Stream Entry (Part 2) - Equanimity and Enlightenment

After a few reflections, after the last seminar on stream-entry, I thought it might be helpful to perhaps clarify a few things and elaborate on a few things a bit further. So I'm just putting this out and, as I said, I hope it's helpful to some people, at least. Partly, I was of course aware that a significant portion of what was woven into the last seminar on stream-entry was material that, if you like, pertains to soulmaking perspectives, Soulmaking Dharma perspectives, so bringing those perspectives to bear on the whole concepts and relation with stream-entry.

Part of the reason of doing that is that it's interesting, I think, and important, but it's also the case, teaching, that some people, long-term Dharma practitioners, committed, devoted meditators, come to a point -- not everyone, but some people come to a point -- where their whole idea and sense of path, of practice, and goal of path and practice, kind of begins to lose coherence or doesn't kind of make sense any more, or enough sense to them, to their being without the perspectives of Soulmaking Dharma and concepts like eros and image and fantasy, etc. So some people are like that, and so it's necessary for those people to bring to bear those soulmaking perspectives on any Dharma issue, including the issue of stream-entry.

For others, however, Soulmaking Dharma is not their thing. Perhaps they're just not ready for it at this time in their lives, this time in their practice. Perhaps it will never be their thing, and there's no reason why it should be their thing ever. Or, we could say -- especially when we look at something like stream-entry or awakening from the perspective of soulmaking -- what it invites is a kind of radical questioning, a bold questioning and inquiry into the very concepts of path and goal and awakening and all that. With that, there can be what we call in soulmaking language the breaking of the vessels. Sometimes whole ideations and structures of what we thought we were doing, and where we were going, and how it all worked, and what we were assuming were truths we could rest in, sometimes some or all of that whole structure begins to crack. We call that breaking of the vessels.

So that's quite a momentous experience, that kind of thing. We have to be ready for that. So if that's the case, if soulmaking is not your thing, if you're not attracted to it, if it just feels like that kind of bold questioning of what awakening is, and where are we going, and what can we assume, and what can we rely on, and why are we doing this, and what is stream-entry and all that -- if that kind of bold questioning that will potentially shake the foundations of things, if that feels like, "I'm just not ready for that. It's just too shaky, too upsetting, too ungrounding," then please ignore the whole soulmaking thing and the whole soulmaking perspectives or inquiry into awakening and stream-entry. Just forget about it. Think classically. If you want to think about stream-entry, think classically about it, if it's helpful. Now, sometimes -- and I'll come back to this -- even thinking classically about it, for a person who's thinking only in terms of, let's say, classical mainstream Dharma, not Soulmaking Dharma, still the concept of stream-entry is not helpful -- it's actually a bit of a red herring. I'll come back to that.

So, in a way, you can simplify. Just put aside all that stuff, all that questioning, all that throwing things up into the air and sort of penetrating inquiry there, and just think classically about it. I wish that things could be that simple. [laughs] Even then, even if I do that -- let's say I decide, "I'm leaving the soulmaking. I just want to think classically about it" -- I still am left with the issue of having to choose, probably, whose version of classical Dharma stream-entry I'm going to trust or follow. Just in terms of Gaia House teachers, you could probably line up, I don't know, ten of us, of the main teachers at Gaia House, and you'd probably get close to ten different versions of what it means from a classical perspective, what stream-entry is, what it entails, what it asks of us, what it delivers (including -- I'd be one of those ten, I suppose).

But if you want to do that, and if you want to find out what I said, then you can go back to -- I think there was a talk I gave in 2007 or 2008 somewhere. I think it's called "Awakening." But you can find it on Dharma Seed, and talking about stream-entry and that. And of course, a central part of that practice towards that would be emptiness -- not all of it, and I'll come back to that as well -- and you can find that in books and talks, in my book, Seeing That Frees, and in lots of talks over the years to do with deep insight into emptiness, etc. But you're still left with this problem, how to decide between different versions.

A related issue is the fact that, again, you could line up those ten Gaia House teachers, not to mention teachers from other traditions, etc., and you will get ten different versions, or close to ten different versions or interpretations of what emptiness means. And it can be quite confusing when we start to mix these paradigms, these explanations or definitions of emptiness. It can be quite confusing if we start to mix, without realizing it, these definitions and interpretations of stream-entry. So I think it's wise to recognize differences and inquire into differences and be quite precise and accurate about that, both with respect to stream-entry and also with respect to emptiness, insight.

[7:33] So there's one problem with deciding who I'm going to trust, if I'm just being classical now, I've decided I just want to be classical in my Dharma approach. There's a second issue -- we're not going to go into it too much, but I'll just flag it for now -- which is a deep realization of emptiness, deep insight into emptiness involves, includes the realization of the emptiness of liberation, the emptiness of awakening. The emptiness of liberation and awakening doesn't mean that liberation and awakening don't function, don't provide a fruit in life. It does not mean that. Things can be completely empty, things are completely empty, and still functional, function, produce effects on a conventional level. So this is axiomatic in Buddhism. So it still functions even though it's empty, and it can still function as something we aspire to. It functions in producing results, and it can function as something that we aspire to. I fully know the emptiness of liberation; it doesn't cut or undermine my aspiration to further levels of liberation.

