From Mindfulness to Divinity: Towards the Tracing of a Phenomenology of Soul (Part 1)

If we pay attention well; if our mindfulness is not too blinkered, too narrow; if we honestly and carefully observe our experience, our life, especially the play of meaningfulness, senses of meaningfulness in our lives, and the play of any sense of devotion -- I don't just mean religious devotion, but anything we are devoted to, or when we feel or we want to devote ourselves to something; if we honestly and carefully observe our life and those aspects of our life, then we will come to recognize and inevitably acknowledge the play of something that we are calling 'eros,' and the play of what we are calling 'fantasy,' and something we are calling 'soulmaking.' Just through careful, honest, open observation of our experiences, of our life, especially in certain aspects of our lives, but actually in general, then these things will be recognized and acknowledged. These delineations that we have made and explored will be recognized and acknowledged, as well as the inevitability and the necessity of eros, of fantasy, of soulmaking in our lives -- that these are inevitabilities. That whole complex (eros, fantasy, soulmaking) is an inevitability, arises in different ways at different times, threads running through our life: threads of meaningfulness, threads of fire, threads of all that. And they are necessary. They are inevitable and necessary to us as human beings.

And when we recognize and acknowledge that, then we can begin to actually allow more this soulmaking movement, the eros that's involved in it in different ways, the fantasies, the images, allow and explore that whole complex movement and process and dynamic of soulmaking involving eros, involving fantasy, implying the imaginal and the attention to what we're calling 'image.' In allowing and exploring all that, a lot will be opened to us, for us. A lot will open in our experience, in our sensibility, in our feeling, in our emotion, in our conception. Much will be open. Much will unfold from that allowing and that acknowledgment, that recognition, that allowing and that exploration. Much will open, much will unfold, much will be discovered, and much will be created, and much will be discovered/created.

Let's just, in a way, recapitulate some of what we've drawn attention to, of what will be opened, unfolded. It's sometimes quite subtle, and sometimes what we don't actually notice at first when we begin to start exploring these territories, but we will notice that implicit aspects of image, of what we're calling the 'imaginal,' what we're calling 'image,' we will start to notice different aspects. So for example, the resonances. What is imaginal for us, what is image for us, involves, creates whole sets and ranges of kinds of resonances in the being that we can notice. Part of the resonances are resonances of meaningfulness. This is an implicit aspect of what we're calling 'image' or 'imaginal.' Also it has this sense of theatre to it, this Middle Way, if you like, between real and not real. Powerful, potent, moving, captivating in a way, but not really real -- theatre at its best, if you like. The aspect that we notice of timelessness, what we were calling the iconic nature of image. There's a timelessness. There's the eternal that's palpable as a dimension of the image, of the imaginal. The unfathomability that we sense there of an image, the inexhaustibility, and thus the mystery, because it always involves something beyond in that unfathomability. Often the aspect of duty involved somehow, to be discovered/created, found out in relation to the image. Duty: how does it interface? How does it stream into my life, the physical reality that I move in?

The aspect of love in the image -- in the image, from the image to me, from myself to the image. Loves, plural. It's an implicit aspect that we notice. All this is maybe not so obvious at first. It's like, so to speak, our eyes become accustomed to the light in the imaginal realm, if we use certain language, in relation to images. We start to notice these. Sometimes they're really obvious at first, sometimes less. The eros there, what we're calling 'eros,' begins to be more obvious to us. The effects on the body and the sense of the energy body. This sense of the dimensionality or the dimensions, the opening of dimensions in the erotic-imaginal, in the erotically beloved other, in the image. The whole complex movement/dynamic of eros-psyche-logos in that mutual insemination, fertilization, expansion, enrichment, widening, deepening that we've talked about. Whatever words we use, or however exactly we slice up the delineations and definitions, something of that will be discovered as an aspect implicit in the imaginal, in image, in what is image for us.

The cosmopoesis, the spreading into the world, but also, as we've said, into the self, that that gets involved in the image, not just the other. Self, other, world, and the eros itself become imaginally infused, become alive as images for us. And with that cosmopoesis, and actually implicit in the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, in the dimensionality that comes to be perceived, sensed that way in self, other, world, and eros, then different kinds of senses of sacredness, of, let's say, the divine, different senses, various, diverse senses of the divine start to become more and more palpable, more and more obvious, more and more evident and experienceable in the imaginal constellation. And then, for example, as we said, that unfolds more and more -- the dimensions of divinity into divinity, if you like, so that it becomes both a perception and a concept that my eros, this eros that I am feeling is divine or is the divine's; it belongs, it comes from, it originates, it has roots in the divine. That's all kind of an implicit evolution, if you like, already present in the image, or as we've said, that my eros participates in the divine eros. So all this is kind of implicit, waiting to be discovered, revealed, if you like, once we acknowledge and then allow ourselves to explore eros, fantasy, image, the whole constellation, the whole movement of soulmaking.

It's these aspects of divinity that I actually want to dwell on and say something about in this talk and the next talk, so we'll return to that. But it's worth running through a little bit, and again drawing out, going over again things that we've already mentioned that are implicitly involved or implied by this movement and opening to explore soulmaking and the erotic-imaginal.

One of those aspects is the implicit movement or the movement towards implicitly making less discrimination, and holding, harbouring, less of a conception of difference between something called 'life' and something called 'fantasy.' That whole division there that's so imposed on us by the dominant philosophy of modernist Western culture tends to get attenuated. We become aware, and more and more aware, that there is nothing called 'life' separate from fantasy. Life and fantasy blend into each other. Our lives are full of fantasies. We need to learn to notice this, to attend, to become sensitive to that. This is really, really important in terms of a direction that's implicit for me in this exploration of soulmaking, of eros and the erotic-imaginal.

Often, images of self, or images of other, or images of the world, move toward -- there's a gradual evolution, and sometimes right from the beginning, or even now they're operating as images of self, of other, of world. For instance, an image of self looks, appears like it's just me. So at first blush, at first sight, who are you in this image? "Oh, it's just me," someone might say. Or what about that depression which can feel like 'other*,'* something visiting me, this darkness descending and wrapping around me, or this anger that wells up, this fire of anger or whatever? Or the world. It looks like it's just this depression, it's just that anger, it's just the world as it usually is.

So the image of self, for example, it can be something -- I'm involved in this image, and this image itself is something very odd; suddenly I'm some kind of creature or something, a bull with horns and bellowing fire, or something like that, so clearly there's an image of self that I'm identifying with. But it's not necessarily the case. We've been through all this on the other retreats, so again, I'm recapitulating, but there are certain things that are important to draw out, and this is one of them: the image of self or other or world doesn't necessarily need to be very odd or different from the normal sort of appearance, or obviously different from that. And there may be, as I said, a gradual evolution to an opening to include the more subtle images that, at first sight, bear more resemblance to just, "Oh, it's just me. It's just me. It's just this thing," or whatever.

Now, it is the case sometimes that we have no fantasy. No image is operating in relation to something. No image or fantasy in relation to myself with this aspect of the path, or my self, whatever it is. There is either a kind of realism -- so actually, there is a kind of fantasy there, but in the poor sense, and we're taking it as real: "I'm a failure. I'm a loser because I keep experiencing this," or whatever it is. It's not a fantasy in our pregnant, dimensional, theatrical sense. It's a realism. Sometimes that's the case for us, and sometimes there's a flat kind of absence of the imaginal. We're in flatland. We're perceiving the self, others, and the world flatly, or some aspect of self, other, world, and eros flatly, the absence of the imaginal.

