Transcription
As usual, just a reminder: if you have a question, and you'd rather it wasn't recorded, then just let me know, and I'll press 'pause' on the recorder. Please, anyone?
Q1: difficulty with words like God, divine, soul / reality assumptions around meaninglessness and Godlessness
Yogi: I've got a question about God.
Rob: Yeah.
Yogi: I've kind of been following from the beginning of the retreat, really, and then today, the nodes particularly kind of related to the divine. There's a lot of this kind of language in soulmaking, and I guess in many ways it's what draws me to it. I have a very tight relationship with God kind of historically. So when, you know, language like angel, the sacred, reverence -- I kind of feel the energy body tightens. A few days ago, I think you said something about how we have an allergy to the word God, at least some of us, and that God is empty like everything else -- and that kind of helps with that. [laughter]
Rob: You need another fix. [laughter]
Yogi: Exactly. I need a magic word ... [laughter]
Rob: So Marianne's asking, there's a lot of language of divine and deity and angel and reverence, etc., on this retreat, and partly -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- partly there's an attraction to that, and it's kind of partly why you're here, and at the same time, there's a history with that kind of religious language and the whole idea of God that has been difficult, and so that sometimes when you hear those words, something in you just clenches up and reacts. Certain ideas have been helpful in relationship to that, for instance the idea that God, too, is empty, the divine is empty. What was the other thing that helped? Or that was it? That was it. Okay. [laughter]
Do you want to say a little bit ...? You don't have to, but do you want to say a little bit more about what in particular is difficult about the idea of God? You don't have to.
Yogi: It's just that it's kind of a very visceral, immediate response, really. It's just conditioned from decades of a very religious background, religious upbringing. It kind of bypasses my -- I hear the words, and I just feel this kind of gut-wrenching ...
Rob: Is there another word or words that you could use that would replace? If we say, "What do we want to capture by that word?", I mean, that's already an interesting question. It's like, in a way, the words are not so important. How's the word 'sacred'? [pause, laughter]
Yogi: 'Angel,' 'holy' ...
Rob: All that stuff, yeah. Boo. [laughter] If we go conceptual for a second, yeah? It's hard to say, if you ask someone, someone who's comfortable with the word God or sacred or angel or divine, and say, "What do you mean by that?", and you ask them, it's actually quite difficult for them to say anything to kind of capture what they mean by it. Now, I would say that that uncapturability is probably one of the most significant things about those kinds of words, okay? They're open-ended. They have a mystery to them. How's the word 'mystery'? Good! Okay. I don't mean Agatha Christie, right? [laughter] So that's part of what's meant, this kind of unfathomability. There's something -- it's not that we can't say anything about it, about what 'divine' is, but whatever we say is not going to kind of get it. And, wrapped up in that, it's got a meaningfulness to us, and we can't even say quite what the meaningfulness means. So something that's kind of -- I'm never going to get my head completely around it. I could say some things about it and some concepts, but somehow it's of utmost value, and even though I can't define it, I can't capture it, it's of the utmost value to ... soul? [laughter] Ughhh. [laughter] To me, to you. [laughter]
So there's something about this cluster of, if we just talk conceptually, this cluster of concepts: ultimate value, kind of ultimately undefinable or uncapturable, and meaningful, and mystery, and that kind of thing. So you could make up a word or words, and kind of translate as we're going. But that's really where it's going. What's maybe happened in the past is that those words have come to be not just associated with certain kind of punitive or restrictive measures -- you know, I was also brought up in an Orthodox environment, which I really didn't like for the most part. And it's almost like there's something about this whole business of soulmaking that will (we touched on it yesterday) break vessels, including what any concept means, like divine, God, all that. So it's almost like, if you know that's where you're going, then at the moment, there's a kind of encrustation based on the past about what these words mean -- not just the emotional, the relational associations with them, but also what they are. I was brought up with a very kind of strangely narrow conception of God as the kind of judge and somehow separate from me. At some point, that has to get stretched or broken, and maybe I'm just confused for a while. Maybe there's a not knowing. But at some point, either that word or other words can come back to kind of point to and suggest -- they function really, as much as anything, as poetry words, poetic words to suggest into the soul something of this mystery that's ultimately valuable and ultimately meaningful in a way that I can't quite capture.