But somehow this piece of realizing the emptiness of liberation/awakening is still somehow in that, in the mix of the whole path there towards different stages of awakening. It's something I have to reckon with. Emptiness of liberation is the emptiness of a phenomenon, the phenomenon of awakening, of liberation. In a lot of Theravādan -- let's say most Theravādan traditions -- they don't address so much the emptiness of phenomena. It's more the emptiness of self, of the personal self. But even then, you will get a teaching, a variant of this kind of conundrum, potential conundrum that I've just voiced. So, for example, Ajahn Chah -- I can't remember the words exactly, but he would say, "Don't be a stream-enterer. Don't be an arahant. Don't be a once-returner. Don't be anybody. If you're thinking in those terms, you're thinking of becoming someone or being someone, having achieved something and then being this or that." He said, "Let go of all that."

So whether it's only at the level of the emptiness of the personal self, or whether it's at the more universal, more comprehensive level of the emptiness of phenomena, somehow I'm going to have to both include that realization with respect to stream-entry and being or achieving stream-entry, and kind of overcome it, if you like, without letting go of my realization of emptiness. I'm just flagging that. It's a separate point we're not going to go into now.

To be honest, if I'm working one to one with a student -- this applies to many issues, but certainly with regard to something like this -- the whole communication becomes much simpler, because you're dealing with one person, one person's personality, one person's propensity, one person's kind of particular place where they are in their life and their practice, and what they're ready for, and what they're hungry for, and what they want. And then it becomes much easier for me as a teacher. I won't even mention, for example, soulmaking or all that, kind of bring that radical questioning to bear, if my sense is it's not going to be helpful for this person -- it's not invited, it's not wanted, it's only going to confuse things. Or, if it is [wanted], then of course I can bring it in as a teacher. So working one to one, you can be quite precise and attuned in your teaching and the interaction there, because you've only got to tune to one thing.

So someone might have listened the other day and felt quite confused or agitated by some of what was said, some of what I said. And it might be they've sort of heard it, but they haven't had any background in Soulmaking Dharma teachings, and it all just sounds like, "Oh, you can just make it up and stream-entry can be whatever you want it to be," and it all sounds a bit flat and flippant and unimportant or very confusing. So then my advice would be forget about it, just forget about all that. And it might be, as I said earlier, that the whole notion of stream-entry for that person might be a red herring, if that's the right metaphor. It's something that's actually coming into the mix, attracting the attention, but not what we need to focus on.

So my question is always -- and you probably heard it the other day -- what is it that you're wanting from practice? What is it that you're wanting? I might ask a person, and they might say something like, "I want some opening to something bigger than this small self that I feel. I feel already imprisoned in it, and my neuroses, and my patterns. I want to taste something bigger." Now, they may use words like 'mystical' or whatever, but they may not. They may just say something like that. They may say that, and they may say, along with that, "And I want to work well, I want to work better, I want to learn to work better with my psychological difficulties, my issues in relationship, the everyday dukkha, neuroses, messes I get in, working with my emotions, etc. I want to learn to work better with the stuff of self and psychology."

Okay. So what we have there, it's very clear. You could say there are two realms for development, exploration: there's this opening beyond the self, and there's the -- if we use language not so strictly -- stuff of the self. That's what I explore. My practice then explores those two realms. Is there a connection? Will they impact each other? Yeah, sure, but you don't need to worry about that yet. Know what you want, and it indicates to you what you should then explore. Within that, you can drop the whole 'stream-entry' notion. What's it doing? What's it adding at that point, for this person? It doesn't help. It only confuses. It might be, as I said, a bit of a red herring.

So in this case, the example I just gave, the desires are clear, okay? So it maps out what practices we need to do, what questions we need to ask, what we need to develop in practice. Part of what I was trying to say the other day -- and I'll try and say it now; just pick one piece out and try and say it now without soulmaking language -- is I was trying to pick up a little bit on what I said, I think, in those talks, "What is Awakening?," which is beginning to inquire into the psychology of why we have certain responses in regard to stream-entry and the self, like "where I am" -- "I've achieved it," "I've not achieved it," "I really need to achieve it," and a striving, or "It just doesn't interest me." Any of those responses will have some kind of psychology, a nexus of psychological factors, that is, if you like, birthing or propelling, sustaining that particular attitude and that particular idea about self and self feeling in relation to a concept.

