, because world and life is what we get through the senses.
In the second, this movement kind of beyond, this transcendent thrust that we were referring to, that refers to papañca and the senses are kind of coterminous in what they refer to, and the movement is beyond the world of the senses, to drop the senses, if you like, and to puncture that and open up to the Unfabricated, then there the Unfabricated is regarded as real. The word 'fabricated' implies -- if we say 'a fabrication' -- something not real. The Unfabricated is reality. Everything else, the world of the senses is essentially papañca, rather than some basic reality revealable there. The world of the senses is not reality. The Unfabricated is reality in that view. And there's a strong case for that view, a reading of the Pali Canon in that way, very much. But there, the soulmaking is only in relation to that Unfabricated. That's the thrust. That's what I want to open to. That's what I want to penetrate and reach. And then the fantasy of the path is around that.
In the third versions, either the soulmaking vision of what we're talking about with the imaginal, etc., and eros, or the Vajrayāna versions of that, where they overlap, I would say, there's not the reality so much assumed of an independent existence, either of the Unfabricated and certainly not of the senses. Or I should say most Vajrayāna teachings, I would say. The emptiness is implicit there. Or in the soulmaking, we say 'knowing image as image.'
But the general point here is there's always a way of looking, there's always a conceptual framework, and there's always a fantasy involved regarding sense pleasure, vedanā, and world. There's always a way of looking in place, as I said before. There's always some logos and some psyche, some image and fantasy, in relationship with the senses, with vedanā, with sense pleasure, unpleasant or whatever it is, with world, etc. And that's determined by context, by teaching, by intention, by the conceptual framework of whatever tradition of Dharma we're being exposed to or we're in, and it has implications for eros and soulmaking in all kinds of ways, certainly in relation to the senses and the world and what's allowed there. Actually, more than that. I'll come back to that. But let's just start there. So we're looking at where does the eros get to go. Where does it get to be directed or to flow? Where is it allowed?
So a person -- and this is not just a hypothetical example I'm going to give, but a person could have with them a lot of eros flowing in their system, a lot of libido, if we use that word, a lot of eros towards the Unfabricated -- they really want to know that -- and towards the opening to, the penetration of, the realization of deep emptiness in their life. And they bring their energy and their intelligence and their creativity, and they're really into practice in that direction, everything that's involved in that directionality, and they reflect a lot, and they're experimenting and all that.
But in relation to the world, the things of the world and the senses, there is only craving. There's not eros. In other words, there's no fantasy and image with respect to the world and the things of the senses. The imaginal is not operating there. The imaginary may be operating, but the imaginal is not operating. And then this person is putting all their energy, all their libido, in the direction of the Unfabricated or deep emptiness and, if you like, just trying to kind of let go of their craving with respect to the world. But they can't shake their addiction -- and they're calling it an addiction -- they can't shake their addictions to food (they keep going to the refrigerator -- what's going on there?), to sense pleasure in different forms, and to what they would call an ego aggrandizement, despite the certain amount of actually relatively deep penetration into emptiness, and despite a certain amount of practice with that and a certain amount of practice with the jhānas. What's missing here? What's going on?
In terms of the jhānas, I should say -- this is, again, a slight side point, but it's important to make -- the second jhāna is characterized by a really -- I was going to say overwhelming; it may be overwhelming at first, [but] then you get used to it -- a very deep, deep upwelling of happiness and joy. That's sort of the essential ingredient of the second jhāna. One is just really absorbed in that, really suffused, saturated in that happiness running through the body, running through the heart and the mind there, permeating, filling up the body, the heart, and the mind.
This repeated sort of sitting in that second jhāna has a direct bearing, I would say -- as all the jhānas do, but there's something particularly about the second jhāna, I think -- that has a direct bearing on our addiction to sense pleasure and our need for sense pleasure, so that, with time, we're kind of weaned off; it's not where we go to look for happiness. We have a much richer source of happiness. But we can only wean ourselves off, that weaning is only possible, if we really sit and what I call 'marinate' in the jhānas, in the second jhāna in particular.