The other thing that's worth saying about the notion of, let's say, divinity -- and some people will prefer Buddha-nature, and there are certain streams of Dharma that it's almost the same, the idea of a kind of ultimate cosmic deity to certain ideas of Buddha-nature; they're pretty much the same. So there's this value, this -- benevolence is not really the right word, but something like that is wrapped up vaguely in the concept. There's a way that it's also not separate from me, and I think that's very important as well. So again, I was brought up, if I just share about my background, there was no indication that the divine or God or whatever is not separate from me somewhere. It was always portrayed as something other that would judge me or discern where I would end up or something like that. There's this kind of separation there. Yeah? So that's also part. This is woven into the concepts: non-separation, this kind of endlessness, endlessness of sort of reverberation and unfathomability and all that. And, you know, you can hear in the words I'm using a lot of the other nodes; they imply each other. But that's the kind of thing we're going for. So it's much more open. Does this make sense?
That's one way of just knowing that actually, okay, this is completely -- it could be around this concept, it could be around something else, it could be around body, it could be around emotions, it could be around relationship, it could be around what the cosmos is, it could be around what matter is. There are certain ways (we touched on this yesterday) things are frozen by ideas, or things that have happened to us, or our personal history, or our energetics, or the way we relate to our emotions. All kinds of ways something gets stuck. If I can find ways of entering into what we're calling soulmaking, any way in -- you don't even have to quite go in at these words that feel difficult. Find something that does relate, and the kind of alchemy of that vessel, it's like the yeast rises. Something expands in the kneading of the dough. I shouldn't use cooking images, because I don't ... [laughter] I don't know what I'm talking about. [laughter] Something expands, and it starts to gather into it other aspects of the being that aren't yet included. Should I say that bit again? Or is that okay? Say it again?
Yogi: Say it again.
Rob: Okay. So here's an issue. There are two ways of approaching it. Here's a difficulty. We can approach it directly, and inquire into the difficulty. I'll come back to that in a second. You can also kind of a little bit not bother too much about the difficulty, and just go in with whatever makes sense and resonates to you out of what's being said here and what's being taught. Go in where there's a feeling of soulmaking, where there's that sense of soulmaking, and just get into that, and let that speak to you, let that resonate in the being, psyche, whatever, and it will start doing its alchemical sort of expansion process in its own time. And eventually there will get included, subsumed into that process, all other aspects and concepts of the being at different levels that, at the moment, are outside of that process. So you can just trust what works, and trust that we're going somewhere that is going to be -- whatever words you end up with, whatever works for you as concepts -- quite different from what your background is. So in a way, you don't have to -- it's good that you recognize there's a problem there, but you don't have to kind of bash your head against it. Right? So it could be anything that actually works for you, something about ... I'm making this up. Or you could say: which bit does work?
Yogi: Nature.
Rob: Beautiful. So nature, and there's a sense of soulmaking in nature, and you can sense nature with soul. You go that way, you trust that, and something happens that expands that will -- what these words that we're using, and you might replace them with other words, but that kind of concept and idea and intimation that we're pointing to will come out of that soulmaking where it works for you. You understand? So this is a general rule, yeah? And, at times, you may want to, for instance, inquire into the particular kind of pain in relationship to these words. So it's actually like, in a safe space, maybe with someone you trust, maybe with a teacher, with a friend, actually drop those words in and just -- what is it? I get angry? What is it? I feel oppressed, I feel ...? And just notice what happens, and then what does that need? As always, there are different directions in. It's really helpful to look at what's difficult and explore what's going on there: what are these walls that I have? And what do they need in terms of healing or opening, etc.? And sometimes we don't need to go towards the difficult. You can go the other way, and trust this rising of the bread, this alchemical process, where it works for you (which is what you're saying with nature). Does this make sense? Yeah? How does that sound for now, Marianne?
