Chapter 4 - Ways of Looking

Rob: I felt like there were certainly conflicting and confused or very unclear messages around the nature of awareness and what the relationship was of awareness and the Deathless or the Unconditioned -- whether it was the same, or something different, or what. Like I said, I felt a bit lost, really. Either people weren't that interested, or the answers just didn't satisfy me; they felt a bit too easy or too sloppy.

So it gripped me in the context of -- not just because I was interested in, like people are interested in "What is consciousness?"; I think that's interesting, but it was really to do with liberation and emptiness. I really wanted to understand. And I wanted to know, you know? I was experiencing a lot of different states. I was experiencing the sixth jhāna a lot, infinite consciousness, or variations of that, like just a kind of vastness of awareness, or states where it feels like everything is awareness -- everything, inner, outer. There's no inner/outer; there's all awareness. This [touches couch] is awareness. You're awareness. I'm [awareness]. Is that ...? It sounds like, when some people talk, it's like they're talking about that. So what? Now I'm just supposed to kind of stay here or something?

Lila: And it still doesn't feel like freedom.

Rob: It didn't feel like freedom, and it felt like there's more, you know? There was a lot of frustration and questing. It's like a dog with something -- a bone, and it won't let go! [laughs] I can't remember the exact order of things, but at some point, something came together for me in terms of these two ideas of ways of looking and fabrication. So this question, maybe it wasn't so clearly formed in hindsight, and I've formulated it since clearly -- it's like, "Let's just see what is fabricated." Don't, in advance, put an answer on what is and what isn't. I know when I have papañca, when I have "aaghh," I'm completely crazy and blah blah blah, and then afterwards I think, "Hey, a lot of that was fabricated!", I know that's fabricated. Let's not assume anything else; let's just find out. And then, experimenting with this idea of 'ways of looking' -- that basically you can regard meditation as the exercise of a flexibility of ways of looking ('looking' meaning sensing and thinking and relating).

So I can relate to a pain in my knee, or I can relate to you, I can look at you, I can sense you and conceive of you in all kinds of different ways, or myself, or my body, or the light, or time. Seeing the broad picture of meditation as experimenting with that, in the service of, "What is fabricated?", with this question, and "What is true?" And starting to notice the connection between clinging and fabrication -- so any kind of pushing away or holding on or identification basically fabricates more. The more pushing and pulling and aversion and self-identification, the more solid that papañca is. But it doesn't stop there. It goes subtler and subtler. Just exploring that more and more, and coming to a place where you see, oh, a certain amount of letting go of clinging -- if I just sit here, and just kind of hang out, and just let go, at some point it will actually open to, very likely, a state of open awareness where there's this kind of sense of "everything is in awareness." And then if I just let go a little bit more, everything is awareness. All I've done is let go at a subtler and subtler level. But the thing is, one can let go more than that.

Lila: Let go of awareness?

Rob: Let go of the identification with awareness, let go of things like any idea that there's any subject, including an awareness, or any object or time. It's like getting really into -- this has to do with dependent origination -- really into the sort of, what are the subtlest levels of clinging? How deep can this go? This is all in this question: fabrication and ways of looking, particularly ways of looking that include different kinds and degrees of clinging. Just experimenting and experimenting, and really refining the kind of art of letting go at really subtler and subtler levels.

So it's one thing, for example, to let go of, "This is my body," or "I am the body." There's identification there. It's another thing to see that the body is empty. That's a deeper level of letting go. The body has no inherent existence. Or it's an even deeper level to see that awareness has no inherent existence, or time.

Lila: They're dependent ...

Rob: Yeah! There are a lot of different ways you can see their emptiness, but yeah, one of them is dependence. And then, not just thinking about it, actually going into meditation, almost like a kind of delicate kind of surgery almost -- but more artistic and fun than that, I think!

Lila: Composition!

Rob: Yeah! Playing with these really delicate shifts in ways of looking and letting go and clinging -- really subtle. And ways of seeing emptiness, introducing them. And seeing the whole thing just collapse. So this whole infinite awareness, cosmic consciousness or vastness of awareness or everything is awareness, you see: a letting go of clinging at a more subtle level, even that collapses. That, too, is fabricated. It's less fabricated than a normal state of consciousness. It's certainly less fabricated than a papañca state of consciousness.