A little bit here and there, dipping out or just racing through because I want to do all eight jhānas and then get on to my insight meditation -- that's a style of practising the jhānas, but just dipping in that way probably won't make much difference to the operation and the pervasiveness and the sort of niggling movement and force of craving in our life. We have to really marinate -- I mean sit in it, again and again for hours, and just soak it up and soak it up. Something deep, deep, deep in the being is being transformed in terms of patterns and needs and where it really feels the fulfilment, but only if we (what I call) 'marinate,' only if you really sit in that, underwater in the happiness, and just soak it up like a sponge for hours and hours and hours and hours. And then it makes really, I think, a lifetime difference.
But the main point here is not so much about jhānas. It's actually: could it be that this person, these people need actually -- rather than all the eros going to the Unfabricated, and then there's a kind of soulmaking fantasy around that movement, around the transcendent thrust on the path as far as it's transcendent, and with regard to the world there's only craving (there's no imaginal allowed there; it's refused for whatever reason) -- maybe what they need, completely contrary to a sort of conventional assessment or wisdom, maybe actually it's that the world and food and even the ego (whatever that is) needs to be imaginally [infused]. We need to let the imaginal infuse world, food, ego, whatever it is I'm addicted to, sense pleasure, so that, as is characteristic of the imaginal, they gain dimensionality. Food is not just sense pleasure. Even ego, even self, starts to get image. The whole world of the senses and of sense pleasures starts to gain dimensionality, and through the dimensionality, some kind of sense of divinity, so that, for example, eating or drinking whatever it is, a cup of tea, whatever I'm eating, this is divine nectar, divine nectar that I'm drinking, that I'm eating, etc.
That would be an example of allowing the imaginal to infuse that realm of the senses, instead of refusing the imaginal dimension there and just trying to cut the craving. "Why is it not working? I'm doing my emptiness practice. I'm really creative with that. I'm doing a little bit of jhāna practice or whatever. Why is it not working after all these years?" Might it be that there's a possible doorway opening into a freedom here that actually is quite the opposite of what we assume? And if divine nectar and all that sounds a bit silly to you, or if it sounds contrived (which it can be contrived), I would say practise with this. Practise in relationship to the world and in relationship to the senses and sense pleasure. Images await you. Images that work for you await you. You don't have to choose the standard sort of Vajrayāna ones like divine nectar. That's a standard Vajrayāna sort of practice or instruction, seeing food and drink that way. But, you know, we're practising the imaginal in a more open and creative, less prescriptive way. So I would say: images await you that work for you. Images that work for you are waiting for you to discover them in relation to the senses -- images of sense pleasures, images of the things of the world.
So again, what's the difference here? And I go back to what I was relating about one of my oncologists saying about taking holidays [laughs], and there's this sense of escaping something there. What's the difference between seeking sense pleasure, seeking an escape of something or other in sense pleasure, or seeking an escape from the world, as the Buddha sometimes talked about it, into a jhāna or into the Unfabricated -- what's the difference between that and something that brings an embodied soulmaking into our sense experience, into relationship? There's an erotic, soulmaking, imaginal relationship with the experience of the senses -- in other words, with life, with the world. So pilgrimage, if you like, instead of vacation. We talked about that.
Nietzsche said, or wrote, actually -- I'll leave this in his gender-biased language for now:
The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit.[2]
Where he wrote that, it was in a book that contains a lot of just single sentence aphorisms, and so the immediate context around that is not exactly -- it doesn't even look that related; it's not that apparent immediately. But what if we take that statement and replace the word 'sexuality' with 'eros'? "The degree and kind of a person's eros reaches up into the topmost summit of her or his spirit."