Yogi: Yes. It takes away the pressure there.
Rob: Absolutely. There's no pressure. First of all, we're going very quickly through this business, and some of it just won't make sense, or there will be reactions, all kinds of reactions. It's all fine. It's all part of the kind of working of the process, the turning of the soil and stuff. You can really trust your sense of soulmaking. That's like a golden rule. And go with that. And at some point, there might be some really interesting, heartful investigation of these kind of wounds, basically, around these ideas and those relationships.
Yogi: Just going back to the thing you said about trusting, there's also a part of me that thinks, just as man kind of fabricates God to give life meaning, are we fabricating soulmaking to give us meaning?
Rob: Yeah, thank you. So the question is man -- well, some people would say man fabricates God to give life meaning, and the question is: are we fabricating soulmaking? We could say yes, but it's just that the usual way we then understand that idea, it's like, at a certain level of understanding, we say, "Life is ultimately meaningless, and the reality is there's no God." And then what we're doing, because we can't kind of handle that, we're a little morally weak, we invent things that make us feel a little bit better and more comfortable. That's based on a certain kind of, "This is real. Meaninglessness is real. Soullessness is real. Godlessness is real." You understand? Oftentimes in the framing of that kind of question there's already a reality assumption there. I think partly where I want to tie in all this business with emptiness is if we start with the idea of, "Okay, fabricate, we make up stuff, or stuff gets kind of believed in or perceived or created," then I have a question to investigate. And it's a very deep thread of a question: what's not fabricated?
So I can see, for example, and everyone in this room knows, when you experience papañca, for example, and you're just lost in some blah blah blah, you come out of that, and you think, "Huh! That was fabricated." You gain your sanity again. So I know, "Okay, at that point, that's fabricated, all that nonsense, papañca and that kind of mess that we get into. And this is real, the hard reality of that, and I can settle with that." What if we don't stop the investigation of what is fabricated right there? Keep going. I've seen papañca is fabricated. What else is fabricated? One way of understanding what Buddhadharma is, that journey, is to keep open that question: what is fabricated? How do I know? How can I investigate and see? So this sense of self most people would take completely real, and then you start going in and out of different states of meditation. You start looking at, "What is it that makes this sense of self feel so convincingly solid and fixed, etc., at times, and then at other times not? What does it depend on?" And then, at a certain point, you realize, "Goodness me, that sense of self is fabricated," and then maybe even a more subtle sense of self, etc. And the same with other realities.
That's a long and profound journey, but at the end of it, let's say, one realizes it's all fabricated. So there is no, "Life is like this. The universe is like this. There is Godlessness. Meaninglessness is an existential fact," etc., "and we're just fabricating on top of the basic reality to kind of paint things pink." It's actually that it's all fabricated. That's an extremely deep insight. But I'm not asking anyone to believe that insight, so much as maybe investigate. I mean, some people will just have an intuitive belief in that insight, and that's fine, but what if I'm really ruthless and rigorous, and I say, "Let me find out what is fabricated and what is not fabricated," and then I just keep going with this question? I don't just see, for instance, that papañca is fabricated, or that meaning is fabricated; I follow it, and I go even deeper. Meaninglessness is also fabricated. Godlessness is fabricated. So that's one way of going through. We have chosen the word 'soulmaking' because it emphasizes the fact of fabrication. So it's actually, yes, we're fabricating, yes. And then it's like, why is that justifiable? And actually, is that something beautiful? So participation is (we'll get to this) a much deeper, fuller word. We participate in the creation and discovery of all of this, all of this.