So I kind of developed this idea of a spectrum of fabrication, dependent on ways of looking and clinging, etc., and just playing with that and seeing: where does it go? So it's taking me to different levels of less fabrication. It's taking me towards the Unfabricated, beyond this vast awareness, "all is awareness" thing. And it's also telling me about the emptiness, because if something is fabricated, it means it's empty. It means this thing, whatever this thing is -- whether it's awareness or time or an object or a self, or whatever it is -- it's dependent on clinging. It's fabricated by clinging. You understand: it's empty in that sense.

Lila: Would you say that the Unfabricated, what the Buddha was pointing out, is the goal of this teaching? It's when everything ceases -- life ceases there.

Rob: Yeah. I don't know about life, because the body will still be alive in that experience, but yeah. There's what the Buddha calls "the cessation of perception and feeling."

Lila: Is it the eighth jhāna, or something else?

Rob: No, it's beyond the eighth jhāna. In the eighth jhāna, it's called "neither perception nor non-perception."

Lila: There's still something there.

Rob: It's almost like, what's the perception in the eighth jhāna? It's the perception of, "There's not quite a perception here." It's as if the mind is sort of falling and not landing, and what you're really perceiving is this falling and not being able to land on any perception. It's right at the edge of perception. Also there's a sense that that experience is happening in time. It's like there's this falling, but it's going on in time. It's really at the edge. It's beyond even nothingness.

In an experience of the cessation of perception and feeling, there's not even a sense of time or of a present moment, and not any sense of a subject or an object, or even a kind of -- mind, subject, object, time. That's what I'd see as the most basic kind of triad of any perception at all: subject, object, time. And that's not there. That completely crumbles. So in the eighth jhāna, you've got a mind that's struck by the fact that it can't make a perception, but that's the perception, and it feels like it's happening in time.

Lila: It doesn't sound very alluring.

Rob: [laughs] No.

Lila: Object, subject, time -- gone. This is nibbāna?

Rob: No, well, as a state -- this is good that you point that out -- it doesn't sound that alluring probably for most people. There are probably some people listening who think that sounds great! [laughter] But it doesn't sound alluring, and it's hard to pinpoint -- for me, it's hard to actually put into words. And the Buddha struggled as well. Actually, there's a sutta where someone says to Sāriputta, "That doesn't sound very alluring." Exactly that. And Sāriputta basically answered -- typical Theravāda -- that "alluring is the fact that nothing remains. This is the beauty of it," or something; I can't remember the exact words.^[1] But it's hard to convey that.

In a way, this starts to relate to other stuff and imaginal stuff, but we can regard the path -- typical Dharma way of regarding the path, it's the Four Noble Truths: it's all about getting rid of suffering. So when you get rid of experience, either then you learn how to not be reborn again (in other words, experience doesn't arise again -- the arahant at death). That's the goal: getting off the wheel of rebirth. So that's some people's paradigm. That's a very traditional paradigm, I think, historically. Or you take it more that this experience of the Unfabricated, this experience of what sounds so dry (subject, object, and time not [arising]) is opening me, in some way you can call an experience but it's very unusual, of the Unfabricated, something that we call the Deathless or the Unfabricated. That, to me, is incredibly beautiful, and it's really -- you can't put into language what's beautiful about it. The timelessness of it, the transcendence of it.

Lila: It's magic.

Rob: Yeah. There's something that -- it's hard to describe to someone, and it's good to know that Sāriputta had the same problem. [laughter] But there's something to me -- it's not just about freedom. There is a lot of freedom coming from that if that then shines its light on my life, or if it teaches me about emptiness, or both, because I understand: fabricated, fabricated, fabricated, Unfabricated -- all this is fabricated, all this, all this. That shapes, that tells me it's fabricated, therefore it's empty, and then I'm freed up in my relationship to it. [11:35]

Lila: So it's not the thing in and of itself; it's what it shows, or ...