So it's really interesting -- if I have this or that response in regards to stream-entry, "I'm not interested," or "I've achieved it," or arahantship, "I've achieved arahantship," or whatever it is -- why? What's going on psychologically in that? More than that, part of what I wanted to say the other day -- I think I did say it; maybe it wasn't that clear -- is what are the effects of that? So, for example, a person says, "Well, I'm not interested in stream-entry." They don't even think about it. When they hear it, or when someone asks them, they say, "Nah, it doesn't interest me." Now, I've heard plenty of that from people over the years. What's going on? Perhaps it might be the pain of desire. It's hard -- the Buddha talks about this, something like the pain of the contemplative, I think is his word. Here's this thing that can be achieved, and it sounds fantastic, and I don't have it yet, and I want it, and that's painful. A person can decide, "I do not want that pain. I do not want to tolerate that pain. I refuse the pain of desire." And so, the easiest way to do that is, "I'm just not interested." I just abolish that notion or that goal or that possibility from my consciousness, or I diminish it, or demean it, or poke fun at it or something.

It may be that a person -- this is related -- maybe there's a lot of ego-pain. It's more that the pain of desire is not so much just the tension of longing, but there's a self-judgment that comes in: "I'm useless. I'll probably never get there. Who am I to aspire to that?", etc. It might also be that a person's not interested just because they haven't heard about stream-entry, and that can be the case for a lot of Dharma practitioners. They've not read about it, they've not heard about it. They've just not been introduced to that level of possibility. And again, related possibly to the first, the pain of desire, is also what I've called in the past a kind of generally anti-libidinal attitude, and perhaps it's to life in general. There's a sense of just wanting to kind of flatten everything out; not to have one's libido, one's life force, one's juices, one's eros and desire pour into and towards something in life; not to get too excited about this or that, or too inspired; to want everything to just be not too high, not too low, just even.

So lots of different possible psychological reasons to not be interested, and more. But what's the effect of that? And one of the obvious effects is that potentially that kind of psychology will limit the range and the opening and the potential discovery in practice. So this is one of the things I was trying to point to the other day -- it's not so much the concept; it's like, what's our relationship with this concept, and what is the effect of that on our lives and on our practice, and then on our discovery in practice, on the realms that open up to us? A person could have an attitude, "I've achieved stream-entry. I achieved it years ago, decades ago," whatever it is, or arahantship, or wherever in between, and again, what's happening there? Is there, in fact, a position of ego-defence there? I want to say, "I've got this. I don't want others to question me. I want to measure up with others. I don't want to question myself."

Is it, again, that we're avoiding the pain of desire? Because if I have achieved something, maybe there's an attitude of, "Well, that's good enough. I don't need to ... There's nothing else, anyway. As the Buddha says, 'Done is what had to be done.'" Or, "Stream entry is good enough for this life. The next six lives, I'll worry about it." Or, again, is there this kind of anti-libidinal attitude that pervades one's existence? Again, what happens? I've achieved something, and out of that, it supports that attitude, that idea, that self-view, and that whole idea of goal supports and locks into place, perhaps, a non-desire, the absence of ongoing desire, ongoing momentum, ongoing curiosity. And again, that limits what we discover, what we open to.

[20:46] A person could say, "I'm not interested in stream-entry," but still their desire, their eros, their curiosity is alive. They're on fire. They're just not thinking in terms of, necessarily, a closed concept like stream-entry. All the discovery is there. Why? Because their interest is still there. Because their curiosity is still there. Because their fire is still there. Because their restlessness, in a good sense, is still there. So there is the opening, and there is the range that opens up in terms of experience and understanding and discoveries and realms and all of that, and the fire burns. And again, fourth possibility, someone could say, "I have achieved this or that level of awakening," and maybe it's even arahantship, "but there's more possible. Yes, more beyond arahantship." And so this self-definition of achievement, or notion of achievement in relation to whatever this concept is -- arahantship or whatever -- it doesn't diminish their fire. There's more possible. What else can be discovered? What else can be opened? Do we really think there's a limit to what human beings can open to, and create and discover, and the beauties, and the depths and dimensions, and the mysteries that consciousness can know and inhabit, the way the world can open up?

So, "not interested" can go both ways, can spawn either a kind of dying, a dullness, a closing down, or it can spawn and support a fire, an opening, an onward movement. And similarly with "I have achieved, I have achieved this or that." So the effects. A really important question is, what psychology is going on for me? What's going on for me psychologically? And what are the effects of that? This takes an enormous amount of self-honesty and integrity. So that's a presupposition here. So all that's in the mix, and if one is working one to one with someone, as I said, all that either is apparent fairly immediately, or can be teased out or helped to bring to the surface, to consciousness, etc., and it becomes easier for me or any teacher, "This is what we're dealing with. This is what needs attention. This is what needs support. This is where we're going. This is what needs to happen."

I find, as a teacher, as soon as I'm relating to or speaking to more than one person, it's very hard not to try to take care of everybody, and their individual needs, and places where they're at, and inclinations, and personalities, and histories, and psychologies, and so the whole thing just gets a lot more complex, because the minute I say something, I feel like I have to qualify it or add something for this other person. At the moment, just in my person, I can't seem to help that process. [laughs] It just happens. There's something in me that wants to try and be inclusive and address the whole range of needs and understandings and all that.