How does that sound? Is that enough for now? Yeah? So it's really good to be sceptical and doubtful, but if you're going to be sceptical and doubtful, be vigorously, rigorously sceptical and doubtful. This is to everyone now. We've got this question. It's like, we settle so easily for answers, and we rest in assumptions as human beings so easily, sometimes without even recognizing, "Oh, I don't know that. It's just an assumption." So what happens if we just keep this -- it's a bit like what Catherine said today; it's like, "I know what reality is." Can we keep that open as an exploration?
There's another thing that reminds me ... the other thing that we assume is that the generator or the fabricator, me or whatever, is a real thing. So it's like this self is fabricating soulmaking. Actually, again, when we go deeper and deeper, you start to realize that self, too, is empty. The fabricator, the mind, the soul, they're all empty. There's no ground to any of it. And it might sound a bit -- I don't know how it sounds now, or where it lands in different people, but the deep, felt realization of that is something truly magical. It's something wondrous and mystical. It's not something like, "Well, that was a drag." [laughter] It's hard to convey it in language. And the thrill of that journey, as well, just keeping this question open, "What is fabricated? Is there an Unfabricated? Is that real?" Also the integrity and the power and the beauty of that thread of the question. And to me, it doesn't come out of somewhere nihilistic at all; it comes out of somewhere magical and mystical and with so much blessing to it ... but maybe those aren't nice words. [laughter] Is that okay? Good.
Bo, yeah?
Q2: shared and individual images, social/cultural context
Yogi: This is still forming. I've been reflecting or what's alive is these sort of layers of personal soulmaking, this collective here, and then if you could imagine the soul of the universe soulmaking together. And thinking about that in relation to social context. The other day, you used the word temenos, I think as a vessel or a sacred space. It has felt to me over the last few months of doing these practices that my -- if you could call it an image library, just to simplify, is shaped to some extent by dominant culture, personally and then also collectively.
In some of my work, or talking with other people and hearing their images, I realized -- like a colleague was giving, he's Afro-Caribbean, and he was talking about the Juba dance, which arises from sort of this collective archive of trauma. It's performed, and then it disappears, and it's always new every single time. That was really rich for me, and I would not have known about that. I think, but I'm not sure, that temenos is also meant to include all archetypal, cultural sort of elements -- that it spans cultures, it's not just sort of specific. So I guess I was wondering how -- because you and Catherine have really elegantly laid down these ... well, actually, really woven us together in community, and you talked a little bit about the environment. This group is not hugely diverse, so if we were in, like, Ghana, we would be having very different images. Is there a way, or is it important to think about how could we collectively contribute to -- I don't know -- kind of an image library, in the sense we can read about things, but even hearing yours and Catherine's, it's like, "Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," or "I've never been exposed to that"? Does that make sense?
Rob: I think so. I'm not going to repeat it, because you're sitting quite close, and I think everyone could hear that. Yeah? Some of it makes sense, yeah. There was a bit about temenos at the end that I didn't quite grasp, about temenos spanning cultures.
Yogi: I thought it was meant to.
Rob: I have been using the word temenos only occasionally so far to mean a kind of -- it's as if, when there's an image, whether I'm just on my own practising, or whether I'm practising with others, like when we did the sharing yesterday, etc., it's like we need an alchemical vessel. It needs a vessel. Or when there's eros, it also needs a vessel. It needs a container and a boundary, without which the soulmaking can't happen; it doesn't really catch. Now, some of you might have noticed already, you're in a group or you're in one of those fours or in a dyad, and someone says something, or Catherine or I share an image in a talk, and that image lands in your soul and functions either as a spark for other images or becomes an image for you. Do you understand? Or someone becomes an image -- Catherine or I, or someone here, or someone you know becomes an image for you. Or, again, you hear images. So there's a way that that happens, but it needs a kind of temenos to happen. Part is just sensitivity, presence, care. I think formalism also helps, you know?