But sometimes fantasy, for example of self, is there, but it's subtle. And this needs us to expand the range of subtlety of our attention, allow our attention and our sensibility to become more subtle, to enable us to notice the subtle fantasy that's operating, and to attune to it. So these kind of subtle fantasies, subtle images, are often present in our life, but we just don't recognize them, or we come into wrong relationship with them.

There's something related here, as well, that we should note: that often we are given images. We are given fantasies, if you like. We are called to them. We notice or discover images. So we have to, as I said, develop the sensibility, the sensitivity to discern them, to 'sniff them out,' as it were. It's not the case that it's always either possible or advisable just to move into a kind of active manipulation mode of practice where you just decide to see the self or life, or this situation, or this other, or whatever it is, see it some way or other that's prescribed from the outside as an image, as a fantasy, and that's supposedly helpful. Sure, there's a place for that, there's a time for that, but there's also a dimension of soul that we are given, as I said, we discover, we notice, we are called to, rather than I just take it out of a textbook and decide to see it this way. So both these are helpful, but for me, for the fullness of soulmaking, and the depth and the power of soulmaking, we also really need to be open to, "What am I called to here, now? What image, what fantasy, what eros am I called to? And can I notice that?"

But the main point right now is that sure, there's a place in our practice, in our lives, for images that are obvious: "I had a dream last night, and it's clearly an image visiting me in the dream." It may not seem to bear any relation to my life immediately/obviously, so I take that image from the dream, and I can work with it, or I'm sitting in meditation, and I'm doing some samatha, or doing some emptiness, and the loosening that happens gives birth to an image. Or I'm tracking my emotions, I'm opening to my emotions in the energy body, and that gives rise to an image of this or that in meditation, and it's clearly an image. But to me, the whole movement starts to include more and more the increase in subtlety of what 'image' means to us and can be for us, and what fantasies we are in touch with and alive for us in our lives, so that eventually the movement is that we sense life as image, as soul. We sense life as image and as soul. Imaginal meditation practice should, I believe, gradually increase, develop our sensibility and our ability to sense life -- what is life? Life is experience. Life is experience and appearance and concept of self/other/world. That's life. So imaginal meditation practice, meditational practice of the imaginal, should develop and increase and open and deepen our sensibility and our capacity to sense life as image, as soul, to sense life that way.

Implicit in that is that there's less and less separation between something called 'meditation' and something called 'life' or 'relationship' or 'work' or whatever it is. But of course, our culture, the dominant culture in the West, and sometimes the dominant meditation cultures, do not support this. I've been through all this before. But that kind of bleeding into each other, overlap, interpenetration, recognition of the saturation of image and fantasy in our life, the necessity and the inevitability of that, that recognition, and the permission to enter into it and explore it and even expand it and use it artfully, the culture and the dominant kind of teachings that we get through the larger culture of Western modernism at present does not support this. It supports rather the division into a simple 'real' and a simple 'unreal': it's either real or it's imaginary, or what is image gets reduced to some kind of explanation psychologically.

Another thing that becomes evident as we recognize, acknowledge the centrality, the necessity and inevitability of eros, psyche, fantasy, image, and soulmaking in our lives, and we begin to allow and explore all that, is that we start to actually realize -- following on from what I just said -- that what we are calling 'soul' is actually a missing element, an absent element in many psychologies at present. Certainly not all, and there are also some psychologies that might use that word, 'soul,' but actually mean something either much smaller than what we're talking about, or in fact quite different, and certainly many philosophies in the past have used that word, 'soul,' to mean something different.

But we start to see, because you can't help but look around and feel the difference, that it's a missing element in many psychologies, this idea and experience of soul that we've been unfolding and exploring on this retreat and the other retreats. Certainly, of course, many psychologies include heart and heartfulness, and certainly thought and awareness of thought and an analysis of thought and belief, and maybe even the concept of modes of mind to a certain limited extent, and other such ideas and divisions. But much less so elements of what we would call 'soulmaking,' 'soul,' and 'eros,' and the 'imaginal' as we are presenting it. Again, many psychologies might use the imagination, and some might really shun that and be fearful of the imagination, any use of the imagination, fearing one would (quote) "lose touch with reality," etc. But generally speaking, the element of soul and soulmaking and eros as we are talking about them is often absent. It's a missing element.

We can look at classical standard Theravādan Buddhist psychology, which is handed down to us in the Abhidhamma, so-called higher teachings. And you see that there's this attempt at a minute kind of classification, categorization, and analysis, a sort of almost bureaucratic movement of the mind, categorization of, for example, emotions and mind states. So you get a list of -- I've forgotten how many -- and there's sad, happy, excited, peaceful, aversive, desiring, bored, etc. But one quickly gets the sense with that that it's either what we would now call a psychology without soul, or we might just as well say a psychology that does not serve and support and nourish soulmaking. We either get that sense, or that there actually is a fantasy operating there, but it's a fantasy of order, usually of one-dimensionality, of reductionism, and of clarity. It's a fantasy of clarity, that in dividing things up this way into some kind of neat categorical system that there's clarity. But the question is, in that fantasy, that kind of limited, oftentimes one-dimensional fantasy, what comes from that? What is allowed from that? Where does it tend to go? What does it tend to open up for us in the experience of life? Where does it lead? What does it support? What does it not support? What does it not allow? What does it nourish? What does it not nourish?

Again, if we recognize and acknowledge this aspect, dimensions of our existence that we're calling eros, fantasy, soulmaking, image, the inevitability, the necessity of that, we will also notice -- and again, this is partly recapitulation -- we will also notice that there's fantasy operating in our relationship with the path: a fantasy of the path, a fantasy of the awakening, of awakening, a fantasy of the tradition, a fantasy of the self in relationship to that tradition, on the path towards awakening. And with all that, there's a fantasy or fantasies of the Buddha if you're a Buddhist, or whatever teacher or teachers are important to you, have come alive to you, through the aliveness that the soulmaking in relation to that, that must be there if there's the devotion and the fire of that, must be there, whatever teachers have become alive to you and important. There will be fantasy of that. So it's fantasy of Buddha if you're a Buddhist. And -- this is obvious now; this should be really obvious -- it's not that in realizing that there's a fantasy of path and awakening and Buddha that we then say, "Oh, this is rubbish. Throw it all out." To my mind, there's a much more sophisticated understanding here and psychology here, that actually recognizing the fact that we have fantasies of the Buddha, that the Buddha for us is fantasy, it doesn't mean that it's completely made up. Fantasy is in dialogue with what's there on the page in the suttas, and what we've heard from other teachers and everything. But there's a fantasy. It imbues that dialogue. I cannot separate it.

And we understand, in the more sophisticated psychology, we don't want to separate it. It would be a silly move. There's a liberation of that capacity for fantasy to a certain extent. We feel liberated in relationship to the fantasies of Buddha, path, awakening, tradition, self on the path, etc., and there's soulmaking allowed there. We've touched on this a little bit, and I hope that you will dare to explore this in your relationship with practice, in your life.