It starts to make sense in terms of everything that we're talking about. The degree and the kind of eros will shape, determine, open to lesser or more extents and ranges, the degree and kind of spirituality, if you like, or let's say path that a person chooses or engages in, etc. The degree and kind of a person's eros determines the degree and kind of the path -- and not only in obvious ways. This is what I want to draw attention to. We might ask in relation to this, what is it, then, that might limit the eros with regard to the path? In other words, if the eros is determining the path, but then if the eros is limited, it will limit the kind of path. It will limit the notion of spirituality. It may mean I'm definitely not using that word, 'spirituality,' because my vision of what the path is doesn't allow that word, or it's only spiritual and it lacks body, or whatever. But what limits eros with regard to the path? This is interesting, and it can be so varied. But this is really what we want to investigate -- what can go on there?
So all kinds of things, and in all kinds of directions. Richard Tarnas has a wonderful book, really beautiful book called The Passion of the Western Mind.[3] It's a history of the ideas that have really influenced Western culture, Western society. And he pointed out that in England, in the Restoration of 1660, the restoration of the monarchy after the events of the previous years, after the Restoration, just after the Restoration, prominent clergy and philosophers and doctors stressed the importance of a "sober natural philosophy" -- in other words, a sober philosophy of nature. For example, or in particular, the recent mechanistic philosophy of material -- the world is composed of material particles which, in themselves, are kind of inert, but they're governed by permanent, fixed laws (in other words, the Descartian view of matter and the world, the natural philosophy that came with the Scientific Revolution). So they were really encouraging and stressing the importance of a sober natural philosophy to undercut the passion-inflaming enthusiasm supported by the more esoteric world-views and the kind of more radical streams of religion that were around back then.
So there was something in a stressing of a certain kind of logos that actually undercut the eros that was allowed in relationship to the world and the path, in that case, that people could choose or were on. "To cut the passion-inflaming enthusiasm," is what he writes. 'Enthusiasm,' the etymology of that word is entheos. It has to do with the influx of the theos, the god. So again, you can see how all this is related. And that would be an example, in that time in England, in a Christian context, an example of juiciness, exuberance, ecstasy, breadth of affect, of emotion, and heat of love being squeezed out of philosophy, actually, and in this case, particularly epistemology, like what are valid ways of knowing -- inspiration from God, imagination, etc. (we've touched on this before), replaced by an epistemology that disregarded and dismissed and denigrated epistemologies that didn't fit within this narrow view of Western scientific materialism that was emerging. But juiciness, exuberance, ecstasy, breadth of affect, the heat of love, or hot love as opposed to just kind of warm goodwill, squeezed out of philosophy and religion.
So again, here's a logos, but you can also see there's a whole fantasy and image there of sobriety that, alongside the sort of tide of the new logos, the new conceptual framework that came with the Scientific Revolution and the so-called Western Enlightenment, there is a fantasy/image here of sobriety. Is this the case today as well? That juiciness, exuberance, ecstasy, a breadth of affect and the heat of passionate love are squeezed out of some Dharma paths, so that there is a kind of sober tone, a kind of looking down or hopefully a removal of the ecstatic, of the entheos, the inflow of the divine and that sense? Or in views sometimes where that kind of mechanistic natural philosophy that I was talking about at that time in England and the West -- is that related, or can you see that that's related also to some process views? Yes? This atomistic process, moment by moment, of vedanā, sense perception, etc. And that, too, is a kind of mechanistic process view that undercuts eros -- the emphasis on cooling, simplifying.
So something is deliberately being looked down on and shut out. Or, and what's sometimes worse, there's a kind of disempowerment of the eros by just sort of, "It's okay. It's okay if you feel hot. It's okay." That's different than giving a place to it, or supporting it, or actually giving it a meaningful place and purpose, the ecstasy, the entheos, the drunkenness (metaphorically speaking), the wildness, the heat, the passion, the complexifying, the richness, the imaginal. Sometimes an "it's okay" attitude, "Everything is okay. Just let it come, let it go," sometimes that's actually more destructive, more undermining to the erotic and the soulmaking and the imaginal than an active and clear opposition.
