Transcription
Suzanne, yeah?
Q1: awakening without experiencing the Unfabricated; what qualifies as meditation; the place of long sessions, retreats, jhāna
Yogi: First I want to say that your talk last night and this morning was really -- it really resonated with me. It was very useful and got me very excited, just seeing or hearing how my art practice and my meditation practice can feed each other, because I know that for a long time I've been buying into this version of what meditation and the Buddhist path looks like. And I feel like the world of the senses is kind of taken care of for me. For as long as I can remember, I've always had a yearning, a really deep yearning, to connect with something -- call it divine. I was not raised religiously at all, so it didn't have a particular form that it took. It kind of evolved over the years. When I was an adult I had some kind of mystical experiences that I misinterpreted. I kind of interpreted them as, let's say, kind of Buddhism 101 about 'all things are connected.' When I learned about emptiness, it was like, "My god, I knew it, I knew it." It just seemed to all make sense, and I just developed this passion for experiencing the Unfabricated. I know that it can slip into craving sometimes.
But in our meeting yesterday you mentioned to me that "you don't have to meditate." And you know that, because of my physical limitations, I don't think that I'm not going to be able to meditate, but I know that I'm going to have to try new things and be flexible. So I'm wondering, you were saying, "You don't have to meditate to become enlightened," but what does enlightenment look like if you're not sitting on the cushion? Can you have an experience of the Unfabricated? I've heard all these stories about, you know, there's a monk, and the Buddha said this, and he instantly became enlightened. What does that mean? Is it the same thing as having -- it's the same experience, or it's something else? Is it something different for everybody? I would think not, to a certain extent. There's a certain knowledge that you gain, right? [pause] I'm done! [laughter]
Rob: Okay. So. [laughter] Let me see if I get this.
Yogi: I want to know that I'm -- I just want to know that I'm kind of moving in the right direction. I don't want to go off and think, "I can just do this," and then that's not really a good direction to go in. I'm not expecting you to tell me what direction, but I need to know that I can kind of get where I want to go.
Rob: You can. I'll just try and summarize. Is the basic question just, given what's happening physically right now and with health, etc., and you feel like long meditation sessions and frequent meditation sessions are not within the capabilities of the body right now, is it still possible to get enlightened? And is that kind of enlightenment that I might get without long and frequent meditation the same kind of enlightenment as ...?
Yogi: The phrase you've used, 'the beyond,' that's very ... that resonates with me. Can I experience the beyond?
Rob: Yes. [laughter]
Yogi: I don't get it, when you're not meditating ...
Rob: Yeah, so thank you. I don't recall saying to you you don't need to meditate.
Yogi: No?
Rob: No.
Yogi: I thought that's what you said.
Rob: Yeah, that's interesting. What I did say was meditation might not look like what you have a picture of. So if someone asked me, "What is meditation? What is insight meditation?", people give all kinds of descriptions and this and that, and then they think it's a certain posture or a certain this or that, or concentration, or a great deal of stillness, whatever. To me it's just, in a nutshell, practising a flexibility of ways of looking, and seeing what comes out of that flexibility of ways of looking, and an understanding or understandings come out of that that have to do with -- well, with all kinds of things, but primarily emptiness. That doesn't have to look a certain way. So to make a distinction between meditation on retreat, on the cushion, etc., and not, I feel that's overdone.
Yogi: What about walking meditation? Can you become enlightened during a session of walking meditation?
Rob: Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the suttas and all that, there are loads of stories of that, yeah. To me, it's a strange -- there's a hierarchy, first of all, between the four postures. I don't know what order most people put them in, but sitting is usually the best one. [laughter] Apparently. You know, it's like -- this is all ... I mean, if we just take the Buddha right now, there are four postures. Even in a division between retreat and not retreat ... You know, long meditation sessions, long meditation retreats can be really fruitful, but it might not be where a person's most transformative insights and liberations come. I have spent a lot of time on retreat, and long, all this and that. But even if I look back at that, I wouldn't pinpoint the long times or the long sessions or this as the times that -- I don't think it stacks up that way. I don't think that bears up to scrutiny, really. We have these ideas.