And so a person might say, if they hear from such-and-such a teacher, or read from such-and-such a teacher, or someone or other, or such-and-such a scholar or supposed scholar or whatever, "The Buddha taught basically something very simple: try to be kind. Everything is impermanent. Everything is a process or a flow. So let go, and experience ease. This is the goal. That's what the Buddha taught: try to be kind, everything is impermanent or a process or a flow, so let go, and experience ease, and that is the goal." A person might hear that or read that or whatever, or someone is trying to convince them of that or something, and recognizing this aspect of fantasy, actually say, "Is this such a Buddha who just taught that, are they even that interesting as a Buddha? Is the fantasy there, that I can build on that or around that? If that's my fantasy of the Buddha, is it a fantasy commensurate with my soul and the needs for soulmaking? Would such a Buddha as that be that worthy of study and of the injection of eros and devotion in all the ways that devotion can come in, all the dimensions or manifestations of devotion can come into a path? Would such a Buddha as that be worthy of that much study, or the infusion of the erotic-imaginal?"

And again, if one is subject to that kind of insistence from the writer or a teacher or whatever it is who claims the Buddha did not teach any transcendent Unfabricated -- as might be one interpretation of the Theravāda: that its central thrust is to a transcendent Unfabricated. And so-and-so might be saying the Buddha did not teach a transcendent Unfabricated; he did not teach what we might call, in our language, the deep emptiness of all things (which perhaps was one of the two central thrusts of the Mahāyāna, of the development of the Mahāyāna), and the Buddha did not teach how that understanding of the deep emptiness of all things begins to reveal, more and more, the divinity or the sacredness of all things (which, again, you might see as one of the central thrusts of the Vajrayāna). The Buddha taught none of that, a person is insisting or claiming, and trying to create a scholarship which claims that. Then one response would be: if you're saying that, can I discover or create, and discover/create, a Buddha that did or that will? I'm aware already that I discover/create the Buddha anyway. I create and discover, you create and discover the Buddha anyway. And you might want a Buddha that taught deep things, wonderful things, much more for you to move into, to learn, to discover, to explore. You might want a Buddha that taught the Unfabricated, the transcendent Unfabricated, that taught the deep emptiness of all things, that taught the opening into the perception, the cultivation of the perception of the divinity of all things -- as they say in the Vajrayāna, "to see all appearances as divine," the sacredness of all things.

We recognize that we create/discover the Buddha anyway. Aware of that, can I discover/create a Buddha that did teach all that, that will teach all that? We talked also about this strange religious fantasy that puts the authority in the past. And if the historical Buddha didn't teach all that, why can we not regard it as an evolution of those who came later in his wake, in his stream, drawing on his platform, his teachings, and giving another dimension, another level to the teachings, as an evolution, as an improvement? But there's something here about actually taking away a realist basis for the path in different ways. Through the emptiness and through the understanding of the imaginal, taking away a realist basis, and recognizing the primacy of image, the inevitability of image and fantasy, the necessity of it, as we said.

So the whole path, it's like taking away a tablecloth, you know, when you've got all the plates and cups on, whisking it away, and it comes to rest on the solid ground of what? Emptiness and image and fantasy. We have our solidities reversed, usually: we think the tablecloth is the most substantial thing that's keeping everything up, this insistence on reality and historical fact and whatever it is. Actually, as we've said, it's usually just me importing whatever my metaphysical beliefs are into my interpretation, my scholarly interpretation. Scholars do that. Actually taking away that insistence or desperate attempt at a kind of realism, and actually recognizing that all this rests on the ground of the groundlessness of emptiness and of the imaginal. A whole different basis for what we're doing, a whole different basis. And the possibilities that opens up for us in experience, in perception, in conception, in soulmaking.

So there's all that. And again, one last piece about what we recognize, what we come to, when we recognize, acknowledge this movement of eros in our lives, fantasy and soulmaking, and we allow ourselves to explore that: we recognize, and implicit even in that statement is that we recognize that we care about soulmaking. We care about soulmaking. And more than that, we see that sometimes soulmaking is not the same as reducing or ending suffering. Sometimes soulmaking is not the same as reducing or ending suffering.

So we have a dilemma here. We care about soulmaking, and sometimes it doesn't equate to ending or even reducing suffering. In what we are calling our phenomenological approach, we begin to recognize fabrication of self, of perception, of world, of dukkha, of all of that. We begin to understand dependent origination through playing with ways of looking. That begins to reveal more and more the emptiness of all things. Eventually it even reveals the emptiness of the whole notion of fabrication. Radical, radical emptiness of all things. And in the end, at least in the way I would present it, in the end what we're left with is the recognition that all we have are ways of looking. There are just ways of looking. Those ways of looking are empty, too, but that's all we have. There's something akin to a very radical version of postmodern understanding, postmodernist understanding in philosophy. Something akin to that. All we have are ways of looking. This is what we're left with, ways of looking, and the range of ways of looking that we have developed and that are developable, that we can play with.

The question is: how does one choose? On what basis does one choose between these different ways of looking, all the range of the diverse ways of looking that we may have cultivated in practice? Now, the standard Buddhist answer, or the standard answer of Buddhadharma, at least the way I would read it, would be that you choose according to the Four Noble Truths. In the shorthand version, in other words, I choose a way of looking. In this situation right now that I am experiencing, I choose a way of looking that brings less suffering, either in the future, or right now in relation to this. In relation to whatever it is I'm dealing with, how do I choose ways of looking? I choose a way of looking that leads to less suffering. So if that's mettā, and then that eases the suffering of the situation, mettā to self, mettā to others if it's compassion, if it's exchanging self and other; if it's seeing whatever is going on for me, this difficulty, as anattā, as not-self; if it's contemplating the impermanence. There are many, and I've dwelt on this a lot elsewhere. But that would be the standard sort of answer from Buddhadharma: you choose a way of looking dependent on the sense of what attenuates, what diminishes the suffering the most in regard to whatever you're dealing with.

But we might also choose a way of looking at times with a question like: what brings soulmaking? What is the way of looking, the way of relating to this experience, this constellation of self/other/world, etc., right now, that brings soulmaking? If we recognize in our lives eros and image and fantasy and soulmaking, and we recognize the inevitability and necessity, and we develop that, there will be times when we have two options, that we can look and ask the question, "Of the ways of looking that I have developed and that I have available to play with in my toolbox, so to speak, which ways of looking decrease the suffering, drain the suffering out of the situation/experience, or lead to less suffering?", and a second option is, "What supports, nourishes, opens, ignites the soulmaking?"

Now, sometimes these two -- the road to less suffering and the road to soulmaking -- would just be the same, in fact, and quite a lot of the time, they will be the same. Sometimes there will be a lot of overlap there. And sometimes there will be areas, at least, where they diverge. So the relationship with soulmaking and the reduction of suffering I think is actually quite complex when we go into this. Partly what we're saying is, going back right to the beginning of this talk, if we're honest and careful in our observation, I cannot avoid this complexity and these questions of the relationship, for instance, between soulmaking and suffering. I will bump into them. I will have to encounter and engage these questions and their complexity.

This is touching on what we've already touched on in this retreat and in past retreats. But we have said that eros and soulmaking, the experience of eros and soulmaking, or those aspects, they bring and we recognize them by a decrease in dukkha and in the contraction. So eros, unlike what we're calling 'craving,' soulmaking, unlike what we're calling papañca, actually bring less dukkha, decrease of dukkha, and ease the contraction in different ways that we've touched on before. At the same time, we've also said that eros will always involve a certain amount of erotic tension because it keeps the two and the polarity and the pull towards more. And oftentimes the erotic relationship involves, because of the imaginal, involves some sense of duty to be, if you like, deciphered, found out, created. And if there's duty then there's, at least in relation to that duty, not complete freedom. Freedom, end of suffering on one side, and duty and erotic tension on the other. All this is involved in eros. So it's not straightforward what the relationship even of eros and soulmaking is to suffering in that sense.