Okay. So one of the things that came up the other day, Jamie asked a question and it was related to equanimity. In a way, it was implicit in some of the other things that were said, but I want to just pick that strand up a little right now. So the relationship between equanimity and enlightenment. What can happen when we start discussing these kinds of things, or looking into them, or thinking about them for ourselves and trying to make sense of our practice, is that different notions can be brought together. So, for example, stream-entry, emptiness, equanimity, and in Jamie's case it was also service (which I don't know if he said explicitly, but I know that he's very committed to that, it's very important to him). And also ideas and images of enlightenment, etc., of which stream-entry is one. And all this gets mixed, but sometimes it can get mixed, these different aspects of Dharma concepts, these different Dharma concepts can get mixed in not-so-helpful ways.

So stream-entry, emptiness, equanimity, service to others, whole ideas and images of what enlightenment is -- they are all relevant to each other. But sometimes we need to make sure we're allowing them to kind of dialogue with each other or balance each other and inform each other in a way that's not misinformed and not obscuring things or confusing things. I mentioned this image or metaphor of a ball bearing in a U-tube, and I said something like maybe one way of thinking about stream-entry is, in my definition, in my classical definition, would be something like stream-entry is the realization of the emptiness of absolutely everything. One knows that. Absolutely everything -- self, phenomena, all versions of self-view, all phenomena including awareness and space and time. So a stream-enterer has seen that, has known that in their heart.

But as they go through their life, their understanding of that, or the accessibility of that understanding, moves at times. Sometimes it's right there, it's centred and they're grounded in that understanding. The ball bearing is at the bottom of the U-tube. But other times, their access to that understanding has shifted, and in the metaphor, the ball bearing is going up the tube. Stream entry will mean, because of the gravity of that place of insight, that there is a returning to that place of insight. It will also, because of the gravity, mean that there's a limit to how high the ball bearing can go up the tube. So certain, let's say, ranges of dukkha, ranges of suffering, just -- it's virtually impossible to get a stream-enterer into that. They just cannot construe that amount of papañca or difficult self-view or problem. It just won't go, because of the gravity of where that ball bearing is. But still, they can move.

And at further stages of enlightenment, the range of the movement of the ball bearing, how high it goes up the tube, you could say, is decreased, until an arahant, supposedly the ball bearing doesn't move, or barely moves. And then Jamie was saying we could come up with another, higher bar, [which] I think he said would be that the bearing doesn't move because one remains equanimous, impervious to -- he mentioned praise and blame, but we could say all of what the Buddha calls the eight worldly conditions: praise/blame, success/failure, gain/loss, pleasure/pain. So then we have to tease this apart a little bit. Okay, one, the second one there, is a description of a state of equanimity. In other words, the ball bearing represents the mental state, the turbulence or not of the mental state. In the metaphor as I was using it, the ball bearing represents access to an understanding. They're not irrelevant to each other, but there's a difference there.

So what does the ball bearing represent? What does the tube represent, etc.? And what's the relative value of those two metaphors? Jamie, as I understood him, was trying to say, "Well, if I can just be kind of completely unperturbed by the eight worldly conditions, that must be a higher bar. If I define stream-entry that way, that's a higher bar than what you're talking about." I mean, it's safe to say -- well, I'm certainly not aware of the Buddha defining stream-entry in anywhere near those terms, as Jamie was talking about, but he didn't talk about ball bearings -- I don't think they had ball bearings then. [laughs] And it's open to interpretation, whether you can interpret it in the way that I was explaining.

[30:05] But basically, there's a difference there between a mental state of equanimity, or, let's say, some kind of mental state, and a knowing, a lived understanding. What's more important here, though -- I think I said this somewhere or other; I can't remember where -- it's very interesting. If we take just the theme of emptiness and the exploration of emptiness, at what we might call the (I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all) less deep end of emptiness exploration, so things like personality definitions, or unpacking self-blame, or the way mindfulness unfabricates to a certain extent, this kind of level -- let's say relatively the shallow end of emptiness explorations -- the freedom that comes from that is very obvious. There's a very obvious connection between that level of emptiness explorations and freedom in one's life. As you get deeper, into the really deep end of emptiness explorations as I would kind of lay it out, the relationship with freedom becomes more subtle, perhaps, so that it may be that someone who has realized the emptiness of things at a very deep level may, at times, have less freedom than someone who has only realized a more superficial level of emptiness, at times, if this second person, who has only got a certain, relatively superficial level of emptiness, if their freedom or equanimity is bolstered by other factors -- other path factors, other psychological factors, other personality factors, etc. Or -- and this is something I'll come back to -- actually what we're looking at is not freedom and equanimity, but the near enemy of freedom and equanimity, or a near enemy. I'm going to come back to that point.