Rob: Mostly I tend to teach it's what it shows. But I think the truth is, it is also the thing in and of itself. For some people, some people have a sense of, like, it's -- again, using the words lightly -- as if it's shining through everything, and there's something so free and so beautiful about it, that it casts a different light on things.

Lila: I think you were using somewhere, maybe in the book, quoting someone, that it's "more amazing than the amazing, more wonderful than the wonderful." Nāgārjuna? It's beautiful.

Rob: Yes. I can't remember where the quote is. It's hard to put it into words, of course. And the Buddha says it's beyond what you can put into words. But the other thing I wanted to say about it is what you just said: beautiful. For me -- and this doesn't get talked about a lot, because Buddhists tend to always think about freedom from suffering, freedom from suffering.

Lila: Not talking about beauty.

Rob: Exactly. So for me, there's literally an indescribable beauty in that, in the sense of that. And it does free, but even if it didn't free, that beauty would be worth its weight in gold. So I feel very much that way about practice, and that relates to the imaginal stuff, which we can talk about later and what the point of practice is. It's like, let's be honest about why we're practising. We can talk about that later.

Lila: But just to recap on that, the sūtra you were talking about, it's not in the Pali Canon?

Rob: Yeah, it is. I can't remember where. I don't remember who he's talking to, but basically, he said, "That doesn't sound very alluring. There's nothing there." And he said, "Just so. It's because ..."

Lila: It can sound so dry, especially when you read ...

Rob: Of course, of course. And you know, it's interesting -- I don't know what to say about it; it sounds dry. It also depends how you frame it, because (and again, I point this out in my book) sometimes the Buddha talked about it in the completely negative: "Not this, not that. There's nothing there. There's no this. There's no that." And so it's a sort of negative theology language kind of thing. And sometimes he says, "You can't say anything about it. Don't even say anything negative." And then sometimes he talks about it in the positive, as "consciousness without (anidassanaṃ) attribute" or without ...

Lila: Sign.

Rob: Yeah. Nidassana is related to darśa, "without showing, without seeing, without revealing anything, without landing on anything." It's almost like pure subject, is a certain way of thinking about it. But again, I always stress: not in time, and no object. So sometimes it's put in the kind of object, like it's this thing, the Unfabricated. Sometimes it's more of a subject. But sometimes he just says, "I can't say anything about it." But that's what happens at that level. The words, the concepts don't -- because concepts deal with subject and object in time. That's how our language works. You can't do that. But yeah, I think this thing about the beauty of that, and what it does to the heart and the soul, as well as the freedom -- I think that's key.

Lila: It's so interesting because maybe the freedom that the Buddha was talking about had the flavours of the monks and the celibate life and [inaudible] in a way non-returning to this wheel of saṃsāra and to this life. But it has others, other flavours, like beauty, and maybe others.

Rob: Yeah. It's possible. I mean, sometimes it's hard to find that in the Pali. [laughter]

Lila: Yeah, it's not ... it's hardly there.

Rob: It's hardly there. But yeah, we could talk about history and stuff, but. Anyway. Then you get the Mahāyāna, which goes beyond that. So I was also interested in that. Beautiful as that was, and fulfilling, the poetic allure and condensation of that, there's also the beyond ...

Lila: Of the emptiness?

Rob: Of the Unfabricated. You actually see: that's not the end. I mean, it's the end for Theravāda, for classical Theravāda. You get that, you let go into that, and there's no rebirth.

Lila: Or at least that's what's being described. There's no more talking afterwards.

Rob: No more talking about what?

Lila: About everything that can be -- like in the Mahāyāna, the description is very much prescription: if you do that, you get there, and this is the most important thing. Afterwards ...

Rob: Well, afterwards there's no rebirth.

Lila: Yeah. This is just my question: what got into the Pali Canon, we never know, and what was left out.

Rob: It's true. But I have another question on top of that, which is: what happens for us, for you and me and whoever is listening, in relationship to the Pali Canon? Why -- and this goes back to the independence thing -- why do we feel this weird allegiance to the Pali Canon? Or even the Buddha. And it's like we have to, "No, he was probably like this." And someone says, "No, he's probably like this. He probably thought this, but he didn't say it!" Why? What's going on for us psychologically, just in terms of the image of what that represents, and also in terms of our need for authority?