We've also said, additionally, that with the firing up and the expansion of the fire in the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, and the movement and the fire, catching light here and there, and expanding and spreading out and deeper, and then sometimes what happens is the breaking of the vessels: that that expansion will cause walls to shatter, walls of concept, walls of vision, walls of sensibility, walls of awareness, walls of relationship, structures, etc. And that expansion, and sometimes when that expansion is sudden or abrupt, or even, so to speak, violent, in a way, that is not peaceful sometimes. It's not always peaceful, and sometimes it's even disturbing and disorienting. Is that a reduction in suffering when that happens that way in soulmaking? Sometimes it's delightful and beautiful, and sometimes it's not. What's the relationship there? And yet again, with all of that, we could say, well, there's a kind of freedom of sorts right there. Freedom of what? These walls. The walls of concept, the walls of vision, the walls of perception that I was enclosed in have now just crashed open, and a certain freedom of thinking, of seeing, of sensing has emerged. So there is a kind of freedom there, but it's not always peaceful, and sometimes it's disturbing. Complex.

James Hillman, in his presentation of the way he thinks about the imaginal and all that, he insists that what he calls 'pathologizing' is part of what the soul does, that the soul is always involved in creating dukkha through the imaginal. And he devotes quite a lot of time to that and insisting on it. I would actually not agree with him that it's always the case. In a way, maybe, as always, teaching is contextual, and he was perhaps reacting to certain currents that were very dominant around him at that time in the sixties and seventies, when he was first developing his ideas. But I think for myself I don't always agree with him about that at all, or rather I don't agree that that is always the case. However, sometimes I think we need to recognize what he calls the 'pathology' in a certain image opening up, the pathos in it, the kind of suffering that is endemic, intrinsic to a certain image.

Certain images do open up freedom in one way, and a certain kind of pathos or suffering in another way. For example, in the past, I used to share about certain images that I would get recurrently, different variations of a kind of solitary wanderer. Beautiful, beautiful images, and the divinity in them, and the archetypal nature of them, and the beauty, the meaningfulness, and the depth of resonance there. I wouldn't want to trade that in for something that was more bland and avoided the soulmaking that was implicit and involved in them. But there was a kind of loneliness in those solitary wanderer images, beautiful and moving and touching and opening and deepening as they were. So I wouldn't like to agree with James Hillman in saying it's always like that, soulmaking always involves that image, always involves pathologizing. But I think we really need to keep the door open and be sensitive and discerning when that -- let's call it 'pathologizing' -- when the suffering is actually part of the image, but it has this beauty, and this meaningfulness-making, and this opening quality to it, in the theatre of it and in the duty of it. It's almost like, don't shut the door on that. Recognize that it's necessary to some images at some points and some movements of soulmaking. Can we discern, and can we listen, and can we recognize?

Fourthly, in the Dharma, there's the teaching of, to quote Ajahn Chah, "the suffering that leads to the end of suffering."^[1] He used to ask people, "Is this just suffering, or is it the suffering that's leading to the end of the suffering that you're going through right now? What kind of suffering are you going through right now if you're feeling suffering, if you're miserable, if you're distraught? Is it the suffering that leads to the end of suffering?" So there's this idea of the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. I was telling you about the U Pandita retreats in the eighties, and how much suffering -- people used to call them 'the dukkha retreat.' It involves suffering, but it was thought to be the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. Or even just in people so often -- as I think I mentioned, as well -- trying to develop their samādhi, their samatha, and hearing about the jhānas, and wanting to go for that, and getting so tight around that movement and that directionality and that goal orientation, and then just dropping the whole thing, because it's like, "I'll just be with what is" or whatever.

How do we determine if it's actually the case that this suffering that I'm experiencing is a suffering that leads to the end of suffering? It's not actually that obvious. Furthermore, we recognize that soulmaking is involved in a fantasy that's involved in the practice, about the practice, about the path, and about the suffering that the path involves -- the difficulty, the hardship, the stretching of oneself. So, for example, on an U Pandita retreat, plenty of fantasy around the retreat, the retreat form, the experiences, the teacher, where it's going. And even the suffering on the retreat becomes embroidered into that fantasy. It's part of the fantasy: the suffering itself, the hardship, the dukkha. Or on other retreats -- Goenka-style, for instance -- the suffering is conceived of as a purification. But certainly that kind of suffering becomes part of the fantasy. It's wrapped up with this sense of meaningfulness, the fantasy of the self, of the tradition, all of that. It's not simple, this relationship of soulmaking and the supposed lessening of suffering.

And implicit in all these four ways that's the case, that it's not simple, that I've just gone through, implicit in all those is what I've also mentioned before at different times: it's that the meaning of dukkha (what often gets translated as 'suffering'), the meaning of that word as the First Noble Truth, and the meaning of ending dukkha, ending suffering, or even reducing suffering, is now completely open to interpretation. Now that a lot of people, and perhaps most, don't really subscribe to a belief in rebirth, and that the end of dukkha is the end of rebirth, and all that, what does it mean, dukkha, suffering? Some people, "It just means this, but this kind of dukkha remains," whatever -- one's constriction and pain at the existential situation; it's just that one is not adding to that with a kind of neurosis, etc. But basically, in all these different kind of explanations, if you like, of the path and Buddhism and this and that, the meaning of the two central terms, dukkha and the end of dukkha, has become open to interpretation.

So that also makes this whole question of what is the relationship between soulmaking and the end of suffering, also adds to the complexity, the openness of that question. I mean, even more (and I'm not going to dwell on this), we can easily assume if one is a Buddhist practitioner, or certainly a Buddhist teacher, that one is engaged in something that just brings less suffering in the world, and it's very clear: we're part of the movement towards less suffering in the world. I think the question is much more interesting than -- it warrants more questioning than just assuming that. So, you know, even if a person says to me, "Oh, it's so helpful. It's so helpful, your teaching on this and that," for myself, I don't feel like I'm completely drawn into that assumption that I am very simply serving the end of suffering in the world, even if hundreds of people say, "Oh, how helpful." To me, it warrants more investigation.

And I've talked in the past -- I'm not going to dwell on this here, but sometimes some streams of Buddhism, and the stream that I'm most involved in, the Insight Meditation tradition, there tends to be a certain, relatively speaking, lack of engagement or a lacking of a modelling by us teachers of a sort of political engagement, environmental engagement, etc. So all this, to me, means: can we question all this? Just this whole assumption, even, that we're moving, we're supporting, we're really kind of important in the movement to less suffering? It seems so obvious: "Of course you are," because we teach about love and letting go, kindness and letting go. So how could we not be?

I'm not saying people should be this way, or shouldn't be this way, or should do this instead of this. I'm actually not saying that. I'm not saying it is definitely that we're creating less suffering or it isn't. Rather, again, I'm actually just wanting to open and insist on questioning here around "What do we mean when we talk about the end of suffering or reducing suffering, dukkha and the end of dukkha?" Can we see everything that's involved there, and all the assumptions, and the diversity of view and interpretation, and the contradictions in what we're even saying? And questioning that, secondly. Questioning all that, daring to go into that invites us or must include an awareness of soulmaking and fantasy in all that.