I think in terms of the conceptual framework, what we're trying to do is a little bit what you could call a meta-framework. In other words, we're not so interested in gathering together around a certain image. So, for instance, in Christianity, you have the cross as one very potent image, or the body of Christ, or all kinds of things. There's a gathering together around a certain image. It's community around an image, a commonality of people resonating with the same image, maybe in different ways and at different depths. I mean, we might do that temporarily. So even when Catherine laid out those artefacts today, it's like, we're sharing an image for the space of a ritual, and some people will feel it more or less, but we're not choosing certain images and then making a religion out of those. Maybe it's something to do with Western culture. Maybe it's something to do with our personalities. I think what we're aiming for is this sense of, like, images are infinite in possibility, and what we want to do, the business of these nodes, is the question of: what's common to the whole process and the experience and the constellation around any particular image?
So that's kind of what we're teaching. And you can take that anywhere. You can use it in relation to any image or any sensing with soul. It's like, what are the things that help this work, yeah? Partly it may be a response to just, we live in a certain time in Western culture, in a culture of individuality. We cannot erase that now. That certainly has its difficulties -- the alienation that's so common, the loneliness, the sense of self-judgment or social anxiety: "Do I look okay? Am I okay? Do I measure up? Am I good?" All that is endemic in Western culture because of the birth of the Western sense of self centuries ago, slowly, gradually, for complex reasons. So that brings with it a kind of -- 'curse' is too strong a word, but challenges. It also brings with it some gifts -- this gift of like, anyone here, any one of us can have images in any direction suitable to our soul. They can be fed by anything at all. It's like we follow our own kind of path there. Now, it may be that that just reflects, as I said, my inclination, Catherine's inclination, or it may be that there's something about Western culture at this time that needs that kind of openness and more of a legitimization -- because not only in Buddhadharma, but also in the larger culture, we don't really have a legitimization, a deep legitimization of the imagination. So maybe there's something that needs a kind of structure that will legitimate, support practice, and actually working and deepening, but much more freely and individually. Yeah?
In terms of what you're calling a library of images, yeah, absolutely. You have to kind of see what works. I think what I've tried to do sometimes in the last few years giving talks is give a whole range of images. So you know, some are very kind of ethereal and blissful, and some are kind of seemingly violent and devouring and bloody, and some are very sexual, and some are very peaceful, and some are really unremarkable, and some are incredibly dramatic. Partly what I'm trying to say is: look at the range here! It's, again, endless; it's infinitely possible. There are infinite possibilities there. So it could be that sharing images or receiving images from other cultures seed ideas, you know, for you, for others, and we can do that with each other. But probably the thing that helps to seed images -- it's like, if I open a book of mythology or whatever, personally I often get quite bored quite quickly, whereas if someone tells me an image, and it's alive for them, or if the writer is writing it in a book, and it's alive, it's something about the aliveness of the soulmaking spark in another that travels and plants a spark or ignites something in me, and then that may become soulmaking. Do you understand? So we could make a library, but it's -- I mean, I'm just speaking off the top of my head now, so I don't know, but maybe it's also necessary to have that spark of ignition. We have to also receive the soulfulness, not just the "this is what it looked like." I'm guessing now, but I'm not sure.
Yogi: I think the sense of limitation or ...
Rob: Yeah, thank you. So about that as well, it's like, as the soulmaking thing gets going -- this may sound like a tall stretch to some people, but in time, everything gets kind of woven in or brought in, involved into this kind of vortex of soulmaking. I think I shared when Nic asked -- it's like, even the things that happen to me that are difficult, my life, the events of my life, the things my life receives, beautiful and difficult, are seen as given by soul, are sensed as given by soul. They're part of the grace, even when they're tragic. And that kind of thing expands. We could also say that what's given to us culturally, both in my personal history and my cultural history, is given from the World Soul, the anima mundi, so there's a kind of intelligence in the unfolding. I mean, there's a deep non-intelligence, but there's a kind of intelligence as well in the kind of unfolding of our culture, and the images, and the difficulties and challenges, environmental, political, social, all of that. It's given by soul to us together, and this is what we're faced with. This is our soul-food. This is what we turn, this is what we knead in the dough to become soulmaking. It can even be just a shitty situation or whatever it is, or a wonderful gift of Western culture or whatever, or it can be made into soul-stuff. Does that ...?