But it's interesting, too -- and if you go back to the situation in England at that time in 1660, you can see how political motivations actually played a part in limiting logos, and thus limiting eros, limiting logos and eros and the fantasies that were kind of supported. In other words, there was what was perceived as possible chaos after the removal of the monarchy, and then the monarchy had been restored: "Let's preserve order. Let's reinstate order, and let's make sure that no one gets too hot or passionate. We need to keep the lid on the passion, keep the lid on the range of the logos, on the range of the images of what religion looks like, in the logos, in the view of the world." These limitations on eros, psyche, and logos were political in part, so that's interesting. And again, was that just a one-off in history? Does it still go on today?
The logos, if you like, shapes or allows a certain amount of eros, shapes and allows a certain amount of eros, determines the eros, and the eros and the soulmaking shape and allow and determine the logos, as we have touched on before. But let's go into this a little more from the psychological point of view. Again, a little bit of history: there's a -- I don't know what you'd call it -- a sort of stream of philosophy in modern Western philosophy called 'pragmatism.' And some people regard William James (the psychologist and philosopher who was active at the turn of the century, the 1800s to the 1900s), regard him as one of the first exponents of this view. And, in a way, what he was saying in a lot of ways was a little bit similar to what we're saying about ways of looking and conceptual frameworks, that rather than thinking about reality and that sort of idea, and stressing that, we're actually emphasizing, "What works? And what effect does a certain way of looking or a certain conceptual framework have?" It's pragmatic. In other words, it's something to practise. If you put it into practice, praxis, and it works for you, then it's something worth pursuing.
More recently, in the twentieth century, the philosopher -- I think he died not too long ago -- Richard Rorty (I mentioned him, I think, already before) also labels himself or is labelled as a pragmatist philosopher. But there's a difference between Richard Rorty's version of it, which is actually relatively popular now, and William James's version. Some people -- for instance, Jorge Ferrer, and Jacob Sherman, and other writers -- stress the difference here between the different kinds of pragmatism. And I would go along with this for myself, and say that Richard Rorty is what could be called a 'deflationary pragmatist.' Although he's kind of also saying, "Just don't get hung up on this idea about reality, and that you can come to some way of determining reality, or a single way which is the right way of looking and realizing the reality of things and the true things. Come away from that to this more pragmatic view: what works? What works for different cultures?", etc., there's something in his kind of project there that seems pretty intent on disallowing anything that involves enthusiasm, anything that involves a perception, a way of looking, that would open the perception of other dimensions and the kind of religiosity and divinity, etc.
So somehow, wrapped up in what he's saying is a kind of deflationary -- it's almost like, "There is no truth. There's nothing to really penetrate and know. Human beings are very limited. We can't really know things. Just calm down and accept this fate, and give up on any kind of sense of being able to expand the perception of things in a way that brings this enthusiasm," etc. It kind of runs through his philosophy, as far as I can tell, from what I've come across and read. So there's a deflationary pragmatism. One wonders, where does that come from? Why is it that some people's thrust -- they've got hold of the same idea, and yet it's thrusting towards a deflation, a sort of bursting of bubbles, bursting of balloons, and other people it's more allowing, if you like, this expansion of the eros-psyche-logos and expansion of the balloons, without a realism there?
Partly what I want to say is: I think we can recognize it, too, in different versions of the Dharma, in different teachings and emphases, that there's a kind of deflationary explanation or take on emptiness, for example: "Eh, everything's empty. There's nothing mystical there. It's all just interconnected phenomena. There's no ultimate basis or anything like that." And the whole movement, it sounds like a similar conceptual framework, but the whole movement is to really burst bubbles: "Just calm down. Don't get too excited by sort of mystical inspiration and all that." There's a deflationary emptiness, versus (this is more my leaning, and again, and I can't hide my leanings here) the realization of emptiness being something utterly mystical, utterly wondrous, profound, something to really be excited about! There's something so transcendent of the usual way of seeing there, in a way that brings all this wonder and joy and dimensionality to existence, and all kinds of possibilities. Instead of closing down possibilities, it actually opens up possibilities, I would say.
