Transcription
If we want to expand our path, expand our sense of the possibility of what the path can be for us, what can open from the path, then obviously our practice needs to expand, and our understanding, as well, needs to expand. A lot needs to expand, in fact: heart, soul, sensitivity. So it's asking quite a lot, this expansion of practice. It's asking for a lot of elements, if you like, or threads to be woven together. That's part of the development. It's necessary. And that comes, like everything else, almost inevitably gradually.
Already on the retreat, we've introduced two or three threads, really, at least. (1) We have the practice thread of cultivating this well-being in the energy body just as much as we can at any time. That's a kind of thread of intention that can be there at any time. We call that samādhi, this gatheredness, harmonization, well-being. That's one thread. And that brings nourishment. It brings deep nourishment to the body and to the mind and to the heart. This dwelling, resting in this permeated well-being is a really, really important thread of practice.
(2) Second thread is again related to the energy body, but it's really using the energy body to be in touch with and to care for what's happening in the emotions. So the energy body as the indicator, but also the vessel of care, or one of the vessels of care, for what's happening emotionally. Really, really important as a thread in practice. (3) And then yesterday we introduced the whole thread, the direction of imaginal practice and working with images there, and we talked about the balance with twoness, etc., between self and other, self and image.
So those three threads already. They weave together, like a rope is made of different threads. They support each other. You can move between them. So part of developing the art of practice is not only developing the art of each thread, but the art of moving, navigating. How do I approach this sitting or this moment or this walking? What's going on? Which thread will I explore? Yeah? So there's a kind of somewhat improvisatory element involved in that.
(4) Now, add another thread, but it's a thread that you already know, that you're well-familiar with, the thread of renunciation. Okay? We're stretching what practice can be, but it relies on the basis of what we probably already know from our Dharma teaching -- renunciation, letting go. It's all good and well, and what we're trying to say is it's very important and fruitful to play with trusting desire at times. This is part of what this retreat is about. What if I trust it? What if I regard desire in a different way, and approach it in a different way and, if you like, follow it, follow it in a sense? Not necessarily act it out, but follow it in the psyche, in the being, with the sensitivity, for example in imaginal practice (and we'll talk about other possibilities). So that's great, and we really want to offer that and open up that possibility as something that's not commonly offered.
Great and all very good. And at times we want to just cool down, turn it off, let it go, drop it. Really, really, really good. [laughs] Really kind, yeah? So to have these options, not to be stuck in any option, really, and just always bashing away at trying to do the same thing, always on one thread, on one tack of practice. We have this fluidity, this flexibility that we're slowly gathering skill and art in. So sometimes either you just discern: "This is the wisest thing to do now. Drop it. Let go. Let the desire go. Go somewhere else." And other times, you might just deliberately try to explore that mode of dropping and letting go. So there's this fluidity and discernment that we need and we're slowly developing.
Okay. So I want to remind you of that possibility and stress its importance today. As I said, it's really, really a kindness. The capacity and the ability to let go, to drop desire, is developable. In other words, it's something that, with practice, with care, with attention, that develops. We get better at it. We get more confident that we can let go of desire if we want to, when we want to. That confidence is really important as well.
Okay. So I just want to offer -- we could talk about this for weeks, in fact, but just four possibilities. Probably you know them anyway. So rather than get into a whole extended thing, and where this might lead, etc., just four practice possibilities.
(1) The first is come back to what's nourishing. Come back to a nourishment practice. So what's a nourishment practice? Something like loving-kindness is a nourishment practice, whether the loving-kindness is directed towards yourself or towards another. If I'm having a hard time here, or I can't let go of something, and I think, "Oh, I'll give myself loving-kindness," maybe that's really helpful. Maybe I give someone else loving-kindness. Look, it's got to permeate me on the way out. I'm going to get soaked in that loving-kindness as well, right? So don't always think it has to be you. Just loving-kindness mode will be nourishing. When we talk about samādhi, that's almost by definition a nourishing state: I'm just going to hang out in this field, in this bubble, and make it nice and warm and just as comfortable as can be, and just dwell in that, let myself rest in that and be nourished by it. Often we grasp at things and we can't let go because our level of nourishment, the reservoir is too low, the water is low in the reservoir. So I'm looking out everywhere: "What can I get? What's that? What about him? What about her? What about this? What's for lunch?" And there's the anxiety of endless grasping coming because we need more nourishment.
So indirectly, taking care of the nourishment takes care of this kind of endless grasping and craving that's part of the human condition. Anything that brings any degree of yumminess: mettā, samādhi, calmness, the harmonization of energy. What happens is our muscle to let go, just drop it and come back, whether that's the breath or the energy body or the mettā phrases or however you're doing it, just the more in our life we practise -- "This thing is da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da" -- and just drop it and come back, even if it feels completely futile, over time that muscle gets [bigger]. We get better at just dropping and returning. So to have faith in that. It's kind of very, very simple.