But that's a whole other view of, like, what's giving me both the images and even my history and this culture and the challenges. Does this make sense? So that's a whole other view. And again, it's like the concept, the logos expands, and goes to a view like that, and then it's like, whoa, then I get a whole different sense of what life is, and what the cosmos is, and what's actually happening, and what's unfolding. And again, it's like, okay, am I going to convince someone of that or argue that it's an absolute reality? Or is it, again, a poetic idea, but it can have so much power and beauty and possibility to open the soul? And it can have this sense of -- I mean, this whole question of ontology is huge, but it can have real soul-power. Let's just say that for now. Yeah?
I have some questions or notes that I thought were very helpful. It's too late now. I apologize to the people I said that I would get into that. Either I'll write to you, or we'll do it together. It's tea time. I mean, I'm happy to go on, but it's maybe ...
Catherine: Could answer a couple of short ones? [students in background]
Rob: Are you sure?
Q3: relationship of imaginal practice with unfabricating
Yogi: It will be percolating for another twenty-four hours if I don't get it out. I think about a talk you gave many years ago, a samatha talk, and you said that as well as insight practice being a part to full and complete awakening, as well as mettā practice -- this is kind of piggy-backing from the question about [inaudible]. I already know you're not going to say the imaginal practice is a part of complete awakening, because soul doesn't want a full-stop. But is imaginal practice potentially a path to the Unfabricated? I'm kind of wondering about maybe, thinking of the Buddha on the night of his awakening, he was doing imaginal practice -- Māra was sending him arrows and sexy ladies. [laughter] So yeah, this feels important because it's beautiful and meaningful [inaudible] -- the kind of ascetic who is a monk or [?], you're not on the right path.
Rob: Yeah, okay. So this is, again, I think important. So let me try and say a few things if I can track it. I wonder if that picked up? Laurence is reporting on a talk I gave some years ago, apparently, and said that following emptiness can lead to full awakening -- actually, let's say the Unfabricated, or understanding emptiness. Mettā can also, which people often don't realize; mettā as a path of insight and the movement towards the Unfabricated. There's that whole possibility, and how that can work. It's very unusual. Samatha as well -- people again think you've got your samatha, you've got your calm, and then you've got your insight, and the calm is kind of -- you don't want to spend too much time there, because it's the insight that's really liberating, and what that [samatha] does is just sharpen your mind, sharpen your Mañjuśrī's sword so that you can dissect reality. So that's quite a common view. But what I was pointing to was the fact of a different way of understanding what's going on with the samatha, with the calming, with the jhānas, that goes into basically a spectrum of less fabrication. Same thing with mettā if you do it certain ways, with a certain kind of approach: one journeys into less and less fabrication. And there needs to be the question of, like, "How is it that this is happening? What is happening here?," with an open-mindedness, not just assuming, "I'm basically repressing my emotions and ignoring everything, and that's why it all goes dark or quiet." If we actually understand the process of things getting fabricated, more or less -- self, other, world, time, the whole shebang. So that's all that business.
Now, as I said -- I can't remember when it was, a day or two ago -- there's that journey, and there's the possibility of the fullness of that journey, and then emerging, different states of unfabricating, into the Unfabricated, opening to that. Some people would stop there. Some people would stop before that. Some people would stop there. But it's possible then to go even beyond that. Because when you go that far, then you've got the Unfabricated and the fabricated, and there's a kind of duality. Some Buddhadharma is very dualistic: "This is just the realm of saṃsāra and dukkha. It's really not worth much. It's only a place to get out from, not to be reborn in." It's not a popular teaching these days, but it's quite classical. There's a duality: the Unfabricated is good, and the fabricated is not. The Mahāyāna picks up and goes beyond that, and sees even, we might say, the emptiness of the Unfabricated. (I'm just touching on this very quickly to get on to something else.) And then what that does is open up the possibility of fabrication, because fabrication is holy, too; it's sacred-making. Yeah? So there's no duality. There's the possibility of it all becoming sacred. Is this okay so far? Okay.