So this is interesting, the relationship of freedom, how obvious it is to others and in one's life, and what kinds of freedom open up at different levels. And again, what happens when we just -- as maybe most of us nowadays -- actually just put aside the whole question of rebirth? Then what happens to the notion of freedom? And how do we feel it? How do we know it? How do we recognize it in someone else? And what does it deliver for us? To me, the deeper end of emptiness realizations, what they do do is they open up, they deliver, an immense sense of beauty, and sacredness, and gorgeous mystery of being, of the cosmos, of consciousness. They do bring a sense of extremely profound release. That's the word the Buddha used, 'release,' when he talked about these different stages of meditation. But it's very hard to put into words the experience of that release. When you're dealing in meditation with these kind of subtleties, it feels like a profound difference than, say, a stage earlier, of the emptiness insight unfolding. But actually, it's quite subtle, in terms of the actual experience, the differences in the experience, and what comes out of it in one's life. The differences are quite subtle.

However, the deeper emptiness, for the most part, brings, as I said, beauty, sacredness, onward eros, onward possibilities for creation and discovery, as well as this profound release. And that, relating to what I said the other day, I think that's of immense benefit. So again, we come back to this question: what is it that you want? What do you want? And if you're not buying into the whole rebirth paradigm, what do you want? What does it mean for you? What kind of freedom are we talking about? What's available? And is it just freedom? You can't help -- I would like to be so clear and just put aside soulmaking questions and all that, but you can't help but they come in with any kind of intelligent questioning of one's experience as one goes deep in the path.

So there's a couple of factors here, just to recap what I just said. There's the notion of lots of different factors contributing to equanimity, if it is equanimity, in the moment, or freedom in any moment. It's not just emptiness. There are lots of factors. Some of them will be Dharmic factors, path factors. Some will be non-path factors. And different degrees of emptiness deliver more than just freedom in the ways that we usually think about that. So we cannot escape this question, I think, of "what do you want?" It's so important, so central.

[35:50] Equanimity, classically speaking, when the Buddha talks about equanimity, actually a couple of things are worth pointing out about it. There are different kinds of equanimity. So the Buddha talks about there's equanimity as one of the brahmavihāras, which mostly means equanimity with respect to or in relationship to the suffering of others. And it's a balance for compassion, for the heart that cares and is moved by the suffering of others. The danger for that heart that's very sensitive and very receptive to dukkha and the suffering of others is that it can get too wobbly. So the fourth brahmavihāra kind of acts as a balance, a balancing factor, for the second brahmavihāra. Equanimity, I stay steady with respect to the suffering of others, with the compassion. So it's not instead of the compassion. But there's equanimity there with respect to the suffering of others.

There's equanimity with regard to, as Jamie kind of mentioned indirectly, the eight worldly conditions that we just enumerated -- pain/pleasure, success/failure, gain/loss, and praise and blame. Then there are places where the Buddha talks about equanimity based on singularity, and equanimity based on multiplicity. What's he talking about there? Equanimity based on singularity is the equanimity of the third and fourth jhānas, and those jhānas beyond it. They are states of deep equanimity. But they're actually, relatively speaking, either pretty much completely closed to the multiplicity of phenomena in the world -- there's a single object, which is stillness, or peace, or whatever it is, or one of the formless realms -- so there's singleness, the single object. The world is shut out, so of course I'm equanimous in relation to the world; the world's pretty much not there.

But then there's equanimity based on multiplicity, which is the consciousness open and receiving the impressions -- receiving is the wrong word, but we'll leave it for now. Open to the impressions, to sense impressions. The sense doors are open, and there's equanimity in relationship to the multiplicity of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches and mental formations. So we can then talk about equanimity with regard to all phenomena. So there are these -- depending on how you slice it -- four different kinds of equanimity. But equanimity, as I said before, is a state. It's a mind state. And that mind state can arise in lots of different ways. This is important too. It can arise from insight. It might be insight into impermanence. It might be insight into the unsatisfactory nature of things. It might be insight, some degree of insight into emptiness. But it can arise from insight.

It can arise from certain ways of looking. Certain practices will just give rise to [equanimity]. It can arise, as we just mentioned, from samādhi, from jhāna. And it can arise also from mettā. So just doing mettā practice will give rise to a certain amount of equanimity. Calmness itself has already got some equanimity. So just in terms of positive path factors, equanimity can arise from a lot of different situations. So when you see someone being equanimous, or you feel equanimous in a certain situation, we still have to discern how is it that that equanimity, in that moment, has arisen. We don't necessarily assume it arises from a deep insight into emptiness. It may. It may have nothing to do with it.

