Transcription
Okay. That was beautiful to hear, what people were sharing there. We've called this retreat Foundations of a Soulmaking Dharma, and just to say a little bit about that, and about that word, 'foundations,' just a little bit: in a way, it implies that we're going to try not to introduce any new material. Some of you are probably quite relieved. [laughter] There's a lot already, and the time may be to consolidate, to digest, to get those foundations. What may be a little different is some of the relative emphases between different elements of this teaching, of this path. That may be a little different. We'll see. But we're trying -- emphasis on trying -- to kind of condense or distil the teachings and the material down to some sort of basic building blocks, if you like -- meaning kind of skills, let's say. What are the skills involved in practising this way? What qualities or attitudes serve these kinds of opening, the openings of these kinds of directions and avenues? And what kinds of understandings, plural, are part and parcel, are the bones and the flesh of this -- let's call it art, this kind of practice, this kind of art. So we're going to try and condense and distil, and sort of present that and go over that.
I think we should say right from the bat that we're not trying to be exhaustive in terms of "This is now the canonical thing, and these are all the lists," and all that kind of stuff. And there are also great individual variations. People are, of course, different in their constitution, in their personalities, in their inclinations, in where they're gifted and where they're more challenged, in their histories of practice, and of what teachings they've been exposed to. So somehow all that's got to be kind of acknowledged and brought into the mix. But the foundations of all this, of this art, will include, do include, actually everything that you already know from your practice of Buddhadharma, and particularly from insight meditation -- all the mindfulness, all the sīla (the emphasis on goodness and ethics and virtue), the samādhi, paññā (insight), mettā, the brahmavihāras. In a way, all those are foundations for what we're talking about. So everything you know comes into it, and probably more than you already know, in terms of other possibilities, other ways of doing things, other ways of conceiving and looking at things. So what you know, probably a bit more than what you know, and also, I would say, the willingness to question what you know, to question ideas that we have absorbed or arrived at at this point in our lives -- ideas from Buddhadharma, ideas from insight meditation culture, ideas and assumptions actually from the Buddhadharma, but also about the Buddhadharma. So that's actually all part of the foundations. It's a kind of shaky foundation. It's the foundation that shakes. It questions. It dares to question what we've received, and come to, and arrived at at this point in our life, from psychotherapeutic investigations, or practices that we've been doing, or teachings -- even what we might have come to from different ways we've been exposed to words like 'imaginal,' and 'soulmaking,' and 'eros,' and all of that, or what we might have encountered in kind of paths that are similar or overlap (shamanism, energy healing, and all that kind of stuff). A lot of the language is quite similar.
Part of what we're interested in here is a kind of -- well, Mary said "breaking through," and I don't want to tell you what you meant at all, but one way that that could be interpreted is that's very much a part of what happens when we let the soulmaking get going. Stuff gets broken through. So that willingness, that courage, that boldness, is actually part of the path. Refining clarity, as well, alongside that kind of boldness and willingness to question assumptions -- that's all part of it. So it's asking a lot. It brings in a lot. Actually, it will involve, it will bring into the mix, everything -- all the elements, all the aspects of our life. It's asking a lot. And within that, or with that asking a lot, then we have to also bring some wisdom to the question of pacing and digestion, and when am I ready for this, or when am I ready to question that. That's all part of it, and there will be huge individual variations in that. That needs to be respected. It's part of the maturity. It's part of the care. It's part of the wisdom.
So we're going to try to communicate somehow, to hopefully support you gaining a sense, really a sense and a taste of what we mean when we use words like 'imaginal,' and 'soulmaking,' and 'eros,' and all that. And also to try and open up and get a taste of what that implies, what that unfolds, and what that indeed opens up in terms of the possible visions, ideas, and senses of what it is to be a human being, and what a human being is, and what the world is. Something about this has the potential to just really open out. And where this is all going, the sense of that, and the possibility of that being opened up as well -- awakening, or the goal of the path, or whatever. This all, again, comes into the mix, gets metabolized in the soulmaking.
Someone said, "What brings you here?" And someone said, "Beauty." I used the word 'art' before, referring to this as an art. Even just those two ideas there, beauty and art -- what might that do to your whole sense of what the path is about, and how we conceive of it, and the kind of language we use, and the kind of either clear or vague ideas of where we're going? Some of you have been practising a long, long time, and it might be interesting for you to just question: where do I think I'm going with this? This business of awakening, or enlightenment, or liberation, or give it any words, what do I think that is? Where is it going? What is it that I actually really want? Am I using the right language and the right ideas to support the truth of what my soul wants? Some of you have been practising not that long, perhaps, and that might be an interesting idea, question, to introduce.