Let me qualify that a little bit now and ask you: what is your tendency, what is your historical tendency, in regard to that kind of practice and desire and dropping things? You might be historically -- you look back at your years of practice and see, "I tend to drop a lot and come back to my nostrils" or whatever it is, or my abdomen, or whatever it is. Or you might be the opposite: "I tend to be a very investigative type. I'm always going out, exploring what's going on. I don't give much attention to developing the well-being and the nourishment." So what's your tendency? What's your pattern? And sometimes it's good to just, "Okay, I realize that's my tendency. Let's practise the opposite. Let's learn to lean the other way." Again, eventually in the service of this flexibility we have just a multitude of directions possible to us. We can tack in any direction. We're free. We're fluid.
So in this case, both the exploration of eros and desire as we're opening it up, and also the letting go and the coming back. Always to let go, as I think I said in the opening talk, as a way of living, it ends up being a little silly. It doesn't kind of cohere as a path of practice. It doesn't make sense. It's not our life, and it doesn't fully serve our life. So we need some discernment here. Always going after desire and exploring eros, and opening to it and letting it open us, will also be somewhat unbalanced. If I do that, I won't be able to open other doors -- for instance, the door of deep emptiness exploration, because that involves letting go of clinging. Okay. So that's the first one. It's just come back to something nourishing. That's the first possibility. Just come back, come back. Just drop it.
(2) The second one is also a little bit related to nourishment. Really it's to do with the possibility that sometimes what's happening when we're chasing after something -- "I really need that thing. I really want that thing" -- or the mind is just distracted that way, what's actually happening is that there's some pain underneath the desire. The desire is not actually the primary thing: I don't really care about those chocolate cookies or whatever it is. What's happening is I feel lonely, or what's happening is there's grief, or there's heartache, or there's boredom. It could be something quite subtle as boredom. And we're disconnected from that heart state, and then we're going after this thing as a way of kind of covering over what's going on. We hope that somehow if I can -- it's not conscious, of course -- if I can disconnect enough, I'll maybe get better. No, we need to connect. Come back. Have a look at the heart. Something there might need caring for. And caring might just be connecting, which means just touching it, just holding it, just holding it in a caring awareness. That, maybe, is all it needs. The connection heals. The kindness in the connection heals. And in being connected, we're more grounded, and we're automatically chasing out less. It means coming back to what's painful, but the connection starts slowly to soothe what's painful. It starts to heal it. And then there isn't this being propelled by some emotion that we're not fully conscious of. So second option is have a look at the emotions if you're troubled by a desire. Have a look at the emotions underneath. Give them some caring attention.
(3) Third possibility is when there is craving, that craving is uncomfortable. The craving itself is dukkha. It's not an easeful feeling. There's tension and pressure that we feel when there is craving. You can feel it actually certainly in the mind, but you can feel it in the body and in the energy body. The craving itself is dukkha. Sometimes what we're craving, if it's a cigarette or a drink or whatever it is, it's not even so much the thing that we're craving, the pleasure of it. We're craving the relief from the discomfort, the tension, the pressure of the feeling of craving. So when I get that thing, it just "ah." The balloon of pressure bursts, and it's actually that that we're -- there's kind of an aversion, again, driving us, similar to the second practice thread here; it's an aversion to the underlying emotion, or it's an aversion, in this case, to the craving itself. We just want relief from that. What's possible is actually noticing, getting in touch with that feeling of the discomfort of craving, the pressure, the tension of it. Where do I feel it? Sometimes you can feel it in the whole body; it's kind of buzzing with that. Sometimes it's much more subtle.
But really, really helpful to notice, yes, craving is dukkha. Craving not only leads to dukkha, it is dukkha. And what does it need, this pressure? It needs what all pressure needs: space. I create more space around that pressure. I let it bubble away, this discomfort, but I give it more space in the awareness. So if it's a pressure cooker, and we make it bigger, the temperature goes down. Right? So that's how pressure cookers work. They create pressure, and that heats it up more. You create more space. Just let it be, let it be uncomfortable. It's going to be uncomfortable. Like when you stub your toe, it's like you just have to kind of "okay," give it space for a few seconds, right? And it just does its thing, and then it peters out. So what happens here, there's this craving, this discomfort of craving, the pressure of it, and just give -- I know it's unpleasant; I just create space around it, let it bubble away, and it will rise like that, get more intense, and then it will reach a peak, and then it just subsides, and then it's gone. Then you're free. It might come back. But every time you go through that whole cycle, because you've given it space and not been dragged into action by it or into following, following, following in the mind, every time you do that, the whole cycle, the whole peak gets less. The whole intensity and grip of that craving on the whole system gets a little less, gets a little weaker.
So that's the third possibility: noticing the discomfort, noticing the pressure, and giving it space. Just giving it space. Learning to tolerate. Developing our capacity to tolerate the discomfort of craving. This, as I said before, gives us confidence. You go through that cycle, and you see, "Wow, this is possible." The strength of the being grows, and the confidence of the being grows.