So emptiness allows a flatland one-dimensional view, certainly. I have that view a lot of the time, maybe, or rather, it's one I can pick up and put down. It allows that. But it also allows much more mystical conceptions and views, whereas a deflationary take on emptiness tends to just, by default, encourage this more one-dimensional view. And sometimes that extends to the whole Dharma, so that a kind of take on the Dharma or approach to it is essentially (or for the most part) deflationary. It's all just, "Simplify. Calm down. Just be even. Don't get too excited. Don't get too depressed," and there's a kind of, "It's just this. This is what you have to deal with, just this." In the flatlanding, reducing the dimensions, there's also a kind of deflation, but it's also in terms of deflating the eros, deflating the soulmaking dynamic, the way that expands, the way that grows. And then one gets kind of deflationary psychotherapeutic theories or approaches as well: "Just calm down. Just ground more. Just rein it in. Just sober up a little bit." You might not use that language. And I wonder sometimes even if there's a kind of deflationary approach to art, the arts or different arts.
We mentioned some talks ago this Scottish psychoanalyst, W. R. D. Fairbairn, who was active in the twentieth century, a lot in the fifties especially, and his whole idea of the libido, which is similar to what we're calling 'eros,' but lacking the dimensionality. It's this movement towards making connection. So there's this libidinal ego. In his view, a human being has kind of a split: there's a libidinal ego and a libidinal thrust towards connecting with objects -- others, basically -- and an anti-libidinal ego which gets constellated out of fear that the object will reject us or be unavailable. So this anti-libidinal ego is a kind of alternate or alter ego, if you like, that tries to protect us, if you like, and so dampens: "Don't get too excited. Don't make yourself too available. Don't go towards that too much, because you might get disappointed. They might reject you. They might not be available." And so there's a kind of tussle, ongoing tussle throughout life -- until one gets more conscious of it, and even then, one's just more conscious of it, and maybe it's less out of control -- between the libido and the sort of anti-libidinal thrust, the libidinal ego and the anti-libidinal ego.
One wonders, if we take that idea and expand his meaning of 'libido' to what we're calling 'eros,' how much the limiting of the eros in this anti-libidinal movement is coming, in essence, out of fear of disappointment: "Don't puff things up. Don't get your hopes up. Don't make too much of things," whether that's the path, or the sense of the world or reality or the Unfabricated, whatever it is. There's a kind of restraining of what we're calling eros. It's limited because of this anti-libidinal ego, essentially out of a kind of wanting to protect oneself from disappointment, or just the discomfort of that much eros, that much libido flowing through the being, or some other reason. How much that kind of anti-libidinal movement of the psyche, of the psychology, actually ends up limiting the eros and then limiting the soulmaking, limiting the eros-psyche-logos dynamic because we're pulling back the eros. We're not allowing the eros because of whatever reasons: some kind of fear, or protection, or discomfort or whatever. And then, again, the whole path becomes -- we choose something that's more the deflationary philosophy, the deflationary version of the Dharma or emptiness, or deflationary psychology or whatever it is. And how much of that is actually coming from what Fairbairn would call the anti-libidinal movement?
Let's explore this a bit more, again, in terms of eros and how it chooses, creates, or finds a path, or which path, what kind of path it will choose, find or create. We've said that eros needs a perception of otherness, right? Remember that? Eros needs this other, this erotic object that is 'other' than it. It's not just this collapse into union, into oneness. So eros needs a perception of otherness, and something in that other needs to have something 'more' or 'beyond' in it. There needs to be a fascination with the other. That's necessary to eros: a fascination with the other. And part of the fascination is that there's more there in this other, in this otherness, that I don't quite know yet, that I'm not quite in contact with. I can maybe intuit it, or I've been told about it, or I can half-perceive it or something. So eros needs a perception of otherness, and in that otherness, it needs this 'more' and 'beyond.' We've touched on this before.