[9:50] So I used this word 'art,' and I didn't want to mean it in a kind of -- I don't know -- facile way. It's very easy to talk about 'the art of this,' or 'the art of that,' or 'the art of ...' whatever, and to imply in that word, 'art,' something like, "Well, it involves a skill, but there's also kind of an intuitive element, and some people can get really good at that," or whatever. All that, I suppose, is the case. I don't know what it means to be 'really good' at soulmaking. But I think I mean the word 'art' in a slightly fuller and potentially more radical way. When we really think about art, making art, and great art, it's like, what's the purpose of it? Why art? Why do people make art? Why do we love art? What is it that we're after? Where does the process or the engagement with either making art or loving art lead us? What's the goal? What does it serve? Some may not relate to the word 'art.' It's just one way of conceiving what we're doing, and if that doesn't really relate to you, there are other ways of opening up the sense of what this might all open out to. There might be another fantasy, rather than that of art.
But also in relation to art, I think we're trying that there isn't really a dogma here, much as there isn't with art. And it's not really a question of truth in the usual sense we think about that. Some of you have heard teachings around soulmaking, and stuff we've talked about before. So there's a kind of particular relationship with notions or ideas of truth and reality. There's a particular relationship that we're interested in. We'll talk about this as the retreat goes on. I think some of you have heard this before. But it's that particular kind of relationship with the whole idea of truth and reality that opens things up in certain ways that they wouldn't otherwise get opened up -- opening up a different domain, a range of experience, and giving us a different sense and idea of everything.
Actually, if we linger with this idea of art, you know, I think even when it's not obvious, when it's not spelled out in words or pictures that make obvious sense, I think that all art that I would call wonderful, or beautiful, or meaningful, or soulful art, even if it's not in an obvious way, it has an ethical dimension. It has a dimension that addresses us in terms of value, that touches our sense of value, makes us want to live differently somehow, makes us want to be alive differently. You guys know I like John Coltrane. It's like, well, there's a guy just playing some sounds. There's nothing in the title. There's nothing. And it does something to the sense of existence, and there's goodness and ethical values wrapped up in that. Art touches on that. So I use the word 'art' in relation to the practice that we're doing in all those senses, with all those implications.
Someone sent me a lovely poem, really touching to me, not too long ago -- a week or two ago. And she said, in introducing it (this is not someone I know yet), "Yesterday was my birthday, and I have a tradition of getting up early and writing a poem on that day." And then she said, "I think you'll find the soulmaking teachings' influence in here." So this is a poem:
This year a Syrian girl gifted me a red poppy.
This year the sunflowers grew as tall as the roof.
This year Annette's son died a week before mother's day.
This year I kissed a man who was also a falcon.
This year I was a cloud and when I rained, she cried.
This year the long-tongued deity taught me wild equanimity.
This year, I prayed naked, and the gods loved it.
This year, on winter solstice, we laughed so hard we peed off the edge of the mountain. This year I traded babies with a minotaur mother.
This year I was a gazelle eaten by a lion.
This year children reminded me that you can become a robot when it's pretend-real, that we can share mermaid dreams with the dog, and that kings make bad fathers when they've lost their bones.
This year the electronic billboards lit snowfall in Nanjing.
This year a pair of cranes landed on a river when the sun fell.
This year Steve and I were still learning to dance.
This year I played peek-a-boo with a blue-eyed spider.
This year an insane amount of people decided to keep loving me.
This year a few decided to stop.
This year the crow finally flew from that windowsill and we became each other.
She continues,
In this birthday writing, I'm not being abstract. These things happened to me. But I'm also not claiming that any of it is real or not real. It's just that life whispers in many tongues. My dear Western culture, my darling inheritance, in all your brilliance and brutality, this year I've come to realize that you've forgotten many secret languages, especially the ones that makes us most human -- the 'let me create you and you create me' love languages, the languages of belonging. Let's keep remembering, shall we?
This year, I discovered how to belong.
Beautiful. "The 'let me create you and you create me' love languages."
She mentions in there this inheritance that we all have of Western culture, and its brilliance and brutality. There's so much gift, in terms of science, and social infrastructure, and that kind of way of thinking, that we are heirs to, that we benefit from. And I think it's become clear, it's becoming clear, that the culture, the intellectual inheritance, and the inheritance of sensibility and outlook, metaphysics and all that, has a brutality to it, as well. It comes with a cost. We see every day there's something in the news -- unfortunately, it's usually way down in the back pages -- but every day there's something of some kind of ecological/environmental crisis somewhere. We are living through multiple environmental/ecological crises that are somehow the result of our vision, our brilliant and brutal and limited vision. We're living through environmental crises, ecological crises. I think we're also living through anthropological crises. What is a human being, that we look on each other these ways? 'Anthropology' means the logos, the ideation of what a human being is, in one sense. So in a way, humanism that came with the Western Enlightenment -- there's a kind of crisis in it, you could say.