Lila: You know for me, listening to you, and just before, what was going on in just listening to your life story, it's so much about trust. And trust comes in a package deal, a huge package deal. It's so easy for me, and when I look at others, too, and your story, too, get mixed up and not knowing. We trust the Buddha because something very, very deep was touched inside, so we buy the whole thing. And once it's questioned, or even something in it is questioned, it can shape something that is very fundamental and was important for us. So I can understand people who are just like, "No, no, no," just take the whole thing as it is, one block.

Rob: Sure, absolutely. And you know, I don't want to tell anyone what to believe; I'm not even making a statement about it. I think more the interesting thing for me is, like, can we even ask the psychological question of ourselves about what's going on in terms of trust and authority and belief and in relationship to all that? It's really interesting to me.

Lila: Yes. And it just occurred to me that his last words in the Pali Canon were, "Be a light unto yourselves." So it's a lot about getting off the authority relationship, because he's gone -- that's it. Or it says, "Whoever sees the Dharma sees me." He's trying to even out, maybe, these things, and trust yourself -- maybe that's his last message. Again, I'm speculating.

Rob: I think for me, yeah, just personally, where I am now, it kind of doesn't matter. [19:17] It just ...

Lila: Because you took from it what you ...

Rob: Yeah.

Lila: What was mattering for you.

Rob: I feel like -- yeah. And maybe it sounds weird to some people, but ... I feel this sense of more free inquiry now, and that's just where I am now. It's interesting with the Mahāyāna thing. Because there's no rebirth. Then they go beyond the Unfabricated. Everything's empty. And they've got this idea of a bodhisattva or a Buddha who comes back, who doesn't get not reborn, who actually comes back. It's like, how does that work with the old teachings? There's a really complicated history in the background of Mahāyāna philosophy trying to make it all work in terms of dependent origination and rebirth and emptiness and compassion. But they always say, "These are the original teachings. They just got hidden." So there's a kind of psychology there about authority.

Lila: Being backed up.

Rob: Backed up, and the authority's in the past. Anyway. I find the whole thing -- it's interesting for the soul, like what goes on for the ego, but also for the soul, in terms of tradition and authority. Ego is, "I need to trust, or I can't possibly ..." Or, "That's rubbish, and we've got the right team," and all this kind of stuff. But the soul is something different, in the sense, you know, tradition is a soul thing, it's a beautiful thing, and our relationship to that, and how the soul sees the self in relationship to tradition. There's a huge scope there. So I'm just interested in that, rather than saying, "The Buddha was like this, or he wasn't like this." To me it just seems a little silly now, because there are other, much more interesting questions about, "Why do you even have that point of view? Or why is that so important to you? What's going on for you, ego or soul or attachment?" The soul is the more interesting one. That's just where I am with all that.

So the Unfabricated, all that, and then just finding ways to go beyond that -- again, taking the same theme about fabrication, and seeing that the Unfabricated is empty, too, or the whole notion of fabrication is empty, too, if it's something that happens in time and if it doesn't produce real things. It's almost like the whole thing gets less dualistic: not fabricated/Unfabricated. The whole thing becomes empty. In a way, for me, that was really exciting for me, that point, because then, to my mind, that's what liberates and opens or makes sense of the tantric teachings. Because then there's the possibility of skilful fabrication, because fabrication is empty and because everything is fabricated.

Gradually -- this was happening over I don't know how long, a couple years; actually more, more -- kind of going even further with the same themes, and then reaching this place of, like, it legitimizing and opening possibilities for me. And I explored some kind of classical Tibetan tantra, but again, it didn't really satisfy me. It didn't really -- yeah. But I tried. Anyway. But then, the imaginal thing that I've been developing with Catherine came out of that time, after the tantric thing, and being exposed to James Hillman.

Lila: Would it be right to say that for you the imaginal is -- because anyway everything is fabricated, we might as well have something that is deeper, beautiful, more soul to it, yeah? This is what you mean?