I shared with Suzanne: when I was 21 or something, I was on retreat at IMS, and I had all this crazy energy stuff happening. The teacher asked me to sit -- first of all, "Sit in the back of the room, because you're disturbing people." [laughter] So I sat at the back of the room. "You're still disturbing people," etc. "Go away." [laughter] I was sat over the other side of the courtyard, outside of the meditation room [laughter], in my room by myself, etc., and eventually he asked me to leave. I was 21. I was living in a foreign country. I was so passionate about the path. I so wanted enlightenment and awakening. I remember after he said, "It's better for you to leave. You're going to hurt yourself. You need (a certain thing he recommended)," and I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. I told you this story. I walked up that road, and it was like, "How am I going to get enlightened now?" And to me now, looking back, I really feel for him and that kind of passion, but it seems like I was naïve, that sort of simplistic "if I can't do long retreats, then I won't get enlightened. If I can't sit a long time still ..."
Yogi: [inaudible] Just getting into this jhāna practice, and trying not to be attached to that, but also [inaudible] less and less fabrication, like that's how it's going to happen.
Rob: Through the jhāna practice?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Not necessarily. That's one way that things unfold, that way.
Yogi: I've had a lot of teachers say to me, "Don't do that," or "Don't meditate." If I know that there are ways other than jhāna practice ... but then I know that the thing is jhāna practice is just supposed to get you to a place where you can do insight, right?
Rob: No. That's the way it's often taught. First thing I also just want to put in right now: teachers are important. So right now, we're having this dialogue, and I'm the teacher and you're the student. I really recognize the support of that. And also I kind of, in this moment, am feeling a little uncomfortable. [laughs] Partly to do with, like, what is -- this is such a big, tricky area -- what is one's relationship with teachers, and outside authority, and people who say it's like this and like that? So for example, that idea about jhāna, there's so much there. What you've got just in the Insight Meditation tradition now, jhāna was kind of taboo territory for a long time. Then you get certain teachers who begin to teach jhāna, and some of them say you need jhāna, just like you said, because jhāna will sharpen the mind, etc. This is all just kind of dogma, really, you know? Jhānas can be really helpful for lots of different reasons to some people. For others, they're just not a big factor on the path. And I certainly don't buy this thing about sharpening the mind and then you can do insight. I just don't buy it at all.
I'm not sure what would help you ...
Yogi: You've clarified and given me what I needed. I think the problem is, as a teacher, I know that there are a lot of teachers who teach a way of doing things, and one reason that I always love talking to you is because you can kind of encourage me to do what's right for me, whereas a lot of other teachers are saying, "No, don't do this," and then I start doubting. I don't want to do that; I still want to meditate.
Rob: Yeah. But again, I would just open up what that word, 'meditate,' means. If I look back to me when I was 21 years old -- well, there was a different thing going on, but there was a period of time when I didn't meditate. I so cared about it, but that period of time, and everything that came out of that, and everything that I learnt, and the bodywork that I did, and all that, it was so helpful. So I'm not a doctor, I don't know, but I don't think what you're going through is going to last your whole life. It's a period. And meditation is more than sitting still and getting the mind to shut up. If it was that ... all right, it's nice, but there's so much more. If you have this broader view of what meditation means, it's something much more creative. And things like insights into the Unfabricated and fading and that sort of thing, they come -- it's not so, "The person who sits twelve hours straight, that's the person." It's not like that. And the jhāna thing as well, sometimes people say, "I sat there and I didn't have a thought for two days" or something. [laughter] And it's like, okay, where's the insight? It doesn't stack up. And I'm not saying it's not worth it, but it's not like a 1:1 correspondence at all.
In terms of the Unfabricated as well, sometimes -- and this is not textbook -- but sometimes one has the perfume of that, even without meditating. You walk in nature, you walk somewhere, or even when you're with someone, there's something we sense. That's meditation. What's happening there? The way of looking is opening out. The perception is getting attuned to something; I can't put it into words. I can sense it somehow, or beyond sense or whatever. These are the kind of things, they start working their way into your life. Not only do they stack up, but they also bring a certain amount of liberation. So before you've had 'the experience,' as if there is ... well, let's leave that. [laughter] But these things give you a faith that you feel in the marrow of your bones in something like that. So all of this, all of this. And then the last thing (and I also said this to you the other day, and it relates partly to what I was talking about yesterday and today): I heard what you said at the beginning, but you're going to want a big, fat liberation; not just a deep liberation, a wide one, because of the art, and because of ... do you understand? So it's like, how you find your path, create your path, discover, is going to have to include all that, rather than getting too tight around. Yeah?
Right now, I'm not sure what else to say.
Yogi: You don't need to say anything else.
Rob: Okay.