[18:43] Now, I'm not saying -- and I don't think Catherine would say, either -- that what we're doing with soulmaking is the solution. Absolutely not. There are plenty of people addressing these questions, and there are many possible solutions. But it does, I think -- what we're doing, and what we're wanting to bring into this, and the way practice opens up the being -- it does address those issues of what it means to be a human being, and what the world is, and then what our relationship is organically, naturally, with other human beings, ourselves, and the world.
So as I said, in our time, there are many views, and ancient traditions, and practices, and epistemologies, and ontologies that are kind of resurfacing, are being resuscitated to address some of these questions. And there's so much of value there, so much of value. And there's so much need for it, and so much hunger for it. All this stuff comes up, and in a way, then, it lands on the table, and gradually, we can start to kind of sort and sift what's there, these different ideas, these different practices, these different understandings and outlooks. And I really, absolutely don't want to say this one path is better, or this conception is worse, or that way of practice is more advanced, or anything like that. But they are different. There are differences there. And to sort them, to understand what's been brought up, resuscitated, and brought to the table in multiple attempts to address these kind of predicaments that we globally face now, I think making delineations, making discriminations and discernments between these different ideas and practices and outlooks is quite important.
Actually, some of you might know already, or have heard us say, that this making of discriminations is actually an element of soulmaking. The more on fire soulmaking is, the more discernments, and delineations, and proliferations, and complexities, and faces of things open up. We will explain this. It's what happens when what we call the 'eros-psyche-logos dynamic' gets going. All these differences, and different aspects, and faces, worlds upon worlds open up, and part of that is delineation and discrimination. And in all that, there's a maturing of understanding and of practice that's possible. So one element, just one element -- it's certainly not the be-all and end-all, but one element that's quite central in this, what we're calling 'soulmaking,' is the realm of concepts and conceptual frameworks. And there's a dance here, I think. There's a dance to be witnessed, to be entered into -- a kind of middle way dance between, if you like, precision of conceptual understanding, precision of conceptual delineation on one hand, and elasticity on the other, fluidity, flexibility, capacity to stretch.
In all that, what can be allowed in this dance between precision and elasticity, what can be allowed is the creation and the discovery of more and more facets of soul, more and more worlds, more and more dimensions, more and more realms of being; a proliferation that happens of richness with the whole soulmaking dynamic. And that feeds and requires kind of sensitivities. We develop our sensitivities to make these discernments and to make these differentiations. We're talking about a kind of, if you like, you could say a 'soul-intelligence' -- which is not just a head, abstract thing. It's lived. It's felt. It touches the soul with beauty, and it involves a great deal of present moment, alive flexibility of conception, and ways of looking, and all that.
So eventually -- for some of you already it does -- but eventually this soulmaking dynamic will involve eros for ideas, eros for the conceptual, eros for these differentiations. Some of you might find that very hard to believe. But everything gets subsumed. Everything starts to burn, come on fire. Everything. Even more things than you can even think of when you hear the word 'everything.' Because in the process of create/discover, we discover more things that we didn't even know were there, that come alive, come into the dimensions of our being. I'm just highlighting one element tonight, not at all to say it's the most important one, but just putting this out. The conception is part of it, and part of what will be involved, part of what will be swept up into the flames and the flowering of the soulmaking.
In that, you will come to love that ongoing refinement of ideation, and conception, and ways of looking, and all of that, the ongoing, your love, your care for these kinds of discernments and discriminations, because you realize it's part of the creation and discovery. And if we just throw everything in together and say, "It's all one. It's all the same. All paths are the same," etc., actually, I don't know that that reflects the utmost care. Someone who really cares about cooking, like a really top-notch chef, they just don't stir it, "It's all good." They relish the subtleties of the discrimination, and the nuance of the tastes, and the aromas, and the visual. It's a sign of their care.
So I'm not talking about something that's an intellectual abstraction. I'm talking about something that opens up awareness, and avenues of experience, and practice, and sense. I mean actually sensing. So I really want to encourage you at the beginning -- and hopefully you'll catch the spark here -- encourage you to play, and to experiment, and have fun with this. Firsthand, experiential understanding; firsthand experience of the creation and discovery that's part of soulmaking. And so, experience and idea, or praxis and logos, they can unfold, they can open, they can be enriched together, and there's tremendous beauty in all that, tremendous beauty, riches.
Just finally, just practically speaking: I wish sometimes, teaching a retreat, that there would be some way of instantaneously downloading all the teachings in one go. [laughter] Saṃsāra being what it is, that's not possible, so things have to happen in a certain order. But the order that we do things in doesn't imply any inherent kind of "Things go in this order," or "First you need to do this." They all kind of feed into each other. We're going to try, given the limitations of just how time is structured, we're going to try and build. Things that come later hopefully build on what comes earlier, so it can kind of make sense that way.
I think that's all I want to say now. Just to really -- you've heard us say so much -- emphasize this quality of play, and experimenting, and letting yourself taste what opens up when you bring those attitudes. So I really want to encourage that. Okay. Thank you.