Again, the question here of choosing ways of looking, of navigating on our paths and in our lives, and how to choose a way of looking. Is it just the ones that reduce suffering? What about the soulmaking -- ways of looking, ways of relating, ways of conceiving that bring more soulmaking? The relationship between those two premises or criteria for choosing, for navigating, that's complex. And if it doesn't seem complex, I think it's only a matter of time before it does [laughs], because as we go more into what's involved on both sides, the meaning of what suffering means and the recognition and the exploration of soulmaking and what that means, then we see there's a really complex relationship. Which is wonderful. Shouldn't necessarily be daunted or turned off by complexity. It invites more exploration. It invites more questioning.

Actually, all that was by way of a very long introduction, a kind of recap of what happens when we recognize, acknowledge eros, fantasy, soulmaking, recognize its inevitability, necessity, allow it, explore it, etc., in our lives, and what opens from that. But what I want to dwell more on in this talk, and the next maybe one after that, is that through this, what we might call a phenomenological approach, what we've been calling the phenomenological approach, there comes to be, as I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, the opening of the sense or senses of divinity, experiences of what we might call divinity, and the opening also of concepts of what we might call divinity. So in experience and in ideation, divinity starts opening up for us, just through what we're calling our phenomenological approach. I'm going to nuance that as we go on, but just first to say that I'm aware that for different people certain words and certain uses of language have quite different resonances. Some people, and often some Buddhists, really get turned off or have difficult reactions when words like God or divinity are used, and others quite the opposite -- those words, theistic words, if you like, open something that Buddhist language doesn't kind of reach or open so much.

Someone was saying -- and this actually is someone with a Catholic upbringing, but it doesn't need to be, and I've seen this; it doesn't actually depend on the background and the conditioning culturally, etc. -- but some people say, "Well, when I hear the word God, it opens much more up inside me and opens my sensibility and my experience much more than when I hear the word Buddha-nature." Or someone says, "The idea and my sense of the sacred heart of Jesus," if you know that teaching, "opens something much more for me, has much more dimensionality, beauty, pull, captivation, meaningfulness, resonance than just a word like compassion or karuṇā, or the cultivation of other beautiful qualities." So people are different. Reactions are different. I'm really aware of that.

And I'm actually a little bit torn what to suggest in regard to that, because I could advise: just be comfortable. If I or someone else, Catherine or whoever it is, uses a word like 'divinity,' and you're not comfortable with it, or it doesn't really mean much for you, then just substitute another word that does. Be comfortable. Choose your own words. On the other hand, I might also say in regard to this: maybe it's good to use words that you're not familiar with, that actually stretch you, that kind of leave more to open into, that you haven't decided, "Oh, I know that. I know what it means. It refers to this experience that I have, or it refers to that idea," or whatever. So I could go both ways in the advice, and maybe it'd be interesting for you to try both ways: the comfortable, the familiar, your words, or stretching, a word that stretches and is a little bit unfamiliar to you. Because words like divine, and I would say also Buddha-nature, to me imply something -- it may not even be a 'thing,' for a start, but -- something not capturable, something infinite. When I use terms like Buddha-nature and divinity, I mean -- and this is often recognized in relation to divinity, but -- something not capturable, something infinite, something not containable or graspable or fully definable. Not fully containable, graspable, or definable. We said this in relation to eros, but just making it more clear about divinity itself.

So there is, having said that, considerable folly in then going ahead and starting to talk about this. But still, I think turning away from the whole thing is also not the answer, just not speaking at all or not exploring delineations, definitions, the magic of words. All this can be soulmaking. All this can fertilize our perception, our sensibility, our conceptions.

Let's maybe draw attention to some aspects of the divine, or what we might call the divine or Buddha-nature. I'm actually going to, for myself, use these words interchangeably, or God or whatever. And I realize, of course, that's very contentious, etc., for some people. But we can draw attention to the fact that both experiences and concepts of divinity or the divine have, in those experiences and concepts, some sense of something that is more than the experience or more than the concept, something that's beyond. So in the very experience and concept is, I think, wrapped up in it, a recognition, a feeling that the concept or the experience can never capture what divinity is fully, can never fully capture what divinity is. However, I would insist that concepts can still be helpful. It's like a jewel with infinite facets. And this concept illuminates or reveals for our encounter, for our contemplation, for our experience and exploration, it reveals one facet, and a different concept reveals another facet, but the jewel itself can be said to have infinite facets.

Therefore, it's still helpful to explore concepts. Just know that you're never going to get a concept that completely circumscribes the whole thing. And the same with experiences of the divine. In the experience itself, there's this feeling, generally speaking, I would say, as if there's more, that this experience is just one face of the divine. With experience, and it's not always obvious at first, and of course we can come into wrong relationship with concepts, and believe we have captured something like that fully, the divine fully, but with concepts and experience, I would say it's the same: there's such a diversity of experiences of the divine, such a diversity, so much variety, and again, I would say infinite. The senses of sacredness that we can have and the senses of divinity we can have are infinite, partly to do with the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, and the way that moves, as we've been discussing.

Implicit in that, or rather, in what I want to say also, is that our experiences of the divine over time evolve. We get to have more depth, more diversity, more range in our experiences of divinity and our concepts. We're talking about both in the experiences and concepts something that hopefully -- certainly potentially -- it evolves. Experience and concepts of the divine evolve, partly, as I said, because of the eros-psyche-logos dynamic, and partly just through deepening insight into less fabrication. But there's always this sense of more, or beyond, or an infinity in some way that can't quite get around. 'Concept' means, in a way -- concipere -- 'to take.' Capere is 'to take' in Latin. So there's a certain taking, a kind of grasping at. The word 'concept' actually implies a holding of something, a taking hold of. And there's something in the sense and the concepts of divinity that I would say sooner or later -- and usually sooner -- recognizes that that can't be completely grasped that way, either through the experience or through the concept.

I want to point out something about experience of the divine that maybe isn't obvious, but partly because it's so hard to articulate. But about experiences of the divine, a couple of things: I would say that if we look carefully, and get used to those kinds of experiences, that experiences of the divine have -- we sense something of relationship; they're relational experiences. Now, they can include the sense of a personal divinity, and the relationship of this self with a personal divinity, absolutely. But even experiences of an impersonal divine -- vast awareness or vast love or whatever, all kinds of things -- they still feel or seem, or we still sense (and again, maybe not obviously at first, but) they're related to who I am. So there is still relationship implicit in them in terms of who I am. Or we could say experiences of divinity are related to who I am; they have something to say, something to open me to, to inform me about about who I am. They bear on who I am most essentially, most fundamentally, in my depths, etc.

This, I think, is not obvious at first, but I'd say I just want to draw out a couple of characteristics of experiences of the divine despite their diversity. I'd say they're relational. At least, they're related to who I am. They say something about, they inform me about, they open me to realize something about who I am. Now, we could say that experiences of the divine involve a sense or recognition that who I am, this self, the very existence of this self, of who I am, I recognize in an experience of the divine -- whether I realize it or not, when I'm aware of it or when I'm not aware of it, or if I'm not yet aware of it, or someone else who is not yet aware of it -- it is somehow always contained. This self, this 'who I am,' or at least a part of who I am, is always contained or subsumed in, or part of, or related to, or participating in something vaster. Not a 'something vaster' that's something that's a more rigidly boundaried entity like a nation state, for example. Someone could feel like, I don't know, with this rise of nationalism at different times in history in different places, one can feel like, "I'm really part of something vaster," but that's very rigidly boundaried, because there's 'us' and 'them.' Not like that. Rather, something that also contains, subsumes, includes, and in a way is everything, and more than everything. In other words, it's not just the totality of things.