With the imaginal, in a way, it's interesting. We could go round and ask everyone -- we won't, but we could go round and ask everyone -- how much or what kind of permission and legitimization do you need to get into imaginal practice or sensing with soul? And for some people, it will be exactly related to this question of fabrication. For some people, it will be related to where it fits in the context of Buddhadharma. For some people, it will be something about, "Well, isn't it dangerous?" For some people, it will be, "Well, what about all that eros?" People will need different kind of permissions and legitimizations. But there is a legitimization that can come strictly from that kind of really deep understanding of emptiness that liberates the possibility and legitimates the possibility of fabricating beautifully. Why? Because fabrication is empty too. There's no duality with the Unfabricated. One has sensed the equal holiness and non-duality of all things.
So that legitimizes it. There's probably a real minority in this room right now of people who have actually practised all that way with the emptiness in order then for it to liberate the permission for the imaginal. That happened to be my path. But it's not common. Other people approach it a different way. I'll talk about this tonight just a bit. What we need, though, is this sense of 'neither real nor not real' with the imaginal. And that can come through art, that sensibility, through poetry, through literature. We have that sense there. But I don't need to necessarily go through all that practice with the emptiness. Do you understand? Some people approach the imaginal -- they're attracted to it and start practising with it before they've done all that emptiness business, or they've only done a little bit of it. And they find that, for instance, like we were talking with Nic yesterday, about one of the things you might see with the self-view is just this multiplicity of self-sense, and you live it, and you feel it, and so it brings with it this kind of, "Well, which one is the real me?" And it brings a loosening of the self-sense, for example, and it can bring a loosening and a liquefying of the world-sense and the other-sense. So there's a kind of way that something similar to the emptiness process, the loosening of that, the un-reifying of that, de-reifying of that, can happen through imaginal practice. So that's into more emptiness, yeah, in this understanding of the non-inherent existence of things.
In terms of the Unfabricated, this actually relates to a couple of the notes I had. Guys, are you okay? It's quarter to seven. [background encouragements] Yeah, yeah. So what can happen -- a couple of people mentioned in their notes meditating and -- I don't know how quickly to zip through this; that's the thing -- meditating on an image. [shuffling notes] In this case it was "infinite Aslan space." Do you know who Aslan is? I had to remember. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's the lion. When I first read it, I thought it was "infinite Asian space." [laughter] Anyway. It's infinite Aslan space. So, in other words, Aslan is an imaginal figure for her, with a history. And what can happen sometimes is the image, the form of the image fades, and we kind of get to the essence. So it wasn't just space or just infinite space; it was space imbued with the essence and the character of Aslan, and everything, all the richness and the unendingness and the complexity of what Aslan meant, but without the form.
Now, there's another one here which is a lot more complicated, and I think I'll maybe talk to the person. But if I can just extract a couple of things from this. It's a complement to what I've just said about Aslan. The Aslan thing is very -- whatever Aslan means, but it's very beautiful goldenness, and kind of simply pure, noble, etc.; everything that Aslan would kind of represent, and more. The other images -- I'll have to go through this quickly, because it's complex, but it's really interesting -- but were more complex images, and to do with destruction and death and suffering. Someone had an image of a skeleton, and then the skeleton dissolved. The skeleton had been around for a long time, then it dissolved. This was quite surprising. Let me just find what she says. "There was huge love and joy emanating from the image, and I was plunged into sadness." Okay. I'm guessing that the Aslan image was quite just lovely and radiant and noble and very uplifting and all that. Here was a more emotionally complex image or sense.