What this means in relation to eros for the path, and what eros then does with the path or makes of a path, or what path eros makes, what it means is that in order to have eros for the path -- it means I'm deeply, fully in love with the path, and with where the path is heading, or my sense of that, with awakening -- in order to have eros for the path and for awakening, I need to have a vision, a sense, a logos, or an image of the path and of awakening that has some otherness to it. There has to be something 'other' to know, right? Just as with the 'other' being a person or a thing or whatever, the path itself has to have some dimension, some sense of otherness to it, some sense of a 'more,' a 'beyond' that I want to know, in order for the eros to really impregnate the path or to have a really erotic connection with the path, with awakening. You know when people are deeply, fully in love with the path and with that movement towards awakening, however they conceive of it -- which a lot of people who are really dedicated to practice, it's there, okay?
So something has to constellate. The vision, the sense, the logos, and the image of the path and awakening has to have some otherness to it, something kind of other that I don't already know. If my sense of the path and awakening is just about reducing my suffering -- that's my vision and logos and whatever, conception of what the path is: just about reducing my suffering -- that doesn't allow eros. That doesn't allow enough eros. It's just about reducing my suffering. I can't really fall in love with such a path. It might be very useful to me. I might engage in it. I might even be fairly disciplined in my engagement with my practice, whatever I've been taught, etc., to reduce my suffering. But if that's the only thing in it for me, that's how I'm seeing and sensing the path and conceiving of it, eros cannot really establish in relation to such a vision of the path. I can't really fall in love with that kind of path.
Some secular visions or conceptions of awakening, and some visions of where one is headed in secular versions of mindfulness, some secular versions of the way mindfulness is taught, are characterized, their conceptual frameworks and visions of awakening are characterized by an absence of there being much else to discover or perceive than is already obviously true, apparently obviously true, or apparent, than we already know. They're actually characterized by the absence of much beyond to discover or to perceive. The vision of awakening isn't really that there's much more beyond what we already sense and perceive, to know. Okay, it may be I know or discover not to believe thoughts of how I am, or how she is or he is, or how terrible the situation is, or how wonderful the situation is. And again there, there's this sort of even keel: "Go for the equanimity. Don't get too seduced by something seeming wonderful. Don't get too taken in by something seeming terrible."
So there's an acknowledgment of that, but basically, this that I currently perceive is, for the most part, taken as reality -- for the most part. And the vision, the concept of practice or path or awakening, is really just a disentangling of my relationship with that reality. There's not much more to perceive; I'm just changing my relationship by more letting go, by not being so entangled with that reality. But the reality is pretty much the reality, except for the crazy papañca things I get into about believing this person is like that, or this situation is absolutely awful, or whatever it is.
There is not, then, in such a conception, such a vision of awakening, more or very much more at all to open, open the perception to, or to discover. Maybe a little bit: "Oh, there's not really a self. There's just a process." That's a little bit more, but there's not really that much erotic connection one can have with that idea or soulmaking connection. Again, it's, in itself, quite a deflationary idea.
Compare that conception or vision of awakening with a path that says something like, "Awakening means to discover your true nature," or "Awakening involves the realization of the thorough and deep emptiness of all things," or "Awakening involves an opening to the Unfabricated," or "Awakening involves a union with the divine or a becoming divine." These kind of conceptions and visions of awakening, the otherness there, the 'beyond' what I already know, what I've already tasted that is in the vision and in the conception of awakening, and therefore of the path, is much, much larger. There's more otherness there, and therefore more eros. More eros, more otherness. Because there's more otherness, more beyond, there's more eros can get constellated there and more soulmaking. Very different logoi and fantasies of awakening kind of allow and constellate different erotic relations with the path, degrees of eros with the path itself and with practice.