Rob: That would be a simple way of saying it, yeah, absolutely. It's usually, like, if we turn it around and say, in our wider culture, imagination has been demoted since, say, the medieval times, or in other cultures. So imagination, it's okay if you're kind of making a cartoon film or a Hollywood thing or something.

Lila: But it's not real life.

Rob: Yeah, exactly. So it's like, "Don't confuse that, and don't run away into imagination." It has this very derogatory kind of status -- except for art, it's just for some people, and we go for some entertainment. It's got ontologically, in terms of reality and everything, it's got a very suppressed status. That took hundreds of years in the West, from like 1200. But anyway. If you kind of asked -- let's say I was giving some teachings on the imaginal, and some people really don't like it, you know? What they try and articulate, sometimes what they really don't like is this business about, "That's not real!" And then, again, the usual understanding for Dharma, because this is in Dharma circles, is "When I'm mindful, I'm being with what's real. I'm being with what is. I'm not fabricating," etc.

Lila: "What I'm aware of is not fabricated. It's real."

Rob: Exactly. "And all this is real, and imagination is something not real. Mindfulness puts you in touch with it," etc. So this is a kind of well-established view that merges well with typical secular modernist culture, scientific materialism and all that.

Lila: I think you've made a huge contribution with your talks with elaborating and opening up so many avenues into just first being aware of it, and then questioning it.

Rob: It feels really, really important to me. Thank you for saying that. I feel like -- I mean, you know, and I've admitted it -- there was quite a lot of polemic for a few years in my talks.

Lila: Polemic?

Rob: Polemic is arguing, getting positions in. Partly because it felt like I wanted to elbow some room philosophically for something, rather than just accept basically an implicit philosophy of this kind of realism in "Mindfulness means ...", and "Imagination ..." that was too -- not just limiting; that didn't allow for this depth and sacredness and beauty. And also that philosophically it was kind of, like, dumb, you know? Sorry! As I was saying, polemic is obviously not a thing of the past. [laughter] But it's just not rich as a philosophy; it's stupid. It can be pulled apart easily. And yet, it has so much authority and so much weight in terms of people's minds -- even people who think, "I'm not a philosopher," they're like, "This is not real. That's terrible. Isn't that dangerous?"

So it felt like a lot of it really needed to, "Hang on. Wait a minute," and coming at it from different angles, from modern physics, from modern philosophy, from emptiness. And it's like, this feels really important, you know? Thank you for saying that, because now I feel like, "I don't need to do that. I've done that." And now we can build on. And if people want to argue, they can just go back and listen to the talks. [laughs]

Lila: I think it's very, very important, because you point out something that, if the argument is "No, no, this is not real, and even dangerous," well, have a look at what's real, and go back into your authority to even question. But I wanted to ask you, how did you start with the imaginal? What was the starting point?

Rob: I started playing, like I said, just from books and maybe some videos or something -- different Tibetan tantric teachings. So it made sense to me. It's like, I took the emptiness thing, in the way that I was exploring it -- it was like the natural next step. It made sense to see everything as divine, everything was sacred, and perception is malleable because of ways of looking.

Lila: Would you say that what the Buddha was teaching in the Pali Canon and getting into the end of it, you experienced it, and you moved on? It's a tricky question, I know.

Rob: Well, it depends.

Lila: It didn't satisfy you, did it?

Rob: It didn't satisfy me, yeah. It didn't satisfy me. And that's not to claim I'm an arahant. I'm absolutely not an arahant or anything like that. But in terms of tasting that Unfabricated and that, and then the beauty of that, and the transformation -- and not just the Unfabricated; also the emptiness as well.

Lila: Yes, and you're talking about the beauty.

Rob: Yeah.

Lila: And still ...

Rob: Still it didn't satisfy something.

Lila: What was it that wasn't satisfied?

Rob: I think it's basically -- well, it's more like this: if you just go to the Unfabricated, then all this [gestures broadly] is kind of fabricated and relatively worthless. It's dualistic. The Unfabricated is a great thing, and you just go, you know? And that dualism felt uncomfortable to me.