Q2: how images can lead to jhāna, navigating more toward samādhi or images
Yogi: I was working with an image, an imaginal image, and this sort of like brought me to jhāna. I just don't quite understand how that works. I mean, I see the image is sort of related to stillness. The image is about the stopping of time. It's a poetic image. I can see sort of space and stars and stuff like that, [inaudible] moving through that, and all of a sudden it freezes. The jhāna happens quite frequently. But I don't quite understand how the process -- you said there's eros. I love this image. There's something about it. I really love it. But it doesn't lead to more complicating; it leads to unfabricating.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. So Joël's describing something that seems to be occurring quite regularly with the same image. There's an image that has to do with the stopping of time, and kind of cosmic in terms of galaxies and stars and things. There's eros with that image, there's beauty and ... is it actually from a line of poetry? Just a poetic image? Yeah. So something is touching; the poetry of it is touching the soul. He's a little bit surprised how sometimes that leads into jhāna, or quite frequently into jhāna. Rather than what I was saying, whenever it was, that imaginal work tends to create more complexity and branch off, this is actually leading into more simplicity, less fabrication. Yeah. This has actually come up a couple of times in here. This is really common. So, why is it happening? I think it happens because when something is imaginal, the energy body responds, first of all, and comes into some kind of harmony or alignment or openness or something like that. And if the mind, part of the mind or attention gets captivated by what's happening in the energy body and the kind of harmonization there, it will just go into a jhāna, because focusing on that is a jhānic state.
So any time there's an image -- and it doesn't have to be an image of, like, stopping time, or space, or some kind of image of stillness. The other day, you were asking about an image of anger. It could even happen with an image of anger: here's this, not the image you were alluding to, but maybe some image of some stomping, monstrous, raging dragon god or something, and there's all this fire and da-da-da, and the power of that can be felt in the energy body. There's a resonance with that. The anger itself is kind of transmuted alchemically into whatever its kind of gold equivalent is, so to speak. But the energy body kind of starts resonating with that energy, and one can -- one can, one of the options is to -- enter this jhāna. I think I was saying yesterday, at any point with imaginal practice, you can kind of glide in any direction. You get to have a little more say sometimes. Sometimes it just takes you.
But because of the energy body involvement, there will always be a possibility of samādhi. You can always lean off into that. At the moment, it sounds like it's kind of happening because the energy body constellates that, and then probably the attention is just getting captivated by it, but as you develop, it will become more and more a sort of intentional possibility. So you could always just do that and let the image go. You could say, "Very nice energy body stuff, but I want to go further with the resonances with the image," so you don't so much go into the samādhi. And then you can play with the emphasis of attention, like how much attention is on the meaningfulness or the beauty or the poetry of the image, how much is on the energy body, how much is on the emotional impact.
With time, all this, it's like you've always got these kind of -- what would be a good image, analogy? I'm not quite sure. But you've got this sense of being able to lean in multiple directions, also in terms of how much attention am I giving the image versus how much my own process or my own self, the way the self is constellating in the imaginal constellation. So you've got things like self, other, world, and the eros itself, all of which can be imaginally infused, come alive as image. You understand? And then you've also got things like the emotional aspect, the energetic aspect, the samādhi aspect, the image aspect, and you can kind of just -- sometimes you're just taken into one or other. Sometimes you need to rebalance things. I think I alluded to that on the second night's talk. Sometimes we're just too much in the image, or too much with the self, or the self needs to come alive imaginally; the divinity is all over there. So there are all these options. You're balancing things so that there can be more steadiness and equanimity and fertility with the image. And sometimes you're just making a choice out of curiosity. And sometimes you're just taken one way or another.
So I'm answering more than you're asking, but does this ...? Do you get a sense of what can evolve here? So, not at all uncommon. I mean, it also happens with not imaginal things. Sometimes one way people kick-start a jhāna or samādhi is just by remembering something that brought happiness, for instance, and then that happiness infuses the being, and there's just a gentle sort of inclining the mind to that happiness, and sort of getting into the happiness and letting it suffuse. For some people, that's a way into jhāna. So it's a little bit similar to that, as well, but that's not so imaginal.
Yogi: The image just falls away after samādhi is established, but I wonder now if it's because I'm just too absorbed by the jhāna itself or the samādhi itself, and I sort of let the image go because ...[inaudible]
Rob: Okay, yeah. So Joël's saying the image falls away into samādhi, and you let it go because samādhi is what you want.
Yogi: Well, I didn't realize I was doing that. I just thought it was like a natural thing that the image just sort of goes away because, I don't know, it's not an erotic movement any more [inaudible].