But then, even within the limits of what we might call secular religions -- why I'm using that phrase is 'religion' in the sense of an insistence, a kind of dogmatic insistence, that there is just this, "There is just this one dimension." That dogma, that insistence, makes it kind of a religion, but a secular religion, if you like. But even within the limits of secular religions -- and there might be different versions of that -- there is still going to be, and this is where it's interesting, eros is in us as human beings, so there's still going to be a relationship with some kind of otherness that is constellated by the eros. In other words, the eros in the being will constellate a relationship with some kind of otherness even within the limits of a secular religious view and vision of the path and awakening. And that relationship with whatever the otherness is that it constellates, it will be erotic to some extent. In other words, from our definition, there will be a wanting of more contact, of more intimacy, of the aliveness of that contact and intimacy with whatever this kind of other is.
So then you get presentations of awakening or visions of awakening, concepts of awakening that have to do exactly with awakening being an intimacy with life, for example. And again, what's 'life' there? Well, it's a good question. It's senses or whatever, or a flowing with life. In other words, again here, it's not just a reduction of suffering. The eros has come in, created a kind of otherness, but in this case, the otherness is with that one-dimensionality, and it's trying to make more of that otherness. So 'Life' becomes an erotic object, 'Life' with a capital L, intimacy with life. It become the erotic object, and there's a romantic, if you like, a quasi -- I'm using that in a loose sense -- romance of life, and the intimacy of life, and being with life, and flowing with life or whatever, and the touch of life. Life becomes the erotic object. There's a kind of romantic relationship with it, an elevation of the importance of Life (give it a capital L) and an elevation also in this intimacy with it and the touching life. And there's this desire for the contact, the intimacy, the touch of life, etc. So eros is finding some otherness there, and this otherness is Life, if you like, and it does what it does: it pumps it up. It gives it importance. It gives it a kind of romance in the relationship with it, and there's the desire for the intimacy. But there the eros is limited into how much it can expand the notion of Life, if the logos is absolutely rigid.
So even, then, that kind of erotic relationship with life, and intimacy with life, and that vision of awakening, it will only allow a limited eros, a limited falling in love with the path, and a limited involvement of the whole being with practice, with the path, with that movement towards awakening. There's still eros trying to do its thing, constellating an other, creating a kind of romantic relationship with that other, trying to fill it out, elevating its importance, desiring more contact, but actually it's limited.
Now, if we take Nietzsche's quote again, he may say -- and he doesn't pull any punches, Nietzsche -- he may say, well, many on that kind of path, that kind of secular religious path, he might say, well, they just don't have much eros, and they don't have much psyche, and that's why they're okay with that. We might more fairly say, or more -- what's the word? -- generously say, if a person has limited eros, psyche, limited libido -- and remember, that might just be, you know, people are different. People are different. So if a person has limited libido, limited eros and sort of psyche, if you like, that conceptual framework and that limited other, that limited otherness which cannot expand, which cannot be multidimensional, because that's refused, that might be enough for their souls. There's a limited amount of eros-psyche-logos fertilization and expansion anyway, and so a limited vision and idea and logos of path and awakening comes out of that limited eros-psyche-logos dynamic. That's what's operating there, and there's a limited vision.
But it might be that this limited vision, this limited conceptual framework, limited image, fantasy, and logos of the path and of awakening, is enough for some people. And the opposite is true: a limited conceptual framework, limited logos, and limited image of the path and awakening, limited fantasy of the path and awakening, will also limit the eros for the path and awakening, the eros that we can really feel and have in relationship to the path and the movement to awakening. The question is, where are those limits coming from? How is it that the eros or the psyche or the logos gets limited in these ways? Some people, there's a limit. And the question is, where is that limit coming from? But if there's a limit on the libido, on the eros, on the psyche, then it might be enough. A limited conception of what the path is, and of what awakening is, and that there's not much beyond what we already sense and know, that vision, that idea may be enough for that soul. It depends where the limits are coming from.