We could say that. We could say experiences of the divine, they're relational, and they involve a recognition about the relationship of who I am; they're related to 'who I am,' in its relationship with -- whether one realizes it or not -- something much larger that contains, subsumes, that the self is a part of or related to or participates in, etc. And that 'something' is not a rigidly boundaried entity, but rather something that also subsumes, contains, includes, or is everything and more than the totality of things. You could say that, but even that may be a little too far a step. So if we go back just a little bit and say: experiences of the divine, the diversity of experiences of the divine, have some sense of being relational. They imply something. They are related to a sense of who I am most deeply. And recognize that that is the case anyway, whether I realize it or not. This, what they say about who I am and what 'who I am' is in relationship with, is the case whether I realize it or not. That is an aspect of experience of the divine.

But maybe it would be better to say that the nature of the experience of relationship with the divine in those kind of experiences is something akin to echoes, like echoes in a canyon or something, echoes of a voice in a canyon. You cannot find the end point. We cannot find the terminus, the termination, the limit of those echoes or of the sense of the divine. So there's a sense in this relating that it's somehow like an echo -- it echoes, and I can't find the end point. There's an echoing into the infinite beyond or the unknown. It's something I know very palpably and that's very right here, and yet there's also this dimensionality, this echoing, this echoing into the infinite beyond, the unknown. There's some kind of unfathomability, and therefore some kind of mystery, in some way or other. Again, there's a range; there's a huge variety there. But the nature of the experience of relationship that's kind of intrinsic to an experience of divinity is something akin to an echoing without an end point, or something like infinite mirrors reflecting each other. It's the reflection of a reflection of a reflection of a reflection.

It's hard to put this into language. This is the best I can do right now. But again, I'm pointing to something that we can notice in our experiences when we feel a sense of divinity. It's very hard to articulate. But that sense of infinite echoing, infinite mirroring, the endlessness of that, the sense of endless mirroring or echoing. And I don't necessarily mean, it doesn't imply spatiality, that kind of endlessness; it might, or it might not. It doesn't imply vastness in that sense, necessarily. But intrinsic to the experience of the divine is that that sense of infinity and endlessness in the echoing, in the mirroring and the lack of an end point that's discernible, is not nihilistic in its implications or its feeling. It doesn't give a sense of meaninglessness. Rather, it gives a sense of beauty, a sense of belonging, of love, of place, of blessing. So all these, I would point out, are aspects of experiences of what we're calling the divine. As I said, there's a huge diversity, and experiences of the divine evolve or can evolve, as well as the concepts, for different reasons.

I would also say that there's a dimension of timelessness to the divine, to the Buddha-nature. For me, it involves that. It might not be all that it is, or all the dimensions of the divine are timeless. We'll perhaps come back to that. But there is a dimension of timelessness to the divine, to the Buddha-nature. So all of this, as we said, there will be a dimension or dimensions of the Buddha-nature that are beyond the full grasp of our understanding, of our conceptualization. But in all of this, there's a sense of rightness, if you like. There's something right about the experience. There are implications, a sense of meaningfulness implicit, involved, woven into the experience, implied by the experience, and beauty. In the divinity, there's beauty. And in our relationship, our sense of the relationship that's implicit in the experience of divinity, there's beauty in that as well. So all of that, just to point out what's actually quite hard to articulate, and what's not always obvious in these kinds of experiences. Again, I'm actually sure I'm leaving much not said.

Now, our experiences and our concepts of divinity, we could divide into two types. And I've touched on this before already. We could divide our experiences and concepts into the transcendent experiences and concepts, and the what we're calling 'immanent.' Now, these two words, transcendence and immanence, people use them in different contexts, and use them in very different ways. What I mean by transcendent in this case is they transcend -- the divinity or the Unfabricated transcends perception, transcends space, time, a sense of self, of other, of any object whatsoever. It transcends any kind of conventional constellation of subject/object/time, even if it's a sense of oneness and a sense of present moment. So I mean it in that sense: the Unfabricated, the transcendent Unfabricated. Transcendent to what? Transcendent to our usual perception, is the main point. And as I said, I've talked a lot about and written about the way that in the Dharma, meditation practice can be used, certain ways of looking, to fabricate, to understand how to fabricate less and less perception, and eventually open up to that transcendent Unfabricated.

So there's the transcendent sense of divinity or kind of experience and concept of divinity. And there's what we might call the immanent (again, used in different ways, etc.), but then I really mean this world of fabrication and a sense of that world itself being divine. So yes, these objects that I perceive, this self that is perceiving, the subject and object, the perceiving itself, the world, all of that, desire. There's a sense of an increasing fullness of the perception of divinity in the realm of perception, and in all kinds of ways. So that yes, it's fabricated; one acknowledges that. One has gone perhaps deep enough into the understanding of fabrication that divinity starts to reveal itself in different ways, and different possibilities for that perception open up. But we want, I would say, we want to open up these experiences of the transcendent and immanent divinity from our practice or through our practice. In other words, from what we were calling our phenomenological approach. So this, for me, is really important. From the very phenomenological approach that we talked about right at the beginning of the retreat, or very near the beginning -- in other words, through practice, through approaching practice with a certain very open, basic conceptual idea, and then through the exploration of ways of looking, etc. -- all this can open up.

Often, historically in the West, it is assumed that anything that kind of talks about or points to or upholds something beyond the flat one-dimensionality of materialist existence, any talk of divinity, etc., is metaphysics. 'Metaphysics' is often a very charged word, and a very derogatory word sometimes, but it's used in very different ways, or rather, it means quite a lot of different things. It's used to mean different things by different people at different times. But one of the things it means is this talking about or referring to or pointing to or insisting on or drawing attention to anything that's beyond the flat, one-dimensional view of reality, any talk of divinity, etc., anything actually that is more than what is obvious to the normal, untrained modernist perception -- unless it's approved scientifically, by scientific authorities, or the authority of scientific establishment. Anything that is more than what is obvious to the normal, typical, untrained perception of a Westerner today in our modernist culture is regarded as metaphysics. And it's often assumed that any talk of divinity or something like an Unfabricated or whatever is metaphysics, and metaphysics is rooted in abstract thought, in belief, in speculation. So those words often go together -- 'metaphysical,' 'speculation.' Actually, the word 'speculation' is from the word speculum in Latin, which means 'mirror.' So it's supposed to mirror reality, if you like, or truth, but it's come to mean something quite different. Speculation is just like conjecture or groundless unreality.

But there's often this assumption that all this talk about divinity, etc., is just metaphysics, is something beyond the obvious, one-dimensional, therefore it's not real, etc. -- the seemingly obvious one-dimensional. For example, I have this book here by a guy called Moshe Barasch, and it's a book called Icon. It's studying the histories of the idea of the icon in Western but also Middle Eastern thought. He quotes a passage from our friend who I mentioned earlier in the retreat, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, if you remember him, who wrote some works, and one of them is called Mystical Theology. Moshe Barasch writes that he gives a concise summary of "apophatic (negative) theology" -- I'll come back to what that means -- "in the shape of a compressed description of what happens when we are being uplifted."^[2] Let me read the quote from Pseudo-Dionysius and then come back to what this means or how different people read it.