[39:55] Related to that, it's really important to understand -- just saying what I just said in different words -- that, in a way, the whole of the Buddha's path, or certainly the totality of it, most or many of the elements in the Buddha's path -- not all of them; many of them -- will support the possibility of equanimity. Samatha, calmness, samādhi, mettā as I just said, reflections on death, impermanence. Reflections, for example as Jamie was talking about, praise and blame -- I think I put this out in some talk, just reflecting, "Okay, this person thinks I'm a jerk, or thinks I'm an idiot, or thinks I'm this or that, and so this thought is going through their mind right now. Maybe it goes through that person's mind ten or twenty times. But how much do I really think they're thinking about me?" So let's say twenty times they have this thought that "Rob's an idiot," for instance, or whatever it is. So I could reflect, "Okay, and how many thoughts do they have in their lifetime? And how many thoughts are there of the totality of thinking, sentient beings in the history of the universe?" [laughs] And in that context, innumerable, billions upon billions of thoughts that generally just come and go and then people get distracted with other stuff, twenty of them pertain to Rob being an idiot. I'm just reflecting and I'm playing with a certain reflection that contextualizes that person. I may not know for sure that they think I'm an idiot; that's another reflection. But anyway. Certain skilful, playful reflections that contextualize whatever it is, the blame, etc., and that does something to my whole relationship. It's like, "Am I really going to get upset? Twenty out of, like, one gazillion thoughts are about Rob being an idiot." So, for example, something like that.

I mentioned samatha, but I'll mention another more concrete example: one of my teachers, his whole approach to the path, including insight, was very much based on working with the breath. And so he would encourage students, basically, if we could, stay with the breath all day long. It was whole-body breath. All day long. And he would say things like, "Then someone can insult you or whatever, and basically there's a lot of space in the body, and you're just with the breath, and you just watch that insult go right through. It doesn't land." That equanimity, imperturbability there, non-reaction, is coming out of attempting to sustain a practice. A person doing that might have no insight whatsoever. So it's important to see that equanimity can arise in many different ways. In terms of our practice, if equanimity is what's important to us, we also have to look to the larger web of the Buddha's teachings and think, if I want equanimity, I'm not just going to bang on about emptiness. There are a lot of other ways to get equanimity, just from the collection of the Buddha's offerings.

So all this begs the question -- I mentioned this before -- here's this person, or here's my experience, or I see another person's experience of what looks like equanimity, or they're claiming, this person's saying, "Oh, I don't get touched by any of that," or "I feel my mind is completely steady through all that," and the question is, how does that equanimity arise? As I said, is it from insight? Is it from a certain practice? If it is insight, what level of insight? And as I alluded to before, is it actually equanimity? Or is it a kind of hardness? Is it a kind of thick-skinnedness? Is it an insensitivity? So this is actually really important. This is why the Buddha talks about near enemies and this kind of thing. It might also be -- we didn't have time with Jamie in the Q & A the other day; we were saying, "I've seen the emptiness of this and that," but if we had more time and there was the opportunity, then it might be we have to also let in the possibility that maybe the emptiness practice needs tweaking. So you can say, "Oh, yeah, I've understood the emptiness," or, "I know how to do that." It's like, let's revisit that. Let's just make sure it is. And maybe it's fine. And maybe it needs a little tweaking, and that tweaking of it will actually deliver equanimity where there was none before.

So especially with something like emptiness, there's a real possibility of really deep refining of what it means, and also of our skill with practising with it. But really what the insight is, the Middle Way is really a razor's edge, and we get closer and closer to that as we go deeper. So sometimes we can think, "Oh, yeah, I've done that, emptiness of this, emptiness of that, got that, got that," and I'm not at all implying that about Jamie; I don't know -- but were there more time for our interaction or in an interview, that would be one of the things worth inquiring into, worth checking out.

Okay. So, a related question, and this is really important. Again, in talking to Jamie, and also because I know him a little bit: is equanimity the purpose of awakening? So we're back to the notion of freedom, the idea of freedom, the image of freedom. Is equanimity the purpose of awakening? Now, for some people, it is. That's what they want, whether that's a deep desire or a more neurotic desire, if you like, or coming from a kind of reactivity or defensiveness or anti-libidinal tendency or whatever is it. But regardless of all that, which is important questions, as I said before, we still have this question: is equanimity the purpose of awakening? In other words, is that the main point of awakening?

For some people, it is. For some people, the quietening of complexity, of papañca, simplification of things, the imperturbability, the unbotheredness, the un-stirred-upness is actually the point. That, for them, is where the path is going. For noble or less noble reasons, that's what they want. When Jamie was speaking, and again, because I know him a little bit, I would have a question for him: is equanimity the purpose of awakening for you? Is that what you most want? Is it enough for you, equanimity? Or is it that you want the equanimity in the service of something more important? In other words, the equanimity is part of a support or a platform for what actually is more important -- the equanimity is instrumental, if you like. In his case, and what it sounded like, implicit in the question -- he didn't bring it out too much, but -- the thing that was more important than equanimity itself was service, service to others, and what was wanted there was equanimity so that the service could be more steady, more uninterrupted, more full, more potent, etc.