Rob: I have more the feeling that, as it unfolds more and more, you'll realize that you can, like sailing or something, you can kind of lean different ways and guide it. I mean, a little bit related to Suzanne's question, you know, samādhi is great. I really, really value it, and jhānas and all that. But -- sorry, I can't remember what I've said in talks -- if there's a lot of eros in a soul, that won't satisfy. It's part of what we want, but there will be something that wants the image as well.
Yogi: Kind of get bored after a while?
Rob: I mean, a jhāna by definition is a non-bored state, but something in the soul, in one's life, will go, "Okay, that's enough," or not enough, but it's like, "I want more soulmaking. I want more of the poetry." Yeah. So I would keep both options open, you know. Some people have long periods of time when they're more leaning this way or that way. Other people, or as it unfolds, you might just go back and forth more sort of regularly. Does that ...? Yeah?
Bo, yeah?
Q3: emptiness and practising with different concepts/objects conceived as primary
Yogi: I'm very new to this. I'll do the English thing and apologize for anything that's not correct. But you have planted some really beautiful seeds, both of you, and I wanted to cross-pollinate a little bit with some things related to the body. One of the things I think you said is that image is primary, and experience is secondary ... or image is primary.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi: So image is primary. I was reflecting a little bit on some lines of research that have come out about the body. One is in the area of connective tissue, and talks about that our tissue is not inert, but it's always moving all the time kind of in what has been called intelligent chaos. And then also embryologists are starting to say that we don't lose the embryo; as adults, it's still present in our bodies, and that motion is primary, and the form or shape of our body, the way we think about it, is secondary. I was thinking about fabrication. I have been hearing things like, "The body doesn't have a soul, the body is a soul." I'm wondering if part of the beauty of all of these exercises is a sort of -- you talked about who, who is the soulmaking for. Could the fabrication and the soulmaking be part of stepping into a sort of -- if there is one -- a soul of the body through all these many threads, nature and the connection with twoness and ...? Just there are times when I think, in my experience here, it's just feeling like there's a moment where there's music I'm stepping into. It's like there's a process, and the body is a process and not a finite thing. I just wanted to check that out. It's not super well-formed.
Rob: I wouldn't be sure how to sum that up. [laughter] Are you asking whether, instead of image being primary, we could view body as being primary? Is that part of what you're asking?
Yogi: Yes, and are they different.
Rob: Oh, okay. Very good. So Bo's asking ... well, you just heard. [laughter] And the question was, are they different? Did you get that? [laughter] So, yeah, beautiful. Thank you very much. So here's a thing ...
Yogi: And there's one tiny thread, which is that part of what we're doing here seems very devotional, like very bhakti in nature. It's part of our devotional practice to [inaudible].
Rob: Yeah. So, Bo's also saying that part of ... [laughter] Part of a way to think of this is very devotional, and has bhakti in it, and that's part of it, and maybe what's the connection between that and the first part of the question. Okay. So here's how I might frame it or think about it. We have eros as human beings. Here's the thing. If everything is empty, and any conceptual framework, including the scientific, cannot possess a claim to the singular truth of things -- do you understand? Do people get ...? So classical science is fantastic, wonderful, embryology and all this stuff, brilliant. Wrapped up in that is a whole conceptual structure, way of thinking, assumptions. Great, very fruitful. Is it the ultimate truth of things? Is it the singular truth? No.
Starting from those premises, and looking at things, and asking questions from those premises unfolds certain experiences and truths. Starting from some other premise will ... you understand? We could start anywhere. We could start where you started, with the body. We could start with the idea that image is primary. But if someone asked me, "Is that an ultimate truth?", I'd say no, of course it's not an ultimate truth. Once you've seen something about reality and about epistemology and about all that, you start to realize, "Oh, I participate in truth-making. I participate in world creation and perception creation," if you like. So I can, we can, just play with entertaining certain concepts and conceptual frameworks, and seeing what they open. Yeah?
So we could start with the idea that body is primary, and motion in the body, as you were alluding to. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. We could start with the premise that body is not separate from soul. We could start with the idea that image is primary. When you say, "This is primary," it's like already suggesting, what happens if we take that as a basic principle, instead of, for example, my psychological history is primary, or materiality is primary -- all of which are fine as sort of starting angles that will then kind of give a different perspective on some kind of kaleidoscopic -- not kaleidoscopic, but who remembers those disco balls? [laughter] You know. They kind of, like, you can't ... it's like ... reality kind of ... yeah? [laughter] I am really cool, by the way. [laughter] In case you were wondering.