So the image faded and there was a space -- let's just find this, sorry -- "the skeleton collapsed, floated away, and there was liquid light/love/limitlessness, and also sadness and grief." So something has happened. It's not quite the essence of that image, but it has transformed, and it's gone into a boundless kind of samādhi space, similar to the boundless Aslan, which captures something of certain values and emotional resonances. It's not on the Buddha's map, okay? But what you find if you really get into jhāna practice a lot and really play with it is that the Buddha outlined A, but there are all kinds of cocktails and mixes and shadings and variations. There's a whole, again, probably infinite realm of possibilities there.
So this is possible occasionally, that the form of an image fades and the essence of it remains. It could be an essence of loveliness. Here's this goddess. It could be a friend who I'm seeing their angelic form, and I'm meditating on that angelic form and her loveliness, his loveliness, their loveliness. And then she/he fades, and I'm just with that loveliness, but it's particular. It's got the essence of that particular character in it. Do you understand? It's not just universal, generic loveliness. It could go a little step further into universal, generic loveliness. Then we have to say, okay, now we're no longer doing imaginal practice, because the image has gone. The particularity of the image has gone. Yet it still might be soulmaking, because it involves, as you said, "Wow!" There's something that the soul is expanding into and learning there. So if this happens -- I'm just mentioning this because it's a couple of people. And the sadness is fine. She goes on, "I have leant into it, stayed with it. It is not a sorrow that contracts." So here's a clue: there's something soulmaking and beautiful here. "It is expansive in the energy body as love and very beautiful." The sorrow was beautiful. So this is, again, characteristic. We can recognize the soulmaking there. "Unsure," and then she has a question about it, etc. Later, other images came back.
I won't be able to get into all of this now, but the point I want to make now is, back to your original question: if I view, "What's the practice we're doing?", it's samatha, going towards the Unfabricated; this question we had with Marianne, "What is fabricated? What is not? What's all this got to do with fabricating?" Samatha, mettā, emotional awareness, psychological healing, imaginal practice, emptiness -- it's this big maṇḍala. It's a big range. And it's all important. There are ways of going into the imaginal that loosen up the understanding of emptiness. We said that. There are ways of going into the imaginal that kind of get to this essence, and then they move towards this Unfabricated, this fading out of perception, like the jhānas, but they're kind of different. You understand? So with practice, you can kind of learn to lean it one way or another.
So, for example, if I take the simpler one, the Aslan one: here's this infinite Aslan space, and it's really lovely. Now, there's probably, in that mixture, some kind of fundamentally jhānic quality -- let's say equanimity. And it's mixed in with all the things that Aslan is. So I could lean towards that, or find it in the mix, attune to it, and it will amplify out of the mix. Let's say it's equanimity. In that mix, I just tune more to the equanimity, and it will go into the classical equanimity, sort of fourth jhāna. Or I can stay tuned just to the Aslan thing, and then it's a variation. Yeah? Or it can go somewhere universal, etc. So there's a way it can go towards the Unfabricated. It's quite rare, and I wouldn't recommend doing it all the time. If it goes too universal, it's great, but if you do it all the time, then you're losing the particularity of the imaginal practice. Is this making any ...? Yeah? So it's there. There are so many tributaries. It's an endless world of wonder, you know? So you can do that. If you do it all the time, it will take it a bit out of what we're calling 'imaginal.' Or you can stay with the essence at times, but you have to make sure that it's got this particularity to it. That would be the same as saying an image could be very vague -- I have the vague sense of a presence; I don't see it visually, but it's something quite particular, and it's speaking to me with all those particular resonances. Okay?
Yogi: Great. What time ... [laughter] This is super quick. Is the phrase "to see all things as image" equivalent to "to see all things as empty"? Or are they kind of two sides of the coin?
Rob: It's not quite equivalent, but they're related. Maybe we can pick that up. Maybe I'll pick it up tonight. Let's just have a bit of quiet. Then the tea washer-uppers will go, and we'll all meet back at 8:15 instead of 8. Is that okay? All right.