Maybe it sounds like nitpicking, but these are really important questions, I think. Unpacking, again, what do you want? You can't avoid this question, and taking the care necessary to look at that, being honest with oneself, because it makes a difference then to where we're aiming, and where we're aiming makes a difference to what we open to, and we discover, and we make our own, and we achieve or attain. So a couple more questions related to this. Going back to what I said before, equanimity can arise in lots of different ways. Does it matter how it arises? More important, even: how is the quality, the colour, if you like, of the equanimity, dependent on the means of attaining it? Is there such a thing as an equanimity that wobbles? So we have to ask, what do we actually mean by 'equanimity,' okay? In some respects, it means an unwobbling of the consciousness. But when we talk about, when we translate the question into what Jamie seemed to be asking about, service, etc., what about an equanimity that wobbles but still perseveres? And sorry for the soulmaking language for those of you not familiar with it -- is there such a thing as an equanimity without soul? Yes, there definitely is. Is there such a thing as an equanimity with soul? Yes, there is. Are they different? Are they very different? Yes, they're very, very different! [laughs] So is the equanimity hard, or is it soft? Is it sensitive or insensitive? Is it unimpacted? In other words, something -- praise, blame, success, failure -- is it unimpacted by all that?

So when we talk about equanimity, we start to see, "Oh, maybe there's a range in the kinds of equanimity, the qualities of it, the versions of it, what we're talking about here." Jamie mentioned Martin Luther King, but we could think about Beethoven, the composer. Was he equanimous in his whole creative process, in his struggle to get out what he got out, in how he was in relation to criticisms? People said not just "you're deaf" but "you're completely mad now" in his late period, "in what you're producing." Was he unperturbed, unaffected by that? No, he wasn't. [laughs] Did he still manage to persevere and produce, I think, some of the most beautiful creations of humanity in the whole history of humanity? Yes, he did. So is that equanimity, or not equanimity? What's important there? Now, to us in history, is it important that he got angry and shouted at people or whatever, or had some sleepless nights because he realized that some of his contrapuntal passages were wrong, so he'd get up in the middle of the night, redo it, rush to the printer's? Is that important? How much do I care that he was unperturbed? What I care about is that he persevered, and that he had the integrity to do that and to follow through and not let whatever criticism or other difficulties, and tremendous loss in his life, deflect him and impede or even slow down his whole doing what he felt called to do.

Similarly with Stravinsky. Eric Dolphy (I mentioned him in some talks) -- a jazz musician in the sixties, and Miles Davis, who was an extremely famous jazz musician, said, "He just sounds like someone's treading on his toe when he plays the saxophone." And Eric Dolphy said, "Listen, Miles, that's not very fair. We're trying to earn our living here." But did it stop him playing in the way that he felt called to play -- very unusual, very creative, very ahead of his time? No, it didn't. Mahler -- people said, "No one's listening to your music." Bach as well. There were people much more famous than Bach. Was he okay with that? No, he actually wasn't okay. He knew who was the better composer. [laughs] Did it stop him being immensely prolific? No. We could go on and on. I remember -- some of you are too young to remember this -- but do you know who David Beckham is? He was a footballer. In 1998, in the World Cup, he got sent off in this mega sort of epic football battle with Argentina, sort of arch-enemies, and he got sent off with his little petulant reaction to a foul. England went on to lose the match narrowly. And after they got back from the World Cup, he received death threats and hate mail and all kinds of things for a couple of years. I imagine he was anything but imperturbable. I imagine it affected him very much. But he was still able to show up and do his job and work. It's a silly example.

Much more painful examples, I think, are the racism that goes in football. There are a lot of African footballers or British Black footballers or whatever who get, week in, week out, racist abuse from fans on social media or in grounds, and it affects them, and it should affect them, and yet they show up, week after week. You hear some of them speak, "Well, I'm a professional. I do my job." And they concentrate and they do it. Jesus didn't sound very equanimous to me [laughs] generally speaking; he was quite a hothead. So all these -- we could give many examples. In other words, there can be emotion, upset, turbulence, agitation, with something that we can call steadiness and commitment and perseverance to what needs to be done. Is that equanimity? Is it not equanimity? What's more important is not so much whether it's equanimity according to the Buddha, but what's important for you. In this case, Jamie was asking that question. What's important for you? Or is it an equanimity that's kind of impervious, that's just not really touched by something? Or maybe a better example than all those is, imagine a climate scientist, someone who does research on climate change, or a really deeply engaged climate activist. Imagine them having no emotional response at the lack of response or ambition globally to address climate change, or when they read something about how the glaciers are melting faster than we thought.

So is equanimity a kind of robotic imperviousness? Do we have that kind of idea of it? Again, this is important. What do we want? What is it that we want for the texture of our life, for the amplitude of our heart, for the colours of our being, our soul? What do we want? Sometimes Trump looks pretty equanimous, or just unfazed. Certainly Boris Johnson. Sometimes he seems extremely -- like it's just water off a duck's back there. Really impervious. Or in some talks -- to nuance this a little more, actually -- a little while ago I remember giving the example, someone had told me he'd been a monk with a senior monk in Burma for a while, and they were walking somewhere very beautiful. And this person told me they'd stopped to admire the distant sort of panorama of hills in the dawn or the sunset, and the beauty of nature there. And the senior monk, the teacher, the sayadaw, came and sort of just stood behind him and said, "I only see colour and the sensations. There are just the sensations of colour and form. Beauty is an illusion," or something like that. Is that what we want? Is that kind of imperviousness, that kind of equanimity, what we want?