Someone with much more libido, much more eros, if they start to have an erotic connection with the path and with the whole movement towards awakening and that vision, they will need a bigger vision, a bigger idea of what the path is and involves, and what awakening is and demands and involves and opens to. They need more 'other.' They need more 'beyond.' Why? Because the eros needs it -- needs it, and it will create it, both. It will discover it. It will find it. People with a lot of eros need a greater, a wider path, a deeper path. They need more to discover, more to move into. They need a beyond and more beyond. So this 'more' that they want and that they discover, because of the eros and because of the expansion of the vision that they create and discover, will include at some point some sense of dimensionality and divinity.
In other words, divinity gets somehow included on the path. If they start with just a flatland view, dimensionality will be added to that, and eventually transcendence will be added to that. Or if they're only towards the transcendent, eventually the path, the vision, the concept of the path will have to fill out to include the immanent as well. It can't just be for the Unfabricated. Why? Because the eros is pushing, penetrating, expanding. And in its relationship to the erotic object of the path and awakening, it opens and expands the sense of the path and awakening and what the Dharma is. So it can't be just transcendent. It can't be just this world. It will be both, eventually, gradually.
And if there is no sense of the divine, a sense of the divine will come. And if the sense of the divine is only in the direction of a conception and sense of an impersonal divinity, then it will add the personal. And if it's only personal, it will add the impersonal. So there's this movement to discovering more and more, and actually including, embracing more and more in the path, gradually. Gradually more and more depth, more and more range, more and more fullness, multidimensionality, more and more richness, more and more complexity, more to the path, more to the sense of what awakening is and can be. And it's all coming from the eros. Predominantly it's coming from the eros-psyche-logos dynamic. People with a lot of eros will, if they're not blocked, it will tend to keep opening in these different directions, gradually, over time, and not smoothly necessarily at all.
So a vision, a sense, a concept of the path and awakening which doesn't ask for any more or much more to be perceived or discovered of reality or true nature or whatever than is already apparent to normal, popular, consensually agreed perception -- if it even is consensual -- but that doesn't ask for anything more than what is already apparent to normal, popular, dominant world-view perception, such a logos and a vision of the path and awakening will limit the soulmaking dynamic, the eros-psyche-logos, and the eros in all kinds of ways. One is in relation to what we conceive of and our image of the path and of awakening. If a person's eros is strong enough, though, it will expand that image, that fantasy, that concept of what the path is and of what awakening is. Or it will actually shatter it, shatter whatever the current image, fantasy, and logos is, and create or discover or find a larger view, a larger concept, a larger conceptual framework, a broader, richer, deeper, more far-reaching image and fantasy of path and awakening.
If the logos of "nothing much more to discover" -- which is usually implicit, by the way; sometimes it's explicit, but often it's implicit. It's not actually voiced, but it's implicit there. If this logos of "nothing more to discover, nothing much more to discover" is too rigidly held, or stuck in place, or not questioned, there's not enough questioning of it, then the eros and the eros-psyche-logos dynamic can't expand. It can't flower. The soulmaking movement is thwarted. It doesn't have the necessary food or sustenance, the necessary soil or basis, right? It doesn't have this 'beyond' to nourish it and to move into and to open to.
The basis that we're talking about, remember, is a basis of groundlessness. It's a basis of groundlessness because of the teachings of emptiness and because of seeing image as image. And it's that groundlessness that allows the expansion, the deepening, the enrichment, the creation and discovery of more of the object -- in this case the path, but whatever else we're talking about as well: the world, the beloved other, whatever. We've talked about that before. So the eros can be blocked, and it can be blocked by this kind of anti-libidinal movement of fear, if you like, or self-protectionism, or something like that, what seems like self-protectionism. But also the image, the fantasy can be blocked, or the logos can be blocked. So it can be blocked from any direction, and can be blocked in any way. We've been talking about limited paths, and what I was calling secular religious and one-dimensional views, but it can also be blocked with a transcendent view, just blocking it into that, for example. So blocks can work fr**om any direction and in any direction. We'll continue with this and explore some of this a bit more.