(4) Okay, fourth and last possibility for now is a little bit of reflection can really be helpful. We get caught in wanting this thing or that thing, or this thing to unfold, or that person or whatever it is, and how many times have we been through this before? How many times has it really satisfied us? So sometimes a little bit of reflection: what is this thing, what is getting this thing really going to give me? Am I really going to be fulfilled getting it? These are all very standard Dharma approaches; you should be quite familiar with them. Sometimes it's a matter of going deeper into what I want: is this thing what I really want? Do I even really want it? I'm so caught up there, but is that really what I want, what I deeply want? And recognizing it's not what I really deeply want, there can be more ease in letting go. Sometimes it's remembering how often in the past we've got what we wanted, but it ended up not being quite what we had imagined it might be before we got it. Right? Surely. [laughter] Almost always, things turn out differently than what we think. So it's like, just bring that wisdom at the starting end ... [laughter] instead of at the end end. It's like, "Oh, yeah, wait a minute." This relationship, this whatever, forget about it. [laughs] It's not going to make you completely happy. Just as a footnote here, if we're exploring desire and opening to that, it's not because we think it's going to make us really happy. There are other reasons, okay?
(4.1) Lastly, related to this, it's just the reflection on impermanence: this thing will change. I will change. What I want will change. This thing will change. Change, change, change. Impermanence. Just reflecting on that, and sometimes beginning to notice impermanence, beginning to look at beginnings and endings. Lunch comes, and then it goes. Where has it gone? The retreat comes, and then it goes. Everything. Interactions. Mind states. "I really want some of that samādhi that they keep going on about." It comes and it goes, you know? All the sense contact, it all comes and goes. And impermanence happens on all timescales. Lives come and go. Death comes. Birth, life, death. Galaxies come and go. Mind states come and go many times over a day. Relationships come and go. And moments come and go. These words right now. How many different sounds, moment to moment? Sometimes just inclining more towards impermanence. We're really not going to do that too much on this retreat, but it's a possibility. You just go into that mode, just everything's impermanent, and one lets go more.
(4.2) Related to that, you can also [reflect]: because everything is impermanent, everything is dukkha. Everything cannot ultimately satisfy. So another possibility is going into a mode where whatever comes up, "It's just dukkha. It's just unsatisfactory." It's not a philosophy of life. It's just a kind of gear. It's a possible thread you can pick up. Half an hour, an hour, ten minutes, whatever comes up -- these sensations in the backside, it's dukkha; the sounds, dukkha, unsatisfactory. I'm not saying that is the reality of things. It's a mode of looking. It's a way of looking. And there's just letting go, letting go. Why? Because things cannot satisfy. Just let go. Let them come, let them go. Yeah? Potentially very beautiful. It sounds like that's a recipe for misery, but actually it's the opposite. I know that a lot of you know this in this room. Very, very beautiful practice in terms of what can open up for the being. But that's a more extended possibility.
Retracing: we have these threads. We're putting threads together in terms of expanding the path. We have quite a few threads already. Don't get overwhelmed, you know, but learn to navigate between them. One thread is this business about renunciation. You can do that in different ways. In a minute, it's lunchtime, and we'd like to just offer a thread within a thread: to take food, taste, and actually smell and sight, the theme of the senses and desire in relation to the senses. So mealtimes can be a good place to investigate this and to explore and open that out. We'll pick this up at several points on the retreat. If we just say for the starting kind of entry level of this practice, we'll pick up, related to our theme of renunciation: one way of approaching this whole arena of the way the senses are involved with food is to look at it from the perspective in line with the renunciation practices. What that might mean is taking, let's say, at least one, but maybe a few mealtimes meditatively. That means now there will be a lunch queue, and you may be at a certain position in that queue, and what happens in terms of the movement of craving, for instance, in relation to where you are in the queue? You can stand there in the queue and be aware of if there is craving. There might be craving for the lunch. It might be the craving has a fear tinge to it: will there be enough left for me when I get there? Will all the good stuff have gone? [laughter] So that's part of craving, yeah? You can be aware of that. You're standing there. In the queue is a meditation. Just open to these movements of the mind, of the heart.
And then when you have the food and you're taking the food, you're also aware of what's the relationship with taking. Again, do I fear that I won't have enough, and pile the plate high, or we're sort of stingy with ourselves? There's so much in food; I'm going to say very little. But then also the smells and the sights. This word, vedanā, one of the translations is 'sensation.' So the sensation when the food is in the mouth, or the smell. There will be the arising of hopefully mostly pleasant sensations. But that's actually quite interesting. If you really meditate on the food, on the sensations arising in your mouth, what's actually there? These vivid explosions of taste, not much, gaps, gaps in between them. What actually is the experience of sensation, and what is the mind building up around the whole -- it thinks this is going to be the experience of food, but actually find out, be close with the sensation. What happens with unskilful craving is we get caught up with the mind's idea of what an experience is instead of at the level of sensation. So there's taste, there's smell, there's sight.
You're probably all familiar with this. But we just invite that practice as a starting point, and then we'll develop it a little bit with food as the days go by. Is that enough? It's familiar, right? Okay. So just that for now. Could be now, could be at some point, but just do at least a couple of mealtimes like that, at least a couple. And we'll pick it up. But enjoy lunch too. [laughter]