Okay, so we can start with image as primary. We can start with what you said, absolutely. Each will unfold. We could start with eros as primary. In a way, this retreat is kind of leaning in that direction. Or what happens if we just pick up the eros thread, and find out what eros is through our experience, and what opens from that? A little bit, that's what we're doing on this retreat. Or you could start, again, with just -- I think I tossed it out at some point -- the soul loves soulmaking. This is my axiomatic proposition: the soul loves soulmaking. "What the hell do you mean?" Okay, so I unpack what I mean. It ends up being a bit of a circular definition, but it ends up being really fertile. Let's say we take eros as primary. So it's like, in my time, in my experience, I notice in my life where there's eros, and wherever it moves towards -- now, that could be already the body, it could be materiality, it could be my lover, it could be the transcendent or whatever -- and I just trust that eros, and I investigate the experience of eros psychologically and phenomenologically, what it does and what it opens. Then I will find that it starts -- everything gets subsumed in that, and everything gets made sacred and made kind of valid, if you like. So if I start with, "My body is not ensouled," eventually I will come to, through experience, the perception will open up that the body is soul. Now, another person might start more from there. That's where their eros goes immediately. Another person seems a million miles from this: they want the Unfabricated, they want to go beyond form, all that stuff.
If we allow the eros and allow that fire to catch, it will eventually catch everything. It will eventually discover more things, more facets, more sacrednesses. It will discover soul everywhere. It will create soul everywhere. So in a way, there ends up being these unlimited kind of perspectives and unlimited soulmaking and unlimited ensouling. You say, "Which is first?", just follow your experience. Follow your own unfolding. There's conception in what you're saying about the body. There's certainly personal experience. You have a felt, experiential connection with body and bodies, and the investigation of that, and the experience of that, and the understanding of that. There is eros there conceptually, experientially, soulfully for you. If you do that, then it will just -- it will go to other things. Someone else, it's the other way around. Is this making ...? Yeah? So you end up with this -- you know, I could have just cut all that, and just said, "Yes." [laughter] You are right, and so is someone who says something else, because there's something -- to me, it's quite a radical sort of shaking up of the whole notion of truth and objective reality, etc.
If we follow the kind of thread of this retreat, it's like, we have this experience of eros. If we just name it, we begin to then see what it does a bit more. We say, "I'm going to trust this. I'll follow it," and then you start to see what it does experientially, erotically, soulfully, psychologically, philosophically, all this, conceptually, all of that. It's all right, you know? It's all true. Does this make sense? So devotion is exactly connected with that. Where there's devotion, there's eros. Where there's eros, there's devotion. And again, this might not be so obvious at first. You feel into it: let me explore my experience of devotion. Let me explore my experience of eros. Or, as I said, just in the imaginal: here's an image, and you start to realize, if I hang out, I start to notice, "Oh, there's devotion here. Oh, there's eros here." And then I trust that, and then that's how that threads into the other -- I'm just following my devotion, and the whole thing opens up conceptually, experientially, heartfully, soulfully, physically, energetically. Do you understand? So those two parts of your question are extremely related. The bhakti, the devotion, ends up being a kind of philosophical opener as well as an experiential opener. Yeah? Does this make sense?
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Well, just what I just said -- where there's devotion, there's eros. Where there's eros, if we get interested in it, and don't get in its way, and allow it to do its thing, it will instigate, inseminate, ignite that soulmaking process, which starts changing my experience of things. So it changes my experience of body, of what my body is as a thing, from the point of view of subject, from the point of view of expression. Everything -- the image, the sense, the experience, the felt sense, the ideation (and that's where the philosophy bit comes in). This is why soulmaking is so significant, because at every dimension of the being, we're experientially -- it's got this expansion, and I know it, I taste it, and not only that, I know it in a way that's important to me. And everything comes in to support that -- the ideation, the conception, the philosophy, the psychology, the emotion, the energy, etc. Does that ...? Yeah?
I'm happy taking another. Yeah, okay.
Q4: bear attention
Yogi: My bear has a question.
Rob: Yes. [laughter] So Nic's ...
Yogi: I'll say it for him.
Rob: Yeah. This is from Nic's bear. Does your bear have a name?
Yogi: Bear.
Rob: Bear. [laughter] Bear is asking.
Yogi: He's enjoying your teachings. He thinks they're quite good. [laughter] But he'd like you to justify your claim that there is no such thing as bare attention. [laughter, applause]
Rob: Very nice. [laughter] I bow to his greater wisdom. [laughter] I sit at his feet. [laughter]
Let's just have a bit of quiet time.