So Pseudo-Dionysius writes in his Mystical Theology:

Again, as we climb higher we say this. It is not soul or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding.... It is not number or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity.... Darkness and light, error and truth -- it is none of these. It is beyond assertion and denial. We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for it is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and perfect nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial.^[3]

You will recognize, if not in all of that -- in other words, apart from the thing about cause -- something very, very close and almost echoing the Buddha's words in some of those quotes I think I shared earlier about when he taught about the Unfabricated. There are passages in the Pali Canon, this "neither long nor short, beyond measure," etc., "no sun, no moon shines there," etc., all of this.^[4] "Where phenomena cease, all ways of speaking cease," etc.^[5] Beyond mind. All this is very characteristic of what is called the apophatic movement -- in our language, the movement towards the quietening of fabrication, and eventually the cessation of the fabrication of perception. In Christian terminology, that's called the apophatic way, the via negativa, the way of negation. "Not this, not that," neti neti. What we want is something that's beyond all fabrication -- all perception, therefore, in the usual sense.

So to me, that passage clearly reads as a description of the experience of the meditator or the person in prayer as they go through this process of letting go of fabrication, letting go in relation to what is fabricated, and therefore fabricating less. Remember, relating all this to clinging, letting go of clinging, the spectrum of what clinging is, and then the decrease in fabrication. And going, if you like, in St John's language, into the "cloud of unknowing," into the darkness of God, or in Meister Eckhart's language, "beyond creatures," beyond what is created, what is fabricated. To me, this passage of Pseudo-Dionysius is a clear description of a meditative progression of experience. Amazingly to me, or what strikes me is what follows immediately from Moshe Barasch in this book is, he writes:

It is tempting to speculate what Dionysius could have had in mind when he tried to imagine, however vaguely, what the ascending soul might meet on its way upwards.^[6]

In other words, he's reading this passage as just some kind of imagination and speculation on Pseudo-Dionysius' part. It's just, in other words, this metaphysics, this abstraction of coming from thought that you then imagine what someone might experience.

And then Barasch continues:

This is not the place to indulge in such speculation.

Often there's this assumption about talk about other dimensions, or divinity, or something that sounds like what we've just heard from Pseudo-Dionysius, or the Unfabricated or whatever, and there's this insistence that it's just abstract thought.

I don't know enough about the history, but sometimes I read things, and it does seem that often some people start with some ultimate metaphysical positing of, say, perfection -- there is something or some entity or whatever that is perfect -- and then proceed logically from that to deduce all kinds of things from that ultimate speculation about something that's perfect ('speculation' in the modern sense of the term). For example, in Plato you get something called the Good, and it's the ultimate reality, and it's assumed to be perfect. And then following in Neoplatonism and in Thomas Aquinas and in many, many teachers and writers in Western history. So there is the perfection of the Good, and because the Good is supposed to be perfect, therefore it follows X, and therefore it follows Y. For example, out of this perfect One, because of its very perfection and absence of limitation, many are born, and there is the world of manifestation and plurality and diversity that comes out of it. And even, out of this Good, because of its perfection and superabundance and lack of limitation, even evil comes out of it. There's a kind of logical movement from what seems like a metaphysical postulation of something ultimate and perfect, and then a sort of logical deduction of the world and what we find in the world coming from that.

And this, I think, is detectable not just in Western philosophy and from the Greek tradition, but it's also evident in Indian traditions, etc. Dzogchen is actually called the Great Perfection. I don't know enough about the history of that, but certainly in Indian Mahāyāna teaching you can see, I think, a historical kind of movement, inclination, tendency to posit as an axiomatic, fundamental truth the Buddha's perfection. He is the ultimate being, and he is perfect in every way. And so what then follows that: he must have been like this. He must have had this kind of body, and he must have had this, and he must be able to do this and that. And there was this expansion of what a Buddha means historically, just by virtue of positing his ultimacy and perfection. Now, that had, I think, all kinds of strange and unforeseen consequences -- also very interesting consequences, and I think actually fruitful ones, but I know people would debate that.

So if a Buddha is, for example, ultimate in his compassion, he is the ultimately compassionate being, how do I square that with the fact that, by virtue of his realization and his enlightenment, he is going to end rebirth and therefore not be available to help people who are suffering? He is supposed to be ultimately compassionate. So these two conflicting threads of the teaching and the supposition about ending rebirth and yet being ultimately compassionate, you know, infinitely compassionate, they actually needed -- because they're conflicting, they actually had to give rise to an expansion of the logos of what Buddhahood was, a Buddhology, if you like.

And included in that -- and this I've touched on before -- was the whole explanation and ramifications that came out of it of how then the Buddha is the only being, a Buddha is the only kind of being that can fully and deeply see the emptiness of things at the same time as actually perceiving those things, because for everybody else (as I'm pretty sure I've explained) as you contemplate the emptiness while you're looking at something, that thing will fade. Why? Because the avijjā is getting less, and the avijjā fuels, stimulates the fabrication in the wheel of dependent origination, of nāmarūpa, of which perception is a part. More avijjā, more perception, more solidity, etc., of perception, more forms, more delineation. Less avijjā, it quietens down. No avijjā, no perception. A Buddha is the only person -- this was all very, I think, beautiful and cunning, but slightly bizarrely had to be drawn in to answer this question of, well, if he ends rebirth, and he's ultimately compassionate, how does that fit together? Because if he's compassionate, he needs to see experiences, but yet he must see emptiness fully as well; there must be no avijjā there.

Anyway, metaphysics. The main point is that it's often assumed that metaphysics is rooted, it's just a movement of abstract thought, abstract belief, abstract speculation. So there's an aphorism or a slur, an insult, that I don't know who came up with it, but it's sort of around, that metaphysics -- in other words, the pursuit of divinity and of the Unfabricated or whatever, all that -- "metaphysics is like a person walking into a dark cellar at midnight with no light and looking for a black cat that is not there."

So it's kind of funny. But in other words, metaphysics is just something ridiculous. It's a futile endeavour. Looking for divinity or the Unfabricated, etc., some kind of beyond -- just silly, pointless, and futile. What, though, if we start with phenomena instead? Which I'm almost certain that many of these teachers in the past, and possibly even Plato, certainly Plotinus, etc., they had experience of this Unfabricated, this beyond, this Good, whatever they called it. Certainly it's not the case that everyone is starting with this abstract thought. What if we start with phenomena? In other words, appearances; that's what that word means, appearances. What appears to us? What do we experience? What if we start with phenomena instead, rather than starting with some ultimate postulate of what God is or whatever?

Then we might say that metaphysics, taken the other way round, starting with some kind of postulate of what God is, or how God must be, or what divine is, or what Buddha-nature must be, or what a Buddha must be like, then a better metaphor for metaphysics -- rather than this looking for the black cat in the dark that isn't there -- a better metaphor for metaphysics in that kind of top-down approach would be something like "it's putting the cart before the horse."

I don't even know if that's the best metaphor, but in other words, it's getting things in the wrong order. What if we start with what we observe, what we actually experience, and investigate that experience, and the range of it, and how it is affected in different ways by ways of looking, etc.? Then that, what we're calling the phenomenological approach, that can actually open up the discoveries of metaphysics, in the sense of other dimensionalities, the divine, the experience of the divine, the Unfabricated, etc. We start from phenomena, from appearance, from experience, and play with that, our investigation of ways of looking at that. Now, that implies that experience is somehow being used as a basis for our epistemology, for our claims of knowing something. Experience is somehow a basis for epistemology. But what I would like to say is: we must include a range of experience there. We must include the experience of lessening fabrication, the observation of how appearances fade to different degrees depending on the degree of clinging. We must include the experience -- if we can call it that -- of the Unfabricated. We must include this growing understanding of dependent origination, and of how ways of looking condition, fabricate the experience.