[57:49] Related to all this, and specifically related to this point, is this -- how am I, how is my so-called equanimity; how is this person's equanimity, when either they claim it or we see equanimity with them? So there are a couple of things that are important here. One is a larger issue, which I've mentioned before in other talks. The Buddha said don't just assume someone's got whatever stage of awakening, just because they say it or someone else says it about them. You have to live with a person for a while. You have to see them through all kinds of ups and downs and life situations and contexts. So he was saying with regard to someone saying, "These people are arahants," "No, no, wait, wait. You have to hang out and see." We could say the same thing with a stream-enterer. One of my teachers used to say, when people said, "I think I'm enlightened now. Seems great," he'd say, "Let's wait a year. Let's wait a year, because a year is a good length of time -- all kinds of stuff, ups and downs will happen. Life will throw at you all kinds of things. See how this is over the year. And then we'll see whether we call it this or that stage of awakening."

So I have to look at myself, my equanimity, my freedom, or the equanimity and freedom of someone else, and I have to ask two questions. How is it, over time, and with respect to lots of different conditions? And, as I was pointing at before, what is the flavour, what is the tenor of this? Is it impervious? Is it hard? Is it insensitive? Does it have that range in it? Going back to that monk on this point, if this person doesn't really have any or seem to have any reactions to the eight worldly conditions (which, to me, would be a little bit strange -- say, the loss of ecosystems; if that doesn't affect someone, I'm not sure, you know, for myself, if that's a really valuable thing, that kind of lack of reaction). But if they really seem to be that equanimous, do they really have, for example, a deep sensitivity to and involvement with or even creation of beauty? What's their relationship with beauty -- either sensitivity to it or coming out of them in their life, expression of it? What's their relationship with a sense of sacredness?

If they don't have that, either much of a full relationship with the possibilities of sacredness or with beauty, is that a coincidence? Is that a coincidence? I don't know the answer to this. But might it be that that kind of sensitivity and care for beauty, might it come sometimes at a cost to the possibility of a kind of unbudgeable, impervious version of equanimity? Classically, we would jump in and say, "No, no, no, but equanimity has this near enemy, indifference, and we don't mean that." Yes, agreed; we need to know what's indifference and what's equanimity. But this question about beauty and sacredness is much more subtle. You have to look much closer than just the label of a near enemy called indifference.

So all this, as I said, takes a lot of insight, a lot of clear seeing, a lot of penetrating, a lot of questioning, a lot of asking, a lot of subtle discernment, and a lot of honesty, as we said. And it always comes back to: what do you want? What do you want, and -- sorry for the soulmaking language for some of you not familiar with it -- what is your fantasy of awakening? What do you think it looks like? What do you imagine it's like? And, as I said before, in relation to equanimity, is the equanimity instrumental, part of a platform for something that is more important to you, more soulful? Is your fantasy of awakening itself soulful? Is it something that there's eros and juice and love and mystery and the whole kind of ignition of the whole story of that, really, the fantasy of that? Or is the equanimity, as I said, instrumental to, a platform for, something that is, that touches you more soulfully?

Last thing to say for now is -- and this is with the option of soulmaking -- if, then, there is something that is soulful for you, whether it's the version of awakening or whatever it is that's more soulful, letting that which is already somewhat soulful become more imaginal, letting it be more soulmaking -- I'm not going to explain what that means; I'm just saying it as a general point right now -- whatever this is that I want that's more soulful (and in Jamie's case it was service -- there's something for his soul in relation to service, in relation to wanting to do something radical even in service of the greater good in society in different ways; that's potentially soulful for him), letting that which is already somewhat soulful become more soulful, helping it become more imaginal and more soulmaking, that will lead to more equanimity, more ability to stay steady, to persevere. Maybe there are still wobbles. Maybe you're still really upset when certain things happen in terms of the eight worldly conditions or overjoyed or whatever. But the steadiness will come out of -- the more soulfulness, the more ability to persevere. The more this thing has become soulmaking for me, the more imaginal it has become, the more fully imaginal it has become, the more equanimity there will be in the sense of being able to stay true, stay steady and committed to what matters most to us, and there will be more freedom in relationship to that.

So here we get Soulmaking Dharma actually is one of the ways that deep equanimity, let's say powerful equanimity, can arise, and also freedom. So it might be that a person then needs to investigate that more, investigate the soul-aspect and the soul-relationship with whatever calls their being, their soul (in Jamie's case, it was service). Need to investigate that more and work with it more, if that's possible, and if they know how, and obviously if that's a path they want to explore or they even just are open to considering that it might be helpful. Because the fruits for equanimity, potent equanimity, and for freedom coming out of soulmaking can be absolutely enormous, and I would say, in some instances, more powerful than anything else. But I said I wasn't going to talk about it, so that's just a general point.

Okay. I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to put out there. I hope that's helpful to some people at least. I think I'll stop there. Okay. Thank you.