Experience somehow is a basis for epistemology, but how, and to what extent? There is always an epistemology. There is always an epistemology that we are engaging in living and in practising. And epistemologies always involve some assumptions, always rest on some assumptions, and some assumptions that actually are ultimately not provable. That goes for what I'm presenting as the phenomenological approach. It's not outside. It doesn't exist without certain assumptions. It certainly involves an epistemology, what I'm calling the phenomenological approach, and that epistemology rests on some assumptions, and some of those assumptions are unprovable. And that is an inescapable fact of our existence.

So one of the questions here is: can we recognize this, that there is always an epistemology? That epistemology, whatever we use for our epistemology, always involves some assumptions? And actually expose that. Recognize it, become aware of it, and expose it, be honest about it. Not doing that leads to all kinds of pitfalls and contradictions and limitations. You can imagine a kind of conversation, for instance, if I said to someone of a certain dogmatic persuasion, "Space and time are not fundamental. They are emergent." They might reply -- this person, perhaps they're from a devout secularist, dogmatic point of view -- "Oh, that's metaphysics," if I say space and time are not fundamental, they're emergent. "Oh, that's metaphysics, because that's saying something about some kind of transcendent beyond." And I might say, or another person might say, "Oh, but actually it's science." And the word 'science' has a certain clout in our culture. "It's science," and then refer to theories of both special and general relativity, and how time and space are shaped, if you like, and relative to the observer and all kinds of things.

But even beyond that, in the more contemporary theories (that haven't been proved yet, but are certainly strong contenders, and themselves emerging into the forefront of modern physics research), it's actually not just that space and time are shaped, but that they actually emerge from something more fundamental that is beyond space and beyond time -- even the present moment; all of it, not just shaped, but actually emerge. So I could say, whoever is in dialogue with this person, "Oh, but that's science," and explain that a little bit to them. And they might say, "That's all very good and well, but it's better for practitioners to go back to their experience," or "We are basing our teaching on experience," to which a person might respond, "But what if a transcendence of space and of time are sometimes a person's experience?"

Certainly something that we've cultivated in meditation, the access to that kind of experience. So you're saying, "Oh, forget about all that science stuff which can sound kind of mystical. Let's go back to experience." What if a person's experience does include that, sometimes going in and out of a transcendence of space and time and things? If you're basing your epistemology and teaching on experience, then why not include these experiences? Especially as they're repeatable. One can actually learn how to move in and out of such experiences dependent on certain laws, if you like -- laws of fabrication and dependent origination. Why do you include those experiences, but not these experiences? We have the authority of science, but science involves training. Not everyone can be a theoretical physicist who understands relativity or quantum mechanical reality, etc. It involves training. It's not easy. Practice is the same. It involves training. It may be not for everyone; not everyone wants to. And some of it is not easy.

But there's something, a question here: if you're basing it on experience, which you clearly are, or a person says, "We base our Dharma on experience," but then you're excluding certain meditative experiences just because what -- because you haven't had them? Why should the authority of what counts as true or untrue, or Dharma or not Dharma, or epistemologically valid or not, why should the authority rest with those with less skill and less range in their experience, meditation? Some people get nervous. It's like, "Well, we can't have elites claiming a certain esoteric knowledge and then having all the power." Certainly there's a danger of that -- priests and abuse and all that kind of stuff, because "We know. We have the power. We have the mystical insight that you don't have." There's a danger there. Of course there is, and people have pointed to this in history. In all kinds of ways -- religious, and secular, as well, in fact. Nowadays some journalists are pointing to a swing the other way. There's a dismissal and ignoring and denigration of any kind of expertise. It's like ignorance is to be somehow celebrated.

But there's a question here about authority, about epistemology, about consciousness, and honesty about epistemology and authority, exploration of these things. And what is the place of experience, and what range of experience in the epistemology, in the revelation and the discovery of, let's say, reality, truth, dimensionality, divinity (whatever words you might want to pick there)? Going from what we're calling a phenomenological approach -- and just to point out that our phenomenological approach, or the way we're using that word, 'phenomenological approach,' that phrase, is not just the same as 'just observing.' We're including more than that in our phenomenological approach. I would say 'just observing' is a bit of a misnomer, and based on a misunderstanding, but it's one of the ways that the term 'phenomenology' gets used, or practice gets thought about as well. Why is it different, and why is it more than that for us? Because we realize and we acknowledge and we see that the ways of looking fabricate the experience. The experiences that we encounter, undergo, that open to us, that we live, if you like, are dependent on the ways of looking that we're employing, that are in place at any time. And we recognize, we realize, we acknowledge, we see also the necessity and the inevitability of making certain delineations in our conceptuality, conscious or unconscious, subtle or gross, and how that also gives rise to, fabricates the experience. And the exploration of all that, contingency, dependency on ways of looking and conceiving, how all that gives rise to experience and the range of experience dependent upon that, that's what we're calling our phenomenological approach.

Sometimes some phenomenological philosophers want to talk about the experience of self phenomenologically, but there is no one phenomenological experience of self. (A), it's culturally conditioned hugely, and (B) it's dependent on the way of looking and the delineations existing at any time. So we can talk about experiences of something that we might call 'self,' but it is plural. There isn't, "If we just observe, what we realize is that the self is like this." More than that, as I've said many times before, we actually see that without distinctions and delineations and ways of looking, no perception is possible. There isn't any perception without some conception, which involves distinction, delineation, even the barest subject/object or present moment delineation, distinction, discrimination. Conception is involved in perception. Perception implies ways of looking. Nothing arises, is fabricated, without distinction, delineation, ways of looking. There is no reality, if you like, there's no perception independent of these. There's no experience independent of ways of looking, distinctions, delineations. Nothing is given to us by something independent of ways of looking. "The myth of the given," I think, is a phrase in contemporary philosophy.

So with our phenomenological approach, what we're calling our phenomenological approach, we can open to the Unfabricated, and the understanding of the dependent origination or the emptiness of all things. So that is one type, one face, one aspect or dimension of divinity that can open through the phenomenological approach. If I view practice, Dharma practice, as just being mindful -- in the sense of just being present, and learning to concentrate or focus my mind, and developing mettā, developing kindness, being kind -- if that's what my practice involves, just that (mindfulness, being with what is, concentrating my mind, focusing my mind on my breath, or at times to calm down, etc., and being kind), that's not the phenomenological approach that we're talking about that involves this exploration, conscious exploration of the ranges of ways of looking. That kind of view or conceptual understanding of what the Dharma is, and what practice involves, and what meditation is -- mindfulness, concentration, and mettā -- is very unlikely to lead to an understanding, a deep understanding of the radical emptiness of all things, and it's highly unlikely that it will open up all the possibilities that come both out of seeing emptiness and out of the recognition of soulmaking and eros and the allowing of that.

So what we have, again, is a broader mindfulness, a certain way of thinking about what mindfulness is, that we're calling our phenomenological approach, and that can open us to, in time, the sense of a transcendent divinity, what we might call the Unfabricated, or whatever word we use to it. And within our broader phenomenological approach, as I said right at the beginning of this talk, a less tightly constrained or conceived of mindfulness will also lead to an exploration of eros and soulmaking, and that will bring more of this, more experiences and concepts of the immanent divine. I mean, the way via reduction of clinging, and going right through the Unfabricated, and then the emptiness of the Unfabricated, also brings a certain experience of the immanent divine, absolutely, but the range is greatly opened up once we include an awareness of eros and soulmaking, and allow that, and begin to explore that. Let's go into that a little bit more in the next talk.